A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (40 page)

‘Naturally.’ That was right. I wouldn’t want everyone knowing what I got up to, come to think of it.

‘So there isn’t any Hell?’

‘Well, there’s something we
call
Hell. But it’s more like a theme park. You know, skeletons popping out and frightening you, branches in your face, stink bombs, that sort of thing. Just to give you a good scare.’

‘A good scare,’ I remarked, ‘as opposed to a bad scare?’

‘Exactly. We find that’s all people want nowadays.’

‘Do you know about Heaven in the old days?’

‘What, Old Heaven? Yes, we know about Old Heaven. It’s in the records.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘Oh, it sort of closed down. People didn’t want it any more. People didn’t need it any more.’

‘But I knew a few people who went to church, had their babies christened, didn’t use rude words. What about them?’

‘Oh, we get those,’ she said. ‘They’re catered for. They pray and give thanks rather as you play golf and have sex. They seem to enjoy themselves, to have got what they wanted. We’ve built them some very nice churches.’

‘Does God exist for them?’ I asked.

‘Oh, surely.’

‘But not for me?’

‘It doesn’t seem so. Unless you want to change your requirements of Heaven. I can’t deal with that myself. I could refer you.’

‘I’ve probably got enough to think about for the moment.’

‘Fine. Well, until the next time.’

I slept badly that night. My mind wasn’t on the sex, even though they all did their very best. Was it indigestion? Had I bolted my sturgeon? There I was, worrying about my health again.

The next morning I shot a 67 on the golf course. My caddy Severiano reacted as if it was the best round he’d seen me play, as if he didn’t know I could do 20 shots better. Afterwards, I asked for certain directions, and drove towards the only visible patch of bad weather. As I’d expected, Hell was a great disappointment: the thunderstorm in the car-park was probably the best bit. There were out-of-work actors prodding other out-of-work actors with long forks, pushing them into vats labelled ‘Boiling Oil’. Phoney animals with strap-on plastic beaks pecked at foam-rubber corpses. I saw Hitler riding on the Ghost Train with his arm round a Mädchen with pigtails. There were bats
and creaking coffin lids and a smell of rotting floorboards. Is that what people wanted?

Tell me about Old Heaven,’ I said to Margaret the following week.

‘It was much like your accounts of it. I mean, that’s the principle of Heaven, that you get what you want, what you expect. I know some people imagine it’s different, that you get what you deserve, but that’s never been the case. We have to disabuse them.’

‘Are they annoyed?’

‘Mostly not. People prefer to get what they want rather than what they deserve. Though some of them did get a little irritated that others weren’t sufficiently maltreated. Part of their expectation of Heaven seemed to be that other people would go to Hell. Not very Christian.’

‘And were they … disembodied? Was it all spirit life and so on?’

‘Yes indeed. That’s what they wanted. Or at any rate, in certain epochs. There has been a lot of fluctuation over the centuries about decorporealization. At the moment, for instance, there’s quite an emphasis on retaining your own body and your own personality. This may just prove a phase, like any other.’

‘What are you smiling for?’ I asked. I was rather surprised. I thought Margaret was there just to give information, like Brigitta. Yet she obviously had her own opinions, and didn’t mind telling you them.

‘Only because it sometimes seems odd how tenaciously people want to stick with their own bodies. Of course, they occasionally ask for minor surgery. But it’s as if, say, a different nose or a tuck in the cheek or a handful of silicone is all that stands between them and their perfect idea of themselves.’

‘What happened to Old Heaven?’

‘Oh, it survived for a while, after the new Heavens were built. But there was increasingly little call for it. People seemed keener on the new Heavens. It wasn’t all that surprising. We take the long view here.’

‘What happened to the Old Heaveners?’

Margaret shrugged, rather complacently, like some corporate planner whose predictions had been borne out to the tiniest decimal point. ‘They died off.’

‘Just like that? You mean, you closed down their Heaven and so they died off?’

‘No, not at all, on the contrary. That’s not how it works. Constitutionally, there would have been an Old Heaven for as long as the Old Heaveners wanted it.’

‘Are there any Old Heaveners around?’

‘I think there are a few left.’

‘Can I meet one?’

‘They don’t take visits, I’m afraid. They used to. But the New Heaveners tended to behave as if they were at a freak-show, kept pointing and asking silly questions. So the Old Heaveners declined to meet them any more. They gave up speaking to anyone but other Old Heaveners. Then they began to die off. Now there aren’t many left. We have them tagged, of course.’

‘Are they disembodied?’

‘Some of them are, some of them aren’t. It depends on the sect. Of course the ones that are disembodied don’t have much trouble avoiding the New Heaveners.’

Well, that made sense. In fact, it all made sense except for the main thing. ‘And what do you mean, the others died off?’

‘Everyone has the option to die off if they want to.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘No. There are bound to be a few surprises. Did you really want to be able to predict it all?’

‘And how do they die? Do they kill themselves? Do you kill them?’

Margaret looked a bit shocked at the crassness of my idea. ‘Goodness, no. As I said, it’s democratic nowadays. If you want to die off, you do. You just have to want to for long enough and that’s it, it happens. Death isn’t a matter of hazard or gloomy inevitability, the way it is the first time round. We’ve got free will sorted out here, as you may have noticed.’

I wasn’t sure I was taking all this in. I’d have to go away and
think about it. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘these problems I’ve been having with the golf and the worrying. Do other people react like that?’

‘Oh yes. We often get people asking for bad weather, for instance, or for something to go wrong. They miss things going wrong. Some of them ask for pain.’

‘For pain?’

‘Certainly. Well, you were complaining the other day about not feeling so tired that – as I think you put it – you just want to die. I thought that was an interesting phrase. People ask for pain, it’s not so extraordinary. We’ve had them requesting operations, as well. I mean, not just cosmetic ones, real ones.’

‘Do they get them?’

‘Only if they really insist. We try to suggest that wanting an operation is really a sign of something else. Normally they agree with us.’

‘And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’

She looked at me levelly, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years, calculated by old time, of course. But yes, everyone takes the option, sooner or later.’

‘So it’s just like the first time round? You always die in the end?’

‘Yes, except don’t forget the quality of life here is much better. People die when they decide they’ve had enough, not before. The second time round it’s altogether more satisfying because it’s willed.’ She paused, then added, ‘As I say, we cater for what people want.’

I hadn’t been blaming her. I’m not that sort. I just wanted to find out how the system worked. ‘So … even people, religious people, who come here to worship God throughout eternity … they end up throwing in the towel after a few years, hundred years, thousand years?’

‘Certainly. As I said, there are still a few Old Heaveners around, but their numbers are diminishing all the time.’

‘And who asks for death soonest?’

‘I think
ask
is the wrong word. It’s something you want.
There aren’t any mistakes here. If you want it enough, you die, that’s always been the ruling principle.’

‘So?’

‘So. Well, I’m afraid – to answer your question – that the people who ask for death earliest are a bit like you. People who want an eternity of sex, beer, drugs, fast cars – that sort of thing. They can’t believe their good luck at first, and then, a few hundred years later, they can’t believe their bad luck. That’s the sort of people they are, they realize. They’re stuck with being themselves. Millennium after millennium of being themselves. They tend to die off soonest.’

‘I never take drugs,’ I said firmly. I was rather miffed. ‘And I’ve only got seven cars. That’s not very many around here. And I don’t even drive them fast.’

‘No, of course not. I was just thinking in general categories of gratification, you understand.’

‘And who lasts longest?’

‘Well, some of those Old Heaveners were fairly tenacious customers. Worship kept them going for ages and ages. Nowadays … lawyers last quite well. They love going over their old cases, and then going over everybody else’s. That can take for ever. Metaphorically speaking,’ she added quickly. ‘And scholarly people, they tend to last as long as anyone. They like sitting around reading all the books there are. And then they love arguing about them. Some of those arguments’ – she cast an eye to the heavens – ‘go on for millennium after millennium. It just seems to keep them young, for some reason, arguing about books.’

‘What about the people who write the books?’

‘Oh, they don’t last half as long as the people who argue about them. It’s the same with painters and composers. They somehow know when they’ve done their best work, and then they sort of fade away.’

I thought I should be feeling depressed, but I wasn’t. ‘Shouldn’t I be feeling depressed?’

‘Of course not. You’re here to enjoy yourself. You’ve got what you wanted.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Maybe I can’t get used to the idea that at some point I’ll want to die.’

‘Give it time,’ she said, brisk but friendly. ‘Give it time.’

‘By the way, one last question.’ I could see her fiddling with her pencils, straightening them into a row. ‘Who exactly are you?’

‘Us? Oh, we’re remarkably like you. We could be you, in fact. Perhaps we are you.’

‘I’ll come back again if I may,’ I said.

For the next few centuries – it may have been longer, I stopped counting in old time – I worked seriously on my golf. After a while I was going round in 18 shots every time and my caddy’s astonishment became routine. I gave up golf and took up tennis. Pretty soon I’d beaten all the greats from the Hall of Fame on shale, clay, grass, wood, concrete, carpet – any surface they chose. I gave up tennis. I played for Leicester City in the Cup Final and came away with a winner’s medal (my third goal, a power header from twelve yards out, clinched the match). I flattened Rocky Marciano in the fourth round at Madison Square Garden (and I carried him a bit the last round or two), got the marathon record down to 28 minutes, won the world darts; my innings of 750 runs in the one-day international against Australia at Lords won’t be surpassed for some time. After a while, Olympic gold medals began to feel like small change. I gave up sport.

I went shopping seriously. I ate more creatures than had ever sailed on Noah’s Ark. I drank every beer in the world and then some, became a wine connoisseur and despatched the finest vintages ever harvested; they ran out too soon. I met loads of famous people. I had sex with an increasing variety of partners in an increasing variety of ways, but there are only so many partners and so many ways. Don’t get me wrong, incidentally: I’m not complaining. I enjoyed every bloody minute of it. All I’m saying is, I knew what I was doing while I was doing it. I was looking for a way out.

I tried combining pleasures and started having sex with famous people (no, I won’t tell you who – they asked me to
respect their privacy). I even took up reading. I remembered what Margaret said and tried – oh, for a few centuries or so – arguing about books with other people who’d read the same books. But it seemed a pretty arid life, at least compared to life itself, and not one worth prolonging. I even tried joining the people who sang and prayed in church, but that wasn’t really my thing. I only did it because I wanted to cover all the angles before I had what I knew would be my final talk with Margaret. She looked much as she had done several millennia earlier when we’d first met; but then, so did I.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ I said. Well, you’re bound to come up with something after all that time, aren’t you? ‘Listen, if you get what you want in Heaven, then what about wanting to be someone who never gets tired of eternity?’ I sat back, feeling a touch smug. To my surprise she nodded, almost encouragingly.

‘You’re welcome to have a go,’ she said. ‘I could get you the transfer.’

‘But …?’ I asked, knowing that there would be a
but
.

‘I’ll get you the transfer,’ she repeated. ‘It’s just a formality.’

‘Tell me the
but
first.’ I didn’t want to sound rude. On the other hand I didn’t want to spend several millennia pissing about if I could be saved the time.

‘People have tried it already,’ Margaret said, in a clearly sympathetic tone, as if she really didn’t want to hurt me.

‘And what’s the problem? What’s the
but
?’

‘Well, there seems to be a logical difficulty. You can’t become someone else without stopping being who you are. Nobody can bear that. It’s what we find, anyway,’ she added, half implying that I might be the first person to crack this problem. ‘Someone – someone who must have been keen on sports, like you, said that it was changing from being a runner to being a perpetual motion machine. After a while you simply want to run again. Does that make sense?’

I nodded. ‘And everyone who’s tried it has asked for a transfer back?’

‘Yes.’

‘And afterwards they all took the option to die off?’

‘They did. And sooner rather than later. There might still be a few of them around. I could call them in if you want to ask them about it.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. I thought there must be a snag in my idea.’