Job: A Comedy of Justice (39 page)

He stood up and came around to put a hand on my shoulder. “This is a tragedy that I have seen repeated endlessly. A loving couple, confident of eternity together. One comes here, the other does not. What can I do? I wish I could do something. I can’t.”

“Saint Peter, there has been a mistake!”

He did not answer.

“Listen to me! I know! She and I were side by side, kneeling at the chancel rail, praying…and just before the Trump and the Shout the Holy Ghost descended on us and we were in a perfect state of grace and were snatched up together.
Ask
Him! Ask
Him!
He will listen to
you.
”

Peter sighed again. “He will listen to anyone, in any of His Aspects. But I will inquire.” He picked up a telephone instrument so old-fashioned that Alexander Graham Bell could have assembled it. “Charlie, give me the Spook. Okay, I’ll wait.
Hi!
This is Pete, down at the main gate. Heard any new ones? No? Neither have I. Listen, I got a problem. Please run Yourself back to the day of the Shout and the Trump, when You, in Your aspect as Junior, caught up alive all those incarnate souls who were at that moment in a state of grace. Place Yourself outside a wide place in the road called Lowell, Kansas—that’s in North America—and at a tent meeting, a revival under canvas. Are You there? Now, at least a few femtoseconds before the Trump, it is alleged by one Alexander Hergensheimer, now canonized, that You descended on him and his beloved concubine Margrethe. She is described as about three and a half cubits tall, blonde, freckled, eighty mina—Oh, You do? Oh, Too late, huh? I was afraid of that. I’ll tell him.”

I interrupted, whispering urgently, “Ask Him where she is!”

“Boss, Saint Alexander is in agony. He wants to know where she is. Yes, I’ll tell him.” Saint Peter hung up. “Not in Heaven, not on earth. You can figure out the answer for yourself. And I’m sorry.”

I must state that Saint Peter was endlessly patient with me. He assured me that I could talk with any One of the Trinity…but reminded me that, in consulting the Holy Ghost we had consulted all of Them. Peter had fresh searches made of the Rapture list, the graves-opened list, and of the running list of all arrivals since then—while telling me that no computer search could conceivably deny the infallible answers of God Himself speaking as the Holy Ghost…which I understood and agreed with, while welcoming new searches.

I said, “But how about on earth? Could she be alive somewhere there? Maybe in Copenhagen?”

Peter answered, “Alexander, He is as omniscient on earth as He is in Heaven. Can’t you see that?”

I gave a deep sigh. “I see that. I’ve been dodging the obvious. All right, how do I get from here to Hell?”

“Alec! Don’t talk that way!”

“The hell I won’t talk that way! Peter, an eternity here without her is not an eternity of bliss; it is an eternity of boredom and loneliness and grief. You think this damned gaudy halo means anything to me when I
know
—yes, you’ve convinced me!—that my beloved is burning in the Pit? I didn’t ask much. Just to be allowed to live with her. I was willing to wash dishes forever if only I could see her smile, hear her voice, touch her hand! She’s been shipped on a technicality and you know it! Snobbish, bad-tempered angels get to live here without ever doing one lick to deserve it. But my Marga, who is a real angel if one ever lived, gets turned down and sent to Hell to everlasting torture on a childish twist in the rules. You can tell the Father and His sweet-talking Son and that sneaky Ghost that they can take their gaudy Holy City and shove it! If Margrethe has to be in Hell, that’s where
I
want to be!”

Peter was saying, “Forgive him, Father; he’s feverish with grief—he doesn’t know what he is saying.”

I quieted down a little. “Saint Peter, I know exactly what I am saying. I don’t want to stay here. My beloved is in Hell, so that is where I want to be. Where I
must
be.”

“Alec, you’ll get over this.”

“What you don’t see is that I don’t
want
to get over this. I want to be with my love and share her fate. You tell me she’s in Hell—”

“No, I told you that it is certain that she is not in Heaven and not on earth.”

“Is there a fourth place? Limbo, or some such?”

“Limbo is a myth. I know of no fourth place.”

“Then I want to leave here at once and look all over Hell for her. How?”

Peter shrugged.

“Damn it, don’t give me a run-around! That’s all I’ve been handed since the day I walked through the fire—one run-around after another. Am I a prisoner?”

“No.”

“Then tell me how to go to Hell.”

“Very well. You can’t wear that halo to Hell. They wouldn’t let you in.”

“I never wanted it. Let’s go!”

Not long after that I stood on the threshold of Judah Gate, escorted there by two angels. Peter did not say good-bye to me; I guess he was disgusted. I was sorry about that; I liked him very much. But I could not make him understand that Heaven was not Heaven to me without Margrethe.

I paused at the brink. “I want you to take one message back to Saint Peter—”

They ignored me, grabbed me from both sides, and tossed me over.

I fell.

And fell.

And still I fell.

For modern man one of the most troubling aspects of eternity lies in getting used to the slippery quality of time. With no clocks and no calendars and lacking even the alternation of day and night, or the phases of the moon, or the pageant of seasons, duration becomes subjective and “What time is it?” is a matter of opinion, not of fact.

I think I fell longer than twenty minutes; I do not think that I fell as long as twenty years.

But don’t risk any money on it either way.

There was nothing to see but the insides of my eyeballs. There was not even the Holy City receding in the distance.

Early on, I tried to entertain myself by reliving in memory the happiest times in my life—and found that happy memories made me sad. So I thought about sad occasions and that was worse. Presently I slept. Or I think I did. How can you tell when you are totally cut off from sensation? I remember reading about one of those busybody “scientists” building something he called a “sensory deprivation chamber.” What he achieved was a thrill-packed three-ring circus compared with the meager delights of falling from Heaven to Hell.

My first intimation that I was getting close to Hell was the stink. Rotten eggs. H
₂
S. Hydrogen sulfide. The stench of burning brimstone.

You don’t die from it, but small comfort that may be, since those who encounter this stench are dead when they whiff it. Or usually so; I am not dead. They tell of other live ones in history and literature—Dante, Aeneas, Ulysses, Orpheus. But weren’t all of those cases fiction? Am I the first living man to go to Hell, despite all those yarns?

If so, how long will I stay alive and healthy? Just long enough to hit the flaming surface of the Lake?—there to go
psst!
and become a rapidly disappearing grease spot? Had my Quixotic gesture been just a wee bit hasty? A rapidly disappearing grease spot could not be much help to Margrethe; perhaps I should have stayed in Heaven and bargained. A saint in full-dress halo picketing the Lord in front of His Throne might have caused Him to reverse His decision…since
His
decision it had to be, L. G. Jehovah being omnipotent.

A bit late to think of it, boy! You can see the red glow on the clouds now. That must be boiling lava down there. How far down? Not far enough! How fast am I falling? Too fast!

I can see what the famous Pit is now: the caldera of an incredibly enormous volcano. Its walls are all around me, miles high, yet the flames and the molten lava are still a long, long way below me. But coming up fast! How are your miracle-working powers today, Saint Alec? You coped with that other fire pit with only a blister; think you can handle this one? The difference is only a matter of degree.

“With patience and plenty of saliva the elephant deflowered the mosquito.” That job was just a matter of degree, too; can you do as well as that elephant? Saint Alec, that was not a saintly thought; what has happened to your piety? Maybe it’s the influence of this wicked neighborhood. Oh, well, you no longer need worry about sinful thoughts; it is too late to worry about any sin. You no longer risk going to Hell for your sins; you are now entering Hell—you are now
in
Hell. In roughly three seconds you are going to be a grease spot. ’Bye, Marga my own! I’m sorry I never managed to get you that hot fudge sundae. Satan, receive my soul; Jesus is a fink—

They netted me like a butterfly. But a butterfly would have needed asbestos wings to have been saved the way I was saved; my pants were smoldering. They threw a bucket of water over me when they had me on the bank.

“Just sign this chit.”

“What chit?” I sat up and looked out at the flames.

“This chit.” Somebody was holding a piece of paper under my nose and offering me a pen.

“Why do you want me to sign it?”

“You have to sign it. It acknowledges that we saved you from the burning Pit.”

“I want to see a lawyer. Meanwhile I won’t sign anything.” The last time I was in this fix it got me tied down, washing dishes, for four months. This time I couldn’t spare four months; I had to get busy at once, searching for Margrethe.

“Don’t be stupid. Do you want to be tossed back into
that
stuff?”

A second voice said, “Knock it off, Bert. Try telling him the truth.”

(“Bert?” I thought that first voice was familiar!) “Bert! What are
you
doing here?” My boyhood chum, the one who shared my taste in literature. Verne and Wells and Tom Swift—“garbage,” Brother Draper had called it.

The owner of the first voice looked at me more closely. “Well, I’ll be a buggered baboon. Stinky Hergensheimer!”

“In the flesh.”

“I’ll be eternally damned. You haven’t changed much. Rod, get the net spread again; this is the wrong fish. Stinky, you’ve cost us a nice fee; we were fishing for Saint Alexander.”

“Saint who?”

“Alexander. A Mick holy man who decided to go slumming. Why he didn’t come in by a Seven-Forty-Seven God only knows; we don’t usually get carriage trade here at the Pit. As may be, you’ve probably cost us a major client by getting in the way just when this saint was expected…and you ought to pay us for that.”

“How about that fin you owe me?”

“Boy, do you have a memory! That’s outlawed by the statute of limitations.”

“Show it to me in Hell’s law books. Anyhow, limitations can’t apply; you never answered me when I tried to collect. So it’s five bucks, compounded quarterly at six percent, for…how many years?”

“Discuss it later, Stinky. I’ve got to keep an eye out for this saint.”

“Bert.”

“Later, Stinky.”

“Do you recall my right name? The one my folks gave me?”

“Why, I suppose—
Alexander!
Oh, no, Stinky, it can’t be! Why, you almost flunked out of that backwoods Bible college, after you did flunk out of Rolla.” His face expressed pain and disbelief. “Life can’t be that unfair.”

“‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.’ Meet Saint Alexander, Bert. Would you like me to bless you? In lieu of a fee, I mean.”

“We insist on cash. Anyhow, I don’t believe it.”

“I believe it,” the second man, the one Bert had called “Rod,” put in. “And I’d like your blessing, father; I’ve never been blessed by a saint before. Bert, there’s nothing showing on the distant-warning screen and, as you know, only one ballistic arrival was projected for this watch—so this
has
to be Saint Alexander.”

“Can’t be. Rod, I know this character. If he’s a saint, I’m a pink monkey—” There was a bolt of lightning out of a cloudless sky. When Bert picked himself up, his clothes hung on him loosely. But he did not need them, as he was now covered with pink fur.

The monkey looked up at me indignantly. “Is that any way to treat an old pal?”

“Bert, I didn’t do it. Or at least I did not intend to do it. Around me, miracles just happen; I don’t do them on purpose.”

“Excuses. If I had rabies, I’d bite you.”

Twenty minutes later we were in a booth at a lakefront bar, drinking beer and waiting for a thaumaturgist reputed to be expert in shapes and appearances. I had been telling them why I was in Hell. “So I’ve got to find her. First I’ve got to check the Pit; if she’s in there it’s
really
urgent.”

“She’s not in there,” said Rod.

“Huh? I hope you can prove that. How do you know?”

“There’s never anyone in the Pit. That’s a lot of malarkey thought up to keep the peasants in line. Sure, a lot of the hoi polloi arrive ballistically, and a percentage of them used to fall into the Pit until the manager set up this safety watch Bert and I are on. But railing into the Pit doesn’t do a soul any harm…aside from scaring him silly. It burns, of course, so he comes shooting out even faster than he went in. But he’s not damaged. A fire bath just cleans up his allergies, if any.”

(Nobody in the Pit! No “burning in Hell’s fires throughout eternity”—what a shock that was going to be to Brother “Bible” Barnaby…and a lot of others whose stock in trade depended on Hell’s fires. But I was not here to discuss eschatology with two lost souls; I was here to find Marga.) “This ‘manager’ you speak of. Is that a euphemism for the Old One?”

The monkey—Bert, I mean—squeaked, “If you mean Satan, say so!”

“That’s who I mean.”

“Naw. Mr. Ashmedai is city manager; Satan never does any work. Why should he? He owns this planet.”

“This is a planet?”

“You think maybe it’s a comet? Look out that window. Prettiest planet in this galaxy. And the best kept. No snakes. No cockroaches. No chiggers. No poison ivy. No tax collectors. No rats. No cancer. No preachers. Only two lawyers.”

“You make it sound like Heaven.”

“Never been there. You say you just came from there; you tell us.”