Blameless in Abaddon (51 page)

Lovett's pallid face reddened, a flush flowing all the way to the hairless dome of his head. “I cannot accept a dualistic God.”

“Oh? We accept
you
, fat boy—HA, HA, HA!”

Barely had this last speech escaped their host's larynx when something astonishing occurred: more astonishing, even, than the sentient tide that had recently descended upon Scheveningen. A lycanthropic change overcame Yeshua. Lock by lock, his hair dissolved, leaving him balder than Lovett. His neck thickened, his lips swelled, his eyebrows proliferated, his forehead ballooned, his eyes turned bright red.

He grew seven inches in as many seconds.

Martin and Lovett gasped in unison.

“No,” wailed Lovett.

“Jesus,” moaned Martin.

“Indeed,” said Jonathan Sarkos, his hairy shoulders and broad back bursting the seams of Yeshua's shroud. “I am what I am. I am Christ and Antichrist, God and Satan, Heaven and Hiroshima, Arcadia and Auschwitz.” Smiling devilishly, Sarkos lumbered up to Lovett. “Get it, fat boy? God is a duality. Dr. Jehovah and Mr. Hyde.” He lobbed the bottle cap into his mouth and chewed. “Allow me to tell you a bedtime story. It's called ‘The Day the Gas Chambers Malfunctioned at Auschwitz.' On second thought, why bother? You know the plot: the title gives it away—I'm surprised Braverman and Kelvin left it out of their overblown epic. Can you imagine how it feels to be a seven-year-old Jewish child, standing in line with hundreds of other Jewish children, waiting your turn to be thrown alive onto an open fire?” Swallowing the bottle cap, Sarkos swerved toward Martin. “Don't you see? It's the only solution that can possibly work. No other theory comes close. Of
course
God has a dark side. Not just dark—evil. Radically, radically evil.”

“Why didn't you tell me this the last time I was in His brain?” demanded Martin. “If I'd walked away with a deposition from you arguing for a dualistic—”

“A deposition from
me
? From the
Devil?
Torvald would've shredded it on the spot.”

“I'll have you know I passed up a meeting of the Beer and Beowulf Society to come here tonight,” said Lovett scoldingly. “I must admit, I expected something more enlightening.”

“Tough cookies,” said Sarkos. “You aspired to be God's advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God's advocate was ipso facto
my
advocate. Theodicy's a sucker's game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity's obligation wasn't to
worship
Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe with Auschwitz . . . that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil's work for him.”

“The real Lovett should be hearing this—not the Idea of Lovett, the
real
Lovett,” wailed Martin. “It's not
fair.
”

“It's not fair,” Sarkos agreed, transmogrifying back into Yeshua. He rested his turquoise eyes on Martin. “Not fair at all.”

“Maybe the Almighty has His weaknesses, but ultimately He's our only hope,” said Lovett. “Without our heavenly Father, we wouldn't know what love is.”

“Wrong again,” said Yeshua. “Have you never owned a dog? Dogs are experts at love, and yet they know nothing of God.”

“Not fair,” said Martin, “not fair, not fair . . .”

“What about all those witnesses I called?” protested Lovett. “What about my cancer victims—and courageous young Mona Drake, drawing pictures with her teeth?
They
don't think God has a dark side.”

“Fascinating,” said Yeshua. “A psychologist would call it ‘identification with the aggressor.' Battered children do it. So do beaten wives. The most memorable outbreak occurred in the concentration camps, when certain prisoners began acting like their guards: the salute, goose-step, Nazi uniform, everything. No matter how cruel the abuser gets, the victim keeps responding with a twisted sort of hero worship. In this fashion he maintains a modicum of control over his situation.”

“So I was right to pull the plug?” asked Martin.

“‘Mark my words, Martin Candle,'” replied Yeshua, quoting himself. “‘Before your life is done, you'll get another chance at this . . .' Which doesn't mean I'm about to let
you
off the hook either. In your own way you're as sorry a phenomenon as Lovett here. Bitterness is not a philosophy, friend. Outrage is not an ethic. Stop counting corpses and reach a truce with the universe, or you'll be stuck on the dung heap forever.”

“But the universe is full of pointless suffering.”

“Pointless,” Yeshua agreed.

“The Court has already found in my favor,” said Lovett caustically. He walked straight up to Yeshua, clasping the Savior's shoulders with both hands. “It doesn't matter
what
you and the Devil think.”

“Take your hooks off me.”

The professor backed away.

“Maybe we could reopen the case,” said Martin.

“The case is closed . . . forever,” said Yeshua.

“No, it isn't. I could mail a new petition to Ferrand.”

“It's closed, Mr. Candle. End of story. Curtain.”

“How do you know? How? How?”

Instead of answering, Yeshua finished his Rolling Rock, shape-shifted into Sarkos, and then became Yeshua again.

“I wish you'd stop doing that,” said Lovett.

“What makes you think I have a choice?”

“Aren't you the architect of free will?”

“No, Professor, I'm the architect of the known universe. Cheer up. We four are doomed, but life goes on. The eternal Footman is breathing down our necks, but babies keep arriving outside this brain. The sky is falling, but the chocolate cake in the refrigerator tastes like God Himself baked it—which, as a matter of fact, I did.”

 

Martin slept on the bed that night, Lovett on the divan, their host on the floor. With the approach of dawn the cancer patient's dream visited him once again. Martin's subconscious carried him to his little courtroom in Abaddon. Standing before the bench, Dr. Blumenberg confessed to exceeding the posted speed limit on Welsh Road but said he shouldn't have to pay because he'd recently made the magistrate well. Martin refused to waive the fine, but he reduced it from a hundred dollars to eighty-five.

As the sun's first rays slanted through the air vents, casting on the rug a pattern resembling Corinne's favorite constellation, Canis Major, Martin awoke. He stumbled to the refrigerator, took out the pitcher of iced tea, and filled his glass. Head to toe, a remorseless fever coursed through him. The crab feasted greedily on his shoulders, thighs, and pelvis.

Setting six Roxanols on his tongue, he ground them to pieces and washed down the grains. He looked around. His roommates were gone. The hemorrhage had evidently destroyed the Idea of Lovett: the professor's worsted suit lay in a rumpled pile under the divan. The white shroud was nowhere to be seen, a circumstance suggesting that Sarkos a.k.a. Yeshua might still be alive—a thought Martin found both disturbing and comforting.

“Dualism,” he muttered. “Yes. Of course.”

Turning back the stone, he experienced a strong premonition that someone was waiting for him on the other side. Gordon, perhaps, or Lot, or one of those loopy Scrabble-playing dinosaurs.

He was not prepared to meet himself.

But there he stood, all right—the Idea of Martin Candle, leaning on the driver's door of his Dodge Aries and dressed in a white linen suit covered with crusted blood.

“Martin?” said Martin, stepping into the feeble morning light. He raised his left hand, seeking to determine whether he was beholding a mirror image.

Both of the Idea's hands stayed in place. “Hello, buddy.”

“What're
you
doing here?”

“I've been elected to drive you home. You'll finally get to see your childhood fire station again.”

“We were right all along, weren't we?” A crab spasm seized Martin's frame, rattling every bone. His fever climbed another degree. “God was guilty. The best defense is the Manichaean heresy, which isn't a defense at all, it's—”

“Never mind about that.”

“—an indictment.”

“We'd better hit the road. De Groot is storming through Jerusalem even as we speak.” The Idea opened the rear door, extending his trembling index finger to indicate that Martin should enter. “I would help you, but if you touch me I'll disintegrate.”

“I've heard about that rule. It applies only in cases where the individuals love each other.”

“Indeed.”

“You mean . . .?”

“Yes, Martin, I love you. Not everybody can say that about himself.”

Slowly he eased his enfeebled body into the car, gritting his teeth so hard he half expected to crack his molars, until at last he felt the soft velour upholstery cradling his spine and hips.

As the Idea climbed behind the steering wheel, Martin realized a second passenger occupied the backseat—a frail septuagenarian dressed in a black sweatshirt and a straw hat.

“Dad?”

The old man said nothing.

“Dad?” inquired Martin again. “Dad?”

Slowly, with the sound of a wrought-iron gate pivoting on rusty hinges, the Idea of Walter Candle turned. Martin shuddered. Since their last meeting his father's face had undergone a degeneration so profound it was nearly synonymous with his skull.

“I saw your performance in the Peace Palace,” said Walter.

“What did you think?”

“The white suit was an excellent choice. Too bad you got blood all over it.”

“I mean, what did you think of my arguments?”

“Clever. Not as clever as Dr. Lovett's, but still clever.”

“You . . . you agreed with the verdict?”

“Well, yes.”

“God has a shadow side, Dad—just like everybody else. His guilty half was . . . guilty.”

“Do you remember the lesson I used to teach about Jonah and the whale?”

“Jonah? I guess so. Sure.” The image returned in a sudden rush: Martin and his Sunday school classmates huddled inside a sweaty canvas tent while his father pumped in the sounds of surf and the stench of three-day-old pollacks. “You borrowed an army tent from Billy Tuckerman's father.”

“And do you remember the
point
of the Jonah lesson?”

“I'm not sure.”

“I was hoping you'd remember the point.”

“Give me a minute.”

“‘A whale can swallow a man, but only God can swallow a whale.' You tried to swallow a whale, Son. It got stuck in your throat.”

“Stuck in my throat,” Martin echoed in a corroborating tone. “And if I had it to do over again, I'd still hunt Him down.”

“It hurts me to hear you say that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You shouldn't have killed Him.”

“I can understand your feelings.”

“It's
embarrassing.
”

“He wanted it, Dad.” Inexorably Martin's fever took hold of him. His heart hurled itself against his rib cage. “All those tornadoes, and no real defense . . . He
wanted
it.”

Blackness seeped through Martin's brain like ink jetting from a quintessential squid.

 

When at last his consciousness returned, he found himself sitting in a pile of freshly cut grass, each blade damp with cerebrospinal dew. He blinked—once, twice, a third time—inhaling the vivacious fragrance of mentation mixed with chlorophyl. He recognized his environs: the front lawn of his parents' old homestead, the building miraculously restored to its prebulldozer state—Abaddon Fire Station Number One, a weathered mass of brick and clapboard comprising a two-engine barn, a dozen improvised living spaces, and a broken siren. Four stout sugar maples commanded the side yard, shedding their coat hangershaped seedpods. His Dodge sat abandoned in the driveway, doors wide open, giving it the appearance of an immense four-barbed fishhook. Walter's wardrobe lay on the backseat in an amorphous mass. A blood-spattered suit coat hung over the steering wheel.

“Martin! Martin Candle!”

He swiveled his torso, triggering crab spasms in both shoulders. As Patricia ran across the lawn, he inevitably recalled his first glimpse of her: a lithe, attractive woman charging through Hillcrest Cemetery in a mourning dress, looking for the right funeral. Today she wore a more customary ensemble: yellow turtleneck, blue jeans, tennis shoes. A few yards behind her, Randall stood with his hands in his pockets, dazed by the primordial banality of God's Idea of Fox Run.

“Patricia, is that
you
?” asked Martin.

“You bet.”

“Not merely the
idea
of you? Not your twin sister?”

“Darling, it's me. We had a hell of a time getting in. Some day I'll tell you the whole story.”

“This brain of His is the craziest place,” said Randall, approaching. “I just visited our old school, and—you'll never believe this—everybody was reciting the Lord's Prayer. It's like
Abaddon School District versus Selkirk
never even
happened
.”

“I'm in a bit of a fix right now,” said Martin. “I can't seem to get up.”

His friends knelt beside him, setting their hands firmly against his shoulders and beneath his thighs. Their palms were sticky with cerebrospinal fluid. Lifting him off the grass, they bore him into the backyard, two acres of suburban verdancy permeated by the divine perfume of his mother's rose garden. To the preadolescent Martin, this labyrinth of bushes and pathways had always seemed the most tactile place on Earth—Mom's garden with its smooth petals and sharp thorns, its crumbly dirt and prickly-footed Japanese beetles. He wished he could walk through the maze once more, touching everything, but it was not to be. The crab owned him completely now, flesh, blood, and bone.