Death: A Life (34 page)

“Where is he?”

“Where’s who?”

“The boy decapitated by monkeys,” said Gabriel, flicking frantically through a book. My book. The
Book of Endings.
Pages drifted to the floor. I saw that there were many annotations and attached memos and that in lieu of the Darkness, Gabriel had a large black garbage bag in one hand. It had a hole in the bottom. I only now began to hear the sound of souls complaining, a vast tumult of white noise that I had barely registered before. Gabriel had been lax.

“He’s meant to be
here
!” shouted Gabriel frantically, pointing at the spot where the boy’s body lay.

“I have dealt with him.”

“No,” shouted Gabriel. “No. I am Gabriel, Angel of Death.”

“All come to Death, eventually,” I intoned. It felt wonderfully bad.

“But you can’t. You’re sick!” said Gabriel.

“I am the cure to all sickness,” I said. The old lines were all coming back.

The
Book
fell to the ground, spilling pages, and Gabriel dropped to his knees, desperately trying to patch it together again. I could now hear the sound of souls more distinctly.

“…call yourself ‘The End of Life,’ do you, Gabriel…”

“Has infinity begun yet?”

“Come on. Hurry up. I died three hours ago…”

“I shall be making a complaint, you hear, a complaint…”

On the ground Gabriel was on all fours. He had given up trying to patch the
Book
back together and was now sobbing quietly. It was quite pitiful. I helped him to his feet.

“I never knew it would be so hard,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “I mean the sheep are always complaining if you don’t get them immediately, and the puppies!” He looked to the sky. “God! How do you deal with the puppies!”

I sat him down and he began to cry on my shoulder. Shuddering sobs. Around us a whir of ambulances and police formed a background tableaux of disaster. The parts of the boy’s body were being carried away, and the monkeys were being shot. Throughout the zoo, children were being emotionally scarred for life. It felt good. I popped out the monkeys’ souls with one hand, absentmindedly. One tried to climb onto my back, but I flicked him nonchalantly into the Darkness.

Gabriel blew his nose on the hem of his garment. He looked at me, fluttering his big blue eyes. “Thank you, Death,” he said.

“That’s all right, Gabriel.”

“I should have listened to you.”

“All listen to me in the end,” I said.

“It’s just that…”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes…I get so lonely.”

I felt Gabriel’s hand on my knee.

“I think it’s time you went home,” I said to Gabriel, lifting up his hand and putting it back on his lap.

“Oh, I wish I was dead!” cried Gabriel.

“That can be arranged,” I said.

Second Goings and Comings

T
he sun set,
the sky darkened, wounds festered, people drowned—all was bad with the world once more. I barely had time to ponder the strange turn of events in my existence before I was rushing to clear up the vast backlog of the dead left by Gabriel. Fortunately my jogging in the clinic had kept me in pretty good shape. I swept across Earth like a pale gale, like a pain hurricane, like a gloom typhoon, popping out souls here, ushering them into the Darkness there. I was unquenchable. The reception I received from the dead when they saw me was really quite touching.

“Good to have you back, Death,” the souls would say. “Didn’t think much of that last chap. Who was he again?”

Not many people had a good word for Gabriel. It seems some of the souls had straight up refused to come out of their bodies when they saw him.

“He just didn’t look right,” they’d tell me. “What with all that backcombed hair and eyeliner.”

It was unfortunate that Gabriel had chosen to take my place just as some of the most caustic fin de siècle wits had died. They had not been gentle with him.

“A darling boy,” said one, “but hardly the harbinger of finality one had been led to expect. I mean, the poor thing was leaking gravitas with every word he spoke.”

“And those feather wings!” chimed in another. “It was like being swept up by a pillow. Can you imagine anything more ghastly! You could see the concentration on his face. He was trying so hard.”

“He
was
trying,” chimed in another. “Very trying.”

So I was greeted with open arms. In fact, some souls almost leapt out of their bodies to welcome me. It only goes to show that one should not try to mess with people’s notions of their own demise. Say what you want about progress and change, but when it comes to envisaging one’s end, leering skulls and unfathomable blackness never go out of fashion.

It was one of the busiest eras yet, what with the world wars, the ethnic genocides, the aggressive physics, the hostile chemistry, Spanish influenza, elevator shafts, threshing machines, cheap cigarettes, and the increasing availability of fireworks.

Some Still Preferred to Die the Old-fashioned Way.

Soon all the traumas of the past were pushed from my mind. Until, that is, I got the call.

I was in Chicago in the late 1930s, dealing with the grisly aftermath of a circus parade that had coincided with a big game hunters’ convention, when a fat cherub appeared beside me, red in the face and out of breath. It said that I was wanted in Heaven immediately.

I hadn’t heard anything from Heaven since I had shipped Gabriel back there. I had taken the stony silence as a sign of embarrassment. Now, as I flew back to its graffiti-laden walls, I began to wonder whether omnipotent beings disliked being shown up.

I found Peter strapping his mother into a girdle.

“Oh…Death…hello,” he said, over his mother’s grunts. He sounded anxious.

“Anything the matter, Peter?”

“Oh no. No. Not at all,” he replied, studiously avoiding eye contact. “Nothing the matter. Nothing.”

“What is it, Peter?” I asked. I was getting worried.

“Well, it’s just that…” At that moment the elastic on his mother’s girdle broke, sending Peter crashing down through a cloud and catapulting his mother clean over the walls of Heaven. It seemed I would have to find out for myself. I pushed open the gates.

Things had not changed very much in Heaven. It was still in need of renovation. The one big difference was that a vast stadium was under construction. Its seats seemed to stretch into infinity. What could it be for? I carried on past it, and in the distance I saw Jesus standing at the head of a group of angels, leading them in what looked like a mass crucifixion workout. The angels had large wooden crosses that they were dragging behind them in time with Jesus. They wore crowns and bracelets made of thorns, and whenever they went to wipe the sweat from their foreheads with them, they cut themselves hideously.

“And lift your eyes up,” beamed Jesus in a chirpy, slightly out-of-breath voice, “and lower them again. Wince once and cry out—all together now—‘Eli, eli, lamai sabactani!’ And sag. Well done, everyone! It is finished.” The angels collapsed, exhausted and bleeding.

I marched on toward the Parliament of Heaven. It was chaos as usual. Angels flew about the hall shouting, parchment and scrolls fluttered down from the ceiling, harps were being tuned, sandals slapped on the hard cirrus floor. At the head of it all was God. He was struggling to play paddleball. Jesus appeared beside Him, a towel hung over His shoulders. He picked up another paddleball racket and began playing expertly.

Paddleball: Sport of (King of) Kings.

“Now why did I ever create
this
?” boomed God as He swung wildly at the ball. I stood waiting until He caught sight of me. “Ah. Death. Feeling worse, are we?”

“Yes, thank You, Lord God Sir.”

“Very unfortunate that thing with Gabriel. Obviously his halo was faulty and overheated his brain. That’s what happens when you outsource production to the damned—very cheap, but shoddy workmanship. Anyway, We’re having them all recalled.” I looked around and indeed none of the angels I could see were wearing halos, although some had substituted plates that hovered uncertainly over their heads and every few minutes would crash to the floor below.

“Tell him, Dad,” beamed Jesus.

“What?” boomed God. His divine light had become entangled in the paddle’s elastic. “Oh yes, I’m glad you’re here, Death. We’ve just been having a little discussion. We’re going to phase you out.”

“What?” I cried.

“Phase you out,” boomed God, as He tried to untangle Himself. “Yes, Jesus has convinced Me that
you
should die.”

I didn’t know what to say. After all I had gone through, this was my reward?

“I’m informed that it’s ‘ironic,’” boomed God, “and Jesus thinks We haven’t been ironic enough of late.”

“Not since My crucifixion,” beamed Jesus. “Crucifying God? You can’t get much more ironic than that!”

“So you see,” boomed God, “now
you
have to die, because that’ll be very, very ironic.”

“But not as ironic as
Me
being crucified,” beamed Jesus.

“But Lord God Sir?” I said.

“Yes?”

“I’ve just finished cleaning up the mess Gabriel left.”

“And a splendid job you’ve done, hasn’t he, Jesus?”

Jesus beamed silently.

“But what will happen to all the dead souls if I die?”

“Jesus is going to take care of them,” boomed God proudly. “He’s been thinking of making a comeback in which everybody lives forever and all the dead are resurrected. We’re going to call it ‘The Second Coming.’ Got a nice ring to it, hasn’t it?”

“But that’s stupid,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” beamed Jesus. “Tell him it’s not stupid, Dad!”

“But it is!” I said. “If everyone’s going to be resurrected, why bother having them live in the first place? Why not just start them all off in Heaven?”

God and Jesus looked at each other.

“Because…,” boomed God uncertainly. “Because…”

“Because…We’re inscrutable,” beamed Jesus, and crossed His arms.