Heloise and Bellinis (13 page)

I do not remember who at the time told me how babies were made. All I remember is that one day a priest at school asked me if! knew. I said no, because I was afraid I’d have to do a penance. So he told me an incredible fairy tale that got off to a roaring start with bees and pollen. Afterward he asked me if I would like to enter the priesthood. All I could think of was what my father’s reaction would have been, so I said that I would have to give the matter some thought. Then I decided to talk to my friend Jacky Ivancich; he’s an ambassador now. 1 knew the priest had told him the story of the birds and the bees, and I thought it was time he learned the truth about how babies were conceived. I remember that he was quite hurt, chieiy by learning that the priest had been lying to him.

It is obvious that everything ever written about the afterlife, or rather the afterdeath, is pure fantasy. Take Dante, for example. There is nothing at all believable in his
Comedy
. There is no denying, however, that he didn’t omit a single person, friend or enemy.

If you had to imagine a place that could contain all the men who, as their widows put it, have gone on to a better life, it would be difficult to conceive of a place where bodily sensations still survived.

The body dies at death; that’s all there is to it.

So ail that fire and ice and burning, and all those stories about the physical pain and joy of the life beyond, are certainly self-serving fibs.

Take a minute and think about the incredible “colossal” show that will be brewing up a few years from now in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. What with angel trumpets blasting and stern drums rolling, everyone who has ever lived will come in trembling submission to divine judgment.

It is quite obvious that whoever took down the words of the Prophet never owned a restaurant. If he had, his first concern would have been where to install the washrooms. Joel or whoever it was doesn’t even mention the matter and leaves his reader in total darkness about a matter of the utmost importance. Think about it; billions of people in the same place, and the overwhelming majority of them probably have the runs, they’re so frightened, but not one toilet. Joking aside, the story doesn’t hold up.

I think you might imagine the only thing to survive would be a kind of collection of our individual thoughts and feelings, which would have a better chance of coagulating into some kind of whole depending on how deeply we were able to desire and feel things.

What I would like very much is a wide expanse in the heavens where all the good thoughts could come together, and another expanse, a little lower down and a little less heavenly, where all the bad thoughts could get together. Stop. This is my premise, and no one can disprove it—least of all you, materialist that you are; you’ve never given a thought to such things. It is my view, then, that George and Heloise, or rather their thoughts, quietly went off to that higher expanse. And they smiled, as it were, to see all those other thoughts that ever since the world began have helped men to be men and women women.

That came out all right too.

There are some other people I would like to see join the heroes of my story in the expanse that, for the sake of convenience, some people call heaven. I would like to see George and Heloise there together with General Custer, Suzy, Tom Margitai, and of course Harry Cipriani and all his family. Merchants no, because their life is too studded with temptations to get through it unharmed.

That way things wouldn’t seem boring either, and one day—I hope it is still a long way off—I wouldn’t mind joining all those nice people myself. I should also hope that the person in charge of the arrangements might work some inscrutable miracle and make sure they never run out of deliciously refreshing Bellinis for the enjoyment of all.