iv
Word soon got round that a mighty contest was about to take place between the two great powers that be. The Earth itself seemed to hum in anticipation. The mob had retreated to the squalor of the village square, where a make-do stage was quickly prepared. They squabbled while they waited. God would win, the younger ones foretold, He had Divine Scribes working for Him. No no! Didn't Satan have his own diabolical writers? But look at the form! The form! God has never lost such a battle before. Not so! The history of the world is littered with the triumphs of Evil over Good. Don't your ever watch the news? The older ones agreed, the world was falling apart, the church was a broken institution. And anyway, where had He been all these years? Scuffles broke out, angry men pushed each other, slapped their wives, spat on the ground. Children screamed and pointed grubby fingers at their playmates without knowing why.
Meanwhile, inside the shack it was dark and difficult to write. God tried to think of all the jokes He knew. Only one came to mind, a trifle about some nails and a motel in Birmingham, but this had gone down like a lead balloon at the Eternity Anniversary Ball. No, humour was not His forte - He was no Groucho!
The Devil, on the other hand, was licking his lips and chuckling. He had some wonderfully horrible poems up his sleeve. His eyes shone like cosmic stones, curls of smoke rose from his nostrils as if a pistol had just gone off somewhere inside. He scribbled away on the parchment of dried skin, dipping his index-claw with great care into a wide-eyed blood-well, the head of one of the mob. This would be an easy victory!
Time passed quickly. At last the Devil folded his arms, grinning from horn to horn, he was finished. God peeked out from the corner of His eye. Under the table, a sandal-clad foot twitched nervously. He picked up the small piece of paper on which He had created form from void and bit His lip. It scanned awkwardly and His metrics were all over the place. In point of fact, He wasn't absolutely certain what metrics were. In any case, everything was predestined... He coughed.
They stood up, came face to face in the doorway and held each other's stare with something that might well have been called at one time esteem. But the moment was gone. The candles went out simultaneously and the Devil opened the door, beckoning God to go first. The sky blushed to a deep crimson. As God walked out into the street there was jeering, a cabbage fell at His feet. As the Devil emerged, wild cheering erupted, followed by triumphant belching and hand-clapping.
The whole world had gathered in the village square - the creatures of the underworld jumping about on the rooftops and trees. Lili and St. Peter were seen sitting up a telegraph post, eating cherries and looking on eagerly. Two chairs were placed in the centre of the stage and a microphone set up. To the sound of a slow drum, God and the Devil walked slowly towards the platform, side by side, while the drunken village musician puffed out his cheeks and blew his trumpet. Night had descended, an icy wind blew. Women clutched their children. Men stood on boxes making excited hand-signals.
They emerged on the stage. God remembered to bow just as a crab-pate sandwich flew past, slapping the Master of Ceremonies out of a nervous trance. The Devil raised his arms to thunderous applause. A toothless old hag, topless, her breasts swinging like empty sacks before her, walked cackling up and down in front of the microphone, holding a large card with ONE written on it, before being pelted with tomatoes and laughed off stage. The town drunk, who was lying at the foot of the stage, was singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone,' waving his bottle in the air.
The Master of Ceremonies, eyeing the crowd suspiciously, stepped up to make his introductions.
'My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen-na, Seraphims and Succuba, Demons and Deities, presenting the main event of the evening-ga - sponsored by UNIFEST, the World's Authority on Pathogenic Infestations - the contest for the Championship of the World and Beyond, fighting for the title of Master of All Matter, Living and Dead...'
He dropped the microphone to his waist, grinning with a full set of gleaming white teeth. The crowds screamed and jostled. The two combatants paced the boards behind him, punching the air, gargling, twisting their necks this way and that...
'Introducing - in the blue corner, wearing white and weighing in at zero kilos, Lord of the Heavens, of all things good and righteous,' his voice rising steadily, wavering to good effect, 'the one and only - Go-da.' The crowd tittered, one or two hand-claps arose from the eastern stand. The Devil stepped forward. '...and in the red corner, wearing black, weighing in at six hundred and sixty six kilos,' cat-calls, cheers rising up from all sides, the Master of Ceremonies' voice breaking with feverish pitch, 'Lord of the Night, of all things dark and sorrowful, the one and only - Lu-ci-fer!'
Pandemonium broke out, wild cheering, screaming, cat-whistles. The trumpeter tried to play 'Rocky' but collapsed in a heap with a sorry burp. Vegetables were thrown into the air, firecrackers went off, drunken women started ripping off their clothes, screaming 'chase me! chase me!' It took a full ten minutes for the crowd to be brought back under control.
Finally, the two combatants came together in the centre of the stage. They eye-balled each other as they picked straws. The Devil tittered and pursed his lips, his was the shorter one. God went to sit in His chair. Lucifer approached the microphone grinning broadly amid appreciative applause. A deathly hush fell over the population of the third planet, and in a cheerful sing-song tone, the Devil began:
O Mary wasn't quite all there, in fact she sometimes barked,
'Oh life,' she moaned, 'is so unfair, I'm lonely here in the dark,'
And so she bought a little lamb and fed it only grass,
But every night it howled so much that Mary kicked its... head in!
The Devil grinned, waiting for his just rewards... none came forth. Undeterred, he chuckled wickedly, then guffawed for all his worth, and this proved very effective as the crowd burst spontaneously into exaggerated laughter. Rockets lit-up the night sky and sparklers went off all around. The citizens of both worlds cried, belched, slapped their thighs and asked each other what it meant. This went on for a long time and the Devil was pleased. Not very original, he thought, but what the hell. He turned triumphantly, winked at God and sat down.
All eyes fell on the Lord.
With unsteady step He walked over to the microphone and coughed into it. The strangely angelic sound it produced echoed for miles around and the crowd jeered derisively. He tried to lower the microphone but fumbled it - it creaked into the night like an old attic door. More jeering and outlandish belching. Finally He took out a small piece of paper from a prayer book, held it keenly before Him, and with a high, rather tremulous voice, began to read:
There once was a man called Bulgakov,
Who mixed up his pills for the whooping cough,
His glory was struck
With such terrible luck
That his wife had no choice but to w...
Holy sinners! When the Lord came to the most important bit, the microphone had emitted a horrible noise, which was followed by a horrible silence. He replaced the piece of paper in His prayer book and looked out over the crowd, completely unaware that no-one had heard the punch-line.
A dog barked. The wind brushed through the streets. The Devil was nonchalantly shining a favourite middle-claw on his gown and inspecting it keenly.
God, looking up to the sky, waited, and waited... then muttered something under His breath, which sounded very much like 'have to bring in the sheets,' for the chilling thought had crossed His mind that He - the greatest choreographer and set-designer the world had ever seen - had just died on the stage!
Just at that moment a tipsy giggling could be heard, 't'was the missus, ha ha! the old bag! Wopped it off, she did!' It was the town drunk lying under the boards. His rambling, light-hearted chuckling was so infectious that now someone else joined in. It spread among the rabble, slowly at first, but soon ripples of amusement broke out, and whispers, 'wopped it off? - bit close to the knuckle, that!' Giggles all around. Giggles, and chuckles, and then clapping. Fina
lly, someone threw out a great fat 'Ha!' and it was then, not wanting to be the last to get the joke, that the crowd at last broke into peals of laughter. And where had that horrible noise come from, they nudged each other, from God Himself? The more they thought about it, the more they laughed. It swept through the town like a form of mass hysteria, laughter turning to guffaws, guffaws to screams...
God was delighted - He lived again!
Meanwhile, the Devil had bolted up from his chair. What was this? He pushed his way forward, roared into the microphone, 'I, Lucifer, command thee...' but only a horrible sound blew out from the dodgy speakers. More roars of laughter. He raised his arms in delirious anger. 'Stop!' he cried, 'stop!' but too late, too late... With howls of laughter ringing in his ears, he turned towards God, fear and betrayal burning his eyes... there was a tremendous explosion, a blinding flash - the Devil disappeared in a plume of red smoke.
From thereon in everything happened quickly. The dark spectres of the Underworld let out such a terrible wail... a huge sheet of electricity ripped through the skies and they all burst into flames and were gone. Fires broke out everywhere. The sky was lit up as if in flames itself, the villagers fled in terror - Clootie's Cover was destroyed.
Strangely enough, to everyone present the end to the evening had seemed somehow anticlimactic. 'Debacle!' declared the tabloids. 'What a sham!' screamed reporters. On television, panels of 'experts' calmly discussed the event. Perhaps it was the hyped build-up, or the lack of instant-replays, or just the verses themselves? 'Not at all!' the cheery gardener laughed, 'everyone knows the best poetry is to be found in the corner shop, not on the stage!' What did they expect, the hastily despatched broad-sheets asked with the wisdom of reflective hindsight over the following days, from a poetry competition? That words alone were the answer to the world's problems? In any case an enquiry was promised by the authorities, who apparently had lost a lot of money on the night themselves.
But on the fires raged, causing havoc to all peoples across the globe, and neither the dailies nor the odd sports personality could come up with a solution until God Himself, a trifle over the top some maintain considering the closeness of the result, dealt with everything in one swift action on His return to the clouds, where the whole sorry incident was swept - or rather flushed - quickly under the carpet.
In His happiness, God forgave St. Peter, whose face was covered in cherries, and gave him back his job. As a precaution, however, He installed state-of-the-art video cameras outside the Gates of Heaven, complete with audio-visual domophone and complimentary doormat. Lili - Lilith, as she is better known - was exposed as Satan's long-time accomplice and unceremoniously escorted back to where she hailed from, the Unctuous Pit of Snakes. The drenched people of the Earth doffed their caps and were forced to admit after all that a God with a (dubious) sense of humour was better than a kick in the head. They returned to their nice, humdrum lives; their laborious, mundane jobs, and soon enough Heaven became full once again.
It must be said, much time has passed since then. The great competition has long since fallen into myth. Even so, rumours abound that a furious Lucifer has slipped back to Earth and is masquerading as a transvestite billboard-paster-upper in Berlin - another cover. God, ashamed of His literary effort some believe, remains silent, and keeps His face turned from the people of the third planet. Nevertheless, when men and women of a certain countenance open their prayer books, searching perhaps for that hallowed snapshot of Arthur as a baby, or when they find themselves unexpectedly on stage, holding a microphone or kneeling before a Minister of God during Holy Matrimony, they start giggling, and for the life of them can't figure out why.
***
Clootie’s Cover is taken from a larger collection of 28 stories by the same author entitled Krakow Stories. Please buy a copy of the book, instead of simply downloading free samples, and help keep this impossibly ungodly writer – who is currently living under a bridge contemplating Dante – in good spirits!
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