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. H2S. 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.”
“Well… Heaven’s okay, if you’re an angel. It’s not a planet; it’s an artificial place, like Manhattan. I’m not here to plug Heaven; I’m here to find Marga. Should I try to see this Mr. Ashmedai? Or would I be better off going directly to Satan?”
The monkey tried to whistle, produced a mouselike squeak. Rod shook his head. “Saint Alec, you keep surprising me. I’ve been here since 1588, whenever that was, and I’ve never laid eyes on the Owner. I’ve never thought of trying to see him. I wouldn’t know how to start. Bert, what do you think?”
“I think I need another beer.”
“Where do you put it? Since that lightning hit you, you aren’t big enough to put away one can of beer, let alone three.”
“Don’t be nosy and call the waiter.”
The quality of discourse did not improve, as every question I asked turned up more questions and no answers. The thaumaturgist arrived and bore off Bert on her shoulder, Bert chattering angrily over her fee—she wanted half of all his assets and demanded a contract signed in blood before she would get to work. He wanted her to accept ten percent and wanted me to pay half of that.
When they left, Rod said it was time we found a pad for me; he would take me to a good hotel nearby.
I pointed out that I was without funds. “No problem, Saint Alec. All our immigrants arrive broke, but American Express and Diners Club and Chase Manhattan vie for the chance to extend first credit, knowing that whoever signs an immigrant first has a strong chance of keeping his business forever and six weeks past.”
“Don’t they lose a lot, extending unsecured credit that way?”
“No. Here in Hell, everybody pays up, eventually. Bear in mind that here a deadbeat can’t even die to avoid his debts. So just sign in, and charge everything to room service until you set it up with one of the big three.”
The Sans Souci Sheraton is on the Plaza, straight across from the Palace. Rod took me to the desk; I signed a registration card and asked for a single with bath. The desk clerk, a small female devil with cute little horns, looked at the card I had signed and her eyes widened. “Uh, Saint Alexander?”
“I’m Alexander Hergensheimer, just as I registered. I am sometimes called ‘Saint Alexander,’ but I don’t think the title applies here.”
She was busy not listening while she thumbed through her reservations. “Here it is, Your Holiness—the reservation for your suite.”
“Huh? I don’t need a suite. And I probably couldn’t pay for it.”
“Compliments of the management, sir.”
XXV
And be had seven hundred wives, princesses, and
three hundred concubines: and his wives turned
away his heart.
1 Kings 11:3
Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a
man be more pure than his maker?
Job 4:17
“Compliments of the management!!” How? Nobody knew I was coming here until just before I was chucked out Judah Gate. Did Saint Peter have a hotline to Hell? Was there some sort of under-the-table cooperation with the Adversary? Brother, how that thought would scandalize the Board of Bishops back home!
Even more so, why? But I had no time to ponder it; the little devil—imp?—on duty slapped the desk bell and shouted, “Front!”
The bellhop who responded was human, and a very attractive youngster. I wondered how he had died so young and why he had missed going to Heaven. But it was none of my business so I did not ask. I did notice one thing: While he reminded me in his appearance of a Philip Morris ad, when he walked in front of me, leading me to my suite, I was reminded of another cigarette ad—“So round, so firm, so fully packed.” That lad had the sort of bottom that Hindu lechers write poetry about—could it have been that sort of sin that caused him to wind up here?
I forgot the matter when I entered that suite.
The living room was too small for football but large enough for tennis. The furnishings would be described as “adequate” by any well-heeled oriental potentate. The alcove called “the buttery” had a cold-table collation laid out ample for forty guests, with a few hot dishes on the end—roast pig with apple in mouth, baked peacock with feathers restored, a few such tidbits. Facing this display was a bar that was well stocked—the chief purser of Konge Knut would have been impressed by it.
My bellhop (“Call me ‘Pat.’”) was moving around, opening drapes, adjusting windows, changing thermostats, checking towels—all of those things bellhops do to encourage a liberal tip—while I was trying to figure out how to tip. Was there a way to charge a tip for a bellhop to room service? Well, I would have to ask Pat. I went through the bedroom (a Sabbath Day’s journey!) and tracked Pat down in the bath.
Undressing. Trousers at half-mast and about to be kicked off. Bare bottom facing me. I called out, “Here, lad! No! Thanks for the thought…but boys are not my weakness.”
“They’re my weakness,” Pat answered, “but I’m not a boy”—and turned around, facing me.
Pat was right; she was emphatically not a boy.
I stood there with my chin hanging down, while she took off the rest of her clothes, dumped them into a hamper. “There!” she said, smiling. “Am I glad to get out of that monkey suit! I’ve been wearing it since you were reported as spotted on radar. What happened, Saint Alec? Did you stop for a beer?”
“Well…yes. Two or three beers.”
“I thought so. Bert Kinsey had the watch, did he not? If the Lake ever overflows and covers this part of town with lava, Bert will stop for a beer before he runs for it. Say, what are you looking troubled about? Did I say something wrong?”
“Uh, Miss. You are very pretty—but I didn’t ask for a girl, either.”
She stepped closer to me, looked up and patted my cheek. I could feel her breath on my chin, smell its sweetness. “Saint Alec,” she said softly, “I’m not trying to seduce you. Oh, I’m available, surely; a party girl, or two or three, comes with the territory for all our luxury suites. But I can do a lot more than make love to you.” She reached out, grabbed a bath towel, draped it around her hips. “Ichiban bath girl, too. Prease, you rike me wark arong spine?” She dimpled and tossed the towel aside. “I’m a number-one bartender, too. May I serve you a Danish zombie?”
“Who told you I liked Danish zombies?”
She had turned away to open a wardrobe. “Every saint I’ve ever met liked them. Do you like this?” She held up a robe that appeared to be woven from a light blue fog.
“It’s lovely. How many saints have you met?”
“One. You. No, two, but the other one didn’t drink zombies. I was just being flip. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not; it may be a clue. Did the information come from a Danish girl? A blonde, about your size, about your weight, too. Margrethe, or Marga. Sometimes ‘Margie.’”
“No. The scoop on you was in a printout I was given when I was assigned to you. This Margie—friend of yours?”
“Rather more than a friend. She’s the reason I’m in Hell. On Hell. In?”
“Either way. I’m fairly certain I’ve never met your Margie.”
“How does one go about fin
ding another person here? Directories? Voting lists? What?”
“I’ve never seen either. Hell isn’t very organized. It’s an anarchy except for a touch of absolute monarchy on some points.”
“Do you suppose I could ask Satan?”
She looked dubious. “There’s no rule I know of that says you can’t write a letter to His Infernal Majesty. But there is no rule that says He has to read it, either. I think it would be opened and read by some secretary; they wouldn’t just dump it into the Lake. I don’t think they would.” She added, “Shall we go into the den? Or are you ready for bed?”
“Uh, I think I need a bath. I know I do.”
“Good! I’ve never bathed a saint before. Fun!”
“Oh, I don’t need help. I can bathe myself.”
She bathed me.
She gave me a manicure. She gave me a pedicure, and tsk-tsked over my toenails—“disgraceful” was the mildest term she used. She trimmed my hair. When I asked about razor blades, she showed me a cupboard in the bath stocking eight or nine different ways of coping with beards. “I recommend that electric razor with the three rotary heads but, if you will trust me, you will learn that I am quite competent with an old-fashioned straight razor.”
“I’m just looking for some Gillette blades.”
“I don’t know that brand but there are brand-new razors here to match all these sorts of blades.”
“Nor I want my own sort. Double-edged. Stainless.”
“Wilkinson Sword, double-edged lifetime?”
“Maybe. Oh, here we are!—‘Gillette Stainless—Buy Two Packs, Get One Free.’”
“Good. I’ll shave you.”
“No, I can do it.”
A half hour later I settled back against pillows in a bed fit for a king’s honeymoon. I had a fine Dagwood in my belly, a Danish zombie nightcap in my hand, and I was wearing brand-new silk pajamas in maroon and old gold. Pat took off that translucent peignoir in blue smoke that she had worn except while bathing me and got in beside me, placed a drink for herself, Glenlivet on rocks, where she could reach it.
(I said to myself, “Look, Marga, I didn’t choose this. There is only this one bed. But it’s a big bed and she’s not trying to snuggle up. You wouldn’t want me to kick her out, would you? She’s a nice kid; I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I’m tired; I’m going to drink this and go right to sleep.”)