THE LINK A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
THE LINK
A Saul Vogel Mystery

We were enjoying another sunny day on the porch of our forest home, Vogel laid-back lazily in his rocking chair, while I was fidgeting and wriggling like an impatient child.
"What is the matter with you?" he protested at last, my squirmy mood disturbing his – that of deep pacific relaxation. "Got a pain in the rear?"
"As if you didn't care about the great news: Humanity is finally landing on Mars!"

Together with the rest of the world, we were awaiting the TV transmission from the simultaneous landing of four manned interplanetary craft, their mission to build a base on the Red Planet. The transmission was scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. and I could hardly contain myself. I checked the watch: 20 minutes to go. Did not bother to see commercials, look-backs (establishing bases on Moon to be used as chute for further travels) or listen to the experts, having heard all their opinions and predictions before.
"You misunderstand," he protested. "I am interested, but I don’t share your view of things to come. You and your co-religionists view the future of Mankind as that of space expansion, while I feel that we yet are too much linked to Mother Earth to be able to leave her without restoring her to her previous glory."
"You think that since we killed a few whales and reduced the jungles to national parks, Mother Earth won't let us go? On the contrary, she'll kick us all the way to Alpha Centauri – if only to get rid of us!"
"I'm afraid she won't. Her nature is to detain those who don't respect her."
"Care to explain?"
"Mother Earth is of Space, too, but she won't be just used by us, no sirree!"
"She survived the giant meteorite, which killed off the dinos. Why should she mind losing some acres of forest? She’s indomitable! When we are gone, she'll recover in no time."
"I feel we are tied to her with an invisible cord. It is long, I admit; after all, we have landed on the Moon. Perhaps, we will land on Mars as well or even on Jupiter’s moons, but as we’ll be going to the outer planets, the cord will be spent and we will be stopped in mid-space,” he said quite seriously.
“Yeah. And these invisible cords are fastened to the dicks and the clits of us humans, I presume?”
“I’m throwing my pearls for swine!”
He rose, stepped inside and switched on the TV.

The transmission lacked any dramatic merit, as the touchdown was smooth and uncannily true to the timetable. The four craft landed precisely on the spot and began the prescribed procedures without a glitch. It would have been boring if not for the feeling that I was witnessing a momentous event, but Vogel was actually yawning.
Then, the female commander of the mission stepped down the ladder onto Martian soil. She kneeled down and symbolically kissed it through the helmet of her spacesuit. She got up, took a step forward and said: Yet another giant step for Mankind – and she emitted a frightful howl, fell down and rolled on the ground. Simultaneously, the other astronauts emitted a howl and fell – and so did Vogel and I. Writhing on the floor, I almost upset the set. Then the indescribable pain in the gut ceased.
When we crawled back into the easy chairs the screen was all snow. Then, a sorry-looking speaker appeared and explained that the station's technicians have upset, in their paroxysms, some vital gear. The transmission from Mars is postponed owing to equipment having been smashed by the astronauts in their paroxysms. NASA is, however, in radio contact with them. Confronted with the inexplicable phenomenon, occurring both on Mars and Earth, the space agency commanded them to stay inside their craft while Earth was investigating.
Then he began to read the news from all over the world and the nature of the anomaly became clear: it hit all Humankind – that on Earth and that on Mars – at the very same time. Already, one intellectual has managed to formulate a theory and get on the air with it: the Solar system is an organism and the spacecraft must have hit some crucial nerve within it. "NASA's making a big mistake: the astronauts should get out and inspect what their rockets are standing on," he said. There were reports of disasters: fires, botched surgeries, an acrobat killed – the paroxysm having surprised people in precarious situations. Seven airplanes crushed, innumerable traffic accidents, people drowned, many injured in the safety of their homes. A religious pundit proclaimed the phenomenon a warning from God: "We overstepped our authorization and we have been punished by the Lord."
"Well, Mr. Vogel, what is the learned opinion of Philosophy?" I asked.
"You are my assistant, you tell me!"
"You've been right. There is a link between the Earth and us humans. With her giant step, the mission commander must have stretched it too far and it jammed the system."
And a new paroxysm hit us, followed by seven others. There was a pause from sunset to sunrise, when new paroxysms began…

Three weeks were gone. As the paroxysms during this period – up to fifty-one on the third day, thirty-three on average – occurred only within day-hours of our time-zone, people of other longitudes had to adapt to night-time torment and change their life rhythm. And adapt we all did, working and sleeping at odd hours and finding out what functions could be maintained in the periods with paroxysms. After a week, the global system of air transport has been re-established – with long stopovers. Working hours and routines in most work places have been re-devised. Contrary to some fears, suicides decreased, as if the paroxysms actually mustered us into hanging on. The fact that humans were the only species to be affected gave us hope that the answer is in our physiology: curable, when we make it out. And that the length of paroxysm periods was in accord with the shortening of daytime in our geographic latitude suggested that the problem is of earthly rather, not interplanetary nature.

After a month, NASA has at last ordered the astronauts out – for a few hours, well inside the paroxysm-free period. Their movements, some many miles from the base, provoked no paroxysms either here or there. They checked the ground under their craft and found only solid rock, in no way unusual.
"It only proves that stretching of the invisible cord is not guilty of our misery: we have plenty of rope yet," Vogel commented with that peculiar facial expression we all had during the paroxysm-periods: that of bracing oneself for a sudden explosion of pain. And the convulsions were hitting and they often came in pairs.

People were coping somehow: took painkillers, wore amulets, spent the periods in support or prayer groups or drank themselves numb, but all these took only the top off the agony. For myself, I developed a meditation-like attitude, which was taking more than the top. Vogel, on the other hand, was drawing on his hobo experiences: he concocted a herbal pill, which took off much more. He was selling plenty of those (made a wad) and was working on a stronger version during the precious paroxysm-free hours not squandered on sleep.

On the 35th day, we stayed, as usual during the periods of torment (sleep was impossible in spite of pills, booze, anything), in front of the TV set waiting for a news that would give us hope. We had seen journalists stalk men and women of science and demanding explanations – to no avail. We just heard a guy had been acquitted of killing his wife (who was divorcing and suing him for a stash): he was loading his gun when a paroxysm hit – as if Humanity did not know that toting firearms and paroxysm-periods don't mix, but there was no law yet.

Agony (for the 24th time today)… Agony (the 25th time: they do come in pairs)… We were not rolling off the chairs only because of the makeshift safety belts we had installed. After two paroxysms, there was a strong probability of a calm period, so Vogel took The Daily Rag, a paper edited by his old hobo-buddy Feigenblatt, just back in business. He skimmed a few lines, hammered his fist on his forehead and began to read aloud:

Dear Reader, we've been knocked out as much as anybody, but here we are again! In order to disperse the shadow of calamity hanging over the lot of us, a good news: our Mother is still alive! On the now infamous day of the Mars touchdown, a vivacious development has been taking place here on Earth – and within the borders of our own country! A tremor deeply under the seabed, several miles south of our fishing town of T., was registered that morning, but because of the later developments, the authorities were not up to the task of investigating. The first report came when our fishermen went back to fishing two days ago. They discovered a brand-new islet jutting from the sea [here an exact position according to GPS]. As our armed forces are rebuilding their efficacy, we remind the Government of its sacred duty to assure our national sovereignty over this possibly valuable piece of land, positioned so close to the territorial waters of our neighbor…

"Yeah, let's go!" I cried and we ran to the garage. I grabbed the flag in passing (we fly it on Vogel's birthday, National Day and other law-prescribed occasions) and we were off. Twice, we nearly got killed (driving and paroxysms don't mix) even though Vogel had swallowed a handful of his pills, and we survived other five paroxysms before the sun went down.
The roads were crowded during the nights, so we arrived at T. first shortly before sunrise and we couldn't find anyone willing to sail us over or to rent a boat (sailing and paroxysms don't mix). We were resigned to waiting till the evening when a motorboat appeared with a middle-aged guy at the helm, his military camouflage jacket and beret in national colors identifying him as a member of a certain nationalist group. I took the flag from the car and commanded him to take us to the new island. "Just think that some foreign jingoist claims it for his country!" I told him.
Who said that nationalism socks? The patriot took us over in no time, planted the flag, sang the national anthem and proceeded to drink beer and sing chauvinistic songs, leaving us free to roam the rocky island.
The day was breaking when we finally found our prize: a thick reddish rope protruding from the ground and forming a twisted sculpture. It must have issued from a fissure in the ground, much like toothpaste from a tube. As we were looking, a gull landed on one of its numerous folds, looked around, as if thinking what to do next.
"No, you bastard!" we shouted in unison, but it was too late: the bird pecked and as its beak hit the rope, we were hit by a paroxysm. It sent us writhing onto the hard stone.
There was no second one. As we got up, the bird was gone, scared by our contortions and moans. We approached the rope: it was like a thick cable braided of innumerable strands of enormously thin threads. It could have been mistaken for a piece of hi-tech wiring if not for its being alive and pulsating. It exuded a smell of flesh, which must have been prompting seabirds to peck – twice, before finding out it was too hard to penetrate.
It felt very hard when we – cautiously – laid our hands on its surface. We took off our clothes, wrapped it and with utmost care covered it with stones and camouflaged with seaweed.
When we joined the patriot he declared that he had named the island after himself and was going to claim it as his possession and to build a home here. Then he saw we were naked, called us perverts and wouldn't have us in the boat. It took some effort to persuade him that his title to the island depended on signatures of two witnesses, before he agreed do take us and to give us clothes from the boat's cupboard.
When we arrived back in T., the streets were crowded with happy people, united in an impromptu merry-making. Somehow they knew: the ordeal was over! We joined in.

"So there are invisible links binding people to the Earth,” I began, as we were speeding home in the afternoon. “But what was the thing we secured? It must have some connection with the links, obviously.”
“A fragment of the nerves of the Earth containing a part of the cords, which normally is hidden inside the Earth and has invisible extensions connecting us with Her. She’s a living organism and we are parts of Her. Volcanoes and earthquakes are Her diseases. The tremor must have forced the nerve up together with the island. In one of his stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle depicts Earth as a living organism and us humans as its parasites. Personally, I think we are Her organs – eyes, ears, noses and brains – and therefore have to be attached to Her. As no other living organisms were hit by paroxysms, it stands to reason that they don’t have that function. The purpose of the evolution must have been to generate new organs for Her, and when we humans appeared She set the apes free – as She did with other animals while developing improved organs. It seems that we also suffice as Her space-organs, at least for a time being, but who knows how long the link is? She might evolve another race whenever She feels like going into Deep Space. After all, we can only serve Her with our five senses! Imagine that a complete picture of the material world can only be achieved through not five but, say, ten senses, the extra five being unimaginable to us?”
“Master, the inconceivable thing is that our links are so material inside the Earth and totally invisible outside!”
“Must be one of Her early inventions: imagine Her organs: the fish, the dinosaurs, the monkeys, the apes and us pulling long meaty ropes from our asses? She made our part of the link of something so invisible, so pliable, so obvious and so supple as to be detectable only with one of the senses yet unknown. Should She make you grow them, you would be “seeing” the “cords”, don’t you worry!”
“You think She will give us enough “rope” to go for the stars, Master?”
“Let’s hope so! Otherwise, a new breed will appear and take over – if we don’t kill Her before. Just imagine: organs killing the host off!”

The paroxysms never came back, but Vogel’s pills have proven to be effective against migraine.
A month later there was another tremor and the island disappeared into the sea, back whence it came.
Let's hope that now, when the wiring is on the bottom, sharks won't get to it.

Copyright Peter Billig 2007

OCKHAM'S RAZOR A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
OCKHAM'S RAZOR
A Saul Vogel Mystery

“Don’t you feel sorry for your characters?” Vogel asked, as I finished reading some of my short stories to him. “You make them feel so much, think so much and suffer so much.”
The reason for the reading was that some of my stories – a hobby until now – were published and received good reviews. More stories were in my head, good ones. I was considering a fulltime author’s career and Vogel wanted to size up the competition: up to this moment, I have been happy working as his associate.
“Master, fictitious characters don’t exist ergo they don’t suffer! They are models of attitudes, that’s all,” I replied as one would reply an illiterate.
At that time he actually was illiterate, having unlearnt the art after running from school and home at the tender age of 8. He was roaming the world as a vagabond until 25 years later he decided to settle down as a philosopher and to secure my collaboration. We set up house in Domicile, a villa in the middle of great woods he bought at the same time.
“I may be an illiterate, nevertheless I sense that writing poses a philosophical problem. Are you familiar with the concept of Ockham’s Razor?”
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, I quoted the medieval thinker. “Beings oughtn’t to be multiplied beyond necessity, but literary characters can hardly be called beings!”
“While listening to your stories I had the same feeling I once had in Greece when in the mountains I encountered an agitated local who said he’d been attacked by a human-size hairy ape with an oversize nose. By putting a rapier to the Greek’s throat, the primate elicited directions to town. I asked the man to show me where. He brought me to a place at the foot of a rock where the alleged ape allegedly had jumped him from shrubbery. Behind the trampled bushes, I found an entrance to a cave. There was only one set of footprints – leading from the cave to the bushes: human prints, apes do not wear shoes. They came from the murkiest part of the cave. I did not have the guts to go there. The peasant revealed now that the ape actually was a man with long hair, a monstrous proboscis, a plumed hat, outlandish boots and clothes. We were both puzzled but had no explanation to share. It became one of the mysteries of life: never explained. I have this queer feeling that your stories and that incident are in the same category.”
He gazed at me. It is pointless to reveal treasures of literature to illiterates, I felt.
“Why not check it out?” Vogel said tentatively. “Book us on tomorrow’s flight to Athens.”

“I remember another feeling of the same sort: listening to goodnight stories in childhood,” Vogel resumed onboard the plane to Athens. “Made a great impression on me. I could see and hear the persons, and the events described were lifelike for me. Yesterday, I saw the antagonists and the plots of your stories as vividly as then. Your talent releases the reader’s or listener’s imagination.”
I was flattered: my best review to date! Being on duty, though, I just informed:
“Your Greek described a well known long-nosed literary character, Cyrano de Bergerac, a poet and a French musketeer from the 17th century.”
“A character from a book?”
“Now you come to mention it, not entirely. Rostand based his play on a real person.”
“The plot thickens: a real individual becomes a role!?” Vogel said pensively.
He closed his eyes and thought, sipping his scotch.

The Reader may consider it strange that Vogel, a vagrant, could afford to buy Domicile together with the surrounding woods. Thanks to his experience with Nature, his sagacity and powers of observation, he designed, patented and got into production two herbal medicines, Gomorrin® and Sodomin®, effective aphrodisiacs for respectively females and males, no side effects. As long as sex remains the main diversion of mankind, the ex-hobo will be able to meet the expense of employing an assistant, driving a Porsche, traveling business class and staying at the best hotels.

In Athens we rented a jeep, bought provisions and spelunkers’ equipment, drove up to Lamia and further north. Here we drove off the road and went on bumpy paths, which Vogel called donkey trails. Finally, when I was ready to swear there was no intact bone left in my entire body, he stopped the car at the foot of a steep mountain.
While I was unloading rope, helmets, flashlights, backpacks and rations, he hewed at bushes. An entrance to a cave appeared. We went in and scared some bats. There were no prints whatsoever; water, dripping from the ceiling, has obliterated everything. In a murky corner, the powerful flashlights found a corridor leading deeper into the mountain. We entered.
After an hour of uneventful stroll, light appeared at the end of the tunnel and then a cavern so immense that its farther walls were invisible. From above, a soft celadon light was issuing. You had the impression that the ceiling was open, only no sky nor sun were to be seen, as if the light originated from another world, governed by different laws of physics: a strange dimension, more dream-like than real.

As we stood agape, we heard a mumble of countless voices, like lamentations of pain, from further ahead. The threshold of Hell, I thought but Master sped forward, already having guessed the nature of the realm, which we were encountering. I followed, even though every fiber in my body told me not to.
People appeared in teams small and large, clothed in the queerest of garbs. One group wore medieval suits of armor, another – mendicants’ rags, yet another – frocks and suits from the Victorian epoch, and the fourth donned modern jeans and T-shirts. There were hundreds of teams nearby and I could see hundreds, thousands of others behind them.

In each group a different kind of action was going on: talking, fighting, getting married, working and lovemaking. No one paid any attention to us or to anyone outside the group.
“Can’t they see us, Master?”
“They can’t see outside their own book. How can you ask, Mr. Writer?”
“I don’t understand!”
“Let’s take a stroll, and you will.”
We walked slalom-like among the countless teams, me not understanding anything at all. Suddenly, I saw a group, which made sense: D’Artagnan receives his marshal’s baton. A Dutch bullet hits his breast; he sinks to the ground bleeding, the baton falls out of his hand. He pronounces his valedictions to his friends and dies, exactly as Dumas wrote in his trilogy about the four musketeers.
“Literary characters! But how come they’re alive?”

“Fictitious characters don’t exist, ergo they don’t suffer,” Vogel quoted. “It’s you bloody authors who call them to life!”
The old, immobile and dead d’Artagnan changed suddenly into the youngster he had been before setting off to Paris, and action began exactly by the book, other dead or quiescent persons becoming operational in time for their part in the plot.
“He’s been dead as a doornail. What made him alive again, Master?” I asked, mystified.
“The bloody readers, I figure. The writer creates these individuals; the readers’ imaginative energy keeps them alive. They play their parts as many times as the book is read, waiting for it to become obsolete and forgotten, and themselves to become dormant. Then some scholar reads the text, making them perform once more. And think of the pitiful fate of the characters from a classic work, read and imagined by millions of schoolchildren. Movies are made, based on literary works, every moviegoer multiplying the torments. One hell of existence, wouldn’t you agree?”

He motioned me on. I was identifying the authors, and he made the comments. We saw Balzac’s crowded fields (“a criminal!”), the gallery of suffering by Shakespeare (“a bandit!”), the gloomy meadows of Tolstoy and Hugo (“scumbags!”) and the populous steppes of Dickens (“a gangster!”).
I refrain from quoting his remarks concerning the writers, whose output has made a lasting impression on me. Instead, I deem the moment appropriate to pay tribute to Dumas, Tolkien, Dostoyevsky, Sienkiewicz, Fleming, Waltari, Vonnegut, May, Mrożek, Hrabal and Hašek.
As we saw mine, the author’s heart began to pound quicker: some of “mine” moved – I was being read! Some were dormant, though, and Vogel pointed them out.
“These are only in manuscripts,” I explained.
“Burn the scripts, and the poor beings will disappear, as if they never had existed! Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,” he said.
We left in silence.

“In ancient times, this countryside was called Phthia. Here was one of the entrances to the land of the dead: Hades. A friend of my nomadic days, an ex-professor of classics, who taught me Latin and Greek, told me about Ulysses. In the Odyssey, he visits Hades and meets his deceased friends we saw alive in the Iliad. Was Homer cognizant of this land? Did he visit his characters there?” Vogel mused, as we rushed back to Athens.
“How did Cyrano leave the literary world? Why Cyrano and not, say, d’Artagnan?” I asked.
“It might have something to do with the original Cyrano having been a human being. Together with Rostand’s art, it might have made the literary Cyrano so lifelike that he grew to be alive, and he left.”
“So that’s the way out! I have to make my characters more human-like!”
Vogel shook his head:
“You are talented, yes, but can you fill Rostand’s shoes? My advice is: if you have to write, write nonfiction: a casebook of Saul Vogel’s philosophical exploits, perhaps?”
“That would necessitate a raise,” I replied.
“Let’s negotiate on the plane,” he said and stepped on it, happy to keep his assistant.




















Copyright © Peter Billig 2007

THE FOURTH DIMENSION A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
THE FOURTH DIMENSION
A Saul Vogel Mystery

Vogel had a sudden fit of scientific interest, this time for ancient Roman religion. I kept fetching volumes in numerous languages. I would have protested sooner, the library being miles away, but the librarian was so attractive that I did not protest till two months were gone and I still heard only her firm “no!”.
“Master, drop it!” I appealed to him. “I beseech you in the name of the Capitoline Triad! It’s all Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad now. Nobody venerates Jupiter or Juno anymore, and the career of a Vestal or any other virgin is not that popular nowadays. Perhaps only old Priapus…”
“You have become impertinent, my young apprentice! You do whatever your employer tells you to, that’s what you do! I want to refresh in situ on my Minerva, Saturn, Pomona, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Lares, Penates, Janus and other deities. Pack up! We’re going Rome!”

We stayed in a hotel. My hopes that Vogel, confronted with the Eternal City, will soften up, enjoy campari on the rocks and tick off the obligatory sights were gone. Sure, he liked campari but he refused to visit churches or the Vatican (“it’s modern Roman religion”). He spent day after day wandering in the worst heat on the Roman Forum: a site at the foot of the Palatine Hill, all covered with stumps of ancient temples. He would stop before a ruin, read in the thick books he carried in a case, and ponder.
At first I felt obliged to accompany my boss and carry the case but as he would not share his thoughts and the heat was unbearable, I thanked off, bought a second-hand bike and made excursions into the landscapes around Rome. We dined together in the evenings and broke our fast in the mornings, but we hardly spoke, as he was completely engrossed in the studies.
“Have you ever heard of the canicula, a vacation any Roman with self-respect would take from Rome’s burning heat when the constellation of Canis Minor came up?” I asked.
“I’m an old vagabond, I can take the heat.” And he counseled me to drive up to the colder North and see Florence, Venice, Ravenna, Turin and Milan on the way.

Heat indescribable. I couldn’t pull myself together to drive anywhere and stayed naked in the room, frequent showers and camparis on the rocks. I remember lifting the glass up to my lips, and suddenly Vogel is shaking me and I am spilling the drink.
Why was he in my room? How could I have fallen asleep like this, with a glass to my lips? Am I drunk? Is it a dream?
“Wake up, man, let’s go! No time to waste!”
“A moment, Master, I’m naked!”
“Not important!”

He dragged me out into the street and I was taken aback. A green double-decker was standing at the bus stop in front of the hotel but the alighting passenger was not landing on the sidewalk – he was hanging in the air! Cars, in Italy honking and speeding, stood motionless and soundless, and so did pedestrians, normally garrulous and gesticulating, now like a sculpture exhibition.
“What is this shit, Master?”
“Time’s stopped.”
“What?”
“Time is standing still. Time doesn’t fly,” he added in Latin[1]. “Let’s move it! Every second is precious!”
“How come? If it’s still, what’s the hurry?”
“It hasn’t stopped for us, can’t you see? And I don’t know when the next attack comes.”
“What attack?”
He sent me one of those glances, so I said: “Lead on, Master!” and followed him.
We ran like hell, slaloming among the frozen pedestrians and cars, all the way to the Roman Forum. There he led us zigzagging between the petrified tourists to a particular ruin.
There a young couple stood frozen in the middle of a kiss, a priest immobilized while taking a picture, two nuns eternized in mid-conversation, a sculptured woman reading in a guidebook and a guy immortalized with a string of urine between his dick and the wall of the ruin.
Vogel paid no attention. He stopped, raised both arms and cried out in Latin: “Father Janus, Father Janus, come to me![2]”
This I echoed and we kept on in more and more lamenting voice until a tall bearded man in a white toga emerged out of thin air.
“What do you want?[3]” he asked Vogel in Latin.
“Mercy![4] Don’t make us perish![5]” and Vogel made a movement with his arm encompassing the tourists but meaning all mankind.
The newcomer looked around with satisfaction, like a craftsman proud of his work. As he turned, I saw another face on the back of his head – and this one was angry.
“Seventeen hundred years”, he thundered out of this mouth, “and no respect, no sacrifice, no nothing! And now you even piss on my temple! You’ve been worshipping foreign gods here in my city and they have kept us down. I’ve got enough! I’ve stopped Time. Let your new deities save you!”
“I’m not so sure they can,” my Master answered with a bow. “For you, Father Janus, who were the god always named first in the prayers of the Quirites, to be ignored like this must be intolerable. But I vow and pledge that if you stop scourging us with your wrath I shall enliven you once a week with a prayer and incense burnt for you and you alone on an altar!”
“So you have sworn, mortal. Be careful not to breach your oath!” one mouth said. “Gee, you must be somebody special to resist my power so easily,” said the other mouth. “Or have I wanted you to succeed?” asked the first teasingly and the old god smiled with both pair of lips. “How nice, you brought yet another worshipper. Prayer and incense, remember, prayer and incense! Jove will be furious that the mortals worship again – not him but me!”
He disappeared into thin air and the tourists came alive. The pisser finished, hid his tool and zipped his fly. The reading woman turned a page. The priest took the picture and started looking for a new opportunity. The couple finished the kiss. Nobody had noticed anything. For them, nothing has happened.

Then they spotted the stark naked man: me. The priest dropped his camera. The young couple laughed. The nuns stared with open mouths. And the pisser sent me an angry look, as if I had outperformed him, the nuns having overlooked his performance.
Still stunned by the meeting with the double-faced one, I had completely forgotten my nudity. The pisser’s rage brought me back to the fact that the old rules apply again. I had an impulse to cover my dick with my hand and run for cover but I overcame it.
“See you later, micturator!” I said to the pisser, smiled to each of the other viewers and walked tall to the exit, head high and meeting the gapes of the revived visitors with intrepid eyes and a friendly smile. Master walked behind explaining in the numerous tongues he speaks that I was a fugitive from a loony bin.

At long last, we were out and took a taxi. As we were driving through the revived streets, again full of speeding cars and lively people, Master nodded philosophically and said:
“No person in the world save the two of us know that anything’s been amiss. If you ever wrote it down they would call it fantasy. Should anybody bother to check, the only clue to follow is an out-of-thin-air materialization and following parade of a well-endowed naked man in the Roman Forum.”
“You did it to me on purpose,” it dawned on me.
“And you surpassed yourself,” he answered, and the cabby asked me in bad English whether this was the newest outfit for flashers.
“Va’fa’n’culo!” I answered in a better Italian.

In the evening we were seated in a plane bound for our country, imbibing tax-free malt and talking.
“No, Master, no lecture. I may not have studied Roman religion as heatedly as you but still know my Janus, the double-faced god of beginnings and endings, the deity of Time. January is called after him and so should December, only it isn’t. The gate of his temple, that’s our ruin, was closed or opened only when there was peace all over the Roman Empire…”
“Closed!”
“Wasn’t it the ardor of your studies, which brought him back from the oblivion inside old books?”
“The ardor of my studies made me know what was going on, where to go and what to do. Actually, it’s the Catholic Church who’s been negligent or weak. After all, the Christians dislodged the ancient gods and it’s been their job to keep them down ever since. The Greek Orthodox Church does a much better job, as no Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Hades, Ares, Aphrodite or such like re-appear over there.”
“How did you resist Janus, Master?”
“I was about to go out and roam the Forum again when I suddenly felt I was dying. Didn’t want to, so I fought it and it gave up. A moment later, it tried again and I gave it a shove and felt it was loosing interest for the time being. Then I looked out of the window and the sculptures down there made me understand: Time has been halted. With ancient Roman religion on my mind, I thought of the Roman god of time and, as you have seen, the hunch paid off.”
“But how is it possible to keep Time going for two persons only? Isn’t Time one and same for all?”
“So we philosophers thought but it can’t be. I figure Time is a bundle of individual channels. Makes sense if you think how differently time flies when you are in an uplifting conversation with your Master and when you sit in a dentist’s chair. And for the dentist, it’s a different time still.”
“Why use time on reviving me while a new attack was imminent?”
“If my intuition was correct and the attacker was a Roman god then he would appreciate another worshipper. I invested only little energy to activate your time channel; you kept it alive yourself after. And Janus was glad, which brings me to the oath we have taken…”
“You have taken,” I protested. “The constitution guarantees the freedom of religion.”
“You don’t have to feel any piety, just go through the motions. It’s a part of your job from now on,” he replied and we had a longer discussion about my job description, wages and such.
We built an altar in my garden and every Sunday we burn frankincense and say the following short Latin prayer:
Father Janus, I venerate You as the first and the last of the gods[6].
Any takers?

---

[1] Tempus non fugit. A paraphrase of one of those “golden thoughts”, which always have to be in Latin.

[2] Pater Iane, Pater Iane, veni ad me.

[3] Quid vobis vultis?

[4] Miserere!

[5] Noli nos omnes perdere.

[6] Pater Iane, Te primum ultimumque deorum veneror.

Copyright © Peter Billig 2007

THE HILL

Peter Billig
THE HILL

It was a clear summer evening. He was eight, standing on the top of a hill. To the right, the last red afterglow was going out, to the left, the stars were already shining. A black silhouette of a mountain range stood out on the horizon like a paper cutout. As the stars began to spread all over the heavenly ceiling, he had a sensation, frightening at first, then awesome, that he is not standing here and imbibing this view for the first time. Once, he was someone else and this someone – he, as it is he who is remembering this – made an important decision just here, on this very hilltop. What was it now…?
"Where are you, you brat!" called a harsh voice from below.
"I'm coming now, Mom!" he called back and ran downhill, the memory gone.
"You promised to come after sunset! Supper's getting cold!"
As he was eating, he strove to recall the consciousness of having been someone else, but the thought seemed absurd under the low ceiling of the hut.

He had a strong dream that night. He was in a town in some distant century. As he was walking the narrow streets, he recognized houses on both sides and remembered their names and purpose: a city hall, a blacksmith's, a mercer's, a grocer's, a gunsmith's, a bell-founder's, an inn and so on. He came to a broad river, and crossing it on a bridge with fancy towers he remembered that a famous person had been thrown down from here. He went uphill to a huge castle: the gate was open. With sure steps he strolled past a half-finished church to an alley glued to the ramparts. It was "his" and he knew which of the tiny houses was "his". He came to the door and spelt the name on the nameplate – his own. He awoke with a start.

One summer vacation twenty-five years later he was visiting Prague, a city he has never experienced before. First, he participated in an astrology seminar, astrology being his great hobby. Then there was time to play the tourist. And here he was with a guidebook in his hand, standing before the old city hall, a peculiar structure. Suddenly, he had an uncanny feeling of having seen this unique building before. Obviously, he had read illustrated material about Prague before going, but it did not explain the eerie quality of the experience. Then he remembered: it was the city hall from that long, long forgotten dream!
Being inside an evolving dream gave him goose flesh. He decided to follow through. He trod in the footsteps of the dream throughout the Old City, walking in the general direction of the river and recognizing the blacksmith's, the mercer's, the grocer's, the gunsmith's, the bell-founder's, the inn and so on through their now modern trappings.
He reached the river. The bridge was there. In the dream it had not been adorned with the statues of the saints (added by Counterreformation from 1685 on, the guidebook said), but the fancy towers gave it away.
He crossed the bridge (whence St John of Nepomuk had been thrown down, he read) and went up to the Castle. The unfinished church has grown into a consummate cathedral. He went to the alley from the dream, glued to the ramparts. It proved to be Golden Lane where Emperor Rudolph's alchemists lived: they were supposed to find a way of producing gold from base metals. At that time, Prague was the occult capital of Europe, full of astrologers, alchemists and magicians, the guidebook said.
He found "his" house: it was an innocent souvenir shop now, but it gave him a shudder, nevertheless.

Five years later, the first morning of his summer vacation. The exams are over, his students gone. He puts his Latin off his mind, ready to go holidaymaking, as he has been planning all the year. He has packed the car but now he feels like not going to the sea after all. What an unexpected change of heart! Where to, then? At once, the name of the destination enters his mind. He checks the road atlas: only one entry of that name: a village in the Foothills District, so he drives there instead.

Halfway, he stops at a roadside diner. He orders and sees a magazine, left by another customer, opened on a picture of the information plaque from the probe "Pioneer", sent by the U.S. at the end of the 1960's to meet Extraterrestrials. He looks closer. The messenger carried images of man and woman and a diagram of the Solar System. Aliens will be joyous finding it, now knowing that there is life in Space! And where Earth is and what manner of creature we humans are, should they feel like invading, ha, ha!

But what if we had sent the messenger not for the benefit of aliens but of ourselves?
"You all right?" inquires the waitress coming with his soup.
"Fine, I just had a very crazy thought."
She nods and leaves. This short exchange and the enticing smell of the food changes his priorities. He begins to eat, but the thought would not give up. It hits him again and he freezes with the spoon in midair.
If we, who now are Earthlings, are later reborn in another part of the Universe, a plaque from Earth could be, on Sirius or Aldebaran, a welcome reminder of a former incarnation.

He puts the spoon down and lets the thought think itself out: the sojourn on Earth is for gathering experience to carry out an assignment elsewhere. The sojourn elsewhere is for an assignment here. On Earth an exchange takes place: a part of one's soul is invested in Earth and it stays within Earth after one's death. One's body improves Earth by staying behind. It's of a better stuff, having been so close to the soul. Earth reciprocates by enriching the soul via the body, by making new parts of the soul grow. The new parts are the reason why a sojourn on another planet is now feasible. It all makes sense! So it can go on all over the galaxies, with repeated sojourns on the same planets, perhaps as member of a different species whenever on Earth? This traveling between distant worlds might be the meaning of one's existence as an entity…

"You don't like the soup?" the waitress arrives with his main course. "The cook believes himself to be the reincarnation of Brillat-Savarin. Puts his soul into the soup, we hear but praise and acclaim!"
"It's excellent. It's that crazy thought, I'm afraid. Could you explain to the cook…?"

She nods and leaves with the cold soup.

What did she say? The cook puts his dick in the soup?
He visualized the scene and burst out in laughter. The other guests began to stare. He shut up shaking with stifled laughter, tears pouring down his cheeks. Eating was impossible.

"So you left the main course, too. Been crying over it? It's not that bad, some people like it. The cook won't accept apologies this time. He'll go for you with the cleaver!"
He smiled and gave her a bill.
"Keep the change."
"No." She gave him change and pressed her own coins on him. "I'm tipping you for the entertainment."

The name of his destination appeared on a signboard by the road; a moment later he recognized the hut, and the summer vacation with his mother years, years ago came vividly back. It was here – that dream, which led to the curious experience in Prague! This great sensation, top of a hill!

And the hill appeared. He stopped the car and ran up.
To the right the last afterglow was going out and to the left the stars were already shining. Before him there was a black silhouette of a mountain range, like a paper cutout on the horizon. As the stars began to spread over the heavens, he had a sensation, at first frightening then awesome, that he is not standing here for the first time. Once, he was someone else and this someone – but actually he, as it is him who is remembering this – had made an important decision just here, on this very hilltop.
What was it now…? He sat down, closed his eyes, fell down the well of his inner space – and landed in Prague, crossing the bridge. Like in the old dream, the saint-figures were gone, as were the buildings built later than the early 1600's. Now he could fully appreciate it: the monstrous Wallenstein Palace, for example, wasn't there.
He went up to the Castle, entered Golden Lane and walked to his house. The door was locked. As he was searching for the key, he suddenly felt very cold – and found himself back on the hill, shivering.
It was 3 a.m. and dark, except for the stars. He fetched his sleeping bag from the car, found some level ground on the hilltop, crawled into the bag and was fast asleep:

Now he was by the door, turning the key. The room looked like a medieval laboratory: pipes and alembics arranged on long tables, shelves with varicolored jars, flasks and phials, containing chemicals, as he could tell by the smells. The fireplace was ablaze, even though it was summer.
A desk by the window was covered with writings and drawings. A man was scribbling laboriously with a quill. Immediately he knew: he and this man are one and the same person!

The man finished scrawling and fetched a little glass bottle from a shelf. He rolled the paper, he just had written, and placed it inside. He skillfully melted the neck down over the fire. There was no doubt: an important document has been placed in a time capsule.
A man with a whip knocked on the window:
"Your coach is ready, sir."
"I'm coming," the other replied, put the bottle in his breast pocket and reached for his cape and hat…

He awakes with a shudder. It is very cold; the sleeping bag is covered with dew. The sun is rising. The dream has been so vivid that to be back on the hill feels like being in a different universe.
He stands up, urinates, fetches a screwdriver from the car and begins to jab the soil off the level part where he just has been sleeping. The metal scratches against glass, and he digs on with his hands, extracts the little bottle. He rinses it in the dew. Yes, it is intact; the paper is still inside. He breaks the glass and unrolls the paper, actually a parchment.
There is a horoscope of one Adalbertus de Praga, drawn in the antiquated square-based style, and a text in Latin:

When I, Adalbertus of Prague, alchemist and astrologer, was on 15 August 1600 AD bivouacking on this hilltop, I was shaken to the deepest of my soul by an enormous view. As with wondering eyes I was watching the stars being born on the evening sky simultaneously with the black ridge of the mountains and a bloody sunset, a feeling in my heart and a thought in my head were born spontaneously: death is not the end of a human's life, but the beginning of a future life. There is no point in fearing death: when a human dies, the soul leaves the dead body, freed of carnal constraints. At the astrologically proper time, when the mistakes of the previous life best can be straightened by virtue of the favorable configuration of the planets, the very same soul enters a new body. That is why it is called metempsychosis in Greek and reincarnatio in Latin. To me, my doctrine seems to be a pernicious one because it is not in accord with the Scriptures and the Church, but more like a religion of heretics. Whom shall I believe: the heretics or the Fathers? Other people's authority or myself? Is it a deceptive daydream or a true hope? If it is not just a specter, let this be the token and testimony for you – or should I say "me"? Because if you should recall this had been written and find this container and read this report, what more should you require than this testimony, this token and this document? I stretch both my arms out to you (to me) through the chasm of eternity. Get born (let me get born), live (let me live) and stay fit (let me stay fit)![1]

"My private Pioneer has arrived," he thought and heaved a sigh of relief.

---

[1] The horoscope is private and will not be published, and the original Latin text reads as follows:

Ego, Adalbertus de Praga, alchemista & astrologus, die XV Aug. A.D. MDC hic in summo colle cum tempus tererem, visu enormi sum percussus usque ad imam animam. Nam cum stellas in caelo vesperino nascentia simul cum nigro derso montium & cruento Solis occasu oculis admirantibus animadverterem, sponte sua sensus in corde & cogitatio huius generis in animo nati: non esse mortem finem vitae humanae, sed initium vitae futurae. Non est timenda mors: moritur homo, dissolutis carnis catenis anima corpus mortuum relinquit, & cum tempus astrologice idoneum obventurum sit, quando peccata pristinae vitae ex constellatione planetarum facillime emendabuntur, ingreditur anima ipsissima in carnem novam; quare Graece metempsychosis, Latine reincarnatio appellatur. Quae doctrina ideo mi perniciosa videtur, quod contra Scripturas & Ecclesiam ad haereticorum paganorumque spectat religionem. Cui credam? haereticisne an Patribus? auctoritati aliorum aut mihimet ipsi? Est phantasma falsum aut spes vera? Si spectrum non est, en tibi – dicamne "mihi”? – signaculum testimoniumque: quod si scriptum recordatus fueris, repositorium inveneris, hunc nuntium legeris, quid hoc testimonio, hoc signo, hoc documento amplius requires? Bracchia ambo tibi (mihi) super abyssum aeternitatis protendo. Nascere (nascar), vive (vivam), vale (valeam)!

Copyright 2007 Peter Billig

TROJAN MULE

Peter Billig

TROJAN MULE

“Life’s a bitch and always because of the broads!” Werner said. “Bottoms up!”
He emptied the glass to his image in the mirror and thus spake to his double:
“Werner, a human blessed with awareness, got hurt again! Animals learn quicker! Where does this urge come from? I give my soul to a woman, I get abandoned and I undergo the same excruciating pain again and again. And when my heart has healed, I find yet another woman! This is a trap, a pitfall of existence! My manhood, erudition and free will mean dick because I can’t gainsay my psychological program, the preprogrammed robot I am! Cheers!”
They drank again.
“Let’s be fair. In my case, it’s always been a man ditched, as I’m a man. But women get discarded too. I’ve seen females hurt by men. Works for both genders; all humanity’s trapped! Cheerio!”
They took a long silent drink.

“Here we go again, full of heartache, getting stiff,” Werner said at last. “Time to do something. I’m referring to my secret project code-named “Sexless”, told you last time. Being the leader of this lab I can start at once, without questions from above. If I keep it secret the first three months, everybody – Rector, President, Primate and Pope – can kiss my ass. We have the anti-abortion law and the free press! Pro-lifers will stand by me and I will adopt, the sperm being mine! Let’s drink to the project!”
They did.

Nine months later all Institute was present to assist at the “delivery”. The moment the little one has been taken out of the mother-surrogate, the scientists avidly began their inspection: in the place where genitals occur, it had only an orifice to void urine. Werner called it Evadam, a hybrid of Eve and Adam, the first man and the first woman. Evadam was the first unsex. In its birth certificate, in the space gender stood neuter, and in mother and father both Werner’s name.
Werner’s flat became an open house for scientists and a strange thing happened: their initial scientific curiosity gradually changed into heartfelt care for Evadam’s well being. Soon, all scientific pretences were dropped and people kept coming for the pleasure of it.
Even though in its physical and intellectual growth Evadam did not stand out against his sexed peers, there was something irresistible to its beautiful features, gracious movements, and, later, harmonious voice making Evadam’s presence an enjoyment. Some said Evadam had a healing effect on body and psyche comparable to swimming with dolphins.
Three years old Evadam began in kindergarten and even the kids’ parents were enticed, staying to talk with it and to give it sweets. The kids, though, were not jealous because Evadam created peace and harmony around it. To be angry or envious with it was impossible.

Same story repeated itself in school: Evadam was a favorite with everyone, both its teachers and pals. In high school, in the age when sexuality means so much, Evadam’s peers respected it precisely because of its holding itself aloof of all this hanky-panky. And the teachers noticed that love and lust between the students, a normal state of affairs, was practically non-existent during the unsex’s stay, replaced by asexual friendships.
Only too late they linked this fact to Evadam’s person. As the unsex graduated from high school, it went on vacation. There, it celebrated its coming of age – eighteen – and, albeit unaware, its unsexual maturity. So when it entered university in the autumn, all the fellow students began to lose sexual interest for their partners. Once more nobody associated the fact with Evadam’s person. Three months after its enrollment a reporter from a local TV station visited the university to talk with the freshmen. He chanced upon Evadam.
The five minutes short interview was broadcast during the intermission in a prestigious soccer game. Only the people in the stadium watched the second half of the match. The TV viewers were phoning or e-mailing the station with demands to see Evadam again – such was the commendation of its charm! The interview was shown again immediately after the game. Other stations in the country heard of it and showed it. As the result, 99% of our populace saw Evadam and the same thing happened to them: they lost sexual interest for other people, exactly as Evadam’s fellow students. TV stations abroad bought and brought the interview. Every newspaper had at least one picture of Evadam. A soft drink company put its image on the bottles – and kept selling out! Other companies followed. Their products reached everywhere – into the jungles, the deserts and the icecaps.
And before anyone was aware of it was too late. We never thought that men and women attracted each other because their biological program offered no choice – a smart device by the monopolistic Nature, interested in keeping her farce of life going. As soon as an unsex appeared, engineered by human protest, the deeper strata of our psyche saw through the scheme and blew the whistle on Her.

Copyright 2007 Peter Billig

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH A Saul Vogel Mystery

Peter Billig
FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH
A Saul Vogel Mystery

"What I most revere in you, Master, is your mental independence: that you never have adhered to any doctrines, even your own," I told Vogel. We’ve had a discussion about Philosophy the day before and once more I was amazed to see the ease, with which he abandoned yesterday’s opinions.
"I'm afraid your flattering opinion doesn't tally with the facts," he replied. "There was a time in my youth when a particular dogma was holding sway over me."
"Which dogma would that be?" I asked lightly, expecting a joke like "womanism", a neat formulation of my Master's particular partiality.
"Roman Catholicism," he said reluctantly, as if expecting me to be scandalized.
A sick joke – but something in his face told me it was no joke: he must have had a Catholic episode, never shared with me. My inner eye saw my Master kissing a priestly hand, and I felt sudden queasiness.
“Nauseating, isn’t it?” he said. “I met a padre in Italy, whose stance and faith impressed me so much that I converted…"
"You got baptized!" I exploded.
"But you wouldn't mind, had I become a Hassid?”
"It would have been more consistent with your national roots."
"Roots, shmoots, my ass! People are equal. A priest's cassock is no worse than a rabbi's gabardine or an imam’s whatever. What really was despicable here…"
"So you even wanted to be a sky pilot!"
"Why be a follower if you can be a leader? Father Giuseppe prevailed upon me, though, not to enter seminary but to spread the faith privately, the people of Italy having become increasingly Communist and godless under the Vatican's very nose. That's where my talent is, he told me, the fire of my heart much more effective in private contacts than anything I could say from the pulpit. What really was disgraceful here…" but I interrupted by getting up to fetch whisky and glasses.

As I was arranging the tray, it struck me that Vogel was being extremely frank, telling me things he was deeply ashamed of: a token of enormous confidence! I shouldn't have interrupted, I should have encouraged him or he might clam up on me.
"What a splendid idea!" his eyes shone up when he saw the tray.
"What really was shameful here…" I prompted, pouring.
"… was not the fact that I became a Catholic (it would have been the same had I become a Protestant, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Judaist) but that I ceased to use my own brains (or wait for my own illumination) and surrendered myself to another person's mental tutelage. It's not important whether this person is wise or stupid, godly or ungodly. It's to accept any doctrine as the truth: revealed, absolute and complete! Before meeting Father Giuseppe I used to call myself itinerant freethinker… Itinerant asshole!"
He drank up and I followed suit.
"You were young and wanted something to lean on," I said conciliatorily.
"Don’t patronize me! My youth was aggravating circumstances! I can understand an old man who's been searching for the truth all his life, and not having found it, he embraces an existing religion or philosophy in order to die in peace. This is all right. But young folks should search for new truths, establish own religions and philosophies and never let themselves be caught in a web of systems built on outdated illuminations, millennia old, which stay alive only through indoctrinating their customers from the cradle on."
"Imagine the mess if each and every person had his/her own religion. But tell me about your case: Saulo Voghelli vs. il Papa, " I said.
"I used to be a vagabond,” he smiled at last, “going from country to country, thinking whatever I pleased, taking odd jobs on my way, entrancing women and breaking their hearts (a bird free to perch on whatever branch it chose) when I met Padre Giuseppe in a coffee-bar in a Sicilian township. We talked over a cappuccino and I was struck by a lightning from God! Padre Giuseppe invited me to follow him to Palermo and join the group of his "laic friends"; he had a parish there and was a bigwig within the Jesuit order. I dropped the work I was doing for a local widow (Angela, and wasn't she an angel!) and drove with him in his Lancia. In Palermo he set me up with a job and a flat. I worked in a gunsmith's, selling legal rifles to hunters and illegal submachine guns to mafiosi. Twice a week, after evening services, we held meetings in his church, and the whole setup: the Master and the disciples, the topics discussed, the instructions issued, the atmosphere of sanctimonious subjugation provided all my spiritual nourishment. I lived within a protective Catholic circle, organized like a monastic order. We called each other fra Giovanni or suora Maria, even though most were married and had children. No wonder it did not take long before I was asking to be baptized. A cardinal performed it, the mayor of Palermo stood godfather. I wanted to become a priest but Padre Giuseppe convinced me my path should be worldly. He introduced me to a young woman from una famiglia borghese di Siracusa (Maddalena, a very nice girl) and suddenly I heard myself pronounce readiness to marry her, sire children and bring them up as Pope-fearing Catholics. So we got engaged."
"You were planning a pilgrimage on your honeymoon? Fátima, Compostela, Lourdes or just San Pietro?” I inquired. “Speaking of whom: did you inform your new friends about your origins?"
"I did. Padre Giuseppe was the more admired for having brought one of the "older stray brethren" back to the fold. Our flock told me the human part of Jesus was Jewish, his mother, too, and the Apostles. I wasn't actually turning my back or my coat on my roots. ‘The first Christians were Jewish,’ Padre Giuseppe told me, ‘and as you never believed in the now outdated truths of Judaism, there is no treachery.’ I was baptized as Paolo to remind me of my namesake Saul, who, at the gates of Damascus…"
"Oh, spare me! Tell me rather how you have got out of this holy mess!"
Vogel had another drink and began:

"I had a neighbor upstairs, a guy called Adriano. From his place, there always came noises of parties or sexual intercourses whenever I wanted to focus on contemplation or prayer. Sometimes, I had the impression, listening from my apartment, that he was doing it with more than one at a time. At last, I went up during an extremely wild party to appeal to his better self. He answered the doorbell together with three naked chicks. The fire in me went ablaze and I held a sermon on the doorstep, but he, instead of kicking me downstairs, invited me to step in. I'll never forget his grin when he poured a grappa for me, and the nudes began to touch me. I told them I was fidanzato and a teetotaler. Un astinente disgraziato, they teased and the horny chicks let me see all they had one at a time, having made bets as to which one will succeed in seducing me. My black half-priestly clothes actually piqued them on! I almost succumbed to the first, but overcame my old self through a moral effort and stayed chaste and sober throughout the ordeal.
"I must have impressed the host, because later Adriano visited me with a bottle and spent the whole evening emptying it and telling me the story of his life. A bastard son of a local landowning count, he was well provided for in his will. He was also an atheist and a fervent anticlerical, studying philosophy at the Università di Palermo. He aimed at a journalist career and certainly did his legwork and research. The things he told me about the clergy! All the sodomites, child-molesters, Satanists, thieves and weirdoes! Some stories were convincing but I managed to suppress them, especially as he couldn't say anything negative about my Padre Giuseppe.
"Then it was my turn. My religious glow made quite an impression on him, but he was able to suppress it as well. To cut the story short: a curious friendship developed. I tried to save his soul, and he – my head. We visited and discussed and philosophized and propagandized, and the temple of God stood firm in me, and so did that of Satan in him." Vogel sighed and had another drink.

"I remember our last conversation. He visited me in the gun-shop, and I assaulted the stronghold of Beelzebub in his soul:
"Just think, Adriano! Because of your way of life, you are squandering away the bliss of Paradise!" and I depicted for him the glory of the Trinity and the Cherubic Choirs, a view he will never be allowed to behold."
"Non dire cazzate, pio amico mio!" he replied. "I am as I am and this is not my fault: the Creator has made me so. If He doesn't like the way I live, He should have created me different. Is it reasonable that I should be made to pay because He botched His job? Is it fair that I, a product, should be made responsible for my Demiurges' foozle? If He wants a mule to carry ten tons, He should have made it a truck, not a mule! If I'm supposed to stay away from the girls, He should have created me a eunuch! I am not going to make a knot on Mr. Dick because You Know Who has been lazing it off in excelsis. The Creator has not created man until the 6th day: tired by then, hands trembling? I am a bungled, low-grade product, a lemon, and I act accordingly. Not that I believe in His existence, I believe in Matter having produced life, but should I be mistaken and the Creator exists, I'm sure He accepts my point!"
"Perhaps the Almighty purposely created man with all the faults and failures and is not so much interested in our avoiding all the sins and temptations but in our sincerely wanting to? And obeying the precepts of the Church is the surest policy, as She represents the Holy Trinity on earth. Why be an idiot and exchange eternal life in Paradise for eternal damnation in Hell? My friends tell me you propositioned a nun in the street! Have you no shame in life, Adriano?"
"Your people have a saying: One may proposition even a rabbi's wife. Suora Teresa could have changed her mind about staying a nun in response to my masculine charm, couldn't she? And a simple "no" would have sufficed, no need for the heavy stuff."
Suora Teresa called the carabinieri, Adriano was charged with blasphemy, but got off with a fine for streetwalking, the judge being quite witty.
"I don't believe in a life after death: there will be a black screen and no one to see it," Adriano went on. "But should there be a new TV show instead, a Catholic one, I won’t be languishing in Hell very long – if at all! There are worse criminals than me. Can’t imagine the Judge giving a lady-killer the same sentence as a real killer, a child-molester, a political leader or a religious one!"
"You will be boiling in tar longer than you think," I retorted, "because you think you are smarter than the Church and Her tradition, based on revelations of Jesus, the Apostles, the Fathers and the Saints up to the present day. Think of our own Father Pio, a Saint alive!”
"Va’ fa’n culo! The stigmata may be a special Catholic state of mind, but it is just one of many elated states, which devout Judaists, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims or Hindus alike are able to generate. They experience whichever Lord is appropriate: Adonai, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna… All these states are products of the material body, they are pure psychology, exactly as falling in love, getting angry or experiencing pleasure are," said Adriano. "For my part, I encounter Our Lady Venus whenever making love, but I don't believe in meeting Her when I'm dead, neither do you, Saolo."
"Call me Paolo. And what if you died tonight and, as the Holy Church teaches us, met your Maker? You think you will be able to convince Him to let you off the hook?"
"Don't worry, Saolo. If that be the case I'll drop you a line directly from Paradise!" Adriano replied. He said he had a date in Agrigento, sprang into his convertible and was off.
An hour later he was killed in a road accident.

“I was devastated. I never realized how much of a friend Adriano had become,” my Master continued, “but my grief was partly due to my not having been able to convert him in time. I received consolation from our flock. By now they called me “our little missionary”. Why “little”?
“Father Giuseppe asked us to pray for Adriano: ‘He really needs it more than anyone and let us hope that Paolo’s words managed to make an impression on his soul until, in his stupid rush through life, he took that fatal turning,’ he pronounced and promised to say a mass for his soul. Police investigation revealed that Adriano’s Ferrari had been negotiating the lethal curve with excessive speed.
“I went to the funeral, attended the banquet thrown by his friends, and when I got back home I found a letter on my desk, even though I had the only key to my flat.”
Master opened a drawer and handed me a piece of paper-like material. It was silky and did not rustle when handled. The letters on the white surface were handwritten in blue:

Dear Saolo, I promised to drop you a line from Paradise and here it comes!
I used to fear death as the moment of the inner screen going black but when the point in time actually came, instead of blackness I saw my limp body lying by the smashed car. An asshole should never drive a Ferrari, I thought, but I did not feel ashamed, actually I felt detached: I was outside, this corpse out there wasn’t me anymore. My eyes closed for the material world and opened for another dimension: a tunnel. I flew into it and moved quickly, headed for its bright end far away. With every passing second life was getting more distant, as if it only had been a dream.
Upon reaching the bright end, I found myself entering a lush park, which was sporting flowers, bushes and trees of all imaginable and unimaginable shapes. The feeling I was experiencing was that of indescribable happiness. I was in Paradise!
I wanted to plunge into this beautiful sensation but something kept nagging me, some unresolved bond to life, an unfinished business. Paradise is a Catholic idea and I realized that I was expecting the Judgment. You were right, there is a Paradise – but I should be in Hell instead! It was a very unpleasant feeling, making it impossible to sink into the bliss.
I spied some entities walking nearby and saw that in my present form I looked exactly like they: cartoon ghosts. ‘Excuse me, which way to the Judgment?’ One bothered to come out of bliss: ‘What Judgment?’. I explained, and the friendly ghost advised me to ask God: ‘He takes care of all questions here.’ The ghost gave me directions. ‘Can’t miss Him.’
I spare you the details of my walkabout but I assure you: no Trinity on my way, no Cherubic Choirs, no Abraham’s bosom, only human and animal ghosts perambulating amid the plants.
At last I saw God sitting under a particularly psychedelic-looking tree. There was no mistake: He was no ghost, He was a human being, very present and aware. He had a nondescript face and a little beauty-spot on the left cheek. He smiled when our eyes met, and He knew me at once:
“Adriano the nun-molester, professional lady-killer and amateurish driver! You want to ask about the Judgment, eh? There is no Judgment, no Hell, no Purgatory! There is only Paradise! Father Pio or Idi Amin, no difference, every single one of you comes directly here.”
“What is justice then if a Hitler and a Saint Francis get the same reward?” I asked.
“Justice is that whatever pain, misfortune and loss you have suffered or caused in life becomes irrelevant once you get in here. Life was a nightmare you have dreamt and now you are awake.”
“And what do I do now?” I asked.
“You bliss in, and when your time comes, you bliss out.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“There is some dissent among the inmates. Personally, I am pretty confident it is to the dimension whence I was made to appear here.”
This sounded all right and I couldn’t wait to bliss in, but something was vexing me, though: the awareness that you, my friend, live in the clutches of a stupid ideology, making confessions, doing penance, kissing a priestly hand and entering a loveless marriage.
“I want to tell a living friend about this Paradise, if I may?” I said.
“Who’s stopping you? You only have to will a letter with a specific content at a particular place over there, the way I had willed the world, life and so on.”
So here comes the letter and it’s up to you to take the cue as I’m about to bliss in.
Tanti saluti
Adriano.

“And this is how I got out of that holy mess.”
“It was a hoax! Someone from your pseudo-monastic order wanted to take the neophyte down a peg. Or was it a friend of Adriano’s? Far too ingenious for a Catholic!”
“Exactly my thoughts. Something told me, though, to have the letter analyzed, and the lab told me this material should not exist on earth at all as it is made of unknown elements. Actually, several labs did. A bit too elaborate for a practical joke, wouldn’t you think?”
“I would,” I said looking a bit sheepishly at the silky page.
“Suddenly, I saw the inner strings of my religious obsession, realized my mistake and my mind-set went tumbling down. I actually heard it crack and crumble in my head, a tower collapsing! I went to Padre Giuseppe, gave my reasons and said my goodbyes. I’ve never seen a man more shocked. He called me a Judas and so did the brothers and sisters I visited, as Padre Giuseppe forbade me to address them at a meeting. I drove my little Fiat to Siracusa and broke off the engagement. Poor Maddalena was flabbergasted and called me a Judas. Then I partied with Adriano’s crowd, made love to all the horny chicks and drove back to my Angelina, who called me a son of a bitch and set her vicious dog on me. So I sold my car, resumed my vagabondage, quit Italy and moved over to Greece, wisely knowing never to use other people’s minds instead of my own. But this is another story.”
“So you never got un-baptized?”
“Can a guy get un-circumcised?” he replied, looked at the clock, and I said goodnight and went downstairs to my apartment.

Copyright © 2007 Peter Billig