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.
“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
No comments:
Post a Comment