Blameless in Abaddon (35 page)

“Nothing on ontology or free will—”

“I'm not surprised.”

“—but they've thoroughly scoped out the defense's ‘theological witnesses.' Just as I suspected, Brother Sebastian Cranach is their heavyweight.” Selkirk added that Martin would find on his desk a dozen back issues of the
Augustinian Quarterly
and the
Thomist Review
containing the monk's articles. “Not exactly beach reading. Let's hope the judges find Cranach as impenetrable as I do.”

Stepping into his office, Martin experienced a benign variety of claustrophobia. The place was like the cockpit of a jumbo jet: cramped, disorienting, and jammed with machines—telephone, computer, modem, fax, printer, copier. A combination coffee urn and warm-milk dispenser dominated the Danish-modern desk, rising from amid an avalanche of indictments, dossiers, depositions, interview transcripts, theology journals, and videocassettes of
A History of Havoc.

While Olaf and Gunnar sat in the next room watching dubbed
Cheers
reruns, Martin engaged in a jurisprudential frenzy, gulping down
koffie verkeerd
as he pored over the documents and worked on his opening statement. By four o'clock his stomach was rumbling audibly. So far, thank God, the crab had not undertaken to destroy his appetite.

Dusk found him sitting alongside his bodyguards in a fast-fish restaurant on Nieuwe Parklaan called Noordzee, eating a
haringsalade
and browsing through his souvenir program book. Among the highlights of
The Story of International 227
were eleven watercolor portraits depicting the “principal players” in the trial: Lovett, Martin, Randall, Esther, God, Sebastian Cranach, Bernard Kaplan, Eleanor Swann, Donald Carbone, Tonia Braverman, and Stuart Torvald. Martin's own image pleased him. The artist, a Dutchman named Van Brunt, had made him appear committed but not crazed, stricken but not terminal.

The Story of International 227
concluded with a signed article by Morris Stackpole, a philosophy professor at Binghamton University. In Stackpole's view, an odd variety of reverence lay at the heart of Martin's project. “A man who argues with God is a man who takes God seriously and thereby pays Him tribute,” wrote Stackpole. “To rebuke the Almighty is to honor Him.” A striking and disturbing thought, Martin decided, just the sort of perverse idea philosophers got paid for having.

On their way back to the Peace Palace they stopped off to see the famous Madurodam Miniature Town, a 1:25—scale copy of a Dutch village. Martin found it unimpressive and would have regretted the visit were it not for the modest bronze plaque in the lobby. The miniature town, the plaque explained, had been funded by J. M. L. Maduro as a memorial to his son, who had distinguished himself during the German invasion of 1940 and died five years later at Dachau.

Moral evil. A phenomenon for which, according to Saint Augustine, the Defendant could not be held responsible. “We'll see about that,” he whispered to himself, raising an invisible stein of Oranjeboom beer to the memory of J. M. L. Maduro's boy. “We'll just see about that.”

 

On Sunday evening, having spent a mind-boggling afternoon studying the Kroft Museum catalog and screening the first three episodes of
A History of Havoc
, Martin convened—at Lovett's expense—a combination reunion banquet and strategy session in the Rembrandt Room of the Huize Bellevue. With the exception of those victims too busy, sick, or insolvent to travel, every charter member of the Job Society attended the event, a lavish buffet featuring roast pork,
fricandel
sausages, and other exemplars of the high-calorie Dutch diet. Looking around the hall, Martin drew considerable comfort from the familiar faces and equally familiar accessories. How could Lovett's “theological witnesses” possibly defeat the mute testimony of Norma Bedloe and her oxygen tank, Peter Henshaw and his IV drip, or Julia Schroeder and her portable dialysis machine?

As dessert was being served—those sufferers whose physicians permitted them sweets had a choice of either apple tarts or
stroopwafels
with ice cream—Martin rose and rapped his soup spoon against his water glass. The general addressing his troops: a classic scene, he mused—Henry V galvanizing his men on Saint Crispin's Day, George Patton intimidating his infantry at the beginning of the Hollywood biopic. He told his Jobians that many grueling hours of fighting lay ahead. He warned them that the World Court's protocols owed far more to international war crimes tribunals than to American jury trials. Forget Perry Mason. Forget the O. J. Simpson epic. Both the prosecution and the defense would enjoy extreme latitude in cross-examining witnesses. Objections were permitted in principle, but only a few would be sustained.

“Finally, I want to emphasize that nobody here is obligated to take the stand against his better judgment.”

“Wild horses couldn't keep me from testifying,” said legless Stanley Pallomar, bobbing back and forth in his wheelchair.

“Before we rehearse any interviews, I want to run my opening address past you.” Martin drew a legal pad from his briefcase and, tilting his head slightly, aligned his bifocals with page one. “It's a little rough in spots, but I think it gets the job done. You tell me. Ready? Here goes.” He ate a Roxanol and cleared his throat. “May it please the tribunal. The case before you,
International 227: Job Society, et al., plaintiffs, versus Corpus Dei, Defendant
, is paradoxical . . .”

 

“. . . paradoxical in the extreme,” said Martin to the Western world.

He took a deep breath and planted his forearms on the lectern to reduce the pressure on his crumbling hips. The TV lights pained his irises and squeezed pearls of sweat from his brow. As he studied the bench, he realized he was also perspiring inside his three-piece linen suit—an ensemble he'd purchased right before boarding the
Carpco New Orleans
, its whiteness chosen to convey a subliminal saintliness, its bagginess to conceal his breasts. America, Great Britain, France, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Israel, India: the nine judges—red robed, white bibbed, and bewigged, each equipped with a pair of headsets and a personal TV monitor—stared at him with hard, gelid eyes.

“It is paradoxical not only because the Defendant in His day was divine, but also because the reputation that preceded Him was impeccable. God, His partisans repeatedly told us, was good. Peaceful, they said. Merciful, loving, and just.”

He winced, his voice having cracked on
impeccable
and
merciful.
He took a sip of water and vowed to get a grip on himself.

“The prosecution intends to show that exactly the opposite is true. Through the testimony of expert witnesses and ordinary victims, we shall prove that, whatever debt we may owe the Defendant for the raw fact of our existence, He has continually acted in a fashion that must be called criminal.”

Seeking to underscore this last sentence, he swept his arm toward the portrait of Francis Biddle but succeeded only in slapping the lectern microphone and creating a loud electronic thud. He gritted his teeth and pressed on.

“We shall prove that, during those millennia when God was presumably in charge of the universe, He caused or countenanced a stupefying array of atrocities.”

He paused, momentarily distracted by the voice of a female translator rendering his words into French, the second official language of the World Court.

“What were these atrocities? The record is all too familiar. A complete list of the Defendant's crimes would require an indictment running to thousands of volumes. Item: in the year 19
B.C.
an earthquake shook the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, slaughtering a hundred thousand in present-day Syria. Item: in
A.D.
125 a plague swept through North Africa, leaving a million dead in Numidia and Carthage . . .”

Martin had three hundred and fourteen more items ready, a catalogue that excluded the great Cretaceous dying: fond as he was of Vivien and Lawrence, he felt their tragedy wouldn't move the judges. He spent a full hour reciting God's sins, periodically casting furtive glances toward the prosecution table, a massive oak slab swathed in green cloth. Esther offered an encouraging wink. Randall gave him a heartening thumbs-up. Pistols bulging from their armpits, Olaf and Gunnar smiled in unison.

“Philosophers divide human suffering into three categories. First comes natural evil. Earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, plagues, spina bifida. Then we have moral evil—horrors committed by
Homo sapiens
in the name of historical necessity or self-defense. The Albigensian Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition, World War One, Dachau, Hiroshima, Rwanda. Finally we have existential evil—the treacherous interface between human ingenuity and the brute facts of gravity, combustion, and decay. On August 10, 1887, an excursion train tumbled off a burning trestle in Chatsworth, Illinois, and as the cars piled on top of each other, eighty-two men, women, and children were crushed. On March 10, 1906, an explosion ripped through the Courrières coal mine in northern France, mangling, incinerating, and asphyxiating over a thousand men and boys. The evening of December 24, 1924, found two hundred youngsters and their parents jammed into a schoolhouse in Babb's Switch, Oklahoma, to watch a special holiday show. As Santa Claus began passing out presents, he knocked over a Christmas tree decorated with a lighted candle. Thirty-six children and adults perished in the resulting fire.”

His voice was growing stronger. I can get through this, he told himself. I am as resolute as Job.

“But in the long run the philosophers' distinctions don't matter. What matters is whether or not our Creator in His day had good reasons for His manifest failure to prevent such tragedies.”

As Martin slid his hand into his pants pocket, his fingertips brushed Patricia's red silk scarf. He pulled the scarf free, held it against his sopping forehead, and glanced toward the defense table. Dressed in a brown worsted suit reminiscent of Augustine's, Lovett raised a steaming mug of tea to his lips. His brother and aide-de-camp, Darcy—a large, veiny-nosed man with John L. Lewis eyebrows—sat disconsolately beside him, gripping a silver flask between his thumb and palm.

“Let me conclude on a personal note. As a boy I faithfully attended Perkinsville First Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania. Throughout my youth and early manhood I had no quarrel with God. I loved my heavenly Father. As you might imagine, the journey I have taken since then has inflicted me with profound spiritual distress.”

A fly buzzed through the courtroom, hurtling itself against the stained-glass portrait of John Dewey. Martin lowered his gaze and fixed on the court stenographer, a blowsy young man with a Roman nose, his fingers dancing nimbly on a computer keyboard.

“And yet, if there is one principle I came to hold sacred during my years as the magistrate of Abaddon Township, it is this: once you know someone is guilty, you must prosecute that person with unrelenting diligence. To do otherwise is to mock the name of justice. Thank you, Your Honors. For the moment I am finished.”

“The tribunal will recess for lunch,” said Stuart Torvald, confronting the Court TV camera with a bored and sullen face.

 

“Do we really have to watch this shit?” asked Funkeldune, pointing toward my Zenith. He reached into the popcorn bowl, grabbed a fistful of raw kernels, and shoved them into his mouth. “We're missing
The 700 Club.
”

I looked up from the sewing machine. The TV screen showed a CNN reporter standing outside the courtroom, favoring his audience with an impromptu analysis of Candle's speech. I went back to my project: a new American flag for the incinerated schoolhouse in the Idea of Babb's Switch in the Idea of Oklahoma.

“I'll have you know this is the hottest trial since the O. J. Simpson case,” I told my disciple.

“Oh, gimme a break,” said Funkeldune as the corn kernels began erupting in his fiery maw.
Pop, pop, pop.
“That one had sex, violence, jealousy, dogs, corrupt policemen, a likable defendant—everything. This one has three-piece suits and a lot of talk.”

Schonspigel devoured a Klondike bar in one bite. “Can't we watch the Superbowl instead?”

“The Superbowl won't be on for another eight months.”

“
Gilligan's Island
?” asked Funkeldune.
Pop, pop, pop.

“No.”

“The Love Boat?”
asked Belphegor.

“Forget it.”

“
Wheel of Fortune?”
asked Schonspigel.

I did not deign to reply.

 

“Did you read this article by Morris Stackpole?” asked Martin after lunch, shoving his copy of
The Story of International 227
toward Randall and Esther.

“I thought it was a crock,” said Randall.

“You don't believe that to rebuke God is to honor Him?”

“If I thought that, I'd hop on the first plane back to Boston.”

“Don't tell me
you
buy Stackpole's argument,” said Esther.

“I need to think it over,” said Martin.

“What's there to think over?”

“I need to think it over . . .”

“The defense will make its opening statement,” said Torvald, demurely readjusting his wig.

Locking his Malacca walking stick under his arm, Lovett sauntered toward the front of the courtroom. He removed a scrolled manuscript from his coat pocket and unfurled it on the lectern.

“May it please the tribunal. Let me begin by saying that the defense will not be satisfied merely to establish a lack of culpability in this case. A conventional ‘not guilty' verdict would be inadequate here. Rather, we intend to prove our heavenly Father's fundamental innocence and, beyond that, His complete and everlasting perfection. We shall reveal to you a Creator who is worshipworthy in the extreme.