Job: A Comedy of Justice (36 page)

“Thank you. Now about this berthing assignment. It’s a single. I want a double, for me and my wife. I want—”

“Your former wife, you mean. In Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage.”

“Huh? Does that mean we can’t live together?”

“Not at all. But both of you must apply, together, at Berthing General. See the office of Exchange and Readjustments. Be sure, each of you, to fetch your berthing chit.”

“But that’s the problem! I got separated from my wife. How do I find her?”

“Not part of my M.O.S. Ask at the information booth. In the meantime use your singles apartment in Gideon Barracks.”

“But—”

He (she?) sighed. “Do you realize how many thousands of hours I have been sitting here? Can you guess how complex it is to provide for millions of creatures at once, some alive and never dead, others newly incarnate? This is the first time we have had to install plumbing for the use of fleshly creatures—do you even suspect how inconvenient
that
is? I say that, when you install plumbing, you are bound to get creatures who
need
plumbing—and there goes the neighborhood! But did they listen to me? Hunh! Pick up your papers, go through that door, draw a robe and a halo—harps are optional. Follow the green line to Gideon Barracks.”

“
No!
”

I saw his (her) lips move; she (he) may have been praying. “Do you think it is proper to run around Heaven looking the way you do? You are quite untidy. We aren’t used to living-flesh creatures. Uh… Elijah is the last I recall, and I must say that you look almost as disreputable as he did. In addition to discarding those rags and putting on a decent white robe, if I were you I would do something about that dandruff.”

“Look,” I said tensely. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus. While you’ve been sitting around in a clean white robe and a halo in an immaculate city with streets of gold, I’ve been struggling with Satan himself. I know I don’t look very neat but I didn’t choose to come here looking this way. Uh—Where can I pick up some razor blades?”

“Some what?”

“Razor blades. Gillette double-edged blades, or that type. For this.” I took out my razor, showed it to her/ him. “Preferably stainless steel.”

“Here everything is stainless. But what in Heaven is
that?
”

“A safety razor. To take this untidy beard off my face.”

“Really? If the Lord in His wisdom had intended His male creations not to have hair on their faces, He would have created them with smooth features. Here, let me dispose of that.” He-she reached for my razor.

I snatched it back. “Oh, no, you don’t! Where’s that information booth?”

“To your left. Six hundred and sixty miles.” She-he sniffed.

I turned away, fuming. Bureaucrats. Even in Heaven. I didn’t ask any more questions there because I spotted a veiled meaning. Six hundred and sixty miles is a figure I recalled from our sightseeing tour: the exact distance from a center gate (such as Asher Gate, where I was) to the center of Heaven, i.e., the Great White Throne of the Lord God Jehovah, God the Father. He (she) was telling me, none too gently, that if I did not like the way I was being treated, I could take my complaints to the Boss—i.e., “Get lost!”

I picked up my papers and backed away, looked around for someone else in authority.

The one who organized this gymkhana, Gabriel or Michael or whoever, had anticipated that there would be lots of creatures milling around, each with problems that didn’t quite fit the system. So scattered through the crowd were cherubs. Don’t think of Michelangelo or Luca della Robbia; these were not bambinos with dimpled knees; these were people a foot and a half taller than we newcomers were—like angels but with little cherub wings and each with a badge reading “STAFF.”

Or maybe they were indeed angels; I never have been sure about the distinction between angels and cherubim and seraphim and such; the Book seems to take it for granted that you know such things without being told. The papists list
nine
different classes of angels! By whose authority? It’s not in the Book!

I found only two distinct classes in Heaven: angels and humans. Angels consider themselves superior and do not hesitate to let you know it. And they are indeed superior in position and power and privilege. Saved souls are second-class citizens. The notion, one that runs all through Protestant Christianity and maybe among papists as well, that a saved soul will practically sit in the lap of God—well, it ain’t so! So you’re saved and you go to Heaven—you find at once that you are the new boy on the block, junior to everybody there.

A saved soul in Heaven occupies much the position of a blackamoor in Arkansas. And it’s the angels who really rub your nose in it.

I never met an angel I liked.

And this derives from how they feel about us. Let’s look at it from the angelic viewpoint. According to Daniel there are a hundred million angels in Heaven. Before the Resurrection and the Rapture, Heaven must have been uncrowded, a nice place to live and offering a good career—some messenger work, some choral work, an occasional ritual. I’m sure the angels liked it.

Along comes a great swarm of immigrants, many millions (billions?), and some of them aren’t even housebroken. All of them require nursemaiding. After untold eons of beatific living, suddenly the angels find themselves working overtime, running what amounts to an enormous orphan asylum. It’s not surprising that they don’t like us.

Still… I don’t like them, either. Snobs!

I found a cherub (angel?) with a STAFF badge and asked the location of the nearest information booth. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Straight down the boulevard six thousand furlongs. It’s by the River that flows from the Throne.”

I stared down the boulevard. At that distance God the Father on His Throne looked like a rising sun. I said, “Six thousand furlongs is over six hundred miles. Isn’t there one in this neighborhood?”

“Creature, it was done that way on purpose. If we had placed a booth on each corner, every one of them would have crowds around it, asking silly questions. This way, a creature won’t make the effort unless it has a truly important question to ask.”

Logical. And infuriating. I found that I was again possessed by unheavenly thoughts. I had always pictured Heaven as a place of guaranteed beatitude—not filled with the same silly frustration so common on earth. I counted to ten in English, then in Latin. “Uh, what’s the flight time? Is there a speed limit?”

“Surely you don’t think that you would be allowed to
fly
there, do you?”

“Why not? Just earlier today I flew here and then all the way around the City.”

“You just thought you did. Actually, your cohort leader did it all. Creature, let me give you a tip that may keep you out of trouble. When you get your wings—
if
you ever do get wings—don’t try to fly over the Holy City. You’ll be grounded so fast your teeth will ache. And your wings stripped away.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t rate it, that’s why. You Johnny-Come-Latelies show up here and think you own the place. You’d carve your initials in the Throne if you could get that close to it. So let me put you wise. Heaven operates by just one rule: R.H.I.P. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” I answered, not entirely truthfully.

“Listen and learn. You can forget the Ten Commandments. Here only two or three of them still apply and you’ll find you can’t break those even if you were to try. The golden rule everywhere in Heaven is: Rank Hath Its Privileges. At this eon you are a raw recruit in the Armies of the Lord, with the lowest rank possible. And the least privilege. In fact the only privilege I can think of that you rate is being here, just being here. The Lord in His infinite wisdom has decreed that you qualify to enter here. But that’s all. Behave yourself and you will be allowed to stay. Now as to the traffic rule you asked about. Angels and nobody else fly over the Holy City. When on duty or during ceremonies. That does not mean you. Not even if you get wings. If you do. I emphasize this because a surprising number of you creatures have arrived here with the delusion that going to Heaven automatically changes a creature into an angel. It doesn’t. It can’t. Creatures
never
become angels. A saint sometimes. Though seldom. An angel, never.”

I counted ten backwards, in Hebrew. “If you don’t mind, I’m still trying to reach that information booth. Since I am not allowed to fly, how
do
I get there?”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Take the bus.”

Sometime later I was seated in a chariot bus of the Holy City Transit Lines and we were rumbling toward the distant Throne. The chariot was open, boat-shaped, with an entrance in the rear, and had no discernible motive power and no teamster or conductor. It stopped at marked chariot stops and that is how I got aboard. I had not yet found out how to get it to stop.

Apparently everyone in the City rode these buses (except V.I.P.s who rated private chariots). Even angels. Most passengers were humans dressed in conventional white and wearing ordinary halos. But a few were humans in costumes of various eras and topped off by larger and fancier halos. I noticed that angels were fairly polite to these creatures in the fancier halos. But they did not sit with them. Angels sat in the front of the car, these privileged humans in the middle part, and the common herd (including yours truly) in the rear.

I asked one of my own sort how long it took to reach the Throne.

“I don’t know,” I was answered. “I don’t go nearly that far.”

This soul seemed to be female, middle-aged, and friendly, so I used a commonplace opener. “That’s a Kansas accent, is it not?”

She smiled. “I don’t think so. I was born in Flanders.”

“Really? You speak very fluent English.”

She shook her head gently. “I never learned English.”

“But—”

“I know. You are a recent arrival. Heaven is not affected by the Curse of Babel. Here the Confusion of Tongues never took place…and a good thing for me as I have no skill in languages—a handicap before I died. Not so here.” She looked at me with interest. “May I ask where you died? And when?”

“I did not die,” I told her. “I was snatched up alive in the Rapture.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, how thrilling! You must be very holy.”

“I don’t think so. Why do you say that?”

“The Rapture will come—came?—without warning. Or so I was taught.”

“That’s right.”

“Then with no warning, and no time for confession, and no priest to help you…you were ready! As free from sin as Mother Mary. You came straight to Heaven. You
must
be holy.” She added, “That’s what I thought when I saw your costume, since saints—martyrs especially—often dress as they did on earth. I saw too that you are not wearing your saint’s halo. But that’s your privilege.” She looked suddenly shy. “Will you bless me? Or do I presume?”

“Sister, I am not a saint.”

“You will not grant me your blessing?”

(Dear Jesus, how did this happen to me?) “Having heard me say that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I am not a saint, do you still want me to bless you?”

“If you will…holy father.”

“Very well. Turn and lower your head a little—” Instead she turned fully and dropped to her knees. I put a hand on her head. “By authority vested in me as an ordained minister of the one true catholic church of Jesus Christ the Son of God the Father and by the power of the Holy Ghost, I bless this our sister in Christ. So mote it be!”

I heard echoes of “Amen!” around us; we had had quite an audience. I felt embarrassed. I was not certain, and still am not certain, that I had any authority to bestow blessings in Heaven itself. But the dear woman had asked for it and I could not refuse.

She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “I knew it, I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“That you are a saint. Now you are wearing it!”

I started to say, “Wearing what?” when a minor miracle occurred. Suddenly I was looking at myself from outside: wrinkled and dirty khaki pants, Army-surplus shirt with dark sweat stains in the armpits and a bulge of razor in the left breast pocket, three-day growth of beard and in need of a haircut…and, floating over my head, a halo the size of a washtub, shining and sparkling!

“Up off your knees,” I said instead, “and let’s stop being conspicuous.”

“Yes, father.” She added, “You should not be seated back here.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, daughter. Now tell me about yourself.” I looked around as she resumed her seat, and happened to catch the eye of an angel seated all alone, up forward. (S)he gestured to me to come forward.

I had had my fill of the arrogance of angels; at first I ignored the signal. But everyone was noticing and pretending not to, and my awe-struck companion was whispering urgently, “Most holy person, the angelic one wants to see you.”

I gave in—partly because it was easier, partly because I wanted to ask the angel a question. I got up and went to the front of the bus.

“You wanted me?”

“Yes. You know the rules. Angels in front, creatures in back, saints in the middle. If you sit in back with creatures, you are teaching them bad habits. How can you expect to maintain your saintly privileges if you ignore protocol? Don’t let it happen again.”

I thought of several retorts, all unheavenly. Instead I said, “May I ask a question?”

“Ask.”

“How much longer until this bus reaches the River from the Throne?”

“Why do you ask? You have all eternity before you.”

“Does that mean that you don’t know? Or that you won’t tell?”

“Go sit down in your proper section. At once!”

I went back and tried to find a seat in the after space. But my fellow creatures had closed in and left me no room. No one said anything and they would not meet my eye, but it was evident that no one would aid me in defying the authority of an angel. I sighed and sat down in the mid-section, in lonely splendor, as I was the only saint aboard. If I was a saint.

I don’t know how long it took to reach the Throne. In Heaven the light doesn’t vary and the weather does not change and I had no watch. It was simply a boringly long time. Boring? Yes. A gorgeous palace constructed of precious stones is a wonderful sight to see. A dozen palaces constructed of jewels can be a dozen wonderful sights, each different from the other. But a hundred miles of such palaces will put you to sleep, and six hundred miles of the same is deadly dull. I began to long for a used-car lot, or a dump, or (best yet) a stretch of green and open countryside.