Unfinished Business...
I WAS no sooner through the door than the old-timer was on his feet and giving me the lie of the land.
“The time has come,” he thundered, “for judgement to begin!”
He waited for the reverberations of his pronouncement to die away, then lowered his forefinger. And his voice.
“Obliged to say that,” he smiled “Bit dramatic, but it gets the attention. Not that it’s…” A frown took over. “What are you grinning at?”
Fair enough question. In my position, you don’t grin like a moron. You look around in total confusion and ask yourself certain questions. Questions like “Is this a courtroom?” and “This ancient bloke in the dress with the huge keys hanging around his neck. Isn’t he the one from my nightmare?”
I had no need. I was on top of it. Even my voice was controlled.
“Expected to get here a bit later, that’s all.”
“Oh? My host resumed his throne-like chair, one of the two items of furniture in the room. The other was a small table bearing a computer.
“Where is here?”
“The place of reckoning, obviously. That opening statement was a dead giveaway, if you’ll excuse the expression. From your First Epistle, right?”
He looked impressed. “You got it.”
“Not only that. I recognised you.”
The old boy’s eyebrows went up, so I explained about the Perugino print that hung in the headmaster’s office at my old school. It was Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter, and the St Peter of that masterpiece was the spitting image of present company, right down to the brown eyes in a tanned face, the prominent cheekbones and Palestinian nose and the hint of incipient baldness in the shoulder-length white hair. The garb was identical, too. Blue shirt, collarless brown-gold robe hitched over one shoulder and leather sandals. The only thing the painter had missed was the aura of authority about the man. Perhaps that was because of the context. In the painting, Peter didn’t have full possession of the keys. Now he did.
“It is good, isn’t it?” His eyes twinkled. “A little divine inspiration there.” He tapped at the keyboard on the lee side of his bench. “Marist College, Pendleton, you said? Who was your headmaster, to have such taste?”
Uninvited, I moved to get a decent view of the monitor. A bit discourteous, I suppose, but under the circumstances, what the heck? The screen was scrolling the staff records of the old alma mater.
“Father Ignatius, 1980 to 1984. He also had a taste for defenceless boys.”
Pete hit a few more keys. “So he did,” he frowned. “Another victim of the doctrine of celibacy.”
“He was a victim!” I was suddenly angry. Bloody angry. Father Ignatius was the first and only person to touch my penis without my permission, expressed or otherwise. Even my mother, as far as I can remember, never touched it after I was out of nappies. But Ignatius, the solicitous soul who tucked in his lonely young boarders come bedtime, had fondled mine. Often. Mine and God knows how many others. I’d known it was wrong, he’d known it was wrong, and he’d known that I’d known. The bastard had also known that I was too scared to dob him in. Dobbing was a sin.
“God does know, Mark. I’ve already judged him.”
So the bastard was dead. Good news.
“I hope he rots in Hell.”
“I don’t know if he’s rotting, but Hell is where he is.”
“More better still.”
“You can’t find some forgiveness?”
I thought briefly of Michael Riley, whose bed had been next to mine in the Junior dorm. Michael would watch as Ignatius ministered to me. Knowing his turn was next, his eyes would be wide with horror. Or was it terror? Afterwards, he would bury his face in his pillow to suppress the sound of his sobbing.
“None.”
“Can’t say I blame you.”
He pounded a few more keys. “Now, let’s do the audit. With all that Catholic education, you know the deal. If you’re only slightly in the red, you stay here in Purgatory until you expiate your sins. If I find you’re beyond redemption, down you go.”
“Got it.” A thought struck me. “We’re already in Purgatory? Even you?
“Have you forgotten?” His eyes revealed his pain. “It was I who denied Jesus after he was arrested. This is my tribulation.”
“Last place I’d expect to find the first Bishop of Rome.”
“Are you kidding? We’ve got enough popes in here to play Collingwood.”
“Julius the Second?”
“The warrior Pope? He went down. His mate Michelangelo went up, incidentally.”
That had been my next question. He read my mind on the following one, too.
“Bit heavy on Popes? We’ve also sent down an Archbishop of Canterbury or two, let me tell you. No religious prejudice here. Now…”
A couple of keystrokes and what looked like an ancient book title appeared on the screen. What it said, in stark, no-nonsense capitals, was
THE LEDGER
of
MARK ALEXANDER MASON
1971-2003
So here it was – the Book of Mark, the life and times of yours truly, a chronicle of good works and evil deeds. What would Pete make of it?
The pages were divided vertically with black entries in the left column and red - no, scarlet - entries in the right. Only a blind man would fail to notice the preponderance of red.
It wasn’t true, I now realised, that your life flashed before you as you died. It flashed before you as St Peter scrolled through your ledger, a ledger that was definitive to an excruciating degree.
Mine began early in my fifth year, presumably when some Authority decreed that I could distinguish good from evil. Most of the red entries were thoughts rather than deeds, which proved…what? That I was too morally developed to act on my immoral impulses? Or too shy? Too chicken, as I recall it.
The screen became a blur. Peter was scrolling at a furious rate, far too fast for me, except when he paused for a closer examination of entries that had me reddening. All about sex. Here was the 14-year-old Margaret Hillier, the first in a fat dossier of girls never to realise the intensity of my lust. Which was just as well. Thanks to my Catholic upbringing, my knowledge of female anatomy at the time was abysmal. Here was Peta Carter, who took it upon herself to correct that deficiency. Here was the untouchable Miss Pritchard, the glorious Languages teacher in the state high school that provided my secondary education. [My dad, God bless him, sent me there to gain a better grounding in the humanities. The Marists’ forte was animal husbandry, and no 14-year-old son of his was going to study that.] Poor dad. If he’d only known why my Latin and French marks were so low! And here was Marlene Pritchard, twenty, blonde and gorgeous and the first girl I ever seduced. Or was it the other way around? There was a memory!
“Good sort, was she?” Peter mindreading again.
“She was indeed.” But Pete was glowering, so I added, “But I’m sorry for that.”
“Liar.”
The scroll sped on, and an unimpressive biography it made. Pete was thinking likewise, if his darkening countenance was anything to go by. He muttered the word “selfish” more than once. When he reached the episode with Lenny Glover, his gravity became intense.
“This is bad. Very bad.”
I begged to differ. “Crap. Tell me. What did you do with him?”
There was just the slightest hesitation. “I sent him down.”
“I rest my case.”
“You were doing the community a favour, were you?”
“I reckon.”
“There wasn’t just a tad of vengeance about it?”
My turn to hesitate. No point lying to this bloke. “Large tad, actually.”
Pete nodded, then returned to his keyboard. He was pushing the “Scroll Down” button, but nothing was happening.
“Christ!” he exploded. “How am I expected to work with shit equipment like this? This stuff is out of the ark.”
I blinked, surprised. Nay, shocked.
“Blasphemy! From you! You looking for another two thousand years of tribulation?”
Pete was unworried. “He doesn’t mind all that much. His Dad either, for that matter. When you think about it, you can’t truly blaspheme unless you truly believe. It’s actually a back-handed acknowledgment.”
I conceded the point and took a closer look at his computer. His description was accurate; it was an old clunker of a Dick Smith trade-in, a Japanese 286 clone suitable only for the scrapheap or an inner suburban police station. God only knew where it had come from. Pete would, too, I supposed, but I thought better of asking – I didn’t want to start an argument about the relative merits of Christian and Shinto technology. Instead, I reached out a tentative helping hand.
“May I..?”
He nodded, so I hit a few keys and got the ancient device on the go again. You didn’t do all those in-house computer courses without picking up a wrinkle or two.
“Thank you.”
“Anything to help.”
His gaze was accusatory. “Anything to help square the ledger, you mean.”
This holding-the-other-person’s-gaze technique was old hat to me. I was, or had been, a cop. And I didn’t give a stuff what he thought.
“Whatever.”
That gave him pause. He came over all contemplative.
“I have to say, you’re a lot less concerned about your future than most.”
Future? Who was he kidding? The moment the four-wheel drive had begun to concertina against that unyielding mountain ash, I knew I had no future. Nothing this bloke could say or do could make me more miserable than I felt.
“Wanna bet?” he replied. His sandals resounded on the stone floor as he strode to the only window in the room. He invited me to share the view.
We were on the third floor, as near as I could judge, and the height gave me a decent view of the river that snaked past not fifty metres away. It was huge, the far bank being at least a kilometre distant. There was land to be seen on the far side, but it was the river that grabbed my attention. It looked…sinister. Its water was black and deathly still, not even a ripple, and not a single reflection to be seen. It was as if the light of day died upon its surface. If anything lived in that murk, it showed no sign. If anything could live in it, I didn’t want to meet it.
Beneath us, a wire-enclosed walkway led from the ground floor to a wooden jetty. An old-fashioned boat was moored there. Old-fashioned because it was propelled by five pairs of rowers and steered by a helmsman in the stern.
The helmsman was ninety if he was a day. Dressed like an extra from a Victor Mature epic, he was overseeing the seating arrangements. Jumping to his direction, four large blokes in navy shirts, each with a baton hanging from his belt, shepherded ten of the most miserable specimens I’d ever seen to their places behind the oars. One rower, more reluctant than his fellows, or perhaps just a bit slower, got a whack around the ear for his tardiness. Then, with all hands in position, the navy shirts jumped ashore and gave the boat a starting shove. A word from the helmsman and ten oars fell into a synchronous, if unenthusiastic, rhythm. Leaving no wake, the boat headed towards the distant land. It was then that my spinning brain registered. I turned to Peter.
“Jesus! That’s…that’s…”
“Charon the Ferryman? You’re quite right. And that’s the Styx he’s crossing with the latest consignment to you-know-where.” He smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this isn’t what the good Marists taught me.”
“Damned right. They said all this was a Greek myth.”
“Well, it’s not. Face it, you have to hand it those Greek ancients. They got it almost right more often than not.”
“Almost right?”
He nodded towards the land beyond the Styx. It suddenly looked dark and forbidding. “They called it Hades, after the god of the dead who is supposed to rule there. The fact is, it’s ruled by Satan and it’s really much more like the Hell that was used to scare you as a child.” He opened the window and drew me forward. Charon, leaning on his tiller, was getting smaller by the moment.
“Close your eyes.”
I did. Almost immediately, I felt the lightest of breezes. There was nothing pleasant about. It was warm and carried the fetid, gut-convulsing odour of burning...something. At the same time, a distant wail rose from a thousand throats. It was the wail of unremitting, ineffable sadness. It was the sound of souls in endless torment.
It scared the shit out of me.
“My God!”
I leapt back, slammed the window and backed away. I wanted no part of that.
“Well might you call on Him,” Peter observed. He returned to his keyboard. “Now…”
He scrolled through the remainder of my life, every so often favouring me with a disapproving frown. My anxiety soared, towards my personal panic station.
But then: “A bit late in the game, but a few redeeming actions here. Doesn’t put you in the angelic class, but…” The grin was wide. “…you’ve made the cut.”
“You mean?” I could feel the panic subsiding. “I stay in Purgatory?”
The old boy nodded. ”Not that I’d be celebrating. It’s no picnic you’re going on. And I warn you, with your record, don’t be looking for quick purification. Don’t even think about Heaven.”
“I don’t care. Anything rather than…that.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” Peter said, and I didn’t care for his ominous tone. He stood and shot his cuffs.
Oh oh, I thought. Sermon time..
“Ground rules,” said Pete. “Purgatory is, for all intents and purposes, a variation of the ancient Greek city-state. It has a subsistence economy built around production and consumption, and everyone has a job – like it or not – that plays a part in maintaining the balance. Those jobs are in the production, distribution and preparation of food, residential building, fuel production, public transport and sanitation. Nothing more, and all pretty basic. You follow so far?”
“Yep.” And not liking it.
“There are no social distinctions. Everyone’s on the same footing, which is emphasised by everyone having identical housing. Tall poppies are discouraged.”
“How?”
“I’ll come to that. There is no organised entertainment, no sport, no animals, no media and no music.” He saw my reflex grab for my Walkman, which was still in my pocket. Thank God.
“That won’t work here.”
Don’t thank God. Peter didn’t hold out a hand for it, so I believed him. I was liking this less and less.
“No private transport,” he went on, “and no libraries.”
“Russia, 1960s.”
He agreed with my comparison. “Those poor bastards have already had their purgatory.” His grin faded. “And there are no children here.”
That figured. “So Limbo exists, too?”
“Did you think God would permit children in a place like this?”
“As you describe it, I reckon not.”
“You can also reckon that you’re expected to abide by the rules and pull your weight. If you don’t…” He pointed across the Styx. “…that is always waiting. Now, finally…”
“Don’t tell me. No sex.”
“Correct again.”
“Hell is starting to look not so bad.”
“This is a place of punishment, you know.”
“And a bloody cruel and unusual punishment it is. How do you enforce it?”
“Ah, that’s where you come in. Would you like to be a policeman again?”
A rising inflection usually implied a question. But this one didn’t, and Peter knew that I knew it didn’t. He manipulated his keyboard again, and two sheets of A4 emerged from his wheezing printer. He handed them over. One announced my appointment, in the rank of probationary constable, to the Police Force. Talk about a P-plate! The other was a lease to a bed-sitter at 400 West 32nd Street.
“We’ve adopted the American address system,” Peter explained. “Unimaginative, but eminently sensible. Even the dullest lost soul can find his way home.”
He laughed uproariously, but his humour was lost on me.
My question was a question. “I don’t suppose there’s a court of appeal?”.
“Out,” Peter snarled. “First order of business, report to work.” He pointed over my shoulder to the door I’d entered by. “Left down the corridor, stairs to the lobby, out via the main doors.”
The court was rising, but I had more questions.
“How will I know when I’ve been purified?”
“If you ever are, I’ll let you know,” Peter replied. He pointed to the computer. “Your ledger will continue and I’ll review it from time to time, as well as making the occasional spot check.”
“So, how do I get purified?”
He glared at me, then shook his mane. “You still don’t get it, do you? All that religious education and you learned nothing.” He stepped menacingly closer. “Let me tell you something that should be obvious. The same rules apply here as you chose to largely ignore in your temporal life. I’d advise you to think about that. And believe me, you’ll have plenty of time to do it in.”
He turned his back, as dismissive an action as you could get. Bad tempered bastard.
I stepped into the corridor and turned left. The corridor was long, perhaps a hundred metres, and it was uniformly stark. Just a whitewashed stone passageway giving access to twenty or so identical doors. The crude stone seat that ran the length of the corridor was occupied by upwards of a hundred seriously confused and frightened ex-citizens awaiting judgement. And more arriving by the moment. Like me, they just…appeared. And, also like me, they arrived in the state they’d been in just before they snuffed it. Most were in pyjamas or starkers, proving that the majority of us shuffle off while abed. A sizeable minority were in bloodied military uniform, which probably also proved something.
The door I’d just left was marked “Court 160”. How many courtrooms did this joint contain? Whatever, they were needed
Before I could ponder my own question, I heard familiar voices. Familiar angry voices. They came from Court 161. There was no sign prohibiting entry, so in I went.
Peter, the very same Peter, nearly snapped my head off.
“I told you to bugger off.”
I turned my confused expression to the other person in the room.
Sandra.