“Go ahead,” God smiled. “I always appreciate a good critique. There’s always room for improvement.” He picked another thick slice of chocolate cake out of the air and sat back with anticipation.
Anise screwed up her courage. “Look,” she said hesitantly. “Let’s start with the fact that every time we arrive in heaven You’re never there. I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time that the system, or The Draw as the heavenly clerks like to call it, is simply unfair. We have to run alongside the planet and then draw a country where we’re going to spend an entire lifetime. It’s totally arbitrary. There’s no freedom of choice involved. And then we’re supposed to pick one of three families we cannot possibly get to know during the random thirty minutes we get to see them. You call that choice?” Anise was getting into it now. “It’s obvious that you can’t get to know a family by observing them for a half-hour. And that means that, most of the time, we make a bad choice and suffer. As if it isn’t tough enough to be reincarnated, time after time, to the same cruel planet.” She had said her piece and now took a sip of juice.
God had listened with great attention. “I tell you the truth. I make mistakes, too. Many, in fact. After all, you people are made, as they say, in God’s image,” He laughed and then immediately turned serious again. “But you’re right, Anise. Take what happened there with the Orphils of the Royal Guard. That was a mistake. I haven’t been around for a long time and things have gotten out of hand. I really have to visit all the departments. There’s a lot that needs fixing. The problem is that I never have the time.” He fell silent and sank into thought. After a moment, His face lit up again. “Maybe I should show you my side too, so that you understand a little better,” He suggested.
All at once, the furniture disappeared and, before anyone had batted an eyelash, they found themselves in a large hall, full of angels scurrying about in a mad rush.
Angels in white ran from one place to the next holding long lists that trailed after them in the air, trying to keep up with the pace. Anise looked at the words pushing and shoving one another, each trying to reach the top of the list first.
On the other side of the hall, a group of angels scurried about. They were carrying heaps of animal holograms, carefully putting each animal on its own designated planet. Not far from there, several angels in blue overalls were rapidly planting vegetation in different parts of planet Earth.
As if hypnotized, Mor was staring at a group of angels wearing kimonos arranging stars in exact geometric patterns. They bowed elegantly when they walked past. God bowed back to them. They walked past a large Chinese angel, whose swollen cheeks looked ready to burst. “He’s in charge of winds,” God explained, and amicably tapped Enochio’s shoulder. The chubby angel was still unable to speak. “Maybe now you’ll complain less,” God laughed.
“On second thought, standing at the gate is a pretty good job,” Enochio whispered, making God laugh out loud.
God bent down over Enochio. “Listen, my friend. You’re going to have to practice that flying thing. After all, we have a reputation to uphold.” And then, in a whisper, “Perhaps a bit of a diet would also be worth considering.”
Enochio nodded, red-faced with embarrassment.
They stopped at a long, dark wooden table. Around it, angels wearing suits and frowns of concentration were moving numbers over a transparent surface.
“This is the committee,” God said proudly. “This bunch is in charge of developing plans in principle.” He motioned to a particularly tall angel to turn around; small stars flitted in and out of his many curls. “This is Gabriel,” He introducing him affectionately.
Behind Gabriel’s back, long lines of words flew about; they were constantly getting in one another’s way, some tossed to the floor in the heat of the quarrel. Some of the words tried to climb others’ backs to get to the top of the list. From time to time, Gabriel was forced to turn around to smooth the list down. Every time he did so, the words quieted down in awed respect and humbly took their rightful places. But the moment Gabriel turned away, the pushing and shoving started up again.
“Gabriel is my right hand,” said God, patting the curly-haired angel on the shoulder. Gabriel nodded his head with grace and shook the visitors’ hands warmly. The words behind him used his momentary distraction to quarrel some more and dart around one another. Gabriel again turned back to them to separate the sides, but one word was paying no attention and collided with him head-on. Gabriel tripped and fell.
God motioned for his guests to keep walking. “You must forgive him,” He apologized, “but Gabriel is in charge of religious issues and, as you know, that’s not easy. He tends to collapse under the strain. Every time he seems to have one religion under control, an uproar breaks out somewhere else.”
“Look,” He said, pointing at a transparent bubble hovering in the air. Within, some priests dressed in long robes were stretching a man on a breaking wheel. The man screamed in horrible agony.
“Hey, that’s the Inquisition,” Anise said. “I learned about it.”
“Yes,” God sighed, “it took a very long time to straighten that awful mess out. So many people were killed for no good reason. Just because some charlatans claimed, without any justification whatsoever, that they represented me. Which wasn’t true, of course.” He sat down on a chair with a back embroidered with stars; merry rays of sun played hide-and-go-seek with the moon on the armrest.
“Ah! Now it comes back to me,” said God, taking Rae’s hand in His. “Here is your planet,” he said, opening his other hand in which a hexagonal star lay trembling.
“Forgive me, Rae,” He said softly. “I’ve been paying attention to planet Earth and have neglected you.” Rae burst into tears of joy, filling the floor with blue tears.
God carefully moved the star to an angel by His side. Some angels in blue overalls stepped up and started to arrange new vegetation on it. There were fruit trees, wheat fields, and many vegetable beds.
“What do you say?” God smiled warmly at Rae. “I think this will solve the starvation problem, don’t you?” Rae blushed all over her body and gave God a fierce embrace.
“Ready to go home now?” God asked, and Rae nodded, auras of purple light pulsing around her head.
A purple boy, his color very similar to Rae’s, flew toward them on transparent wings. He hovered a few inches in the air, holding a hand out in an invitation to Rae.
Rae turned around to look at the gang, her long eyelashes bright with tears. She didn’t want to leave any of them, but she’d achieved her goal and her quest here was complete.
Anise understood her perfectly. She walked up to Rae and kissed her beautiful purple cheek. “I’ll always be right here,” Rae whispered, holding a long finger over Anise’s heart. “Besides, just in case, whistle if you need me.” She gave a sly wink and placed something in Anise’s hand. Anise looked down and saw a red whistle. Smiling broadly, she shoved it into her pocket.
Rae waved goodbye, spread her wings, and held her hand out to the purple boy.
“Goodbye, you nuisance,” Yam waved back. When all was said and done, Yam had grown quite fond of Rae, despite her flightiness, and was sorry to see her leave.
Anise looked at Rae and the boy holding one another and giggling. With an elegant lift of their wings, the two took off in perfect harmony and were quickly lost from view.
God, still looking in their direction, smiled. “Forgive me for boasting, but I created them,” He said proudly. “I think that went well. And now, it’s your turn.”
Yam turned around and looked deep into Anise’s eyes where he saw the beginning of it all, the reason for it all.
“You know my answer,” God smile.
That’s the problem right there, thought Anise. No, she wasn’t going to let Him confuse her. Before He had a chance to go on, she burst out, “The problem is that, here, I know it all. The information is
available and the answers are clear. But when I get to Earth, I forget everything. So what’s the point of all this knowledge? Like rats in a maze, we humans keep coming back to the same point of hatred and darkness without ever making any progress.”
“Now, now. Let’s make some order here,” God said patiently. “Let’s begin with the fact that not everything I created came out exactly right and perfect. I’ll be the first to say so. To borrow human concepts, I too was once young and inexperienced,” He said, then stopped in thoughtful silence. Then He resumed, “But, I have to admit that I always thought that the glorious human race, which succeeded so rapidly in inventing medicine and aviation, even reaching the moon, would have figured out the answer long ago because it really is quite simple.”
“I don’t understand a thing,” said Anise, confused.
God rearranged Himself in the armchair, pulling His legs up to sit cross-legged. “My dear, you don’t, in fact, forget everything. You simply have to agree to remember,” He explained.
“But I do forget,” Anise insisted. “I spend a lifetime only to understand what I knew in the first place. And sometimes I spend an entire lifetime without ever understanding,” she said, and with a painful jolt of memory thought of the incarnation in which she was born a criminal and spent most of her life in a maximum-security prison.
God, still looking thoughtful, said nothing. Then He spoke. “Look, Anise, when a soul comes into the world, it knows everything. All one has to do is agree to connect with this vast knowledge. And that is the choice every human has to make,” He said.
Mor felt that God was trying to wiggle out of an answer. He overcame his shyness and confusion at being in His presence and spoke up. “That’s not exactly the way things are. People die for no reason and the world is full of suffering and sickness and hunger and injustice.”
Now God changed his shape several times in rapid succession. Finally, wearing the face of a Sumo wrestler, he sat down in the chair satisfied. “Excellent point, Mor,” He said. “Look, you said there’s hunger on Earth. But if you look at it more closely, you’ll see that the hunger is manmade.” Now He became a cloud again. “I’m not to blame for starvation. I provide planet Earth with enough – more than enough – food for all human beings. As far as I’m concerned, there is no reason for any human being on Earth to go hungry. The problem lies in people or, more precisely, the way they decide to allocate their resources.
“I don’t understand,” Mor said in frustration.
“It’s all right,” God answered patiently. “I’ll explain. Let’s say there are twenty bananas on a banana plant and there are twenty people. That means there are enough bananas for everyone, right?” He asked and Mor nodded in agreement. “Now imagine that one person picks ten bananas, OK?”
“So…?” Mor asked.
“So, this person with the ten bananas is willing to give someone else a banana only in exchange for something else. Money, for example. But the other person doesn’t have the money to pay for the banana and therefore remains hungry.”
“That’s not fair,” Mor protested.
“Exactly,” God smiled, “the bananas don’t belong to the person who picked them. Not at all. I made sure there would be twenty bananas for twenty people.”
Absentmindedly, Mor twirled planet Earth, which was right next to them, and thought about what God had just said. “So, what You’re saying is that if everyone would only take their own banana, there wouldn’t be any hunger at all.”
The globe stopped spinning for a second, and Mor’s attention was caught by a tiny spot covered with smoke. “That’s Jerusalem,” God said sadly.
“I get it!” Mor jumped up excitedly. God caught him at the last second before he fell on top of Brazil.
“Look,” He said, “you found the gate thanks to two factors. The first is that you believed in its existence. The second is that your heart is pure.” He rose from His chair. “You visited the lost city and understood that the Mayans did not disappear; they simply found the gate. The moment people stop fighting, stop trying to control one another… the moment people understand that I don’t threaten or frighten, but only love, they too will be able to find the gate, just like the Mayans did.”
God changed shape again, this time to a woman with short white hair. “I need to mix it up, you know. I don’t like being bored,” He half-apologized, half-laughed, then grew serious again.
“You found the gate because your heart is pure and you’re not afraid to ask questions or get mad at me,” He said. “That’s the meaning of love.”
Mor drummed his fingers on his knees, an old nervous habit. “So why doesn’t my dad love me? And why did You send me there?” he asked the question that bothered him most.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t send you there,” God answered, “you made the choice.”
“Oh, sure,” said Mor bitterly. “The two of them looked so loving and everything was perfect. And then you just killed my mom and, ever since, my father doesn’t love me because I remind him of her.” He made no attempt to stop the tears rolling freely down his cheeks.
God spent a few thoughtful moments in silence and then said, “I admit that the system is a little disorganized. We are working to fix it. But there are problems here, too. And you’ve run into some of them, I know.” Anise, remembering the Orphils, shuddered. “Mor, try to see things in a somewhat different way.”
God continued speaking to Mor. “Your father does love you, but he doesn’t know how to show his love because he’s in so much pain. You, actually, can help him. You can teach him. Maybe that’s your job,” He stroked Mor’s hair with love. “Remember, the choice is always yours.”
Anise thought that this was an evasive answer. “And maybe You just built everything wrong. Everyone hates everyone else. Everyone’s jealous of everyone else. And nobody’s happy,” she said.
“Look!” God called out. Now, all blue, He hopped onto a passing cloud.
Mor, amused, observed His antics. “Tell me, are You sure You’re God? I mean, aren’t You behaving a little childishly?”
“That’s precisely the point! People think I’m scary,” God answered, “but it’s only because they’ve chosen to believe that. Do I really seem scary?” He asked, amused. All three laughed. “Even if you don’t agree with me, Anise, you’re welcome to come and help me. I’d be very happy. As you can see, there’s a lot of work here, and there’s only one God. Every time I fix something, something else breaks. I don’t have time for everything; I’m kept busy just putting out fires. I haven’t had a vacation for… oh, an eternity.”
“All right, then. How can we help?” Anise asked.
“As I said, the choice is yours,” God answered and started fading away. “Now, excuse me. I have to get back to work,” He said and turned His attention to the line of impatient angels waiting for Him. “I didn’t choose you for nothing.”
“But how are we going to remember?” Anise called out. God turned back around and looked at her one last time. “You can always find Me in your heart,” He said and then everything fogged over.
Chapter 33
Sual was the first to see them. “Anise, Mor,” she shouted, and started toward them, forgetting the bullets shrieking in the air. Theo and Amalia hurried after her.
Mor looked at the gate and the gray rocks blocking it, then turned his gaze to Yam and Anise. “We’re back again,” he whispered, not sure how he felt about it.
“But this time I remember,” said Anise, squeezing his hand hard.
“I remember too,” said Yam just before Amalia’s arms looped around him, threatening to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. Mor looked at Theo, unsure of what to do. But Theo pulled his son close and covered his face with kisses.
“Dad, you’re kind of squishing me,” Mor finally managed to say.
Theo burst into merry laughter. “Making up for all th
e years I didn’t,” Theo answered, giving him one last sloppy kiss before letting him go into Sual’s waiting arms. Thank you, God, he thought, looking upwards.
Yam looked at Amalia, taking in her dusty hair and the rifle slung over her shoulder. She looks like an Amazon, he thought. He then looked at his father with some concern. Yoav’s long side-locks were gone as was his beard, and his arm was resting on Amalia’s shoulders. Yam smiled with relief.
Anise’s head burrowed deep into her mother’s soft chest. “I love you, Mom,” she whispered. Sual stroked her head, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry, my child,” she said, but Anise put a finger to her lips.
“I know, Mom, I know.” She looked deep into Sual’s eyes. “And I’m sorry too.”
“All right. Time to move. It’s not safe,” Ido urged them all. They looked at the soldiers next to the wall, protectively surrounding them with drawn weapons.
A Jeep, its lights off, waited nearby.
“Was all that real?” Yam whispered to Mor when they climbed into the vehicle.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Mor answered with a smile.
“I think I know what He meant,” Yam whispered to Mor once the vehicle started moving. “He’s right. We really can help.”
The Jeep drove into the base and Ido led them to a hall. “I’ll get you something to eat and then we’ll talk,” he said.
Yam drew Mor into a corner. “Do you remember what was in that silver-colored briefcase we took with us, the one we found in the Arab terrorists’ chamber?” he asked. Mor nodded. “I think I have a solution,” Yam smiled.
Mor looked at his friend. “Nasat said the timer is set for twelve midnight. Tonight,” he stressed. Both cast an anxious glance at the clock on the wall showing eleven.
Ido brought them a tray of sandwiches. “I’m really happy you’re all OK,” he smiled. “Lots of people have been very worried about you.”
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