Job: A Comedy of Justice

by Robert A. Heinlein

  But, if we take the birth of Christ rather than the date of the Crucifixion as the starting point from which to count the millennia, it is evident at once that neither the naive date of 2000 A.D. nor the slightly less naive date of 2001 can be the bimillenarian date because Jesus was born in Bethlehem on Christmas Day year 5 B.C.

  Every educated person knows this and almost no one ever thinks about it.

  How could the greatest event in all history, the birth of our Lord Incarnate, have been misdated by five years? Incredible!

  Very easily. A sixth-century monk made a mistake in arithmetic. Our present dating (“Anno Domini”) was not used until centuries after Christ was born. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher on a cornerstone a date written in Roman numerals can sympathize with the error of Brother Dionysius Exiguus. In the sixth century there were so few who could read at all that the error went undetected for many years—and by then it was too late to change all the records. So we have the ludicrous situation that Christ was born five years before Christ was born—an Irishism that can be resolved only by noting that one clause refers to fact and the other clause refers to a false-to-fact calendar.

  For two thousand years the good monk’s error was of little importance. But now it becomes of supreme importance. If the Millenarianists are correct, the end of the world can be expected Christmas Day this year.

  Please note that I did not say “December 25th.” The day and month of Christ’s birth are unknown. Matthew notes that Herod was king; Luke states that Augustus was Caesar and that Cyrenius was governor of Syria, and we all know that Joseph and Mary had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be counted and taxed.

  There are no other data, neither of Holy Writ nor of Roman civil records.

  So there you have it. By Millenarianist theory the Final Judgment can be expected about thirty-five years from now…or later this afternoon!

  Were it not for Margrethe this uncertainty would not keep me awake nights. But how can I sleep if my beloved is in immediate danger of being cast down into the Bottomless Pit, there to suffer throughout eternity?

  What would you do?

  Envision me standing barefooted on a greasy floor, washing dishes to pay off my indenture, while thinking deep thoughts of last and first things. A laughable sight! But dishwashing does not occupy all the mind; I was better off with hard bread for the mind to chew on.

  Sometimes I contrasted my sorry state with what I had so recently been, while wondering if I would ever find my way back through the maze into the place I had built for myself.

  Would I want to go back? Abigail was there—and, while polygamy was acceptable in the Old Testament, it was not accepted in the forty-six states. That had been settled once and for all when the Union Army’s artillery had destroyed the temple of the antichrist in Salt Lake City and the Army had supervised the breaking up and diaspora of those immoral “families.”

  Giving up Margrethe for Abigail would be far too high a price to pay to resume the position of power and importance I had until recently held. Yet I had enjoyed my work and the deep satisfaction over worthwhile accomplishment that went with it. We had achieved our best year since the foundation was formed—I refer to the nonprofit corporation Churches United for Decency. “Nonprofit” does not mean that such an organization cannot pay appropriate salaries and even bonuses, and I had been taking a well-earned vacation after the best fund-raising year of our history—primarily my accomplishment because, as deputy director, my first duty was to see that our coffers were kept filled.

  But I took even greater satisfaction in our labors in the vineyards, as fund raising means nothing if our programs of spiritual welfare do not meet their goals.

  The past year had seen the following positive accomplishments:

  a) A federal law making abortion a capital offense;

  b) A federal law making the manufacture, sale, possession, importation, transportation, and/or use of any contraceptive drug or device a felony carrying a mandatory prison sentence of not less than a year and a day but not more than twenty years for each offense—and eliminating the hypocritical subterfuge of “For Prevention of Disease Only”;

  c) A federal law that, while it did not abolish gambling, did make the control and licensing of it a federal jurisdiction. One step at a time—having built this foundation we could tackle those twin pits, Nevada and New Jersey, piece by piece. Divide and conquer!

  d) A Supreme Court decision in which we had appeared as amicus curiae under which community standards of the typical or median-population community applied to all cities of each state (Tomkins v. Allied News Distributors);

  e) Real progress in our drive to get tobacco defined as a prescription drug through the tactical device of separating snuff and chewing tobacco from the problem by inaugurating the definition “substances intended for burning and inhaling”;

  f) Progress at our annual national prayer meeting on several subjects in which I was interested. One was the matter of how to remove the tax-free status of any private school not affiliated with a Christian sect. Policy on this was not yet complete because of the thorny matter of Roman Catholic schools. Should our umbrella cover them? Or was it time to strike? Whether the Catholics were allies or enemies was always a deep problem to those of us out on the firing line.

  At least as difficult was the Jewish problem—was a humane solution possible? If not, then what? Should we grasp the nettle? This was debated only in camera.

  Another matter was a pet project of my own: the frustrating of astronomers. Few laymen realize what mischief astronomers are up to. I first noticed it when I was still in engineering school and took a course in descriptive astronomy under the requirements for breadth in each student’s program. Give an astronomer a bigger telescope and turn him loose, leave him unsupervised, and the first thing he does is to come down with pestiferous, half-baked guesses denying the ancient truths of Genesis.

  There is only one way to deal with this sort of nonsense: Hit them in the pocketbook! Redefine “educational” to exclude those colossal white elephants, astronomical observatories. Make the Naval Observatory the only one tax free, reduce its staff, and limit their activity to matters clearly related to navigation. (Some of the most blasphemous and subversive theories have come from tenured civil servants there who don’t have enough legitimate work to keep them busy.)

  Self-styled “scientists” are usually up to no good, but astronomers are the worst of the lot.

  Another matter that comes up regularly at each annual prayer meeting I did not favor spending time or money on: “Votes for Women.” These hysterical females styling themselves “suffragettes” are not a threat, can never win, and it just makes them feel self-important to pay attention to them. They should not be jailed and should not be displayed in stocks—never let them be martyrs! Ignore them.

  There were other interesting and worthwhile goals that I kept off the agenda and did not suffer to be brought up from the floor in the sessions I moderated, but instead carried them on my “Maybe next year” list:

  Separate schools for boys and girls.

  Restoring the death penalty for witchcraft and satanism.

  The Alaska option for the Negro problem.

  Federal control of prostitution.

  Homosexuals—what’s the answer? Punishment? Surgery? Other?

  There are endless good causes commending themselves to guardians of the public morals—the question is always how to pick and choose to the greater glory of God.

  But all of these issues, fascinating as they are, I might never again pursue. A sculleryman who is just learning the local language (ungrammatically, I feel sure!) is not able to be a political force. So I did not worry about such matters and concentrated on my real problems: Margrethe’s heresy and, more immediate but less important, getting legally free of peonage and going north.

  We had served more than one hundred days when I asked Don Jaime to help me work out the exact date when we would have discharged the te
rms of our debt contract—a polite way of saying: Dear Boss, come the day, we are going to leave here like a scared rabbit. Plan on it.

  I had figured on a total obligated time of one hundred and twenty-one days…and Don Jaime shocked me almost out of my Spanish by getting a result of one hundred and fifty-eight days.

  More than six weeks to go when I figured that we would be free next week!

  I protested, pointing out that our total obligation as listed by the court, divided by the auction value placed on our services (pesos sixty for Margrethe, half that for me, for each day), gave one hundred twenty-one days…of which we had served one hundred fifteen.

  Not a hundred and fifteen—ninety-nine—he handed me a calendar and invited me to count. It was at that point that I discovered that our lovely Tuesdays did not reduce our committed time. Or so said our patrón.

  “And besides that, Alexandro,” he added, “you have failed to figure the interest on the unpaid balance; you haven’t multiplied by the inflation factor; you haven’t allowed for taxes, or even your contribution for Our Lady of Sorrows. If you fall ill, I should support you, eh?”

  (Well, yes. While I had not thought about it, I did think a patrón had that duty toward his peones.) “Don Jaime, the day you bid in our debts, the clerk of the court figured the contract for me. He told me our obligation was one hundred and twenty-one days. He told me!”

  “Then go talk to the clerk of the court about it.” Don Jaime turned his back on me.

  That chilled me. Don Jaime seemed as willing for me to take it up with the referee authority as he had been unwilling to discuss Margrethe’s tips with the court. To me this meant that he had handled enough of these debt contracts to be certain how they worked and thus had no fear that the judge or his clerk might rule against him.

  I was not able to speak with Margrethe about it in private until that night. “Marga, how could I be so mistaken about this? I thought the clerk worked it out for us before he had us countersign the assignment of debt. One hundred and twenty-one days. Right?”

  She did not answer me at once. I persisted, “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Alec, despite the fact that I now usually think in English—or in Spanish, lately—when I must do arithmetic, I work it in Danish. The Danish word for sixty is ‘tres’—and that is also the Spanish word for three. Do you see how easily I could get mixed up? I don’t know now whether I said to you, ‘Ciento y veintiuno’ or ‘Ciento y sesentiuno’—because I remember numbers in Danish, not in English, not in Spanish. I thought you did the division yourself.”

  “Oh, I did. Certainly the clerk didn’t say, ‘A hundred and twenty-one.’ He didn’t use any English that I recall. And at that time I did not know any Spanish. Señor Muñoz explained it to you and you translated for me and later I did the arithmetic again and it seemed to confirm what he had said. Or you had said. Oh, shucks, I don’t know!”

  “Then why don’t we forget it until we can ask Señor Muñoz?”

  “Marga, doesn’t it upset you to find that we are going to have to slave away in this dump an extra five weeks?”

  “Yes, but not very much. Alec, I’ve always had to work. Working aboard ship was harder work than teaching school—but I got to travel and see strange places. Waiting tables here is a little harder than cleaning rooms in the Konge Knut—but I have you with me here and that more than makes up for it. I want to go with you to your homeland…but it’s not my homeland, so I’m not as eager to leave here as you are. To me, today, where you are is my homeland.”

  “Darling, you are so logical and reasonable and civilized that you sometimes drive me right straight up the wall.”

  “Alec, I don’t mean to do that. I just want us to stop worrying about it until we can see Señor Muñoz. But right this minute I want to rub your back until you relax.”

  “Madame, you’ve convinced me! But only if I have the privilege of rubbing your poor tired feet before you rub my back.”

  We did both. “Ah, wilderness were paradise enow!”

  Beggars can’t be choosy. I got up early the next morning, saw the clerk’s runner, was told that I could not see the clerk until court adjourned for the day, so I made a semi-appointment for close-of-court on Tuesday—“semi” in that we were committed to show up; Señor Muñoz was not. (But would be there, Deus volent.)

  So on Tuesday we went on our picnic outing as usual, as we could not see Señor Muñoz earlier than about 4 p.m. But we were Sunday-go-to-meeting rather than dressed for a picnic—meaning that we both wore our shoes, both had had baths that morning, and I had shaved, and I wore my best clothes, handed down from Don Jaime but clean and fresh, rather than the tired Coast Guard work pants I wore in the scullery. Margrethe wore the colorful outfit she had acquired our first day in Mazatlán.

  Then we both endeavored not to get too sweaty or dusty. Why we thought it mattered I cannot say. But somehow each of us felt that propriety called for one’s best appearance in visiting a court.

  As usual we walked over to the fountain to see our friend Pepe before swinging back to climb our hill. He greeted us in the intimate mode of friends and we exchanged graceful amenities of the sort that fit so well in Spanish and are almost never encountered in English. Our weekly visit with Pepe had become an important part of our social life. We knew more about him now—from Amanda, not from him—and I respected him more than ever.

  Pepe had not been born without legs (as I had once thought); he had formerly been a teamster, driving lorries over the mountains to Durango and beyond. Then there had been an accident and Pepe had been pinned under his rig for two days before he was rescued. He was brought in to Our Lady of Sorrows apparently D.O.A.

  Pepe was tougher than that. Four months later he was released from hospital; someone passed the hat to buy him his little cart; he received his mendicant’s license, and he took up his pitch by the fountain—friend to streetwalkers, friend to Dons, and a merry grin for the worst that fate could hand him.

  When, after a decent interval for conversation and inquiries as to health and welfare and that of mutual acquaintances, we turned to leave, I offered our friend a one-peso note.

  He handed it back. “Twenty-five centavos, my friend. Do you not have change? Or did you wish me to make change?”

  “Pepe our friend, it was our intention and our wish that you keep this trivial gift.”

  “No no no. From tourists I take their teeth and ask for more. From you, my friend, twenty-five centavos.”

  I did not argue. In Mexico a man has his dignity, or he is dead.

  El Cerro de la Nevería is one hundred meters high; we climbed it very slowly, with me hanging back because I wanted to be certain not to place any strain on Margrethe. From signs I was almost certain that she was in a family way. But she had not seen fit to discuss it with me and of course I could not raise the subject if she did not.

  We found our favorite place, where we enjoyed shade from a small tree but nevertheless had a full view all around, three hundred and sixty degrees—northwest into the Gulf of California, west into the Pacific and what might or might not be clouds on the horizon capping a peak at the tip of Baja California two hundred miles away, southwest along our own peninsula to Cerro Vigía (Lookout Hill) with beautiful Playa de las Olas Altos between us and Cerro Vigía, then beyond it Cerro Creston, the site of the giant lighthouse, the “Faro” itself commanding the tip of the peninsula—south right across town to the Coast Guard landing. On the east and northeast were the mountains that concealed Durango a hundred and fifty miles away…but today the air was so clear that it felt as if we could reach out and touch those peaks.

  Mazatlán was spread out below like a toy village. Even the basilica looked like an architect’s scale model from up here, rather than a most imposing church—for the umpteenth time I wondered how the Catholics, with their (usually) poverty-stricken congregations, could build such fine churches while their Protestant opposite numbers had such a time raising the mortgages on mor
e modest structures.

  “Look, Alec!” said Margrethe. “Anibal and Roberto have their new aeroplano.” She pointed.

  Sure enough, there were now two aeroplanos at the Coast Guard mooring. One was the grotesque giant dragonfly that had rescued us; the new one was quite different. At first I thought it had sunk at its moorings; the floats on which the older craft landed on the water were missing from this structure.

  Then I realized that this new craft was literally a flying boat. The body of the aeroplano itself was a float, or a boat—a watertight structure. The propelling engines of this craft were mounted above the wings.

  I was not sure that I trusted these radical changes. The homely certainties of the craft we had ridden in were more to my taste.

  “Alec, let’s go call on them next Tuesday.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you suppose that Anibal would possibly offer us a ride in his new aeroplano?”

  “Not if the Commandant knows about it.” I did not say that the newfangled rig did not look safe to me; Margrethe was always fearless. “But we’ll call on them and ask to see it. Lieutenant Anibal will like that. Roberto, too. Let’s eat.”

  “Piggy piggy,” she answered, and spread out a servilleta, started covering it with food from a basket I had carried. Tuesdays gave Margrethe an opportunity to vary Amanda’s excellent Mexican cooking with her own Danish and international cooking. Today she had elected to make Danish open-face sandwiches so much enjoyed by all Danes—and by anyone else who has ever had a chance to enjoy them. Amanda allowed Margrethe to do what she liked in the kitchen, and Señora Valera did not interfere—she never came into the kitchen, under some armed truce arrived at before we joined the staff. Amanda was a woman of firm character.

  Today’s sandwiches featured heavily the tender, tasty shrimp for which Mazatlán is famous, but the shrimp were just a starter. I remember ham, turkey, crumbled crisp bacon, mayonnaise, three sorts of cheese, several sorts of pickle, little peppers, unidentified fish, thin slices of beef, fresh tomato, tomato paste, three sorts of lettuce, what I think was deep-fried eggplant. But thank goodness it is not necessary to understand food in order to enjoy it—Margrethe placed it in front of me; I happily chomped away, whether I knew what I was eating or not.