The Golden Pig
Page 15
Part Twenty-Six
Who can describe the terrors that lie within even a normal man’s mind? The landscape of Hymie’s was wild indeed; sheer cliffs of doubt descended into a slough of despond and all was encompassed by the quagmire of despair. Not an ideal holiday location, unless you fancied a change from Ibiza.
Take a trip with Hymie. Float into the void of his brain. Thoughts like far distant planets collide in the vacuous wilderness of eternity. Electric storms of fear and loathing wrack the pulse of his consciousness, tearing away the mundane, the real, the sane and leaving only the vision of a man; eight feet tall, with long white hair, a grizzled beard and holding a palmer’s walking staff the size of a small tree. Wait, it is a small tree.
“Zeus? Odin? Buddha?...Big Daddy?”
“Just call me God”, said God.
“But how did I get here? Am I dead? You’re not here about the parking tickets, surely?” asked Hymie.
“No. Just thought I’d drop by. You’re having an hallucogenic episode, but that doesn’t make me any the less real. Consider yourself lucky, I don’t usually make personal appearances these days. It’s no fun opening supermarkets when there’s one on every street corner.”
“I’m glad to see you, God. Do you really know everything?”
“Yes, although most of it’s not really worth knowing.”
“About my life?”
“Yes, and all the others. People blame me for not taking charge of their lives for them but they should get a grip. Life’s no picnic you know.”
“You’re telling me.”
“It’s an opportunity…for good or ill, nothing more nor less. Those that rise to the challenge, take responsibility and don’t just look out for themselves have a rewarding and fulfilling time.”
“And the rest?”
“End up shovelling shit downstairs.”
“Really?”
“It’s all part of the contract I signed with Satan. I get the nice people, he gets the scum; lawyers, criminals, high court judges, traffic wardens, politicians, estate agents…and so on and so forth. He’s seriously overcrowded.”
“Do you know what will happen next?”
“No. Should I?”
“I don’t know,” said Hymie, perplexed.
“You see, you set a train of events in motion and to some extent have to wait and see what the outcome will be…nothing’s predetermined. Some things are more likely than others, but anything’s possible.”
“Like me solving a big case?” asked Hymie, wistfully.
“Don’t ask for miracles.” God smiled and the room was bathed in sunlight.
“I need help, God.”
“You need help, that’s a good one! You think you’ve got problems? You don’t know you’re born, laddie. I have to keep records on everyone. It was easy when it was just Adam and Eve, but you wouldn’t believe the state my admin. systems are in now. Personally I blame those ruddy temps. I’ve been using since the thirteenth century…ruddy hopeless! Most of them don’t know the difference between a PC and a microwave.”
Hymie just sat there gaping. It had never occurred to him that the Almighty might have problems too. When you thought about it, it made sense. Here He was; running the biggest business of all, with no-one to help Him and no-one even thinking He might need a hand from time to time.
Of course, God, being God, knew how to put the petty problems of even his most forlorn and forsaken sheep before his own headaches.
“Let me tell you a story, Hymie. I may call you “Hymie” mayn’t I?”
His English grammar was a little dated, but Hymie guessed he didn’t use it much. He seemed to remember it wasn’t even God’s native tongue.
“Sure thing, Big Guy.”
“A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in my office in the Celestial Palace, or the “CP” as we call it, catching up on my paperwork. There was a knock at the door and a cherub poked his head around it to say there was someone at the Pearly Gates.”
“He called me “Oh Great One”, which usually means they are either after something or are extracting the Michael. So I harrumphed a good deal and said couldn’t the Archangel Gabriel deal with it, and they said, no he ruddy well couldn’t deal with it because he was out playing golf and besides, it was Lucifer himself, spoiling for a fight.
So after a bit more “um”ing and “ah”ing and generally complaining that no-one else around the place was any flaming use I flew over to “QA”; that’s the Quarantine Area we keep for undesirables, to sort it out.
A couple of seraphim were hovering around outside the ante-room, polishing their halo’s and exchanging tittle-tattle about the Devil’s latest incarnation as I arrived.
“Go on, tell me…what’s he come as today, ladies?” I asked.
“Apollo; the Greek God, not the Spacecraft. Golden curls everywhere…must have spent half the morning under a hairdryer,” they said, bitchily.
“Well he does like to blend in on his visits here. Trying to pretend he was never really banished after all.”
“The nerve!” they said, and I agreed with them.
“Thank you, ladies, I suppose I’d better get this over with.”
So I strolled into QA with my usual effusive charm, whistling the latest Lloyd Webber…“Don’t cry for me somewhere or other” I think it was, possibly Bognor Regis, and tried to get him to leave without further ado.
“Lucie Baby! Good of you to drop by, but you know you shouldn’t have.”
“I’ve missed you, Big G.”
“Thanks awfully but you know you’re not allowed in here you old goat, its members only.”
“I know, but if I have to torture another ruddy lawyer I’ll go mad.”
“Fancy a beer?”
“Sure, what have you got?” he asked.
“Anything you can think of and a few new real ales that I’m working on.”
“I’ll have a pint of Grunge’s Old Dirigible,” he said.
The Devil clicked his fingers and a Chippendale chair appeared beneath him. Antique furniture’s a passion of his when he’s not tormenting lost souls.
“Business must be bad,” I told him, trying to wind him up.
“Are you kidding? Mankind’s going down the toilet faster than I can handle. I need to rent some more space.”
“Not from me, matey,” I assured him.
“Look, God, I’m tired of all the recriminations and the backbiting. Tired, tired, TIRED!!!”
“I see…you’re tired. Ready to quit huh, Lucie Baby? Come to throw in the towel and admit you’ve been wrong all along?…ready to turn over a new leaf?”
“No.”
“Not even just a bit?”
“Well, maybe, but I look at it this way: we’re neither of us getting any younger are we? So where’s the sense in slugging it out for all eternity?” he asked.
“What else is there? Mankind has its life, death, sex and taxes, not necessarily in that order, and we have this…this virtual chess game. If you’re getting tired, then you can always resign. Put it another way, if you can’t stand the heat, get outta the kitchen, Lucie!”
“Not what I had in mind. Cards on the table…I’ve had a few setbacks I admit; that St.Peter don’t fight fair. But I’m big enough to take it, I don’t complain.”
“Much!”
“If you’ll just let me finish!” said Lucifer.
“Go for it!” I said.
“..I got to thinking…”
“A new departure for you then.”
“…the whole thing would make a lot more sense if we settled our differences in one Championship bout; my champion against your champion.”
“The winner takes all?” I asked.
“Exactly,” said Satan.
“So, when I win you’ll release all the tormented souls, dismantle the Kingdom of Hades and take up residence in the North Pole?”
“Supposing there’s still a polar icecap, yeah,” he said. “And if I win?” asked the Devil.
“It’s a deal,” he said. “Any rules?”
“You want rules? You’d only break them anyway,” I said, antagonistically.
“I’d pretend to be offended but I just can’t be bothered today. I know you like rules so I thought I’d ask before you mentioned it,” said the Devil.
“Well, rules are fine and dandy if we stick to them. What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing…none; a championship bout to the death between two mortals,” he said.
“A bit mediaeval isn’t it? Don’t you ever move on?” I asked.
“There’s nothing to compare with a good old fashioned punch up.”
“True, true. I take it we’re not actually talking about a contest in the ring?”
“No, somewhat passé. The world’s their stage, their ingenuity their weapon.”
Hymie, who had been quietly nodding off to this celestial shaggy-dog story suddenly sat up and took notice.
“So what happened, God? Did you agree to the contest?”
“I’m afraid so, Hymie. I never could resist a challenge. It’s always been a weakness of mine. They said I couldn’t create the world in a week so I had to do it in six days…heck of a job that was, my back’s not been the same since.”
“So who are the champions…Hercules? Albert Einstein? Not Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Hymie was beginning to fear the worst, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that God, the omnipotent, omniscient being, could make such a dud decision.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” asked Hymie.
“Yes. You’re my champion,” said God.
“But how did that happen? I’m a complete no-hoper. Surely everyone knows that?!”
“No-one’s a no-hoper who believes in Me.”
The white haired giant had spun him a good yarn and he wasn’t about to let him off the hook now. Hymie Goldman needed to believe in Him and so he would.
“So who do I have to fight? Hercules? Albert Einstein? Not Arnold Schwarzenegger?” He was wondering what would happen if he tried to edge out of it.
“You will know, when the time is right.”
“Was I your first choice?”
“You selected yourself, Hymie. Now, I must be off. Miracles to perform and all that…you know how it is. Good luck.”
He had a million unanswered questions, but Hymie never got the chance to ask one of them. A dazzling light illuminated the entire office. He clutched his eyes to protect them from the searing brightness of the supreme-being. Within half a nanosecond God had gone.
A voice like thunder disappearing into a long tunnel echoed after him through space.
“Give up the drugs. You mustn’t fail me.”
The words would stay with him forever. He knew then that he had no choice, that he was irretrievably committed to this contest against some unspeakable emissary of evil and that he wasn’t to be allowed even his old physiological and psychological crutch.
He sat in a stunned silence for hours. The shadow patterns on the office floor swirled around him like some bizarre monochrome kaleidoscope as night passed into day, but time held no meaning for him. His mind was locked in torment. Wild imaginings overtook him and transported him to another place. He was sitting in a tram as it rattled through gaudy neon-lit streets in some distant Chinatown. From time to time he saw flashes of glass-columns, chromium-plated superstructures, light displays flashing in Mexican waves across the front of mountainous tower-blocks.
He flew past advertising hoardings too numerous to count, fast food restaurants, shops and bars and everywhere were teeming, milling throngs of Chinese, like a million ants swarming through his honeycombed brain.
Another tram hove into view from the opposite direction. As it pulled alongside he noticed for the first time a girl sitting facing him. She was staring at him with her mouth open as if to speak, but her words were drowned out by the clamour of the passing throng and the clatter of the tram on its rails. With some consternation he realized that he knew her. He leant forward to speak to her, but she slumped forward into his arms and he observed with a creeping horror that she had been shot. He tried to staunch the blood with his hand, but she was already dead; a lifeless thing of flesh, bleeding all over him.
He lunged at the bell and the tram lurched to a halt. People were shouting and screaming at him. Some of the passengers prodded the girl’s lifeless body and recoiled in fright. All he could do was to point helplessly at the retreating tram. He could have sworn he had seen a white haired old lady moving out of sight on the lower deck. He was sure that the dart had been intended for him.
The crowd was turning nasty. He forced his way to the front of the tram and threw himself out onto the street; clear of the doors, of the menacing crowd, of his own descending panic. As he did so the driver called after him.
“You mustn’t fail me! You mustn’t fail me!”
When he hit the pavement he remembered where he had seen the dead girl; long ago in an apartment at Thirty-five Riverside Drive.
Part Twenty-Seven
“Hymie! Hymie!!” Mike was gently shaking him and slapping him around the head. Since ‘gently’ had never been in Mike’s repertoire, his stocky little friend was lucky not to be adding concussion to his list of probleMs
“Do this to me again, mate, and you’re dead, capish? We’ve got a client to see in a couple of hours!”
Mike had never expected to see the day when he’d be in business with Hymie Goldman, and now that he was, it bothered him to realize that he was the one taking it seriously.
“Oi, Doofus! You wanna get stoned on your time, that’s up to you, but Don’t do it on Mine!!”
Unfortunately the crumpled P.I. was in no fit state to heed even Mike’s bellowed warning. It took a facial bath of lukewarm coffee and a good ten minutes of being frog-marched around the office before the first hesitant signs of consciousness emerged. He felt like he had been walking in slow motion down the up-escalator to nowhere.
“Where am I?”
“Boy, you’re sharp. Get with it Goldman, you’ve got to convince this horsey dame you’re an ace investigator. Some chance!”
Hymie winced.
“What day is this?”
A low groan escaped Mike’s lips. “To think I gave up a good position in the dole queue for this!”
“I’m a P.I., right? Do I still have any cases?” asked Hymie.
“Not if you don’t pull yourself together fast. Does the name Hunting-Baddeley ring any bells?”