Can the Gods Cry?

by Allan Cameron

  We climbed and climbed. And as we climbed, my impatience to see the happy place where we all spend eternity grew to such an intensity, I thought that my immortal soul would surely suffocate in a haze of blissful expectation. When at last we arrived at the summit, I couldn’t see anything that looked like heaven – only an enormous hotel in the modern style. The enormity was indeed ineffable, but everything else was banal. It was impossible to see where the hotel ended in either direction of the valley. Every mile or so there was a huge neon light on the hotel roof, forming the words “Paradise Hotel”. There were many entrances that could be seen and presumably there were many more that could not. At each entrance there was an endless queue of new arrivals. Suddenly the afterlife no longer felt like a personal encounter with truth and beauty, but more like Butlins on a public holiday multiplied by some absurd celestial factor.

  Milton perceived my disappointment. “It wasn’t always like this. But what could they do? Populations just kept increasing. In the end, they had to pull the old one down and build another. They used Sir Basil Fence, the architect who designed Southdown University. He came highly recommended when he came up here in the mid seventies. Everything is done by committee in paradise too.”

  “I thought it would be by divine edict.”

  “Oh no, we move with the times up here. We don’t allow human mortals to get ahead of us. Well, we do actually, because we are a reflection of how mortals perceive things. So we move with the times, but slightly lagging behind. It wasn’t always like this.”

  “But will I get to see God?” I asked, as this, at the time, seemed the most important thing.

  “Oh no, no one has seen him in a long time.”

  “But he does exist?”

  “Well, on the whole, I think so. During my mortal life on earth, I was a very conformist non-conformist, but now I am less certain. Of the seven days God marked out as the measure of our time, three find me thinking like a deist, three like a theist and one like an atheist.”

  “There must surely be more certainty in the afterlife?”

  “Not at all,” he said dismissively.

  “But we know it doesn’t end.”

  “Who knows? As far as you’re concerned, I and all that we have done together might just be a vision in the final nanoseconds before you die. In any case, God reveals nothing of himself in this life either. Perhaps down there amongst those busy mortals, a bizarrely clever man will one day discover the scientific explanation for all this – for the strangeness of existence in any world. They seem to have discovered an awful lot of things since I expired in blindness. We keep abreast of modern cognisance, you know. It’s really very exciting. Darwin, what a clever man! And who would have thought it? But it’s still a conundrum.”

  It seemed that the distance between the real and the ideal is even greater in heaven than it is on earth. “I’m so disappointed.”

  “Why? Knowledge is good, but curiosity about the unknown is better. And you’ll have a long time to think about these things,” Milton said.

  “But didn’t you write about Satan, hell and the fall of man?”

  “I did.”

  “So you got it all wrong.”

  “It depends how you look at it,” he smiled, “my Satan represents very well the psychology of power amongst humans. His ruthlessness, his arrogance and his courage are well portrayed, I think.”

  “Never read it myself.”

  “Few people do these days.”

  “Does that sadden you?”

  “Of course, literary vanity does not diminish once you’re dead.”

  “At least there’s no punishment up here, even if paradise does have its disappointments.”

  “We haven’t got there yet,” he said, although by then we were getting close, and I could perceive the extraordinary height of the building from below and the stone carvings on the outer wall depicting all kinds of pleasures, although rather consumerist ones: beaches, palm trees, people running, an enormous sun, smiling children and old people, hard-working adults building a utopian city full of cinemas, bowling alleys, restaurants, malls, cafés, ice rinks, tennis courts and the like. “You may get used to it,” he said doubtfully.

  “I’m not convinced, but at least there’s no punishment,” I insisted on this one saving grace.

  “Well that not strictly true. Someone’s resisting the trend, because in spite of all the changes, there are still two punishments.”

  “What are they?” I said with interest. Even though I had just asserted my intellectual approval of no punishments, part of me – the less rational part of me – was curious to know and slightly reassured.

  “Well you know those balloon-like creatures in the top half of the sandglass?”

  “Yes…”

  “Well they’re the souls of very rich people held in a kind of limbo for eternity and buffeted by currents of sands. If you never experience a touch of the hell down on earth, then you never really experience that mortal life at all, so you are then condemned to spend eternity in limbo, deprived of all stimuli other than the gritty blast of shifting sands.”

  “And the other punishment?”

  “Yes, you will find out in Paradise Hotel. They run a self-service restaurant. Well, what can they do with current population figures? And the kitchens are entirely staffed by twentieth and twenty-first-century dictators, potentates, war criminals and other purveyors of human misery.”

  “I like that idea better. But it seems to me that they get off lightly, while the rich people are dealt with too harshly.”

  “You’re right. But this immortal world is not run on entirely rational lines either. The law is blind, and a rich potentate or war criminal is punished as a potentate or war criminal and not as a rich man, perhaps because someone on the committee who decides this kind of thing thinks that a punishment with an element of humiliation is worse than a punishment that involves the deprivation of sensory experience. But I’m not so sure.”

  We came to the building, or rather, to a long jostling queue. Everyone was excited and talking about the amazing facilities inside. There was a shiny, slightly kitsch sign with the wording, “Heaven – Eternity is a Wonderful Experience and we guarantee Happiness (conditions apply).” Who could not be excited by such a promise? This hotel seemed to reflect too closely the world I had just left, and I began to wish that I had entered one of those dark woods where the goatmen live and play their pipes. Nymphs and deer, and gods hunting both, no doubt. Fear and surprises. Cruelty and purpose. Generosity and recklessness. Pride and arrogance. So much more real than this exercise in celestial mass tourism.

  Milton appeared to read my thoughts, “Pleasure, pleasure every day – for eternity. I warn you that this can become very dull.”

  Eventually we got inside, where I registered and was allocated a room with an absurdly high number. Milton accompanied me there, and never stopped explaining and elucidating – in modern English but with a slightly pedantic tone.

  “Not everyone has a guide,” I noted.

  “No, there are not many guides. If you are that way inclined, you can go back to the mortal world and pick up souls from dead bodies and guide them back. I like it as an occupation; it gets me out of this – this hotel. Each soul I accompany is different, and I learn from them, just as I instruct. I can make the journey more pleasing. Many souls are terrified when they fall into the sandglass, so I am helping the dead in the moment they feel most lost. Anyone here can do this, but not many do – mainly writers who wrote about these things.”

  “Then I am indebted to you. How did you find me?”

  “By chance. Now let’s get something to eat.”

  “Why do we need to eat in the immortal world?”

  “We don’t, but here we are reflections of the mortal world and we retain its appetites.”

  We got our wooden trays and stood in the queue at the self-service, still chatting about the construction of the mortal and immortal universe. “Move along, move alon
g,” shouted a man in a striped chef’s uniform, “we don’t have all day; fish and chips, steak pie or cauliflower cheese? What’s it to be?”

  “How’s your appeal going?” asked Milton affably of the man in stripes.

  “Well, I think,” he replied, “but it will take time. This bureaucratic mix-up has deprived me of my rightful enjoyment, but what are a few years in comparison to eternity. I bear my trials as a Christian should. With fortitude. It is the foul slur upon my name that concerns me most. It is a cosmic injustice I suffer in silence.”

  My mentor turned to me and politely explained, “This gentleman – Mr. Blair he’s called – has been condemned to these kitchens for warmongering. You might remember the case …”

  “Of course, I thought I recognised you. Yes, I was thirteen when you invaded Iraq. Of course, I remember … Weapons of mass destruction… Bad luck about the skiing accident.”

  “Everything I did I did in good faith,” the man adopted an expression of suppressed anguish – he played the part of the misunderstood.

  Coming from another age, Milton seemed to feel sorry for him. “At least you have a chance to speak with our Lord Protector back there in the steamiest part of the kitchens where they scrub and wash. Something I would dearly love to do.” The ex-prime minister seemed perplexed by this suggestion.

  Just then a little man with a simian face broke in: “Yeah, you get them kick his ass over there amongst them dishwashers. I’m heartily sick of his pissing and moaning. Of course, he ain’t got no chance. I reckon them reds and pinkos got their hands on this place.”

  Milton might have been moving with the times, but not enough to understand the American gentleman who resembled an American president well known for his accomplished missions.

  When we sat down to our meal, I started to reflect on how religions had got it so wrong. No hell. Eternity in the kitchens didn’t seem so bad compared with the vicious talionic penance of the Middle Ages. I shared my perplexities with my master.

  “Maybe,” he said, “there was a hell up here when people on earth could believe in it. Maybe the gods and the heavens are just a reflection of all those minds down below aching to know and to understand at last – and then, most foolish of all, believing with absolute certainty.”

  “You mean that this paradise we live in is something new – so where were its oldest inmates when there was a hell? Were the occupants of hell trans-shipped to here when it was closed down?”

  “Maybe. But I think the past is changed retrospectively to adapt to the new reality. When you’re down in your earthly existence, you think – well, if there really is a life after death, we’ll eventually find out how it all works, but in fact it all appears even more indecipherable up here than it did down there. Human life after death continues to enjoy an epistemological void – a place for the imagination.”

  Such were our conversations. Very interesting they were too, although inconclusive for the most part. We walked the corridors and avoided as much as we could the shabbiness of the entertainments provided in Paradise Hotel. We talked and talked, and became close in a way. One day as we sauntered along the dusty carpet and breathed the stale air, we saw an extraordinary man coming towards us with his large retinue. He was tall and had a long, long grey beard, flowing robes of red and gold, and what can only be called a businesslike manner. Just behind two men were pushing a trolley on which lay an enormous parchment covered with numbers. When he was close, Milton bowed very low and said, “Sire, you do me honour.” The man beckoned to him to stand and then came close, so close his mouth was next to Milton’s ear: “We have got to number 2,678,432,765,321, all en-suite it appears. I think that we can crack this in another two and a half thousand years. And then what will I do?” He started to move off. “By the way, Milton, start to move with the times – no one says ‘sire’ these days. Not even ‘sir’.”

  Milton, still in awe, just muttered, “Of course, sir. Of course, you’re right. You’re always right.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Aristotle. He’s counting the number of rooms in Paradise Hotel.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it matters to him. When he takes it into his head to find something out, he is utterly dedicated to his task. Knowledge is everything for him.”

  “Sounds very dull. How long has it taken him?”

  “Well, he’s been at it since he died.”

  “I thought you said that hell might have existed in the Middle Ages.”

  “Yes, indeed. Although I cannot be sure. Because our memories are also adjusted. Everything is labile here. If there had been hell at that time or even when I died, he would have been stuck in limbo discussing philosophy with all the other Greek …”

  “…windbags,” I interrupted.

  Milton looked at me sternly as one would at a congenial but slightly unruly pupil. “Remember that the world of immortals is probably just a shadow of the one inhabited by mortals, and when the latter changes, then the former changes not only in the present but also in the past. Time here is of a different dimension; that is why we had to go through the sandglass. When mortals project their imaginations on the past, the future or the timeless, they always do it through the prism of the present.”

  Just then another bearded man in flowing robes appeared. He was short and fat, and was muttering to himself: “Socrates said… Alcibiades asserted… Timaeus negated… Gorgias insisted…” And in front of him strode a cockerel.

  “Mister Plato, good day,” said Milton in a familiar tone.

  “Ah, Milton. Poets like you should be kept away from any virtuous republic, particularly a celestial one. What are you plotting now? What vain imaginings are you coming up with to distract the tender and malleable minds of the rabble? This place is quite uncontrolled. And the last thing they need is poets wandering around and reciting nonsense.”

  “Quite right,” said Milton, “and that’s why I do my best to stay away. I’m back and forth, you know. I’m hardly ever here.”

  “Glad to hear it. What are you doing with this young man?”

  “Showing him around … and subverting him.”

  “Thought as much.”

  “Are we allowed to keep pets in heaven?” I joined the conversation shyly.

  Plato looked at me as though I were an idiot.

  “The cockerel,” I said and pointed to it.

  He looked away from me and towards Milton, “Try to teach the boy something.”

  “The cockerel,” Milton explained, “is none other than the famous mathematician Pythagoras in his most evolved incarnation.”

  “Correct,” said Plato, “and we have work to do.”

  “The reader has just come by – a couple of minutes before you appeared.”

  “Oh really, the ‘counter’ we should call him now. How’s he getting on with counting all the rooms in the building?”

  “Halfway there, he thinks.”

  “Well, as I say, we have work to do. Sensible work. Good day, sir.” And off he went, muttering and perhaps consulting with the cockerel.

  “Plato may be a grump, a reactionary you would call him now, but he is the more genial of the two,” Milton smiled warmly, like someone touched by the banality of greatness.

  “And the one I can read,” I said.

  “You modern people have very delicate palates. Have you ever looked at the servile prefaces we had to digest in my times? If someone isn’t enticing you people with what might come next, you can’t read a word. But you’re right: the curmudgeon is a good read – a better read than the reader.”

  “What did you mean by saying that you’re subverting me?”

  “I am, really. This is what I do. I go back to the solid earth to find souls on the point of leaving their mortal coils and then I guide them back. I like to show them the silliness of heaven with its amusement arcades where people spend eternity trying to make money they can’t spend…”

  “That is a relative eternity. Who knows what
’ll happen, when things change down below.”

  “Quite,” he said, always irritated at my habit of interrupting him, “and also observing those large screens they have, the ones that show humans beings in their homes – reality TV, they call it. They look at the real tragedies of randomly chosen individuals and laugh. Their eyes are desperate for entertainment. Always entertainment. There’s nothing else. No seriousness. No feeling. No compassion.”

  “There was little of those things down on earth, too.”

  “Reality TV, and then of course the group therapy sessions. In which people endlessly rake over their lives on earth. Then, yes, they find the strength to weep. But always about themselves. What their mummies and daddies didn’t do. The brutes they met in life. The cheats and scoundrels. All the horrors of earthly existence that made them come off worse. That isn’t an existence, and certainly not one you’d want for eternity.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Leave the Hotel with me and I shall take you to one of the dark woods and lead you into its deep interior. I will abandon you there, and in time you will become feral. You too will metamorphose into a goatman and play the pipes and wander singing your weird songs of infinite melancholy. I shall not hide from you that there are dangers there. Fierce, mythological beasts conjured up by man’s greatest fears stalk the woods in search of prey. If you stay away long enough, you will be freed from the vicissitudes of heaven and its changing natures in accordance with the whims of mortals, but – and this is an enormous ‘but’ – you will lose some of your immortality, which mathematically means that you will not see out the whole of eternity. The thrill of danger has its price. But you will live. You who lived so little in the world of mortals will live the charmed life of a wild spirit in the dark imagined woods.”

  And so it was. I followed him dutifully and he abandoned me to go in search of his own prey. Like so many writers, he incites others to folly from the safety of his studied thoughts. But folly is good. Folly brought me here, and my goat legs carry me through the limitless forest, whose distant calls excite my heart. I, who once used a staple gun to join together frail garden sheds, now whittle my pan pipes and scratch on timbers the words of my bitter-sweet songs. I dance in the clearing and laugh in the hollows. I sleep on the boughs and feast on the berries. I drink from the stream and swim in the pools. The green is undying and the woods eternal. I wander the paths of man’s measureless imagination. I live.