Approaching Oblivion

by Harlan Ellison

  Inside the Cathedral of the Church of the Apostates, the smell. Like a million popped pincercrushers. I almost went over on my face from that smell.

  It took three hands to hold all of my nose, a little whiff shouldn’t slip through.

  I started reeling around, hitting the strings they called walls. Fortunately, I rolled around near the entrance, and I stretched my nose a couple of feet outside, and I took a very deep breath, and snapped my nose back, and held it, and looked around.

  There were still half a dozen of them who hadn’t run off to Kasrilevka, all down on their stomachs, their feet winding up and unwinding, very fast, their faces down in the mud and crap in front of the altar, doing what I suppose they call praying. To that idol of theirs, Seymour, or Simon, or Shtumie, whatever they call it. I should know the name of a heathen idol, you bet your life never, better I should know the Latin name of a miserable worm that stinks first, let me tell you.

  So there they were, and let me assure you it pained me in several more than a couple of ways to have to go over to them, but…I’m looking for Kadak.

  “Hey,” I said to one of them. A terrific look at his tuchis I got. Such a perfect tuchis, if ever there was one, for a pincercrusher to come and chomp!

  Nothing. “Hey!” I yelled it a second time. No attention. Crazy with their faces down in the crap. “Listen, hey!” I yelled at the top of my voice, which isn’t such a soft niceness when I’m suffocating holding my nose with three hands and I want to get out of that place already.

  So I gave him a zetz in the tuchis. I wound up every foot on the left side, and I let it unwind right where a pinchercrusher would have brunch.

  Then the dummy looked up.

  A sight you could become very ill with. A nose covered with crap from the floor, a bunch of eyes filled with blue jelly, a mouth from out of which could only come heathen hosannahs to a dummy idol called Shaygets or something.

  “You kicked me,” he said.

  “All by yourself you figured that out, eh?”

  He looked at me with six, and blinked, and started to fall over on his punim again, and I started to wind up I’d give him such a zetz I’d kick him into a better life.

  “We don’t accept violence,” he said.

  “That’s a terrific saying,” I told him. “Meanwhile, I don’t accept an unobstructed view up your tuchis. So if you want I should go away and stop kicking you, so you can go root around in the dreck some more, what you’d better do is come up here a minute and talk to me.”

  He kept looking. I wound up tighter. You could hear my sockets creaking. I’m not such a young one anymore. He got up.

  “What do you want? I’m worshipping to Seymool.”

  Seymool. That’s a name for a God. I wouldn’t even hire something called a Seymool.

  “You’ll worship later. That buhbie isn’t going anywhere.”

  “But Zsouchmuhn is.”

  “Very correct. Which is the same reason I got to talk to you now. Time is a thing I got very little of, if you catch my meaning here.”

  “Well, what is it you want, precisely?”

  Oy, a Talmudic scholar, no less. Precisely. “Well, Mr. Precisely, I’ll tell you what it is precisely I want. You know where it is I can find a no-good snuffler called Kadak?”

  He stared at me with six, then blinked rapidly, in sequence—two and four, three and five, one and six—then went back in reverse order. “You have a nauseating sense of humor. May Seymool forgive you.”

  Then he fell back on his face, his legs up winding and unwinding, his nose deep in dreck. “I say Kadak, he says Seymool. I’ll give you a Seymool!”

  I started to wind up for a kick would put that momzer in the next time-zone, when a voice stopped me. From over the side of that stinking Cathedral—and you can bet I was turning yellow from not breathing—a woman said, “Come outside. I’ll tell you about your friend Kadak.”

  I turned to look, and there was this shikseh, all dolled up in such a pile of colored shmatehs and baubles and bangles and crap from the floor, I thought to myself, Gevalt! this turn I should never have crawled out of the burrow.

  So anyhow I followed her outside, thank God, and let my nose extend to its full length and breathed such a deep one my cheek-sacs puffed up like I had a pair of bialies stuffed in. So now this bummerkeh, this floozie, this painted hussy says to me, “What do you want with Kadak?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “I’ll get upwind from you, meaning no offense, lady, but you smell like your Church.” I rolled around her and got a little away, and when it was possible to breathe like a person, I said, “What I want is to go join my lust-mates on Kas—, on Bromios, but what I got to do, is I got to find Kadak. We need him for a very sacred relgious service, you’ll excuse me for saying this, dear lady, but you being Gentile, you wouldn’t understand what it is.”

  She batted four eyelids and flapped phony eyelashes on three of them. Oy, a nafkeh, a lady of easy virtue, a courtesan of the byways, a bummerkeh. “Would you contribute to a worthy charity to find this Kadak?”

  I knew it. I knew somewhere on that damned looking for Kadak it would cost me a little something out of pocket. She was looking directly at my pouch. “You’ll take a couple of coins, is that right?”

  “It isn’t exactly what I was thinking of,” she said, still looking at my pouch, and I suddenly realized with what I’ll tell you honestly was a chill, that she was cross-eyed in four of her front six. She was staring at my pupik. What? I’m trying to tell you, butterfly, that she wasn’t staring at my pouch which was hanging to the left side of my stomach. She was staring with that cockeye four at my cute little pupik. What? You’ll forgive me, Mr. Silent-Butterfly-With-the-Very-Dumb-Expression, I should know that butterflies don’t have pupiks? A navel. A belly button. Now you understand what it is a pupik? What? Maybe I should get gross and explain to a butterfly that shtups flowers, that we have sex through our pupiks. The female puts her long middle finger of the bottom arm on the right side, straight into the pupik and goes moofky-foofky, and that’s how we shtup. You needed that, is that right? You needed to know how we do it. A filth you are, butterfly; a very dirty mind.

  But not as dirty as that nafkeh, that saucy baggage, that whore of Babylon. “Listen,” I said, “meaning no offense, lady, but I’m not that kind of a person. I’m saving myself for my lust-mates. I’m sure you’ll understand. Besides, meaning no offense, I don’t shtup with strangers. It wouldn’t be such a good thing for you, either, believe me. Everybody says Evsise is a rotten shtup. I got very little feeling in my pupik, you wouldn’t like it, not even a little. Why don’t I give you a few nice coins, you could use them on Kasri—on Bromios. You could maybe set yourself up in business there, a pretty lady such as yourself.” God shouldn’t strike me down with a bolt of lightning in the tuchis for telling this filthy-mind cockeye heathen nafkeh what a cutie she was.

  “You want to find this Kadak?” she asked, staring straight at two things at the same time.

  “Please, lady,” I said. My nose started running.

  “Don’t cry,” she said. “Seymool is my God, I trust in Seymool.”

  “What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

  “We are the last of the Faithful of the Church. We plan to stay on Zsouchmuhn when they Relocate it. Seymool has decreed it. I have no hope of living through it. I understand cataclysms are commonplace when they pull a planet out of orbit.”

  “So run,” I said. “What kind of dummies are you?”

  “We are the Faithful.”

  It gave me pause. Even Gentiles, even nut cases like these worshippers of Shmoe-ool, whoever, even they got to believe. It was nice. In a very dumb way.

  “So what has all that got to do in even the slightest way with me, lady?”

  “I’m horny.”

  “Well, why not go in your Cathedral there and shtup one of your playmates?”

  “They’re worshipping.”

  “To that statue that look
s like a big bug picking its nose, with the dreck and crap and mud all over it?”

  “Don’t speak disrespectfully of Seymool.”

  “I’ll cut out my tongue.”

  “That isn’t necessary, just stick out your navel.”

  “Lady, you got a dirty mouth.”

  “You want to know where Kadak is?”

  I won’t tell what nasty indignities came next. It makes me very ashamed even to think about it. She had a dirty fingernail.

  So I’ll tell you only that when she was done ravaging my pupik and left lying there against a mud-wall of a building, the pink shmootz running down my stomach, I knew that Kadak had been as lousy an Apostate as he had been a Jew. One afternoon, just like in the synagogue years before, he ran amuck and started biting the statue of that bug-God they got. Before they could pry him off, he had bitten off the kneecap of Shmoogle. So they threw him out of the Church. This nafkeh knew what had happened to him, because he had used her services, you could brechh from such a thought, and he still owed her some coins. So she’d followed him around, trying to get him to pay, and she’d seen he’d bounced from religion to religion until they accepted him as a Slave of the Rock.

  So I got up and went to a fountain and washed myself the best way I could, and said a couple of quick prayers that I wouldn’t get knocked up from that dirty finger, and I went looking for the Slaves of the Rock, still looking for that damned Kadak. I walked with an uneven roll, hop, unwind. You would, too, if you’d been ravished, butterfly.

  Just a second you’d think on it, how would you feel if a flower grabbed you by the tuchis and stuck a pistil and stamen in your pupik? What? Oh, terrific. Butterflies don’t have pupiks.

  Talking to you, standing here in sand, is not necessarily the most sensational thing I’ve ever done, you want to know.

  The Slaves of the Rock were all gathered in a valley just outside the city limits of Houmitz. The Governors wouldn’t let them inside the city. Who can blame them. If you think those Apostates were pukers, you should only see the Rocks. Such cuties. It is to varf!

  Big rocks they turned themselves into. With tongues like string, six or seven feet long, all rolled up inside. And when a krendl or a znigh or a buck-fly goes whizzing past, slurp! out comes that ugly tongue like a shot and snags it and wraps around and comes whipping back and smashes the bug all over the rock, and then the rock gets soft and spongy like a piece rotten fruit and absorbs all the dreck and crap and awfulness squished there. Oh, such terrifics, those Rocks. Just the kind of thing I would expect a Kadak to be when he couldn’t stand being himself no more. Thank you oh so very greatly, Reb Jeshaia, for this looking mission.

  So I found the head Rock and I stood there in that valley, all surrounded by Rocks going slurp! and squish! and sucking up bug food. This was not the best part of my life I’m telling you about.

  “How do you do?”

  I figured it was the most polite way to talk to a rock.

  “How did you know I was the chief Slave?” the Rock said.

  “You had the longest tongue.”

  Slurp! A znigh on the wing, cruising by humming a tune, minding its own business, got it right in the punim, a tongue like a wet noodle, splat right in the punim, and a quick overhead twist and squish! all over the Rock. It splattered on me, gooey and altogether puke-making. Definitely not the kind of individual to have a terrific dinner out with. The guderim was all over me.

  “Excuse the mess,” said the chief Slave. He really sounded sorry.

  “Think nothing,” I said. “That was a very cute little overhand twist you gave it there at the last minute.”

  He seemed flattered. “You noticed that, did you?”

  “How could I help? Such a class move.”

  “You know, you’re the first one who’s ever noticed that. There have been lots of studies made, by all kinds of foreigners, from other worlds, other galaxies, even, but never once did one of them notice that move. What did you say your name was?”

  The bug ooze was dripping down my stomach. “My name is Evsise, and I’m looking for a person who used to be a person named Kadak. I was given to understand that he’d become a Rock a few years ago. I have a great need to find this Kadak rock, he should drop dead already such a rotten time he’s been making for me.”

  “Listen,” said the chief Slave (as the remains of the znigh oozed down through the spongy surface), “I like you. Have you ever thought of converting?”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, really, I’m serious. To Worship the Rock is such an enriching experience, it really isn’t smart to dismiss it without giving it a try. What do you say?”

  I figured I had to be a little smartsy then, just a little. “Say, I wish I could. You got no idea what a nice proposition that is you’re making to me. And in a quick second I’d take you up on it, but I got this one bissel tot of a problem.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  A psychiatrist rock, yet. I really needed this.

  “I’m afraid from bugs,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I see your point. Bugs are a very big part of our religion.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Ah, well. I’m sorry for you. But let’s see if I can help you. What did you say his name was?”

  “Kadak.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember now. What a creep.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Let me see now,” said the Rock. “If I recall correctly, we threw him out of the order for being a disruptive influence, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago. He used to make the ugliest noises I’ve ever heard out of a Rock.”

  “Snuffling.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Snuffling is what he did. A terrible snort noise, all wet and cloggy, it could make you sick to be near it.”

  “Yes, that was it.”

  “So what happened to him, I’m afraid to ask.”

  “He reconstituted his atoms and became just like you again.”

  “Not like me, please.”

  “Well, I mean the same species.”

  “And he went off?”

  “Yes. He said he was going to try the Fleshists.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I sat down. Settled my tuchis right down between my rims, drew up my legs, and dropped my head into a half dozen of my hands. I was very glum.

  “Would you like to sit on me?” the Rock asked.

  It was a nice offer. “Thanks,” I said politely, looking at the last slimy ooze of the znigh on the Rock, “but I’m too miserable to be comfortable.”

  “What do you need him for?” he asked.

  So I explained the best I could—this was, after all, to a rock, a piece of stone, even if it could talk—about the minyan of ten. The chief Slave asked me why ten.

  So I said, “On the Earth, a long time ago…you know about the Earth, right? Right. Well, on the Earth, a long time ago, God was going to give a terrific zetz to a place called Sodom. What it was, this Sodom, was a whole city full of Fleshists. Not a nice place.”

  “I can’t conceive of an entire city of Fleshists,” the rock Rock said. “That’s rather an ugly thought.”

  “That’s the way God looked at it.”

  We were both quiet for a while, thinking about that.

  “So, anyhow,” I said, “Abraham, blessed be his name, who was this very holy Jew even if he wasn’t blue, you shouldn’t hold that against him—”

  “I won’t.”

  “—uh. Yes. Right. Well, Abraham pleaded with God to save Sodom.”

  “Why did he do that…a city full of Fleshists. Yechh.”

  “How do I know? He was holy, that’s all. So God must have thought that was a little meshugge…a little crazy…also, you know God is no dummy…and he told Abraham he’d spare Sodom if Abraham could find fifty righteous men living there…”

  “Just men? What about wome
n?”

  “There isn’t scripture on that one.”

  “Sounds like your God is a sexist.”

  “At least, you’ll pardon my frankness now, but at least he isn’t a thing that lies in a valley for birds to make ka-ka on.”

  “That’s rather rude of you.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but it isn’t nice to call the one true God a rotten name.”

  “I was only asking.”

  “Well, it isn’t too classy for a rock to ask them kinds questions. Now do you want to hear this or don’t you?”

  “Yes, sure. But—”

  “But what!?”

  “Why did this God haggle with this Abraham? Why didn’t he just tell him he was going to do it, and then do it?”

  I was getting pretty upset, you know what I mean? “It was because Abraham was a mensch, a real terrific person, a snappy dresser, that’s why, okay?”

  The rock didn’t answer. I guess he was sulking. So okay, let him sulk. “Then Abraham said, okay, what if I can only find forty righteous men? And God said, okay, let be forty. So Abraham said what if only thirty, and God said, nu, let be thirty already, and then Abraham said what if only twenty, and God started yelling all right stop nuhdzhing me, let be twenty…”

  “Let me gess,” the rock said, “Abraham said ten, and your God got really mad and said ten was it, and no further, and that’s how you came up with ten men for the congregation.”

  “You’ve heard it,” I said.

  The rock was silent again.

  Finally, he said, “Listen, I like your idea of religion. I’m not altogether happy being a Slave of the Rock, even if I am the chief Rock. How about if I converted and came back with you, and made the tenth for the minyan?”