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Petals fell in my hair. I reached up and brushed loose a small shower of them, pink and white, as they fell on my pants and shoes.
"Memnoch!" I said suddenly. I looked around me. Where was he? Was I here alone? Far, far away moved the procession of happy souls across the bridge. Did the gates open and close or was that an illusion?
I looked to the left, to a copse of olive trees, and saw standing beneath it first a figure I didn't recognize, and then realized it was Memnoch as the Ordinary Man. He stood collected, looking at me, face grim and set; then the image began to grow and spread, to sprout its huge black wings, and twisted goat legs, and cloven feet, and the angel face gleamed as if in living black granite. Memnoch, my Memnoch, the Memnoch I knew once again clothed as the demon.
I made no resistance. I didn't cover my face. I studied the details of his robed torso, the way the cloth came down over the hideous fur-covered legs. The cloven feet dug into the ground beneath him, but his hands and arms were his own beautiful hands and arms. His hair was the flowing mane, only jet black. And in all the Garden he was the only pure absence of color, opaque, or at least visible to me, seemingly solid.
"The argument is simple," he said. "Do you have any trouble now understanding it?"
His black wings came in close, hugging the body, lower tips curved forward, near his feet, so that they did not scrape the ground.
He walked towards me, a horrid animalian advance carrying the overwhelmingly perfect torso and head, a hobbled being, thrust into a human conception of evil.
"Right you are," he said, and slowly, almost painfully, seated himself, the wings once more fading because they could never have allowed it; and there he sat, the goat god glaring at me, hair tangled, but face as serene as always, no harsher, no sweeter, no wiser or more cruel, because it was graven out of blackness instead of the shimmering image of flesh.
He began to talk:
"You see, what He actually did was this. He said over and over to me, 'Memnoch, everything in the universe is used . . . made use of. . . you understand?' And He came down, suffered, died, and rose from the Dead to consecrate human suffering, to enshrine it as a means to an end; the end was illumination, superiority of the soul.
"But the myth of the suffering and Dying God¡ªwhether we speak of Tammuz of Sumer or Dionysus of Greece, or any other deity the world over, whose death and dismemberment preceded Creation¡ªthis was a Human idea! An idea conceived by Humans who could not imagine a Creation from nothing, one which did not involve a sacrifice. The Dying God who gives birth to Man was a young idea in the minds of those too primitive to conceive of anything absolute and perfect. So He grafted himself¡ªGod Incarnate¡ªupon human myths that try to explain things as if they had meaning, when perhaps they don't. "
"Yes. "
"Where was His sacrifice in making the world?" Memnoch asked.
"He was not Tiamat slain by Marduk. He is not Osiris chopped into pieces! What did He, Almighty God, give up to make the material universe? I do not remember seeing anything taken from Him. That it came out of Him, this is true, but I do not remember Him being lessened, or decimated, or maimed, or decreased by the act of Physical Creation! He was after the Creation of the planets and the stars, the same God! If anything He was increased, or seemed to be in the eyes of His angels, as they sang of new and varying aspects of His Creation. His very nature as Creator grew and expanded in our perceptions, as evolution took His path.
"But when He came as God Incarnate, He imitated myths that men had made to try to sanctify all suffering, to try to say that history is not horror, but has meaning. He plunged down into man-made religion and brought His Divine Grace to those images, and He sanctified suffering by His death, whereas it had not been sanctified in His Creation, you understand?"
"It was a bloodless Creation and without sacrifice," I said. My voice was dull but my mind had never been more alert. "That is what you're saying. But He does believe suffering is sacrosanct or can be. Nothing is wasted. All things are used. "
"Yes. But my position is that He took the awful flaw in His cosmos¡ªhuman pain, misery, the capacity to suffer unspeakable injustice¡ªand He
found a place for it, using the worst superstitious beliefs of Men. "
"But when people die¡ªwhat happens? Do His believers find the tunnel and the Light and Loved ones?"
"In the places where they have lived in peace and prosperity, generally, yes. They rise without hate or resentment directly into Heaven. And so do some who have no belief in Him whatsoever or His teachings.
"Because they too are Illuminated. "
"Yes. And this gratifies Him and expands His Heaven, and Heaven is ever enhanced and enriched by these new souls from all quarters of the world. "
"But Hell is also full of souls. "
"Hell so far exceeds the size of Heaven as to be laughable. Where on the planet has He ruled where there has not been self-sacrifice, injustice, persecution, torment, war! Every day my confused and embittered pupils are increased in number. There are times of such privation and horror that few souls ascend to Him in peace at all. "
"And He does not care. "
"Precisely. He says that suffering of sentient beings is like decay; it fertilizes the growth of their souls! He looks from His lofty height upon a massacre and He sees magnificence. He sees men and women never loving so much as when they lose their loved ones, never loving so much as when they sacrifice for others for some abstract notion of Him, never loving so much as when the conquering army comes down to lay waste the hearth, divide the flock, and catch up the bodies of infants on their spears.
"His justification? It's in Nature. It's what He created. And if battered and embittered souls must fall into my hands first and suffer my tutelage in Hell, so much the greater will they become!"
"And your job grows heavier all the time. "
"Yes and no. I am winning. But I have to win on His terms. Hell is a place of suffering. But let's go over it carefully. Look at it; what He did:
"When He threw open the gates of Sheol, when He went down into the gloom of Sheol, like the god Tammuz into the Sumerian hell, the souls flocked to Him and saw His redemption and saw the wounds in His Hands and Feet, and that He should die for them gave a focus to their confusion, and of course they flooded with Him into the Gates of Heaven¡ªfor everything they had suffered seemed suddenly to have a meaning.
