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I saw the Light, saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round, and widening as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place.
"I didn't know, I didn't know!" The voices rose. The Tunnel closed.
I stumbled, turning this way and that. Here soldiers tortured a young woman with their spears, while others wept and sought to throw themselves between her writhing form and her tormentors. Here babies ran on chubby legs with little hands outstretched to be gathered in the arms of weeping fathers, mothers, murderers.
And pinned to the ground, his body covered in armour, his beard long and red, his mouth open in a howl, lay one cursing God cursing the Devil and cursing all Fate. "7 will not, I will not, I will not!"
"And who stands behind those doors," said a sombre Helpful Ghost, her beautiful hair shimmering around her in ethereal whiteness, her soft hand on my face. "See there¡ª" The double doors about to open, the walls lined with books. "Your dead, my beloved, your dead, all those you've killed!"
I stared at the soldier on his back, roaring from his red-bearded mouth, "Never, never will I say it was right, never, never. . . . "
"Not my dead," I cried. I turned and ran. I stumbled and fell again on my face in the soft press of bodies. Beyond, the ruins of a city withered in fire; walls crumbled on all sides, the cannon exploded again, and once more, a noxious gas filled the air, people fell coughing and choking for breath, the chorus of I DID NOT KNOW blended all in one instant of order that was worse than none!
"HELP ME!" I cried and cried. I never knew such release in screaming, such pure and abandoned cowardice, to shout to High Heaven in this Godforsaken place where cries were the very air itself, and no one heard, no one but the smiling Helpful Dead.
"Learn, my dearest. "
"Learn. " Whispers like kisses. A wraith, an Indian man, turbaned head, darkened face. "Learn, my young one. "
"Look up, see the blossoms, see the sky. . . . " A Helpful Ghost danced in circles, her white dress passing in and out of the clouds and spurts of soot and filth, her feet sinking into the marl but turning still with certainty.
"Don't fool me, there is no garden here!" I sho
uted. I was on my knees. My clothes were torn, but in my shirt I had the veil! I bad it.
"Take my hands. . . . "
"No, let me go!" I slipped my hand in my coat to cover the veil. Staggering towards me a dim figure rose, hand outstretched, "You, you cursed boy, you filthy boy, you in the Paris streets, like Lucifer Himself full of golden light, you! Think what you did to me!"
The tavern took form, the boy falling backwards from the blow of my mortal fist, the barrels going over and the growl of the disheveled and drunken men who closed in on me.
"No, stop it," I roared. "Get him away from me. I don't remember him. I never killed him. I don't remember, I tell you, I can't. . . .
"Claudia, where are you? Where are you, the one I wronged! Claudia! Nicolas, help me!"
But were they here, lost in this torrent, or gone, long gone through the Tunnel to the blazing glory above, to the blessed songs that wove the silence into their very chords and melodies? Pray gone, pray there, above.
My own cries had lost all dignity and yet how defiant they sounded in my own ears. "Help me, someone! Help!"
"Must you die first to serve me?" Memnoch asked. He rose before me, the granite angel of darkness, wings outstretched. Oh yes, blot out the horrors of Hell, please, even in this most monstrous of forms! "You scream in Hell as you sang in Heaven. This is my kingdom, this is our work. Remember the Light!"
I fell back on my shoulder, hurting my left arm, but refusing to pull my right hand free of the veil. I saw the blue sky above in a flash and the peach blossoms blowing from the green leaves of the tree even as the luscious fruit itself clung to the branches.
Smoke stung my eyes. A woman on her knees said to me:
"I know now that no one can forgive me but myself, but how could I have done those things to her, and she so small, how could I. . . . "
"I thought it was the other things," whispered a young girl who had hold of my neck, her nose touching mine as she spoke, "but you know that kindness, that just holding his hand and he. . . . "
"Forgive!" Memnoch said, and parted the way, gently pushing the souls aside. But the crowd crushed in; pale figures raced over me as if towards a respite I couldn't see, or some source of alarm. "Forgive!" Memnoch whispered.
He snatched up the monk covered with blood, his brown robes shredded, his feet blistered and burnt from deliberate fire. "In your heart, the power!" said Memnoch, "Be better than Him, better than Him, set Him an example. "
"I love. . . even Him. . . . " came the whisper from the soul's lips as it suddenly dissolved. "Yes, He couldn't have meant for us to suffer so. . . He couldn't. "
"Did he pass the test!" I demanded. "Did that soul pass muster in this hellish place, what he just said? Was that enough! Ignorance of God, was that enough! Or is he here scrambling somewhere else in all this filth, or did the Tunnel take him up! Memnoch! Help me. "
Everywhere, I looked for the monk with the burnt feet. I looked and looked.
