Blameless in Abaddon (42 page)

“Please tell the tribunal something of your philosophy,” said Lovett, striding toward the lectern.

“You have to understand, I'm a rabbi, not a Talmudic scholar.” Kaplan nervously twisted a cuff button on his blue seersucker suit. He was a smiling, disheveled gnome, his light brown hair frothing outward in a manner that evoked the second visiting potentate in Jonathan Sarkos's Nativity movie. “Until
Newsweek
called my book a ‘theodicy,' I'd never even heard that word.”

To Martin, the rabbi's modesty seemed wholly genuine, his humility totally without guile. He would not enjoy dismantling this nice man's worldview.

“Nevertheless, you ended up tackling some pretty tough questions in
When You Walk Through a Storm
” said Lovett.

“I wanted my readers to grasp a strange but soothing truth. Many things that initially seem wrong turn out to be necessary when we shift perspectives. ‘Why does carrion smell so bad?' the student asks the Zen master. And the master replies, ‘If you were a vulture, it would smell like chocolate.'”

“Did you know that Christian theologians call this the hidden harmony defense?”

“‘Hidden harmony'? All right. Fine. I was very moved by Mr. Elder's testimony last week—how he had to keep pounding on his son's chest. A visitor from Venus might think Mr. Elder was abusing the boy, when in fact he was keeping him alive.”

Martin opened his briefcase and drew out the loose-leaf binder he'd obtained that morning in the hotel pharmacy, its cover decorated with Franz Hals's
The Jolly Toper.
Turning to the first page, he wrote,
Call his bluff. Ask about Auschwitz.

“In your book you give the example of lightning striking a dead tree and starting a forest fire,” said Lovett.

“Our first instinct when we see a burning forest is to douse the flames,” said Kaplan, “but ecologists now tell us such fires are part of nature's rhythms. They clear away dead trees, allowing sunlight to filter down and stimulate new growth.”

“Your book also includes a discussion of termites.”

“Homeowners hate them, but this would be a pretty sterile planet if we didn't have lots of termites out there in our forests, converting dead trees to loam.”

“The man's obsessed with trees,” whispered Esther.

“The arboreal defense,” grunted Randall.

“Termites murdered my wife,” muttered Martin, scribbling frantically in his loose-leaf binder.

As the August sun arced across the sky, the rabbi reeled off a dozen additional examples of ostensible evils in which an ultimate good lay concealed. Throughout this long speech Martin kept his eyes fixed on the judges. They were a grim and twitchy bunch, continually removing their headsets to scratch their ears or brush the sweat from their temples: a phenomenon he chose to interpret optimistically. All nine men, he decided, were bored out of their skulls.

Among Kaplan's more vivid illustrations was a catastrophe that had arisen not far from The Hague. On October 1, 1574, the North Sea had come crashing through the dikes and rolled across the western plain. From the Dutch perspective this disaster was actually a godsend, for the people were then in rebellion against their overlords in Madrid, and a vast Spanish army had surrounded Leiden. The deluge broke the siege, saving many innocent lives.

“Let's return to Jeffrey for a moment,” said Lovett. “That is, unless . . .”

“It's all right.”

“At one point in
When You Walk Through a Storm
, you suggest that even a child's death can involve unexpected blessings.”

“As horrible as it was to see that tumor destroying Jeffrey, completely horrible . . . all that pain . . . he was so brave.” The witness's voice failed. He lifted his hands, hid his grimace behind his open palms, and sobbed.

“Perhaps we should stop.”

“No.
No.
” Kaplan slid his palms away. A tear trail streaked each side of his face. “The truth is that, for the other parents in my congregation, Jeffrey's suffering was . . . well . . . a kind of gift.” He looked past Lovett and focused his moist eyes on the bench. “Why do we love our children, Your Honors? Because they're
vulnerable
, that's why. Remove that vulnerability, that awful chance of losing your boy to some monstrous twist of fate, and you've sacrificed the very thing that gives a father's love its edge. Think about it. It's a trade-off—a terrible, white-hot tradeoff—but I'm willing to make it.”

“Are you saying you've become reconciled to Jeffrey's death?” asked Lovett.

“I shall never become reconciled to Jeffrey's death.”

“Thank you, Rabbi Kaplan. I have no further questions.”

After the lunch recess, Torvald invited the prosecution to interview the witness. So here it comes—my first cross-examination, thought Martin, approaching the exhibit table with the best approximation of a strut that exhaustion and the crab allowed. He tucked both his crocodile cane and his Jolly Toper binder under his arm, took hold of Noah's ax, and limped up to Kaplan.

“Do you know what this might be?”

“It's an ax,” said the witness.

“The very ax Noah used to built his ark. His prototype presented it to me when I toured the Defendant's brain. In a month it will be dust—otherwise I could probably get fifty million pounds for it from the British Museum. Are you aware, Rabbi Kaplan, that the hidden harmony argument is sometimes evoked to explain the great Deluge recounted in Genesis, chapters six through eight?”

“No, but I can imagine . . . the Flood was a necessary purgative—right?—cleansing the Earth of sinners and clearing the way for a more virtuous generation.”

“Very good.” Martin smacked the flat of the blade against his open palm. “Chop, chop, chop, and down go the gopher trees Noah will need to set the saving remnant afloat. Let me ask you something: does the Flood story fit your notion of how a benevolent Creator ought to behave?”

“Objection,” said Lovett. “Rabbi Kaplan has already stated he's not a Biblical scholar.”

“Overruled,” said Torvald.

“Thank you, Judge, but I'll withdraw the question anyway,” said Martin smoothly. “I'd rather talk about the
witness's
book.” He set the ax on the stand, hobbled up to the lectern, and opened his binder. “This morning, Mr. Kaplan, you told the tribunal that forest fires sometimes prove benevolent in the long run.” Lubricated by sweat, his bifocals slid down his nose. He pushed them back into place and glanced at his notes. “Now, putting aside the question of ultimate ecological necessity, let's consider a common occurrence with forest fires: an innocent fawn trapped in the flames. Before long the animal is horribly burned, and over the next three days it dies a slow, agonizing death. Are you saying that behind the fawn's seemingly gratuitous suffering there lies a greater good?”

“I'm saying there
might
be a greater good.”

“What sort of greater good?”

“If I knew, then the fawn's suffering wouldn't be ‘seemingly gratuitous,' would it?”

Martin was taken aback by this riposte but managed to remain unflustered. “Quite so . . . but let's have a crack at it, okay? Let's imagine, for example, that the fawn is hosting a new species of pathogenic bacteria. Released into the human population, these germs would cause a plague ten times worse than the Black Death.”

“That wouldn't explain why the fawn needs to be roasted alive,” said Kaplan thoughtfully.

“Maybe only intense heat can kill the bacteria.”

“I don't think that's very plausible.”

“Neither do I. How do you feel about the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘How do you feel about the Nazi concentration—'”

“How do I feel about them? They were probably the greatest evil of this century.”

“Why did the Defendant allow these camps?”

“Objection,” said Lovett.

“Overruled,” said Torvald.

“I'm willing to talk about my son, Mr. Candle, but not
this
.”

“Here's a theory for you. All the people who died in the camps—Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals . . . children—every one of them was plotting to manufacture and disperse a lethal chemical capable of wiping out life on Earth. By permitting the Holocaust, God prevented the extinction of a hundred thousand species, including our own. What do you think?”

“I think your theory is obscene.”

“So do I—the hidden harmony defense is invariably obscene . . . ‘pornography for priests,' as God's Idea of Noah puts it. Question: suppose one of the dikes protecting this city suddenly ruptured. Can you picture it? The North Sea starts pouring into the streets, sweeping away thousands of victims. How would the people in this room react? Would they sit around saying, ‘Maybe this is 1574 all over again. Maybe there's a greater good here'?”

“I doubt it.”

“What would they do?”

“They would probably grab the nearest sandbags and try to repair the breach.”

“Right. And yet you're inviting us to imagine some arcane justice in the world's pain. To which I can only reply, ‘If this is a hidden harmony universe, Rabbi Kaplan, then why do we try so hard to
change
it?' By your reasoning, a person who puts out a fire, cures a disease . . . or lifts a sandbag against a flood—this person may actually be opposing the divine will, correct?”

A shudder passed through Kaplan, head to toe. Martin prayed that the witness's distress was registering clearly on the judges' personal monitors. “All I can say is, in my line of work, the idea of a greater good is astonishingly helpful. As a rabbi, I'm obligated to comfort people.”

“Indeed you are, sir. Indeed you are. No further questions.”

Stifling a smile, Martin limped back to the prosecution table.

“Great job,” said Esther. “You blew him out of the water.”

“We'll be hearing no more about hidden harmonies,” said Randall.

“One down and four to go,” said Martin.

 

When the trial resumed the next morning, Lovett called Eleanor Swann, a Yale Divinity School professor whose published works included a scholarly history of Gnosticism and a three-volume annotated translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She was slender and sharp featured, the sort of formerly pretty woman whom advancing age has made beautiful. Her diction was like her physiognomy, compact and efficient. Sentence by sentence, metaphor by metaphor, Swann constructed a lucid and compelling argument to the effect that adversity fosters spiritual growth.

“Disciplinary defense,” muttered Randall.

“Piece of cake,” whispered Martin. Opening his binder, he turned to a blank page, picked up a pencil, and carefully printed,
ARID APES.
Was it an anagram, perhaps?
A SAD PIER
, he wrote.
DRIP EASE, SAID RAPE.
None of these variations seemed remotely relevant to the ontological defense.

In confronting life's hardships, Swann explained, people often discovered within themselves “unexpected reserves of patience and compassion.” Alluding to Lovett's own
Conundrum of Suffering
, she called the pre-coma God “a cosmic surgeon” who reluctantly but dutifully inflicted pain “while He repaired our souls with His divine scalpel.” As the examination continued, the professor made dozens of learned references—Saint Augustine's
Enchiridion
, Gregory Nazianzenus's
Discours
, Martin Luther's
Werke
—though these embellishments didn't seem to impress the judges, who so far appeared as benumbed by Swann's presentation as they'd been by Kaplan's.

Raise the stages: bring in AIDS
, Martin wrote.

At 12:47
P.M.
Torvald, yawning, declared a lunch recess.

“I'm sure we can all understand how suffering strengthens a person's character,” said Lovett after the tribunal reconvened. “Nevertheless, a skeptic might ask why misfortune is distributed the way it is. Last month we heard from a man who lost his legs in Vietnam. Why was he so badly hurt while thousands of his fellow soldiers returned home whole? Was Lieutenant Pallomar in particular need of spiritual growth?”

“The problem of seeming randomness presents a formidable challenge to the disciplinary defense,” said Swann with a frigid smile. “So formidable that in many instances one must supplement this explanation with an eschatological argument.”

“According to which our spiritual growth continues . . .”

“After death. Christian eschatology holds that anyone who exits the present world unscathed will undergo various disciplinary trials upon entering the next. Conversely, a person who dies with a highly developed soul—Lieutenant Pallomar, say—will receive a perfect body right away.”

“The eschatological argument has a venerable history, does it not?”

“Oh, yes. I'm particularly moved by Bishop Origen's concept of
apocatasis
, according to which even the Devil can be saved.”

“Origen cut off his own balls,” Martin informed Randall. “Prostate cancer?”

“Faith.”

“Thank you, Professor Swann,” said Lovett. “I have nothing further.”

With her fiery gaze and eloquent gestures, the witness reminded Martin of the cleverest person ever to appear in his courtroom, Rhonda Fischer, a Glendale aerobics instructor whose spouse had been cheating on her for fifteen years. Shortly after 9:30
P.M.
on July 4, 1992, the town's residents watched enthralled as a thirty-foot-long aluminum trellis rose into the nocturnal sky, the climax of the annual fireworks display. Earlier that day, Fischer had managed to tamper with the materials, so that when the trellis was ignited, instead of reading
HAPPY ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY, GLENDALE
, the brilliant orange sparks spelled out, for all of Abaddon Township to see,
HELEN AMBROSE IS FUCKING RHONDA FISCHER'S HUSBAND.
So impressed was Martin by Fischer's resourcefulness—and so moved by her pain—that he punished her vandalism with the lowest allowable fine, sixty-five dollars.