The Trial of Fallen Angels (21 page)

Gautama smiled but said nothing, as if he were dealing with a misbehaving child.

“Problem is,” Tim continued, “she thinks she’s too good for you too. She only screws Jew boys. I happen to know that she likes them circumcised. Well, I say it’s time for her to find out what a real man feels like. You wait your turn here, Gautama, and we’ll see what she thinks. It won’t take long.” Tim lunged toward me and I screamed, but Gautama stepped in front of him and spun him around in the other direction.

“Good night, my daughter,” he said to me, leading Tim away by the arm. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

27

I
left the reception badly shaken. For the first time in Shemaya, I feared for my personal safety. But was there really anything to be afraid of? Can a human soul be raped—or harmed in any other way? Tim Shelly looked like a man with a man’s body. I felt his hand on my back, on my body. But none of these things existed—and yet they did. And how was it possible for anti-Semitism to survive even after death? I wasn’t Jewish, and I never told Tim that Bo was. How did he know, and why did it matter? None of it made sense.

There was something genuinely cold and malicious about the way Tim looked at me. What happened to the sweet guy who thought he was a waitress and camped out with his father—the guy who visited Tara with me, and sailed with me on the caravel, and worried about how his mother was taking his death? Maybe it was just the alcohol talking . . . but how can a human soul consume alcohol, let alone become intoxicated?

I walked down the long corridor of offices. A chill came over me when I reached Tim’s office, but this was nothing compared to the stab of dread I felt when I saw my own name on the office door next to his, engraved on a brand-new plaque. “Brek Abigail Cuttler, Presenter.”

The door was unlocked, and I went in. The office was identical to Luas’s, with a small desk, two chairs, two candles on the desk, and no windows. I was not the first occupant: the two candles had been burned unevenly, their sides and brass holders clotted with polyps of wax. It was a claustrophobic little room, a confessional in a rundown cathedral. The air hung damp and heavy, laden with the sins of those who had exhaled their lives there. But it was mine. I lit the candles, closed the door, and settled in behind the desk to enjoy the privacy.

Then came a knock at the door.

Tim?

I slipped quietly around the desk and braced the guest chair against the door.

The knock came again, followed this time by a girl’s voice, Asian-sounding and unfamiliar: “May I come in, please?”

“Who is it?” I said, wedging the guest chair more tightly into place with my foot.

“My name is Mi Lau. I knew your uncle Anthony. I saw you leave the reception.”

“Anthony Bellini?” I said.

“Yes. May I come in?”

I pulled the guest chair away from the door and opened it. What I saw standing before me was so hideous and repulsive that I shrieked in horror and slammed the door shut again. A young girl stood in the doorway, her body burned almost beyond recognition and still smoldering, as if the flames had just been extinguished. Most of her skin was gone, exposing shattered fragments of bone and tissue seared like gristle fused to a grill. Her right eye was missing, leaving a horrible gouge in her face. Beneath the socket were two rows of broken teeth without lips, cheeks, or gums and an expanse of white jawbone somehow spared the blackening of the flames. The stench of burned flesh overpowered the hallway and, now, my office.

“Please excuse my appearance,” the girl said through the door. “My death was not very pleasant. Nor, I can see, was yours.”

I looked down and saw myself as Mi Lau had seen me—as I had seen myself when I arrived in Shemaya, naked with three holes in my chest and covered with blood. I opened the door again. Mi Lau and I stared at each other, sizing each other up like two monsters in a horror movie. We obviously could not communicate or even be in each other’s presence if our wounds were all we could see, so we engaged in the same charade played by all the souls of Shemaya, agreeing to see in each other only the pleasant hologram reflections of life the way we wished it had been.

In this filtered and refracted light, Mi Lau suddenly became a beautiful, young teenage girl with yellow topaz skin, large brown eyes, and long, thick, dark hair. She was a child on the verge of becoming a young woman—fresh, radiant, and pure, and dressed in a pretty pink gown, making the gruesomeness of her death all the more cruel and difficult to reconcile.

“I am very sorry my appearance frightened you,” she said. She spoke in the rhythmic, loose-guitar-string twang of Vietnamese, but I somehow understood her words in English, as if I were listening to a hidden interpreter.

“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” I said. “I didn’t expect anybody at the door and then, well . . . yes, you frightened me. Please, come in.”

Mi Lau sat in the guest chair with her hands folded in her lap. I closed the door and returned to my place behind the desk.

“How do you know my uncle Anthony?” I asked. “He died before I was born.”

“We met during the war,” Mi Lau said, “and he is also one of my clients.”

“My uncle is on trial here?” I asked. “Can I see him?”

“Yes, you can come see his trial. I present his case every day.”

“The Judge ends it before you finish?”

“Yes, like the others.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why bother having a trial?”

Mi Lau said nothing.

“How did you meet during the war?” I asked. “What was he like?”

“Your uncle came to my village with other American soldiers,” Mi Lau said. “They were chasing the Viet Cong. The VC stayed with us. We had no choice. They were mostly just young boys. They left us alone and didn’t harm us.

“When the Americans came, there were gunshots, and my family hid in a tunnel beneath our hut. Always my mother would go into the tunnel first, then my sister, me, and my father last. But the fighting caught us by surprise, and this time I was last. The tunnel was narrow, and we had to crawl on our stomachs. We could hear the machine guns and the Americans shouting, and the VC boys screaming. My sister and I covered our ears and trembled like frightened rabbits.”

“It must have been horrible,” I said.

“Yes. But the fighting did not last long. Soon all became quiet until a powerful explosion shook the ground. Dirt fell into my hair, and I was afraid the tunnel might collapse. My father said the American soldiers were blowing up the tunnels in our village and we must get out quickly. I crawled toward the entrance, and that is when I saw your uncle. He was kneeling over the hole, holding a grenade in his hand. I remember it clearly. A crucifix with the right arm broken off dangled from his neck. I remember thinking it looked like a small bird with a broken wing. I smiled up at him. I was so naive, I thought that Americans were there to help us, that they were our friends. But he didn’t smile back. He looked at me with terrible, hateful eyes, and then he pulled the pin and dropped the grenade into the hole.

“‘No! No!’ I screamed. ‘We’re down here!’ The grenade rolled between my legs. It felt cold and smooth, like a river stone. I saw him turn his head and cover his ears. And then it exploded.”

Mi Lau spoke without anger or emotion, as if she were describing nothing more than planting rice in a field. I lowered my head, too ashamed and distraught to look at her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Thank you,” Mi Lau said. “I know all about your family from presenting him. They seem like such nice people. It is funny. Your uncle was convinced you would be a boy before you were born, but he was so happy when he found out you were a girl.”

“I was told he died a hero.”

“Maybe he did,” Mi Lau said, “but a hero is something that lives in other people’s minds. After blowing up all the tunnels in our village, he went off with some of the other soldiers to smoke marijuana. He said to them with a laugh: ‘The best thing about blowing up tunnels full of gooks in the morning is that they’re already in their graves and you can spend the rest of the afternoon smoking dope.’ Then an hour later, he wandered off by himself and shot himself in the head. That was heroic maybe, to take his own life so he could no longer take the lives of others.”

It took me a long time to absorb what she had said.

“How can you represent him if he killed you and your family?” I asked. “I’m sorry about what he did, but how can he get a fair trial? I mean, naturally you would want him to be convicted—and maybe he should be. That’s probably why he’s still here.”

Mi Lau’s eyes narrowed and she straightened herself indignantly. “I present Anthony Bellini’s life exactly as he lived it,” she said. “I cannot change what he did, and I do not bias the presentation in any way. Luas monitors us closely and disciplines any presenter who attempts to influence the result.”

“But how can you even face him after what he did to you?”

“He can’t hurt me again,” Mi Lau said. “And I feel better knowing justice is being done. All is confessed in the Courtroom . . . there are no lies. Some say Shemaya is where Jesus stayed for three days after his death, before ascending into heaven, presenting all the souls who have ever lived. I believe Shemaya is where the final battle is fought between good and evil. Evil must not be permitted to win. It must not be allowed to hide or disguise itself; it must be rooted out, and destroyed, and all those who perpetrate evil must be punished.”

Mi Lau stood, and suddenly she was transformed back into the girl whose body had been mutilated and blown apart by my uncle’s grenade. “I must go now,” she said. “Welcome to Shemaya. You will be serving God here. You will be serving justice.”

28

I
woke the next morning to the nutty-sweet aroma of Irish porridge. It was a delicious, familiar scent that I hadn’t smelled since Grandma Cuttler made it for my grandfather and me on the farm. I went downstairs and found Nana Bellini in the kitchen, already dressed for the day. She gave me a kiss on the forehead and placed a steaming bowl of porridge before me at the kitchen table.

“You’ll need your strength today,” she said.

There was something different about her. Her eyes seemed distant and moist, almost melancholy. I hadn’t seen her this way before.

“Thanks,” I said, delighted with the breakfast. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s just that the time has come for me to go, and I’m sad we’ll be apart.”

“Go? What do you mean, go? Go where?”

“Just go, child, go on. You came here wounded and frightened, and there’s still some pain and fear left in you, but it no longer controls you. You’ve recovered from the shock of death. That’s why I was here, to help you. You’re a presenter now. You need space to experience, to spread out your thoughts and look them over—space to study and understand. The next steps you take must be your own. You’re ready, and I’m proud of you. We’re all proud of you. You give us hope.”

I was terrified. “Take me with you,” I begged. “I don’t want to be a presenter. There’s no justice here. Uncle Anthony, Amina Rabun, Toby Bowles . . . they’re all convicted before their presenters even enter the Courtroom. The same trials are held every day, and the same verdicts are issued. It’s . . . it’s hell, not heaven.”

Nana went to the counter to get some coffee. “Maybe you were brought here to change all that. Maybe God needs you to fix it.”

“But God created it, and God is the judge. He’s the one who stops the trials before a defense can be made. Only He can fix it.”

“That’s not God’s way,” Nana said. “We all have free choice, Brek. You have a choice about the kind of presenter you want to be, just as you had a choice about the kind of person you wanted to be.”

“I don’t want to be a presenter at all.”

Nana sat down next to me. “That choice was already made, child. You chose to come here. The question is not whether you will be a presenter, but what kind of presenter you will be. That is something you must decide for yourself. You’ll feel differently after you meet your first client. The postulants need you, Brek. You mustn’t abandon them.”

“But you’re abandoning me.”

“That’s not true. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to you.”

I didn’t feel ready. I knew I was rooted in solid ground, that I had been planted there by her, this remarkable woman who had nursed me when I passed through my mother’s womb, and who nursed me again when I passed through the womb of life.

“Where will you go?” I asked. “Will I be able to see you?”

“Oh, I couldn’t describe it to you in a way you’d understand,” Nana said. “What I can tell you, though, is that, like all places, I’m going to a place I choose and that I help to create. I don’t know where it is, or what it will be like, but I do know that it is a thought to which I go—a thought I’ve been thinking that, like all thoughts cultivated and cared for, becomes manifest in a tiny corner of the universe so that it may be experienced. Creation transcends everything, child. A million-billion acts of choice become a million-billion acts of creation.”

“But I already lost you once, Nana,” I said. “I can’t bear losing you again.”

“
Shhhh
, child,
shhhh
,” she whispered. And then she gave me what I needed most—one last, brief, wonderful moment of childhood. She held me close and pressed my face against the wrinkled skin of her cheek. She allowed me to hear the strong pumping of her heart and smell the sweet fragrance of her skin. In her embrace I felt safe again. And then she said, “Haven’t you learned, child? Don’t you see? Visit my garden when you have doubts. Learn from the plants that live and die there and yet live again. And remember, oh child, always remember that I was here to greet you when you thought I had gone so long, long ago. You didn’t lose Bo and Sarah, Brek. And you will never lose me. Love can never be destroyed.”

29

W
hen Nana left Shemaya, so did I. I wanted nothing to do with the sordid proceedings of the Courtroom. I would have rather spent eternity alone than participate in them.

Although Tim Shelly had turned on me, he had done me a great favor by showing me that I had the power to go anywhere, anytime, by simply thinking about it. So, I decided to do just that, embarking upon my own Grand Tour of the earth, seeing and doing things no person had ever done, or could ever do, in a single lifetime. I needed a vacation, an escape from death.

I started off at a leisurely pace, recreating and sunbathing on some of the most exclusive beaches in the world: Barbados, the French Riviera, the Greek Islands, Tahiti, Dubai, and Rio de Janeiro. I lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous, sleeping in the most exclusive villas and resorts, sailing aboard the most luxurious yachts, flying on private helicopters and jets, arriving in the most expensive limousines, dining at the finest restaurants, drinking the most expensive champagnes, shopping at the most exquisite jewelers and boutiques, and winning—and losing—millions of dollars at the most exclusive casinos. It was a dream life, a heaven. I scuba dived the coral reefs of the Galápagos, climbed the highest mountains of every continent, trekked across the Sahara, sailed solo around the world, paddled a canoe the entire length of both the Amazon and the Nile, walked the Great Wall of China, visited the North and South Poles, and went on safari across the game lands of Africa.

All this was great fun—for a while. But I was alone everywhere I went—on the beaches, in the villas, on the planes, in the casinos. I had nobody to share my good fortune with or even to envy me from afar. I imagined that this must be how God felt before creating humanity. Could there be any greater sorrow in all the universe than having all of
this
and no one to share it with? As I traveled alone from one wonder of the world to another, from ocean to desert to mountain, I came to understand why God would have been willing to risk everything—even rejection, suffering, and war, as Luas had said—for the joy of hearing just one breathless human being say, “Oh
my God
 . . . look at that!”

Yes, by taking this journey I had been able to avoid Tim Shelly, Mi Lau, Luas, Elymas, and what I considered to be the tragedy and injustice of the Courtroom, but I needed to share my experience of the afterlife as much as I had needed to share my experience of life itself. Like God, perhaps, I grew increasingly desperate for an
other
, a companion in my paradise.

In this way, I came slowly to understand why the serpent had told Eve that it is the risk of evil that makes life rich and the experience of contentment and joy even possible. I had returned, in a way, to the Garden of Eden and found it to be as wanting as Eve had found it; for in paradise, there is only perfection. Without its opposite, perfection cannot be understood or experienced, just as the light from a candle at the center of the sun cannot be understood or experienced until it is removed from the sun and placed into the darkness.

Strangely, at the end of my tour of all the riches of the earth, I was ready, again, to be cast out of paradise. Jesus was said to have experienced a similar moment after the devil offered him all the kingdoms of the world but Jesus turned them down, accepting the risk of suffering and death for the sake of experiencing love.

And so, as Gautama had said I would, I returned to the place of my journey’s beginning, seeing it again for the first time. I returned ready now for my first client. But secretly I was hoping, as I had hoped every day since I arrived in Shemaya, that this would be the day I would be told it had all been a very strange and terrifying dream. And that it was time to wake up.