Blameless in Abaddon (36 page)

“If our goal were simply to protect our Client from disconnection and death, we would ask you to annul this case forthwith. We would preface our petition by arguing that judicial bodies such as the World Court are empowered to prosecute people rather than deities, and that Your Honors' jurisdiction does not extend to the numinous.

“We shall make no such request. On the contrary, we could not be more pleased that
International 227
has been convened. For far too long the best solutions to the problem of evil have been the private possession of a few cloistered theologians. It's time the public at large received the answers. Looking around this courtroom, I notice lights, cameras, microphones, and journalists. To this I say, ‘Good!' Our Client has nothing to hide. He justified Himself to Job, and before the summer is out He will have justified Himself to you.”

Lovett now launched into an elaborate philosophical analysis of the three qualities the pre-coma God was generally believed to possess: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence. He noted that, over the years, epistemologists had attempted to place logical limits on the Defendant's power, knowledge, and generosity. These misguided sophists liked to assert, for example, that God could not square a circle or create a stone too heavy for Him to lift. They argued that God had evidently been unable to foresee the Fall of Man—hence His righteous indignation when it occurred. In Lovett's view, such arguments were merely word games, failing to diminish the Almighty in any meaningful way.

“One popular solution to the conundrum of suffering, a solution with which I shall not waste anyone's time this summer, is essentially a compromise. This answer holds that, given the fact of evil, we cannot rationally ascribe to the pre-coma God His three traditional attributes. If the Defendant was allknowing and all-good, He can't have been all-powerful—otherwise He would have continually intervened to end our pain. If the Defendant was all-powerful and all-good, He must have been unaware of our torment. Finally, if He was all-powerful and all-knowing, He was amoral at best and malicious at worst.

“We shall not take the easy way out. We shall not presume our Client was ignorant of human misery, nor shall we suggest He was incapable of ending it. At the moment I wouldn't blame any of you for saying, ‘The riddle is unsolvable. Either God is guilty as charged, or He was never really God.' But the riddle
is
solvable, Your Honors. The answer is satisfying but subtle. You will have to listen carefully to my witnesses—one of whom, I am pleased to report, will be Martin Candle himself, so profound is his commitment to learning the truth about human suffering. By the time
International 227
is over, you will all know why no contradiction exists between the stark reality of pain and the assumption of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, worshipworthy Creator. Thank you.”

“So . . . what do you think?” asked Martin apprehensively.

“If I ever blow up a nursery school,” said Esther glumly, “Lovett's the man I want defending me.”

“Blow up ten nursery schools,” said Randall, “and he'll probably take the case for free.”

“The tribunal will stand in recess until ten o'clock tomorrow morning,” said Torvald, lethargically rapping his Christmas gavel on the bench.

T
HE ONLY
E
NGLISH-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPERS
on sale in the pharmacy of the Huize Bellevue were the
International Herald Tribune
and
USA Today
, and the morning after delivering his opening statement Martin bought a copy of each for five guilders apiece. Surprisingly,
USA Today
covered recent events at the Peace Palace in greater detail than did the
Tribune
, though its treatment of Martin's performance was far less sympathetic. Whereas the
Tribune
editorial claimed that “from start to finish, Candle presented himself as a passionate student of life's deepest mysteries,”
USA Today
asserted that “the chief prosecutor came across not so much as an accuser as a whiner, a man with an adolescent chip on his shoulder and a sophomoric obsession on his mind.”

A passionate student of life's deepest mysteries:
Martin liked that—he liked it so much he clipped the phrase from the paper and placed it in his wallet, where it became a kind of caption to his driver's license photo. Hobbling into the Peace Palace at 9:45
A.M.
, his right hand gripping the mahogany cane Patricia had given him the night before, he felt more certain of victory than at any time since conceiving
International 227.
He sat down, propped his cane against the prosecution table, smiled at Randall, and gave Esther an affectionate pat on the arm.

“Well, folks, here we go.”

“Off to kill the wizard,” said Esther.

“Did you catch Court TV last night?” asked Randall.

“No.” Martin studied the head of his cane; it was sculpted to resemble a crocodile, though to his Jobian's imagination it looked more like Leviathan. “I was reading witness dossiers and back issues of the
Augustinian Quarterly
.”

“They reran your whole speech.”

“How did I look?”

“Otherworldly. That white suit makes you glow.”

With a desultory rap of his golden gavel, Torvald convened the tribunal and invited the prosecution to examine its first witness.

Martin grabbed his cane, stood up, and limped toward the lectern. “The people call Norma Bedloe.”

The witness chamber door swung open, and Martin's leadoff sufferer stepped forward, a hunched, shriveled woman in a blue print dress, a symmetrical pair of plastic tubes arcing upward from her nostrils like a Salvador Dali mustache. Her right hand gripped the flange of an oxygen bottle: a green, lozengeshaped metal tank that she dragged behind her like a penitential weight.

As Norma settled behind the stand, the court usher—an elfin young man with waxy skin—slapped a Dutch Reformed Church Bible into her palm and said, “Please state your name.”

The witness identified herself, swore to speak the truth, and, prompted by Martin, launched into her story. A lifelong resident of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, Norma had entered the world too soon, a three-pound preemie cursed with a malformed liver. For the past thirty-five years, her body had been relentlessly engaged in poisoning itself. Her left lung was ruined, her right ventricle damaged, her cerebellum injured, her spine wrecked. She had suffered three myocardial infarctions in as many years. She was always cold. Every day, Norma kept her symptoms under control and her pain in check by swallowing sixty-seven different pills, tablets, lozenges, and capsules.

“The problem is, half the time I throw 'em up before they can get in my blood.” Norma leaned toward the witness-stand microphone, a sleek cylinder affixed to a gooseneck shaft. “That's the great fear a person like me has to live with.”

“The fear of regurgitating your pills?” Martin propped his elbows on the lectern, resting his jaw between his fists.

“Right. Ever since I decided to end it all, I've been scared my stomach won't cooperate.”

“You intend to commit suicide?”

Norma nodded. “No American doctor has been willing to help me out. When I realized I'd be getting a free trip to the Netherlands, I decided to book an early flight. Three days ago I met with a gastroenterologist in Amsterdam who told me exactly which over-the-counter drugs would . . . you know . . .”

“Stop your heart?” asked Martin, furtively eating a Roxanol.

“Right. As soon as I understood what he was saying, my eyes filled with tears of joy.” From her dress pocket she produced a picture postcard. “He wrote the formula on the back of this card. The other side shows Rembrandt's
The Blinding of Samson.
I've probably kissed Samson a hundred times by now.”

“Your final exit is scheduled for . . .”

“Soon as I get home. Three of my girlfriends will be dropping by. A kind of going-away party.”

Slowly—too slowly—the sacred opium pacified the crab. “Miss Bedloe, I have just one more question. Who would you say is responsible for your suffering?”

Lovett waved his hand about in a perfunctory gesture of protest. “Objection,” he said without bothering to rise.

“Overruled,” said Torvald dryly.

I should hope so, thought Martin.

Norma's jaw tightened. “It's not really my place to judge Him . . . but I will say this—I think He gave me the worst damn liver in Creation.”

“You blame the Defendant?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I blame the Defendant.”

A sensation somewhere between exhilaration and terror washed through Martin. With Norma Bedloe's unequivocal accusation—transcribed in English by the court stenographer and echoed in French by the translator—a threshold had been crossed.
International 227
was no longer one man's private grudge match. Now it belonged to the world.

Two minutes later Lovett stood before the witness, addressing her in a manner at once gentle and paternalistic.

“You're thirty-five years old, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And now you intend to end it all?”

“Right.”

“That makes me very sad, Miss Bedloe.”

“Nobody's asking you to come to the party.”

“As you probably know, until quite recently three-pound preemies typically died within hours of their births. Some people would say it's a miracle you're here at all.”

“Thank God for small favors,” said Norma with a carefully practiced sneer.

“Atta girl,” whispered Randall to his teammates.

“You picked a winner,” muttered Martin, squeezing Esther's hand.

“Do you wish you'd died at birth?” asked Lovett.

“I get that question a lot,” said Norma.

“How do you answer it?”

“Depends on who I'm talking to. Sometimes I tell people what they want to hear. Sometimes I tell 'em the truth.”

“And what is the truth?” asked Lovett, smiling expansively.

“I wish I'd died.”

Lovett's smile remained disconcertingly intact. “As you were growing up, did you ever ask your heavenly Father to make you well?”

“You mean . . . did I pray? Sure, I prayed. Wouldn't you?”

“Why would you beseech a God you regarded as malevolent?”

“I've never regarded Him as malevolent.”

“How
do
you regard Him?”

“Hard to say. Kind of like those scientists Boris Karloff used to play in the old horror movies, always trying to discover a cure for cancer or death or something. Inevitably the experiment would backfire, after which Karloff would go off his rocker.”

“You see God as a mad scientist?”

“That's right.”

“Boris Karloff?”

“Boris Karloff.”

“No further questions.”

“Do you wish to redirect?” Torvald asked Martin.

“No, Your Honor,” Martin replied, cavorting internally. Norma needed no redirection. She'd never lost her bearings.

For his second sufferer of the morning, Martin called Wanda Jo Jenkins, an earthy adolescent reminiscent of Lot's pregnant daughter Shuah.

“How old are you?” he asked Wanda Jo after she'd given her oath.

“I turn seventeen tomorrow, sir,” she answered in a melodious Southern accent.

“Is that a wedding ring I see on your hand?”

“It is.”

“So you're married, then?”

“I'm a widow, sir.”

“Please tell the tribunal about your late husband.”

In an unrehearsed but brilliantly effective move, Wanda Jo looked directly toward the bench. “Maybe you judges read about it in
People
magazine. Billy was one of those three hemophiliac brothers who got AIDS from a batch of contaminated blood factor.”

“Are you referring to the so-called Atlanta Blood Center scandal?” asked Martin.

“I am, sir.”

“Did Billy Jenkins know he was dying when you married him?”

“He did.”

“How old were you?”

“On our wedding day I was fifteen and Billy was fourteen.” A collective gasp wafted through the courtroom.

“Where were you and Billy living?”

“Bossier City, Louisiana, but we had to go across the state border into Carthage. Fourteen-year-olds can't get legally married in Louisiana. They can in Texas.”

“Were your parents supportive of this union?”

“The night before I walked down the aisle, my daddy said to me, ‘Wanda Jo, normally I'd boot your butt for doin' something like this, but I gotta tell you that right now I'm probably the proudest father in the whole US of A.”

“Did Billy Jenkins have any AIDS symptoms at this time?”

“Yes, sir. He was an outpatient at Bertram Percy Children's Hospital in Shreveport. We had to wheel his bed into the church. He married me lying down.”

This couldn't be going better, thought Martin, who had himself performed four such ceremonies during his career as a JP. “That must have been a pretty emotional day for you.”

“It was the happiest day of my life.”

“Did you marry Billy because you pitied him?”

“No, sir. I married him because I was in love with him. And also . . . well, I knew if we didn't get married, Billy would still be a boy when he died and not a man.”

“Was Billy a man when he died?”

“He was, sir.”

“You were taking a certain risk, weren't you?”

“We used condoms. Billy was a great lover, very enthusiastic. Near the end it got too painful for him because of the lesions all over his body.”

Martin paused, letting Billy's Jobian sores engrave themselves into the judges' imaginations.

“Do you consider yourself a religious woman, Mrs. Jenkins?”

“Most every Sunday I attend Mount Calvary Methodist Church back home in Bossier City.”