Father, Son, and Holy Ghost through all eternity. All eternity—really? God help us.
The choir droned on, the same choir they heard every year, singing the same homely hymn it sang every year. What did it mean, “holy ghost”? As a child, the phrase frightened him; now, it only irritated. Were God and Jesus actually one and the same? He knew that various councils had pretty much sorted that out ages ago, but had they really? How many people believed this stuff? He gazed around at the nodding heads and the rapt smiles and the dewy eyes, the features of the faithful doing their faithful thing and believing in hearsay. Must be nice to have faith.
Or not. Remember the Cathars? They had faith, had it in spades, and look what it got them: burned alive. Nice Christian thing to do. Who says it won’t happen again? Look what the Muslims are doing to each other. Through all insanity… He was not here to pay obeisance to a deity, he was here with his wife, as he was every Christmastime, to listen to the choir. It was a good choir, he supposed, but it was the same thing every year, the same nine faces, none of them anything much to look at, all dressed in the same boring black (was there some rule that all musicians must wear black?), singing the same hymns and other churchly stuff. “Early music,” they called it, as if no one made music before the Middle Ages. It was all very earnest and pleasant enough, but after a while the hollow intervals and thin harmonies paled. Did they really not have thirds back then? He didn’t believe it; people have always filled up space, temporal and otherwise.
The audience was the usual mass of gray and balding heads, and few young people. “It’s mostly elderly that attend these things,” he used to like to joke. Back when they were younger. She would nudge him and chuckle. Then, at some obscure turning point, she stopped chuckling and instead sighed and said, “Yes, dear.” He took that to mean she’d had enough, so now he says nothing.
Kyrie eleison. Full of beseechings and passive-aggressive demands, the music soared, begging for God’s attention. His eyes followed the ascending chant up the arch and over the nave or vomitory or whatever the hell they called it, and he imagined vines enveloping the ruins of the church in a few hundred years, twisting and constricting like Cerberus exacting pagan revenge. The church had been built in the twenties; the interior was rough brick, but the original intent had been to finish it with stone or marble. But the money dried up in the Great Depression and the brick was left exposed, raw and ruddy for all Christendom to see. The arches over the altar were edged in three ragged rows of serrated brick and waiting for the next minor earthquake to rain brickbats down on the heads of the seated congregation as they beseeched their God, who would of course be with them but strangely powerless—or unwilling—to intervene. He gazed up at the hovering death-bricks and wondered how many of the listeners subscribed to the non-interventionist “God-does-no-favors” school and how many belonged to the “God’s will” school that took earthquakes and rains of brickbats as expressions of higher purpose. Either way, they were screwed.
Someone nearby wore the faint stench of dinner on their clothes. The thirty-something couple just ahead, perhaps; they looked like people who would have eaten a meager fried-food dinner at home before the concert. They had youthful-looking hair and skin, but wore the clothes and attitude of middle-age, he a study in gray—gray sweater with gray plaid shirt underneath, short grayish-brown hair, gray complexion—she a study in beige: beige sweater with shawl collar and beige-and-gray silk scarf, her cornflower hair knotted in a firm beige bum. Where did sex fit in with them? Probably wordlessly and comfortably, like their sensible shoes, or perhaps spiced with sly whispers and even some nasty bits of bondage and discipline. You never knew.
Here and there were lush islands of youth. Coming in, he’d seen a slim young man in an old man’s black topcoat and a red plaid muffler wrapped high around his face, holding the hand of a sleek, dark-haired young woman in a white wool coat. The young man gave his thick brown hair a demure shake when he pulled his scarf loose, and gazed into the cathedral with shining, dreamy eyes. He tried to keep them in view, but they vanished into the mob to be lulled into churchly vapidity with everyone else.
Tendrils of melody twined toward the ceiling, yearning, keening, beseeching, demanding, God on high, God have mercy, God protect us, God be with us (dammit) kyrieeleison, godgod gogmagogyogsothoth! “People said “Gosh,” as if in fear of drawing lightning or brickbats down upon their blaspheming heads from the great Godly arm poised to smite, smite upon the faintest uttering of His Name in Vain—ka–bong! Well, a lot of folks could use a good smiting. No doubt on that score! The thought made him smile, and he continued to think about smiting, smiting someone hard on the buttocks, smite on the bum, smite on the ugly mug that you’ve become, I’ll give you something to smite about, smitesmitesmitesmite.
Say, for example, this woman two rows up, with thick, raven-black hair: bit of cheek there, just possibly smite-ripe. She turned her head, smiling at the woman beside her, and he saw that she was older than she appeared from behind and not at all attractive. The vision deflated him and his eyes wandered back to the old-young couple. The woman had an odd sort of carbuncle on the back of her neck. No, it was her hand. Why would someone hold their hand on the back of their neck like that?
The man next to him, a lumpen gray middle-ager who obviously liked his food, fidgeted with his program. He was not looking at it, just dumbly turning it over and over with his thick red fingers and picking at the edges of the pages. Pick-pick-pick. What made grown men fidget so? Lack of sex, or too much? He turned away from the man and tried to tune him out, and found himself looking toward another brunette, chisel-jawed, fortyish. He continued looking and conceived a scheme whereby, upon telepathic command from him, she would fling herself over the intervening pews and squirm down upon him, breathe hotly into his face, and whisper fiercely, Smite me, please, smite me!
He scarcely noticed as the choir moved from arid plainsong into a more modern composition, angular and ominous, almost James Bond-ish. This was more like it. But then the words ruined it: God-is-with-us everywhere…Well, no, he isn’t. He wasn’t “with us” at Auschwitz, or on the Lusitania as all those little children drowned. Wasn’t with us when Belgian gunners mowed down African families in the Congo. Wasn’t there at the church in Oradour-sur-Glane when the goddamn Nazis burned the women and children in God’s own house. Wasn’t even there for his own son, for Chrissake. Gods and monsters: what the hell was the difference?
Intermission came and aging armatures struggled painfully erect. Someone farted loudly. Hands in pockets, they stood in place or tottered aimlessly into the aisle, a jostling mass of retired executives, professors, lawyers, department heads, sex kittens, bent backs, scabby bald heads (did they actually pick them?), spotted hands, and drooping, tragic faces, faces furrowed by work, children, family, duty, obligation, unfulfilled desire, guilt, and fear, workworkworkfearfearfear. Work, fatigue, fear, disappointment: that’s what we should really be singing about. Many wore Yuletide red and green, putting up a brave front against the black unknown of the impending new year. Or death, whichever came first.
A handsome older woman, tall and erect in a gray sweater and high black boots, stood nodding soberly at a man friend. She threw him a tight smile then strode away toward the front, marching as to war through God’s house, leaving her male friend (had they been lovers, once?), in sagging khakis and a rumpled sport coat, smiling pathetically at the place she’d vacated. Women, in their boots and sexual potency and hard-fought (as to war) professional lives: they were the real power, the riders. Men were only pack animals.
He stood and his wife smiled up at him. “Are you enjoying it, honey?” she asked. “Very much,” he said, stretching his neck and looking casually around. Where was the young couple? After a moment he saw them standing by a pillar. The fellow, wearing a maroon sport coat, was leaning back on the pillar and talking earnestly with his girlfriend, who was leaning into him and caressing his lapels. He grew faintly aroused at the sight. When had that last happened to him, and why did it have to stop happening? What did the couple find to talk about so earnestly, so hotly? Making plans for later, probably: for dancing, drinking, sex. What else was there at that age? The young man’s eyes flicked toward him so he looked away and sat back down and rested his hand lightly on his wife’s thigh. She smiled at him and he leaned in and kissed her softly.
The large man next to him reached into the hymnal rack and pulled out some small pieces of paper and envelopes. The papers bore the legend For Little Lambs—something for restless kids to doodle on. There was nothing else on them, but the man flipped through them slowly, staring at them and trying to digest that there was indeed nothing else written on them. He began replacing them on the rack, but his hand was wobbly and one of the little envelopes caught an edge on the papers behind. Didn’t he see that it was going to catch and probably fall? Yes, there went all the papers, onto the floor. With a sound like air being forced from a punching bag, the man bent over into the well, slowly picked up the papers and envelopes, and put them back into the rack. As he finished, he patted them firmly into the rack as if patting a dog’s head.
Without warning the choir reentered, black reapers heralding the coming apocalypse. All this constant black, year after year, black, black, black. Well, it was “classical,” wasn’t it? Spiritual. Shit, couldn’t primary colors be just as damn spiritual or whatever? Maybe he would write a letter: Dear choir director, enough fucking black, already.
He sighed softly, the figures of doom stood stiffly, the director tapped his fork against his head (forming a scab which, years from now, he would pick at), and the group burst into a quaint roundelay. The absurd fa-la-las made him think of Monty Python, and he suppressed a wave of laughter. Thank God, or somebody, he could still laugh. He glanced briefly at the chisel-jawed brunette, now regretting his earlier mental indiscretion, then turned his eyes again into the realm of God and brickbats, following the insipid round as it twined and twirled toward the inevitable, God on high, God is with us, God please be with usandsmitedownourunworthysoulsonourmiserableflatulentbums, fa-la-fa-la-fa-la-fucky-fucky-ya-ya.
Unworthy souls? Sure, men were unworthy, but not because they didn’t believe in God but because they were pigs. Farting, scab-picking, fornicating, murderous pigs. “God” didn’t enter into it. Did no one here get it—did no one here doubt? Of course they did; even among the faithful, there had to be doubts. A guy comes along, says he’s a prophet, and, bam! Everything changes. People are such suckers, they love having their pockets picked and hearing the same tired old rubbish.God—God-who? Oh, you’re both God! So sayeth the monophysites or the mononucleites or whoever the hell. Religion was so much delusion. When would people catch on? Probably never.
The lump of dough next to him was now studying his program, apparently not having had time to do so during the interval. He held it stiffly up to his jowly red face, making a soft rustling sound, rustle-rustle, then began sliding his finger along one edge, slide-crinkle-slide-crinkle.
He conceived a fresh mental scheme whereby he put his right hand on the back of the rustling man’s head and bashed it into the back of the next pew. The thought made him smile with pleasure, and he redirected his attention to the choir as it sent its godly (goshly?) tendrils twining Heavenward. The music, good old Saint Saens, shed its ancient baggage and was truly heavenly, now, and it made him think of the dewy young couple back in their little love nest apartment having sex, the young man pumping relentlessly into her, pumppumppumppumppa-rum-pa-pumpumpum, la-la-la-la! What did their screams sound like?
His wife’s warm thigh touched his. She may have tired of his wan humor, but she never tired of him. The thought gratified and reassured him. He must try to be a better husband. Even having the option, he knew, was a blessing, a real, honest-to-gosh blessing, God or no God. A bright ray lanced through his mind: After the concert, by gosh, he would take them down to the 13 Coins for spaghetti and vino rosso, fun on Saturday night, night of love and romance and adventure! He must live up to her faith in him, the faith of love—the highest kind of faith. They would go out and have fun, and after that—why, anything could happen.
He looked again at the chisel-jawed brunette and saw that her companion, a middle-aged man with a goatee, had his arm draped over her shoulders. A draping couple, probably had sex every day. Whereas daily sex was probably long over for most of these people. Not that this sad reality precluded thinking about sex. He gazed around at the heads: how much thinking about sex was happening this moment? It was a question he often posed; the fish-shop man, the code-writer, the teacher at noon, the cop on the bike, the baker at five: how much did they think about it, and how intensely? The answer was obvious: constantly. You knew damn well they did. Just look at them, even the most ravaged, bowed, beaten, humiliated of them: still enthralled by it. Greedily, relentlessly, the horny hand of sex sustained them, even as it destroyed them.
Considering a rim job from the auburn-haired woman in the front row, the choir director turned and bowed. The concert was over and people once more creaked and farted as they stood and shuffled toward the exit. Outside, it was the same old Seattle: chilly, damp, and dreary. He looked around for the young couple and saw them getting bundled up for the night.What would they do next? Probably go have a drink, maybe go dancing, then home to their little apartment where they would share a beer and watch late-night television, then go to bed and have sex, wonderful, dewy, steamy young sex, sex that would make God tremble. And after that? After that, the inevitable: work, kids, sensible shoes, fat, disillusionment, estrangement, scab-picking, and wondering where the sex went. The finality was inescapable; good old Terminus, the pagan god: he got it right. Life is a dead-end.
Well, fuck it, he thought, shucking into his coat. He felt suddenly ashamed; he had no business presuming upon the lives of young couple and defiling them with his own cynical, stale-smelling, fried-food thoughts. Old-man thoughts. No, he had no right.He had no right to defile is own life and marriage with such bile. Out, bile, I command thee!
He took his wife’s hand and they followed the tottering heads into the night. He loved his wife, he loved their life, but that life was built on constraint, moderation, and pleasure in simple things. They would not go downtown, they would not eat spaghetti, they would not get in the car and vie for space with thirty-somethings on their cell phones. They walk quietly home, eat a few nuts and apple slices, watch a little television, and go to bed, to sleep, dreamlessly and happily. And in the morning—why, anything could happen. As they reached the door he shot one last glance toward the ceiling, or Heaven, whichever came first.