Life Without The Boring Bits

by Colleen McCullough

  In the fullness of time, TTB will die away into nothing, part of the insubstantial pageant faded. Whereas The Masters of Rome, which is a teaching aid as well as a light shone on a different era, will continue. My only unfulfilled ambition? That uniform large-sized edition of all seven volumes.

  But not to worry. Time has a habit of solving everything.

  The really important thing is that I lived to finish my Roman books. Eat your heart out, Virgil.

  List of published works

  1974

  Tim

  1977

  The Thorn Birds

  1981

  An Indecent Obsession

  1982

  Cooking with Colleen McCullough and Jean Easthope

  1985

  A Creed for the Third Millennium

  1987

  The Ladies of Missalonghi

  1990

  The First Man in Rome

  1991

  The Grass Crown

  1993

  Fortune’s Favourites

  1996

  Caesar’s Women

  1997

  Caesar: Let the Dice Fly

  1998

  The Song of Troy

  1998

  Roden Cutler, V.C.

  2000

  Morgan’s Run

  2002

  The October Horse

  2003

  The Touch

  2004

  Angel Puss

  2006

  On, Off

  2007

  Antony and Cleopatra

  2008

  The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

  2009

  Too Many Murders

  2010

  Naked Cruelty

  2011

  Life Without the Boring Bits

  2012

  The Prodigal Son

  ETERNAL STATES

  It would seem that, in step with the evolution of the prefrontal cerebral cortex, came Man’s terror of dying, and our obsession with the postulated existence of an immortal life commencing when the mortal one here on Earth is over. We break out of our vile and tainted, disgustingly imperfect bodies as out of a chrysalis, to stand forth, exquisite butterfly or foetid cockroach, as an immortal soul.

  What is a soul?

  Mine is a literal mind, so when I was very young I thought a soul was shaped like the sole of a foot, and was pure white; I even visualized it in motion, undulating up and down like a flat snake through the sea. At about the moment when I might perhaps have transmogrified it into a shimmering, rainbow-hued puff of immortal mist, an old Irish priest told my seven-year-old First Communion class that there was no such thing as evolution. I dismissed the entire religious phenomenon as a load of tired old codswallop, and my interest in the soul perished.

  Only relatively recently have I returned to the contemplation of such things, not really because I now have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin; more because in my old age I am allowing myself the luxury of writing essays.

  What do I think of a soul today, in my mid seventies?

  First of all, that the laws of physics forbid its existence. It doesn’t age, or wither, or die. In other words. it is young as well as immortal. Both are impossible states of being when fused into a static package. Leading on from this, as it contains no matter of any kind, the soul must be invisible to every kind of eye, even the eye of a fellow soul. Eyeless in Eternity.

  Therefore I do not believe in souls. They are creatures of the imagination conjured up to make dying easier, and should be regarded as a lifelong funeral rite.

  That takes care of the immortal soul. Next comes Eternity, which is a state of utter nothingness. In Eternity nothing ever will happen, or ever did happen.

  By definition, Eternity is the opposite of Time, the opposite of existence. Nothingness!

  However, let me suppose that the soul does exist in Eternity. In which case, it must have places to go. There is no point in being alive if there’s no place to go, ask any of those dolled-up-to-the-nines young women one sees forming a patient line outside a place to “rave”. In my time, raving was something a psychotic maniac did as he swung a bloody axe. Rave, rave, rave. Never mind! Ours is a living language that certainly has an impressive soul. A description that highlights a different meaning for a soul: that divine spark illuminates some human characteristics.

  The first rule of an eternal place for souls to go is that it should accommodate only those with similar beliefs, habits and inclinations. This is why each religion varies from all other religions, rather like the pie wedges that septs form in a clan. The faithful flock must be made to feel exclusive, more favored by God than any other favored flock. In fact, most faithful flocks do not believe that any other faithful flocks get a look-in when God strolls around taking a census.

  Every religion has a happy place to offer those who live by and obey its tenets, and every religion has an unhappy place for those who do not live by and do not obey its tenets.

  Pray pardon me for confining myself to Christianity. I am afraid that I am not conversant enough with other religions to analyze them. The one thing that seems to be common to all religions here on planet Earth is that men invented them and, by and large, still run them. Women may be permitted to be anything from good wives to cattle, but never whole, rounded persons owning fantastically wide educations and running some sort of empire. Which, when one thinks that a man’s Y chromosome is really woman’s second X with one leg amputated, is hilarious. Though my mother, a truly superlative misanthrope, used to say that men had three legs, growl, snarl, hiss, gnash, roar.

  Christianity calls the happy place Heaven.

  There are so many Heavens that it’s difficult to know where to start — or when to stop. However, the sine qua non of any Heaven is perfect happiness, despite the fact that descriptions of what exactly perfect happiness means are thin on the ground — or in the clouds, for that matter. Not helped by exclusivity from creed to creed.

  I have this vision of a sky (Heaven is always “up”) with one set of Pearly Gates much bigger than all the others, outside which Peter sits at a supercomputer giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down decision that sends the lucky souls through this outer defence, made of gold and encrusted with gems. Once inside, the souls haplessly wander in search of their Heaven. The red brick gates in a high red brick wall say SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST and the ones with the Bernini Baldacchino say ROMAN CATHOLIC with, on a signpost headed ATTENTION SCHISMATICS! in smaller script: GREEK ORTHODOX 4 GATES DOWN, RUSSIAN ORTHODOX 37 GATES DOWN, EASTERN RITES 91 GATES DOWN. Other souls have to consult each set of minor Pearly Gates as they come to them under the general heading of HERESIES. Some Protestant sects prefer turnstiles, plain as at sporting venues or designed by luminaries from Eero Saarinen to Christopher Wren. The tartan gates saying PRESBYTERIAN have been boarded up and have a notice attached: CLOSED IN FAVOR OF THE UNITING CHURCH. The Church of England gates are black with gilt detail like the gates of Buckingham Palace; Henry VIII is on duty, chomping his way through haunches of venison while all six wives sigh besottedly, including the two with their heads tucked under their arms.

  Rowan Atkinson described Heaven as a place of talking to God, singing in choirs and watering pot plants. A description that comes pretty close to my own idea of what Heaven is like: a very boring place.

  Heaven is extremely light on sex, if sex exists at all. One may be joined in it by one’s earthly partner, but sex doesn’t appear to resume, though the body is young and in tip-top health. Imagine those billions of handsome men sustaining an erection forever, and no sex! Imagine those billions of gorgeous women actually feeling like it, and no sex! It is safe to say that sex is off the menu in any Christian heaven; to Christians, sex is a dirty word. Apropos of one’s earthly partner joining one, what happens when the earthly partners have been multiple? Which wife does a husband spend Eternity with? Does it have to be the dumb nurse who worked her buns off to put him through medical school,
or can it be the blonde bimbo he married in his sixties and died on top of just before he came?

  There doesn’t seem to be any food or drink in Heaven either, I presume because of the voluptuous pleasure superb cuisine can give its devourer. In fact, anything that smacks of gratification for the senses is right out in Heaven. Perfect happiness is a state of mind, it doesn’t depend upon the senses, so no sex and no fabulous taste thrills. Not even a bottle of Coke or anything else fizzy! I keep thinking of the rapturous look on a little girl’s face in Turkey way east of the Euphrates when Ric gave her a handful of candy — now that was Heaven!

  One thing I know for sure: God runs a dry operation! No Glenlivet Scotch or Veuve Clicquot, and, by extension, no kind of recreational substance. Man, just think of it! Finally one lands in a place where there’s no such thing as a hangover, and guess what? No intoxicants either!

  Here may be a good place to introduce the Wowser, pronounced as it is written — wow, sir! — slurred together. The Australians coined it, and I know of no other word to describe the Wowser save terms like “tub-thumper” and the like, but a Wowser can be a Wowser without living a church-bound existence. The word is dying out and it must not be allowed to die out; the species Wowser is anything but dying out. For instance, these days the worst sort of Environmentalist is a Wowser.

  The Wowser is a fanatic of a kind. In its old form, the Wowser saw sex as strictly for procreation, wouldn’t be in the presence of alcoholic beverages or loose women, ate plain food and used a sheep to mow the grass. Any joke is either dirty or moronic, especially one that offends the obsession: the Wowser sense of humor is vestigial or entirely absent.

  The etymology of the word isn’t known, nor need it be given a capital letter. Hitler had wowser tendencies.

  I ask a pertinent question: Will there be clothes in Heaven?

  When Michelangelo painted the Sistine frescoes, all the men were — um — well, naked. Then a later pope got the moral heeby-jeebies and ordered that a white cloth be painted over the nether regions of the males, even God’s. Adam stayed nude, possibly because his penis is so small it doesn’t count. As the pope is infallible, I therefore deduce that in Heaven all men will wear underpants and all women will wear sarongs. The male garment will have to have a little tent sewn into its front to hold the permanent erections comfortably; as Heaven contains perfect happiness, there is no such affliction as lover’s balls. Naturally these items of clothing will be dazzlingly white.

  Okay! No sex. No food. No drink. No alcohol. No stuff for snorting or shooting up or smoking. White underpants with little tents for men and white sarongs for women. The books will be volumes of sermons and religious treatises and the Bible. No art worth looking at in Heaven, which belongs to the Chocolate Box school. No zoos or zoosters. No pets. No deciduous trees or bushes. No anuses unless they’re tucked deep between buttocks. The sun shines eternally, there are no clouds in the sky, and night never falls.

  Heaven is all white, with touches of blue and green. All plants are in white plastic pots, and a special process turns potting mix snowy white. Kentia palms are hugely popular, as they don’t mind if someone neglects to water them, and the brown bit at the end of a frondlet can be trimmed off with celestial scissors. Rubber plants. African violets. Aspidistras. Ladder ferns. At Eastertide, potted hyacinths. At Christmastide, potted poinsettias. Potted pot’s pots betray their presence by turning a putrid yellow and oozing noisome pus.

  There will be music, but choral only, and since Heavenly happiness is perfect, everybody will love the endless repeats of King’s College Choir singing Allegri’s “Miserere”. Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” will get a colossal bashing, but, alas for poor Beethoven, his Ninth is too pagan to qualify. “Nearer My God to Thee” and “Rock of Ages” and “Onward Christian Soldiers” will be flogged not to death but to eternity. A trillion-name inter-denominational petition to God organized by the Wowsers protesting the bagpipes has resulted in the banning of “Amazing Grace”; the Scots promptly moved en masse into the abandoned premises of the Presbyterians and play “Scotland the Brave” on illicit bagpipes smuggled up from Hell in a haggis.

  Heaven does offer special treats. You can be baptized by John the Baptist in person. You can do a brick-by-brick, cobble-by-cobble tour of the Holy Land and be blown up by a suicide bomber, exchanging Christian and Muslim ideas of the perfect happiness awaiting as you fly into bloody little pieces. You can talk to God. You can sing in (some) choirs. You can water pot plants and trim the brown bits off Kentia palms. You can sit somewhere that’s simply too, too white with a very sharp knife and keep slashing yourself and watching the blood gush in the perfect happiness of knowing you are not going to die and there’s a much-needed touch of crimson in the vicinity. You can take trips to some planet where the ruling species has two heads, or four penises, or propagates by budding; this last is called “Heaven hopping” and is very popular. In fact, you can do what you want, go where you want. Except no sex. No fabulous taste thrills. No intoxicants. White underpants and sarongs. Et cetera, et cetera. You’re perfectly happy.

  Above the gold and jewel-encrusted Peter’s Pearly Gates it says BOREDOM IS BLISS and, below that in smaller script it says WOWSERS WELCOME.

  Now I come to the unhappy half of the eternal state.

  We may shed this life when we die, but we cannot shed its consequences. If in this life we lied, cheated, stole, foisted other men’s children off on our husbands, murdered, indulged in perversions, were lawyers or otherwise offended the tenets of our sex or tribe, we are sent to a place of eternal punishment when our souls stand forth as foetid cockroaches. The generic name for this place is Hell.

  In almost all instances, Hell is a seething mass of fire, agonizingly hot. Few indeed are the frozen Hells, probably due to the fact that those being frozen to immortal life go to sleep. Whereas those who burn die screaming every time. Dante wrote of it as layered — like with like. Some, chiefly Catholics of all kinds, have invented a temporary Hell called Purgatory, wherein the agonies are just as bad but have an end, after which the purged soul enters Heaven. Most Protestant Christian sects do not have a Purgatory. Once in Hell, it’s for all eternity.

  Lucifer the archangel led a revolution in Heaven to topple God, and lost. He was stripped of his beauty, dowered with the most incredible ugliness, and thrown down (Hell is always “down”) into a place God created for him — Hell. “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven!” he was reputed to have declared, an angel of his convictions. He is now known as the Devil, or Satan, or Beelzebub, or any of a thousand other names. His best weapon is temptation, but he also brandishes a two-tined, barbed fork, handy for toasting marshmallows. He commands an army of demons and imps. Imps are, I hypothesise, baby demons whose torments are more thoughtless and silly than those of fully mature demons, some of whom spend millennia in diabolical think tanks dreaming up new torments sure to cast the Boss into ecstasies. I mean, it doesn’t say anywhere that Satan and his imps and demons don’t enjoy their work. One characteristic about the staff of Hell is really interesting: no women imps or demons.

  The portals of Hell are el cheapo blow-up gates designed by the same committee who designed blowup sex dolls. Above them it says ARBEIT MACHT FREI and, in smaller letters, WOWSERS WELCOME.

  Satan himself has distinctly Hellenistic pagan elements, as in the Great God Pan. The best visual interpretation of the satanic look is Tim Curry’s in a film called Legend. Terrific!

  Following the tradition of the Christian Heaven, the Christian Hell is an exceedingly boring place.

  What is it with Christians, that even their place of eternal punishment is reduced to sameness and monotony? Take a look at a day in the (eternal) life of a soul condemned to Hell. It sleeps in a cockroach-shaped and white-hot coffin, and after passing yet another boring night being smelted with impunity (everyone knows cockroaches will survive anything in the Universe, which makes them carapace-neck-and-snout with lawyers and sharks), it is rudely
awakened by a godawful prod from its personal demon’s pitchfork.

  “What’s today’s schedule like?” asks the foetid cockroach.

  The demon consults a smoking clipboard. “Oh, just the usual, I’m afraid. Flames, flames, and more flames. However, Old Nick does have a weeny treat for you this afternoon. Immersion in a Jacuzzi of lava with Stalin and Gollum.”