The Trial of Fallen Angels

by James Kimmel, Jr.

  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

  When 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 f
ound 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.

  30

  Luas didn’t answer when I knocked on his office door. Instead, the being from the Courtroom appeared in the hallway to inform me that the High Jurisconsult was occupied and would see me after I had met with my first client. I was to go to my office and wait.

  I did as I was told, and soon the being from the Courtroom arrived with a postulant, closing the door behind on the way out and leaving us alone in the office. I had decided beforehand to keep my back to the postulant and face the wall behind my desk. I wanted to postpone the exploration of my client’s past and attempt first to communicate under present conditions, one fellow soul to another lost from a common home and left to a common fate. I would not lightly rob my clients of their memories, or demand that they wait in the other room while I negotiated eternity with their Creator. They would be given the opportunity to participate in their own defense, to explain on their own terms what had happened during their lives and why.

  So there we sat for a moment, my first ecclesiastical client and I, together on the precipice of eternity.

  “Are you afraid?” I asked.

  “Yes,” a male voice responded hesitantly.

  “I understand,” I said. “I will do everything I can to help you.”

  But I was afraid too. Every lawyer has doubts, and what was at stake in the Courtroom of Shemaya was far greater than in any courtroom on earth.

  How can I bear another’s burdens when I cannot even bear my own? How dare I attempt to reconcile another’s accounts when my own debts remain unpaid?

  “I don’t think anybody can help me,” he said. “I have done a terrible thing.”

  His voice was barely audible, resigned, without hope. I could not allow such despair to go unanswered, no matter what demons haunted me and no matter what he had done. Not only did his plea stir my compassion, but it made plain for me, as if there all along, that this was the call I had prepared my entire life to answer. This was the reason I had been chosen to defend souls at the Final Judgment. It seemed at that moment as though the mystery of my own life, and afterlife, had been revealed unexpectedly in the suffering of another soul. I would devote myself to rescuing my clients from the pit of desolation and injustice. I would redeem them before the throne of God.

  With the joy of this revelation, I could no longer keep my back toward the soul across from me. I yearned to see his face in the light of truth, and to learn everything I could about his life, both the good and the bad. I would bless, not judge, and do everything in my power to guarantee him every benefit and annihilate every doubt. I would speak out in the Courtroom with the partisan voice of an advocate and risk even my own punishment to win justice. I would never allow to happen to this soul what had happened to Toby Bowles, Amina Rabun, and my uncle Anthony.

  These were the promises I made to myself when I turned to face my client—promises that, perhaps, I had made years ago, as a young girl, when a conveyor chain disfigured my body and reconfigured my life. I knew now that I had been brought to Shemaya to fulfill those sacred vows and, perhaps, to secure my own redemption.

  But as I turned to greet this beautiful, helpless soul upon whom I would lavish my devotion, my love, my eternity, I was met by a very different kind of face. It was the wicked face of a killer, not the innocent face of a victim.

  No . . . no, not him. Please . . . please, dear God, not him!

  But it was too late.

  The man who murdered me had died and gone to Shemaya.

  His soul now roamed inside me. And I held his fate in my hands.

  PART IV

  31

  Otto Rabun Bowles understood none of his tumultuous family history as he sat dazed on the sideline during halftime of the football game after being hit viciously for two quarters by children nearly twice his size. He pleaded with his father not to be sent back into the game. But his father, Tad Bowles, responded as his own father had responded to him as a boy, by belittling Ott for acting like a baby and ordering him out onto the field.

  This is when Toby Bowles, Ott’s grandfather, made his surprise appearance. Toby had been estranged from Tad for more than a decade. As a result, Ott had never seen him, and never would see him again. The old man and former perpetrator of such callousness climbed down from the bleachers to intervene on his grandson’s behalf by asking Tad to give the boy a break. Ott was all bruises and wonderment at this fallen angel about whom he had heard such terrible things, but who bore such a remarkable resemblance to his own father. Toby suddenly seemed like his only friend in the world, and Ott loved him on contact.

  But Tad became enraged. How dare his father show up uninvited, and how dare he criticize him? Harsh words were exchanged between the two men—words that should have been spoken fifteen years earlier when there was context in which to understand them and love left to heal them, but that landed now like hammers on the firing pins of revolvers. When Tad could bear no more and restrain himself no longer, he shoved the old man—hard enough to cause him to lose his balance and fall to the ground in front of Ott and the other spectators.

  Ott’s eyes narrowed into slits of hatred for his father. Stunned and embarrassed, Toby used the bleachers to support himself, got up, and walked away, never to be seen by Ott again. Four years later, Tad’s mother, Claire, called to report that Toby had died of a heart attack. The opportunity for Ott to forge a bond with his paternal grandfather had come and gone.

  —

  AND SO IT was that the lifetime of memories contained within the soul of the man who murdered me became a sort of Rosetta stone, enabling me slowly, painstakingly, to piece together the connections between his life, my life, and the lives of the souls I had met in Shemaya—as Nana had told me I must if I was ever to escape this place. Bizarrely, I needed Ott Bowles’s memories to guide me through the afterlife, because I had been unwilling since arriving in Shemaya to access my own memories about my death, and Sarah’s. And because even if I had remembered everything, I could not have possibly known how deeply interconnected my life had been to so many different people.

  I was stunned to learn that Toby Bowles, the first soul I had seen tried in Shemaya, a man whom I had never met during my life, was responsible not only for the existence of my husband and, ultimately, my daughter—by saving my mother-in-law’s life in Kamenz—but also for the existence of my own murderer—by being Ott Bowles’s grandfather. Yet this was merely the first of many astonishing connections I discovered between my life and the life of Ott Bowles—connections that had brought us fatefully together in life and, now, death.

  Ott Bowles’s parents met in a nightclub in New Jersey where Ott’s mother, Barratte Rabun, age thirty-eight and still quite attractive, served drinks. Many years later, Barratte explained to her son that something in his father’s sad brown eyes and embarrassed smile made her want to hold and protect him. At twenty-six years of age, he vaguely reminded her of her older brother, who had been executed by Russian soldiers in Kamenz. He seemed different from the other young men at the bar who, having finally been given a voice by the alcohol they consumed, had nothing to say but �
�Feed me,” “Where’s the bathroom?” and “Sleep with me.”

  Even so, Barratte’s attraction to Tad Bowles began to fade when she became pregnant with Ott. In truth, until the morning she delivered Ott, she had viewed all men, including Tad, only as game to be hunted and collected, stalking them like a poacher and mounting their dumb, wondering heads on the paneled walls of her memory. After Ott’s birth, men in general, and Tad in particular, were not worth even this to her. She had harvested what little the male of the species offered the world—that precious fertilizer they squandered so recklessly. Now young Ott became her finest trophy, her beginning and her end. Each contraction of her womb breathed new life into her long-dead family, whose existence depended upon her sacred labor. Not for one day during Ott’s childhood would she allow him to forget that the survival of the Rabuns of Kamenz depended upon him. He was the irreplaceable link to all those who had come before, and to all those who would come after.

  Ott readily accepted this responsibility, but his father, in no way a Rabun, was never let in on the important secret. Until the lawsuit Bill Gwynne and I filed against Amina and Barratte Rabun on behalf of my mother-in-law, Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson. The startling revelations in the complaint about the Rabuns of Kamenz came as a complete shock to Tad Bowles. Barratte had told him only that most of the members of her family were killed during the war, that she inherited a modest sum, and that a cousin in Buffalo with whom she no longer had a relationship had helped her escape from Germany before the Soviets closed the Iron Curtain. That Barratte’s father and uncle had been wealthy, that they had accumulated this wealth from the death camps and the extortion of Jews, that Barratte had been raped by Soviet soldiers and her family murdered, and that she had hidden such a history from him—all this left Tad feeling both frightened and betrayed.