Rosenthal turned and saw a young, fat, pimply girl with straggly brown hair and broad, coarse features. She was the kind of unhappy girl Rosenthal always used to see in the company of a tall, lithe blond beauty who knew better how to fit into a sweater. Here was the drab companion sundered from her attractive friend, helpless now and alone. She was bent over, trying vainly to hide her flabby nakedness. It was an impossible task; it would have been an impossible task with the aid of an army-surplus canvas tent, and all she had to cover herself with were her hands and forearms. Perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of something less generous, Rosenthal turned his back on her.
“I’m freezing!” she cried.
Rosenthal didn’t turn around. “Freezing? This is Hell, stupid. It’s hot as hell around here.”
“I’m freezing! I’ve been freezing ever since I fell into that lake of ice.”
Lake of ice. Rosenthal had to think about that, now: What lake of ice? A lake like that didn’t have a snowball’s chance of lasting a minute in this place. “You’re cold?” he asked. He still hadn’t turned around; remembering what that girl looked like, he was prepared to spend the rest of eternity like that.
“Of course I’m cold! Aren’t you’?”
“I haven’t been this hot since I was in Phoenix in 1950,” said Rosenthal. “And at least in Phoenix a person can sit down inside a little without having to worry about getting heat stroke.”
“I don’t understand,” said the girl, frightened. “I’m so cold and you’re complaining of the heat.”
“I came out of a lake of fire and you came out of a lake of ice,” said Rosenthal, shrugging. “This is Hell. If you wanted things easy to understand, you shouldn’t have died.”
“Listen ” she began.
Rosenthal got tired of carrying on a conversation with his face to the rocky wall. He turned around and the girl dropped to her dimpled knees. “Jesus!” she cried, startled by his appearance.
“You’ll forgive me,” said Rosenthal, “you’ve got the wrong boy.”
“You … you …” She couldn’t get her mouth to form more words.
“What, girl? You’re wasting my time.”
She tried covering herself again, doing no better on the second attempt. She looked like she was on the verge of fainting. “You must be the devil! You’re all … all leathery and awful and …” Her voice trailed away and she did faint.
Rosenthal rolled his eyes upward. “She thinks I’m the devil,” he muttered. He watched her plop on the ground and lie there for a little while; then she started to wake up.
Her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened them. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“Wrong again.”
“Satan.”
Rosenthal had a flash of inspiration. If she thought he was the devil, what the hell? “So what’s wrong?” he asked solicitously.
She gave him a horrified look. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Not a damn thing. I’m busy.”
“I fell for nine days and landed in that lake of ice, pulled myself out and walked all the way here, but you’re not going to do anything?”
He gave her a trial leer. “Are you disappointed? You have any suggestions?”
She shuddered. “No, Your Majesty,” she said weakly.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, sweetheart. Why are you here?”
“You don’t know. Your Majesty?”
“And if it’s all the same, you can stop with that Your Majesty business, too. No, I don’t know. What do you think I am, all-knowing or something?”
It was her turn to be confused. “They said I broke the First Commandment.”
“Uh huh. Which one is that? I forget.”
“Listen,” said the plump girl, “can I have something to wear? I’m still freezing.”
“You’re still naked,” said Rosenthal, leering again. He was getting the hang of it.
“Well, yeah, that too.”
“Wish for it. Just wish for some clothes.”
The girl looked dubious, but did as she was told. “I wish I had something nice to wear,” she said in a quavery voice.
Nothing happened. No nice outfit appeared, not even a cruddy poodle skirt and a blouse with a Peter Pan collar. “How about that,” marveled Rosenthal.
“What’s the joke?” asked the girl.
“Nothing,” he said. “I want a robe for this girl here,” he said in a loud voice. And just like that, she had a robe. It was every bit as disgusting as his.
“Thank you, 0 Satan,” she said meekly. She slipped, somewhat disconsolately, into the filthy garment.
“Okay,” said Rosenthal, “we still got business. You were telling me about your commandment.”
The girl nodded. “It’s the one about worshiping false idols. They said I was paying too much attention to this graven image. They said I was the first one to get busted on that rap in a couple of hundred years.” She added that with a defiant touch of pride. “They asked me if I wanted to repent my words and deeds. I said no. They hit the button, and I ended up here.”
Rosenthal shook his head. “I would have gone along with them. They never gave me a chance to repent. Bing bang, here I am.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what kind of graven image were you worshiping?”
“I had this kind of shrine set up in my locker at school I went to Ste. Nitouche’s Academy in Arbier, Louisiana pictures of Dick, you know?”
“Dick?” He said it differently; apparently he misunderstood her.
“The lead singer for Tuffy and the Tectonics. Up in Heaven they said I had crossed the fine line between music appreciation and idolatry. I said they could never make me deny my love. They gave me until the count of ten, but I was loyal; then it was look out for that first step.”
“You picked Hell over Heaven on account of somebody called Tuffy and the Tectonics? I wouldn’t have done that for Martha Tilton with the Andrews Sisters thrown in.”
For the first time, she looked a little doubtful about it. “Maybe it was a mistake,” she said.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” asked Rosenthal.
“Rosalyn.”
He smiled wanly. “Nu, my wife’s name was Rose,” he said.
“Your wife, O Prince of Darkness?”
“Never mind. Well, you’re here for some punishment, right?” She nodded fearfully. “Give me twenty pushups, right now,” he said.
“Twenty pushups?” It was doubtful that she could manage even one. Getting down, with the aid of gravity, would probably be simple enough; getting back up was another matter.
“Twenty, shiksa, or I’ll think up something even worse.”
She got down in pushup position and tried her best, but she failed to do one decent pushup. “The nuns said Hell would be unimaginably terrible. I’d rather have little ugly devils with pitchforks,” she said, gasping for breath.
“Very sad, very sad,” said Rosenthal, clucking his tongue. “The kids of today.”
“Where are the devils and everybody?” Rosalyn asked.
“What, you think you’re special or something? You think all of Hell is going to turn out to welcome you? This is a big operation, sweetheart. I can’t spare any more demons to shape you up. We have our hands full as it is.”
“How do I rate your individual attention?”
Rosenthal laughed. “I haven’t heard of anybody breaking Number One in a long time, either,” he said. He’d always been a good liar; he’d been a lousy murderer, but he’d always been a terrific liar.
“And the penalty for breaking the First Commandment is twenty pushups?”
“Hey, you and I are just getting started here. We have all the rest of forever to kill. Who knows what I’ll think up next?” He looked around at the base of the cliff and kicked together a little pile of black pebbles. “Here, pull up your robe and kneel on these for a while. See how you like that.”
“The nuns used to make us do this,” s
aid Rosalyn. “It’s not so bad.”
“Try it for a couple of hundred million years, then we’ll talk.”
Rosalyn gave him a sideways glance. “Why are you being so easy on me?” she asked.
“I like you. Can I help it? I like you is all.”
“I’m not that kind of girl. You know I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Listen, Rosalyn, sweetheart, you’re in Hell now, grow up. What, you think if you do something wrong, God won’t like it? God isn’t watching anymore, Rosalyn, you’ve paid in advance. I’m not saying I’m entertaining ideas like that, I’m just saying you’re not in some fancy Catholic girls’ school in Louisiana anymore.”
“You’re the Arch-Enemy, the Great Tempter,” she said.
Rosenthal was losing patience with this thick-skulled, fat-faced zhiub. “Tempter-schmempter!” he cried. “What do I have to tempt for, you’re already in goddamn Hell!”
“It could be worse,” she offered.
“You tell me how.”
She shifted uneasily on the sharp pebbles. “I could have bat-winged things with horns pouring molten lead down my throat. I could have scaly fiends flaying the flesh off my bones while spiders crawled all over me and snakes and lizards chewed at my eyeballs. Lots of thing.”
“You got some good ideas, bubeleh,” said Rosenthal. He genuinely admired her imagination; of course, a lot of the credit had to go to her Catholic school upbringing. Still, he saw that she might be valuable to have around. “There’s always a place in the organization for somebody with ideas.”
“You mean “
He raised a hand, admonishing her. “I’m not promising anything, you can’t hold me to it. I’m just saying that sometimes there’s an opening every quintillion years or so, and I like to surround myself with bright people. You could work your way out of the class of torturer and into the torturers. It’s still unpleasant; but unless you have a crazy thing for pain, you’ll find I’m sure that it’s better all the way around to be on the staff.”
“What do I have to do?”
Rosenthal shrugged airily. “Well, you have to flatter me a lot and praise me and tell me how wonderful I am and generally carry on as if I was the hottest thing going down here. I like that kind of thing; the nuns probably told you about that. And you have to do everything I tell you.”
“We’re back to that again.” She made a face.
“So what’s so terrible? You were saving yourself for this Tuffy or something?”
“For Dick. There wasn’t really any Tuffy. It was just the name of the group.”
“Why don’t you try some situps? I think I’m getting an idea.” He watched her puff and wheeze her way through fifteen or twenty situps, he wasn’t really paying close attention. She gave him a pleading look; he was feeling satanic, so he said, “Come on, come on, do a few more. I’m being generous, you know. You could end up back in the ice, frozen up to your pupik until, well, until Hell freezes over.” He gave a good, demonic laugh and watched her pitiful eyes grow even bigger.
His idea was that he had to learn what she expected from the devil, if he hoped to pull off this impersonation. Eternity is a long time to bluff your way through any role, and Rosenthal suspected that he couldn’t keep handing out mere rise-and-shine exercises. For the first time in his life existence, rather he felt his lack of imagination. Plaguing Rosalyn with the gruesome punishments she expected would have the additional benefit of entertaining him. The long haul was going to be pretty dull for him otherwise.
“Isn’t that enough?” she whined.
“Huh? Oh, sure, knock it off for now. Listen, Rosalyn, I’ll tell you what: because I’m giving you my personal supervision and because I like you, I’m going to do something I shouldn’t do: I’m going to take it easy on you. Wait a minute, let me explain. I really shouldn’t do this you wouldn’t believe it, but they keep an eye on me, too. They don’t like that I should take it easy on somebody. After all, you’re here for hard labor, not for two weeks in the Catskills. I get a little leeway, so I’m going to make you this offer. I want you to flatter me and treat me nice and tell me I’m wonderful and whatever else crosses your mind. In return, I’ll just inflict the kind of tortures you expected with no awful shticklech that you’d be afraid to tell your mother about.”
“Just the regular tortures? Like in the paintings?”
Rosenthal didn’t have any idea what she had in mind, but he’d find out. “Like in the paintings,” he said.
“You promise?”
“If you’ll take my word for it.”
“You’re the devil. You want me to worship you,” she said with some distaste.
“Oy, is that so bad? You were ready to worship this hoo-ha of a juvenile delinquent “
“Don’t you talk about my Dick that way!” She was furious. “He could sing. He could play the guitar and the tambourine.”
“He’s not here yet. In the meantime, you could do worse than worship me, lots worse. Believe me.”
She started to say something, then decided against it. “I’ll give it a try,” she said.
“Good girl. I don’t expect anything fancy, no slaughtered oxen or anything. Sincerity counts with me.”
“Okay, I’ll wait then, until I really feel it.”
“You do that. In the meantime, I wish I had some molten lead.” And just like that, he had molten lead. He also had an awful inspiration for what to do with it. He laughed satanically the whole time he did it; he was growing into the part.
Just before all the molten lead was used up, a thin baritone voice called out to him. The man didn’t sound so fearful as Rosalyn had. “Try tilting her upper body back a little more,” the man said.
“So fine, that’s just what I need now, a kibitzer,” said Rosenthal. “You’re not here to help. Your puny [aroys-gevorfineh] soul’s here to get its own share of the hot lead, smartie. Take a number, I’ll be right with you.”
“Gröss Gott! A Jew!”
Rosenthal gave the man a long, chilly, intimidating stare. “Watch it, bubie, remember who you’re dealing with. I can appear a million different ways and I can speak a million different languages. So what are you, some kind of Nazi?”
“Yes,” said the man. He was tall and skinny and young, with a sloppily trimmed beard; he looked more like the devil than Rosenthal did. He seemed perfectly unconcerned about being naked.
“Ai-yi-y,.” Rosenthal wondered if he was torturing these people, or if they’d been sent to torture him. “And stop grossing Gott around here, you’re too late for that. And it gives me a pain, too.”
“Sorry,” said the man.
“Name?”
“Friedman, Lamar S.”
“Friedman? Aha.”
“My family’s Lutheran.”
“Of course it is. Offense?”
“Generally good, but I could have used more depth up the middle.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Sorry,” Friedman said, “I did some high school football coaching. Want to know why I’m here? I committed an unforgivable sin.”
“Mmneh,” said Rosenthal noncommittally. “Why? Your team choke in the big game?”
Friedmann laughed dryly. “Hardly. I was jilted by my fiancee.”
Rosenthal thought about the twenty-nine years of wedded horror he had escaped from.
“You’re a fool, Friedman,” he said.
“You’re saying she wasn’t worth it. You never even met her. She was some dish.”
“Dishes get filthy, they crack, they break, or else they sit in the cupboard and cockroaches crawl all over them. They’re not worth having your kishkas pumped full of boiling lead.”
Friedman blanched. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, staring at Rosalyn, who was loudly, raucously, and unashamedly writhing, blaspheming, imploring, and hemorrhaging. It was already getting tedious, Rosenthal thought.
“You were telling me about your sin,” said Rosenthal.
“To be honest
, you never got close to telling me about your sin, but let’s pretend that you did.”
Friedman couldn’t take his eyes off the hideous sight of young Rosalyn in agony. “I broke the Second Commandment,” he said, all his cockiness now gone. “That’s what they told me in Heaven.”
“The Second Commandment,” said Rosenthal. “Which one’s that?”
Friedman glanced at him briefly, but quickly looked back at Rosalyn. Her shrieks filled the silence of the empty hell. Friedman acted as if he hadn’t heard Rosenthal’s question.
“So which one is Number Two?” asked Rosenthal again.
Friedman looked very queasy. “That’s the one about blasphemy and cursing. I took the name of the Lord in vain.”
“That’s what they sent you to Hell for? Did they give you a chance to repent?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So what happened?”
Friedman’s eyes squeezed shut. “I thought they were making a big deal over nothing. I didn’t think they’d nail me for something like that. And I guess I was trying to act tough.”
“You didn’t repent?”
“I told them I didn’t have anything to repent for, I never killed nobody, I never stole anything.”
Rosenthal shook his head in disbelief. “You let them trip you on Number Two. They are worse than the IRS.”
“At least the IRS will take a check, you can halfway dicker with them. Now I’m in Hell.” He looked again at Rosalyn; made the connection that the same thing or something similar would soon be happening to him, too; and passed out.
“Some Nazi,” muttered Rosenthal, looking down at Friedman. “I wish Rosalyn would stop suffering. I wish she’d be healed, too, and completely forget the whole molten-lead incident.” And just like that, she was standing beside him in the same bewildered but untortured shape in which she’d arrived.
“What happened?” she asked. “Who’s that?”
“Some Nazi.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“We?” asked Rosenthal. “We?”
Rosalyn scratched her oily scalp for a few seconds. “Weren’t you offering me some kind of partnership or something?”
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 13
