“This time there were changes! I can’t believe you haven’t heard already—”

  “Heard? Who from, will you tell me that? Does anybody ever come to visit? Not the children, you can count on that! Right here in town, too, every one of them, but do they remember me, wasting away here?”

  “It’s hard being old, I know that. But it’s a lot better than not being old, if you get my meaning!”

  “I’m not sure about that anymore. I think of old Eph and what he’s probably doing right now. Forgot all about me, you can bet, after leaving me all alone here—”

  “Well, I can bet you’d rather be Eph’s widow than old Joe’s!”

  “Oh, don’t even make me think about that Miriam and her perfect son.”

  “But that’s what the news is, from the city. He’s dead!”

  “No! No, oh, I bite my tongue that I spoke of him like that—”

  “Oh, you didn’t know, of course you didn’t, no harm done, you silly old dear. You never think ill of anybody, I know that, not really.”

  “Well it’s true, I have only the best wishes in my heart for every living soul. How did he die?”

  “Don’t make me go into that, please. He was executed. Trumped-up charges, that was obvious.”

  “But I’m not surprised. He was always so controversial. The government would never let him keep on the way he was going. I said as much to Miriam, and she just smiled that superior little smile of hers and said, ‘A son has to continue his father’s business,’ as if old Joe ever went around stirring up trouble!”

  “Joe was always a quiet one, that’s true. But when you think about it, so was the boy.”

  “Well, he didn’t have to say much, did he? Not with his mother acting like he was God’s gift to the world! Honestly, did you ever have a conversation with her that didn’t turn to her wonderful boy and all the marvelous things he was doing?”

  “A mother always wants to talk about her children.”

  “Well, I know a few things she never mentions.”

  “Really?”

  “Now that he’s dead, I don’t see that it does much harm to talk about it. Can’t damage his reputation! Not that the shame should go on the boy himself, mind you. But you were too young when it happened.”

  “What? I can’t believe there are any secrets in that family, after all these years with their son so famous!”

  “Let’s just say that Joe and Miriam got married in the nick of time.”

  “Oh, is that all. They were engaged, weren’t they? Happens all the time, you silly old dear.”

  “It didn’t then. And besides, you didn’t know Joe. The most strait-laced, proper fellow you ever saw. I can promise you he didn’t spend so much as five minutes alone with her, even after they were engaged. And then all of a sudden, oops! She’s letting out her dresses! Her family tried to put a gloss on it. She’s going to visit her cousin Lizzy, that’s all. My husband and I escorted her, you know. A young woman can’t travel alone, and we were glad to be of help—what are neighbors for? But right there on the road, outside her cousin’s house, the girl gives this little ‘woop’ sound and when I ask her what’s wrong, she just smiles at me like it was the most wonderful thing in the world and says, ‘The baby moved!’ Well, she was only two months married, so excuse me for thinking that if she had any sense of decency she would have kept that little piece of news to herself.”

  “I’ve never yet met a woman who didn’t feel like the baby she was carrying was the center of the universe.”

  “There’s such a thing as decency, though, don’t you think? At least she had the respect not to have the baby here. Or maybe it was Joe, since Miriam never had a sense of propriety—anyway, they found an excuse to go to his hometown to have the baby. Claimed he had to clear up a tax problem but we all knew the truth, they just didn’t want anybody here to know the exact birthday, as if it wasn’t already common knowledge that the baby was early and it wasn’t his.”

  “It’s so hard to believe that none of this ever came out during all the controversy that boy caused. You’d think his enemies would have heard about it and—”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, the only people who knew about it were right here in this town. And we don’t go around telling tales to strangers!”

  “There is such a thing as loyalty.”

  “And Joe did the right thing. They went off to somewhere else, Cairo I think, until the boy was five or six and ready to start school. He wasn’t an in-your-face sort of man, that Joe.”

  “I wish I’d known him well.”

  “He was a saint. You never heard him brag about his son. But he was proud of him, as proud as if he really were his, if you know what I mean.”

  “These things are always so confusing, but good people bear with it.”

  “We all bore with it. You can’t say that a single one of us ever threw it in Miriam’s face, even when she was bragging away. And the boy—well, we never treated him differently from any other boy. But I swear, there are limits. When he came back and made some of his most outrageous claims, right here where we knew him! Well, had he no shame?”

  “I think events have proven that he did not!”

  “Exactly. There were some people angry enough to kill him that day, but we calmed them down. I said to my son Ephie—I mean, my son was so angry he could have thrown him off a cliff, the things Miriam’s boy said!—but I told Ephie, You can’t blame him, he’s grown up with his mother saying that he’s God’s gift to the world, so you can’t be surprised when he starts claiming to be the fulfillment of prophecy. And when Ephie realized that the poor lad was just acting out the destiny his mother charted for him, well, he calmed right down.”

  “I remember that day. I remember thinking it was a miracle he got away alive.”

  “I’ll tell you what it was. It was neighbors. In the city, nobody knows anybody else. All strangers. But here, we all know each other. We care about each other. Even the crazy people. We understand. We accept.”

  “He was lucky to grow up in a place like this.”

  “If he’d just stayed here, even with his strange ideas, why, nothing bad would have happened to him. We would have tolerated him. Protected him, even. But Miriam was always push push push, and so the boy had no chance. She killed him, when you think about it. I know that’s an awful thing to say, but it’s nothing but the truth. All her fantasies about him, no wonder he ended up like he did. It’s fine to have dreams for your children, but you have to keep them in the real world. Their feet planted on the ground.”

  “Well, Miriam paid for it. She was there watching. She saw him die. The poor thing.”

  “The poor thing. I wouldn’t trade places with her. Oh, I complain that my boys never come to see me, my daughters neither, but at least they’re decent people, leading decent lives. Eph and me, we raised them right.”

  “We should go call on her.”

  “Miriam? Yes, we must. If I can walk that far.”

  “She’ll be home from the city soon. They buried him there. A rich man’s crypt. Can you imagine? Being buried far from home, in a borrowed grave? But it was too far to bring him home.”

  “He should have stayed here, where we knew him, where we understood him. He should have stayed among friends and neighbors. That’s just my opinion, but I’m not afraid to say it.”

  “That’s what everyone says about you, dear. You tell the truth. You see the truth, and you tell it.”

  “Well isn’t that the sweetest thing. You’ve brightened my whole day.”

  God Plays Fair Once Too Often

  My old companion and I met at an embassy party in London. It took us a while to recognize each other, of course—it always does, after so many years. We had no sooner nodded in greeting than we both found ourselves on the fringes of a loud conversation dominated by the most annoying sort of American. He was a Washington lobbyist, one of those people whose career consists of suborning the votes of congressmen, and now, a bit in his cups, he was showing off how well he understood the sordid business of government, going on and on—quite the bore. “Historians are all fools!” he cried. “Same as the politicians and the journalists! They think they have their thumb on the world’s pulse, but when something really important comes along—the mere victory of capitalism over communism, for instance!—the only one who wasn’t taken by surprise was God.”

  It was more than my companion could bear. “I’ll have you know,” said my companion, “that God himself was surprised by that.”

  The statement was so outrageous—and everyone was so eager to listen to another voice, any other voice—that silence fell, and my companion was given a chance to tell the whole tale, which I knew he was dying to do. “All right then,” he said. “It doesn’t take long to tell, though most of you won’t believe it.”

  “Give us a try,” said a lady.

  So he shrugged and smiled and launched into it.

  It was the tag end of 1841 (he said). God was going incognito in his favorite Manchester pub, looking like any other worn-out workingman getting his pint before going home to a flat full of screaming brats and a wife who had little comfort in her after her own day at the jenny. His hands were dirty, his clothing was sweat-stained, and his sadness showed in his face, which meant that no one was likely to seek out his company. So it should have taken him a bit by surprise when a hale, beefy-handed banker sat down across from him. Only of course God can’t be taken by surprise, so he recognized his visitor at once.

  “Good evening to you, Lucifer,” said God, looking him up and down. “If you insist on possessing the bodies of my children, why do you choose such unhealthy ones?”

  “Get used to it,” said the devil. “All the best people are going to be fat now. This new machinery thing I’ve got going has already changed everything. So much money, so much indoor work, so little exercise. I’m going to get people to stuff their bodies so full of sugars and fats that they drop dead all over the place, with their lives half-lived. This little ploy is good for centuries.”

  “Till the 1970s, more or less,” said God. “Then the rich will be the only ones who have enough leisure to exercise, so the middle class will start to imitate their slenderness and musculature.”

  “Yeah, right,” said the devil. “But I’ll see to it that it’s also in vogue for the rich to be darkly sunburnt, so when the heart attacks let up I’ll get them with skin cancer.”

  “And colitis,” murmured God.

  “It really spoils my fun, you know, when you flaunt your omniscience that way.”

  “It’d be better if you remembered it more often, Lucifer. I’m always a step ahead of you.”

  “Don’t I know it. That whole business with Job.”

  “Still harping on that?” Satan was such a hard loser.

  “Because I still think you cheated—you knew from the start that he’d never curse you.”

  “Yes, and I told you that I knew it. You just didn’t believe me.”

  “My mistake,” said Satan. He grinned. “Buy me a pint?”

  “Buy your own,” said God.

  Satan waved to the publican. “Good sir!” he cried. “Pints for me and my dear friend here.”

  Oh, the eyes turned toward them then, what with a rich man buying for a poor man, and openly, too. What would people think? God knew, of course. Some were thinking: That poor old fellow must have a pretty daughter, and this banker wants to turn her into a whore. It was a measure of just how ugly this world was turning. It made God so depressed sometimes. Give them steam, and they create sweatshops out of it. The idea of cheap energy was to make it easier for everyone to have plenty to eat. I created a world of plenty, and they still manage to manufacture poverty and misery and hopelessness everywhere. Lucifer likes to take credit for it, but maybe that’s just what humans want to be.

  The pints appeared on the table before them. Lucifer grandly paid the girl who brought them. Of course he overtipped shamelessly. Just like him, the snake—works as hard as he can to make their lives hellish, and then gives a few big tips and they think he’s generous.

  “Well, I’ve got to hand it to you,” said God, sipping the bitters. “You’ve really created something ugly here in England. And it’ll spread, too, I can see that. As bad as slavery in America, in the long run. It’ll take me decades to heal the damage.”

  “Hmmm,” said Lucifer.

  “Oh, yes I can,” said God. “I can heal it all, and you know I will. This whole miserable thing you have with capitalism. It’s so obviously unfair that decent people will rebel against it. I can have it broken up within a century.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can,” said Lucifer.

  “I feel another wager coming,” said God.

  “We haven’t really had a good one since Job. And I came close, you have to admit.”

  “Lucifer, you know that I always know the outcome. Why do you still bet?”

  “Ah, but that’s one of the terms of the wager,” said Lucifer. “You have to close your eyes.”

  “Close my eyes!”

  “You have to promise not to know how things will turn out.”

  “Wouldn’t you just love it if I agreed to that!”

  “Not forever,” said Satan. “Just for—a century and a half. Until the beginning of 1992. Then you can be prescient again. What can I do in a hundred and fifty years?”

  “Good question. What can you do in a hundred and fifty years?”

  “I wager that in 1992 I can have things even worse than they are right now, and yet all the best people will think it’s better.”

  “Those are pretty vague terms,” said God.

  “I’ll be more specific,” said Lucifer. “I will bet that by 1992, I can have it so that the overwhelming opinion of decent people everywhere is that capitalism is the best and fairest and most wonderful economic system in the world.”

  “Oh, such nonsense.”

  “And in the opinion of decent people everywhere, your way of doing things, where everybody shares fairly in the world’s goods—that will be completely discredited as the most brutal, unfair, terrible economic system in history.”

  “The only way you could do that is to turn the human race stupider than baboons,” said God.

  “Do I have a bet, then? No peeking—no fair seeing how things will turn out after you agree to the bet and I start my plans in motion.”

  “No coercion,” said God. “No possessions. You can only do it by your tamer methods.”

  “Lies,” said Lucifer. “And greed. And the lust for power.”

  “And I can work against you the whole time.”

  “As long as you keep hands off, too,” said Lucifer. “And no peeking into the future.”

  “You think you’re so smart.”

  “You made me that way,” said Lucifer.

  “I thought you might make life more interesting.”

  “I know. That was before you started to actually care about these people.”

  “I always cared about them.”

  “In fact, my dear God Almighty, I suspect that it’s only because I make them so ignorant and miserable that you started having compassion for them. Admit it—you were bored with them when they were still back in the garden.”

  “I was lonely for company,” said God.

  “And I wasn’t good enough for you,” said Lucifer.

  “You aren’t company,” said God. “You’re the competition.”

  “Is the bet on?”

  “What are the stakes?”

  “If I win, I get to destroy the world next time.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Come on, old chap, you know that if I win this bet, you’ll have to wipe it all out and start over, just like back at the time of Noah.”

  “I had to suspend all the rules of physics and chemistry to cover the whole earth with water,” said God. “You don’t have the power.”

  “See?” said Lucifer. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “I know you’ve got a trick up your sleeve.”

  “Yes, and if you really wanted to, you could pluck it right out and know all my plans. But you’ll play fair, won’t you?”

  “And you won’t.”

  “But you’re God.”

  “And you want my job.”

  “No, I just don’t want your job to exist.”

  “Even if we end up destroying all of humanity, Lucifer, I’ll still be God.”

  “Yes,” said Lucifer. “But I’ll break your heart.”

  God thought for a while. “I think human beings are smarter and better than you give them credit for. It’s a bet.”

  Lucifer whooped once with joy, then tipped back his pint and drank it to the last drop. “You’re such a sport, God, old man! And they say you’re a stick-in-the-mud—if only they knew you the way I do!” Then he got up and strolled bold as brass out of the pub.

  God smiled. It was such an outrageous idea—to play the next hundred and fifty years without knowing what was coming next. A true contest. Maybe Lucifer would be able to make a contest of it this time.

  Anyway, to make a long story short, the century and a half are almost up. And in all that time, God hasn’t had a clue from moment to moment what was going to happen next.

  The American lobbyist sneered. “So what’s the punch line?”

  “No punch line,” my companion replied. “I just thought you ought to have the facts straight. Not even God knew.”

  “Right. Like I’m supposed to believe this.” The American glowered. “I know when I’m being made fun of.”

  “Oh do you,” said my companion. “But I thought since you were so intimately familiar with the corridors of power, you’d be delighted to have the inside scoop on real power.”

  “You’ve made your point,” said the lobbyist. “Just another snobby Britisher, putting down the American and feeling oh so clever about it.”

  “But that’s not it at all,” said my companion. “For one thing, I’m not British. And for another, I admire you greatly. I think you’re a swell fellow. It’s my friend here who thinks you’re a bit of an asshole.”

  The lobbyist looked at me. “Oh yeah?”