15

And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, walk before me, and be thou perfect, I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and kings shall come out of thee.

At ninety-nine? Not bad. Do you think the Lord might have similar objectives for me? (But all I really want is this: that he’ll just get off my bleeding back!) Ninety-nine is currently my own age. Recently, someone asked when I had last got it up. Salacious old bugger. Naturally I wasn’t going to tell him I couldn’t remember, must be thirty years ago at least. That’s an added grievance, of course. Having all this time and still being deprived of a good fuck.

Not that longevity would be all it’s cracked up to be even with a rampant cock. Well, not for me. Can’t speak for Abram!

You get so tired. That’s the thing. You’ve had enough. You want to put an end to it. Rest. It isn’t just the aches and pains—and, yes, I really do mean pains—the heart attacks, the strokes, the rheumatism, arthritis. The cataracts, the deafness. Non-stop wheezing. And it isn’t just seeing your mates drop dead all round you, in truth I never had many. It’s everything. It’s the damned monotony, it’s the damned exertion. It’s the damned business of having to get up in the morning and then having to go to bed at night—though knowing you won’t get any sleep. It’s the damned business of having to fill up all the time in between, find food, rely on people who aren’t reliable, people you’d rather spit in the eye of, not have to feel obliged to. We Jews are supposed to venerate old age but I know there’s always someone ready to snicker behind my back, make fun of me, point me out as a freak and an outcast. A leper. I’d rather be a leper—much. You die, of leprosy. Your days are numbered. Me, I don’t even know if my centuries are numbered! My God, before long I’ll be reduced to crawling about on my hands and knees—with creaks in every joint, agony in every movement—seeing nothing, hearing nothing and stinking to the high heavens. That’s not the way I was brought up. Hygiene was always important, who wants to stink? So when you get right down to it it’s not only the tedium and the pain and the exhaustion, it’s all those never-ending small humiliations. When you’re doomed to eternity how are you meant to trim your toenails?

Too often now I think about my childhood. When I was young I had no time for either of my parents, any of my family. But I was wrong. I see that more and more. I wish I didn’t. It’s sentimental, it’s disgusting. Last night I even had to wipe away rivers of rheum and snot when I allowed myself to reminisce.

I still see my mother as a young woman, tend to forget that she became a fishwife. Screaming old harridan. Even my father can sometimes seem all right. I hate it that my early years—before that bloody man was crucified—should now be turning into something sacred. Precious. It wasn’t much of a life, even then.

I’ll tell you what’s precious about life. I’ve thought about this. It’s the fact it’s short, it’s fleeting, you don’t know when it’s going to end. You want to hang onto it, hang onto it at any price. Death is the thing that’s precious about life.

So when you realize you’re not going to die…

But don’t think I haven’t tried. I’ve tried by jumping off a cliff. I’ve tried with knife, and rope, and poison.

Yet nothing works, absolutely nothing, even though I can break every bone in my body—back, neck, arms, legs—which accounts for the shape I’m in now, all the twists and the deformities. I’m not just a freak, I’m a monster, beside me Cerberus would sweep the board at any beauty contest. It also accounts for the fact that, as I said, I can’t even sleep at night, there’s no position I can lie in for longer than three minutes. So no escape, you see. Not even on those rare occasions when I can scrounge a bit of wine. A bit of wine, a whole amphora wouldn’t help! I say scrounge because I haven’t any money, how should I have? Quite often I starve and thereby add to my manifold physical attractions an air of charming emaciation, and to my manifold physical discomforts the ache of gnawing hunger. I’m deprived not merely of food but—far worse—deprived of the consolation of knowing that at least I’ll starve to death.

So wouldn’t you think I’d have learnt sooner? After that dive off the cliff-top? But the thing was, although the chance of survival was only about one in a million, I’d believed that I, wouldn’t you know, had been that poor, dumb, millionth sap. So I drove a knife through my chest. And, oh God, the agony of it! You need courage to do these things. You need courage to do them and courage to recover from them; or would do if you had the least bit of choice in the matter. And yet, even then, I thought I lived because I’d missed my heart, the physician said I had, anyhow. But in truth it could have been plain desperation that permitted me to think it. After I’d hung myself, and swung three feet above the ground for six whole hours, scrabbling and clawing for my breath, I finally had to acknowledge it: that there was never going to be, ever, any hope of a way out!

This, though, didn’t stop me from rushing at the henbane, packing it into my mouth, gulping it down unchewed, in the second I fooled myself they might be looking the other way. They, my persecutors. And I got the convulsions all right, the sensation of having swallowed shards of heated glass that burned and tore relentlessly at my gut. But when I was next able to think, in the intervals between the torment, I knew I hadn’t caught them by surprise. Whatever surprises might be going I was the one who’d always be on the receiving end. The bastards.

Sodding bastards.

Yet…why the plural? I see I keep on doing it. Persecutors, bastards. Why?

Of course there’s a lot of nonsense talked these days about a father-and-son act, and I’ve even heard mention of some crazy ghost wanting to turn it into a trio! But when I’m not getting too distracted, I still always think of him, not them—I mean, if I have to think about it at all, which thankfully doesn’t happen often. Him being that same goddamn bullyboy who buttered up Abram and could obviously be pretty free with the goodies if he thought it was going to pay. I mean! Imagine a fellow of my years still being able to get his leg over and squirt his juices in the right orifice. Lucky git. I bet he’d done more than his fair share of sucking up.

But even luckier git. Better far than fucking. Then Abram gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years.

That’s happiness, true happiness! Beats bonking. Every time.

Because if I knew that, like him, I should die at a hundred-and-seventy-five—in other words, ninety-nine years down, seventy-six to go, well past the halfway point—then maybe I could bear it. Even looking as I do now, even functioning as I do now, not functioning as I do now, then maybe I could bear it. Just to know that one day all of this would come to an end. Another seventy-six years. Finito.

But wait.

Other countries? Other customs? Other times?

Well, I’ll tell you. In my heart I dared to hope that all that nonsense had been forgotten. Or never seriously intended. Meant only to frighten and confuse.

For—think about it—sixty years! Over sixty years! Wouldn’t you imagine they’d have felt impatient to get on with it, witness its results, an experiment as exciting as that? Because that’s what it would have been, of course. An experiment. (And presumably, in their eyes, an exciting one.) Which perhaps they’d now discovered—glory be—that they weren’t capable of carrying out. Faces all covered in egg! How are the mighty fallen!

An enterprise dreamt up on the spur of the moment—and possibly fairly soon regretted.

Though be that as it may, they must have realized they’d let too much time slip by, far too much. “Oh, yes, Cartophilus! You’ll most certainly get to know…” Yet in the first place I was no longer mobile and in the second place I had cataracts. How could I possibly get to know?

Yet, even so, I was worried. One night I thought about the Witch of Endor—I don’t know what put her into my mind. No way was I thinking of journeying to Endor or of travelling back through past centuries; it was enough that I must travel forward through future ones. (You see, I still hadn’t quite convinced myself.) Besides, I now had a fear of witches, since I’d seen that woman perish in the fire. But the notion remained with me: might witchcraft cure my ills? After all, I couldn’t go on like this, not unless they simply put me in a cage and left me there as some interesting exhibit—a decrepit, aging, floorbound, defecating beast, barely recognizable as human.

And it defied belief to suppose that that could have been the projected manner of it. Some sort of travelling peep show? “Step right up and see the world’s oldest and ugliest inhabitant!” No, surely not. To get to experience different lands through only the smells that drifted between the bars of some endlessly swaying cage? Or through the barely heard ribaldries of those who came to gawp at me? That couldn’t be what they’d had in mind.

So the question then remained. If it was going to take place, how was it going to take place? Was it conceivable there could be anyone out there—other than a witch or a warlock or an outcast of some other variety—who might have the potential to help me? And even if they had the potential, would they possess the generosity? Remember, I was penniless. Would it be within their nature to take pity?

However. Finally it happened. Somebody did take pity.

She set down her buckets and her yoke and procured me bread and gave me water and didn’t seem to mind that she almost had to shout at me on account of my poor hearing. I felt so starved of talk, of normal human intercourse. I would have liked to touch her face but didn’t dare request it—my warty fingers, no doubt filthy nails. And anyway. Again it was only sentimental: who cared what she looked like, so long as she delivered?

She wasn’t a witch. She couldn’t deliver. Not directly. But it was she who told me of the wizard who had recently arrived in Jerusalem. “I could take you to visit him,” she offered, “or…”

I pictured her looking first at me and then at the state of my hovel.

“Or perhaps he could visit you here, if you’d be willing to receive him.”

Willing? I’d have been willing to receive King Herod if King Herod could have offered me the least degree of hope.

So he came. Not Herod. The wise man she had spoken of.

“I hear you need assistance.”

What glorious words! To show my gratitude I would have sunk down on my knees if I’d been able.

“You can help me die?” I whispered.

“But haven’t you been doomed to live; to wander over land and sea for all eternity?”

“Wander? Is that what they call it? No, doomed to drag myself along! Inch by painful inch.”

“Nobody can help you die.”

I moaned. My gratitude was short-lived. “How can you ‘assist’ me, then?”

“Through making sure you don’t have to drag yourself along. Inch by painful inch.”

“And how, exactly, do you mean to accomplish that? Foot by painful foot wouldn’t be so much of an improvement.”

He stared at me, severely. “By offering you the chance of a new life. A new life every century.”

Oh, a new life every century? Why, yes, of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that?

This fellow must be mad.

“You are very much straining my patience, Cartophilus—but no, in fact, I am not mad.”

Well, he patently had powers. Possibly it would be foolish to underestimate them; and I shouldn’t have been so quick to let him know I did. Hot-tempered, that’s me. But even if by some outlandish chance he was capable of doing what he claimed…no, I just couldn’t believe it.

“So what can I say,” he murmured, “to make you believe it?”

And then, ironically, I did. It was as simple as that. But it wasn’t the actual question which convinced me—no, of course not—nor the fact he could so clearly intercept what I was thinking…although that, too, was certainly impressive. No, what convinced me was the way he’d put the question. The softness of the voice he’d used. For I had suddenly realized something. I could actually hear him! I could actually see him! The process had been a gradual one, but if he was talking miracles I now had proof that he could do it—well, ears and eyes, at any rate. Which was a persuasive testimonial…especially to somebody as keen to be persuaded as I was.

And from that instant I trusted him. Well—as fully as it was in my nature to trust anyone.

“I’m sorry I was sceptical,” I said. “Born again?”

He nodded. I really saw him nod. It was amazing.

But this might have been simply in acknowledgment of my apology. I had to get it straight. No ambiguity.

“Reborn every century? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

In other words it almost seemed… Well, it almost seemed as if my punishment was about to be suspended. Or lifted. Or evaded. Eternal life—the thing all mortals hungered for. (Especially if, like me, they had their doubts regarding heaven.) No more a punishment at all. A positive reward.

But why? Clearly, there had to be some catch to it. There was always a price tag. Nothing was for nothing.

This time he didn’t respond, though—and I remembered that only ten seconds ago I had apologized for my scepticism. So be it! I let my mind dwell on the sheer restfulness of lying in a crib.

“Good health?” I persisted.

“What? Oh, good health. Yes, certainly. You’ll be a normal child. A normal youth and adult. With everything normality implies except that—”

I laughed. “Except that I’ll still live to be a hundred?”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Money?” I asked. “Will I have money?”

“That all depends. If you want to be well-off it’s obviously something you can see to on your own account.”

Slowly, I digested all this information. “Every hundred years…made young again! That’s staggering. Really staggering.”

“Yes. I’m glad you look on it like that.”

“Though on the other hand… Do you mind if I make one small suggestion? A hundred years is a long time. Couldn’t we make it fifty?”

“No,” he said.

“Seventy-five?”

Although he shook his head he didn’t look reproachful. I sensed that with a bit of coaxing I might be able to swing it. “So much sympathy,” I said, “so much compassion! I’m sure the two of us could come to an agreement.”

“Are you?”

“Hugely beneficial to both parties.” I rubbed my hands.

“How so, to me?”

“Oh, I can see you’re a real gentleman. A philanthropist! I can see you’d like to make this world a better place.”

“Aren’t I doing that already? Your own small part of it, anyway?”

“Oh, you are, you are! You’re the kindest person I have ever known!” I could tell he was amused by my flattery—even if I could also tell he didn’t mean to be swayed by it. (Yet the funny thing is, it wasn’t altogether flattery. He was the kindest person I had ever known.) “All right. Not seventy-five. I accept that. But does it have to be a hundred?”

I really felt he might be weakening. “That all depends,” he said.

“Depends on what, O wise one?”

“On how things go.”

What an irritating answer!

But no matter how I wheedled I couldn’t get him to expand on it. I heard my tone grow plaintive.

“I don’t want to live so long,” I grumbled. “Not to a hundred! Please! No, never again!”

(Okay, so I was stretching a point. Though only by a few weeks—a few short wretched weeks. No. A few long wretched weeks! He said: “By eight months and four days, if we want to be accurate.” Why did he think that funny?)

But would you believe it? Already I was grumbling. I should have been dancing.

Tomorrow I’d be dancing.

“A newborn baby finds it difficult to dance,” he remarked.

“Besides,” I pointed out. I wished to demonstrate he wasn’t dealing with an idiot. “When I’m newborn I shan’t even know I’ve any reason to dance, shall I?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly,” I agreed.

But then—the very next second—

“I shall?”

“As I was about to tell you a short while ago. You’ll be a normal child and youth and man in every respect save two.”

I felt apprehensive.

“First,” he said, “the matter of age. But you’re aware of that.”

“And second?”

“Memory.”

My apprehension dwindled. “You mean I’ll be forgetful? Hardly to be wondered at over the course of centuries!”

“No. I mean the opposite. Your memory will be excellent.”

So what was the disadvantage there? (Though perhaps I’d only inferred one. Ever the pessimist! Yet—following a life like mine—certainly not without cause!)

“From your own point of view,” he said, “the disadvantage will be this. You’ll remember more than you would want to.”

“Oh, I think I can live with that.”

But suddenly again, on a far less casual note, “More than I would want to? What kind of thing?”

“Every kind of thing.”

“Every kind of thing?”

“You’ll remember, for instance, how you struck the Saviour. How you repeatedly tried to kill yourself. How you became an animal. How you—”

I was appalled.

“No, stop! All the things I’d most be wanting to forget!”

He ignored my interruption.

“Though undoubtedly you always were an animal! I should have said—how you became an out-and-out grotesque!”

His tone remained pleasant, despite his statement having been as damning, virtually, as any statement could be. But, for the moment, that wasn’t what mattered. What did matter—overwhelmingly—was that even as a newborn I’d be remembering all the horrors I’d assumed I should now be leaving behind. I’d be carrying the full weight of my past even into my cradle. From my cradle I’d be hauling it every interminable step of the way into my grave—and out of my grave—and back into my cradle. It would be unbearable.

Iniquitous. Indescribable. Wouldn’t it almost be better not to—?

“No,” he said, “think straight, man! What—remain as you are? You can’t have forgotten that at the very least now you’ll be able to sleep at night?”

Yet even this was qualified.

“Or if you don’t, it won’t be due any longer to crippling physical discomfort, which—although you didn’t realize it—must often have neutralized the pain of thought.”

He added, “Naturally you won’t be attempting suicide again, now that you’re familiar with the consequences?”

No. At least I had learned that much.

“And you’ll have bread, you’ll have wine, you’ll have all the things you might have thought would give you pleasure. Even sex, Cartophilus, you’ll be able to squirt your juices once again. It’s just that you’ll also have a new ingredient—an ingredient invariably withheld from others. Your memory of past lives.”

I muttered: “Mercifully withheld from others.”

“That all depends—doesn’t it?—on the quality of the past lives.”

I considered this a phrase I could very easily grow to hate. Already had. How many times had he used it? That all depends…

“I’m sorry, Cartophilus. Those have to be my terms.”

“And you let me think there wasn’t any catch. You really let me think there wouldn’t be a catch.”

He hesitated.

“You’re right to point that out. It wasn’t my intention to mislead.”

“Hmm,” I answered, doubtfully.

“Whether you believe me or not is immaterial. But at least I’d like you to forgive me.”

I, too, hesitated.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a shame,” he said, “because forgiveness of course—”

I cut him off. “What I meant to say…”

“Yes?”

“What I meant to say was…” I gave a shrug. “That all depends.”

There followed a moment of silence. I wondered if I’d have to explain. But then he laughed.

Properly laughed. Laughed with genuine enjoyment.

Which—I have to admit—did a lot to sweeten things.

Yet even so. Didn’t he understand that there was weariness of spirit—oh, my God, was there not weariness of spirit—at times every bit as burdensome as the greatest weariness of body?

“Remembering things,” I said, “will be to go on experiencing them! To go on reliving them! For ever!”

He offered no reply.

There ensued a further short silence.

“And bearing in mind that you did mislead me,” I observed, “are the terms you’ve mentioned utterly non-negotiable?”

“Utterly.”

Contained in that question had been a degree of humour which he clearly hadn’t recognized. My tears began to well. I fought furiously to stem them.

“Yet if it’s any consolation,” he remarked, “I can add that every thousand years or so you’ll have the slate wiped clean.”

“Oh, thank you!” I said. “Every thousand years? What a remarkable selling point; you should have introduced it earlier!” (My natural aggressiveness…perhaps accentuated, because of those ruddy tears. I knew it wasn’t appropriate. Basically, he was my benefactor. Basically, he was my friend. But all the same… Well, I ask you!) “Every hundred years… Every thousand years… Can’t you think in anything but round figures?”

“Maybe I can,” he conceded—frankly, more gentle than I would ever have expected. “So let’s amend it a little. Every thousand years, more or less. How’s that? One lifetime in ten. But the key factor is…on those occasions you won’t have any memories left at all. It’ll feel as if you’re starting out totally afresh.”

“Just one in ten! I shall go crazy!”

“That’s up to you,” he said. “You might go sane.”

I steadied myself.

Took a deep breath.

“Couldn’t we make it one in seven?”

“No.”

But then he laughed again.

“I can respect the haggling,” he said. “It’s the whining I don’t take to.”

He placed his hand upon my shoulder, gave it a squeeze. Nobody in over half a century had done anything that simple or so suggestive of friendship.

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right. I wouldn’t take to any of the whining, either. ‘What an ingrate!’ I would say. ‘Doesn’t he know when he’s well off?’”

I added quickly:

“So couldn’t we make it one in three?”

It was a universal wheeze. He was meant to say: One in three; a moment ago it was one in seven! Oh, very well, I suppose we’ll have to split the difference! One in five!

That, anyhow, would have been something.

Because one lifetime in ten! Ridiculous! And every lifetime lasting a hundred years! Ridiculous! Hadn’t he discovered yet that all of human existence was inescapably messy? What about seventy-three-and-a-half, or thirty-nine, or fifty-five, or even eighty-six-and-three-quarters? Eh?

“Well, that all depends,” he said.