A Slow Saturday Night At The Surrealist Sporting Club

Being a Further Account of Engelbrecht the Boxing Dwarf and His Fellow Members

I happened to be sitting in the snug of the Strangers' Bar at the Surrealist Sporting Club on a rainy Saturday night, enjoying a well-mixed Existential Fizz (2 parts Vortex Water to 1 part Sweet Gin) and desperate to meet a diverting visitor, when Death slipped unostentatiously into the big chair opposite, warming his bones at the fire and remarking on the unseasonable weather. There was sure to be a lot of flu about. It made you hate to get the tube but the buses were worse and had I seen what cabs were charging these days? He began to drone on as usual about the ozone layer and the melting pole, how we were poisoning ourselves on GM foods and feeding cows to cows and getting all that pollution and cigarette smoke in our lungs and those other gloomy topics he seems to relish, which I suppose makes you appreciate it when he puts you out of your misery.

I had to choose between nodding off or changing the subject. The evening being what it was, I made the effort and changed the subject. Or at least, had a stab at it.

"So what's new?" It was feeble, I admit. But, as it happened, it stopped him in midmoan.

"Thanks for reminding me," he said, and glanced at one of his many watches. "God's dropping in-oh, in about twelve minutes, twenty-five seconds. He doesn't have a lot of time, but if you've any questions to ask him, I suggest you canvass the other members present and think up some good ones in a hurry. And he's not very fond of jokers, if you know what I mean. So stick to substantial questions or he won't be pleased."

"I thought he usually sent seraphim ahead for this sort of visit?" I queried mildly. "Are you all having to double up or something? Is it overpopulation?" I didn't like this drift, either. It suggested a finite universe, for a start.

Our Ever-Present Friend rose smoothly. He looked around the room with a distressed sigh, as if suspecting the whole structure to be infected with dry rot and carpenter ants. He couldn't as much as produce a grim brotherly smile for the deathwatch beetle that had come out especially to greet him. "Well, once more into the breach. Have you noticed what it's like out there? Worst on record, they say. Mind you, they don't remember the megalithic. Those were the days, eh? See you later." "Be sure of it." I knew a moment of existential angst. Sensitively, Death hesitated, seemed about to apologize, then thought better of it. He shrugged. "See you in a minute," he said. "I've got to look out for God in the foyer and sign him in. You know." He had the air of one who had given up worrying about minor embarrassments and was sticking to the protocol, come hell or high water. He was certainly more laconic than he had been. I wondered if the extra work, and doubling as a seraph, had changed his character.

With Death gone, the Strangers' was warming up rapidly again, and I enjoyed a quiet moment with my fizz before rising to amble through the usual warped and shrieking corridors to the Members' Bar, which appeared empty.

"Are you thinking of dinner?" Lizard Bayliss, looking like an undis-infected dishrag, strolled over from where he had been hanging up his obnoxious cape. Never far behind, out of the WC, bustled Englebrecht the Dwarf Clock Boxer, who had gone ten rounds with the Greenwich Atom before that overrefined chronometer went down to an iffy punch in the eleventh. His great, mad eyes flashed from under a simian hedge of eyebrow. As usual he wore a three-piece suit a size too small for him, in the belief it made him seem taller. He was effing and blinding about some imagined insult offered by the taxi driver who had brought them back from the not altogether successful Endangered Sea Monsters angling contest in which, I was to learn later, Engelbrecht had caught his hook in a tangle of timeweed and wound up dragging down the Titanic, which explained that mystery. Mind you, he still had to come clean about the R101. There was some feeling in the club concerning the airship, since he'd clearly taken bets against himself. Challenged, he'd muttered some conventional nonsense about the Maelstrom and the Inner World, but we'd heard that one too often to be convinced. He also resented our recent rule limiting all aerial angling to firedrakes and larger species of pterodactyls.

Lizard Bayliss had oddly colored bags under his eyes, giving an even more downcast appearance to his normally dissolute features. He was a little drained from dragging the Dwarf in by his collar. It appeared that, seeing the big rods, the driver had asked Bayliss if that was his bait on the seat beside him. The irony was, of course, that the Dwarf had been known to use himself as bait more than once, and there was still some argument over interpretation of the rules in that area, too. The Dwarf had taken the cabbie's remark to be specific not because of his dimuni-tive stockiness, but because of his sensitivity over the rules issue. He stood to lose a few months, even years, if they reversed the result.

He was still spitting on about "nitpicking fascist anoraks with severe anal-retention problems" when I raised my glass and yelled: "If you've an important question for God, you'd better work out how to phrase it. He's due in any second now. And he's only got a few minutes. At the Strangers' Bar. We could invite him in here, but that would involve a lot of time-consuming ritual and so forth. Any objection to meeting him back there?"

The Dwarf wasn't sure he had anything to say that wouldn't get taken the wrong way. Then, noticing how low the fire was, opined that the Strangers' was bound to offer better hospitality. "I can face my maker any time," he pointed out, "but I'd rather do it with a substantial drink in my hand and a good blaze warming my bum." He seemed unusually oblivious to any symbolism, given that the air was writhing with it. I think the Titanic was still on his mind. He was trying to work out how to get his hook back.

By the time we had collected up Oneway Ballard and Taffy Sinclair from the dining room and returned to the Strangers', God had already arrived. Any plans the Dwarf had instantly went out the window, because God was standing with his back to the fire, blocking everyone's heat. With a word to Taffy not to overtax the Lord of Creation, Death hurried off on some urgent business and disappeared back through the swing doors.

"I am thy One True God," said Jehovah, making the glasses and bottles rattle. He cleared his throat and dropped his tone to what must for him have been a whisper. But it was unnatural, almost false, like a TV presenter trying to express concern while keeping full attention on the autoprompt. Still, there was something totally convincing about God as a presence. You knew you were in his aura, and you knew you had Grace, even if you weren't too impressed by his stereotypical form. God added: "I am Jehovah, the Almighty. Ask of me what ye will."

Lizard knew sudden inspiration. "Do you plan to send Jesus back to Earth, and have you any thoughts about the 2:30 at Aintree tomorrow?"

"He is back," said God, "and I wouldn't touch those races, these days.

Believe me, they're all bent, one way or another. If you like the horses, do the National. . . . Take a chance. Have a gamble. It's anybody's race, the National."

"But being omniscent," said Lizard slowly, "wouldn't you know the outcome anyway?"

"If I stuck by all the rules of omniscience, it wouldn't exactly be sporting, would it?" God was staring over at the bar, checking out the Corona-Coronas and the melting marine chronometer above them.

"You don't think it's hard on the horses?" asked Jillian Burnes, the transexual novelist, who could be relied upon for a touch of compassion. Being almost seven feet tall in her spike heels, she was also useful for getting books down from the higher shelves and sorting out those bottles at the top of the bar that looked so temptingly dangerous.

"Bugger the horses," said God, "it's the race that counts. And anyway, the horses love it. They love it."

I was a little puzzled. "I thought we had to ask only substantial questions?"

"That's right?" God drew his mighty brows together in inquiry.

I fell into an untypical silence. I was experiencing a mild revelation concerning the head of the Church of England and her own favorite pasatiempi, but it seemed inappropriate to run with it at that moment.

"What I'd like to know is," said Engelbrecht, cutting suddenly to the chase, "who gets into Heaven and why?"

There was a bit of a pause in the air, as if everyone felt perhaps he'd pushed the boat out a little too far, but God was nodding. "Fair question," he said. "Well, it's cats, then dogs, but there's quite a few human beings, really. But mostly it's pets."

Lizard Bayliss had begun to grin. It wasn't a pretty sight with all those teeth that he swore weren't filed. "You mean you like animals better than people? Is that what you're saying, Lord?"

"I wouldn't generalize." God lifted his robe a little to let the fire get at his legs. "It's mostly cats. Some dogs. Then a few people. All a matter of proportion, of course. I mean, it's millions at least, probably billions, because I'd forgotten about the rats and mice."

"You like those, too?"

"No. Can't stand their hairless tails. Sorry, but it's just me. They can, I understand, be affectionate little creatures. No, they're for the cats. Cats are perfectly adapted for hanging out in heaven. But they still need a bit of a hunt occasionally. They get bored. Well, you know cats. You can't change their nature."

"I thought you could," said Oneway Ballard, limping up to the bar and ringing the bell. He was staying the night because someone had put a Denver boot on his Granada, and he'd torn the wheel off, trying to re-verse out of it. He was in poor spirits because he and the car had been due to be married at Saint James's, Spanish Place, next morning and there was no way he was going to get the wheel back on and the car spruced up in time for the ceremony. He'd already called the vicar. Igor was on tonight and had trouble responding. We watched him struggle to get his hump under the low doorway. "Coming, Master," he said. It was too much like Young Frankenstein to be very amusing.

"I can change nature, yes," God continued. "I said you couldn't. Am I right?"

"Always," said Oneway, turning to order a couple of pints of Ackroyd's. He wasn't exactly looking on Fate with any favor at that moment. "But if you can..."

"There are a lot of things I could do," God pointed out. "You might have noticed. I could stop babies dying and famines and earthquakes. But I don't, do I?"

"Well, we wouldn't know about the ones you'd stopped," Engelbrecht pointed out, a bit donnishly for him. "So when the heavens open on the day of resurrection, it really will rain cats and dogs. And who else? Jews?"

"Some Jews, yes." In another being, God's attitude might have seemed defensive. "But listen, I want to get off the race issue. I don't judge people on their race, color, or creed. I never have. Wealth," he added a little sententiously, "has no color. If I've said who I favor and some purse-mouthed prophet decides to put his name in instead of the bloke I chose, then so it goes. It's free will in a free market. And you can't accuse me of not supporting the free market. Economic liberalism combined with conservative bigotry is the finest weapon I ever gave the chosen people. One thing you can't accuse me of being and that's a control freak."

"See," said Lizard, then blushed. "Sorry, God. But you just said it yourself-chosen people."

"Those are the people I choose," said God with a tinge of impatience. "Yes."

"So-the Jews."

"No. The moneylenders are mostly wasps. The usurers. Oil people. Big players in Threadneedle Street and Wall Street. Or, at least, a good many of them. Very few Jews, as it happens. And most of them, in Heaven, are from show business. Look around you and tell me who are the chosen ones. It's simple. They're the people in the limousines with great sex lives and private jets. Not cats, of course, who don't like travel. Otherwise, the chosen are very popular with the public or aggressively wealthy, the ones who have helped themselves. And those who help themselves God helps."

"You're a Yank!" Engelbrecht was struck by a revelation. "There are rules in this club about Yanks."

"Because Americans happen to have a handle on the realities, doesn't mean I'm American," God was a little offended. Then he softened. "It's probably an easy mistake to make. I mean, strictly speaking, I'm prehistoric. But, yes, America has come up trumps where religious worship is concerned. No old-fashioned iconography cluttering up their vision. There's scarcely a church in the nation that isn't a sort of glorified business seminar nowadays. God will help you, but you have to prove you're serious about wanting help. He'll at least match everything you make, but you have to make a little for yourself first, to show you can. It's all there. Getting people out of the welfare trap."

"Aren't they all a bit narrow-minded?" asked Taffy Sinclair, the metatemporal pathologist, who had so successfully dissected the Hess quints. "They are where I come from, I know." His stern good looks demanded our attention. "Baptists!" He took a long introspective pull of his shant. The massive dome of his forehead glared in the firelight.

God was unmoved by Sinclair's point. "Those Baptists are absolute wizards. They're spot on about me. And all good Old Testament boys. They use the Son of God as a source of authority, not as an example. The economic liberalism they vote for destroys everything of value worth conserving! It drives them nuts, but it makes them more dysfunctional and therefore more aggressive and therefore richer. Deeply unhappy, they turn increasingly to the source of their misery for a comfort that never comes. Compassionate consumption? None of your peace-and-love religions down there. Scientology has nothing on that little lot. Amateur, that Hubbard. But a bloody good one." He chuckled affectionately. "I look with special favor on the Southern Baptist Convention. So there does happen to be a preponderance of Americans in paradise, as it happens. But ironically no Scientologists. Hubbard's as fond of cats as I am, but he won't have Scientologists. I'll admit, too, that not all the chosen are entirely happy with the situation, because of being pretty thoroughly outnumbered, just by the Oriental shorthairs. And they do like to be in control. And many of them are bigots, so they're forever whining about the others being favored over them.

"Of course, once they get to Heaven, I'm in control. It takes a bit of adjustment for some of them. Some of them, in fact, opt for Hell, preferring to rule there than serve in Heaven, as it were. Milton was on the money, really, if a bit melodramatic and fanciful. Not so much a war in Heaven as a renegotiated contract. A pending paradise."

"I thought you sent Jesus down as the Prince of Peace," said Lizard a little dimly. The black bombers were wearing off, and he was beginning to feel the effects of the past few hours.

"Well, in those days," said God, "I have to admit, I had a different agenda. Looking back, of course, it was a bit unrealistic. It could never have worked. But I wouldn't take no for an answer, and you know the rest. New Testament and so on? Even then Paul kept trying to talk to me and I wouldn't listen. Another temporary fix-up as it turned out. He was right. I admitted it. The problem is not in the creating of mankind, say, but in getting the self-reproducing software right. Do that and you have a human race with real potential. But that's always been the hurdle, hasn't it? Now lust and greed are all very well, but they do tend to involve a lot of messy side effects. And, of course, I tried to modify those with my ten commandments. Everyone was very excited about them at the time. A bit of fine-tuning I should have tried earlier. But we all know where that led. It's a ramshackle world at best, I have to admit. The least I can do is shore a few things up. I tried a few other belief systems. All ended the same way. So the alternative was to bless the world with sudden rationality. Yet once you give people a chance to think about it, they stop reproducing altogether. Lust is a totally inefficient engine for running a reproductive program. It means you have to modify the rational processes so that they switch off at certain times. And we all know where that leads. So, all in all, while the fiercest get to the top, the top isn't worth getting to and if it wasn't for the cats, I'd wind the whole miserable failure up. In fact I was going to until Jesus talked me into offering cloning as an alternative. I'd already sent them H. G. Wells and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The United Nations and all the rest of it. I'm too soft, I know, but Jesus was always my favorite, and he's never short of a reason for giving you all another chance. So every time I start to wipe you out, along he comes with that bloody charm of his and he twists me round his little finger. Well, you know the rest. One world war interrupted. Started again. Stopped again. Couple more genocides. Try again. No good. So far, as you've probably noticed, you haven't exactly taken the best options offered. Even Jesus is running out of excuses for you. So I'm giving it a few years and then, no matter what, I'm sending a giant comet. Or I might send a giant cat. It'll be a giant something anyway. And it'll be over with in an instant. Nothing cruel. No chance to change my mind."

Death was hovering about in the shadows, glancing meaningfully at his watches.

"That's it, then, is it?" Jillian Burnes seemed a bit crestfallen. "You've come to warn us that the world has every chance of ending. And you offer us no chance to repent, to change, to make our peace?" She tightened her lips. God could tell how she felt.

"I didn't offer," God reminded her. "Somebody asked. Look, I am not the Prince of Lies. I am the Lord of Truth. Not a very successful God of Love, though I must say I tried. More a God of, well, profit, I suppose. I mean everyone complains that these great religious books written in my name are incoherent, so they blame the writers. Never occurs to them that I might not be entirely coherent myself. On account of being-well, the supreme being. If I am existence, parts of existence are incoherent. Or, at least, apparently incoherent. . ." He realized he'd lost us.

"So there's no chance for redemption?" said Engelbrecht, looking about him. "For, say, the bohemian sporting fancy?"

"I didn't say that. Who knows what I'll feel like next week? But I'll always get on famously with cats. Can't resist the little beggars. There are some humans who are absolutely satisfied with the status quo in Heaven. But all cats get a kick out of the whole thing. The humans, on the quiet, are often only there to look after the cats."

"And the rest?"

"I don't follow you," said God. "Well, of course, being omniscient, I could follow you. What I should have said was 'I'm not following you.' "

"The rest of the people. What happens to them. The discards. The souls who don't make it through the pearly gates, as it were?" Engelbrecht seemed to be showing unusual concern for others.

"Recycled," said God. "You know-thrown back in the pot-what do the Celts call it?-the Mother Sea? After all, they're indistinguishable in life, especially the politicians. They probably hardly notice the change."

"Is that the only people who get to stay?" asked the Dwarf. "Rich people?"

"Oh, no," said God. "Though the others do tend to be funny. Wits and comics mostly. I love Benny Hill, don't you? He's often seated on my right side, you might say. You need a lot of cheering up in my job."

Jillian Burnes was becoming sympathetic. She loved to mother power. "I always thought you were a matron. I felt ashamed of you. It's such a relief to find out you're male." There was a sort of honeyed criticism in her voice, an almost flirtatious quality.

"Not strictly speaking male," said God, "being divine, sublime, and, ha, ha, all things, including woman, the eternal mime."

"Well, you sound very masculine," she said. "White and privileged."

"Absolutely!" God reassured her. "I approve of your method. That's exactly who I am and that's who I like to spend my time with, if I have to spend it with human beings at all."

Engelbrecht had bared his teeth. He was a terrier. "So can I get in, is 'what I suppose I'm asking?"

"Of course you can."

"Though I'm not Jewish."

"You don't have to be Jewish. I can't stress this too often. Think about it. I haven't actually favored the main mass of Jews lately, have I? I mean, take the twentieth century alone. I'm not talking about dress codes and tribal loyalties."

God spread his legs a little wide and hefted his gown to let the glow get to his divine buttocks. If we had not known it to be a noise from the fire, we might have thought he farted softly. He sighed. "When I first got into this calling there were all kinds of other deities about, many of mem far superior to me in almost every way. More attractive. More eloquent. More easygoing. Elegant powers of creativity. Even the Celts and the Norse gods had a bit of style. But I had ambition. Bit by bit I took over the trade until, bingo, one day there was only me. I am, after all, the living symbol of corporate aggression, tolerating no competition and favoring only my own family and its clients. What do you want me to do? Identify with some bloody oik of an East Timorese who can hardly tell the difference between himself and a tree? Sierra Leone? Listen, you get yourselves into these messes, you get yourselves out."

"Well it's a good world for overpaid CEOs . . . ," mused Lizard.

"In this world and the next," confirmed God. "And it's a good world for overpaid comedians, too, for that matter."

"So Ben Elton and Woody Allen . . ."

God raised an omnipotent hand. "I said comedians."

"Um." Engelbrecht was having difficulties phrasing something. 'Um ..." He was aware of Death hovering around and ticking like a showcase full of Timexes. "What about it?"

"What?"

"You know," murmured Engelbrecht, deeply embarrassed by now, "the meaning of existence? The point."

"Point?" God frowned. "I don't follow."

"Well you've issued a few predictions in your time. . . ."

Death was clearing his throat. "Just to remind you about that policy subcommittee," he murmured. "I think we told them half-eight."

God seemed mystified for a moment. Then he began to straighten up. Oh, yes. Important committee. Might be some good news for you. Hush, hush. Can't say any more."

Lizard was now almost falling over himself to get his questions in. "Did you have anything to do with global warming?"

Death uttered a cold sigh. He almost put the fire out. We all glared at him, but he was unrepentant. God remained tolerant of a question he might have heard a thousand times at least. He spread his hands. "Look. I plant a planet with sustainable wealth, OK? Nobody tells you to breed like rabbits and gobble it all up at once."

"Well, actually, you did encourage us to breed like rabbits," Jillian Burnes murmured reasonably.

"Fair enough," said God. "I have to agree corporate expansion depends on a perpetually growing population. We found that out. Demographics are the friend of business, right?"

"Well, up to a point, I should have thought," said Lizard, aware that God had already as good as told him a line had been drawn under the whole project. "I mean it's a finite planet and we're getting close to exhausting it."

"That's right." God glanced at the soft Dali watches over the bar, then darted an inquiry at Death. "So?"

"So how can we stop the world from ending?" asked Englebrecht.

"Well," said God, genuinely embarrassed, "you can't."

"Can't? The end of the world is inevitable? "

"I thought I'd answered that one already. In fact, it's getting closer all the time." He began to move toward the cloakroom. God, I understood, couldn't lie. Which didn't mean he always liked telling the truth. And he knew anything he added would probably sound patronizing or unnecessarily accusatory. Then the taxi had turned up, and Death was bustling God off into it.

And that was that. As we gathered round the fire, Lizard Bayliss said he thought it was a rum do altogether and God must be pretty desperate to seek out company like ours, especially on a wet Saturday night. What did everyone else make of it?

We decided that nobody present was really qualified to judge, so we'd wait until Monday, when Monsignor Cornelius returned from Las Vegas. The famous Cowboy Jesuit had an unmatched grasp of contemporary doctrine.

But this wasn't good enough for Engelbrecht, who seemed to have taken against our visitor in a big way.

"I could sort this out," he insisted. If God had a timepiece of any weight he'd like to back, Engelbrecht would cheerfully show it the gloves.

That, admitted Jillian Burnes with new admiration, was the true existential hero, forever battling against Fate, and forever doomed to lose.

Engelbrecht, scenting an opportunity he hadn't previously even considered, became almost egregious, slicking back his hair and offering the great novelist an engaging leer.

When the two had gone off, back to Jillian's Tufnell Hill eyrie, Lizard Bayliss offered to buy the drinks, adding that it had been a bloody awful Friday and Saturday so far, and he hoped Sunday cheered up because if it didn't the whole weekend would have been a rotten write-off.

I'm pleased to say it was Taffy Sinclair who proposed we all go down to the Woods of Westermaine for some goblin shooting, so we rang up Count Dracula to tell him we were coming over to Dunsuckin, then all jumped onto our large black Fly and headed for fresher fields, agreeing that it had been one of the most depressing Saturdays any of us had enjoyed in centuries and the sooner it was behind us, the better.