Heaven
By Denis Murphy

“Didn’t he look like Serafin?”  Balty asked.  Serafin had cooked breakfast for the Jesuits for 35 years.

Lucian left.  One moment he was there with them and then, with the suddenness of a door slammed late at night, he was gone.  Bats squealed in the acacia trees and two wild ducks that had made their home on top of the faculty house honked furiously.

“He was civil,” Stuffler said. 
“He was indeed,” Balty agreed.  “He looked like… what’s his name… the canon law man?”

Tim, the third of the three old men, looked toward the drinks cabinet and the others nodded.  “He looked like Marcos’ lawyer, the one with the hooded eyes and the lisp,” he said over his shoulder.  He found glasses and a bottle of scotch and brought them over to the glass topped coffee table between their chairs.

Stuffler thought their guest had the eyes of a child, a sleepy child, but he didn’t say anything.  They hadn’t argued since they began the search months earlier and he didn’t want to start now that it was over.  They sipped the scotch neat, and settled more comfortably in the chairs.

“We’ve met the devil; and we’re still here,” Tim said.  He reached out to clink glasses with the others.

“The devil is a liar and the father of lies,” Stuffler reminded them.  “We can discuss things but remember that.”

“Didn’t he look like Serafin?”  Balty asked.  Serafin had cooked breakfast for the Jesuits for 35 years.

* * *

Months before they had taken the first step along the way that led to Lucian on the same back porch of the building now called the Jesuit Residence. Years before it was the Faculty House.  No one knew why the name changed.  Had some woman faculty member applied for a room, as one story had it?  Lucian called it the Faculty House.  Tim and Balty were alone on the porch that night, after the other Jesuits went down to dinner.

“You have to feel sorry for them,” Balty said and dropped the Newsweek he was reading on the coffee table.

“I do, I do indeed,”  Tim said and reached for his drink. He bumped the glass and drops of scotch blotted the pages of the Newsweek. He had read the article.

“Imagine, raisins.”

“You have to feel sorry for them.”

“To wake up in heaven and find it was all about raisins.”

“It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.”

There was no hurry.  They might fall into long silences as if they had  whole vacations in front of them.  One might nod off and the other wouldn’t mind.  In the valley below darkness almost covered the gravestones in the cemetery.  They had watched the cemetery fill up over the years from a few scattered gravestones. Now it was packed end to end. Beyond the cemetery the river was dark crimson.  Far to the East were the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains.

“Did they really believe maidens would be waiting?”  Balty wouldn’t use “virgin”; it was too explicit. “Was it only a symbol?”

“Maybe it will stop violence.”

“Maybe.”  Balty said.

The Newsweek article reviewed a new translation of the Holy Koran that claimed to go back beyond the Arabic to the original Aramaic the Prophet used, which was supposed to be similar to the Aramaic Jesus spoke.  There were some major changes. The Arabic told Muslim warriors who died in a holy war that 100 maidens or virgins awaited them in heaven.  The new translation claimed the Arabic word translated as “maiden” was “raisin” in Aramaic.  The warrior would receive on his entry into paradise a handful of raisins.

The two men had been together 50 years since they met one hot day in the Jesuit seminary in Cebu.  It was now an agricultural school, but young men still stood at the fence looking out at children walking home from school, the young girls and the cars.  Tim was from New York and had been a prefect of discipline most of his life.  Balty taught theology. He was from Malate, Manila where rich families lived after the war. They had been together in the Ateneo de Naga as scholastics, then studied theology at Woodstock College outside Baltimore and were ordained by Cardinal Spellman in New York.  The cardinal had looked sceptically at the priests-to-be coming forward for anointing as if they were after handouts.

“Did they really believe maidens would be waiting?”  Balty wouldn’t use “virgin”; it was too explicit. “Was it only a symbol?”

“Who thinks symbolically about women?”

“It’s not possible, a hundred maidens for every martyr.”

“Don’t worry, Balty.  God is good.”

“It’s sad to see any beautiful hope end.”

They thought of that a while and then they went out through the recreation room and down to the dining hall.  As usual there were no messages in their mail boxes.  They took their food at the buffet table and found a place at a table of young Jesuits.  The dining room was built for a community of 100 men, but  now there were only 25.  The unused tables took up more than half the room.  To remove them would show a lack of hope in the future.

The young Jesuits greeted the two politely then went back to their own conversation, but as soon as there was a lull, Balty asked if they had read the article in Newsweek.  It wasn’t often he had something to share.  Two of the young men had read it and one had met the translator at a workshop in Jerusalem, but Balty still explained it point by point.

“He’s a Catholic,” the Jesuit who knew the translator said when Balty finished,  “though you wouldn’t know it by his name which sounds Jewish.  He talked about his work.  We warned him Muslims might be insulted.  He’s well respected with a good degree.”  Good degrees are important these days, Balty realized again.  His own degree from the Gregorian was considered a barely passing one.

“Will it bother Muslims?”  he asked the group.

“It’s cruel,” Tim said before they could answer and looked around at the others.  “It’s cruel to spoil such hope.”  He had often told boys they couldn’t do this or that in life and watched them go away sad.

“If I were a theologian like you, I’d work on this.  We’re going to spend eternity there and we have no idea what it’s all about.  To see God ‘face to face’—what can that mean?”

They ate until Balty put down his spoon and fork. “I’m not excited about our own afterlife, to tell the truth.  The nearer I get to heaven, the less I like it.”

The young men smiled and gathered their dishes to leave.  “To see God face to face, isn’t that enough for us?”  one asked.  “From God and back to God.”

“Would you blow yourself up for that?”  Tim asked.

The young men left.  Balty gripped Tim’s shoulder. “Don’t talk about blowing up people.  We have years left.”

Without warning the rain poured down.  Lightning flickered over the mountains.  Thunder exploded and rattled the french doors.  They couldn’t hear each other so they stood and said grace, then stacked their dishes on the cart.

Outside they waited for a ride in the elevator, Tim to the third floor and Balty to the fourth.  The elevator was as old as they were and rose shakily.  At the 3rd floor Tim put his foot against the door to keep it from closing and said to Balty, “If I were a theologian like you, I’d work on this.  We’re going to spend eternity there and we have no idea what it’s all about.  To see God ‘face to face’—what can that mean?”  The buzzer was ringing; someone wanted the elevator.

“We’ll both look into it.  Goodnight, Tim.”

“Goodnight, God bless.”

Balty sat at his heavy wooden desk—they were the same in all the rooms and lined up his medicines, the green cozaar, white lipitor, orange hydrochilo-rothiazide.  On the floor below Tim did the same, only he added a pill to combat osteoporosis.  He never mentioned he took that one since he thought it was a woman’s disease.

The Church doesn’t talk much about heaven, Balty knew, but then neither did Jesus.  We’ll see God’s radiant face.  He will embrace us in love that is passionate as fire and look on us with eyes of love.  It should be enough if you really love God, if you really knew Him.

He went out of his room and down the corridor to Fr. Stuffler’s room.  Stuffler had his own reference books since he once told superiors he couldn’t work in the library alongside others.  Balty heard music inside.  He knocked and after what seemed like a long time the music stopped and Stuffler came to the door.  He was another classmate.

“It’s me, Balty.”  Stuffler couldn’t see much at night.

“What a pleasant surprise.”

“I know I’m not, but I need your Catholic Encyclopedia.” 
Stuffler didn’t move.

“I need it now.”  Still Stuffler stayed at the door. “Paul, please…”

“What is it, Balty?  I want to know.”

“Tears” were from Revelation: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. There shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the world that has passed away.”  That wasn’t abstract.

Balty explained about the article and the conversation in the dining room, and how Tim was bothered and how he himself wanted to find what the Church had said of heaven over the centuries.

“Interesting,” Stuffler said.  “You’re not thinking of angels flying around and all of us sitting on clouds?”

“No, Paul.  I can’t see us on a cloud.”

“Good.”

“Why has the Church left it so vague?  That’s what I want to know.  Is it deliberate?”

 “I’ll work on it.”

“Maybe people over the centuries had ideas we don’t know about.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Maybe there were heretics, or visionaries.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“Maybe visions grew out of people’s sufferings.”

“I’ll do my best.” Stuffler was from Buffalo in upper New York State. His friends said the cold of that city had left him a snowball for a heart. They were only half joking.

Meanwhile Tim was thinking the only people he ever knew who looked forward to heaven were widows who lost husbands they loved.  Maybe that was the grain of truth in the Muslim’s belief.  His own mother was a widow 40 years.  Tim was a practical man, a prefect of discipline.  He didn’t know the answers and he wouldn’t find them out that night, so better go to bed.  He filled a glass of water at the sink, swallowed his pills and made a last trip down the corridor to the toilet.  The corridor was open on one side to the night, and afterwards he stood looking out at the campus.  There was laughter from the girl’s dormitory over the hill.  Two people were talking on the floor above.  Bats flew in and out of the acacia trees.

For years he had kept a notebook on the night table by his bed.  It was for students he saw doing something out of order during the day and then forgot about, only to have their faces like police mug shots, full face and in profile, drift into his mind as he was falling asleep.  By then he felt heavy as a boulder and couldn’t get up if he tried, but he could reach out and write something in his book, and if he could make out the scrawl the next morning, justice would be done.  That night in the last moments before sleep he wrote “people… tears.” 

In the morning “people” reminded him he wanted to know what ordinary people expected from heaven.  “Tears” were from Revelation: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. There shall be no more death or mourning, crying out or pain, for the world that has passed away.”  That wasn’t abstract.

It was a wonderful thing about this country, he thought; you could ask anyone any question anytime and they’d answer. “What would you like heaven to be?”  Imagine stopping someone in New York and asking that.

On his way to the college after breakfast, it began to rain and he ducked into the long corridor on the ground floor of the Bellarmine Building.  It was quiet because most students were in class.  From the other end of the corridor, however, a student came toward him.  There wasn’t a sound save for the rain and the squeak of her rubber shoes.  When she came close he put up his hand. “A moment, Miss, do you have a moment?”  She knew him since he often said mass in the college chapel and then stayed to hear confessions on the chance someone wanted to go.  She was smiling, he noticed.  Were his clothes all right?

“Can I ask a question?”

She nodded.  It was a wonderful thing about this country, he thought; you could ask anyone any question anytime and they’d answer.  “What would you like heaven to be?”  Imagine stopping someone in New York and asking that.

She closed her eyes and thought, “Let me see… I’d like to be an angel, not wings, but coming back to help others.”  She thought a little more.  “I’d like to live again.  Maybe God would give me wisdom to overcome my weaknesses.” 

What mistakes could she have made? he wondered. She was hardly more than a girl.

She looked so young and fresh, he said, “God loves you.”

“Do you think so?”

“I can tell.  That’s my job.”  She was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.   Another nice thing about Filipinos is they cry when they’re happy.  “Also, Father, I want to see my mother again. She’s dead.”

“So do I. I mean I want to see my mother.”

Paul Stuffler joined Tim and Balty on the back porch the following night.  He waited till the other priests went down to dinner, then came over, looking about to make sure they were alone. “Bad news,” he said before he was even in his seat. 
“Sit down, Paul.” Tim pulled his chair around to face the two others.

“It’s bad news,” he repeated.  “Do you want to hear?”  They nodded.  “The Church has deliberately avoided talking about heaven.  Something’s wrong.  We know all about hell, but nothing about heaven.  Why the silence?  Something is terribly wrong.”

“Take it easy,” Balty told him.  For Stuffler life was one worst possible scenario after another.

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,”  Stuffler said. He was in full stride:  “We know little and what we know isn’t attractive.  Take St. Thomas.  He says God is the Prime Mover and Immobile—you know all that—and since in heaven we’ll be like God, we’ll all be immobile.  No eating, says Thomas, because eating is movement, change and there is no change in the divine.  No eating, drinking, hugging of loved ones.  Are we men or angels?”

Stuffler stopped and slumped down in his chair.  “Even the art about heaven is bad, shepherds and sheep, I hate sheep, those stupid animals.  Fra Angelico has us dancing with angels.  Aren’t angels men?”

“It sounds awful,” Tim said.

“We have a heaven no one is interested in, and the things people are interested in don’t seem to matter to our Church.  No one talks about spending  eternity with God, except the mystics.”

“It’s not all bad,” Stuffler admitted.  “We will understand all the mysteries of life and will see those we loved in this life and we’ll be happy. We’ll know if people are praying to us.  Big deal.  But here’s something interesting, heretics offer even less of a vision than the Church. You’d expect them to be more imaginative.”

Balty wasn’t listening.  “‘You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.’”  he said. “Remember that?  ‘As the deer longs for living water, so longs my soul for You, O God/My soul is athirst for the living God.’”

“You don’t think something is wrong?  Stuffler asked them.
Something’s wrong, they agreed.

* * *

For another month they searched in Stuffler’s reference library.  They interviewed nearly 30 people, all on the campus, but a cross section of Filipinos—students, faculty, janitors, parents, boys from the squatter areas who come in to play basketball in the covered courts near Loyola House, yayas, drivers waiting for students.  None talked about seeing God face to face or anything like that.  No one longed in the Psalmist’s words “to appear before the presence of God,” though they spoke of many other things they desired.  A yaya waiting for a grade school boy told Tim she wanted her own house with a kitchen and a toilet and two bedrooms, one for her and one for her children, and a sala and trees outside the house so she could sit in the shade. Nothing about a husband.

Tim summarized the interview findings, “We have a heaven no one is interested in, and the things people are interested in don’t seem to matter to our Church.  No one talks about spending  eternity with God, except the mystics.”

Tim finished his drink.  “Here’s another man’s heaven.” He began to sing, “Just lay me down in my native peat/ with a jug of punch at my head and feet.”  The others knew the song well enough from listening to him over the years, so they joined in the chorus, “Too ra loo ra loo, too ra loo ra lay / Too ra loo ra loo, too ra loo ra lay / Just lay me down in my native peat / with a jug of punch at my head and feet.”

Tim had been deeply moved by some of the people he interviewed.  The yaya, and the security guard who said he looked forward to heaven to put an end to pain.  His young daughter had committed suicide.  “Stuffler, what do we do?”

“The research raises embarrassing questions.  Is the Church protecting secrets?”  Stuffler was speaking more and more with a German accent, Balty noticed.

“People want to be with their families,” Tim said. He told them about the security guard, and how he told the guard he would see his daughter in heaven and she would be beautiful and happy, and how the man had cried and held onto him he was so happy.  “Why can’t the Church talk like that?”

“We publish, We publish.”

They didn’t want publicity; they could see the headline, “Jesuits Criticize Church on Heaven.”  If heaven were more concrete, Balty suggested wouldn’t more people lead better lives to get there?

Stuffler laughed like a man gone mad on too many bad jokes.  He stood and danced around their chairs.

“Sit down, Paul,” Balty said.

“Seriously, what can we do?”

“Remember the movie, the three old guys robbed a casino in Atlantic City?”

“Burt Lancaster was in it?”

“And Mitzi Gaynor?”

“I think so.”

“No, that’s another one.”

“There’s  one about old astronauts.  One went flying off to the moon.”

Tim placed his hand palm down in the center of the coffee table.  Balty placed his on top and then Stuffler.  No one spoke.  They looked at each other, then removed their hands, slightly embarrassed at the gesture.

“I love you crazy guys,” Stuffler told them.

They spent long hours together trying to make a plan of action.  At times it wasn’t clear to them what they were after. Would they publicize their findings? They didn’t want publicity; they could see the headline, “Jesuits Criticize Church on Heaven.”  If heaven were more concrete, Balty suggested, wouldn’t more people lead better lives to get there?

Stuffer would say later the idea hopped into his head like a bird onto a window sill.  He was at his desk arranging his medicines and dropped a pill on the floor.  He got down on his knees to find it and when he stood up the idea was bright in his head, sitting there, getting ready to sing.

“This is it,” he told them. “We have a critique of heaven, but we don’t know what it is like.  I thought no one knew, but that isn’t true. The saints know, but will they tell the truth. I don’t think so. There is someone who knows and who is likely to be factual, but whether he’ll talk to us or not I don’t know.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“God?”  Tim suggested.

“No.”  Stuffer looked at Balty, who shook his head.

“The devil,” Stuffer said.

“The devil?”  Tim shook his head.

“He knows.”

“If the devil’s the person to deal with, so be it,” Balty announced.

* * *

“Do you really want to know?  Are you sure?”  They felt something like electricity flow through their bodies.

They set a time and place—the early morning hours when the faculty house was quiet. They picked a day, October 21, Stuffler’s birthday.  They would be in their usual seats on the back porch at midnight.  If he wanted to come, he would. There was no need to send a message.

They went to bed early the night before the meeting.  By midnight they were on the back porch waiting.  The only sounds were the air conditioners in the infirmary downstairs.  All of a sudden a man was sitting alongside them.  He was Filipino and wore a gray barong tagalog.

“I’m not Satan,”  he said.  “We have protocol also, and three old men… well, you’re not a priority.  I’m Lucian, Satan’s representative in the Philippines.”  He had a lawyer’s soft bored manner and a lisp.

Balty wondered what to offer him, coffee or softdrink, but Lucian told him,” Nothing please.  Actually I’m at home here.”  He saw their surprise.  “We’re at home wherever people talk of us.”

“I never heard anyone talk of you.”

Lucian smiled weakly.  “I could name names, but—come we have important business,  I believe.”

Balty explained their search from the night they first talked about the article in Newsweek to the night a few days earlier when they agreed to ask him for help.

“You’ve come to the right person.”

“We want to know what heaven is really like, and why there’s such secrecy about it.

Lucian was silent, staring out into the night.

“Do you want something in return?”  Balty asked, misjudging his silence.

“No, we don’t want souls if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You can have one of us.  Take your pick.”

Lucian was surprised.  “You’re serious.”  He looked intently at them one by one.  “I see you are.  I respect sincerity, but we don’t want you.  No offence intended.”

“None taken, but what then?”

“Do you really want to know?  Are you sure?”  They felt something like electricity flow through their bodies.

“We are,” Stuffler answered.

“There are hordes of poor people there,” Lucian said.

“Anyone else?” Tim asked.

 “A handful of others.”

"...That Newsweek article is mistaken. The warrior who dies in a holy war does enjoy a hundred maidens forever. Don’t ask how it’s possible. It is.”

“A handful?”

“More or less.”

“Who are they?”

“Some saints, some I don’t know.  Not many.”

“Jesuits?”

“What do you think?”  Lucian smiled.

“I hope they are many.”

“Only a few.”

“My God, why?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“And the Muslim’s heaven?”

“The maidens and raisins?  Nothing like that.”

“What do people do in heaven?”

Lucian took a deep breath as if he had gas and was trying to relieve it.  “The so called Blessed suffer the most suffocating, bureaucratic hierarchy conceivable.  Infinite suffocation, infinite bureaucracy—archangels, angels, cherubim, seraphim, powers, orders, hosts, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins down to the bottom where ordinary people are crushed and ground down, and all of them all the time singing His praise.”

“Are they happy?”

“Are slaves happy?  There’s no food, drink, family life, birds, flowers, children, music.  Everyone’s the same age, about 35.  They don’t talk to each other.”

“Why a few Jesuits?  God knows most of us try,”  Tim asked him.

“They’ve left.  They couldn’t stand it.”

“Where did they go?”

“Ah, that’s another discussion, another evening.”

“Where could they go?”

“Another evening, Fathers.  Call for me when you’re ready.”  And then he was gone.

* * *

   
Some months later Tim was on his way to hear confessions in the college when a co-ed in jeans and a black T-shirt that read in front “I’ll show you mine” stopped him.

“Lucian wants to see you all again same place, time, tonight,” she told him, smiled and hurried off. On the back her T-shirt read, “If you show me yours.”

The three friends gathered at midnight. This time they had put out ice. No discussions, they told one another. Just listen.

At 12:00 sharp Lucian was in the chair they had set for him. He looked exactly the same. He was about 35 years old, the same as in heaven.

“I will be brief, Fathers, since you need your sleep. I want to correct a factual matter. That Newsweek article is mistaken. The warrior who dies in a holy war does enjoy a hundred maidens forever. Don’t ask how it’s possible. It is.” He stopped speaking, but they still leaned in toward him as if expecting more. “That’s all, Fathers. Chew on that.”

“If Christians die…,” Balty tried to question Lucian, but he was already standing.

“Muslims, Fathers. Didn’t I say Muslims?” Lucian disappeared.

They sat there till dawn wondering what they should do. In the end it was a simple choice: do they tell the world that Muslims receive such a reward and Muslims alone, or do they keep it secret?
   
Who would believe them whatever they said, Stuffler wanted to know. Who would they cite as their proof, except the devil, a liar and the father of lies?

They decided finally to go to bed and discuss it again.

© Denis Murphy

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