Stanley Elkin - The Living End

Ellerbee heard two distinct shots before he fell.

When he came to, the third man was bending over him. “You’re not hurt,” Ellerbee said.

“Me? No.”

The pain was terrific, diffuse, but fiercer than anything he had ever felt. He saw himself covered with blood. “Where’s Kroll? The other man, my manager?”

“Kroll’s all right.”

“He is?”

“There, right beside you.”

He tried to look. They must have blasted Ellerbee’s throat away, half his spinal column. It was impossible for him to move his head. “I can’t see him,” he moaned.

“Kroll’s fine.” The man cradled Ellerbee’s shoulders and neck and shifted him slightly. “There. See?” Kroll’s eyes were shut. Oddly, both were blackened. He had fallen in such a way that he seemed to lie on both his arms, retracted behind him into the small of his back like a yogi. His mouth was open and his tongue floated in blood like meat in soup. A slight man, he seemed strangely bloated, and one shin, exposed to Ellerbee’s vision where the trouser leg was hiked up above his sock, was discolored as thundercloud.

The man gently set Ellerbee down again. “Call an ambulance,” Ellerbee wheezed through his broken throat.

“No, no. Kroll’s fine.”

“He’s not conscious.” It was as if his words were being mashed through the tines of a fork.

“He’ll be all right. Kroll’s fine.”

“Then for me. Call one for me.”

“It’s too late for you,” the man said.

“For Christ’s sake, will you!” Ellerbee gasped. “I can’t move. You could have grabbed that hoodlum’s gun when he set it down. All right, you were scared, but some of this is your fault. You didn’t lift a finger. At least call an ambulance.”

“But you’re dead,” he said gently. “Kroll will recover. You passed away when you said ‘move.’”

“Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”

“Do you feel pain?”

“What?”

“Pain. You don’t feel any, do you?” Ellerbee stared at him. “Do you?”

He didn’t. His pain was gone. “Who are you?” Ellerbee said.

“I’m an angel of death,” the angel of death said.

“You’re—”

“An angel of death.”

Somehow he had left his body. He could see it lying next to Kroll’s. “I’m dead? But if I’m dead—you mean there’s really an afterlife?”

“Oh boy,” the angel of death said.

They went to Heaven.

Ellerbee couldn’t have said how they got there or how long it took, though he had the impression that time had passed, and distance. It was rather like a journey in films—a series of quick cuts, of montage. He was probably dreaming, he thought.

“It’s what they all think,” the angel of death said, “that they’re dreaming. But that isn’t so.”

“I could have dreamed you said that,” Ellerbee said, “that you read my mind.”

“Yes.”

“I could be dreaming all of it, the holdup, everything.”

The angel of death looked at him.

“Hobgoblin…I could…” Ellerbee’s voice—if it was a voice—trailed off.

“Look,” the angel of death said, “I talk too much. I sound like a cabbie with an out-of-town fare. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“What?”

“What? Pride. The proprietary air. Showing off death like a booster. Thanatopography. ‘If you look to your left you’ll see where…Julius Caesar de dum de dum…Shakespeare da da da…And dead ahead our Father Adam heigh ho— ’ The tall buildings and the four-star sights. All that Baedeker reality of plaque place and high history. The Fields of Homer and the Plains of Myth. Where whosis got locked in a star and all the Agriculture of the Periodic Table—the South Forty of the Universe, where Hydrogen first bloomed, where Lithium, Berylium, Zirconium, Niobium. Where Lead failed and Argon came a cropper. The furrows of gold, Bismuth’s orchards. … Still think you’re dreaming?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The language.”

“Just so,” the angel of death said. “When you were alive you had a vocabulary of perhaps seventeen or eighteen hundred words. Who am I?”

“An eschatological angel,” Ellerbee said shyly.

“One hundred percent,” the angel of death said. “Why do we do that?”

“To heighten perception,” Ellerbee said, and shuddered.

The angel of death nodded and said nothing more.

When they were close enough to make out the outlines of Heaven, the angel left him and Ellerbee, not questioning this, went on alone. From this distance it looked to Ellerbee rather like a theme park, but what struck him most forcibly was that it did not seem—for Heaven—very large.

He traveled as he would on Earth, distance familiar again, volume, mass, and dimension restored, ordinary. (Quotidian, Ellerbee thought.) Indeed, now that he was convinced of his death, nothing seemed particularly strange. If anything, it was all a little familiar. He began to miss May. She would have learned of his death by this time. Difficult as the last year had been, they had loved each other. It had been a good marriage. He regretted again that they had been unable to have children. Children—they would be teenagers now—would have been a comfort to his widow. She still had her looks. Perhaps she would remarry. He did not want her to be lonely.

He continued toward Heaven and now, only blocks away, he was able to perceive it in detail. It looked more like a theme park than ever. It was enclosed behind a high milky fence, the uprights smooth and round as the poles in subway trains. Beyond the fence were golden streets, a mixed architecture of minaret-spiked mosques, great cathedrals, the rounded domes of classical synagogues, tall pagodas like holy vertebrae, white frame churches with their beautiful steeples, even what Ellerbee took to be a storefront church. There were many mansions. But where were the people?

Just as he was wondering about this he heard the sound of a gorgeous chorus. It was making a joyful noise. “Oh dem golden slippers,” the chorus sang, “Oh dem golden slippers.” It’s the Heavenly Choir, Ellerbee thought. They’ve actually got a Heavenly Choir. He went toward the fence and put his hands on the smooth posts and peered through into Heaven. He heard laughter and caught a glimpse of the running heels of children just disappearing around the corner of a golden street. They all wore shoes.

Ellerbee walked along the fence for about a mile and came to gates made out of pearl. The Pearly Gates, he thought. There are actually Pearly Gates. An old man in a long white beard sat behind them, a key attached to a sort of cinch that went about his waist.

“Saint Peter?” Ellerbee ventured. The old man turned his shining countenance upon him. “Saint Peter,” Ellerbee said again, “I’m Ellerbee.”

“I’m Saint Peter,” Saint Peter said.

“Gosh,” Ellerbee said, “I can’t get over it. It’s all true.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Heaven. The streets of gold, the Pearly Gates. You. Your key. The Heavenly Choir. The climate.”

A soft breeze came up from inside Heaven and Ellerbee sniffed something wonderful in the perfect air. He looked toward the venerable old man.

“Ambrosia,” the Saint said.

“There’s actually ambrosia,” Ellerbee said.

“You know,” Saint Peter said, “you never get tired of it, you never even get used to it. He does that to whet our appetite.”

“You eat in Heaven?”

“We eat manna.”

“There’s actually manna,” Ellerbee said. An angel floated by on a fleecy cloud playing a harp. Ellerbee shook his head. He had never heard anything so beautiful. “Heaven is everything they say it is,” he said.