Emails from Hell, part fifteen.

Our Man in Hell had met some really interesting people. Now he was about to meet some obscure ones. Here is his fifteenth email.

{beginning of email}

            “I have something more to show you,” said Andrew. He led me back to the telescope.

            “Not that again!” I said.

            “Sorry. We have to do this.”

            He pointed the telescope in yet a different direction, not at the war between the fundamentalist Christians and the fundamentalist Muslims, and not at the enclave of popes. When I looked in the eyepiece, I almost missed what he wanted me to see.

            “There’s a woman sitting there crying,” I said. “Will she sit there and cry forever?”

            “We are trying to think of something to do about it,” said Andrew. “We would like to get a message to her somehow. She is Emma Darwin, and she spent most of her life being afraid that she would not be able to spend eternity with the man she called her “dear Charley” because he would not be in heaven with her. But I think she would be happier down here, with him.”

            “Happiness in Hell?” I asked.

            Pope Francis came up behind us. “There-a was a man named Mivart,” he said. “St. George Jackson Mivart. He was-a not a saint; his-a first name was St. George. Go-a figure-a. But he was-a Catholic. He was a critic of Darwinism. But as-a he got older-a, he began-a to rethink everything, including-a Catholic theology. He wrote a book-a called Happiness in Hell. He-a got excommunicated-a. I’d-a like to meet him.”

            “I’ll bet he would be thrilled to meet you,” I said. “You know, if forever is infinite, and we keep walking around, pretty soon we will inevitably meet everyone. I think.”

            “Yes,” said Andrew. “We might be able to arrange a meeting of Emma and Charley. But some problems are not so easily solved.” He moved the telescope a little and refocused. Of course, I saw another woman crying.

            “What is she crying about?” I was almost afraid to ask.

            “Let me tell you her story,” said Andrew. “When she was alive, she was a farm worker in New England. The only thing she knew how to do was to pick cranberries. She had no formal education; she couldn’t read or write. Nor could her husband, who drove the mulecarts filled with cranberries to market. They had a baby. A beautiful boy. But he died before his first birthday.

            “He went to heaven. All her life, her sorrow was assuaged only by the thought that she would see her little baby again. And eventually the woman died and went to heaven too.

            “Meanwhile, the little baby grew up in heaven. There weren’t very many intelligent people in heaven, but the few who were there he found. He became an expert in the philosophies of all those great thinkers who are now in Hell. And that’s all he wanted to talk about. He eventually became almost nothing but pure thought. He was the only person who ever lived who could with complete honesty say Cogito ergo sum.

            “When his mother found him, they had nothing to talk about. Nothing at all. And so she still wanders about, in heaven, weeping for her lost little baby.”

            “There must be something we can do!” I said.

            “Well,” said Joe, who had joined us, “you cannot much expect the former baby to unlearn things. I guess you could expect the mother to learn things. But to do that, she would have to come down here. You see, in heaven, they think they know everything there was, is, or ever will be to know. But maybe we can get her to come down here. Just an idea.”

            We all, even the pope, agreed it might be worth a try.

{end of email}