Aux Pioneers
Aux Pioneers began as a lark, when my editor at Berkshire HomeStyle suggested I should write fiction for the magazine. I don't think he imagined I would take him up on it, but I did. The novel began in monthly installments in August of 2000, and continued on an almost-monthly basis until the summer of 2006. One reason for its sad demise was the difficulty most readers had in following the story. New readers were, not surprisingly, daunted by coming across articles with headings like Aux Pioneers, Chapter 32. So I am planning to post the entire novel here, beginning with Chapter 1. If I can find it. That was two computers ago, August 2000. So, while I look for it, I am providing other fiction for your reading delectation. The following story, "Mango Lemonade," was published in The Berkshire Review, vol. 11 by my pseudonymous alter ego, Ed Anthony. I was teaching a course on the psychology of creativity with the subtitle, "Where do good ideas come from?" One answer to that question is, "From dreams." So I gave myself the assignment of writing a short story based upon a dream. "Mango Lemonade" really did begin as a dream of mine, although it is, of course, cleaned up and made slightly more organized in the story. In the summer of 2004, the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge sponsored an art exhibit of "artists' books" or pieces inspired by or incorporating stories from The Berkshire Review vol. 11. Ed's story was used as the inspiration for two works in the show, a lovely Indian-folk-style painting by Charles Bonenti, and a bigger, more abstract multi-media work by Nicole Peskin.
Until I find Chapter 1 of Aux Pioneers, here is Ed's story "Mango Lemonade."
MANGO LEMONADE
Mother Teresa made one more slow lap with her lazy backstroke, her mind drifting, as it often did these days, in the direction of mango lemonade. She was swimming in her long silver gown, an action which would have been awkward or dangerous back on Earth. But this gown was different: the pure, soft water caressed her skin as if she were naked. The gown had only one function- to preserve modesty, which was still important to Mother Teresa. It also looked fabulous, and that was a plus, but not as much of a plus as it might have been to others.
She finished her swim and eased out of the pool. This particular pool was her favorite place so far, although she really hadn’t explored all that much. It was a large, irregularly-shaped, shallow pool with a white sand bottom. The water entered one end of the pool from a waterfall that stretched into the clouds; another waterfall spilled out of the other end into another pool somewhere down below. Around the pool were flowers of all kinds, not separated by climates like they were on Earth, but all together: there were orchids and bromeliads along with tender wood violets and sundews, roses and oleanders and tremendous cactus flowers towering over tundra bluets. There was even a little garden that contained all the flowers with Biblical references: stars of Bethlehem and lilies of the field, crown-of-thorns and passion flowers. Around the pool, nestled amid the flowers, were chairs done up in some sort of soft pink foam that never got wet, not that it mattered, because the gowns dried instantly as soon as the wearer emerged from the water. And when Mother Teresa finished her swim, there was always a cherub ready to bring another tall frosty glass of mango lemonade.
Food in Heaven was, of course, completely unnecessary. Some souls took it, others didn’t. It was an occasion for pleasure and for reminiscence, a celebration of the wonders of Creation and a reminder of glories and sufferings of the personal past. Eating was like looking at your high school yearbook, but without the shame or regret. It was a transitional thing...new souls ate like wolves, reveling in the pleasure of never gaining an ounce, but gradually eating became irrelevant, a diversion that seemed trivial or even foolish. Different souls took different amounts of time to accomplish this transition, but, then, they had all the time they wanted. No one in Heaven was ever in a hurry to do anything.
Mother Teresa remembered the mango lemonade from a visit she had made to the home of an obscenely wealthy computer magnate. Like every other head of a non-profit, she had to make the house calls to the really big donors- if they were going to give millions of rupees, they wanted to get the goosebumps. At the home of this man, one B.H. Chaterjee, she had been given mango lemonade, and she burned with shame for years afterward remembering how greedy she felt when she first tasted it. She had three glasses at the time, and she felt like her lust for this delicious taste was obvious and public, as if she were a hyena bitch yowling in heat. Now, here, she could have as much lemonade as she wanted, and it really didn’t matter to anyone. The Big Boss obviously didn’t frown on it: it was He who provided the unlimited food and the cherubic waiters. So she drank, and drank, and drank, and as she drank she mulled over her latest earthly preoccupation: how to avoid being canonized.
Canonization was a big topic of conversation in Heaven. Some souls loved it, and had always loved it (St. Ignatius Loyola came to mind) but many souls were mortified by it, or had been when it first happened. The souls who preached humility on Earth had it the worst, because sainthood was all about celebrity and it was they, most particularly, who felt it was a waste of time and money that they did not want incurred on their behalf. Mother Teresa had been invited to a forum about the topic hosted by St. Francis of Assisi, but she found him less than helpful…he had worked through this struggle long ago, and had ceased to be interested in what went on down below, except for an occasional effort to save a bird habitat.
What made it so difficult was the temptation to derail the saint train completely. It took a while to get the hang of terrestrial intervention, or, in the Heavenly lingo, TI, but it could be done. First there was the seeing part, which required a trick of focusing the eyes and using the mind as sort of a global positioning system. Then there was intervention itself: it was impossible to make humans change their minds directly, but it was possible to move things around and change their minds that way. You could drive them mad, or make them believers, just by moving objects around in unpredictable ways. It required creativity and care, but it came with practice. Some souls got so good at it they became temporarily addicted, like kids with video games, and they spent all their time bragging to each other about their latest clever TI moves. They knew that everything they accomplished was allowed by the Big Boss; if some soul made a TI move that was not in His overall plan, the move just didn’t work. Revenge was pretty much out of the question, but mischief, as long as it made a good point, was usually allowed.
Mother Teresa’s canonization-in-progress presented her with a particularly vexing TI project: one Sister Antonia. She was a nun from Kosovo, Mother Teresa’s home province, and she had always tried to follow in her superior’s footsteps. She joined the Missionaries of Charity, and went to Calcutta, where she spent all her time trying to hang on Mother Teresa, especially after Mother Teresa became a celebrity. Mother Teresa had chastised Sister Antonia about idolatry, and frequently disciplined her by sending her to her cell for long periods of solitary contemplation. But she always came buzzing back, like a big, fat bluebottle. Mother Teresa was finally able to see how that happened- she was appalled by how much the woman ate, considering that they were supposed to be feeding the poor, not themselves.
Sister Antonia had now taken it upon herself to forward the cause of Mother Teresa’s elevation to sainthood. She knew what was required- miracles- and set about trying to convince anyone who would listen that Mother Teresa was churning out miracles on some kind of Heavenly assembly line. Sister Antonia was trained as a nurse, and she was astute about picking out the first signs of recovery among the desperately ill. She would cruise the hospital wards, looking for the improbable cures, and then sneak in at night and lay a token in the sickbed, a piece of robe or a rosary that Mother Teresa had used. When the poor little body recovered, Sister Antonia called the newspapers and the Vatican, in that order, to trumpet Mother Teresa’s latest triumph; if she was mistaken and the patient died, she just kept quiet. It was scandalous, but the other sisters were too trusting and too busy, God bless them, to notice what was going on.
Mother Teresa tried to thwart Sister Antonia at every turn. When she saw what was happening, she would simply move the token object back to its place: she felt a sense of justice and rightness when she saw the look of consternation on Antonia’s face finding the rosary back in its box, the cloth robe back in its sandalwood chest. Once, when Antonia was obviously in a state of confusion and praying for her memory to be restored, Mother Teresa sent a swarm of bees in the back window to alert her to the error of her ways. But the ambitious sister would not be deterred. Mother Teresa marveled at the woman’s tenacity, but she also tired of the game, and even though she had plenty of time she really did not wish to waste it chasing after a deceitful nun. She often asked the cherubs to watch for her, and they were happy to oblige, but then she felt guilty about abusing their hospitality: the little dears should be singing or splashing in the pool, not watching a fat, greedy earth woman try to ride to fame on her mother’s robe.
After a time, Mother Teresa had found another soul who understood. The poor Princess of Wales had died right around the same time as Mother Teresa, so they were in the same orientation group, and they had stayed in touch ever since, even though many thought they were a very unlikely pair. For one thing, Princess Diana did not adjust well to Heaven. She was always trying to twist or swirl her gown into something more fashionable, but she just ended up looking silly and pretentious, and what she did with food was revolting. She gossiped far too much and bickered incessantly with the recently-arrived Princess Margaret. But Mother Teresa felt she had a lot in common with her new friend.
The Princess was struggling, in her own way, with the problems of earthly veneration, and it gave them a lot to mull over as they sat by the pool. Diana was an eager practitioner of TI, and she was well-known in Heaven as a clever soul who could always figure out an amusing way to manipulate the earthbound. She worked long and hard on behalf of her sons, cheering them up when they were downcast by moving a fat trout onto their hooks or guiding their shots in football. Paparazzi were her favorite victims: at her will, they would drop or lose their cameras, or darkroom doors would inexplicably fly open, ruining the celebrity shots they had fought so hard to take. She left the Prince to himself, and laughingly told anyone who would listen that his interest in Mrs. Parker-Bowles gave him all the torment any earthbound being could require. But the Princess asked Mother Teresa for advice on how, or whether, to help the wretched humans she had tried to help while alive, and the two had long discussions about the merits of intervention: whether to let people die, to hasten their arrival in Heaven, or whether to help them live longer if it meant they would help others.
The Princess reserved all her trickiest tricks for her ex-mother-in-law. Her favorite was to use the dogs: the famous Corgis would inexplicably step under the Queen’s foot, or tangle their leashes around her ankles, or poop right where she set her feet when she got out of bed. When she fell so often that she needed a cane, the Queen found that no cane was truly reliable. The cane would slip on dry pavement, or it would break mysteriously, or disappear when she really needed it to walk in public, and she would have to hobble along looking old and pathetic in full view of her subjects. The Princess would look on in delight and explode in rude guffaws, and then ask the nearest cherub for three or four cream pies to devour in celebration.
In the matter of Sister Antonia, however, the Princess counseled inaction. “Why bother, Mums, darling?” she would say. “That cow is going to keep at it until she drops, and then she’ll be up here and you can paddle her backside if you want to. But you will be canonized in any case…sooner or later, someone else will decide it will be useful to have a new St. Teresa. My Gawd, look at me! Last week I’m supposed to have cured a twelve-year-old girl in Norwich of impetigo, of all things! And I was never anything but a sinner. But you…you’re going to be in the Lives of the Saints any minute. Why not get it over with?”
“But it is such a diversion from the work. How many people could be fed, or bathed, or clothed, in the time they spend verifying these travesties?”
“I know, Mums, I know. But you had to trust others to help you then, and you have to let them carry on now. Look at all your other sisters, beetling away at their jobs like…well, beetles. They’re so devout, and so devoted. And they will all be happy and proud when you get the nod.”
“I do not want to be venerated on the strength of lies.”
“Mums. Let it go. Let the Boss decide, and you stay out of it. That’s what He’s here for.”
The days and weeks passed, and Mother Teresa kept up her vigilance. But one day, she got invited to “Theresas’ Night Out” which turned out to be dinner with St. Theresa of Avila and St. Theresa the Little Flower. She was so thrilled she forgot all about Sister Antonia, and she went out and had a lovely time, even though she realized the dinner was just a little ruse to make her comfortable: the other Theresas had stopped eating long ago. She retired in a state of bliss, feeling like maybe she could get used to Heaven after all. But in the morning, she tuned in and saw that Sister Antonia had been up to new mischief in the night. Sister Antonia had claimed to have seen Mother Teresa in the flesh, and she was reporting all manner of outlandish things Mother Teresa had told her, including, blasphemy of blasphemies, the dictation of the words of a brand-new prayer. The newspapers in Calcutta and Rome were already full of her lies, and she was pictured on the front page of the New York Times, looking fat and smug, Mother Teresa thought, like a circus pig. When she saw the picture, Mother Teresa decided she needed to speak to Antonia in person, and the only way to do that was to kill her.
Mother Teresa watched, and waited, and prayed for her anger to abate. But it was not only anger. It was also a calm decision about a way to proceed. It was an action to improve the world. If it was not in His plan, He would not allow it, but she was, for a change, certain that this action would be approved. She watched Antonia every night, and pondered, until she decided that bringing a little symbolism into Antonia’s death might alert the earthbound that she was just a big fake. Mother Teresa decided to end Antonia’s life with a serpent.
The next evening, Sister Antonia returned to her room late, after yet another press conference with journalists from around the world. She changed into her dressing gown, and knelt by her bedside to pray. With her eyes closed, she did not notice the appearance of the bulge under the sheets as Mother Teresa moved the puff adder into place; this TI was done with unusual skill, since Mother Teresa had been practicing on the confused adder all afternoon. Sister Antonia finished her prayers, and stood up and yawned. She reached out her hand to pull back the bedclothes, and Mother Teresa saw the adder move almost imperceptibly into a powerful coil.
Just at that moment, a short-legged, big-eared dog appeared in the room. It barked like it was mad, and grabbed the hem of Sister Antonia’s gown to pull her away to safety. Then it leaped on the bed, where it was immediately dispatched by the adder’s powerful strike. As the dog lay giving up its last breath and the adder slid away, Sister Antonia cast her eyes up to Heaven with a look of gratitude for her deliverance. Mother Teresa turned away in disgust from the flaccid upturned face, wet with tears.
As she turned, the Princess put a hand on her bony shoulder. “Sorry, Mums. I had to. You wouldn’t be happy for just eons if you murdered someone. And, frankly, I don’t want that lying little tart around just yet.” Diana put her elegant arms around Mother Teresa and held her tight, and, after a moment, Mother Teresa hugged her back. When the Princess let go, she was smiling. “Now, come on. Let’s watch Bad Queen Bess try to find her dog.”
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