Page 16 of Katabasis

They passed another study room, where one Shade was droning on to another in a very loud voice, “... of course, it’s all very Derridean , which I am uncomfortable with because of Derrida’s obsession with feces .

Did you know I saw Derrida speak at a conference once?

All anyone could talk about was how he got high on LSD and smeared feces all over the walls. ”

“Continental philosophers.” Moore shuddered. “Here we have dozens.”

The procession of petty sins continued as they circled up the floors.

Moore seemed to delight very much in explicating the moral failure of his fellow residents, for his hushed whispers nevertheless carried over the floors, eliciting the occasional peeved glare.

“Now, that one self-published self-help productivity books.

“Calls himself a Communist, but hasn’t read Das Kapital .

“Recites pi to show off.

“Had more of a comment, not a question.

“Wouldn’t accept papers written in the first person.

“Turned his exam papers over very loudly.

“Still asks people what they got on their A-levels.

“Still tells people what he got on his A-levels.

“Made his wife call him Doctor . He’s a medievalist, mind you.

“Now, that one keeps saying he went to school in Boston and expecting everyone to know what he means. Every few years the other Shades gang up on him and brick him up behind the stacks.”

They passed a series of rooms overflowing with texts. “Book hoarders,” Moore explained.

“Why would you hoard books in a library?”

“To prove that you’ve found them,” said Moore. “To prove you know of them. To prove you have proximity to them. But reading them, that’s too much.”

At this point Alice had made up her mind Professor Grimes could not have been sentenced to Pride.

She felt indignant, actually, at the thought of this gossipy little man lumping Grimes in with these posers and imposters.

Yes, Professor Grimes was occasionally very rude; yes, the whole Royal Academy called him arrogant behind his back; yes, he habitually reduced undergraduates to tears.

But weren’t all great thinkers of their generation a little prickly?

And hadn’t he earned his prickle? She recalled that Aristotle distinguished between proper and improper pride.

The worthy man could justly boast of his accomplishments, so long as he had actually done them.

Professor Grimes could only be charged with behaving as befit his station, which was lofty, and Alice really did not think this was as morally egregious as calling oneself a Marxist.

Anyhow, Professor Grimes hated peacocking.

She knew this because once she had been caught up with the thrill of competition herself.

At her first conference—after a dizzying night of cocktails with students from Oxford and London, all comparing the sizes of their stipends, their research budgets, who had recently published where—she had gone up to Professor Grimes in the hotel lobby and blustered, drunk on superiority, “Can you believe they don’t have a proseminar at Imperial?

” She had thought he might laugh, that they could share this condescension.

But he had looked down at her with such blistering disdain. “Don’t play stupid games, Law.”

Peter was there; he snickered. And Alice spent the night in red-faced shame.

It was a lesson worth learning. She had not repeated this mistake. Those who had nothing substantial to brag about bragged the loudest. Stay silent and ignore the chattering crowd—this was proof you had something real to be proud of.

She fell back so she could speak to Peter. Moore did not notice. He had worked himself up into a rant about psychoanalysts, and his arms flapped so vehemently that should Alice and Peter have kept pace, he might have whacked them in the face.

“He’s not here,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a waste of time.” Her irritation had sharpened to urgency. Every minute spent here was a minute in which Professor Grimes pushed further into Hell. “And Moore said we were the first from Cambridge in years, so he would have met him—”

“Well, maybe they didn’t cross paths.”

“Then let’s ditch him and search on our own. He’s a clown—”

“He’s not so bad.”

“He’s a petty gossip!”

“He’s the first Shade we’ve met who will explain anything to us,” said Peter. “We’ve no idea how Hell works, Law. We’ve got no other leads.”

“Aha!” Up ahead, Moore turned and waved enthusiastically. He gestured to a door. “Here we are. My office. Do come in.”

Alice had seen offices like Moore’s many times before.

They were offices of decadent accretion, offices of men who had earned tenure back when earning tenure just involved being friends with the department head and who treated their space like a clubhouse until they grew old enough the university could boot them out.

A massive, cluttered desk; plump armchairs; porcelain tea sets; memorabilia from trips to Asia and Africa—where Moore had found a Turkish carpet in the Underworld, Alice had no idea.

Books overflowed from the shelves, lay scattered in piles on the floor and the desk.

These included, she noticed, the aforementioned copy of Meditations .

Framed diplomas hung on every wall—from where, Alice had no idea, because she was not aware of any degree-granting accredited institutions in Hell.

“Please, please.” Moore ushered them in. “My little sanctuary. Be comfortable.”

Alice and Peter sat gingerly on the couch, while Moore bustled around his desk, muttering things like “If I’d known I’d have company...” and “Pardon the mess.”

“There we go!” He turned round and offered them a tobacco tin. “Smoke?”

They both shook their heads. Shrugging, Moore packed his own pipe, lit it, and sucked in with great relish. He exhaled. Thick smoke wafted into their faces. Peter suffered the mist with blinking, eye-watering fortuity. Alice coughed.

“So!” Moore plopped himself down across them and kicked his feet up on the ottoman. “A Cambridge man. What college, may I ask?”

Alice glared at Peter, who said, “St. John’s.”

“A John’s boy!” Moore clapped his hands together. “ Good man! We’re going to have such fun.”

“Excuse me,” said Alice.

Moore ignored her. “Last fellow of any standing to come through was a Durham man,” he informed Peter.

“And now, I do have standards, yes, but years of solitude and I thought, Durham, all right, we can work with that . But he was so frightfully dull. Paleontologist. Wouldn’t stop dusting at the floors trying to find ammonites.

He’s on the fifth floor now, somewhere, working out a naturalistic theory of the good. ”

“Excuse me,” Alice said again, more forcefully.

This time Moore paused, though he glared as if she were a persistent mosquito. “Yes?”

“Please help me understand,” said Alice. If Peter didn’t want to leave, then she’d pry for all the answers she could. “What precisely is keeping us here?”

“How do you mean?”

“Suppose we walk right out the door and leave,” said Alice. “On to the Second Court, that is. Desire. What’s going to stop us?”

“Well, nothing.” He blinked at her as if she were stupid. “You can wander wherever you like, but why would you? You’ve got to stay until you’ve passed. They won’t pass you in Desire if you didn’t pass Pride first.”

“Right,” said Alice. “And who’s they ?”

“The deities, of course. Niutou and Mamian. The Oxhead and the Horseface, balancers of karma, the right and left hand to Lord Yama the Just.” All this Moore rattled off like a schoolboy reciting scripture.

“They don’t talk much, but they can understand your heart in an instant.

You can beg all you like, but if you’ve incomplete marks on your transcript, then they’ll always know.

If your transcript says pride, then you must pass Pride. ”

“Sorry—transcript?”

“Haven’t you got your transcripts?”

Alice hesitated.

“Er—” Peter made a show of patting his pockets. “Must have misplaced...”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Moore waved a hand.

“They’ll reappear, give them time. Impossible to lose.

” He nodded to a slip of paper lying facedown on his desk.

“Anyhow, you get marks on your transcript as you go along, you see. The transcript lists your major sins, and then you’ve got to go in order.

Pass Pride and you enter Desire, pass Desire and you enter Greed. ..”

“And then what if we finish at Pride?” Alice pressed on. “If we’re not guilty at Desire, or Greed? Suppose we define the good, whatever that means. What would Niutou and Mamian do then?”

“Ah. Yes.” Moore leaned back. “Well, supposedly they come for you in a ship. Those big doors in the lobby lead to the sands, you know. And past the sands, the river. Supposedly you see a great golden ship on the horizon. Supposedly it glides across dark waters and extends a plank to shore. They’ll be waiting for you there. They’ll help you board.”

“And then?”

“And then they offer you the draft of the Lethe, brewed by the Lady Meng Po herself.” Moore’s eyes grew distant.

The lopsided smile sagged off his face. “They say it tastes of dandelions, of dewdrops at dawn. You drink. Your memories are wiped from your soul, like dust from a mantel. You are mere starstuff, like once you were before. Fresh. Clean. And you are then ferried to Lord Yama’s court, to pass through the Gate of Reincarnation to wander back down into that red mortal chamber, to billow among the dust. So they say. ”

Silence fell between them.

Moore sucked at his pipe, blinking at nothing. He looked a bit translucent then. Alice could see his diplomas through his neck.

“So you’ve never seen this happen?” Alice was not quite sure she should take Moore’s word for anything.