DENIAL

Why do we feel connected to our past?

The bartender and his pub are a microcosm of London. The bartender is a horse-racing fan. Pasted up on the mirror behind him are pictures of champion horses dating back to the eighteen-hundreds alternating with beer ads. Old newspapers sealed behind glass are posted around the pub room. From where I sit, I can see the beginning and ending of two world wars, the resignation of a Prime Minister, a landing on the Moon.

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November,” recites a little girl in a corner booth, swinging her legs in time to the chant. The fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day, a remembrance of an event nearly four hundred years ago. “I want fireworks, Mummy.”

“Quiet, Veronica,” says her mother, shushing her with a pursed-lips look of disapproval. “It’s three months yet.”

We feel connected to our past because we are our past.

“Hey, guv’nor,” says the bartender, stopping in front of me, “you one of those historian blokes in town for the trial?” He’s keeping everything around him in perfect order. He seizes an errant shot glass and scours it clean before carefully placing it on a rack behind him with others lined up in ascending ranks like little soldiers glitter of steel bayonets mouse-squeak of new leather as  drums thunder the advance into battle, knees turn to water and I piss my pants as I see the English guns shining in the dewy Waterloo fields and pointed at me, at me, and I shove through the ranks and run as Capitaine L’Heureux raises his sword and howls the order to aim. . ..

A deserter. I recognize the toy-soldier uniform, the long primitive rifle he dropped as he ran. French, from the last gasp of the Napoleonic wars. Nothing interesting there. Now he spent all his time behind a bar. Safe, he wanted to be safe. One day he’d realize he was safe, but also in a cage, trapped, going nowhere. Justice is a complex thing and never escaped.

“Yes,” I answer.

“Robert something,” the bartender says, pronouncing it the English way, “rah-bert.” “Saw you on telly.”

“Guerison,” I say. “But my first name is pronounced the French way, ‘row-bear’, not ‘rah-bert’. Ro-ow-bear”, drawing it out, “Guerison.” I leave out the “Doctor” part. That has always felt pretentious to me. I’ve never had the desire to feel superior to other people. I know the price. I don’t want to be cut off from humanity.

“For the defense,” I add quickly, so he’ll know whose side I’m on. The Royal Court of Justice courtroom is the only place I want to have a confrontation.

” Don’t mean to give offense, guv’nor, but it’s all a waste of our hard-earned tax money, if you ask me,” the bartender says in what I’ve learned is a lower-class accent. London is a rich melange of accents. The bartender leans on the polished oak bar. The entire pub, floor, walls and ceiling, is gleaming oak, making me wonder about fire hazard, and looks like it’s well over a hundred years old. “I mean, it was bleedin’ fifty, sixty years ago, wadnit. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and all, but it’s ancient history now, you know. Water under the bridge.”

“It is important to remember your mistakes,” I say, “so you don’t make them again. This is as true for a culture as for a person.” I know it sounds pedantic, and it’s probably over the bartender’s head, but it’s the truth.

“Don’t make sense, any of it,” replies the bartender. He picks up the remains of my incredibly bland English lunch off the bar counter and energetically scrubs the wood clean with a towel. “Don’t see why that Richardson fellow has to go on about it so, don’t see why the Government wasted money bringing you blokes here to argue with him. Bleedin’ Liberals. You know it’s not going to change the crazy bugger’s mind.” He holds up an empty mug. “Like a pint to top that off, mate?”

None of them know why, not the Government, not the lawyers, not even Richardson himself. I know why, but it’s not something any of them would accept, and that’s not the battle I’m here to fight anyway.

“No,” I say. “Thank you, but no.” Just a little alcohol, and I can’t shut them out, couldn’t stop from drowning in the accumulated memory. I pay, pick up my laptop and sketchbook, and leave.

A bum outside sidles up to me and looks me over, trying to see if I’m drunk enough to give him money, stale breath rank with alcohol and eyes bright with the permanently scared look of a completely crushed personality oh God I was always a good man I didn’t do anything wrong why are they doing this to me I don’t deserve this I don’t want to die I hear the pump start I open my mouth to scream  the air is pulled from my lungs spikes drive into my skull the Nazi doctors just stand there coldly observing their experiment through a little round window I am not a thing I am not a thing….

Oh, Christ have mercy!

“Here,” I say. With shaking hands I fumble out a fragile five-pound note, colored blue-green and too wide for my American wallet. The bum pounces on the bill like a cat on a mouse and vanishes up the street to buy a bottle of cheap wine to dull a pain he doesn’t understand. I lean on a taxi stand and look down at the sidewalk’s rain-washed brick, fighting to keep from throwing up.

My own past-life memories flash-flood over me.

—corpse-smell dirty starving freezing beaten shuffling in the line to the gas chamber through crematoria ash-fall I am nothing-nothing-nothing–

I wrench myself out of it. No matter how bad you’ve had it, there’s always somebody who’s had it worse. Your response to it is the only choice you have.

I raise my head and search the street for the bum, but he’s no longer in sight. I regret my instinctive action. For an instant, I’m back in New Orleans sleeping off three-day benders in back alleys. It had only made things worse for me, and it would only make things worse for him too. What was wrong with him wouldn’t be cured in this time and place. That is the worst of what I am, seeing innocent victims who have decades of pain ahead of them yet.

There have been greater massacres, but the reason behind the Holocaust’s slaughter has created an agony that will echo for centuries.

“Taxi, mate?”

A London cab has pulled up to the curb, Victorian funereal black, London’s favorite color. I climb in and tell the cabbie to take me to the Royal Court of Justice. Very expensive, but that free-spending Liberal government the bartender disapproves of is picking up the tab, and I don’t feel like walking after the street bum encounter. The price of leaving myself open to discover new and interesting bits of history is an occasional dip into Hell.

I shut myself off. I don’t want any memories from the taxi-driver, still psychically hurting from the street bum. I lean my head against the door window to let the cool of the glass calm my stomach and watch London slide by. I’d never visited here before, but I knew I’d be back someday. London was a constant surprise, a two-thousand-year deep abyssal canyon in the ocean of history. Londoners swam through that history the way fish swam through water, with an unconscious ease that was fascinating to explore and observe. The previous night, I’d done a Jack the Ripper tour after landing despite jet lag, wanting to get as much out my abbreviated stay as possible. The Beefeater guide had pointed out a stone building being renovated for apartments and startled me by saying it had been built before the Great Fire of London in 1666. In America, a place like that would be closed off and tourists charged five bucks a head to walk through it and gawk at it. In London, it was updated and lived in.

My laptop vibrates gently and plays a snatch of “Ride of the Valkyries” in electronic tones. Incoming e-mail from my secretary. I open my laptop and sort through it. Mostly grade appeals from students unhappy with their mid-term grades, plus a note from my substitute pointing out a poorly worded question on the Weimar Government’s inflation rate and requesting permission to substitute a better one. I forward the grade appeals to the dean with my comments added, give my substitute permission to change the question, and return to my study of London.

The cab weaves expertly through London’s breathtakingly chaotic streets, passing by oddly shaped buildings tinted the same shade of gray as the skies, an ancient river village’s winding hut-lined footpaths transformed by time into stone and steel. The cab stops in front of what appears to be a vast Gothic medieval cathedral.

“Royal Court of Justice,” say the taxi driver. “High Court on the Strand. Thirt’ee pound.”

I count the money out into the driver’s hands. I continue to shut his story out in order to check the numbers on the bills to make certain it’s the right amount. The cabbie, used to tourists, waits patiently.

“Ta, mate,” he says when I’m finished, stuffing the money into a plastic pouch hanging from the dash.

I climb out and check my watch. One p.m. local time. My appointment’s not until two. I look down the street and step out into it to jaywalk across for a better vantage point. A squeal of brakes and a car horn’s angry beeping remind me the traffic runs the other way here. The driver rolls down his window as a bobbie at the street corner frowns his displeasure.

“Gerrout of it, ye great daft bugger!”

I scurry across with a look of apology to both. I select a vantage point, open my sketchbook, pat my pockets until I find a drawing pencil and set to work.

I become engrossed, and the time passes quickly.

“Professor Guerison, I presume?”

I look up. I recognize my accoster from the e-mail picture he sent me, despite the wig and robes.

“Mr. Warwicke,” I say, and extend my hand. This is Cedric Warwicke, the “barrister”, a concept I’m not quite clear on, who asked me to make a flying trip over “the Pond” as he’d written in his e-mail.

—gas mask chlorine reek ship’s doctor sawing bone by whale-oil light and the creak of the ship’s timbers pulling oars in the trireme busting Oklahoma prairie sod behind a mule—

An integrating personality. Multiple lives and meanings gradually stitching together. Now I know why he’s defending this case.

“So good of you to come on such short notice, Professor Guerison,” he says as he shakes my hand. “And for such a short visit, too.” He glances at my sketch. It isn’t the Royal Court of Justice. It’s the London slum area the Court displaced in the nineteenth century. The middle nineteenth, to judge from the clothes the people are wearing, but it’ll have to wait until I’m back in New Orleans and can check. Faint curiosity drifts across Warwicke’s face, but with that peculiar English blind eye to possible eccentricity, he says nothing.

“Having any trouble with jet lag?” he inquires.

“I couldn’t resist taking a look around last night after I arrived,” I say. “Still not quite in synch, but I’m functional.”

“Had a bit of a peep, did you?” he says, beaming. “What do you think of our little city?”

“Quite impressive, particularly for an historian,” I say. “I only wish I had more time.”

“Well, it looks like we’re only going to need you just for the afternoon,” he said. “The way the trial’s going, it looks like it’s going to be over quite quickly. And after all that trip you made, too.”

“I don’t mind it at all,” I say, and smile. “New Orleans in August is hot. A trial even if you were born there. A trip to London to cool off is perfect. Besides, denying history is the greatest crime a historian can commit, and I regard it as a privilege to help hold historians like Richardson to account for it.”

“Good show,” Warwicke says, approving. “Let us adjourn to chambers, and we’ll set about sorting this Richardson fellow out.”

I follow him back across the street into the building. The security guard spots Warwicke and waves us through. Passing through the doors, I am again confronted by the English mix of history and practicality. It’s like walking into a museum. The entry room is all tall ceilings and stone columns. I have to remind myself this is a fully functional court of law.

Warwicke sees me looking around and launches into a spiel as he leads me through a maze of corridors.

“Finished in eighteen-eighty-two and opened by Queen Victoria,” he says. “Each court is open to the public and anyone can watch—which is going to be a bit of a problem, I’m afraid, this Richardson thing has been seized upon by the tabloids, and there’ll be a substantial contingent of reporters and so forth in the gallery. No cameras allowed, though.”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ve dealt with reporters before. I can handle the press if necessary.”

“There’ll be some of Richardson’s people,” says Warwicke. “He’s become an intellectual leader to the Nazi groups over here. Very rough-looking chaps.”

“I’m not afraid,” I say.

“How many high-profile cases like this have you been involved with?” asks Warwicke. “I’m told you’ve quite a bit of experience, but they didn’t give me specifics.”

“Two high-profile,” I reply. “Five or six less-publicized efforts.”

Warwicke stops in front of a door and fishes a key from underneath his robes.

“The IRA registers the occasional complaint about English justice with a couple of pounds of Semtex,” he says, inserting the key and opening the door, “and we’ve got to go to all sorts of bother with security.”

A second or two goes by in bafflement before I realize he’s just said they get bombed sometimes. The astonishing English capacity for understatement. I follow him through the door into an opulent meeting room that contains a long mahogany table polished to a mirror-like sheen. High-backed chairs are spaced evenly around it.

“Just have a seat,” says Warwicke, “and we can discuss your testimony.”

I take a seat and Warwicke sits across the table from me. The seats are stuffed with something that’s like sitting on a cloud.

“There won’t be much to it,” he says. “You’ll be sworn in as an expert witness for the defense on the subject of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. You’ll be asked your name and to state your credentials. Just to be clear, could you state them for me?”

“I am an historian specializing in European history from nineteen-hundred to nineteen-fifty with an emphasis on World War Two and the Holocaust,” I say. “I have published a variety of academic papers on the subject in widely respected peer-reviewed journals, and three books that focus specifically on the subject of the Holocaust. I have a degree in chemistry and a doctorate in history, which makes me uniquely qualified on the subject of gas chambers.” I reach for my laptop carrying case and pull a paper out of it.

“Would you have a list of your qualifications and publications with you, by any chance?” inquires Warwicke, then stops, bemused, because I’m placing the list on the table in front of him. He pauses and studies it.

“Hmmph,” he says suddenly. “There’s a mention here of work for the CIA.”

“Nothing spooky,” I say. “I was a small-arms instructor. I trained agents in the use of firearms for many years. I’m a very good shot with a number of small arms. Or was, I haven’t touched a weapon in years.”

“Special Forces for a short period before that? That’s a little unusual.”

“I didn’t quite have what it took. I was going to make the Army my career but it didn’t work out. I made it through the training all the way to Special Forces but didn’t do well on the missions.” That was a painful memory. “The CIA job was a sinecure from a friend after I was discharged. It’s all a bit classified, I’m afraid.”

“Of course,” Richardson says and drops the subject. He continues running his finger down the list.

“Very good,” he says finally. “I have a set of questions here I’d like to run through. Do you mind a little drill?”

“No,” I say. “Shoot.”

Warwicke raises his eyebrows, and I think I’ve just labeled myself a crude American. We go over questions and answers for an hour. It’s nothing I haven’t heard in American courtrooms, and before we’re done I know I’ve redeemed myself in Warwicke’s eyes.

A pager sounds from the depths of Warwickes’ robe.

“That’s us,” he says. “They’re ready in court.” He checks his watch as he rises. “We’re a little pressed for time. If you would follow me, please. The court will adjourn in an hour.”

I trot behind Warwicke as he hustles down the corridor and up a set of stairs. I am slightly winded as he pulls up before a set of double doors. Warwicke smoothes his robes, assumes a calm demeanor, and opens the doors onto a courtroom with a packed gallery, mostly reporters scribbling in note pads and sketch artists drawing sketch books.

A tidal wave of stories—-

—blood-dappled Confederate gray sunlight on the backs of the scriptorium monks the whale breaches two arm’s-lengths from my kayak—

I shut the stories out before I’m overwhelmed. I don’t like dense crowds. Whispers still get through, an insistent sibilance only I can hear. So many people are present the air in the courtroom is hot and humid, reminding me of New Orleans. I’m not seated in the gallery as I expected. Instead I’m bustled directly to the witness stand where a bewigged judge looks me over. A clerk holding a Bible stands in front of me.

“Raise your right hand,” he says, and I am sworn in.

Since we’re the defense, Richardson has first shot. He stands up at his table. He appears to be a normal Englishman, wearing a suit and tie. A contingent of his supporters sitting behind him in the gallery are not so normal. Most are wearing brown shirts. Some are more radical, shaved heads with SS death’s-head ear rings and jackboots. It is chilling evidence what I’m doing here is not the waste of time most of the public thinks it is. I clamp down, not wanting to pick up the evil in their minds.

“Just a quick question or two, Doctor,” says Richardson. He stays behind his table. “Your field of expertise is the chemistry of these so-called gas chambers and ovens?”

“It is,” I say.

“Let us start with the so-called gas chambers,” says Richardson. “Are you aware of the field work that found no traces of cyanide in the walls of the so-called gas chambers at Auschwitz?”

“I am,” I reply. “The sampling was done improperly. They bored into the walls. Cyanide is highly reactive. It would only be found on the surface—which it has been.”

“How much?” says Richardson. “Sufficient quantities to kill a human being?”

“Easily,” I say. “Tell you what, Dr. Richardson. History is subject to endless interpretation. Science is not. I can set up an experiment right here in this courtroom that will detect the presence of cyanide in brick and concrete. We can go and get the samples ourselves, together, so there will be no doubt. Want to try it?”

Richardson is caught off guard. He gropes for an answer.

“That will not be necessary,” he says finally.

“You accept my answer, then?”

A battle starts in Richardson. A storm, of which only a hint shows on the surface. Faintly, momentarily, tendons stand out in his neck. He isn’t aware of the conflict, neither does he understand its nature. But I do.

“I must accept it,” he says, staring off into space. There is something strange about the words he uses I can’t quite put my finger on.

 “Yes, you must,” I state. I don’t know why I say that.

“Cyanide was also found in the walls of the facilities used to delouse clothing,” says Richardson. “In much higher quantity than that found in these gas chambers of yours. Doesn’t that make it clear these chambers were never used for gassing?”

“Only to somebody who doesn’t know anything about biology,” I reply. “It takes a much higher concentration of cyanide to kill fleas than it does to kill humans. Humans are much more sensitive to cyanide. Would you care to see the data? If you want, we can set up another demonstration. I can show you fleas living quite happily in a cyanide concentration that will kill humans.”

“That will not be necessary,” says Richardson.

“You accept my answer?”

Richardson hesitates. Again that inner struggle.

“I must accept it,” he repeats, and I realize what it is that’s causing his tension. The word “must”. The truth of the Holocaust is like a red-hot iron to him. Accepting the truth of the Holocaust is like deliberately holding that red-hot iron against his own flesh. He can’t do it for very long.

I had harbored some doubt—people believe things for a variety of reasons–but not any more.

“Let us discuss the ovens,” says Richardson, dropping the iron in agony to make another pathetic attempt to crawl away, “records have demonstrated that only three-and-a-half kilos of coke per body were allocated for incineration. Could you possibly burn a body with only three-and-a-half kilos of coke?”

“No,” I say. “The Nazis took advantage of the fact that the human body itself will burn and give off heat if heated to a high enough temperature. If I may be permitted a horrible image, think of the human body as a piece of coal. At room temperature, nothing happens. But get it hot enough, and it ignites and gives off heat all on its own. All the Nazis had to do was pre-heat the oven to the right temperature and shove the bodies in. The ovens stayed hot solely from the burning bodies.” I force him to put that iron against his flesh again. “Doctor, I can demonstrate this effect right here in this courtroom if you want.”

“That will not be necessary,” says Richardson, mechanically as a robot.

I lean in harder.

“You accept my answer?”

“I must accept it,” says Richardson. In his eyes, a historian’s respect for the truth wars with the torment of facing it. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “One final question, Professor Guerison. I’ve asked this question of all the experts, and now it’s your turn. Can you produce any documents at all that explicitly refer to the mass execution of Jews by gassing?’”

“Not stated in explicit terms, no,” I say. “The Nazis used circumlocutions to refer to the killing. ‘Special processing’, ‘disinfection’, and so forth.”

“Well, now, that is an awkward thing for your side, isn’t it? Millions supposedly gassed, and there’s not the slightest reference to it?”

“Not awkward at all,” I say. “The physical evidence is beyond question. Given that the Holocaust happened, the Nazis’ childishly clumsy attempts to cover up are revealing rather than awkward, in my opinion.”

Richardson tilts his head back in mild curiosity.

“Revealing? Please elucidate, Doctor.”

“The Nazis believed without question they were the Master Race, fated by virtue of their superior genes to rule the world,” I say. “Victory was certain, defeat inconceivable. With such a belief, they couldn’t possibly fear being brought to account by any human agency. And yet, as their own internal documents show, from the very beginning they went to great lengths to cover up—to lie—about the killing.”

Richardson doesn’t get it.

“They didn’t fear any human law,” I say. “Therefore, the rest of humanity were not who they were trying to hide their actions from.”

Richardson flushes. At his table, Warwicke raises his eyebrows again.

“You’re welcome to your religious opinions,” Richardson says stiffly. “No further questions.” He sits down.

Warwicke stands up.

“No questions, m’Lord,” he says, surprising me.

“We are finished with your services, Professor Guerison,” says the judge. “Thank you for your kind assistance. You may step down.”

I step down from the witness stand. Nobody makes a sound or says a word as I find a seat in the gallery, making me feel like I’m committing some kind of social faux pas as I search.

“Five o’clock,” says the judge when I’m seated. “Court recessed until tomorrow morning.”

“Be upstanding in court,” intones a clerk, and we all rise while the judge leaves. The crowd is perfectly quiet until he’s gone, then breaks into noisy clumps. Warwicke approaches, all smiles.

 “My, but you sorted Richardson out!” he crows. “There was certainly no need for cross. I thought the old buzzard was going to swallow his teeth when you offered to set up those demonstrations right in front of him. That should just about settle it. We’ll know in the morning.”

I have missed something. The trial’s over?

“Fancy supper?” says Warwicke. “There’s a fine little pub just around the corner.”

“I could do with a bite,” I say. We make our way through the crowd. A couple of reporters approach, but I wave them off. I’m too tired to deal with them. On the street, Richardson is complaining about how his right to freedom of speech is being suppressed to a bank of TV cameras. Out of American habit, I expect Warwicke to lead me to his car, but instead he strides down the street in a swirl of robes, heading toward a door underneath a sign displaying a boar’s head. Rain sprinkles across the top of my head in a little reminder of home as I follow him through the door into the pub. The pub, like everything else I’ve seen over here, has a crowded, too-close-together feel. The fact England is an island is stamped into its people’s bones.

This is a lawyer’s pub. Many of the patrons are in robes and wigs. Richardson waves to several as we wedge ourselves into a corner booth.

“What do you fancy?” asks Warwicke. “My ticket.”

“Thank you,” I say. The English have the Southern appreciation for manners. “Any recommendations?”

“They do a great steak-and-kidney pie here,” he says. “Ever had an English trifle? Basically cake, fruit, custard, and you slather it with thick cream. A cardiologist’s worst nightmare. Delicious.”

“Fine,” I say. Warwicke orders, and the meal arrives promptly on two steaming earthenware plates, along with English peas, mashed potatoes, and a gravy boat full of thick brown gravy. Warwicke seizes the gravy boat and pours it over everything on his plate. I discover I’m starving and tuck in. The entire meal is perfectly cooked and almost totally tasteless.

“Is the trial over?” I ask between mouthfuls. I long for a bottle of Tabasco.

“All but the verdict,” says Warwicke. “You’re not familiar with the particulars?”

“No.”

“This is a libel action, a civil suit,” says Warwicke. “Richardson was called a Holocaust-denier in one of the London tabloids, and he sued. Libel is much tougher here than in the States. U. K. law is on his side. We are required to prove to the judge’s satisfaction that Richardson is a Holocaust-denier.”

“What do you estimate our chances are?” I say, a little agitated. “Could we possibly lose?”

“Oh, we’ll win walking away,” says Warwicke, waving his hand. “Richardson hasn’t even hired a lawyer, you’ll notice. He’s representing himself, the idiot. You wonder why he’s going to all the trouble.”

After Richardson’s performance in the courtroom, you’d think the reason would be clear as crystal, and not for the first time I wonder why they’ve never seen it.

They will, one day.

“He’s setting himself up to fail,” I say. “They do the same thing in the States.”

“You think he has a martyr complex?”

It’s much simpler than that, but I can’t explain.

“Who knows what’s inside anyone’s head?” I say, shrugging.

The trifles arrive. Mine is as delicious as advertised, although I can feel my arteries hardening as I eat.

“Coffee?” says Warwicke.

I shake my head. The heavy meal is already making me drowsy.

“It’s all caught up with me, I’m afraid,” I say. “I need some sleep. What time will the judge pronounce the verdict?”

“Ten-thirty,” says Warwicke, thrusting out his hand, “in case I don’t see you again, well done.”

I shake his hand and wiggle my way through the tables. I pop out of the pub and hail another one of those expensive London taxis. I am truly tired. Fatigue washes over me in waves. I am only semi-conscious as I enter my hotel room. I stretch out on the bed without taking off my clothes and sleep until morning.

I wake up the next morning fully rested. I check the time. Nine-fifteen, the middle of the workday morning in the States, but England is still dawdling over breakfast. I take a tepid shower and eat a couple of excellent English pastries in the hotel lobby before I leave for the courtroom.

I decide to walk to work off last night’s heavy supper, but London is a maze of twisted streets, and it isn’t five minutes before I’m thoroughly lost. I hail a taxi, but I know I’m going to be late. I arrive in the gallery just as the crowd is rising for the judge to enter the courtroom.

The judge gets right down to business.

“Doctor Richardson,” he says, “I will issue a formal written opinion later, but I find you to be a racist, an anti-Semite, and an active Holocaust-denier. Judgement is found for the defendant. This court will now adjourn.”

“Be upstanding in court,” says the clerk, and I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding as the judge leaves. Richardson is a Holocaust-denier, which was a foregone conclusion.

But that’s not why I’m here.

People begin leaving the courtroom. Richardson and his little coterie move through the crowd as a group. I press my way through the crowd to them. The crowd is unconsciously moving away from them, creating a kind of people current I have to bob and weave through like a salmon fighting his way upstream. Richardson sees me coming, and dull hostility settles on his face. I get close enough so that he can hear me through the crowd noise. The crowd continues to buffet me as they stream out.

I take a firm grip on my emotions. I must set my charge carefully, if I’m going to give him a shot at redeeming himself and getting this burden off both our backs.

I open up to his story.

Death-camp barbed wire freezing mud the filthy inmates’ fear-stink as they line up.

I walk their ranks Luger in hand.

Who stole the food?

I kill one with a shot to the head. I kill two. I kill three. I kill four I kill five I kill six I kill seven I kill eight I kill and kill and kill crimson blood streams on the concrete innocent men women children their faces haunting my dreams burning my guts MURDERER MURDERER MURDERER IT DIDN’T HAPPEN IT DIDN’T HAPPEN IT DIDN’T HAPPEN….

I will destroy this evil, wipe it from living memory, bury it forever in history’s dry dust.

“You did it to yourself,” I say. “You’re the one who turned your reality into Hell. It won’t go away until you pay the price for it.” Boiling rage rises in me, smashes against the barriers I’ve set up. Some of it leaks through. “You poor weak fool. You can’t escape your guilt. You can only suffer for a time beyond your imagination.”

Incomprehension roils his face, but inside him the doors sag wide open.

“You cannot deny history,” I say. “You cannot deny yourself.”

On the conscious level, he remains puzzled, but I watch my words sink down into his unconscious and explode like a bomb. A single pure emotion completely wipes away the confusion. I stop trying to hold my position, and as the crowd carries me away I take a mental snapshot of the expression on his face.

I work on the sketch all the way home. By the time the plane touches down in the heat and humidity of New Orleans, it is done.

“YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS” I write in bold block letters at the top of it, and frame it and post it high on the wall behind my desk, where it stuns students and fellow professors alike into saying they’ve never seen such absolute, utter damnation.

END

Writer’s postscript: Thank you for reading “DENIAL”. This is an example of soul fiction, a genre of my own invention. “Soul fiction” stories are stories based on ideas contained in The Nine Point Five Theses.

I absolutely assure you, gentle reader, that souls and reincarnation are physically real, how the world actually works and has always worked. Every person around you, including yourself, is actually a body that contains a soul-field. When the body quits, the soul-field simply exits, rests for a while, and then chooses a new body. Souls and reincarnation are not “para”normal, they are simply plain old normal.

If souls and reincarnation are physically real, they must be deducible and provable by the scientific method, theory and experiment. I have written a book, actually more of a short pamphlet, that does the deduction (theoretical) part and contains a proposal for the experimental part, the construction of a soul-detector, The Nine Point Five Theses: The Existence Of Souls Deduced By The Scientific Method (Amazon). The book is written in plain, everyday language, easy to understand, and entirely free in the American and U.K. markets. Won’t cost you a nickel. (Although you will need a Kindle account.)

The book is also available, still completely free, on a number of other platforms: Apple, Nook (Barnes & Noble), Kobo, Scribd, Indigo, and Angus & Robertson, via the following link: The Nine Point Five Theses: The Existence Of Souls Deduced By The Scientific Method.

If you want to know what happens to you when you die, I can tell you. Or, MUCH, much better, I can lay the proofs out and you, the thinking reader, can decide for yourself.

I guarantee you an interesting read.

Post-post script: I write other types of stories as well. Here is my home page, where you will find a list of more free stories, and one I hope you will pay a paltry pittance of $2.99 for. <g> Just scroll to the bottom to see the list.