The Dead

“Anyway, this King of Prussia place, it’s really incredible. Me and Dennis and the wives spent one Saturday afternoon there. The whole Goddamn afternoon!”

“It really is something,” Dennis told Max earnestly.

Max nodded.

Buddy continued: “There was this store. It was called Ceramics Unlimited, I think. They had these statues, oh, about yay high-” he held his hand about two feet above the bar, “-Of all these celebrities and movie stars. John Wayne, Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, everyone. And the faces really looked like ‘em too, right down to the last detail.

“But the wildest thing was the size of their heads. Real big heads, almost life-size. Great detail. Hell, you could practically see the pores in their skin.”

“Always wanted to see John Wayne’s pores,” Max said.

“This would’ve been the place for you,” Buddy said, apparently missing Max’s sarcasm. “My favorite was a big head Louie Armstrong. Just incredible. Him wiping his face off with a handkerchief, just like in real life-lots of little trickles of sweat.

“Now when I laid eyes on that thing, it was love at first sight, let me tell you. I said to Lucy, ‘Honey, I’ve just gotta have that, no matter how much it costs,’ and I shut her up good when she complained; plunked down the forty five bucks, and walked out of there with my very own Louie Armstrong tucked under my arm. It’s on my mantelpiece back home, place of honor. Wouldn’t be parted from it for the world. Ain’t it amazing, Dennis?”

“That’s the word, all right,” Dennis said, less than enthusiastically. “But what I remember most about the store was the religious stuff. All those statues of the Virgin Mary and everything.”

Gary glanced over at him. Was that how Dennis was going to drag God into the conversation? It seemed wonderfully unsubtle, but then again, Buddy had no idea he was being set up.

“Didn’t make an impression on me,” Buddy said.

“Well, it wouldn’t,” Dennis said. “Seeing what you think of religion.”

“Don’t get me started on that,” Buddy said. “I could talk all night. But seeing as how we’ve got a couple of Pope Celia’s boys here, I’ll lay off.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Gary said. “I stopped being a Catholic a long time ago.”

“I didn’t,” Max said. “But don’t let that stop you either, Uncle Buddy.”

“Sure you can take it?” Buddy laughed.

“Try me,” Max said.

“Don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“I don’t bruise easily.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not sensitive about it. Religious people get really touchy, you know?”

“No,” Max said. “Explain it to me.”

“Well, most of ‘em are kind of fanatics. Falwell, Khomeini… people like that.”

“I see,” Max said. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. Do you think there’s something intrinsic to religion that encourages people to be fanatics?”

“Well, seeing how religious folks act… yeah.”

“So you think there’s something in the teachings of let’s say, Jesus, that turns people rabid? The Sermon on the Mount, for example?”

“Never met a Christian that paid the slightest attention to it,” Buddy declared.

“Make up your mind, Buddy. Are Christian fanatics acting on Jesus’s teachings? Or ignoring them?”

“What difference does it make?”

“The difference between Mother Theresa and Torquemada.”

“Torquemada?” Buddy asked.

“Spanish grand inquisitor,” Max answered. “You wouldn’t have liked him. Exactly the sort of guy you’re talking about… You do know who Mother Theresa is, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Buddy said, sounding nettled.

“Well then. Since there’s so much difference in the conduct of various ostensibly religious people, why do you assume it’s the religion that corrupts the people, and not vice-versa?”

“Because when religious people go bad, they’re so much worse than anyone else.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. You mentioned that Torquemada guy. Look at the Spanish Inquisition.”

Gary groaned inwardly. Worst move yet, Buddy, he thought. He’d heard Max unload on this topic too many times in the past; Max was a dedicated historian of atrocities. Buddy had a double-barreled shotgun pointed straight at his face, and didn’t even realize it.

Max flashed Buddy a sharklike smile. “Okay, let’s. Its peak activity was during the final years of the Reconquista, and just afterward-”

“Reconquista?” Buddy asked.

“The reconquest of Spain from the Moors. The Inquisition wound up with a lot of Moslems and Jews to liquidate. Between 1481 and 1540, the Holy Office killed about twenty thousand people. Sound bad?”

“Are you going to tell me it’s not?”

“Hell no. But why don’t we put its achievements in perspective? When it comes to murder, atheists have got the religious folks beat all hollow…The bloodiest killers in history, the worst of the worst, were twentieth-century freethinkers. Squarely on your side of the fence.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, let’s compare. The Spanish Inquisition’s supposed to be right up there, isn’t it? But its record pales beside Lenin’s, for example. Between famine brought on by requisition, and outright murder, he was responsible for about five million unnatural deaths between 1917 and 1921. And the killing followed quite logically from his philosophy. He once wrote, ‘The scientific concept of dictatorship’-that is, of the dictatorship of the proletariat-’Is nothing less than this: acquisition of total power by the party, untrammeled by laws or morality, and based directly on violence.’ He wasn’t joking. His followers weren’t joking either.

“Consider Stalin. Under his leadership, 14.5 million people were exterminated between 1930 and 1934 during collectivization. As many as were killed on all sides during World War I. In 1936 he got cracking again, bumped off millions more. During World War Two he murdered nearly as many Soviets as were killed by Hitler during the same period-and that includes the casualties inflicted on the Red Army by the Nazis. And after the war, another massive purge began, on the typical Stalin scale.

“In short, between 1917 and 1953, the Bolsheviks, atheists all, killed one out of every four people in the Soviet Union. Stalin alone may have killed sixty million. Now the Spanish Inquisition could’ve been operating full blast during that entire period, and it only would’ve piled up about twelve thousand bodies.”

Buddy was silent, glaring at him. “Science says religion is bunk,” he said at last. “I took biology in high school, you know. What about Darwin?”

Max laughed. “What about him? Do you think for one instant that I’m going to let you change the subject and slip off the hook? If you didn’t want to talk about comparative body-counts, you shouldn’t have brought up religious fanaticism. And speaking of body-counts-” he took a gulp of Heineken and cracked his knuckles,-”It’s about time we dragged the reigning Prince of Darkness into this. Everyone’s favorite, Adolf Hitler.”

“Hitler was a Christian.”

“Wrong, Buddy. He was another student of Lenin, by his own admission-only his socialism was the national variety. He despised Christian morality; when asked why he rejected it, he replied that Darwin-there’s that name again-had destroyed Christian cosmology, so what reason was there for paying attention to the ethics? Good point: rack up another twelve million stiffs. More if you want to count the combat deaths.

“And how about Mao-Tse-Tung? He killed seventy million in China; one out of every ten people in the country. Pol Pot killed one out of every three in Cambodia, in two years, no less. Now that’s shootin’, even by atheist standards. Then there’s this Mengistu scumbag in Ethiopia. What a card-”

Max went on in this vein for several minutes more.

“None of this is in any way meant to exonerate all those inquisitors or crusaders,” he wound up. “I’m sure they did the best with what was available to them, philosophically speaking. But only through considerable mental