Seventh Heaven Seven Perceptions

By Maria D'Arcy

At the hour of their death what personalized vision of Heaven will greet a Catholic, Jew, Hindu, Hedonist, Muslim, Atheist or Buddhist, given that our North Star is rooted in our subconscious. But what vision will be revealed to a Jew, or Hindu, Hedonist, Muslim, Buddhist or Atheist if Heaven stems from our subconscious? Let's take a walk in the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maria D”Arcy
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781916109339

Maria D'Arcy

Ms D'Arcy graduated in education with merit in philosophy, psychology and sociology from Notre Dame in Scotland, then followed voice and theatre training at The Gaiety school of Acting in Dublin where she learned the skill of creating vivid backgrounds to bring credulity to the characters. She became an oral storyteller specialising in the literary texts of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Robert Burns and for the last two years has been reading/enacting extracts from her own novel, Seventh Heaven Seven Perceptions, too in Paris where she now lives. 2022, being the centenary of Ulysses she was invited to do a costumed photo shoot at The Irish Embassy and appeared on stage at the commemorations held at Le Centre Cuturel Irlandais and the renowned bookshop Shakespeare & Company. http://mariadarcy.com/writing/index.htm

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Part I

I: Bridget

You have a tumour, the doctor stated.

A tumour? The word rang out, a familiar yet so unfamiliar word.

Does that mean Cancer, asked underweight Bridget, leaning away, holding her breath.

I’m afraid it does, delicately telling the truth.

Her breath froze as she met the doctor’s eyes, sympathetic eyes while the icy meaning penetrated in.

Slowly in and in.

Over the desk, through her skin, into her brain.

Cancer!

A word that was to become too familiar, the only word bounding in her head, the only word of those around. Terrifying her,

Cancer!

Cancer of the stomach, with secondary cancer of the pancreas, he confirmed.

Oh! God! 73-year-old Bridget didn’t even know what or where a pancreas was. It struck her as being a place in London; a platform sign shot to her mind. Had she seen that when she’d visited her daughter Josephine? How ashamed this wee mum was, as always, by her lack of general knowledge! And here this pancreas was, gnawing away at her insides. Poisoning. Eroding!

Though it had happened to three of her other Irish-born sisters Bridget never imagined it would happen to her.

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me, she cried aloud, stunning the usually poised doctor. The mother-of-five declared that she, a devout Catholic, had gone to mass every Sunday of her life, and received Holy Communion, which is the bread of eternal life! The confounded medical man simply encouraged her to pray. She did.

O Mary, conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Bridget sat on there at the teak desk, stunned. This was the one cross she couldn’t fathom. A flash of memory brought her back to when her farming-father, milking a cow in the barn, had turned to her and stated that God sent us crosses to bear, that we had to struggle, even suffer, to be redeemed to everlasting life with God-the-father.

Lord only knows, Doctor, how hard I have already battled and this is my reward?

Yes, yes, said the doctor standing up.

The small, feeble woman obliged to stand too, zipped up her beige anorak, to protect herself from the Scottish drizzle outside, and retraced her steps to the modernised but soul-less waiting room of the public clinic. Spotting the green slacks, and red scarf that his stooped mum had put on earlier that morning to give a wishful impression of vitality, her son called out.

Are you all right, Mum?

It’s a t- tumour.

With that the tears rolled down her face and into her open mouth as she gasped at the idea of losing her life. The 48-year-old son wanted to protect her but all he could think of saying was,

Would you like some tea?

The tea was taken from a vending machine and sharing the thunderbolt, they sat sipping the warming familiar brew, lost in dreads.

She contended how weighed down she’d felt by burdens all her life, and how her heart had reached out to those around falling under their crosses. She’d done all she could to help, even borrowing money from loan sharks since a proper bank would never accord the likes of her a loan. As does happen, thus had begun her crushing life cycle of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. The attentive son listened on well. Yet, that was the issue to her! The timing was strange, for though the family were now grown-up, he and they depended on her as much as ever—one more crippled than the other. The son accepted the slight, acknowledging Bridget didn’t feel herself expendable.

Do you believe in Heaven, Michael? she asked the communist-supporting son who knew well when to hush his opinions.

I’m sure when the time eventually comes, Jesus and Mary will be waiting with open arms to welcome you into Heaven, he said graciously.

Or will the Devil be there hopping in glee, pointing me into the big bad fire of perpetual damnation?

Don’t fret, you are a good Catholic, he pacified, crushing his normal cynicism. But continuing to fret she added,

Be it done unto me according to Thy word?

No thanks, echoed in her mind.

In a shaking voice, she recounted to him the prognosis for this fatal malignancy as being anything from six months to two years, except in the rarest inexplicable of cases when a victim had survived five years. Assimilating all these possible scenarios, she suddenly smiled and declared aloud,

A miracle is what we need! And we Catholics believe in miracles, don’t we, Michael! A wide smile stretched to her eyes.

As a girl, Bridget had been in the prayer group called The Legion of Mary, and was still a devotee to Our Lady of Lourdes. Yes, Lourdes, the grotto where scores of miracles have taken place, where the crippled have taken their first steps and the blind have seen again, where cancer simply dissolves. With all her might she grasped her son’s hand there and then in the white-washed room and prayed,

"O Blessed Virgin Mary who never was it known that anyone who implored thy assistance

or sought thy intercession was left unaided!"

Praise be to God! That was it. Bridget would ask her eldest daughter Maureen who was working in San Sebastian, the Basque region she’d referred to it as, to go to nearby Lourdes. Oh yes! To that saintly grotto in the south of France where miracles happen! Maureen could light long prayer candles, sponsor a priest to dedicate a Mass to healing her and bring back some famous holy water from the blessed springs of redemption.

Praise be to God.

Yes, she’d show the world her faith.

Willpower and faith!

Salvation thronged the air!

II: Joshua

Joshua sipped his espresso, looking out of the coffee-shop window at the passers by on the busy London street. He knew he was often labelled as Intellectual. Powerful. Intimidating. Yes, he lived alongside but out of the rat race. He loathed the fickleness of the modern world. He despised those rollerbladers sailing around aimlessly, no purpose, no direction. He was principled, had lofty ideals. He was kosher. The world was so degenerate, so sullied. His refuge was classical music and collector’s postage stamps, vintage, rare and foreign ones, which to him were a treasure, a timeless heritage. He smiled to himself as he thought of these wonders which he hoarded and placed meticulously in his Sotheby’s mahogany display cabinet, with its delicate sinuousy handles from the art-nouveau era, the 1900s, an epoch that had been opulent for Jews—at first. The antique ensemble gave him solace far removed from the nasty rock bars, noisy louts, sleazy nightclubs of London. It was all he could do to bear the proximity of vulgar people on the Tube, rush hour. What really irritated him was people speaking loudly, familiarly, across the platforms with no respect for what was public and what was private. He scorned the herd queuing for fast food at lunchtime. He knew which foods were pure.

His was a germ-free, kosher-sealed kitchen; separate drawers for the cutlery, never dairy products with meat; poultry was hygienic but only if the animal had been butchered cleanly; fish was almost safe but not cavernous shellfish. Infection had to be avoided. He was not contaminated.

Ceremoniously he laid down his white linen tablecloth for dinner each evening with his silver cutlery and crystal glass from which he drank a glass and a half of ruby, kosher Bordeaux—the experts estimated between one glass and two was good for the health. Not that he actually went to the bother of cooking the meal—a kosher deli was just around the corner on Edgware Road. He was a bachelor. Don’t be mistaken, he liked women. To be homosexual was to be stoned in the eyes of the Torah.

As a virile man, approaching 49, he had been with women. He liked their warmth, their softness, those curvy bodies that’d drive a man wild with testosterone. He loved carnality, getting it up, getting it in, nipples standing, rump out, flesh on flesh, slipping into hot juiciness. Bliss! So blissful it counterbalanced any vestige of unmarried guilt. He always wore a condom, he protected himself, vigilantly. These women were out to ensnare a man, to get their tentacles in, to suck a man dry with their clinginess, their insipid chatter, their ready tears. All that fussiness in their outward trappings! They wouldn’t trap him, despite the ripple of their laughter and the shining of their eyes. No, he preferred his lone dignity, he a solid man of morals. So many sluts around, so much pornography and basic tastelessness. If only he could meet his ideal woman things would be different. Where there is love there is no sin. She, he’d shower with tenderness, dedicate his life to adoring, start a family. But what he got were these flawed, manipulating, spineless creatures. No wonder he instantly turned over to the edge of the bed after intercourse.

He was anxious about his Jewish lineage though. What if the family name stopped with him? Still he couldn’t bring shame on his parents by marrying a Goy, a non-Jew, and yet all those Sephardim, Mediterranean Jews he had met while living those ten years in Israel fighting for the Promised Land, were so dramatic all the time, shouting down the telephone, as if everything were a life and death situation, craving attention like monkeys.

What he hoped was to meet a good, refined, docile woman, of Eastern European stock, an Ashkenazi Jew, like himself, and bear offspring with her. Yes, girl-next-door type, modest clothes, nice features, with a pert body. That would fit nicely with his conservative dark appearance. Flamboyance repulsed him. Better again if she were a good cook who liked to prepare gefilte fish and apple-strudel for the Sabbath, then he would at last be able to return the compliment and invite the neighbourhood rabbi to his home to sing Shalom Aleichim together and prove what an upright, worthy, observing Jew he was. Oh what joy that would be!

Joshua discretely took a miniature prayer book out of his pocket, looking around to check nobody was observing him Fortunately, he had gotten his eyes re-tested and now re-glassed he could read the tiny text. It was with passion and commitment he read the contents, just as he had done when he studied the Torah, the first five chapters of the Bible, written by Moses, as well as imbibing the Talmud, the oral law upheld throughout the centuries. To intensive tutorials he still went, religiously, three times a week and found it all so intellectually empowering, so transcendentally enlightening, far more profound than his Harvard University masters course. He tried not to flaunt it, but he often felt chuffed to be the first one in the scripture-study group able to decipher the holy texts. These had to be interpreted from ancient Hebrew into the modern, or from Yiddish into English, his parents having originated from Poland. He could also speak Spanish, the second language of New York where he had been born. The gift of tongues! But elation in life stopped there for Joshua.

In the office, his subordinates brought insurance claims and calculations for him, Mr Kahn, to check, he being the specialist in the small print clauses, loop-holes that saved the company a fortune. These reports were always riddled with mistakes. He kept his calm, just fixed the employees with a look that let them know he didn’t suffer fools lightly, or as the Hispanics might say, that they were nada. This neat word had stuck in his mind, a useful word he employed often in his head at the idiocies of those around. He would see them mumble explanations, excuses, apologies. Why couldn’t they simply keep their minds on the job? He, Mr Joshua ben-Kahn, was focussed.

But this particular day he’d had to leave the office early, to go for a check-up. Rather daunting, it had been to stand up and leave at 2:15 pm while everyone else was clicking away at their keyboards. No doubt they’d found that curious, fodder for speculation, though hadn’t dared ask him.

Mostly Joshua kept to himself, only too aware that Jews have been persecuted so many times throughout history. But recently he’d felt a bothersome itching in the groin area and a gradual increasing frequency in, well, urinating, rather embarrassing to have to explain.

Would he have to detail this to a doctor?

III: Kamal

Through legends, sermons and his elders, the dewy adolescent boy was able to imagine the day when…

A blinding, penetrating, whirlpool of light and heat would transport him into Paradise, where like a sunflower under a Mecca sun, his energy and luminosity would dazzle and then on the horizon he would see them, a host of nymphs in transparent veils floating on a breeze—maidens—72 of them…

How that would be a dream-come-true!

The lad, Kamal Habib, who had been born in a hilly peasant village in the West Bank, outside Al Khalil, or Hebron to the infidel, sat on a big boulder, near a rare trickling stream, which gleamed in the sun, his favourite place to sit and think for hours. Kamal had been born into a financially-challenged Palestinian family 19 years previously. Not far away, affluent Jews lived in modern settlements having bought or expropriated the land, occupying it since the six-day-war of 1967. How the ripening young man relished this traditional Holy Land where Abraham had built an altar to the Lord, though it purportedly symbolised a communal heritage of Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, but which the Israelis controlled with guns and mortar, forever oppressing the Palestinian majority of this impoverished, rubbled back-region! Economic curbs, curfews and culls were his lot, while Jewish homes were spacious, their demeanour superior, their cars flashy. All he and his friends could do was to fill their tunic pockets and take vengeful pleasure in hurling stones when these imposing cars passed by.

Kamal rose, wiped the sweat off his forehead and wandered back to where his family lived in a one-roomed hovel, roofed with sheet metal held down by rocks. Kamal looked sympathetically at his fatigued mother as she swept the gravel floor, as she did daily, battling against domestic dirt and nature. Their sole room was divided by a tieback curtain, one side with a double bed in which his mother and two sisters slept and on the other was a single bed for his father. The toilet and sink were in an outhouse, which was such a nuisance, if they had to go, in the middle of the night or during a tempestuous sand storm. All was normal, he noted. Under the beds the pans for boiling water and cooking were stowed as well as the serving dishes and a decrepit motorised fan, an essential luxury for the cruel, hot summers of the Levant. In the corner, below a burnished-colour tapestry, was a water pipe that he and his father drew upon in the evenings.

At night the black-haired boy slept fuss-less on his threadbare mattress on the floor at the foot of his father’s bed and consciously dreamt about the four wives he would take were he older and richer. Kamal believed in equal rights, though naturally different gender roles, as taught in the Koran, and knew he would treat the wives honourably so as not to offend any of them. Not that he knew anyone actually wealthy enough to provide for numerous wives, because if one wife was given a necklace for her birthday the others would have to receive similar to avoid the curse of envy and bitterness. Riches brought liability and, for the moment, he was poor thus stain-free. Indeed, he’d heard several fathers bemoan that one wife was more than enough to handle and yet youthful, full-blooded Kamal certainly found it thrilling to imagine a five-some.

There were some fine, plump-breasted and round-bottomed girls around the territory; one could espy their outline despite their baggy garments whenever they ran or jumped. Therefore, what the chocolate-eyed youth thoroughly enjoyed was to naughtily spring out unexpectedly on girls during his weekly errand to Al Khalil, just so they’d startle with fright. There was one girl there he’d seen several times, though, with the most amazing dark eyes. Her head was always covered decently under the typical black jellabiya of the region with its red border but her beauty was still remarkable, enhanced by the smoky kohl around her eyes, sultry eyes that drew him in. He didn’t dare startle her because she seemed educated, townies usually were; her posture so upright, but at times he’d felt her eyes linger on him a split-second, tellingly-long, and he only wished he could deserve her. If only he could do something worthwhile or be someone admirable with something to offer her. How he would love to take her for his first wife, even only wife, if and when his life got on track, whenever his destiny started. Basmala, in the name of Allah, he remembered to add. But it was hard with unemployment rampant, that is unless one humbled oneself and agreed to clean toilets or wash dishes for the avaricious Jews and even those jobs were becoming rare since they were installing electric dishwashers and in some places automatic flushing toilets!

To Kamal there was something incongruous in this weird breed of Orthodox Jew who hung out on the far side of the Mosque with their curling sideburns, who clung to the traditions of yore and yet had all the mod cons that America could conjure up. And as much as he and his friends resented these haughty, craven Jews, much more did they loathe all they knew about the missile-happy, capitalist-expanding, pompous-mouthing United States of America, which carte-blanched everything the Zionists did. He remembered the youngest of his seven uncles telling him that those who concentrate on material gains and luxury, rather than the moral or spiritual, were worse than animals.

Worse than pigs, he’d concluded, ruthless hoarders, and only insatiable egotists amassed fortunes like them!

Kamal was pleased to hear his sentiments encapsulated: Americans were megalomaniacs who lived in the manner they wanted in the land of plenty and pornography, but they would not let Muslims live in the simple manner they chose! Democracy victimised Islam, he was sure. Often Kamal was unable to sleep, thinking of the unfairness of it all. This usually good-natured youth thought about his homeland, the arid territory and the lack of running water or vegetation, the scarcity of work or money and consciously despised the western world for it’s gleeful suffocation of the Arab culture. He actively resented the foraging of their natural resources near the coast of Israel, their unrestrained greed for global control and, worse, the West’s intent on dictating its corrupt regime of globalisation on the entire world, as if it were some God.

Would that he become a superman and rescue the downtrodden!

IV: Shandra

Mamma, tell me again, the seven-year-old with shiny studs in her ears said, as she climbed onto her mother’s lap on the double swing-chair in the flower-filled garden.

Alright, my sweet. As generations before us knew, in the beginning was Shiva, the giver of gifts and he gave Man a beautiful gift, the means of acquiring spirituality on Earth through Indian dance. This mystical recipe he outlined in the sacred book known as Natya. Therein is detailed the placement of the hands, the facial expression which follows, the vigorous turns and rhythmic taps of the feet. Thereupon, Goddess Parvati, Shiva’s female counterpart, revealed a technique to add grace by succumbing to the fluidity of the melody.

The excited little girl held up five fingers. The gentle mother tickled her underarm.

Yes, five classical styles have evolved from their teachings.

What are they Mamma?

"Kathakali found in the south, can you name any city there?"

Yes, yes, I can! Miss Brown went to ‘Madras’ for her last school holiday, the winner exclaimed.

Clever girl! There, in Madras, precise moves are effected in a half-seated pose from which a story is incarnated; a mime, choreographed from a pool of 24 hand-movements, lavish symbols which everyone in our vast land of India is versed in, for as you know, sweetheart, these mythical epic sagas are re-enacted through marionette shows, masked tales and magical songs. Did you know it can take six years to acquire the facility of performing in this position?

The Indian child jumped down, off the swing and put herself into a squatting dance pose.

Like this, Mamma?

Oh you are a natural! Then the dancers must master the hypnotising geometrical darts of the eye, one hour of practice daily is required and it helps to rub them with melted butter.

Now it was the graceful, young mother’s turn to strike a pose to demonstrate the eye darts.

Did you put butter on your eyes this morning, my beautiful Mamma?

No, my love, I don’t need it anymore and besides it would make my mascara run.

I love mascara. I can’t wait to be big enough to wear it.

Soon enough, soon enough! You are getting bigger everyday!

Am I? I am so very happy!

"Where was I? Oh, yes! Around the Tamil Nadu region the Bharata-Natyam is found which includes enchanting leaps. To the North, the Kathak requires the wearing of bejewelled ankle bracelets with bells, the challenge being to ring one bell selectively then build them into a crescendo, a dance in which homage is paid to the sacred elephant Ganesh."

The little girl frantically shook her wrists which were covered in bracelets.

"Towards the Bay of Bengal, where we live, the Odissi depicts love stories with ritualized interpretations of Lord Krishna and Rhada, the beloved one. From the Ganges up to Bengal, the Manipuri is preferred, the most graceful dance of all, akin to the sensual style of Persia."

"The Odissi is my very favourite one Mamma, I love being Bengali. But please tell me about you, Mamma, the overjoyed girl squealed, tell me about you.

The genteel mother in her orange, silk sari obliged and as if reading a book recounted:

It was by the Bay of Bengal, tipping her head from side to side, in acknowledgement, Shandra was born, within that once majestic city of Calcutta, the celebrated jewel of poets and musicians. But this erstwhile imperial capital now represents the best and worst of Indian life. It houses both culture and squalor, literature and foulness.

Mamma, Calcutta is the old name of Kolkata, isn’t it?

You are right, again. But I have always called it Calcutta.

Shandra continued to recount how the young lady in the story