“Anyone asks,” panted the ancient rocker, kneeling over his unconscious victim, “you tell ’em it was the Godfather of Soul did this to you. Yes sir, it was James Brown, huh, alright, it was James Hallelujah Brown what opened this can o’ whuppass all over your dumb cracker ass.” He flicked his bouffant quiff out of his eyes. “Yeah. Damn straight. Alright.” A young Bangladeshi, accidentally trod upon that afternoon by his beloved elephant Sachin, hurried up and draped a small cape across the shoulders of the singer.
It was inevitable that scuffles would ensue. The queue hadn’t moved for hours, and a rumour had worked its way down from somewhere up near the Gates that a small-time snake-oil salesman called Yengeni had choked to death on a prison-issue oyster and was about to get preferential acceptance to Bliss without going through the proper channels.
Fuses were shortening, and the pinkish light that suffused the scene only managed to claw at fraying nerves: like being trapped in a candy-floss machine, a young poet had said that morning, revealing why he had spent his short life being rejected by publishers before finally force-feeding himself the collected works of Ted Hughes in a final, and fatal, act of defiance.
“Motherless fool!” grunted Brown, rising to his feet and producing a reasonable, if faded, facsimile of a pirouette, his patent-leather fauxligator boots glinting in the puce gloaming. “Shoulda known better than to take on the cat what put the Clay in Cassius, what put the Hammered in Muhammad and the A in Ali. Hell, I invented modern boxing. Alright. Huh.”
“Did I hear someone mention Muhammad?” asked a gravely voice, as the throng of onlookers shuffled aside, revealing a stern, bearded man.
“Hey, I know you!” cried Brown. “You’re that — you know, that guy with the —”
“Weapons of mass destruction?”
“No, you know, the— hell, whaddya call those little freaks, you know, the little freaks with the hairy feet?”
“Kurds?”
“Hobbits! You’re Gandalf! I’ll be goddamned! You’re Gandalf!”
“My name,” said the stranger, with regal disdain, “is Saddam Hussein, Saladin the Second, the Lion of Baghdad, Redeemer of the Arab Nations and Connoisseur of Quality Street Chockies.”
“A-grade fruit,” murmured Brown.
Hussein’s eyes blazed. “If I did not have a particularly severe crick in my neck this morning, you would be made to eat your words, sweaty old man in flared trousers. But I let it go, for mercy has always been my watchword.” He poked his foot into the ribs of the figure at their feet. “Tell me, geriatric cabaret minstrel, what did he do to you, this man upon whom you have opened your can of ass-whip?”
“I warned him,” cried Brown. “Goddamn, I warned his sorry cracker self. One more joke about I feel good not being a song for a recently dead brother, and I’d show him my moves. Lordy, yes. And how. Amen. Right on. Sock it to me. Huh.”
Saddam smiled ruefully. “My friend, you are an angry soul. You will not enter yonder Gates of Paradise if you continue to fume so over life’s smaller mishaps.”
“Shut yo mouth, bitch!” cried Brown. “I ain’t gonna be lectured on life’s mishaps by nobody with a hickey like that one round their neck. Who you been making out with, anyway? An anaconda? I once had an anaconda. Biggest reptile on the planet. Most expensive. Had it imported from Brazil. They wouldn’t sell it to me, so I bought the province and had it shipped over, mud and all. Damn right. Hot dog!”
“My wounds,” said Saddam, “are my passport to happiness, for I died a martyr at the hands of the great conspiracy of the Americans and the Jews and —”
“Goddamn conspiracies!” cried Brown. “I ever tell you how I almost became the first African-American to land on the moon, if Nixon and the CIA hadn’t discovered I was single-handedly funding the brothers in North Vietnam with my —?”
“— and as a martyr,” continued Saddam, “I await my righteous reward: 72 virgins.”
“Uh-huh,” said Brown contemplatively. “You ever had 72 virgins before?”
“I knew some women, but —”
“‘Cause I once had 72 virgins in one night. Twice! Oooh, them chickies was squealin’ and whoopin’ for my sweet sweet lovin’, and ol’ Brown Sugar was romancing and singing them sweet soul ballads, and —”
“I wonder where I can acquire a Strepsil,” mused Saddam.
And so it went, as the pink sky deepened to red, and the Gates remained closed as cool, detached eyes regarded lives and pasts, and made neat ticks or neat crosses next to the names of those who waited and waited and waited —