“Hunh?” said the man on the second bar stool. “Oh, I get it. You mean we’ve become anti-religious, materialistic, worldly. Ought to go back to the old-time religion. Is that what you mean?”
“I did not,” the man with the stout said irritably. “I meant what I said. The gods—our real gods—are gone. That’s why everything is so fouled up these days. There’s nobody to take care of us. No gods.”
“No gods?” asked the man on the second bar stool.
“No gods.”
The interchange began to irk George. He finished his drink—bourbon and soda—and motioned to the bartender for another. When it came, he said to the man with the moustache, “Well, if we haven’t got any gods, what’s happened to them? Gone away?”
“They’re in New Zealand,” the man with the moustache said.
He must have sensed the withdrawal of his auditors, for he added hastily, “It’s all true dinkum. I’m not making it up. They’re living on Ruapehu in Wellington—it’s about 9,000 feet—now instead of Olympus in Thrace.”
George took a leisurely pull at his drink. He was feeling finely credulous. “Well, go on. How did they get there?” he asked.
“It started when Aphrodite lost her girdle—”
“Venus!” said the man on the second bar stool. He rolled his eyes. “This ought to be hot. How’d she lose it?”
“Her motives were above reproach,” the man with the stout said stiffly. “This isn’t a smutty story. Aphrodite lent the girdle to a married woman who was getting along badly with her husband for the most usual reason, and the girl was so pleased with the new state of things that she forgot to return it. The couple decided to take a long cruise as a sort of delayed honeymoon, and the woman packed the girdle in her trunk by mistake. When Aphrodite missed it—Olympian society goes all to pieces without the girdle; even the eagles on Father Zeus’s throne start fighting and tearing feathers—it was too late. The ship had gone so far she couldn’t pick up any emanation from it.”
“When did all this happen?” George asked.
“In 1913. You want to remember the date.”
“Well, as I was saying, she couldn’t pick up any emanation from the girdle. So finally they sent Hermes out to look for it—he’s the divine messenger, you know. And he didn’t come back.”
“Why not?” the man on the second bar stool asked.
“Because, when Hermes located the ship, it had put in at New Zealand. Now, New Zealand’s a beautiful country. Like Greece, I guess—I’ve never been there—but better wooded and more water. Hermes picked up the girdle. But he liked the place so much he decided to stay.
“They got worried then, and they sent others of the Olympians out. Iris was first, and then the Muses and the Moirae. None of them came back to Olympus. Those left got more and more alarmed, and one big shot after another went out hunting the girdle. Finally by 1914 there wasn’t anybody left on Olympus except Ares. He said he didn’t much care for the girdle. Things looked interesting where he was. He guessed he’d stay.
“So that’s the situation at present. All the gods except Ares, and once in a while Athena, are on Ruapehu. They’ve been there since 1914. The Maori are a handsome people anyhow, and you ought to see some of the children growing up in the villages around there. Young godlings, that’s what they are.
“Athena doesn’t like it there as well as the others. She’s a maiden goddess, and I suppose there isn’t so much to attract her. She keeps going back to Europe and trying to help us. But somehow, everything she does, no matter how well she means it, always turns out to help that hulking big half-brother of hers.”
“Interesting symbolism,” George said approvingly. “All the gods we’ve got left are Ares, the brutal war god, and Athena, the divine patroness of science. Athena wants to help us, but whatever she does helps the war god. Neat. Very neat.”
The man with the moustache ordered another bottle of stout. When it came, he stared at George stonily. “It is not symbolism,” he said, measuring his words. “It’s the honest truth. I told you I was a mountain climber, didn’t I? I climbed Ruapehu last summer. I saw them there.”
“What did they look like?” George asked lazily.
“Well, I really only saw Hermes. He’s the messenger, you know, and it’s easier for people to look at him without being blinded. He’s a young man, very handsome, very jolly-looking. He looks like he’d play all kinds of tricks on you, but you wouldn’t mind it. They’d be good tricks. He—you could see him shining, even in the sun.”
“What about the others?”
The man with the stout shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. You wouldn’t understand me. They’re too bright. They have to put on other shapes when they go among men.
“But I think they miss us. I think they’re lonesome, really. The Maori are a fine people, very intelligent, but they’re not quite what the gods are used to. You know what I think?” The man with the moustache lowered his voice solemnly. “I think we ought to send an embassy to them. Send people with petitions and offerings. If we asked them right, asked them often enough, they’d be sorry for us. They’d come back.”
There was a stirring four or five stools down, toward the middle of the bar. A sailor stood up and came toward the man with the moustache. “So you don’t like the government?” he said menacingly. There was a beer bottle in his hand.
“Government?” the man with the moustache answered. George noticed that he was slightly pop-eyed. “What’s that got to do with it? I’m trying to help.”
“Haaaaaa! I heard you talking against it,” said the sailor. He swayed on his feet for a moment. Then he aimed a heavy blow with the beer bottle at the center of the moustache.
The man with the moustache ducked. He got off the bar stool, still doubled up. He drew back. He rammed the sailor hard in the pit of the stomach with his head.
As the sailor collapsed, the man from New Zealand stepped neatly over him. He walked to the front of the bar and handed a bill to the bartender who was standing, amazed, near the cash register. He closed the door of the bar behind him.
After a moment he opened it again and stuck his head back in. “God damn everybody!” he yelled.
After the sailor had been revived by his friends and pushed back on a bar stool, the man with the trumpet case, who had been on the far side of the stout drinker, moved nearer to George.
“Interesting story he told, wasn’t it?” he said cheerily. “Of course, there wasn’t anything to it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” George answered perversely. “There might have been.”
“Oh, no,” the man with the trumpet case said positively. He shook his head so vigorously that the folds of his pious, starchy, dewlapped face trembled. “Nothing like that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because…” He hesitated. “Because I know what the real reasons for our difficulties are.”
“Well, what’s your explanation?”
“I—I don’t know whether I ought to say this,” the starchy man said coyly. He put his head on one side and looked at George bright-eyed. Then, as if fearing George’s patience might be on the edge of exhaustion, he said, quite quickly, “It’s the last trump.”
“Who’s the last trump?” the man on the bar stool around the corner from George asked, leaning forward to listen. George knew him by sight; his name was Atkinson.
“Nobody,” the starchy man answered. “I meant that the last trump ought to have been blown ages ago. The world is long overdue for judgment.”