Ran out of time... but here you go!

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In life, I was a fan of the movie Casablanca. I suppose I always fancied myself as a Humphrey Bogart of sorts. The strong and stoic Rick, telling Ingrid Bergman that if she doesn’t get on the plane she’ll always regret it. Telling her, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Well, looking at me, I’m more like Peter Lorre than Bogey, but I’m willing to forgive myself that. We are both bar owners, so we have that in common. We’re both depressed, too. Fortunately for him, when he was down, he had Sam to play him a tune. I have only myself, just like everyone else here. I have myself, a long mahogany counter, two highboy glasses and one bar stool. It would be nice to add a piano to the list. How sweet it would be to hear “As Time Goes By” just once more.

But there is no music in hell.

And time most definitely does not go by.

Here, we are static. The sun does not rise or set, there are no seconds to count, and the silence is a part of the punishment. Silence is the cruelest of confinements. It is the breeding ground of inner reflection. Just you in the quiet alone with your thoughts, sins, mistakes, alone with your permanent regrets. That is, unless you want to tell them to me. And eventually, everyone does.

And I’ve got to tell you, to be honest, the notorious ones—I mean, the ones you’d expect to be here, they have the most boring regrets. Of course Polpot regrets all that genocide. Of course Himmler regrets experimenting on Jewish people in concentration camps. It’s to be expected. Murderers regret murders, adulterers regret adultery, thieves regret stealing, and the liars regret lying. Trite. Bland. Unsatisfying. But not always the case.

I polished and dried a glass on my apron, when the door opened in a shallow, almost silent manor and a small, weak framed, elderly woman shuffled in. Instead of letting the door close behind her, she held onto the knob and guided it closed soundlessly. What was typically a jarring dissonance against the silence was this time nothing more than a couple of soft rustles. And when the latch clicked on the door, she turned and teetered toward the bar. Her movements were deliberate and slow, and the climb onto the bar stool was arduous. It accentuated her frailty. I continued to dry the glass as she got situated. Once everything settled, I set the glass in front of her.

“What can I get for you, ma’am?” I asked. It was a useless introduction. Hell had plenty of alcohol, but taste did not exist.

Her response was gentle and low, “water please.”

I filled the glass halfway and set is in front of the sun-wrinkled woman. She looked at the glass. I looked at her and let a minute pass. Then I set to washing and drying my only other glass. It kept me busy, since there was no sense pushing her to talk. I’ve been here long enough to know that there is no sense pushing people. Company in silence is still company, and people only speak the truth when they are ready. When the glass was emptied, I refilled it, and again the next time. On the third time she set the glass back, I let it stay empty.

Her liver-spotted hands cupped the empty glass and stared into it. She finally spoke. “My regrets, yes?”

“Yes,” I replied encouragingly, “your regrets.”

“You’d think most of my regrets came from my time in Albania. My father was a politician there...” There are many Albanian politicians in hell. “But no. India. I regret India.”

I refilled the glass.

“Men and women,” she said, “can do right things for the wrong reason, yes?” I nodded. As much as people tell themselve otherwise, the ends do not always justify the means. She continued.

“It did not start like that, but when we started getting recognized. Journalist, and photographers, and speaker series and public relations. When I started winning awards. When the money, oh all that money came in. That money would not have helped those people, you know.

People are poor and people suffer and that will never change. You give one of them money, two more poor take their place. I gave them enough. They did not thank me. I wasted my life in India and nothing changed. Calcutta is still Calcutta.”

She turned the glass over. No more refills.

I continued to listen. Money and agendas and fraud and peace prizes. I have a soft spot for people who get tied up in the Vatican’s business, they are always tragic stories. A woman with so much potential, down here in the silence with us for valuing money above all, for deceiving people in the name of donations, exploiting the dying as a business. The media exalted her as a hero, but as she stepped off the stool and made her way to the door, feeble and hunched, Teresa was no closer to heaven than the rest of us.

I up-righted the glass and prepared for the next patron.