The Nineveh Town Council building wasn't tall, but it was impressive. Not because of its architecture: Ori had seen better-designed tool sheds in Warka. This structure had loose bricks and decayed bas-reliefs. On one wall, some wags with chisels had defaced the bas-reliefs with Egyptian graffiti. Ori found the effect curiously artistic. At least, the building couldn't get any worse-looking.

Ori hustled a newly-spruced-up Jonah up the stairs before he could demonstrate a facility for reading rude bas-reliefs. Nisaba had summoned her friend Fredi the barber to give the ragged prophet a trim and brush and Jonah looked 100% better than he had on arrival in the Big Pomegranate, which Ori found out was the locals' name for their bustling metropolis.

Privately, Ori thought the hype was a bit over-the-top: once you'd got used to the sheer size of the place, it all seemed a bit shabby and run-down. Even here in front of the Town Council building the trash seemed not have been picked up in ages. Stray dogs picked among the discarded grape-leaf wrappers of old lunches, and lizards slithered in and out of crevices. The two went in.

There was no security at the door, and there were hardly any people inside. Nobody seemed to care that the City Council was meeting today. There was a wooden bench in the lobby outside the Council chamber door: Ori and Jonah joined a couple of petitioners who were waiting their turn.

The first petitioner was a bald, rotund, well-dressed man of about forty. He sniffed when Ori and Jonah sat down and then ostentatiously looked straight ahead in a self-important way. Whoever he was, he was obviously too exalted a personage to talk to anyone else. Besides, he was next in line and eager to get his chance to present his petition before the Council. He clutched his clay tablet in a sweaty hand – this must be important to him.

The second petitioner was an older woman dressed in the fashion of widows. A young man, her son apparently, was with her. They, too, had a clay tablet to present. Somewhat to Ori's surprise, Jonah seemed interested in this pair and began a quiet conversation with them.

Ori was trying to listen in to find out what interested Jonah about the widow and her son, but a distraction arrived in the form of someone sitting down on Ori's other side.

'Hey, buddy, move over a bit. Share the bench.' Startled, Ori sidled over about a foot, but didn't look at the newcomer in case it wasn't polite. Didn't look, that is, until the stranger started singing softly.

. . .old Jonah said no

I'm a true hard-shell Baptist, and so I won't go

The Nineveh people are nothing to me

And then I'm against foreign missions, you see. . .

Ori stared. 'Haniel.'

Ori got a laugh in reply. The stranger threw back the hood of his cloak to reveal a mischievous face and a shock of unruly, curly black hair. 'Your favourite trumpet player,' Haniel winked. Haniel played second trumpet in the Celestial Orchestra. Haniel also perpetrated more practical jokes of a musical nature than anybody else, and had been twice placed in Time-Out (which is just what it sounds like) for blowing raspberries during solemn choral numbers.

In other words, Haniel was a trickster. What was worse, Haniel played jazz and had been known to pick up a trombone.

Ori chuckled involuntarily: humour was catching. 'Hani. How did you get here? Did you ride on the Paternoster?'

A headshake from Hani. 'Naw. I'm a-scairt of that thing. I come down the stairs when that feller with the rock fetish held it open. Thought it looked innerestin'.'

'And then you followed me to Nineveh?' Ori arched an eyebrow. If Haniel thought this looked 'inneresting', they'd better watch out. Hani's jokes could get kind of rough-and-tumble. Also, when no one else was around, Hani played the banjo.

Haniel laughed: his good nature was infectious. 'Twarnt like I had annathin' better to do with my eternal time. So is our boy gonna address the bosses?'

Ori nodded. 'When it's our turn.'

Since they would obviously be waiting a while, Hani pulled out what looked at first sight to be a clay tablet, and began reading it, occasionally poking at it with a finger and frequently chuckling. When Ori asked about it all Hani would say was, 'Cats are the best thing Prajapati ever invented.'

The rotund businessman was called for. The rest waited on. After about an hour, there was a smattering of applause from inside the chamber. The rotund businessman came out looking pleased. Ori saw that as he exited the main door, the businessman slipped something to the official who held the door for him. Both smiled knowingly. Ori sighed as the widow and her son were summoned and went inside.

'I hope her petition is granted,' Jonah whispered to Ori. 'She reminds me a lot of my Aunt Simcha. All she needs is an extension for her late husband's lease on a garden plot. They need it to grow vegetables, also herbs for the local market.' Jonah didn't seem to notice Haniel: once he had spoken to Ori, the prophet retreated into his own inner world.

What a funny sight, bud, that ever was seen

When Jonah rode off in his new submarine. . .

Ori poked Haniel, but it did no good. All that resulted was giggling and an offer to show Ori a moving picture of cats knocking things off of shelves.

Jonah's thoughts must have bored him to sleep because he was snoring gently when the widow and her son came out of the Council chamber. The woman was sobbing gently on her son's arm. Ori shook Jonah's shoulder and he woke with a start as their names were called. Following Jonah into the chamber, Ori just had time to notice Haniel walking the pair out of the building, whispering something to the son while patting the mother's back comfortingly. Ori was both reassured and troubled by the sight.

Now it's time to go into bureaucrat mode, thought Ori and bowed a carefully-calculated bow in the direction of the Council, who looked to the angel like a right bunch of knaves as they sat around rickety occasional tables in the grungiest room Ori had ever been in. The place looked like it hadn't been dusted in half a century at least. There were sunflower seed husks all over the floor.

These guys would get along with Nimrod if they weren't too cheap to hire a cleaning crew, Ori reflected sourly, while at the same time giving them the standard speech about 'greetings from afar' and introducing 'a travelling prophet who has visited many of the major cities of the north, including lively Halab and far-famed Wassukanni.'

'Cat-ridden Halab and backwater Wassukanni, you mean,' retorted one of the Council members drily. As he said it, he looked around for the approval of the others, who chuckled appreciatively. The Councillor smirked with pleasure.

'Yes, yes,' the Chief Councillor gave Ori a sharp look and waved his hand imperiously. 'Never mind all that. Let the prophet speak. What can he do for us?'

Somewhat to Ori's surprise, Jonah stepped forward and answered boldly. 'What can I do for you, oh councillors? Why, absolutely nothing!'

There was a sharp intake of Council breath at this seeming effrontery.

Jonah continued, 'But The LORD can work wonders for you! The LORD can change your lives, reform your city's morals, and alter your eternal destiny!'

'Quite an ambitious agenda,' murmured the 'witty' Councillor. Another spoke up. 'Can you tell us who this 'LORD' might be, pray?'

Jonah fixed them all with what Ori could only think of as a Sunday-School-pageant stare. Pointing straight up, presumably to the heavens, Jonah thundered, 'The LORD is the Maker of Heaven and Earth! And he commandeth you all to repent! Your sins are manifold and your doom certain – unless you pay heed to my words!'

There was silence in the chamber for a moment. Ori was thinking this might not have been exactly the most diplomatic way to begin when a thought broke into Ori's thoughts, accompanied by a groan.

Oh, you nincompoop!

Prajapati! Ori thought back. I didn't know if you were. . .er, back from petting cats. I haven't heard from you for a while.

I'm here, came the reply. I'm just laying low because I don't want that joker Haniel to know I'm around. I want to let that one think they've got the jump on me. But Jonah is doing a terrible job here. Why do reluctant emissaries always render the most twisted messages?

Ori didn't have anything to say to that.

'Go on,' said the lead Councillor through tight lips – and Jonah did, because Jonah was too self-absorbed to catch, as Ori had, the ominous undertone of the invitation.

'Men of Nineveh!' Jonah declaimed. He was actually declaiming, too, Ori thought, arms spread out like a prize orator. . .

A prize nincompoop, corrected Prajapati.

. . .as the prophet continued to sermonise in the direction of the Council. He enumerated Nineveh's sins, which according to Jonah involved drinking excessively, allowing 'lascivious performances' in the places where the excessive drinking was taking place, including ones in which men dressed like women. For some reason Jonah was sure this offended The LORD.

Prajapati, did you ever. . .?

I did not ever, was the grim reply.

After enumerating a list of 'sins' that were mostly things Jonah didn't like, including mixing meat and milk at dinner (Huh? from angel and spirit simultaneously) and the appalling sartorial crime of weaving linen and wool together, as well as marrying Egyptians, or one's great-grandfather's widow (Where does he GET these things?). The list went on.

At first, the bizarre turn the discourse had taken had kept Ori's attention riveted on Jonah and away from the Council. But then Ori heard it: low at first, then louder, growing into a rolling thunder.

Ori looked over at the Council. They were holding their sides and laughing. Laughing until the tears came.

Jonah droned on, oblivious. 'In addition, it is necessary to sacrifice, on occasion, cows, sheep, pigeons. . .then there is the wave offering, where you wave the grain in front of the altar in the prescribed manner. . .'

'Stop, stop!' chortled the 'witty' Councillor. 'You belong on the stage.'

'No, seriously,' commanded the Chief Councillor. 'This is too much! How dare this madman come before this chamber? Out, before we have you committed to the Home for the Hopelessly Bewildered! Sergeant-at-Arms, remove these people!'

As the Sergeant-at-Arms and his men hustled them out of the chamber, across the lobby, and out the front door, Ori exercised admirable restraint by not suddenly displaying a pair of angel wings, instead leaving meekly like an ordinary mortal along with Jonah, who, incredibly, was still talking. When Jonah got wound up it was best to let him stop on his own, Ori had found, and so didn't say anything, merely picked him up where the guards had rather ceremoniously dumped him at the bottom of the steps, dusted him off, and looked around for Haniel.

'Didn't go so well, I reckon?' Haniel was leaning casually against a pillar that had seen better days, probably the Assurbanipal Administration. It, too, was covered with Egyptian graffiti. Haniel was adding to it by etching funny birds into the dried brick.

Ori shrugged, and the two angels sat down on a dilapidated park bench, completely ignoring Jonah. For his part, the prophet was a bit disoriented: he seemed to have lost his audience but not his will to keep talking. In desperation, he addressed his further remarks to the bas-relief figures, whom he appeared to mistake for particularly shabby Ninevites.

Ori sighed. 'That didn't go well at all. Jonah's talk was calculated to turn off the most sympathetic audience, and those men. . .well. . .'

'I have to ask. Did they laugh?'

Ori nodded glumly. They sat in silence for a while – or as much silence as was possible with someone babbling, 'and lo, an angel came upon them, and. . .' in the background.

Haniel spoke first. 'I've had a jaw with the locals, and that Council is about as useless as a flock of ducks in a sandstorm. They never fix annathin'.' He gestured at the general desolation around them. 'They never lift a finger unless they can turn a shekel with it. They'll steal your underwear if they get half a chance. I suspect that's why the place is in serious danger of being nuked from orbit. . .er, destroyed by heavenly fire.'

'Smite them, O LORD!' shouted Jonah suddenly. 'Obliterate them utterly with heavenly vengeance!'

'Prajapati doesn't do that,' admonished Ori. 'He's not into 'smiting'.'

'What about Akkad?' asked Haniel. 'I understood that place got smitten all to smithereens.'

'That's not Prajapati's fault. The Akkadians did it to themselves. They kept doing the same bad things, over and over and over, until it wore a groove in their world and caused the spacetime locus around them to collapse.' Ori turned to Haniel. 'I suspect that's why we're here. If something doesn't happen, and soon, Nineveh will collapse, too. And take a lot of innocent people with it.'

The two angels sat quietly for a long, sober moment, contemplating the imminent destruction of 120,000 people, plus livestock and pets.

Slowly, something dawned on them.

The square around them had grown quieter. They looked around: no, there were still street vendors hawking wares, and passersby chatting. Lawyers were still milling about at the top of the steps, trying to enlist clients with matters before the Council. But it was. . .quieter.

Then they realised what it was.

Jonah had stopped talking. They found him asleep on a nearby park bench. A friendly bird was trying to stuff a worm into his ear.

They woke him up, and then the three of them headed to Nisaba's for lunch and a planning session. On the way, Haniel entertained Ori (but not Jonah) by singing the whole song about Jonah.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

26.06.23 Front Page

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