The Gentle Rain

The Gentle Rain

By Henry Gregor Felsen

Once in my life I had the strange sensation that I was God above, and the lives of those below me lay in the palm of my hand. There was a grim, limited truth to my feeling. My plane's wings were hung with fire bombs, and the exact moment I chose to release my bombs would determine the exact moment that certain people died while certain others lived.

It was not merely the ability to sow death that made me feel God-like, but my power to alter the strike of my lightning and amend its list of victims. I could start down in a dive, sights fixed on a target, and a hundred people would be a breath from oblivion. Then I could, with a tremor, restore life to those who were, in a sense, already dead, and destroy others who, until a moment past, had been destined to survive. It was this power to pick and choose, to save or condemn at will and by whim that made me feel superior to mere mortals, and kin to God.

My target was a medium-sized industrial city; my self-imposed mission was to make it suffer. Although the war was not officially over, the enemy was beaten, and I was able to fly alone, unchallenged by hostile aircraft or ground fire. I had the legal right to kill, and I intended to exercise that right. I wanted to punish the city whose approaches were littered with the charred remains of my best friends, and whose very name had made me sick with fright a hundred times.

I reached the city and circled it lazily at ten thousand feet. And I thought of the previous attacks on the city, when the sky had been a tangle of planes, the earth spat flak, and there was the terrible sight of friends tumbling to earth in flame and smoke, and the moments of wild, screaming fear. Now I came alone, safely, with leisure to hang in the bright blue sky while I planned my pattern of destruction for those below. I looked down at the gutted skeletons of factories and the sooty rubble of their toppled chimneys. I saw the rows of little houses where the workers lived, their neighborhoods pocketed with bomb craters. And, because it wasn't a large city, the open fields began very soon, almost at the factory walls.

Revenge lifted my wings as I banked over the city, looking for a tender place to strike. The streets were deserted. The only sign of movement was the flutter of some woman's washing on the line. Naturally, they had been warned of my coming, and had gone to ground like hunted animals. A cowering, miserable beaten city, its people cringing in their holes, awaiting my violent vengeance. An entire city hiding its head from the wrath of one being in the sky above. . . . That was the moment I knew what it was like to escape the limits of mortality, and to look down with the eyes of God. Below, a city of humans heard the drone of destruction and prayed for deliverance.

Above, I rode with the wrath in my hand, and it was mine to decide which prayers below would be answered, and which ignored. Who, in my mighty rage, would I destroy? The red roof was a target. I hurtled down on it, my hand on the bomb release. A squeeze and they were dead under the red roof. I stayed my hand and nosed up into the sky again. The green roof? Another dive, with my finger on the fatal trigger, and all who prayed under the green roof were dead--until the moment I changed my mind, and rose into the sky again. Again and again I chose a target, condemned unseen humans, and restored them to life as I withheld my bombs. And knowing their terror and their hope, it seemed I could hear the mass murmur of their agonized prayers for life and mercy, and repentance of their sins. Prayers to God, which were prayers to me. I was the God to whom they raised imploring voices, and only I would know, until the final instant, whose prayers I had chosen to answer. I flew above and listened to their prayers, bemused, looking down with eyes that were neither kind nor hostile, my lightning poised dispassionately.

Looking down with the power of God over these people, I felt no desire for revenge, for I could no longer look on them as enemies or equals. They and their little sins were worth merely a touch of pity, a touch of contempt, and possibly, a touch of destruction. Destruction that would be delivered not as a man's revenge, but as God's reproof. And so I circled my city, while my people below prayed, and felt pity, and contempt, and considered the question of how much destruction, and upon whom. I looked down curiously. The little earthbound people were praying to me in their sky. I was their God, but did they know--or did I know--what kind of God I was? Was I a God of wrath, or a God of mercy? In what inscrutable way would I choose to move, and with what effect on their lives? Red roof or green? Brown roof or no roof? Which cellar would be the tomb, which the haven? Only I knew. I, for the moment, their God above. I knew, and I moved to implement the decision.

I aimed my lightning at the city and unleashed it, thundering down from the sky. "Cringe, you miserable sinners!" I cried. "Cringe and pray! Pray! I am your God! Pray . . . fear . . . wonder!" In the last instant I spared all roofs. I whipped them with sound and chastised them with my thunder, but I spared them out of the goodness of my God-like heart. I did not completely withhold my devastation--that would have been weak. I hurled my bolt where it would frighten them, and shake them, but not harm them. I placed it close, to impress them with the miracle of their deliverance. So they would see what they had escaped, and be thankful, and yet not fully comprehend the reason--which is as it should be when men ponder on the ways of God. I punished them lightly. I passed over the town and dropped my fire bombs in a wheat field at the edge of the city, leaving a broad path of Hellfire across the grain.

The earth had received a token of my terrible power, but the people were safe. I had been a God of mercy to them. I flew home with an exalted feeling in my heart. I had known what it was like to share the power and glory of being God, and I had been merciful. I had not betrayed the supreme trust that had been placed in my hands. I had been God, and good.

A month later the city was in our hands. At the first opportunity I visited it. I wanted to walk through the streets of my city, and to see my people. I wanted to find the people who lived under the red roof and the green, and see whom I had spared in my moment of mercy. I felt that every life in the city belonged to me, and I had the need of walking among my people. Perhaps I would find a Noah or Moses to whom I could reveal my identity, and my works. I wanted someone alive to look at me and realize that he owed his life to the deliberate staying of my hand. That he had been dead under my finger, but my finger had not moved. I walked through my ruined city, looking benignly at my people. They had made me God with their prayers, which I had answered, and I felt a great tolerance for them.

My people were busy digging in the rubble, trying to pile the scattered bricks into shelters once more. I saw many men and women at work, but evidently the children had not yet been returned from the rear areas to which they had been evacuated. There were only a few children, and they worked side by side with the adults. I wished they might rebuild speedily, so that all the children could return, for without them my city seemed without spirit, and without a soul. I walked to the wheat field where I had jettisoned my bombs. It was blackened and scorched, but here and there a little green was showing through, where new life was making a start.

I saw an old man toiling at the edge of the field, and I walked toward him. Perhaps this was one of the lives I had saved. Perhaps here was my Noah, or Moses, one to whom I could reveal how I had shared the secrets of God's power, and transcended the limits of ordinary moral experience.

I joined the old man at the edge of the field. "It is too bad such fine wheat had to be destroyed by bombs," I said. That was my opening. From there I intended telling the old man that as much as I hated to destroy the grain, there had been a choice between grain and life, and then to reveal myself to him as his benefactor--his savior. "The wheat . . . Who cares about the wheat?" the old man said. "Wheat can grow again. Its loss is no tragedy." He shook his head in a helpless, angry way. "The tragedy is that we were such fools! Raid after raid we had, and our field was never touched. Not a bomb fell on it. Last month we had another raid. Only a single airplane came. The wheat was high, and it had never been touched. How could we know what would happen? When the alarm sounded, we sent all the children to hide in the field."