The
day the Devil came for tea
The other afternoon,
sitting around at home, not doing much, the Devil rang at my
doorbell. When I opened the door I recognised him at once. He was
very tall, looked like a cross between a wild goat and a human, and
smelt quite strongly of sulphur.
-"Come in, come in of
course, and for what reason have I the honour of your visit, Prince
of Darkness?"
-"I've come to talk to you about God"
he says.
He settled himself in my best armchair, and asked for
a cigar and a shot of whiskey.
Neither whiskey drinker
nor cigar smoker myself, I couldn't offer him much, so I made some
tea.
-"Do you believe
in God?" asks the Devil.
-"No, I don't know if he
exists" I replied, realising suddenly that the existence of the
Devil proved that of God.
-“That's not what I asked you"
replies the Devil. "Do you believe in the worth of God?"
-"This
question doesn't make sense! God makes worth, he's well above this
question."
-"Ooh la la la!" laughs the Devil,
holding his sides.
I could see the purplish mucus in his
mouth, looking capable of digesting anything. His tail thrashed
wildly, leaving scorch marks on the leather of my chair.
-"Why
are you laughing?" says I.
-"God makes everything;
thought, judgement and intelligence. How then can one turn these
things against their Creator? It's a fine way to keep man quiet!".
I
looked at his fine cloven hooves, tapping rhythmically on my Persian
rug.
-"How do I get out of this situation?” I
ask.
-"Hold you hard!" says the Devil, "Can you
not see the obvious?"
-"All I can see for the moment
is a hybrid phenomenon straight out of hell!" I exclaim.
-"The
obvious" replies the Devil "Is that you have been created.
This is your problem. Your freedom is limited because you come from
God. Without him you are nothing. Your only freedom is to love him in
order to find happiness in the slavery which he proposes. God is one.
Truth is one. There is no room for anything else. Universe is
infinite but God takes up all the room. This is surely the triumph of
singular thought!"
Lucifer was starting to convince me. A
shudder ran through me. Slowly I approached him, to gain from his
psychic warmth. I noticed that his skin was regularly changing
colour, as if streams of molten lava were flowing in his
veins.
-"What should I do then?" I ask.
He
was still sitting cross-legged in my favourite armchair, like a
gymnastic toad.
-"Suffer", he replies.
This
human beast farted white smokes. His eyes seemed to look joyously
into a real elsewhere, an elsewhere from God.
-"Human
beings strive with all their might to be united with God"
explains Beelzebub.
"Pain measures the distance between man and divinity. The more man takes
his freedom, the further he is from God, and the more he
suffers".
-"Liberty is thus so painful?" I
ask.
-"Do you think it has no price?" laughs the
Wily One.
This Genius of Evil then turned to my fireplace,
arranged a few logs, which, under his hand put themselves in place
and soon started a lively blaze.
-"How can I accept
sufferance?" I asked.
-"By greatness" says the
Devil.
I looked at him. He was as reassuring as a fine, strong
animal. He didn't seem wicked, but rather convinced by his ideas. His
ease, and his long life were witness to a relative serenity, and
wisdom. After all, he was there whilst God, explained as all the
world, could only express himself as a form of public
drought.
-"What do you suggest then?"
-"It's
very simple," the Devil says to me, "Hell. But I warn you;
access is not so easy. To get in, you must act against your moral
sense. Try to be a criminal, you'll see it's not that simple. The
Fall into perversion is not as easily given as the gospels would have
you believe; you have a pitiless ego. Believe me, bending your back
to get into heaven is infinitely easier".
On this he
thanked me for my hospitality and went his way.
Once alone
again, I realised the double difficulty.
I was as incapable of
being a sinner as of being a saint. Both heaven and hell were closed
to me. I was just the same as the mass of mediocrity who make up
humanity.
I decided thus that I should smarten up my qualities.
I will
decide later if I will use them for better or for worse.
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