The Devil in Detail, page 10
So, I figured, by far and away the most important thing I had to ask myself, regarding the Devil—not merely because of my particular quirky vocation, but because of his very essence, identity and presence—was: why has he told me that story? Perhaps he would have others to tell me—and, indeed, he had already done so in the guise of various throwaway remarks—but that one, he had not only chosen to tell me at length but had actually prefaced it with the announcement that he was going to tell me a story, and had given it a title. Titles are important, especially when they encapsulate morals.
The ostensible moral of the Devil’s story, which he had deliberately stuck out like a hitch-hiker’s thumb, was summarized in the dictum that one should never bet he devil your heart, whose meaning was a deliberate antithetical distortion of the previously-proposed dictum that one should never bet the Devil your head. That was what the Devil’s story, in essence, had to be trying to tell me. That was what my unconscious mind, the producer and shaper of the hallucination, along with the insistence of the dust of Glofeydd Diafol, was offering me. That had to be the central element of the supposedly-precious knowledge that would constitute his part of the bargain sealed by the pact that is the essence of modern diabolical mythology, in our Faustian Age.
My first thought, as you might well imagine, was that it was an exceedingly meager reward. But then, what did I have to offer him in return? Exactly how much was my soul worth, weighed in the Comic Balance that never lies? The Devil had already told me that he wanted something other than my soul, but I suspected that, even as a mere matter of metaphor and wordplay, my soul was exactly what I had to pledge.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for poor Lucile, though. She had never existed, of course, any more than the Devil did. She was just a narrative device, not a person. The whole story was a tissue of inventions, as all stories are, but that didn’t mean that the Devil was lying when he said that he never told lies, because stories, even when they aren’t factual, can still be true, in a better, albeit perhaps murkier, sense than mere incidents in the unfolding fabric of happenstance. Tragedy is an aspect of storytelling, and actual events only become tragic when they’re narrativized. That’s why it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for the characters in fiction, and even to feel greater pity and affection for them even than the actual mortals we admit into the evolving narratives of our waking lives.
So what I actually said to myself, as a result of all the rapid cogitating, all the off-the-cuff philosophizing, and all the desperate seeking for intellectual orientation that I did while the Devil was telling me his story was: “You can try all you like to make yourself out to be a hero, and play the honest man along with the administrator of justice, but the fact remains that you broke that poor girl’s heart.”
“Precisely,” he said.
“And it was an evil thing to do.”
“Even if it was, you might care to bear in mind that I’m evil by nature, not by inclination,” he reminded me. “I only exist, as a figment of the collective unconscious, specifically to embody the idea of evil, although I’ve inevitably become confused by the literary representations of the Faustian Age, which have transfigured my image in various sympathetic ways. Fundamentally, though, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get away from the fact that I’m evil. That’s why, although there’s nothing but good to be gained from wrestling with the idea of me intellectually—betting me your head—there’s nothing at all to be gained from taking me on emotionally, metaphorically betting your heart. That way, you’ll always lose.”
“So, fundamentally,” I said, “this hallucination isn’t about what I might learn, but about what I can’t. When we get right down to it, the only reason you’re here is because I’m on my own, nursing a broken heart?”
“If that were the case,” the Devil pointed out, “the whole exercise would be a trifle pointless, don’t you think? You know as well as I do that self-pity is one of the worst of your many faults, so it might a good idea to try setting it aside and taking advantage of the opportunities provided by our little chat. That coal-dust isn’t going to be in your system forever, you know. Eventually, you’ll excrete it, just as you piss away everything else in your pointless and pathetic life, so don’t you think that it might be as well to try and take advantage of me while I’m here?”
“You’re right, obviously,” I retorted, slightly stung by the unnecessary insult, “but you’ll doubtless forgive me the suspicion that, given that you’re a figment of my imagination, you’ll ultimately turn out to be just as pointless and pathetic—as you put it—as all the other produce of my imagination. After all, given that you’re really just as aspect of myself, even though you do come from the dark part of my mind, beyond the ordinary reach of consciousness, you can’t actually tell me anything that I couldn’t make up for myself, can you?”
“That is one way to look at it,” he conceded, finishing off his glass of wine—which, I now noticed, was the last of the bottle, although I hadn’t been aware of refilling the glass, which I had obviously done unconsciously while thinking about other things, “but it’s the wrong way. Telling is, in essence, a prerogative of consciousness, an aspect of thinking, so yes, I can’t tell you anything that, in principle, you not only could tell yourself but are telling yourself, because I can’t think anything that you not only could but are thinking yourself. But it works the other way around, too. You might care to ask yourself whether you’re capable of desiring anything that doesn’t emerge, fundamentally, from me—which is to say, whether you’re capable of manifesting any impulse or direction in your life, any ambition or lust, that doesn’t emerge primordially from the unconscious. I’m not just the embodiment of evil, remember, but the embodiment of temptation: the other side of the coin.”
I had to admit that he was coming up with arguments I’d never thought of before, even if it was really me that was thinking of them now. But that was my entire life in a nutshell; I was a writer, after all. Of what did my making up stories consist, except bringing to the surface images, ideas and feelings that I’d never glimpsed, conceived or felt before, in order that their creation could assist the processes and development of my mind, perhaps not necessarily improving it, but at the very least assisting in its gradually maturation and metamorphosis, its process of becoming? And wasn’t that process a process of discovery, never devoid of surprises?
He was right. What I was doing—or, at least, what I ought to be doing—was betting my head against the Devil. I ought to be confronting my hallucination, if not actually playing poker with him or fighting a duel with rapiers, at least taking him on intellectually. I had to get to grips with him in the way that really mattered, by matching his quips, listening to his stories and trying to make a story out of him, as best I could. Just because he was a figment of my imagination didn’t mean that I had nothing to learn from him, nothing to discover in him, no surprises to encounter in supping with him, whether or not I used a long spoon.
“Do you have another bottle?” he asked me, displaying his empty glass.
“I’m not sure that I ought to have any more to drink,” I said. “If I get drunk, on top of the Glofeydd Diafol dust, I might become seriously confused—and if I’ve understood your denial that you had anything to do with the excision of Toby Dammit’s head correctly, the only way I can actually lose in betting my head against the Devil is by losing my mind.”
“You won’t lose your mind,” he said. “To lose it, you’d have to find it first. Are you really certain that that’s where you’re at right now?”
“The possibility that I’ve already lost it, or never really had it to begin with, has occurred to me,” I admitted, “but the fact remains that, given that you’re just a figment of my imagination, I’m the only one here who’s actually getting drunk, and if I open another bottle, I’m likely to end up with a hell of a hangover.”
“You don’t have to drink any if you don’t want to,” the Devil said, “but I need another bottle. As you can see perfectly well, I’m entirely capable of metabolizing it myself, so there’s no need to worry about losing control, vomiting or walking up with a hangover…unless, of course you want to, unconsciously.”
I went back to the kitchen and got a bottle of cheap vin de pays, figuring that it was probably best to be economical in dealing with the Fiend. When I went back, though, I filled both glasses. It seemed impolite not to join him.
In the meantime, I’d pulled myself together. He was right, and I had to take what advantage I could of his temporary presence. Even if I was, in some sense, talking to myself, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t learn anything. “Know thyself” is, after all, the first rule of Epicurean philosophy. The second, of course, is “nothing to excess,” but you have to take things one at a time.
“So,” I said to him, as he looked at me slightly disapprovingly, after taking the first sip from the inferior contents of the second bottle, “what’s God like?”
“He isn’t like anything,” he said, “but if you mean, what do I think of him, on the whole, well, he’s a trifle annoying. All vanity and vexation of spirit, as the saying goes.”
Everybody knows that the Devil can quote scripture, so that wasn’t a surprise. “You approve of Ecclesiastes, then?” I observed. “In much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow?”
Not exactly an Epicurean sentiment, I reflected.
“I do approve of Ecclesiastes,” he confirmed. “Especially in the Tyndall translation. A masterpiece of English poetry, even better than the Hebrew original.”
“How about Genesis?” I suggested.
“All fabulation, completely lacking in coherency and common sense.”
“There never was a Garden of Eden, then?”
“No, of course not.”
That was hardly news. “And Jesus?”
“A thoroughly admirable fellow. He should have taken my advice, though.”
“When you took him to the top of the high mountain and offered him the kingdoms of the world if he would fall down and worship you?”
“When I paid him a brief visit, assisted by the hallucinatory effects of excessive fasting, and reminded him of what he really already knew but wouldn’t admit to himself: that he didn’t have to follow that path he was taking to the bitter end, but could settle for the world instead. He could have the ordinary joys of everyday, domestic life, the love of the flesh instead of His love. I didn’t promise him happiness, because he knew as well as I do how unreliable human love can be, but I did point out that divine love is even less unreliable, requiring much greater efforts of self-deception. He wouldn’t believe me. The faithful never do.”
“So you didn’t actually offer him the kingdoms of the world?”
“Only in a metaphorical sense, and I didn’t demand worship in return for my advice. Worship is His hang-up, not mine.”
“I see. What about Faust, then…and all the other tales of pacts and bargaining for souls?”
“Metaphorical, and misunderstood, naturally. Like any storyteller, you know how easy it is for readers, or hearers, to get the wrong end of the stick.”
I knew. **** was always trying to construe everything I wrote as an allegory of our marriage, whereas our marriage was actually an allegory of the downbeat conviction of my writing. The more pressing issue, though, was whether or not I could get hold of the right end of the Devil’s storytelling stick. It’s by no means unknown for writers to misunderstand their own work, especially when they give free rein to the free association of so-called inspiration, and start dredging in the unconscious.
“But there was an actual Faust,” I said, “just as there was an actual Jesus?”
“Yes, also an admirable fellow in his way, although far less altruistic. A first-rate scholar, but always something of a substance-abuser, in the academic context of the quest for the doors of perception. I opened them for him, at least by a crack. It wasn’t my fault that he didn’t like what he saw—he’d read Ecclesiastes, after all, although not in the Tyndall translation. He over-reacted, and started accusing me of cheating—not an uncommon accusation, as you’ll remember from my story, but always unjustified, because I always tell the truth. I bluff, but I don’t cheat. I didn’t have to bargain for his soul, firstly because I didn’t want it, secondly because it wasn’t worth anything and thirdly because the only damnation to which any soul can be subjected is purely self-inflicted.”
“But you did make a pact with him?”
“Oh yes, I did make a pact. Why else would he have summoned me, and why else would I have responded to his summons? It’s not as if I don’t have other things to do, you know.”
“Actually,” I confessed, “I’m a trifle confused about that. If there’s no Hell, what other things do you have to do, exactly?”
“I supply temptation.”
“But why, if you don’t get anything out of it?”
“Because it’s my raison d’être. What I do is determined, inevitably, by what I am. That’s another advantage I have over you—I know why I exist; you don’t…which is why you have to make up stories to account for it, and also why most of them are so pathetically absurd. It’s not your fault, mind—you’re made in His image, all vanity and vexation of spirit. You can’t help it. It’s the human condition.”
“But didn’t He make you too?”
“Only in a paradoxical sense. I’m His antithesis, so I’m determined by what he’s not. If He really were as perfect as He thinks he is, he probably wouldn’t need an antithesis, but given the actual quality of Creation, obviously, once you get past the stupid worship thing that demands that you simply assume that He’s right a priori, it’s easy enough to see that there’s even more dark matter and dark mind in me than there is in Him. I don’t claim to have all the best stories, or all the best tunes, but if you’ll forgive the metaphor, I have a hell of a lot of them.”
I forgave him the metaphor. There might well be unforgivable sins, but that certainly wasn’t one of them.
I backtracked by a few thrusts in the verbal fencing match. “Okay, then,” I said, “so you didn’t want Faust’s soul, and it wasn’t worth anything anyway. So what was the pact you made with him?”
I was assuming, of course, that it was the same pact he’d come to make with me, although I did have it at the back of my mind that he was probable versatile enough to have more than one pact up his sleeve.
“I already told you, and even the storytellers get that bit right: I opened up the doors of perception by a crack; I gave him a little of the knowledge he craved; I gave him a modicum of enlightenment.”
The legend of Faust was formulated at the advent of the Age of Enlightenment; it was, in a sense its Creation myth, its fabular Genesis—hence Spengler’s characterization of modern era as the Faustian Age.
“I understand that,” I told him, wondering if he had genuinely misunderstood my question or whether he was being deliberately obtuse, for the purpose of teasing me. “What I’m curious to know is what he offered you in return—what you got out of the bargain?”
“The only genuine item of value there is in the universe of dark mind, and the authentic substance of the soul: understanding. I’m not a capitalist; I only make honest pacts. I trade understanding for understanding, enlightenment for enlightenment, perception for perception. I helped Faust realize what he needed to know, and he helped me to understand what I need to know. What other kind of trade is possible between the light mind and the dark mind?”
I didn’t fail to notice that he was now accusing Faust—and me—of being light-minded, but I had to admit that it was a fair comment, especially as he and I were now half way through the second bottle of wine, and I was beginning to get a trifle light-headed.
“In other words,” I said, “Your fundamental motive force is educational? You make pacts with humans in order to find out more about them?”
“You’re trivializing it somewhat. It’s more complicated than that. Yes, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, and the learning experience, as well as the esthetic experience, is mutual…but you mustn’t leave out the dynamic component.”
Light-minded I might have been, by definition, and light-headed I might have been becoming, by virtue of additional substance abuse over and above the devil-dust of the Welsh pit, but I wasn’t about to be left behind by the argument. He wasn’t talking in riddles; he was just employing the Socratic method, as any good daemon would.
“You’re far less mercurial than I am, and far more disciplined in your metamorphoses,” I quoted, “but you’re not fixed forever. You’re eternal, but not unchanging. You evolve. And while you’re changing humans, with your temptation, and the perennial challenge of evil, we’re changing you—or at least, we have that potential. That’s the pact, not just at the personal level of occasional one-to-one encounters, but of the entire Spenglerian era. We’re in the process of changing the concept of evil, and hence the nature of evil, in a collective fashion. And you being here, thanks to the dust, is just a tiny fragment of that broader program?”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he agreed. “Simplistic, of course, but artificial simplicity is sometimes a useful intellectual strategy, for the light mind. Complication so often leads to confusion.”
“And it’s different for the dark minded?” I said, skeptically. “No confusion in pandemonium?”
“I can’t honestly say that,” he answered, as he drained his glass of the dregs of the second bottle of red, “so I won’t. On the contrary: the dark mind thrives on paradox, puns and pataphysics—but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its semblance of order, its deep meanings, and, above all, its esthetics.”
