Satan’s Diary, Leonid Andreyev [the beginning after the end read novel .TXT] 📗

You knit your brow in contempt and ask: Who is this Satan who does not know such simple things? You are accustomed to respect the Devil. You listen to the commonest dog as if he were speaking ex cathedra. You have surrendered to me your last dollar as if I were a professor of white and black magic and suddenly I reveal myself an ignoramus in the most elementary matters! I understand your disappointment. I myself have grown to respect mediums and cards. I am ashamed to confess that I cannot perform a single trick or kill a bedbug by simply casting my eye upon it, but even with my finger. But what matters most to me is truth: Yes, I did not know your simplest things! Apparently the blame for this is for that divide which separates us. Just as you do not know my real Name and cannot pronounce a simple thing like that, so I did not know yours, my earthly shadow, and only now, in great ecstasy do I begin to grasp the wealth that is in you. Think of it: such a simple matter as counting I had to learn from Wondergood. I would not even be able to button my attire if it were not for the experienced and dexterous fingers of that fine chap Wondergood!

Now I am human, like you. The limited sensation of my being I regard as my knowledge and with respect I now touch my own nose, when necessity arises: it is not merely a nose⁠—it is an axiom! I am now myself a struggling doll in a theater of marionettes. My porcelain head moves to the right and to the left. My hands move up and down. I am merry, I am gay. I am at play. I know everything⁠ ⁠… except: whose hand it is that pulls the string behind Me. And in the distance I can see the scrap heap from which protrude two little feet clad in ball slippers.⁠ ⁠…

No, this is not the play of the Immortal that I sought. It no more resembles merriment than do the convulsions of an epileptic a good negro dance! Here anyone is what he is and here everyone seeks not to be what he is. And it is this endless process of fraud that I mistook for a merry theater: what a mistake, how silly it was of “almighty, immortal”⁠ ⁠… Satan! Here everyone is dragging everyone else to court: the living are dragging the dead, the dead⁠—the living. The history of the former is the history of the latter. And God, too, is History! And this endless nonsense, this dirty stream of false witnesses, of perjurers, of false judges and false scoundrels I mistook for the play of immortals! Or have I landed in the wrong place? Tell Me, stranger: whither does this road lead? You are pale. Your trembling finger points in the direction of⁠ ⁠… ah, the scrap heap!

Yesterday, I questioned Toppi about his former life, the first time he donned the human form: I wanted to know how a doll feels when its head is cracking and the thread which moves it is severed. We lit our pipes and with steins of beer before us, like two good Germans, we ventured into the realm of philosophy. It developed, however, that this numbskull has forgotten everything and my questions only confused him.

“Is it possible that you have really forgotten everything, Toppi!”

“Wait till you die and you will learn all about it yourself. I do not like to think of it. What good is it?”

“Then it is not good?”

“And have you ever heard of anyone praising it?”

“Quite true. No one has yet showered praises upon it.”

“And no one will, I know!”

We sat silent.

“And do you remember, Toppi, whence you have come?”

“From Illinois⁠—the same place you come from.”

“No, I am speaking of something else. Do you remember whence you came? Do you recollect your real Name?”

Toppi looked at me strangely, paled slightly and proceeded to clean his pipe. Then he arose and without lifting his eyes, said:

“I beg you not to speak to me thus, Mr. Wondergood. I am an honest citizen of the United States and I do not understand your insinuations.”

But he remembers. Not in vain did he grow pale. He is seeking to forget and will forget soon enough! This double play of earth and heaven is too much for him and he has surrendered entirely to the earth! There will come a time when he will take me off to an insane asylum or betray me to Cardinal X. if I dare to speak to him of Satan.

“I respect you, Toppi. You are quite a man,” I said and kissed his brow: I always kiss the brow of people I love.

Again I departed for the green Campagna desert: I follow the best models: when I am ill at ease I go into the desert. There I called for Satan and cursed his name but he would not answer me. I lay there long in the dust, pleading, when from somewhere in the depths of the desert I heard the muffled tread of feet, and a bright light helped Me to arise. And again I saw the Eden I had left behind, its green tents and unfading sunrise, its quiet lights upon the placid waters. And again I heard the silent murmurs of lips born of Immaculate Conception while toward my eyes I saw approaching Truth. And I stretched out my hands to Her and pleaded: Give me back my liberty!⁠—

“Maria!”

Who called: Maria? Satan again departed, the lights upon the placid waters were extinguished and Truth, frightened, disappeared⁠—and again I sit upon the earth wearing my human form and gazing dully upon the painted world. And on my knees rested my shackled hands.

“Maria!”

… It is painful for me to admit that all this is really an invention: the coming of Satan with his “light and ringing step,” the gardens of Eden and my shackled hands. But I needed