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

a human being by your indifference: You were insulting life by your indifference. It was in your voice, it gleamed savagely out of your eyes, and more than once was I seized by terror⁠ ⁠… terror, sir!⁠—when I pierced deeper the mysterious emptiness of your pupils. If your past has no dark pages, which, as you say, you merely added for the sake of style, then there is something worse than that in it: there are white pages in it. And I cannot read them!⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, oh!”

“When I look at your eternal cigar, and see your self-satisfied but handsome and energetic face; when I view your unassuming manner, in which the simplicity of the grog shop is elevated to the heights of Puritanism, I fully understand your naive game. But I need only meet the pupil of your eye⁠ ⁠… or its white rim and I am immediately hurled into a void, I am seized with alarm and I no longer see either your cigar or your gold teeth and I am ready to exclaim: who are you that you dare to bear yourself with such indifference?”

The situation was becoming interesting. Madonna loves Me and this creature is about ready to utter my Name at any moment! Is he the son of my Father? How could he unravel the great mystery of my boundless indifference: I tried so carefully to conceal it, even from you!

“Here! here!” shouted Magnus, in great excitement, “again there are two little tears in your eyes, as I have noticed before. They are a lie, Wondergood! There is no source of tears behind them. They have fallen from somewhere above, from the clouds, like dew. Rather laugh: behind your laughter I see merely a bad man, but behind your tears there are white pages, white pages!⁠ ⁠… or has Maria read them?”

Without taking his eyes off me, as if fearing that I might run away, Magnus paced the room, finally seating himself opposite Me. His face grew dim and his voice seemed tired, when he said:

“But it seems to me that I am exciting myself in vain.⁠ ⁠…”

“Do not forget, Magnus, that today I myself spoke to you of indifference.”

He waved his hand wearily and carelessly.

“Yes, you did speak. But there is something else involved here, Wondergood. There is nothing insulting in the indifference, but in the other⁠ ⁠… I sensed it immediately upon your appearance with your billions. I do not know whether you will understand what I mean, but I immediately felt like shouting of hatred and to demand gallows and blood. The gallows is a gloomy thing but the curious jostling about the gallows, Mr. Wondergood, are quite unbearable! I do not know what they think of our game here in the ‘place’ you come from, but we pay for it with our lives, and when there suddenly appears before us some curious gentleman in a top hat, cigar in mouth, one feels, you understand, like seizing him by the back of his neck and⁠ ⁠… he never stays to the end of the performance, anyway. Have you, too, Mr. Wondergood, dropped in on us for a brief visit?”

With what a long sigh I uttered the name of Maria!⁠ ⁠… And I no longer played, I no longer lied, when I replied to this gloomy man:

“Yes, I have dropped in on you for a brief visit, Signor Magnus. You have guessed right. For certain very valid reasons I can reveal nothing to you of the white pages of my life, the existence of which behind my leather binding you have likewise guessed. But on one of them was written: death-departure. That was not a top hat in the hands of the curious visitor, but a revolver⁠ ⁠… you understand: I look on as long as it is interesting and after that I make my bow and depart. Let me put it clearer and simpler, out of deference to your realism: in a few days, perhaps tomorrow, I depart for the other world.⁠ ⁠… No, that is not clear enough: in a few days or tomorrow I shall shoot myself, kill myself with a revolver. I at first planned to aim at my heart but have decided that the brain would be more reliable. I have planned all this long ago, at the very beginning⁠ ⁠… of my appearance before you, and was it not in this readiness of mine to depart that you have detected ‘inhuman’ indifference? Isn’t it true that when one eye is directed upon the other world, it is hardly possible to maintain any particularly bright flame in the eye directed upon this world?⁠ ⁠… I refer to the kind of flame I see in your eyes. O! you have wonderful eyes, Signor Magnus.”

Magnus remained silent for a few moments and then said:

“And Maria?”

“Permit me to reply. I prize Signorina Maria too highly not to regard her love for me as a fatal mistake.”

“But you wanted that love?”

“It is very difficult for me to answer that question. At first, perhaps⁠—when I indulged in dreams for a while⁠—but the more I perceived this fatal resemblance.⁠ ⁠…”

“That is mere resemblance,” Magnus hastened to assure me: “But you mustn’t be a child, Wondergood! Maria’s soul is lofty and beautiful, but she is human, made of flesh and bone. She probably has her own little sins, too.⁠ ⁠…”

“And how about my top hat, Magnus? How about my free departure? I need only buy a seat to gaze upon Maria and her fatal resemblance⁠—admitting that it is only resemblance!⁠—but how must I pay for love?”

Magnus said sternly:

“Only with your life.”

“You see: only with my life! How, then, did you expect me to desire such love?”

“But you have miscalculated: she already loves you.”

“Oh, if the Signorina Maria really loves me then my death can be no obstacle: however, I do not make myself clear. I wanted to say that my departure⁠ ⁠… no, I had better say nothing. In short, Signor Magnus: would you agree to have me place my billions at your disposal now?”

He looked at me quickly:

“Now?”

“Yes, now, when we are