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

I must say, Magnus, they have had bad training. They never greet me when we meet.”

“On the contrary, dear Wondergood! They are very well-mannered. They simply cannot bring themselves to greet you without a proper introduction. They are⁠ ⁠… extremely correct people. However, you will learn all tomorrow. Don’t frown. Be patient, Wondergood! Just one more night!”

“How is Signorina Maria’s health?”

“Tomorrow she will be well.” He placed his hand upon my shoulder and brought his dark, evil, brazen eyes closer to my face: “The passion of love, eh?”

I shook off his hand and shouted:

“Signor Magnus! I.⁠ ⁠…”

“You?”⁠—he frowned at me and calmly turned his back upon me: “Till tomorrow, Mr. Wondergood!”

That is why I loaded my revolver. In the evening I was handed a letter from Magnus: he begged my pardon, said his conduct was due to unusual excitement and he sincerely sought my friendship and confidence. He also agreed that his collaborators are really ill-mannered folk. I gazed long upon these hasty illegible lines and felt like taking with me, not my revolver, but a cannon.

One more night, but how long it is!

There is danger facing me.

I feel it and my muscles know it, too. Do you think that I am merely afraid? I swear by eternal salvation⁠—no! I know not where my fear has disappeared, but only a short while ago I was afraid of everything: of darkness, death and the most inconsequential pain. And now I fear nothing. I only feel strange⁠ ⁠… is that how you put it: strange?

Here I am on your earth, man, and I am thinking of another person who is dangerous to me and I myself am⁠—man. And there is the moon and the fountain. And there is Maria, whom I love. And here is a glass and wine. And this is⁠—my and your life. Or did I simply imagine that I was Satan once? I see it is all an invention, the fountain and Maria and my very thoughts on the man⁠—Magnus, but the real my mind can neither unravel nor understand. I assiduously examine my memory and it is silent, like a closed book, and I have no power to open this enchanted volume, concealing the whole past of my being. Straining my eyesight, I gaze into the bright and distant depth from which I came upon this pasteboard earth⁠—but I see nothing in the painful ebb and flow of the boundless fog. There, behind the fog, is my country, but it seems⁠—it seems I have quite forgotten the road.

I have again returned to Wondergood’s bad habit of getting drunk alone and I am slightly drunk now. No matter. It is the last time. I have just seen something after which I wish to see nothing else. I felt like taking a look at the white garden and to imagine how it would feel to walk beside Maria over the path of blue sand. I turned off the light in the room and opened wide the draperies. And the white garden arose before me, like a dream, and⁠—think of it!⁠—over the path of blue sand there walked a man and a woman⁠—and the woman was Maria! They walked quietly, trampling upon their own shadows, and the man embraced her. The little counting machine in my breast beat madly, fell to the floor and broke, when, finally, I recognized the man⁠—it was Magnus, only Magnus, dear Magnus, the father. May he be cursed with his fatherly embraces!

Ah, how my love for Maria surged up again within me! I fell on my knees before the window and stretched out my hands to her.⁠ ⁠… To be sure, I had already seen something of that kind in the theater, but it’s all the same to me: I stretched out my hands⁠—was I not alone and drunk! Why should I not do what I want to do? Madonna! Then I suddenly drew down the curtain!

Quietly, like a web, like a handful of moonlight, I will take this vision and weave it into night dreams. Quietly!⁠ ⁠… Quietly!⁠ ⁠…

IV

May 25, 1914.⁠—Italy.

Had I at my disposal, not the pitiful word but a strong orchestra, I would compel all the brass trumpets to roar. I would raise their blazing mouths to the sky and would compel them to rave incessantly in a blazen, screeching voice which would make one’s hair stand on end and scatter the clouds in terror. I do not want the lying violins. Hateful to me is the gentle murmur of false strings beneath the fingers of liars and scoundrels. Breath! Breath! My gullet is like a brass horn. My breath⁠—a hurricane, driving forward into every narrow cleft. And all of me rings, kicks and grates like a heap of iron in the face of the wind. Oh, it is not always the mighty, wrathful roar of brass trumpets. Frequently, very frequently it is the pitiful wail of burned, rusty iron, crawling along lonely, like the winter, the whistle of bent twigs, which drives thought cold and fills the heart with the rust of gloom and homelessness. Everything that fire can touch has burned up within me. Was it I who wanted to play? Was it I who yearned for the game? Then⁠—look upon this monstrous ruin of the theater wrecked by the flames: all the actors, too, have lost their lives therein⁠ ⁠… ah, all the actors, too, have perished, and brazen Truth peers now through the beggarly holes of its empty windows.

By my throne⁠—what was that love I prattled of when I donned this human form? To whom was it that I opened my embraces? Was it you⁠ ⁠… comrade? By my throne!⁠—if I was Love but for a single moment, henceforth I am Hate and eternally thus I remain.

Let us halt at this point today, dear comrade. It has been quite some time since I moved my pen upon this paper and I must now grow accustomed anew to your dull and shallow face, smeared o’er with the red of your