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

to a friend, just look at Maria and her father, Thomas Magnus. Take her, Wondergood, and you will soon convince yourself of the value of my gift. I don’t need her any longer. And when your humiliated soul shall become inflamed with truly inextinguishable, human hatred and not with weak contempt, come to me and I shall welcome you into the ranks of my yeomanry, which will very soon.⁠ ⁠… Are you hesitating? Well, then go, catch other lies, but be careful to avoid scoundrels and Madonnas, my gentleman from Illinois!”

He broke into loud laughter and swallowed a glass of wine at one gulp. His swollen calm evaporated. Little flames of intoxication, now merry, now ludicrous, like the lights of a carnival, now triumphant, now dim, like funeral torches at a grave, again sprang forth in his bloodshot eyes. The scoundrel was drunk but held himself firmly, merely swaying his branches, like an oak before a south wind. Rising and facing me, he straightened his body cynically, as if trying to reveal himself in his entirety, and well nigh spat these words at me:

“Well? How long do you intend to think about it, you ass? Come, quick, or I’ll kick you out! Quick! I’m tired of you! What’s the use of my wasting words? What are you thinking of?”

My head buzzed. Madly pulling up that accursed sleeve of mine, I replied:

“I am thinking that you are an evil, contemptible, stupid and repulsive beast! I am thinking in what springs of life or hell itself I could find for you the punishment you deserve! Yes, I came upon this earth to play and to laugh. Yes, I myself was ready to embrace any evil. I myself lied and pretended, but you, hairy worm, you crawled into my very heart and bit me. You took advantage of the fact that my heart was human and bit me, you hairy worm. How dared you deceive me? I will punish you.”

“You? Me?”

I am glad to say that Magnus was astonished and taken aback. His eyes widened and grew round and his open mouth naively displayed a set of white teeth. Breathing with difficulty, he repeated:

“You? Me?”

“Yes. I⁠—you.”

“Police?”

“You are not afraid of it? Very well. Let all your courts be powerless, remain unpunished on this earth, you evil conscienceless creature! The day will come when the sea of falsehood, which constitutes your life, will part and all your falsehood, too, will give way and disappear. Let there be no foot upon this earth to crush you, hairy worm. Let! I, too, am powerless here. But the day will come when you will depart from this earth. And when you come to Me and fall under the shadow of my kingdom.⁠ ⁠…”

“Your kingdom? Hold on, Wondergood. Who are you, then?”

And right at this point there occurred the most shameful event of my entire earthly life. Tell me: is it not ridiculously funny when Satan, even in human form, bends his knee in prayer to a prostitute and is stripped naked by the very first man he meets? Yes, this is extremely ridiculous and shameful of Satan, who bears with him the breath of eternity. But what would you say of Satan when he turned into a powerless and pitiful liar and pasted upon his head with a great flourish the paper crown of a theatrical czar? I am ashamed, old man. Give me one of your blows, the kind on which you feed your friends and hired clowns. Or has this torn sleeve brought me to this senseless, pitiful wrath? Or was this the last act of my human masquerade, when man’s spirit descends to the mire and sweeps the dust and dirt with its breath? Or has the ruin of Madonna, which I witnessed, dragged Satan, too, into the same abyss?

But this was⁠—think of it!⁠—this was what I answered Magnus. Thrusting out my chest, barely covered with my torn shirt, stealthily pulling up my sleeve, so that it might not slip off entirely, and looking sternly and angrily directly into the stupid, and as they seemed to me, frightened eyes of the scoundrel Magnus, I replied triumphantly:

“I am⁠—Satan!”

Magnus was silent for a moment⁠—and then broke out into all the laughter that a drunken, repulsive, human belly can contain. Of course you, old man, expected that, but I did not. I swear by eternal salvation, I did not! I shouted something but the brazen laughter of this beast drowned my voice. Finally, taking advantage of a moment’s interval between his thundering peals of laughter, I exclaimed quickly and modestly⁠ ⁠… like a footnote at the bottom of a page, like a commentary of a publisher:

“Don’t you understand: I am Satan. I have donned the human form! I have donned the human form!”

He heard me with his eyes bulging, and with fresh thunderous roars of laughter, the outbursts shaking his entire frame, he moved toward the door, flung it open and shouted:

“Here! Come here! Here is Satan! In human⁠ ⁠… human garb!”

And he disappeared behind the door.

Oh, if I could only have fallen through the floor, disappeared or flown away, like a real devil, on wings, in that endless moment, during which he was gathering the public for an extraordinary spectacle. And now they came⁠—all of them, damn them: Maria and all the six aides and my miserable Toppi, and Magnus himself, and completing the procession⁠—His Eminence, Cardinal X.! The cursed, shaven monkey walked with great dignity and even bowed to me, after which he sat down, just as dignified, in an armchair and carefully covered his knees with his robes. All were wondering, not knowing yet what it was all about, and glanced now at me and now at Magnus, who tried hard to look serious.

“What’s the trouble, Signor Magnus?” asked the Cardinal in a benevolent tone.

“Permit me to report the following, your Eminence: Mr. Henry Wondergood has just informed me that he is⁠—Satan. Yes, Satan, and that he has merely donned the human form. And thus our assumption that