Mastering all trades

 I first heard of it as a saying, then as a myth . Old tales of blues men , crossroads and hell hounds. Tales of greed, desperation, and unholy offerings. While some believed in such things, I couldn’t begin to consider it. 

Then as time went by, I started to hear strange stories, here and there, reports of overnight success, great sudden luck, or once unshakeable obstacles miraculously vanishing. But again, I always chalked it up to coincidence, human willpower and admirable persistence.

If you would know ten people and if each of those would themselves know ten people you’d have a reach of a hundred. Now if you’d know more than ten, and each of them would know more than a ten, you’d have enough to change the world. But, I'm sure, anyone in their right mind would give them all up, only for a chance to befriend Dr Angus May.

For Angus was the guy I knew that knew the devil.

Our friendship goes back as far as med school, now, over a decade ago.

We were both idealistic and filled with ambition. We shared a passion for art, depth in things, and silly humor. Most importantly, we saw in medicine a mean to an end, a sort of compromise in a world where you simply couldn’t be Newton, Mozart, and Nietzsche in the same lifetime.

We had a hunger for beautiful things, and we wanted to absorb as much of it as we could. Though we also were zealots of truth and curious beyond reason.

Medicine as a science got us closer to this truth, while as a practice should have allowed us the necessary resources to venture into art, literature, and other things that delight the senses.

  Our paths seemed intertwined, which created a brotherhood based on mutual admiration and healthy competition, something that fueled our ascent career-wise and in life in general.

Then I became a surgeon, applied for Doctors Without Borders, and left for a couple of years on missions. He became a psychiatrist and stayed home. Like most things, life happened. I lost contact with him. For the first timein a decade our surroundings differed, so did our experiences, and thus so did our goals. In a way, it couldn’t be helped, we seemed to have this inexorable desire to bite off a piece of the world and make it ours, to guide to surface whatever we thought lied deep down in every human and that only the great among them managed to channel. So, each of us, single-mindedly, went their way.

Knowing him, I am certain he understood the necessity of what happened, yet a bitter feeling of guilt lingered with me all those years. Maybe, I shouldn’t have left, maybe I could have made more of an effort to keep in touch. I often wondered whether he felt abandoned.

After a few more years of travel, I grew tired of the instability my life revolved around. I found easily a job and went back home.

I guess the air came with a scent of familiarity or perhaps the rays of sun when characteristically bouncing onto the walls and onto the streets, then into my eyes and grazing my skin triggered a nostalgia that took hold of me. Naturally, I reached out to Angus.

Finding him was an easy task. In my absence the man became a star in his field, pioneering revolutionary ideas and redefining old ones. Although I always believed he was bright, I must admit I was quite impressed.

We talked on the phone. He was exactly as I left him to be, same lightness, same humour and there was no awkwardness nor he showed any hint of bitterness. He promptly invited me to his home, which I eventually discovered to be a mansion some tens of miles away from the city.

I showed up on time and brought a Rum bottle I knew he chose over all others.

Angus greeted me, as one wishes to be greeted, with glee and excitement. It took no time for the joy and earnestness of our bond to reemerge.

We had a drink, then some more drinks. He had already brought out two huge ribeye steaks that he seasoned beforehand. He must have remembered these long speeches I used to improvise, for laughs- partly- , in college about the direct correlation between meat consumption and my happiness. On his poolside, he had a grill that had more in common with a rocket engine than with any kitchen apparatus I had seen or heard of. We cooked, we ate then drank some more.

He wanted to hear about my adventures as a field surgeon. I managed hardly to pull together a few stories since I didn’t really see that much action as a medic. There was no war where I went only mismanagement. But what I was saying didn’t seem to matter that much. He was listening to my words with genuine interest. I sort of missed being heard that way, purely for curiosity’s sake.      

He was jolly in appearance, but I knew him a bit too much not to notice the sadness hidden behind his eyes. He tended to be honest with me, so when I asked about it he confessed.

It was then that I discovered that before things got better they were worse.

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Aware of the silliness of his actions, yet out of options, Angus showed up at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. It was a dome-shaped building, hung on a cliff, under which was the sea. The meeting took place a few hours into the afternoon, so the sky was bright and the water was of a pleasant shade of blue. 

The joint seemed fancy, without being pretentious. Just that appeased some of his anxiety. Through the years Angus’ oscillating social-economic status allowed him to blend in effortlessly in all sorts of scenes, yet he could never stand pretentious people. We might even say that he actively avoided them.

He walked in and was greeted by the hostess who asked for his name.

“Angus May” He said

“Dr. May, follow me please “ She said

He managed a nod and did just that.

Already seated was a man in an elegant grey suit. He wore no tie but had around his wrist an old watch that didn’t match the rest of his outfit. He had a notebook in front of him, not too big, not too small, bound in thin leather, and full of hand writing. Angus tried to peek but failed. The stranger was reviewing it when he saw Angus appear through the door. He stopped and stood up to shake his hand.

“ You didn’t have any trouble finding the place, I hope “ He said

“ Not at all, I could see it from a mile away, it’s actually quite impressive ” 

“Perfect, I think you’re gonna find the food here even more impressive” Said the man joyfully.

“ Oh maybe next time, I don't feel like eating today” Angus’ impatience took hold of him. He wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.

 With a different tone, more serious, more assertive the man in the grey suit said “ I’d feel more comfortable if you did”

“I’m not hungry” insisted Angus

“ This thing takes time, you know, we might be here for a while”

“ And what is THIS exactly”?

“ Well, you're asking for my help, but I’m yet to know you. My aid, if you want, is reserved for a very few deserving people. First, I have to make sure you belong with them. Think of it as a job interview. It shouldn’t be difficult for someone who made a living of talking to people “

“ To PEOPLE, yes “

Angus said it and then bit his tongue. The Remarque wiped the smile off the Devil’s face. The doctor was stricken by a visceral kind of fear that only characters in Lovecraftian tales felt.

Out of self-preservation Angus snapped out of his state of shock and said “ I guess I’m having what you’re having”

Once the dust settled, there was an expensive bottle of red wine on the table. Angus kept sipping and the Devil seemed to have regained, at least partly, his pleasantness.

“What’s a deserving person?” said the shrink.

“Well you must understand that I can’t answer that, or else you’d just feed me crap that serves your cause”

“Fair enough” Mumbled Angus “How does it work then? ”

“Let’s start with the obvious. What makes you so desperate?”

Dr.May took a second to think, then said “ When I started med school, I basically had no money. Like most people, I took a loan. But a few years in, that wasn’t enough, so I found a job. It was tiresome, and my grade suffered from it, plus it didn’t even make a dent expenses-wise. Basically, the solution became a problem on itself , and I couldn’t manage. Luckily, I had good people around me, people who cared about me, a family that believed in me. And even though money was tight for them as well they offered to lend me enough to finance the few years left. We Had this implicit agreement that once I was well off, I’d take care of them. Their generosity more than anything else allowed for a margin of ease of which I took advantage to excel. After a decade of work and struggle, I became who I always wanted to be. And for a second, I felt good.”

The food came and interrupted Angus. Waiters stormed the table with plates and more beverages. The stranger had ordered a seafood spaghetti. It was covered in a mildly spicy tomato sauce and Angus thought he tasted a little basil. There were certainly other ingredients in the mix, but having spent his youth consuming processed food and cheap takeout, he couldn’t identify any of them. He also wasn’t aware food could taste that good.

He then seemed, to the man, reluctant to speak, as if he was ashamed of what would follow, or as if he was waiting for a signal from the Devil to proceed with the story.

“Then, what happened?”

“ I had patients, lots of them. And let me tell you, I almost every time bonded with them. I mean, that’s the basis of a healing relationship. They try teaching us this in school and then in residency, but only when people come to you for help that you truly understand the difficulty of being professional in a job where detachment is counterproductive. It is nearly impossible not to be overwhelmed by what they are. They came to me honest and vulnerable. I loved them all. Some more than others.”

Angus looked down and hid his hands under the table.

“You had an affair with a patient, didn’t you?” Said the Devil

Angus nodded.

“I find that hard to believe. Alright, you might truly have this boundless passion for human connection or whatever, but you still strike me as a cautious man . I wouldn’t think you’d succumb to temptation, especially knowing well the consequences.”

“Yeah, it does sound silly does it.”

The devil listened silently. 

“ Can you imagine what it’s like to keep a tight grip on your life for decades? How it would be for someone, for all those years, to sift through all decisions, actions, and even reactions with a sieve of absolute reason and good sense. To constantly navigate around the mistakes and impulses that suck most people into mediocrity. Striving to minimise the randomness of life. The tragedy of it, is that I understood, profoundly, the beauty that lies in the unexpected. The thing that I pushed away the most, was one that I venerate.”

Without breaking eye contact the Devil played with his watch.

“I embraced that state of being, but only as a temporary necessity. And when I got where I wanted to be, I simply loosened that grip. Life started to feel right. As I once envisioned it, light and wonderful. Then you let go of your shell, and your walls and whatnot to let in this breeze like serenity.”

A smile showed, briefly, on the doctor’s face as he talked, eyes closed. Then he opened them, and sorrow spilled.

 “But when you do so, you tend to forget that once you push the boulder up the mountain, you have to hold it. If you don’t, it comes crashing down and you lose everything.”  

“ You might think that it was a moment of weakness, a momentary lapse of judgement. It wasn’t. For a brief instant, I felt like I owed it to myself, so I allowed in some of that beauty, I allowed myself to fall in love. I sometimes wonder whether life is nothing but a sadistic trade-off between different things we value. When I was with her it didn't feel wrong, in fact I doubt anything ever made more sense than loving her. And to be clear, I’m not an idiot, I did everything by the rules. I referred her to a different practitioner and notified those who needed to be notified. I could never have expected what ensued.”

“ It doesn’t take an expert to figure out what drew me to her. She was exactly what I didn’t allow myself to be, she embodied what I missed all those years, she was uninhibited. To the untrained eye and for a lack of better words, she was full of life. I find that expression quite vague and reductive in this case .What she was, is unpredictable, chaotic. Everything she did surprised me. I mean everything she did felt new. Day to day mundane tasks became somehow noticeable. Through her, I found myself viewing life with the wondering inexperienced eyes of a child. She was simply magnificent. We were in love and I was happy. But people were never made to be vessels to the extremes. She was tough, but at some point she couldn’t handle being herself. And so love turned into ugliness, and she turned on me, and then on herself. ''

The devil looked at him with compassion in his eyes.

'' She took her life soon after, and I was blamed for it. The story attracted the attention of the board of psychiatrists who frowns on such things. In my grief I didn't have it in me to defend myself, and so they pulled my licence. ''

'' I see, " said the Devil." You still haven't answered my question though, what makes you desperate? ''

" Well, I see it this way, a man walks into a casino with some money in his pockets. He plays a few hands and wins a little fortune. Now he's hooked. He plays few more and loses everything but some. Everyone knows you never end on a loss. He plays more, loses everything he started with and more. In dept, he already is too deep to get out. He borrows money and plays again. Loses it. But this time he doesn't only bet his fate but someone else’s. He decides to keep going all in , expecting his luck to turn around at some point. You see, I'm desperate because I don’t see my luck turning any time soon. Because I am already too deep in, because other people depend on me. My path and where it would lead became a central cog in the machinery that is the life of so many others.''

The devil froze in silence as he appeared deep in thought. Then he checked his notebook before saying

" Let me build on your metaphor. Let us suppose that the casino owner, a dear friend of his was standing not far from him and witnessed the ordeal. He takes pity on him, and offers him a deal, or more precisely a choice. In the first he would forgive all his debts and give him all his money back, except for the winnings of course. The man must agree to never gamble again.

The second would have the casino owner help him cheat his way into wealth. But this one comes with a heavy price that the man must pay eventually. ''

'' I don’t think you grasp what is in my case the initial investment. It’s more than just money. It’s time. It’s a decade!''

“Don’t you worry, I know that.''

'' You're taking me for a fool. There is no way you can do that. ''

'‘Well, you know, I doubt we’re gonna have to worry about that.”

The doctor shivered.

 “You see. I never could understand the difference between ambition and greed. People have this strange way of labelling one noble, worthy of admiration, then going and casting the other as sin. Call me a cynic, but I believe that this quest for greatness, that humanity made a tradition of, is nothing but an excuse to indulge in obsession. Greatness, almost always, is possessed by those, who against their better judgement, against their will even, never stop the seeking. Some handle it, most don’t. But since I’m not one who’s keen on saving souls and since I find pleasure in watching things unfold, I’ll grant you my aid. Let us see now Doctor Angus, how far will you go.”    

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 Hearing the story, at first, I thought of it as a romanticised version of the truth. But looking around his mansion and thinking back at what he achieved I compelled me to see truth in what he told me.

'' You didn't say, what was the heavy price the devil was asking. ''

Angus was sitting elbows on his knees, fingers intertwined. He looked down for a second then up to me. I couldn’t help but fall into a profound state of unease, one akin to that of cattle smelling blood on the sledge hammer.