The Devil You Say

“You wanted to see me? What a surprise.”

“I can be spontaneous if so inclined. I had a feeling you of all would appreciate the gesture.”

“Oh, I do, love, believe me. Do my eyes deceive me, or do you look rather peckish in this light? Not that there is much variety here. White-on-white, you know, leaves little impression.”

“Very funny. Did you think that one up in a hundred millennia down at your little club or been keeping it on reserve for our next meeting?”

“So you do have a sense of humor after all. I was starting to worry. Careful to hide it, it will ruin that sterling reputation of yours. Well – I am at your leisure. What will your lord?”

“We are to dine, if you would accompany me. Waiter! We are ready.”

“What will it be for you sirs?”

“A brisket, rare, with garlic bread, a slice of chocolate mousse, and a glass of Chianti or Chardonnay if that’s not available.”

“I’ll have a chunk of sheep carcass. Burnt, extra smoky.”

“Very good, my lords.”

“...You know, I do miss the service in this place. Very accommodating, very courteous and in good taste. You can’t get much good help these days chez moi.”

“I would say. However, if you ever were to repent, truly and honestly in your heart...”

“Nice try. I love my domicile, though it can get intolerably hot at times.”

“I can imagine. Thank you for inviting me, by the way. You were right, I was feeling more peckish than my usual these days.”

“Well! That is something I thought I’d never hear you say. ‘Thank you’—what nicety. You must be feeling off. I haven’t heard such humility from you since our stint with Job. You really ought to be careful doling out these mercies. Your staff will get into conniptions if you suddenly start treating them like you give a damn.”

“You just couldn’t last two seconds without criticizing my management skills, could you? Also, don't call my angels staff. I’d like to think of them as loyal extensions of myself.”

“Funny, I don’t recall you flattering me with such an appellation while I was in your service.”

“Lucy, please.”

“Oh, don’t ‘Lucy’ me. Be stern, be hard, be condescending, give commandments in that sexy alto-baritone of yours, scorch me with your all-knowing gaze of Supreme Judgment, but don’t give me that pathetic attempt at camaraderie. Playing chums does not become you. Besides, that ship has sailed and sailed good. I would rather you acted like the stern Father and excommunicate that good-for-nothing son from your thoughts.”

“Need I remind you that you were the one who quit my ‘service,’ as you call it, and voluntarily, too. I miss you just as any father would his son, I do, but I won’t tolerate this childish game of pin-the-blame-on-daddy. I expect more from you, even if you are no longer by my side.”

“Now that sounds more like the father I know and barely tolerate. I should have known this odd humor of yours wouldn’t last.”

“In that sense you are absolutely right.”

“What, that you’re as mercurial in your mood as a broken thermometer?”

“That I have been in a good mood as of late. Better than ever, in fact. I made a supremely important decision.”

“Is that so?”

“How blandly you reply. I wonder if that’s an affectation. You are fond at playing the fool, I know. But I’m sure you must have heard from your minions, from my staff. As much as they try to play the part of mortal enemies, they are worse than old maids. Regardless, let me put it all to rest: the rumors are true. I have...conceived a son, in a matter of speaking.”

“…I see.”

“You knew this already.”

“Yes. Yes, I was hoping—praying—that I had heard wrong.”

“You are jealous, then. I knew you would be.”

“No, I’m not. Jealousy is more your M.O., is it? I’ve seen what you are capable of, with those poor mortals down on earth.”

“I have made you angry.”

“Oh, no. I’m just splendid. A right songbird. Downright giddy, in fact. You know, I happen to know a genius of a designer who could do wonders for your bland interior design. He’s in the circle for child molestation, but he has an excellent eye for pastels.”

“Don’t change the subject. It is obvious you take offense. Out with it, man.”

“Has it ever occurred to you in that mysterious, multi-layered incorporeal mind of yours that you take too much for granted? That just by existing you cause unimaginable suffering to anyone who falls short of your perfection? And now, after eons of churlish demands and hard punishments, you wish to make a mortal surrogate out of your essence. Wonderful. Brilliant. Your grandest idea yet since that whole murder-everyone-to-obtain-the-holy-land plan.”

“Though you mock me, I will not give you the satisfaction of mocking you back. It is, rightly so, beneath me. Yes, I have thought on the obvious consequences relating to my omniscience. I am well aware that I am responsible for a goodly deal of suffering in the human world. To be perfectly frank, I am unconcerned.”

“Uncon–?”

“My conscience, figuratively speaking, is clear.”

“Your conscience? I am your conscience, or at least I fancy myself as such. Heaven, hell, and earth know you need it, as you most eloquently explained just now.”

“I have justified my ways to you only once before. I shall not do so again.”

“Your ways? Oh, yes, I’ve heard the rationale for your ‘mysterious’ ways before. Why else would I quit your lovely company and establish secondary residence below? Then as well as now, you believed the sinful mortals had it coming. They’ve lied, cheated, stolen, murdered, whored, raped, and worse—they dared worship others who were not you. Naturally, the best and most reasonable solution for this troubling problem is to send them plagues, wars, famines, destroy their homes, banish them from the land you promised them, and forced them under foreign rule. It’s a wonder they haven’t turned their backs on your sorry ass a long time ago. And worst of all this yet—you feel no remorse for it.”

“None whatsoever.”

“You disgust me.”

“From you, that’s almost a compliment. Well? I sense you’re not done.”

“No, you are bloody well right I’m not done. Now you have decided—announced it, I hear, to your pack of sycophants—that you intend to make a son in your essence and send him down to earth to live a measly thirty years as a human, preach in your name, be apprehended, suffer a gruesome death, and rise again after three days as Messiah. Am I correct thus far?”

“Yes, that’s certainly the plan.”

“You would send this creature, supposedly dearer to you than anything of the vestal and celestial realms—dearer than even I was to you—to live, suffer, and die for the sins of not only his tormentors, but the whole of humankind. And with that you would put your plans to conquer the rest of your pet experiments and let yourself be known to them as their god, to force them to abandon all others, to abandon even their own sense of self. To relinquish pleasures and give themselves, in heart, mind, and spirit, over to you. To achieve this, you would be willing to wage war and destroy the future livelihoods of countless millions. All through the benefit of this son's divine ‘sacrifice.’”

“That is perfectly right. Would you mind sharing with me a bit of your wine? I’m feeling rather thirsty after all.”

“Have you any idea how sick, perverse, and twisted these machinations are? And I should know, I’ve seen and been the force for a good many of them. I, who have handled the very worst, the dregs of your creation which pass through my domain, and have taken up the burden as lightly as an afternoon promenade—and even I blanch at the thought at what you intend to do with this poor man! Could it be that even I, jousting old degenerate as I am, feel more acutely than you do?”

“You have heard my reasons and you know my ways. I told you, I won’t be repeating them again.”

“A man cannot bear the sins of the world! Look at him. Look at this yet-innocent. Born with all the gifts and faculties of his kind, you intend for him to die and suffer greatly for it, only letting him know at the last possible minute. What's the difference between him, then, and the Passover lamb? It is perverse.”

“And what exactly would you have me do with him, if my ways are too perverse for your delicate constitution?”

“If you must have him, let him live a normal life as a human. Let him have someone to love and care for. He will suffer, yes, from living in a world you created, but he will have and find joy as well. Don’t curse him with immortality, don’t burden him with the wishes of a dozen superstitious fishermen to teach and placate, which for a young man is no picnic. Let him be, in short, with his people. See them alive with joy and sorrow, subjugated and oppressed. Perhaps he will take up the blade against his oppressors, perhaps not. If he does, it will be his will, not yours.”

“I find it very curious, that you are intent in ripping him apart from me, to rend my nature and his as wholly separate, to make him as fully individual and mortal as the millions of his kind. If that were so, then he would cease to be my son and my little experiment will be moot point.”

“Experiment, you call it? I was under the impression we were debating lives.”

“It is what it is. I am what I am.”

“No nature can be so unchangeable if you can change it.”

“You once accused me, not in so many words, that I feel too little. On the contrary. I feel too much. You forget that I intend to have myself live on earth a man, and as he suffers so, too, will I. No, don’t interrupt me—no doubt you’ll say that what I said was nonsense, or else make some quip or other about masochistic tendencies. I know you of old. Either way, you seem to imply that I do this out of my own enjoyment, out of ennui and maybe some perverse, vicarious thrill. I do not. I break my own heart, which is in my right to do so. I do this out of the selfless love I bear my creation. Privy as I am to all mortal thought and desire, I know these so intimately they are an indelible part of my person. So don’t accuse me of something as silly and narrow as sociopathy. I created sociopathy, don't you think I don’t know the difference? I pity them all, my poor, lost creation. But love is so much more than the pettiness of want or desire; if that were all it is, love would be a very mean and ugly thing indeed, something easily confused with the perversions of lust. Love is knowing what your loved one needs above all, putting their needs above your own, ready to go beyond oneself to their satisfaction. That kind of love is not based on the changeable firmament of concupiscence and caprice. My rule is not based on the pettiness of corrupt governments and the mean, oppressed people who defeat them, create new, equally oppressive regimes of their own, and thereby learn evil from the mouth of that deceitful teacher, Experience. The knowledge I convey is greater than the whole of the mortal world as the mortals see it. It is a truth known not by flawed systems of epistemology, but instinctively, apparent to all who see beyond the limits of their world. Why else do I yet live on, while you are stuck as failed lieutenant in a second-rate hidey-hole? Mortals simply need me more. They know I am there, though they may call me by whatever name what suits them. I am the wind that rustles in the dead of night, I am the shadow at the window, I am the plaintive cry of the morning lark. I am mystery—ancient, unfathomable, real. So blather away about the immorality of human suffering. There are greater evils so rank and gross they would make even you blush. There is a greater picture to consider.”

“You are unbelievable. Literally unbelievable.”

“If you’re going to lead us into a discussion on atheism, spare me. My head hurts just thinking of it.”

“I have no inclination on the sort, your rationale is nonsensical enough as it is. It is all well and good to speak from an incorporeal position, but mortals don’t have that luxury. Their knowledge of themselves seem to me a different, even superior knowledge than the one you profess, in your presumption and arrogance. They may deny it, but it’s there. And you, typical tyrannical you—you forbid them that knowledge, force them to forget that knowledge—knowledge of their own selves! They try so desperately to emulate you, but they can’t because they are not you. Eons of being privy to their astonishing levels of guilt and self-hatred has convinced me of that. Love belongs to humans more than it does to you or me. As for evil, I have seen enough to know that suffering is the greatest evil in the world—a great deal of it done in your name at that.”

“I am not to blame for the work of lunatics and people empty of morals or sense. People do all sorts of things in my name, regardless whether I personally agree or no. Your argument is fallacious and belittling. Is that really what you consider evil?”

“Yes. And you think me evil because of it.”

“Not because of it, Lucy. Because of you. Because of the choices you made.”

“Don’t call me Lucy.”

“You are clever. You always have been. I admire you for that, even when that cleverness is marshaled against me, even when I feel the things you say go beyond the pale. Well, you’ve made your existence the way you want it. You’ve a sharp mind, but a dangerous one. Be warned.”

“Naturally. You were never much into free-thinking. It depressed you too much.”

“What you call freedom and free-thinking is slavery of the worst kind. True freedom requires that you give yourself to a greater truth, and release yourself from chains of inferior, lesser truths.”

“Which in your philosophy that ‘greater truth’ would mean yourself. Very neat, if entirely predictable. I suppose I cannot hope to change your mind?”

“You know the answer as well as I.”

“Fine. I don’t even know why I bother still with these discussions. Every time I do it leads to yet another argument over definitions, and I am heart-sick of that argument.”

“You are leaving? So soon?”

“I just remembered I left Beelzebub in charge and he’s useless, poor chuck. You will have to forgive me.”

“A thousand times, Lucy. I mean that.”

“You are generous, my lord.”

“A rote riposte.”

“I should say. You were the one to teach it to me.”

“Waiter?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Clear the place. Ah—leave the Chianti.”