The Devil, however, seems never to have been so splendidly mapped and defined. Nor can you spy him simply by turning a fine definition of God inside out; he is something decidedly more subtle than just God’s opposite.
Is the Devil, then, sin? No, though sin is very useful to him; anything we may reasonably call sin involves some personal choice. It is flattering to be asked to make important choices. The Devil loves the time of indecision.
What about evil, then? Is the Devil the origin and ruler of that great realm of manifestly dreadful and appalling things which are not, so far as we can determine, anybody’s fault or the consequences of any sin? Of the cancer wards, and the wards for children born misshapen and mindless? I have had reason to visit such places — asylums for the insane in particular — and I do not think I am fanciful or absurdly sensitive in saying that I have felt evil to be palpable there, in spite of whatever could be done to lessen it.
These are evil things within my knowledge: I am certain there are worse things I have never encountered. And how constant this evil is — Let mankind laboriously suppress leprosy, and tuberculosis rages: when tuberculosis is chained, cancer rushes to take its place. One might almost conclude that such evils were necessities of our collective life. If the Devil is the inspirer and ruler of evil, he is a serious adversary indeed, and I cannot understand why so many people become jokey and facetious at the mention of his name.
Where is the Devil? Was Eisengrim, whose intuitions and directness of observation in all things concerning himself I had come to respect, right in saying the Devil stood beside him when Willard the Wizard solicited him to an action which, under the circumstances, I should certainly have to call evil? Both God and the Devil wish to intervene in the world, and the Devil chooses his moments shrewdly.
What had Eisengrim told us? That on 30 August 1918, he had descended into hell, and did not rise again for seven years? Allowing for his wish to startle us, and his taste for what a severe critic might call flashy rhetoric, could what he said be discounted?
It was always a mistake, in my experience, to discount Magnus Eisengrim. The only thing to do was to wait for the remainder of his narrative, and hope that it would make it possible for me to reach a conclusion. And that would be my much-desired document
6
I knew nothing about filming, but Land’s subordinates told me that his methods were not ordinary. He was extremely deliberate, and because he liked careful rehearsal and would not work at night he semed to take a lot of time. But as he wasted none of this time, his films were not as devastatingly expensive as impatient people feared they might be. He was a master of his craft. I did not presume to question him about it, but I sensed that he attached more importance to Eisengrim’s story than ordinary curiosity would explain, and that the dinners and discussions at Sorgenfrei fed the fire of his creation. Certainly he and Kinghovn and Ingestree were anxious for more as we settled down in the library on the third night. Liesl had seen to it that there was plenty of brandy, for although Eisengrim drank very little, and I was too keen on my document to drink much, Lind loved to tipple as he listened and had a real Scandinavian head; brandy never changed him in the least. Kinghovn was a heavy drinker, and Ingestree, a fatty, could not resist anything that could be put into his mouth, be it food, drink, or cigar.
Magnus knew they were waiting, and after he had toyed with them for a few minutes, and appeared to be leading them into general conversation, he yielded to Lind’s strong urging that he go on with his story or — as Ingestree now quite seriously called it — “the subtext”.
“I told you I was on a train, but didn’t know it. I think that is true, but I must have had some notion of what was happening to me, because I had heard the whistle, and felt the motion, and of course I had seen trains. But I was so wretched that I couldn’t reason, or be sure of anything, except that I was in close quarters in pitchy darkness. My mind was on a different unhappiness. I knew that when I was in trouble I should pray, and God would surely help me. But I couldn’t pray, for two reasons. First, I couldn’t kneel, and to me prayer without kneeling was unknown. Second, if I had been able to kneel I could not have dared to do it, because I was horribly aware that what Willard had done to me in that disgusting privy had been done while I was in a kneeling posture. I assure you, however strange it may seem, that I didn’t know what he had done, but I felt strongly that it was a blasphemy against kneeling, and if I knew nothing of sex I certainly knew a lot about blasphemy. I guessed I might be on a train, but I knew for a certainty that I had angered God. I had been involved in what was very likely the Sin against the Holy Ghost. Can you imagine what that meant to me? I had never known such desolation. I had wept in the privy and now I could weep no more. Weeping meant sound, and I had a confused idea that although God certainly knew about me, and undoubtedly had terrible plans for me, He might be waiting for me to betray myself by sound before He went to work on me. So I kept painfully still.
“I suppose I was in a state of what would now be called shock. How long it went on I could not then tell. But I know now that it was from Friday night until the following Sunday morning that I sat in my close prison, without food or water or light. The train had not been travelling all that time. All day Saturday Wanless’s World of Wonders had a day’s work at a village not many miles from Deptford, and I was conscious of the noises of unloading the train in the morning, and of loading it again very late at night, though I could not interpret them. But Sunday morning brought a kind of release.
“There were more men’s voices, and more sounds of heavy things being methodically moved near where I was. Then after a period of silence I heard Willard’s voice. ‘He’s in there,’ it said. Then sounds somewhat below me, and a hand reached up and touched my leg. I made no sound — could not make a sound, I suppose — and was rather roughly hauled out into a dim light, and laid on the floor. Then a strange voice. ‘Jesus, Willard,’ it said, ‘you’ve killed him. Now we’re all up the well-known creek.’ But then I moved a little. ‘Christ, he’s alive,’ said the strange voice; ‘thank God for that.’ Then Willard’s voice: ‘I’d rather he was dead,’ it said; ‘what are we going to do with him now?’
” ‘We got to get Gus,’ said the strange voice. ‘Gus is the one who’ll know what to do. Don’t talk about him being dead. Haven’t you got any sense? We got to get Gus right now.’ Then Willard spoke. ‘Yeah, Gus, Gus, Gus; its always Gus with you. Gus hates me. I’ll be outa the show.’ ‘Leave Gus to me about you and the show,’ said the other voice; ‘but only Gus can deal with this right now. You wait here.’
The other man went away, and as he went I heard the heavy door of the freight-car — for I was in a freight-car in which the World of Wonders took its trappings from town to town — and I was for a second time alone with Willard. Through my eyelashes I could see him sitting on a box beside me. His ephistophelian air of command was gone; he looked diminished, shabby, and afraid.
“After a time the other man returned with Gus, who proved to be a woman — a real horse’s godmother of a woman, a little, hard-faced, tough woman who looked like a jockey. But she inspired confidence, and while it would be false to say that my spirits lightened, I felt a little less desolate. I have always had a quick response to people, and though it is sometimes wrong it is more often right. If I like them on sight they are lucky people for me, and that’s really all I care about. Gus was in a furious temper.
” ‘Willard, you son-of-a-bitch, what the hell have you got us into now? Lemme look at this kid.’ Gus knelt and hauled me round so that she could see me. Then she sent the other man to open the doors further, to give her a better light.