by Ben Okri
‘You mean as research for our visit to the Goetheanum?’
‘No, I mean have you been reading too much Faust?’
‘No more than necessary. Why?’
‘It’s because of all this Devil stuff and being told what to do by him in a dream.’
Jim laughed again. Even his laughter was unreal. Can a man change so quickly, Lao wondered? Maybe it’s just that he is breathing better. His laughter sounded at once very sane and a little mad.
After a short pause, during which the register of his voice shifted, and in a tone that was clear and firm, Jim said:
‘Many years ago, when I craved success more than anything else in the world, I offered to sell my soul to the Devil.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
There was a long silence.
‘But he wouldn’t have me.’
‘Why not?’
‘He said my soul wasn’t good enough.’
Lao stared at him with faint incredulity.
‘He said my soul wasn’t interesting enough. It was too mild. It didn’t have enough potential for good or for evil.’
Jim unburdened himself of a mildly unhinged chuckle.
‘Apparently I have a middling soul. The soul of an English sheep.’
He paused. His voice turned more serious.
‘Apparently I have an ordinary will. The sort of chap who would vote with the crowd. The kind who keeps his head below the parapet. Would always choose the safe option. Not much use to God or Satan. Middle of the road. Always muddling through. You know the type. The country is populated with us. Maybe, even, the world.’
He paused again, and his features in the dark rearranged themselves into what Lao realised was a smile. A light from a passing car revealed Jim’s eyes. Heaven help us, Lao thought, sitting up straight. It seemed to him that Jim was possessed, and that a hint of evil had brought out his true personality.
Lao turned to face him; a question he had not prepared sprang from his lips.
‘Jim, how does one sell one’s soul to the Devil? I mean how does one actually do it?’
Jim flashed Lao a look so piercing and unexpected that he felt the back of his neck go cold.
‘Why?’ asked Jim with cool irony. ‘Is your soul up for sale?’
Lao tried to stay calm. He struggled for the right response.
‘I just wondered how it works,’ he said.
Jim invested Lao with a long candid scrutiny. Lao was not sure if it constituted an evaluation of his soul, and whether, in Jim’s estimation, the Devil might be interested in its purchase. Jim’s silence was inconclusive. When he eventually spoke it was with quiet authority.
9
‘Nearly driven insane by the astonishing success of some of my mediocre colleagues,’ Jim said, ‘I fell on my knees one night and summoned the Devil. I did this, following an ancient prescribed ritual that I found in an antiquarian bookshop, for seven consecutive nights. And then, after my blood was involved, he appeared.’
‘He appeared?’ Lao asked incredulously.
‘He appeared, in my room, in person, in all his satanic majesty. He was not at all what I expected.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘He was not ugly, he had no horns, he had no hoofs, and no fires burned around him. His aura was not horrible.’
‘What was he like?’ Lao asked in the voice of a child.
‘He had a very sweet smell,’ said Jim, without drama. ‘He was simply dazzling. I realised at once that he had indeed been one of the brightest angels in heaven. His charm and beauty were seductive beyond belief. He was the image of the most successful, the most famous, and the most youthful person you can imagine. You sensed, in his presence, that he knew everything. And there he was, in person, in my house, in Kent.’
Jim paused. He appeared to be musing. Occasionally a street lamp would light up his face. After a moment he continued in the same tone as before.
‘His presence brightened the house and glamorised everything in his vicinity. The Devil, as I saw him, was beautiful, delightful, thoughtful, reasonable, and kind. He understood everything. His conversation was exquisite. I had never known before that conversation could be one of the ecstasies of life.’
He paused again, like one whose every memory was a rare pearl which had to be examined in a magical light. Then he shook his head, and turned on Lao an intense pair of eyes that burned with cherished reminiscence.
‘He was the very incarnation of seduction,’ said Jim quietly. ‘I would have done anything for him.’
A longer pause followed, and a drop in his tone, as his voice became more contemplative.
‘When someone is better than you expect them to be, you are already halfway seduced. When someone is worse than you expect, you are halfway repelled. The Devil seduced me not by anything he did or said. He seduced me with his serenity.’
Jim gave an airy little laugh.
‘Isn’t that strange?’
Lao didn’t know what to say. He was so fascinated that he was wholly unaware of the motion of the coach through the dark countryside. Jim sighed.
‘He didn’t try to sell me atheism, humanism, existentialism, evil dogmas, satanic rituals, or any such thing. He didn’t rail against God, religion, or purity. He didn’t offer me the world. He didn’t try to buy me. He didn’t promise me the kingdoms of fame or success. In fact, to my chagrin, he wasn’t interested. He was cool. He wasn’t buying, and he wasn’t selling.’
Jim stopped again, and then, in an odd rhythm, he said:
‘I would have given him everything.’
Then what followed was something close to a sob. Then a long sigh, like a lingering regret.
‘He had only appeared because I had so insistently summoned him. He was, it seemed, mildly curious about me. But his curiosity was such, I sensed, that he already knew the answer. He was very polite. I had the distinct feeling that he might be interested in me in the future, if I ever did anything extraordinary. He seemed to know I mightn’t. I would dearly love to surprise him.’
The coach was slowing down, the purr of the engine became a growl, and then turned smoother. Lao was only dimly conscious of this. Jim’s words had him enthralled, as though he too were under a seduction. Jim shifted his position in the seat, and was almost upright, his face lost in thought.
‘He actually said very little. In fact, I’m not sure that he uttered a single word.’
Jim turned and touched Lao on the shoulder, as if to secure his utmost attention.
‘I think he appeared to me mainly because he was interested to hear exactly how I would pose the question.’
Jim drew a deep breath and, very gently, said:
‘It was the greatest moment of my life.’
‘Jim!’ cried Lao, unable to contain his astonishment.
Jim chuckled and tapped the poet on his forearm.
‘You would never have guessed it to look at me, would you?’
Lao shook his head, quite dumbfounded. Then realising that Jim could not see the gesture, he said:
‘No, Jim, I wouldn’t have.’
Jim chuckled again.
‘Failure often leads us to the most interesting places,’ he said, with mischievous timing.
They had arrived at the hotel.
One of Lao’s lasting regrets was that he didn’t ask Jim how he had posed the great question. For Jim never opened himself to Lao in that way ever again.
10
They staggered down from the coach and, working together as a group, they lugged the camera equipment and baggage into the hotel lobby.
It was a modest family hotel on the edge of Lake Lucerne. The owner was a pleasant middle-aged down-to-earth man called Hans. With his fine moustache, he could have played a medieval innkeeper in a European movie. He was charming to the weary film crew but treated Lao with a certain undefined suspicion.
They were checked in, allocated their rooms, and encouraged to inspect them. They were all delighted with the
ir accommodation and Hans made sure they were comfortably settled, and arranged for the carrying of their luggage to their various rooms.
Lao felt left outside this ring of affection. He was convinced that Hans behaved differently towards him. He listened with an ironic smile to the crew members talking about how excellent the hotel was and how nice Hans had been to them. Lao did not feel that Hans had been so nice to him. He felt the others could not see this because Hans’s attitude was visible to him alone.
As what is not seen is not believed, there were no witnesses to this double-handed treatment. Lao didn’t make a fuss because he knew he would only come across as paranoid or oversensitive. And so he decided, as he always did, to bear the matter with dignity. He decided also to try to win Hans over with charm. But to be on the safe side he asked Mistletoe to deal with the hotel owner on their behalf. Mistletoe didn’t mind.
They had been allocated rooms which Lao insisted on changing till he found one which was acceptable. He finally settled for a room on the first floor, a lovely double room with a fine balcony and a perfect view of the lake and the Rigi mountain. And it was, auspiciously, room seven.
After Lao and Mistletoe had settled in, they had their showers, changed into fresh clothes, and went out on to the balcony.
The mountain was not visible. It was simply a great looming darkness, festooned with twinkling lights, like stars clustered in a nebula. Sprinkled across the invisible mountain were constellations of small towns.
The shimmering waters of the lake made a magical contrast to the dark mass of the mountain. Lao contemplated the nature of water, its responsiveness, the way it transforms its environment. Mistletoe, seated a short distance away from him, surrendered herself to a sense of wonder and timelessness. The lake cast a spell over the world.
In their own rooms, the other members of the crew were experiencing the same wonder as they gazed out across the lake.
Nature had begun to work on them, loosening the holds of their demons, making them feel lighter. For some this brought moments of joy, to others terror. To some their demons are an intrinsic part of what they are; to lose their demons would be to lose their identity.
The silence of the mountains makes inward troubles apparent. Many prefer motion to stillness.
Lao and Mistletoe preferred stillness. As they sat on their balcony they realised they had forgotten what it was like to stare in uncomplicated wonder, at a lake in the dark, at lights on a mountainside, at a calm sky. Distant bells sounded on the breeze. There was laughter down below. They felt as if they had been transported from their bodies by a god and delivered to a realm of pure delight. Then they heard music across the lake, and held their breath.
Arcadia is a dream, and dreams infect reality with their truth.
Mistletoe would remember that moment as one of the purest of her life. Lao would forever associate it with a certain half-lit landscape in paradise.
11
When they went down to dinner they found that all was not well. Everyone looked a little distressed, seated gloomily round a long table. Jim’s thinning hair was unkempt, his eyes distracted. Propr’s moustache was all awry, as if he had twisted it into the visual image of his mood. Jute sat in monumental impassivity. Riley seemed to have shrunk below the rim of the table. Sam didn’t know where to hide his eyes. Husk sat there, saying nothing, but managed to spread a toxic atmosphere.
Lao looked at Jim enquiringly.
‘Bad news from home,’ he said, in a whisper.
Lao and Mistletoe found seats for themselves. A waitress came to take their orders but the atmosphere was so forbidding that she stood there staring. No one spoke to her, so she left.
Husk was eviling. Her eyes were narrowed in pain and bitterness. She kept to herself the bad news that she had received. But she sat there and poured out an evil mood.
Her eyes were troubling. No one could quite look at her. Eviling eyes are as bad as evil deeds. Such a person seems capable of worse things than they really are. No one forgets a witnessed eviling. Suspicion about one seen doing it can last a lifetime. But everyone dwells under the inexplicable cloud of a foul mood at some time or another. The crew round the table concentrated too much on Husk. Her mood fed on their attention.
The cutlery shone on the tables in the dining room, and the glasses glittered in the light of the chandeliers. Couples were having quiet dinners in distant corners. A Schubert Quintet swam through the atmosphere.
Round their table they all took Husk’s eviling personally. Maybe it was because in their rooms, looking out at the lake, feeling the breeze on their faces, they had glimpsed a moment of beauty. There is something poisonous about eviling in the midst of happiness.
12
The human spirit knows how to protect itself from these things, Lao was thinking, when Mistletoe rose like a dryad from her chair. She went round to Husk, embraced her like a twin sister, and gave her a gift-wrapped present.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said.
Husk blushed.
‘I didn’t think anyone knew,’ she said, tears sparkling in her eyes.
All at once they crowded round Husk, hugging and consoling her, bringing out gifts and cards they had carried around in secret. They lavished on her much affection and soon pleasure replaced the bitterness on her face.
Joy flowed with her tears. Though they didn’t know what they were consoling her for, nor what privation she was enduring, they managed to revive her spirits.
When they had all gone back to their seats, Propr tapped a knife against a glass and cried:
‘Speech, Husk, speech!’
‘And make it brief,’ Jim teased, ‘we’ve got a film to finish.’
Husk smiled; everyone laughed. Her smile was infectious. It lifted the general mood. She seemed inspired.
‘About birthdays there is not much to say. One was born on a certain day, so so many years ago…’
‘Reveal! Reveal!’ cried Lao.
Husk smiled indulgently, and continued.
‘And one moves closer to one’s death. Every birthday is a dying…’
‘You are not allowed to be gloomy today,’ said Riley, touching her on the shoulder.
Husk gave an uncertain smile.
‘A dying and a being born. We get worse, we get better, we try to sing the song. It is not an especially happy birthday for me, but it is special because of you all. You’ve all been so generous. Who shall I thank first? Lao, how did you know I love Gregorian chants? You’ve got good spies. Mistletoe, you have a gift for bringing out the best in situations. Thank you for tonight. Jute, without you this journey wouldn’t have got this far…’
‘And may not get further, at this rate,’ Jim said, initiating a pattern of subsequent high-spirited interruptions.
‘Riley, thanks for the scarf and for your quirkiness. Where did Sam find such a wonderful and elusive assistant?’
‘In the Black Forest, pecking away at life,’ said Jim.
‘And you, Sam. Are the dark glasses meant to stop me seeing what you are up to…?’
‘Up to no good, if I can help it,’ Sam rejoined.
‘Propr, salt of the earth…’ Husk continued.
‘Sound of the earth,’ said Lao.
‘Sound of the wind,’ said Jim.
‘Boys, boys!’ said Husk.
‘Let her finish her assassinations,’ said Propr.
‘Surely you mean insinuations,’ said Jim.
‘I meant assassinations,’ said Propr, with solemn humour.
‘Propr,’ said Husk, ‘we all love your sense of right proportion…’
‘I like that! Right propr-ortion! Ha, ha, ha…’ laughed Jim.
‘And you, Jim…’
‘Jim, here comes the knife!’ said Lao.
‘It’ll be no worse than the wife…’ said Jim.
‘Oh, we are getting versy.’
‘Jim, the last time I did a film shoot with you…’
‘Everyone died except you two,’ sa
id Propr.
‘It was so bad no one knew what to do,’ added Sam.
Husk gave Sam a stern look.
‘I was only joking. Surely you know that. Can’t one joke any more?’
‘The last time only five minutes of a three week shoot got aired,’ Husk finished.
‘I know, I know,’ said Jim bitterly. ‘I could have killed them.’
The mood changed a little. Jim stood up and sat down again. While they had been talking, bottles of Pinot Noir and Sauvignon, ordered by Jim, had been opened at the table. Jim was the only one who had been drinking.
‘You are the best,’ Husk said, reassuringly, trying to keep the good spirits that had found a home round the table. ‘But this idea of a journey to Arcadia, where did you get it? I still can’t get my head round it.’
‘It was his idea,’ Jim said, pointing at Lao.
‘Not me. It was his,’ said Lao, pointing at Sam.
‘Not me, his,’ Sam gestured at Propr.
‘It came from the Black Forest,’ growled Propr.
‘I don’t even know what the word means,’ said Riley, in her elfin voice. ‘It must have come from her,’ pointing at Jute.
‘Not me, Guv. It was her.’
She looked at Mistletoe. But Mistletoe was drawing. She was attempting quick portraits of individuals in the group. Picking up the circulating thread, she broke off her concentration, and said:
‘It was Malasso’s idea.’
There was a long pause. They could hear the wind outside.
‘Malasso who must be obeyed,’ Propr said, in a stage whisper.
‘Why don’t we stop bringing up that name. It gives me the creeps,’ cried Jute.
Jim looked at the empty spaces around them. They were the only ones left in the dining room.
‘He may be with us now even as we speak,’ said Jim.
‘Don’t mess about. If he appeared here, right now, and announced himself, you would all faint,’ said Jute.
‘I am more practical,’ said Propr. ‘I would run.’
Mistletoe looked up from her drawing. She was sketching Riley now, and finding her as elusive as ever.
