“Don’t laugh,” Fenwick said. “It’s perfectly true. I could study medicine and prolong human life. I could study politics and economics and put an end to wars and suffering. I could study crime and fill up Hell with new converts. I could do anything - if I had my soul back. But without it - well, everything is too - too peaceful.” Fenwick’s shoulders sagged disconsolately. “I feel cut off from humanity,” he said. “Everything I do is blocked. But I’m calm and carefree. I’m not even unhappy. And yet I don’t know what to do next. I -”
“In a word, you’re bored,” the devil said. “Excuse me if I don’t show enough sympathy for your plight.”
“In a word, you swindled me,” Fenwick said. “I want back my soul.”
“I told you exactly what it was I took,” the devil said.
“My soul!”
“Not at all,” the devil assured him. “I’m afraid I shall have to leave you now.”
“Give me back my soul, you swindler!”
“Try and make me do it,” the devil said with a broad grin. The first ray of the morning sun shimmered in the cool air of the bedroom, and in the shimmer the devil dissolved and vanished.
“Very well,” Fenwick said to the emptiness. “Very well, I will.”
He wasted no time about it. Or at least, no more time than his curious, carefree placidity enforced.
“How can I bring pressure on the devil?” he asked himself. “By blocking him in some way? I don’t see how. Well, then, by depriving him of something he values? What does he value? Souls. All souls. My soul. Hm-m-m.” He frowned pensively. “I could,” he reflected, “repent…”
Fenwick thought all day about it. The idea tempted him, and yet of course in a way it was self-defeating. The consequences were unpredictable. Besides, he was not sure how to go about it. To undertake a lifetime of good deeds seemed so boring.
In the evening he went out alone and walked at twilight through the streets, thinking deeply. The people he passed were like transient shadows reflected on the screen of time. They had no significance. The air was sweet and calm, and if it had not been for this sense of nagging injustice, the aimless inability to use the immortality he had paid so high for, he would have felt entirely at peace.
Presently the sound of music penetrated his rapt senses and he looked up to find himself outside the portal of a great cathedral. Shadowy people went up and down the steps. From within deep organ music rolled, the sound of singing emerged, occasional waves of incense were sweet on the air. It was most impressive.
Fenwick thought, “I could go up and embrace the altar and shout out my repentance.” He put his foot on the bottom step, but then he hesitated and felt that he could not face it. The cathedral was too impressive. He would feel like such a fool. And yet -
He walked on, undecided. He walked a long way.
Again the sound of music interrupted his thinking. This time he was passing a vacant lot upon which a large revival tent had been pitched. There was a great deal of noise coming out of it. Music pounded wildly through the canvas walls. Men and women were singing and shouting inside.
Fenwick paused, struck by hope. Here at least he could do his repenting without attracting more than a passing glance. He hesitated briefly and then went in.
It was very noisy, crowded and confused inside. But before Fenwick an aisle stretched between benches toward an altar, of sorts, with several highly excited people clustered under the arms of an even more highly excited speaker in an improvised pulpit.
Fenwick started down the aisle.
“How should I phrase this?” he wondered, walking slowly. “Just ‘I repent’? Is that enough? Or something like, ‘I have sold my soul to the devil and I hereby repudiate the bargain’? Are legal terms necessary?”
He had almost reached the altar when the air shimmered before him and the crimson outlines of the devil appeared very faintly, a mere three-dimensional sketch upon the dusty air.
“I wouldn’t do this if I were you,” the pale image said.
Fenwick sneered and walked through him.
At this the devil pulled himself together and appeared in full form and colour in the aisle, blocking Fenwick’s way.
“I wish you wouldn’t create scenes like this,” the devil said pettishly. “I can’t tell you how uncomfortable I feel here. Kindly don’t be a fool, Fenwick.”
Several people in the crowd cast curious glances at the devil, but no one seemed unduly interested. Most probably thought him a costumed attendant, and those who knew him for what he was may have been accustomed to the sight, or perhaps they expected some such apparition in such a place at such a time. There was no disturbance.
“Out of my way,” Fenwick said. “My mind is made up.”
“You’re cheating,” the devil complained. “I can’t allow it.”
“You cheated,” Fenwick reminded him. “Try and stop me.”
“I will,” the devil said, and reached out both taloned hands.
Fenwick laughed.
“I am a system enclosed within itself,” he said. “You can’t harm me. Remember?”
The devil gnashed his teeth.
Fenwick brushed the crimson form aside and went on.
Behind him the devil said, “Oh, very well, Fenwick. You win.”
Relieved, Fenwick turned. “Will you give me back my soul?”
“I’ll give you back what I took as surety,” the devil said, “but you won’t like it.”
“Hand it over,” Fenwick said. “I don’t believe a word you say.”
“I am the father of lies,” the devil said, “but this time -”
“Never mind,” Fenwick said. “Just give me back my soul.”
“Not here. I find this very uncomfortable,” the devil told him. “Come with me. Don’t cringe like that. I merely want to take you to your apartment. We need privacy.”
He lifted his crimson hands and sketched a wall around himself and Fenwick. Immediately the pushing crowds, the shouting and tumult, faded and the walls of Fenwick’s sumptuous apartment rose around them. Slightly breathless, Fenwick crossed the familiar floor and looked out the window. He was indubitably home again.
“That was clever,” he congratulated the devil. “Now give me back my soul.”
“I will give you back the part of it I removed,” the devil said. “It was not in violation of the contract, but a bargain is a bargain. I think it only fair to warn you, however, that you won’t like it.”
“No shilly-shallying,” Fenwick said. “I don’t expect you to admit you cheated.”
“You are warned,” the devil said.
“Hand it over.”
The devil shrugged. He then put his hand into his own chest, groped for a moment, murmuring, “I put it away for safekeeping,” and withdrew his closed fist. “Turn around,” he said. Fenwick did so. He felt a cool breeze pass through his head from the back…
“Stand still,” the devil said from behind him. “This will take a moment or two. You are a fool, you know. I expected a better entertainment or I’d never have troubled myself to go through this farce. My poor stupid friend, it was not your soul I took. It was merely certain unconscious memories, as I said all along.”
“Then why,” Fenwick demanded, “am I unable to enjoy my immortality? What is it that stops me at the threshold of everything I attempt? I’m tired of living like a god if I have to stop with immortality only, and no real pleasure in it.”
“Hold still,” the devil said. “There. My dear Fenwick, you are not a god. You’re a very limited mortal man. Your own limitations are all that stand in your way. In a million years you could never become a great musician or a great economist or any of the greats you dream of. It simply isn’t in you. Immortality has nothing to do with it. Oddly enough -” And here the devil sighed. “Oddly enough, those who make bargains with me never do have the capability to use their gifts. I suppose only inferior minds expect to get something for nothing. Yours is distinctly inferior.”
; The cool breeze ceased.
“There you are,” the devil said. “I have now returned what I took. It was, in Freudian terms, simply your superego.”
“Superego?” Fenwick echoed, turning. “I don’t quite -”
“Understand?” the devil finished for him, suddenly smiling broadly. “You will. It is the structure of early learning built up in your unconscious mind. It guides your impulses into channels acceptable to society. In a word, my poor Fenwick, I have just restored your conscience. Why did you think you felt so light and carefree without it?”
Fenwick drew breath to reply, but it was too late.
The devil had vanished. He stood alone in the room.
Well, no, not entirely alone. There was a mirror over the fireplace and in the mirror he met his own appalled eyes in the instant the superego took up again the interrupted function of the conscience.
A terrible smashing awareness struck down upon Fenwick like the hand of a punishing God. He knew now what he had done. He remembered his crimes. All of them. Every last terrible, unforgivable, immutable sin he had committed in the past twenty years.
His knees buckled under him. The world turned dark and roared in his ears. Guilt was a burden he could hardly stagger under. The images of the things he had seen and done in the years of his carefree evil were thunder and lightning that shook the brain in his skull. Intolerable anguish roared through his mind and he struck his hands to his eyes to blot out vision, but he could not blot out memory.
Staggering, he turned and stumbled toward his bedroom door. He tore it open, reeled across the room and reached into a bureau drawer. He took out a revolver.
He lifted the revolver, and the devil came in.
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