The Devil's Concubine

by Goyanes, Ángeles; Johnson, Kasia

  “I even ventured to ask Cannat those questions, but it didn’t matter whether he knew, he just shrugged his shoulders and seemed unconcerned. Cannat only told me what he wanted, when he wanted, and in whichever way he wanted.

  “Malleus Maleficarum kept Shallem entertained for an entire afternoon. Cannat, pleased that Shallem was distracted, used that afternoon to explain, in whispers and with the reverence of a Hebrew patriarch, the secret to their origins.

  “ ‘And God created his Sons and filled them with his Glory and Majesty,’ Cannat narrated. ‘And they were his only company in the Celestial Kingdom. And then God said, “Now I will create a beautiful universe for my Sons to enjoy.” And so it was. Out of all the newly created planets, the Sons of God were fascinated by the beauty of only one, a small paradise somewhere within his Creation. And all his Sons choose this planet as their home.’

  “ ‘As God continued his Work, his Sons enjoyed all the delights of this planet’s gardens. However, life was not stagnant in this garden, new species of trees and flowers emerged to the delight of the angels. And in the briny waters of the sea, life began to move. The angels were happy that they were going to share their land with new creatures. These sea creatures enlivened the earth and were bestowed with a pioneering spirit so eventually they crawled inland and then later began climbing trees. The angels shared their world with them.’

  “ ‘However, life on Earth, lacking divine guidance, began growing in unrestrained proportions. The angels were about to warn their Father but they realized the species were evolving, succeeding each other, so they decided not to bother Him. For the immortal angels, new creatures on Earth ceased to exist as quickly as a spark from a fire.’

  “ ‘One day, the angels had no other choice but to tell their Father about the dangers that ravaged their small paradise. “Father.” they told him. “Our Earth is beautiful, but a dangerous and unruly species has evolved, whose hands ravish all that his eyes can see. They do not have your divine spirit. Father, there is something wrong with these beings because they enjoy, like no other creature on Earth, killing anything that runs, swims, or flies. We ask you, Father, do away with them. If you don’t, it won’t take long for them to destroy our plant and all the beings within it. Someday, they will be able to leave Earth and when that happens, they will endanger life on other planets.’

  “ ‘Grief stricken, God listened to their request. “I can’t destroy these creatures,” he told them. “Neither can I expose the inhabitants of other planets to their uncontrollable wrath. Leave Earth. I’ll send the planet to the boundaries of the universe. To a place where these creatures will never meet another life that wasn’t born on its own soil. Let their lives extinguish naturally. Come back to me and enjoy all the other marvels in the universe which I created for you.’

  “ ‘The angels went back to their Father, sad that they had to leave their paradise and all the animals they loved, but anxious to get away from humans. However, a group of them, remained on Earth, refusing to abandon what they loved.

  “ ‘ “Father,” they told him. “Why are we being punished? Why are You giving those unwanted humans the paradise that rightfully belongs to us, to Your beloved children? Do you love them more than us? Destroy them Father! You gave us Earth, and we will never leave.” ‘

  “ ‘He answered them, “Continue living on Earth as long as you like. But always bear in mind my only command: you will never destroy life on Earth, because all life contains my essence.” ‘

  “ ‘After saying that God did as he had promised, He sent Earth to the confines of the universe and surrounded it with eternally lifeless planets.’

  “ ‘And when the angel who had loved Father the most, the angel who He had gifted with the greatest profusion of divine powers, foresaw the destruction of the paradise he loved, he was the first to unleash his hate against the culprit: against man, the being that had stolen God’s favor.’

  “ ‘When the angel killed, God’s wrath fell upon his Sons. The angels were permanently exiled to a realm on Earth where they couldn’t harm humans. A place where no human could perceive the angel’s existence. And God, seeing that humans were intelligent, decided to endow them with his own spirit.’

  “ ‘However, God had imbued his Sons with tremendous powers and many of them were able to enter the human’s world with ease. And these angels were charmed by the Daughters of Men, had carnal relations with them and thus engendered children. All, except Eonar, since he couldn’t find a woman who was good enough for him.’

  “This is what Cannat told me and during those moments, I learned more about Shallem than I had the entire time we lived together. I finally escaped the darkness in which Shallem had wanted to keep me. I finally knew about his origins, his life before we met. I learned things he wanted to pretend did not exist.

  “With me, and for my own good, he made an effort to appear human. And he seemed happy pretending to be mortal, pretending his body was flesh and blood and could feel pain, acting like he was hungry and needed to eat, yawning at night as if he were sleepy. However, there was only one pain that tormented him: spiritual pain. Perhaps he suffered more from this than any other human could ever suffer. At times, it seemed like he treasured this pain, held on to it as though it would purify his sins, as though the more he suffered the greater chance he’d have of calling his Father’s attention, the greater his chance that He would take pity on him. Struggling against his own phantoms, against God, against mankind, or against his distressing destiny, made Shallem stronger, more beautiful on the inside and even more sensitive than he had ever been.

  “When we were together, we truly believed we were man and woman, that there was nothing hidden nor extraordinary refuting that fact. However, something trivial would always light the ever-latent spark that ignited his hate toward humanity. Shallem, my Shallem, my affectionate creature, was just as tied to his origins as anyone of us is tied to ours, and his life just as bound to his nature as we are to ours.

  “But now I knew the truth. Bluntly and with no disguises, Cannat had told me everything. Now I knew why Shallem despised the human species.

  “Shallem was engrossed in his book and Cannat looked at him lovingly. Then he turned to me and smiled malevolently. I shuddered. He nodded. His eyes seemed to say, ‘Yes. Shallem and I together. Together forever. Since the beginning of time. Killing, fighting, seducing. Two demons of the worst nature. What the hell did you think? That Shallem was a good angel? That he had never laid a hand on a man or a woman? That he was created the day you were born?’

  “I knew that Shallem, between his outbursts of laughter brought on by Malleus Maleficarum, had paid attention to some of Cannat’s monologue. However, he didn’t refute anything that had been said. Maybe, I told myself, he thought Cannat was telling me inoffensive lies and, therefore, didn’t bother to interrupt and distract him from his story. But Shallem had seemed nervous and his surreptitious glances led me to believe otherwise. Of course, I noticed these details so as soon as Cannat was done with his story, I turned to Shallem and asked, ‘Did that really happen? Is it true?’

  “ ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t listening,’ he lied, feigning indifference.

  “ ‘You weren’t listening? I’ll tell you everything he said!’ I told him.

  “I knew, if my suspicions were correct, what I said would threaten him. I knew his reaction would tell me what I needed to know. And that’s exactly what happened. Shallem dropped his book on the table, jumped up and exclaimed:

  “ ‘Tell me some other day, Juliette. Let’s go for a walk in the hills! I need some fresh air, I need to stretch my stiff muscles! Don’t you? You look very pale.’

  “Cannat laughed. ‘You need fresh air, you need to stretch your stiff muscles... What human expressions, Shallem! You have really forgotten who you are!’ “

  “Wait just a minute,” the priest interrupted, obviously agitated. “You’re telling me you know everything? That Cannat actually told you the truth about ev
erything? About the meaning of life, what happens to our souls, about the existence of God... everything?”

  “That’s right. But don’t get excited, Father. This doesn’t concern my story. Anyway, how can I be sure of anything? Shallem assured me Cannat had lied. However, I can attest to one thing. I never met another divine being on Earth besides the angels.”

  “But God exists,” Father DiCaprio insisted. “They spoke about their Father, the Creator of the universe.”

  “That’s true, but is it God or is it a god?” the woman insinuated.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “What I’m saying is that the universe is infinite and it’s magnitude doesn’t begin nor end with our limited ideas about God.”

  “Limited ideas about God?”

  “That’s right. According to man, God is alpha and omega, the beginning and end of all things. But, what if nothing is finite, what if everything is constantly and indefinitely recycled?”

  “But everything has a beginning, even if it doesn’t have an end. The angels themselves had a beginning,” the priest argued.

  “That’s true. But, does every single thing have a beginning?”

  “Everything.”

  “So, when did God begin, in your opinion?”

  “He is God.”

  “Good answer. Does that mean he doesn’t have a beginning?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a very comfortable answer, although there’s no evidence to support it. But you know it’s not possible. What if our God were just one among many? What if another universe exists? A universe different from ours and so enormous, it makes our own concentration of galaxies look no larger than a molecule. Our tiny universe could be contained within this superior universe without us even knowing, just like bacteria can’t see beyond the small space it adheres to on our skin. When a virus travels through blood, does it know the blood belongs to an animal that thinks and moves? Perhaps we are nothing more than this. A virus inside another living and gigantic body. And our planet is nothing more than an atom within an immense body of molecules, immense, that is, to us.”

  “Good heavens! What an outlandish story!”

  “Yes, it’s outlandish. But it isn’t my story. It’s Cannat’s.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s irrefutable dogma. Cannat lied frequently; I rarely knew when he did and when he didn’t. According to his thesis, this being, this other God from a world that we can’t imagine, may have created our universe like an experiment; just like scientists today genetically recreate life in their laboratories. A giant version of a type of atomic explosion. Boom! The universe. A mere accident. But I don’t like those ideas.”

  “Neither do I,” the priest corroborated. “Not only are they unfathomable but also disturbing. It would be horrible if that were true.”

  “Yes, it would be, however, I’m sure I’ve accomplished my goal. That is, to make you stop asking me ‘life after death’ questions. I believe in God. And I also believe the story I just told you: the creation of the world according to Cannat. I know nothing else,” the woman adamantly asserted. However, saying she knew nothing did not mean she was truly ignorant, it meant she preferred to remain silent.

  –IV–

  “At times, Shallem and Cannat would spend long periods of time silently looking into each other’s eyes, absorbed by one another. They gazed at one another fascinated, like a god looking at another god, like a lover looking at his beloved, like a father looking at his son. They looked at each other with admiration, with desire, with pride. During those moments, they blocked out the world, and I, of course, ceased to exist.

  “Shallem loved Cannat more than anything. I knew that from the moment I saw them together. No, that’s not true. I knew it long before that. I knew it from the look on Shallem’s face when he first spoke about Cannat, when he described how proud he was of him and how he longed for him when they were apart. All his sorrows, all the bitterness in his heart, all his fears about our son’s fate were relegated to a corner as soon as Cannat appeared.

  “Cannat called Shallem his “other half”, his “sweet soul”. Shallem loved those nicknames so, at times, he would return the compliments by throwing himself into his brother’s arms to kiss him. Other times, he let himself be loved with bewitching indolence, with silly and sweet arrogance.

  “Cannat adored Shallem with submissive devotion. He treated Shallem as if he were his father, his lover, his beloved, his brother, his teacher, his guide, his protector, his god, and his slave; a perfect and balanced mixture of all those things. And then Shallem would fall into his arms as if Cannat were an omnipotent Titan who was resting calmly within the safety of his fortress.

  “For Cannat and I, Shallem was the center of our lives. Our beloved. The nexus that joined us. And it stayed that way until the end.

  “As for me, I was extremely attracted to Cannat. Believe me Father, no human could resist him. It was like he emanated some sort of magnetic force that attracted everyone. Wherever we went, all eyes were on him. He had a court of admirers at his disposal. And the women... So many women followed him around! At night, servants were sent to give him love letters and would wait patiently for his response. How could have Cannat refused to satisfy a lady? I’m sure he visited many beds.”

  “Did he kill them afterward?” Father DiCaprio asked.

  “No. At least not normally. He liked women too much.”

  The priest breathed a sigh of relief.

  “So Shallem was influenced by Cannat? He enjoyed killing more than ever before, from my understanding.”

  “No, it’s not that. What Shallem really enjoyed was being with Cannat. Cannat was vivacious and irresistible. Life on Earth, for him, was fascinating and fun, and even more so because of humans. In his own words, humans are “toys”, toys for angels, “his toys”. He had always been able to adapt to changes in his life. He had a portentous ability to adapt, unlike Shallem who had never accepted being abandoned by God, never accepted the presence of man on Earth, nor his own imprisonment and solitude. These things, all of them, made Cannat happy. Far from being a prison, Earth was “his kingdom”, his place of leisure and recreation. The appearance of humans was a lucky event; they were his entertainment, his little living dolls, always ready to play with him, always trying to entertain him, always bringing him joy. And how fun it was to play with them! And the women... Oh the women! Beautiful bacchantes servicing his orgies. Unconditional admirers forever prostrated at his feet. The whole world was a party!

  “Cannat found pleasure in everything on Earth. No other creature had his proclivity for happiness. God knew what he was doing when He created him. Cannat loved the blue skies on warm and clear days, when the sun shown calm and bright, bringing peace to everything. He was enraptured when he watched silent lightening during summer nights or when he heard the deafening boom of lighting during dark winter storms.

  “Cannat loved peaceful days, our tranquil walks in the city, our conversations, our silences, the large buildings that contained beautiful works of art that he always treasured. He never belittled man’s ability to create art. Never and not in any of its different manifestations. On the contrary, it was easy to hear him ponder the virtues of this or that work of art, praising certain creations or flattering some master’s work. Cannat admired man’s ability to create art. The very man who he indulged in killing, with no remorse, during their nightly fights.

  “He loved beautiful, lavish clothes, the loose-fitting fabric’s smooth magnificence, their bright colors, the elegance and dignified appearance they gave him.

  “Everything, human or divine, seemed to have been created for the enjoyment of his senses, including the enjoyment of things, as we can gather from his nature, he didn’t need to satisfy, such as his sense of taste.

  “He found great pleasure in tasting different wines. We would often accompany him to tavern after tavern, some of which were underground and unpleasant
caves. We would taste different wines in every tavern and Cannat would praise the wine’s beautiful red coloring, its intense and exquisite aroma, and the way it delighted his palate. We were well known in Florence’s best inns where Cannat would stuff himself with delicious delicacies in which meat would never be an ingredient.

  “ ‘How can you eat that?’ he asked me, twisting his face into an extremely exaggerated expression of disgust. ‘Beings made of flesh, just like you. Don’t you know that man does not need to eat meat. Look at your teeth. Do you think they’re made to tear meat?’

  “ ‘Sometimes I feel like I need to eat meat,’ I answered.

  “ ‘Yes,’ he emphasized the word with bitter disapproval and contempt. ‘Just like vampires need to drink their victim’s blood.’

  “Those criticisms made me feel extremely uncomfortable and humiliated. He took advantage of the times Shallem wasn’t around to hurt and ridicule me with his numerous jibes. Cannat, with an evil expression on his face, enjoyed tormenting me in a thousand different ways when we were alone. He contrived many different ways to attack me, which I never spoke of for fear of his reprisals or being struck dead by his cruel stares. However, when Shallem was with us, his angelic blue eyes would once again look at me with deceptive and insincere affection, he’d be friendly again and feign concern about my pregnancy. He acted this way although he knew Shallem was well aware of his true feelings toward me. We all knew how Cannat felt about me.”

  “Then why did he spend so much time with you? Why did he tell you all those stories?” the priest interrupted.