“But then, if you believe in the existence of Lucifer, you’ve made a pact with him, like me, you’re accursed, like me. We’re at the same point.”
He shook his head, screwing up his eyes and smiling scornfully.
“What tells you that I haven’t accepted the pact in all its consequences, and that I’m not very glad of it? You, you’re like a wretched moth frightened by the flame of a lamp and bumping into all the window panes. Sooner or later, you’ll burn your wings, if you haven’t already. In any case, you can renounce flying in the light and the air.”
A cold chill ran through my body, at the same time as I was invaded by a nameless terror. Distant memories of childhood reappeared. I recalled a book of tales and an image of the Devil that had frightened me when I was four or five years old. I recalled the stairway to an attic that was the demon’s lair in my games. I tried to put on a brave face and started to laugh. My laughter rang false.
“I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Get away! But you’re sweating with fear, and you’re right. You’re afraid, and you don’t know why. What would you be like if you knew! You’re a miserable ignoramus. You’re one of the countless naïve individuals who leave belief in the Evil Spirit to simple folk—imbeciles, as they say. They think themselves very strong, with their science, with their reason. It’s them who are the imbeciles. Lucifer exists. I, who once made a pact with him by chance, have searched for him and have found him. There are also those who have searched for and found God. That’s their business.”
Yes, Kotzebue was speaking sincerely, and my fear increased. I tried in vain not to let him see it, but I sensed my eyes widening and it seemed to me that I was struck with immobility.
“You see, when one belongs as completely as you do to Lucifer”—he was emphasizing his words—“when one has been heaped by his benefits”—he darted and oblique glace at the bedroom—“what good is there in struggling in vain? It’s better to be with him frankly, to take advantage of his grandeur, to serve his power.”
“Be with him? I don’t really understand. You mean that it’s better to do evil amorously?”
Kotzebue shrugged his shoulders. “You always come back to good and evil. Yes, if you want, you can call Lucifer evil. That’s one of his names, but he has others, and finer ones.”
He took a few steps into the bedroom. A street-lamp caused a sad light to filter between the curtains over the window, which illuminated it.
“You say that I’ve been heaped by his benefits, but I don’t see in what respect. My life has been average. I haven’t succeeded in what I’ve attempted. I’ve attempted painting, and then literature. Where have I ended up? If I had had a protection over me...”
Kotzebue burst out laughing.
“You’ve had what you desired deep down. You only desired base things—the bodies of women. You’re uniquely a being of flesh. Your flesh has been lavishly supplied. That began with Irma Pascaud, remember. She didn’t much like you to begin with. Me, I daren’t even look at her. I was timid. I placed her so high. Well, you only had to make a sign, and you had her. The woman who has no soul: you were the one who gave her that nickname among our comrades, and everyone adopted it. There was only me who didn’t call her that, because I didn’t understand. I thought her a very beautiful soul. But you knew full well that you were right in saying that she had no soul. She had had one, but you must have taken it away from her.”
“Me!”
“Yes. For the Luciferian takes from those who have the misfortune to love him their luck, their capacity for happiness, the little patrimony of goodness that constitutes their soul. He dispossesses them, unconsciously. I haven’t followed you in life, but I’m certain that if you care to cast a glance backwards you’ll see yourself giving your hand to a chain on soulless creatures, all those that you’ve left on the edge of the road after having stolen their invisible treasure, their modest baggage for eternity.”
“That’s not true!” I cried.
But I knew very well how much truth there was in what Kotzebue said. I contemplated in the depths of my memory the faces of vanished mistresses, and I heard, as if it were resonating in the room, the voice of a sweet petite blonde woman encountered in a café at midnight, who said to me, a few days later:
“It’s you, you alone, who have doomed me!”
I had laughed at the time, for the little woman was known as a professional and did not hide it. But now I thought that her words might perhaps have had a more profound meaning than their apparent significance, which had escaped me before. Yes, perhaps I had doomed her, as she said.
“Then, you’re claiming seriously that Lucifer exists, and that there are men who obey his will, render him worship, believe in him.”
I had raised my voice. I was speaking in a tone of which I was not the master. Kotzebue’s voice appeared to me to be all the lower.
“It was Lévy who was right, the man we mocked so forcefully when he talked to us about certain secret communities in which Lucifer is worshiped, as Jesus Christ is worshiped in monasteries. Those communities are only secret here and now. If you want to see your brothers, our brothers, celebrate public ceremonies to the spirit of evil, go to ancient Assyria, to the slopes of the mountain called Djebel Maklouh, among the Yezidees—which is to say, the devil-worshippers. Go to the Indies, among the black Jews of Cochin, or to the Antilles, with the Voodoo cults. There are infernal cults in northern China, and near Lake Chad in Africa. And I’ll tell you something more astonishing that I’ve seen with my own eyes.
“In the course of my voyage to the Orient, I went to the edge of the Dead Sea in order to contemplate the place where the Essenes once lived, those wise and perfect men in whose midst Jesus was instructed. I believed at that time in that wisdom and perfection. I was hoping for I know not what inspiration, I know not what marvelous encounter. Well, not very far away from the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, there is a monastery, a monastery without a chapel, whose threshold is not dominated by any cross. There you can see the conscious disciples of Lucifer...”
He stopped, like someone who regrets having said too much.
“But after all, you can’t say that brotherhoods of evil men exist who labor voluntarily in the development of evil. That’s impossible. If it were true, it would be known, people would talk about it, and they’d succeed in destroying them.”
“That’s true, and there are people who know about the existence of these brotherhoods, but they don’t talk about them and don’t think of destroying them, for reasons of prudence, and they’re right. Perhaps I’ll astonish you too much by telling you that these brotherhoods have numerous affiliates, and astonish you even more by telling you that you’re one of them.”
I uttered a dry of fury. “You’re lying.”
But I observed, with despair, that I had already said to myself what he was saying to me.
His little eyes, whose fugitive gaze I had never caught, settled on mine.
“There’s no need to shout. Anyway, you understood. Even if you didn’t articulate any sound, if you didn’t formulate your thought, it will be seen and it will be judged.”
“By whom?”
“By them, the masters of the left-hand path who have pushed self-love to the point of becoming divine. They are the ones who direct you and you can no longer escape them. You’re their instrument. They have an invisible contact with you. It was them who sent Eveline here, in order that you could bring down a creature who had wanted to rise too high. You’ve carried out your mission faithfully. You’ve pushed into your bed that young woman, who might have been the living symbol of the pure spirit, and is henceforth designated to incarnate matter and its pleasure. For they only accord a price to degeneration. Believe me, follow the advice I’m giving you. One can’t fight them. It’s better to serve them frankly and at least have the advantage. I have no interest in telling you that.”
“Then why
are you doing it?”
“To spare you torture of certain nocturnal appeals, nightmares of an excessively frightful nature, apparitions that might trouble your reason.”
Kotzebue’s gaze plunged deep into mine. He dominated me with all of his tall stature. He was about to continue.
I cannot explain, now, the violence that took possession of me. Perhaps I had measured in a second the fear to which the words I had just heard were going to give birth, and the miserable quality of that fear to come was the cause of my anger. Perhaps I was angry with myself for already having thought what Kotzebue had just expressed.
I threw myself upon him and grabbed him by the collar of his coat, crying: “Get out! You’re nothing but a wretch!”
To my great surprise, he did not resist. In spite of his weight, I pushed him without difficulty all the way to the antechamber, astonished by my strength. I had the sentiment that his mass was unresistant and that if I shook a little more forcefully, he might suddenly disperse, like one of those great menacing forms that one sees in dreams and that a thought suffices to make vanish.
He had opened the entrance door himself. I handed him his hat. Under the light of the stairway his powerful frame seemed to condense again. He breathed out, collected himself, extended the tip of his index finger toward me like a rapier and said: “You’re the wretch! But I forgive you, because of the suffering that is reserved for you.”
I slammed the door. I turned round and saw myself in a mirror. I was haggard, and my face was narrower than usual. But was there not another face behind me, considering me?
I went back into the studio and I inspected the bedroom. It seemed to me that someone there had pronounced my name.
The valet de chambre appeared almost immediately. Was it the noise that had attracted him or had he had a secret thought? What a singular expression he had! But how had he entered my service, and how long ago? I scarcely heard the phrase he proffered, in which there was mention of dinner being served, but I remarked its demonic irony.
I made him a sign that he no longer had to watch over me and I went to get dressed in order to go out, avoiding looking in mirrors, because it is in the depths of their infinite distance that the visitors from beyond begin to march.
I didn’t know where I was going. I went down the Rue Ampère, turned the corner, and I saw a little stone church that I didn’t know. I passed before it every day in order to go and buy cigarettes at the tobacconist’s and get the newspapers from a kiosk nearby, but I had the sensation that it has not been there the day before, that it had just surged abruptly from the pavement of the street. My first thought was that of a miracle of a religious order. I stopped to contemplate it.
How beautiful it was, with that bearded archbishop who, crosier in hand, was standing above its portal, with the heavenward surged of its architecture, the tip of its steeple terminated by a lightning-conductor.
My admiration was spoiled by that lightning-conductor. That divine house ought not to have had any need of any such protection. There was, therefore, an enemy who menaced that church from the direction of the sky and against whom the cross was insufficient.
Suddenly, I said to myself that I might be able to put an end to my torment, escape the threat of nightmares, mysterious voices and orders given by the invisible brothers of evil. Possessions were well known to the Catholic Church. I had at home the works of pious and erudite men who had catalogued the demons and specified the means of triumphing over them. Why not put myself under the protection of the Church? It is true that I had not practiced since childhood, and sincerely believed myself to be an unbeliever; but my mental disarray was so great that I was disposed to believe as I had on the forgotten day of my first communion, if only a little peace could return to me. Then again, in the singular encounter with that church, which I had never seen before, there was an indication of sorts.
Reading a handwritten notice under the porch was already an appeasement. That notice summoned the Children of Mary for imminent dates. It announced the feast of Saint Geneviève and the gathering of the Holy Family.
The Children of Mary! The Holy Family! How far away those groups must be, how different from those of which I had just heard mention, and the existence of which filled me with terror.
I went in, and I was astonished by the number of candles that were burning, and forming a kind of circular procession. There were large ones and small ones, doubtless proportionate to the fortune of those who had said prayers, or the magnitude of their sin. I saw one that was so tiny that I was gripped by pity for the person who had had it burned, thinking that it might be someone accursed, like me, someone very poor, twice accursed.
I was reassured by a large number of dwellings in sculpted wood to the right and the left, which must be the confessionals. I looked at an inscription on the door of one of them: Abbé Durand. At the same moment, an aged man wearing an overcoat, who had his hat in his hand, came toward me. He had begun to blow out the lighted candles, and had interrupted himself in order to consider me when I came in.
“The church is about to close, Monsieur,” he said.
I replied that it was absolutely necessary that I see the curé immediately.
He made the gesture of raising his arms to Heaven.
“The curé of Saint-François-de-Sales! But that’s impossible. Strictly speaking, it might be possible to see the priest on duty, who is presently Abbé Durand”—he pointed to the little sculpted house next to which we were standing—“but it’s too late now. Abbé Durand is having dinner. Come back tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”
The man must only be occupied in a modest ecclesiastical function. I put a silver coin in his hand and begged him to go in search of Abbé Durand.
“Tell him that it’s a very grave and very urgent matter.”
Abbé Durand was dining in the house next to the church. I saw the man disappear into the depths of the church, near a niche where wax individuals surrounded an Enfant Jesus of the same material.
I imagined the pious family in the bosom of which Abbé Durand must be dining. The tablecloth must resemble an altar cloth. What good sentiments! What a complete absence of malediction!
Abbé Durand arrived a few minutes later. He had a round face charged with benevolence. He made an effort to appear severe and pressed. I divined that he was in haste to resume his interrupted meal.
He asked me immediately whether it was a matter of giving the Sacraments. When I said no, and explained that I wanted to confess, his effort of discontentment increased.
“There are hours for that,” he said. But he opened the door on which his name was inscribed and made me a sign to kneel down facing him. At the same time, his face was covered by a mildness that must have been natural to him and filled me with emotion. I nearly got up and left in order not to scandalize such an excellent man.
Abbé Durand was doubtless accustomed to the revelation of the most various sins. When I had warned him in a low voice that what he was about to hear had a particularly terrible and singular character he nodded his head distractedly, as if to say: Do it quickly, I’ve heard many others.
And he invited me to recite a pater while he made the sign of the cross. I replied that I had forgotten the exact text of the prayer. That did not appear to astonish him in the slightest. Other sinners must have come, driven by the hope of absolution, who were as ignorant as me.
“Repeat after me,” he said—and he recited the pater with such great rapidity that I could only mumble unintelligible things in my turn.
“I’m listening, my son,” said Abbé Durand, lowering his eyes in the attitude of a listener.
Then I gathered all my courage and I told him, without omitting any detail, the story of the evening once spent with Lévy and Kotzebue. I recounted the conditions in which that pact, forgotten by me, had returned to my memory, how it obsessed me and in what fashion I had arrived at believing that it had influenced all the actions of my life.
At first Abbé
Durand tapped the wood of the confessional on which he was leaning several times, as if to tell me to go more rapidly, to skip unimportant matters. Then he stopped, made a backward movement, and I thought that he was about to flee. He looked at me with extreme attention, as one looks at an extraordinary being or a madman. I sensed, without it being expressed in any way, that the abandoned dinner had lost all its importance in his eyes, given the gravity of the case. And there was also some suspicion in him, as if I were susceptible of delivering myself to a sudden extravagance. I affected the simplest and most modest appearance in order to reassure him.
But I sensed hope quitting me. I had told myself vaguely that perhaps, in the presence of the majesty of the church, my story had less importance than I thought, that many people secretly concluded similar pacts and that I was about to be immediately reassured and perhaps delivered by some ecclesiastical prestige—but I was undeceived by the sadness that was painted on Abbé Durand’s visage.
While I continued my story the gray-haired individual that had greeted me blew out the circle of candles. He returned from time to time and looked in my direction. I thought that he was in a hurry to see the importunate sinner depart who was preventing him from going home.
When the last ex-voto was extinct, the church was filled with darkness. I had finished, Abbé Durand remained silent and I could not distinguish his features. I raised my eyes. The vault above my head was distant, immense. It seemed to me that I had penetrated into an edifice so vast that I would never be able to get out of it again.
Finally, Abbé Durand spoke. First, he asked me for some information about the Essenes, Kotzebue and me. Then he said: “Your case is very serious, my child, and it far surpasses my feeble competence. It’s necessary that I refer you to a superior authority. Between now and then, you must pray, in a constant fashion, even fast in a certain measure, and come to see me again in a few days.”
In a few days! It was impossible for me to wait so long. I was there as if in consultation with a physician. I needed a consoling beverage. I asked him whether the superior authority could not be consulted immediately. The prospect of a sleepless night appeared to me to be too redoubtable.
Lucifer Page 14
