Lucifer

by Maurice Magre

  A tram stopped in front of me. I boarded it. The conductor, no doubt struck by the dolor in my expression, asked me where I was going. I replied that it was all the same to me and that I would get off at the terminus.

  It was not the talismans of Simon Magus that had attracted me to this point of the globe. I had ceased to believe in their existence. It was not the presence of Eveline. I had been told that she had gone back to Paris. It was not the union of pine, rosemary and mimosa mingling to form a unique perfume whose intimate communion one only encounters on the slopes of the hills facing Saint-Tropez.

  An idea had taken possession of me with such force that I had not been able to put off its realization for one day, and I was shivering with impatience in the little train that snaked slowly along the coast, following the detours of gulfs and sometimes stopping as if it were drunk on the sunlight and the sea air.

  The commencement of autumn had an ardor hotter than that of summer. I launched myself alongside the peasant house that represents the station at Beauvallon and I almost had a desire to start running when I perceived the gray line of the convent walls and the quadrilaterals formed by the old trees and its interior courtyards.

  There lived humble women who had found consolation in the practice of prayers, reclusion and renunciation, but there was one among them so deprived of reason, so inaccessible to the elementary instructions of religion, that she had been judged unworthy of admission among the nuns, and who only fulfilled the functions of porter and maid-of-all-work. Her simplicity had prohibited her from making vows. According to what I had been told, she did not pray, she listened to the mass without comprehension, and she had been seen laughing idiotically when the priest lifted up the host. The unique light of her intelligence only shone brightly enough to permit her to receive the provisions from the hands of the grocer that she carried to the convent along the road where I had once watched her pass by. She also knew how to open the door and close it again, and to dig at the place designated to her. That was all. And I was pleased to think that if there was in that soul no hope of future life, it was at least covered by the calm darkness of ignorance

  But I had sometimes recalled the “Alleluia!” sung through the autumnal vines and the crisis of filthy dementia that that song had provoked in the unfortunate Marie with the long neck. The shadow within her was not so peaceful! It had dolorous eddies. The old life of the dives of Marseille still uttered its appeals. Then, a madness took possession of her, and brought her to a degree even lower than the one where she vegetated. Carrying provisions, digging and laughing idiotically at mass, was perhaps the most elevated point that she could reach, and she was not even sure of remaining there, by virtue of occult influences departing from below.

  And suddenly, like a light coming from a star hidden by a cloud, I had been attained by a memory. One sunlit morning, that wretch, as she had passed near me, had prostrated herself as if she had seen an aureole round my head. I had not understood then the sanctity that she seemed to attribute to me. I had put that inexplicable veneration down to her madness.

  Now, though, I thought I understood. It was a brother she had saluted, a being similar to herself, devoured by an evil of the same nature, but who had taken a few steps further in the possession of life and the consciousness of that evil. And that brother was a saint for her because, she had believed that he would save her.

  She expected salvation from me. In what form? I didn’t know, exactly. A few infantile words orientated her toward a very simple ideal, an attitude in her regard showed her that she was a poor woman for whom one might have amity. Who can tell? A gesture with the open hand might have sufficed.

  But how belated I had been! She had seen the guide on the side of the road. She had prostrated herself and waited. Who could tell whether he had not wearied, whether she had not despaired, whether her soul had not eventually closed to all hope?

  How rapidly I walked along the road that led toward the convent! Everything I saw, the placard of a garage, the inclination of the trees, a distant well, took on a meaning symbolic of forgiveness. I wanted to redeem myself in my own eyes. Every man ought to accomplish once in his life a great act of love, freely chosen. It was toward my act of redemption that I was running, but without any fixed intention and without knowing with what words I would render it plausible.

  I went past the avenue of eucalypti. They had the air of having acquired with the rusts of autumn a new sum of wisdom. I saw Monsieur Saint-Aygulf’s house through the foliage, closed and silent. And as I was about to arrive at the sunken road that rose toward he convent through clumps of mimosas, I heard the little sound of a bell. In the same place where I had encountered him the previous year, a priest was advancing, preceded by a choirboy. With the same gesture as before, he was holding the Holy Sacrament to his breast.

  A fat man who was driving a carriage and who overtook me on the road stopped abruptly beside the priest, at the exact moment that the latter was about to turn into the sunken road. They must have known one another. The fat man removed his straw hat respectfully and he asked a question that I did not hear while pointing at the convent.

  I heard the last words that the priest spoke: “It’s Marie, the one who runs errands, the one they call Marie with the long neck. I’ve arrived too late. She died suddenly an hour ago.”

  I saw the fat man make a vague gesture that seemed to signify that that death was the least grave of those that one might fear. He whipped his horse. The choirboy’s bell rang out. A shadow coming from somewhere unknown seemed to glide over things. I stood motionless at the corner of the path.

  Once in life, a great act of love! How difficult it is! And when one has let the moment pass, it never returns.

  Sunlight on quays. But were they those of Marseille, Toulon or somewhere else? I was about to depart, or perhaps I had already departed, and that was happening in a distant land?

  I was sitting in a little tavern sheltered by a tattered awning, and the wind was making it flap. I was waiting until six o’clock in order to embark on a steamship, whose funnel was smoking, drinking a beverage that I had raised to the height of my eyes in order to gaze at its color.

  I suddenly perceived—for my sensitivity had increased immeasurably—that there was someone not far away who was looking at me and tormenting me with his thought.

  I put my glass down and I did indeed see an unknown man who was standing still beside a burden laid on the ground, and who was staring at me with eyes covered by thick eyebrows.

  It was a workman, a stevedore. He had no collar and he had torn sandals on his feet. What struck me to begin with was the disproportion that existed between his paltry appearance and the enormity of the burden he had beside him.

  I was about to let him see that he was importuning me with his persistence in staring at me when he suddenly decided to approach me. With a familiar, unhurried gesture he picked up a chair and sat down at my table. He was not at all embarrassed. He was even smiling beneath his unkempt graying moustache.

  “You don’t remember me,” he said, “but I recognize you. I’m Lévy.”

  And as I remained mute with astonishment, he added: “Lévy from the Latin Quarter.”

  We exchanged the habitual words of recognition. I apologized for not having recognized him immediately.

  “You’ve aged a great deal,” he said to me, with satisfaction.

  I asked him if he was married and he started laughing as if at the enunciation of something foolish.

  “Do you remember the pact?” he said.

  I inclined my head to say yes, and he understood by the heaviness of my head that the memory must have played a considerable role in my life.

  “Do you want me to tell you what has become of Kotzebue?” I asked, thinking that it would interest him.

  “No, it’s all the same to me.”

  “Would you like me to tell you what I...?”

  He stopped me, making me understand by the gesture that everything concerning me
was indifferent to him.

  “Oh, I had a narrow escape that evening,” he said. “You too, in fact.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t by calculation. I wasn’t intelligent enough at that time to dupe Lucifer. Now, it would be a different matter. It was simply by virtue of forgetfulness. The pact, as it was conceived and signed in your room, left us a way out. There’s no point in my trying to explain things that you wouldn’t understand. Only know that I had forgotten to draw the magic triangle in charcoal.”

  “So?”

  “The pact was valid, for him as for us, but in those conditions the man retains the capacity to escape Lucifer if he wants to, with human will-power, and if he returns what he has received.”

  I considered Lévy attentively. He was speaking with the same sincerity as before. He was penetrated by his old conviction as to the existence and power of the demon.

  “Do you mean that you’ve regretted the pact and that you’ve tried to escape its consequences?”

  “I admit it,” he said, in a loud voice, and his eyes glittered beneath his bushy eyebrows. “I was mistaken. It was when I saw the scant value of what I had requested and obtained that I understood my error.”

  “You requested something and received it?”

  “Yes, and I’ve returned it.”

  “What?”

  “Intelligence. I was insensate enough to desire to be intelligent when I was twenty.”

  I murmured to myself: “I too received something and returned it.”

  He uttered a little scornful laugh, but without ostentation. There was a sincere sadness in that laughter.

  “Yes. Lucifer gives honestly what one requests of him. That’s rather curious, in fact. Lucifer is honest, whereas God promises a great deal and doesn’t keep the promise. Perhaps you’ve perceived that? Well, by virtue of the honesty of Lucifer, I’ve been the most intelligent man in the world. But intelligence is evil. It’s nothing. It was necessary for me to get rid of that nothing. It took a long time, but I’ve got there.”

  “How?”

  Lévy pointed at the sack that he had put down on seeing me, from which scrap metal was emerging.

  “By physical labor, by effort, by sweat. By getting so close to matter as almost to resemble it. Loading and unloading ships is the ideal profession for a sage.”

  “And you’re happy?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and seemed irritated by the question. “You’re like everybody else, you think it’s happiness that it’s necessary to seek.”

  “What is it necessary to seek, then?”

  He made a gesture that seemed to project a flame toward the sky.

  “God.”

  “Where can he be found?”

  “In not thinking. In looking into the depths of oneself. He’s dormant there. He sometimes wakes up, but rarely. I often ask myself...and just now when I saw you...”

  Lévy’s voice became lower. He leaned over the table. I understood that he had something to tell me, but that he was hesitant.

  “You see that little breakwater that advances into the sea at the extremity of the harbor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every evening, I go to sit down on that breakwater. I don’t move. I wait. Night falls. The sounds of the land die down. Those of the sea become more regular. The sky seems to descend. Then God wakes up, timidly at first. It’s difficult to explain. Why is God so timid when Lucifer is so audacious? It’s sufficient for the footfall of stroller, or the light of a boat’s lantern, to brush the breakwater, for him to disappear. So...”

  “So?”

  “So, I thought that you might be able to help me. I explained it to you once. It’s a secret that only the great masters have known. There have to be three.”

  I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to understand.

  “Three?”

  “Since one can make a pact with Lucifer, and even, in certain cases, break that pact, why shouldn’t one with God be equally valid?”

  I took a ten franc bill from my pocket and gave it to the waiter, making him a sign to keep the change.

  “I learned once the magical power of ceremonies. I know that it’s possible to sign a pact with God. Would you like to sign it with me? I know a poor fellow who, in exchange for a little money, will replace Kotzebue advantageously. Oh, this time I’m certain of not forgetting anything!”

  I couldn’t contain myself. I stood up, seized Lévy by his torn shirt and with my face close to his I cried: “No! No! No more pacts! You don’t know what it took to extract my mind from the fear that took possession of it because of you. You’ve labored, you’ve sweated, you say? But you’ve found a consolation of sorts in your solitary madness. You still believe that Lucifer and God are two separate beings and you’ve extending your arms naively toward one after extending them toward the other. But I’ve seen them going forth fraternally, bearing the same cross toward a region where, in the end, there’s no longer any light or darkness. I prefer to stay here and love them equally, since they’re myself.”

  I seized my valise, made a gesture of adieu and drew way without looking back.

  About an hour later, the ship on which I had embarked left port. It went slowly, leaving a circular wake behind it. From the deck I watched the lights of the harbor sparkling over the moving water.

  I seemed to recognize to my left the breakwater that Lévy had pointed out to me. There was a human form crouched at its extremity and I thought that it was my friend who was delivering himself to his evening meditation.

  Was he seeing God? Was he not, on the contrary, tormented by a return of Lucifer? I watched to see whether there might be a revelatory contour in his silhouette, outlined against the masts of boats, a symbolic figure of the kind that hazard had so often designed for me.

  But no, I only saw the reality. There was only a poor man, motionless in the dark.

  Author’s Note

  It was on his return from his voyage to Alexandria and Palestine that I encountered J. N..., the author of the confession that you have just read.

  The proprietor of the small hotel where I was staying for the summer, some distance from Aix-le-Provence, told me that an eccentric who had arrived from the Orient had rented a detached property with three rooms on land that belonged to him.

  “He’s asked not to be disturbed by anyone,” he told me, “and he only speaks to the waiter who takes him his meals out there twice a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something for which to reproach himself. He seems to me to have chosen that property because it’s situated on a hill and he can see at a distance if anyone is heading his way. Does he fear an unexpected visit, or is he a crackpot, of which there are so many?”

  Impelled by curiosity, I acquired the habit of strolling every evening along a sunken road framed by trees that headed toward the isolated house. I arrived one day closer to it than usual and I remember that, while walking. I had put my cane over my shoulder and was holding it like a rifle—a gesture without importance whose import I only understood later.

  The eccentric of whom I had heard mention emerged abruptly and ran toward me. He appeared to be prey to a rather vivid emotion. From a distance he looked at my cane attentively and shouted: “What do you want with me? Who are you?”

  I recognized J. N... immediately, and we shook hands affectionately. We had seen one another quite frequently in Paris, two or three years before and we had one of those inexplicable sympathies for one another that acquire the name of friendship after a while.

  He excused the abruptness of his greeting, but without giving an explanation.

  “I thought for a moment...,” he said. “I thought that decidedly...” And he tapped his forehead with his finger, laughing.

  I was less surprised by the change in his features than the profound modifications that seemed to have taken place within his character.

  He had pleased me once by his spontaneity and his own manner of being sincere. He had appeared to me to belong to the
category of individuals who only accord importance to women and the possibility of conquering them. I had always judged him as vain and even slightly stupid. He had acquired an excessive nervousness and a habit of looking to the right and left as if someone might be watching him.

  We encountered one another almost every evening during a long month of September in Provence, alongside olive groves and russet vines, and it was in the course of those walks that he told me the story of the crisis of his existence. I have transcribed that story as faithfully as I could and without adding anything, which explains its disconnection and the absence of certain developments.

  “And Eveline?” I asked him.

  He made a vague gesture. “The first become the last. I’ve heard tell that Eveline has pulled herself together, and that she’s gone to live in Bretagne with one of her relatives, in order to escape her former environment.”

  But in spite of the questions that I asked him, and which he evaded, J. N... told me almost nothing about his voyage to Palestine. He had been deeply impressed by the character of certain landscapes on the edge of the Dead Sea. He only evoked them reticently, and with an evident displeasure.

  It was only later, on the eve of my departure, that he decided, at my request, to recount an episode of his voyage that I think it as well to report.

  “I had resolved to verify what Kotzebue had told me. I knew that he mingled truth and falsehood without being able to recognize them himself, and I thought that in order to be certain about the existence of the monastery where beings powerfully developed in intelligence devote themselves communally to spiritual evil, there was no other means than to go there and see with my own eyes. I remembered the name of the village that Kotzebue had given me. It was situated not far from the place where Galgala was, in the plain of El-Ghor.