Dialogues With the Devil

by Taylor Caldwell

  As always, when a soul leaves a body we know it, you and I. But I had heard the anguish of that man’s repentance and his plea for mercy, he who had never been merciful, and I arrived beside his dying body as it lay on the floor of his chamber the instant you also arrived. You touched his flesh with your foot and said to me, “He is surely damned.” He had fallen there in the brief sleep that precedes death, and I waited.

  Then his spirit crept like a larva from the flesh, cringing and wringing its hands and mourning, and the awakened eyes fell upon you and knew you fully, as he had known in life. And he said to you, “Take me, for I am your own, and give me the deepest of your torments, for I am worthy of no more.”

  But I had heard the Voice of Our Father, and I said to him, “No, you have repented, and not out of fear but out of remorse and a desire to make recompense, and in loathing of yourself. You have asked for mercy, and it is given to you. Arise, and come with me.”

  He looked upon your terrible grandeur in silence but not in dread, and then he looked at me and shaded his eyes with his hand. “I am not worthy,” he said. “If I may be reborn, let me live as the lowest and most contemptible animal, that I may do penance.”

  Alas, you said to him, “Creature, you have always been that animal, and so I claim you.” But you knew he was beyond your power if he so willed. He hesitated, then gazed at me again and I said, “If you will, you can rise and go with me to a place of purging, for you have repented and you need but be made clean of your sins. One died for you, that you might repent your crimes and that you might know Heaven and not death. Accept His Grace and His Sacrifice, and arise.”

  He stood there, trembling, and he touched my garment and said, “It is white fire, and you have a godlike face, and you must be an angel. Do with me what you will.” And he turned from you and departed with me.

  You will say that is unjust, and that men far lesser in evil than he live eternally with you in your hells. But Our Father knows true justice. He will never reject the soul that prays for forgiveness and mercy and loathes his own wickedness at last, whether in the morning or the evening of his life. But it must be true repentance, and not out of fear of hell. It must be an awakening of the whole spirit. That soul is now in Purgatory, where he rejoices, knowing that in some hour he will be free to fly to the hands of God, and that he will be assigned tasks of restitution and reparation. He hungers for redeeming labor where once he hungered only for the powers of his world.

  When that soul departed with me, I looked back at you and you faintly smiled and saluted me in mocking silence. Were you pleased, Lucifer, that one of your own had finally rejected you in the last moments of his life? You will never tell me. But I hope it is so. I believe it is so, for a single instant light itself touched your forehead and you raised your own eyes to Heaven.

  True it is that the men of Pandara, and her sister worlds, may reject God in the future generations and deny Him, and turn to you as their god. We do not know that in surety. Only God knows, for only He sees the future. However, who knows what revelations He will give to those worlds, and what renewal, and what hope for redemption. He has done this ten thousand times ten thousand times over, and will He not do it again? We do not know. I can only hope, and trust in His love.

  Doubtless, you now know—for what is there in the planets that you do not know?—that Melina, whose men you persuaded to destroy all their fellows, including themselves, has become, again, a blue garden of the Lord. Between one breath and the next He obliterated the lifeless and enormous cities, which had desecrated the land, and all the vast tangle of huge roads, and the great towers of futile learning and the conceit of statues raised in a spirit of ebullient self-congratulation. All that arrogant man had made in his folly and in his worship of man has blown away in dust, and again the new trees and the forests and the shining fields are merry with animal voices and sparkling with young eyes and gay with the frisking of happy beings. No fear is here, no creatures of prey, no death, no pain or suffering, no storms and terrors. The winds no longer are foul with pollution and fog and filth. The rivers run clean and brilliant, the lakes are like jewels, and the oceans bubble with a new creation. The opalescent mountains glitter in the strong halcyon light that flows from Arcturus, that great sun. There are no gray deserts, which man had made, no scars on the blessed earth, no uglinesses that came from the souls of men. The skies are silent and glowing, for no roar of man-made machines shatter them. The waters laugh, for no ships sail them, and no harbors mangle the shores. There is nothing but rustlings and song and the sweetness of flowered breezes, and long still shadows in the evening and the pure stateliness of the mornings. Melina is a new Eden—awaiting again the lordship of a new race of men, blossoming, fresh with sapphire trees bearing scarlet and yellow fruit, vivid with red grain. All is calmness, peace, happiness, and mirth.

  I discern but one thing which gives me apprehension: on a great plain there is a stark crimson peak, lifeless and lonely, like a bleak monument. Is that to be the Forbidden Land, from which men will be warned at the peril of death and their disastrous fall? Our Father, you will remember, always creates an Area of Choice, a challenge to disobedience, a place where men can exercise their immortal privilege of free will. I look upon that peak, and I often hover over it, and I see its terror and its promise of ruin. No living creature approaches it; it appears cursed, in its isolated grandeur. But, when did men ever turn from a curse, at least in so many worlds which we have known?

  I cannot ask you, as my brother, not to approach Melina in his beauty, when a new race inhabits him, for if temptation never appears how, then, shall a man exercise his free will? Yes, surely you will tempt the sons of men, however glorious they appear in their new life. I can only hope that they will resist you, that they will turn their adventurous eyes from that ghastly peak, that they will remember the Commandment, and that they will live eternally on Melina in youth, strength, courage, love and Grace, in communion with Our Father, in the smile of their guardian angel, myself.

  You have often laughed at me and my guardianship, and have said to me, “You are impotent before me.” Yes, it has happened so many tens of thousands of times, and so many times without count I have had to drive men from the Garden and let them suffer their self-ordained fate. Each time I have wept and have said to the sons of men, “Shed not your tears, for you are not victims except of yourselves, and this is the fate you chose, and this is the death you willed, and this is the anguish you invoked, and this is the sorrow you embraced of your own free will. Weep for your children, for the earth is cursed in you, and weep for the innocent beasts of the fields and the mountains and the waters, to which you brought death and ravening hunger and whom you made creatures of prey. Alas, you did this, and not God.”

  The few six thousands of souls—out of all those billions!—who ascended into Heaven when Melina was destroyed by men, pray for him again and give their blessing on the land and the mountains and the waters. It is they who worked with Our Father to make of Melina the gracious planet he once was, who designed the sunsets and the mornings, who suggested the creatures who live in the trees and the seas, who invented the fruits and the grains. Our Father touched the inventions with life, and He has raised His Hands upon Melina. But only He knows if Melina will fall again under your enticements and your lies. Has He planned, in that event, to give revelations to Melina—as He has done so many multitudes of times before? We do not know. And will the sons of Melina remember, and keep the faith, rejoicing? Or will they spurn the Lord again and again build their monstrous cities of infamy, and their temples of blind learning, and will they again pollute the air and the earth and leave wounded scars where loveliness now exists? I do not know. I only know one thing: there is gold in that fearsome stark monument on the lonely plain. And gold incites wars.

  You do not hate me, for you are my brother, and we loved each other in Heaven. You do not hate the other archangels, and angels, who are the guardian spirits of other galaxies and other uni
verses. You would join us—if man did not stand between us, man whom you have never forgiven for having been created.

  What you destroy Our Father will re-create. What you lay waste, He will replenish. When you offer death and pride, He will offer life and humility and obedience. When you incite wars, He will strive for peace. You raise up hatred among men, and sometimes the red thunder of it drowns out the Voice of Love, and banishes it.

  In the end, Our Father will prevail, and in your secret heart you know it. Why, then, do you strive? Are not the inhabitants of your hells enough for your rapacity? Why would you fatten them the more? Yes, I know all your arguments: Man is an insult to his Creator. Man is unworthy of His Creator. Man, above all, is an outrage to the angels, who must suffer him. Man calls God his Father also, and that is supremely intolerable to you, who love Him with a most terrible and prideful love and would have no human eye gaze upon Him with confidence. Flesh is not that vile, Lucifer, though you believe it is.

  Flesh, too, has all the capacities of the angels, for so Our Father willed, and the souls of flesh are immortal. Flesh has its beauties, lesser than ours, to be sure, but still it has charm and tenderness. Man was not created as the angels, except for free will, but when he is majestic and obedient he is not much lower. You would deny God His infinite variety, His smaller creations, His fantasies and His delights. We do not know the meaning of man—but Our Father knows. Yet, like a possessive princely son you would surround Our Father with walls of your own creating, and limit Him to His Throne, and protect His glory, and you alone, if you had the power, would approach the Holy of Holies, and imprison the King in His own Heaven.

  I often wonder: If Our Father had not created man at all would you not have warred upon us, your brothers, to keep us from Him, and hold Him as your own, only? Have you wanted Him as your adored Prisoner? Have you desired the Beatific Vision for yourself alone? As I wrote you before, I saw your ardent and jealous and angry eye when we approached Him, and your hand on your sword, which flashed like lightning even in its scabbard. Would you alone converse with Him, and keep His conversation for your own ear?

  He is not the Inmate of His precious Creation! He knew your love for Him, and that is why He mourned you, and Heaven, for a pace, was darkened with His sorrow. He would have you return to Him, in grief and repentance.

  How long, O Lucifer, will you deny your own nature and your own longing? Why is life abominable to you?

  Your brother, Michael

  Greetings to my brother, Michael, who fears for that disgusting Melina, which I cleansed of man, and who believes that he knows my thoughts:

  I do not resent that Melina is once more filled with sinless, animal life. Would that it remain so! How beautiful it is, that no man lives upon it yet! It is indeed a garden, fit to be inhabited by angels for their pleasure and their leisure and tranquillity. It is even fairer than before, musical with creation, sweet with innocence, without guile and without pretensions.

  But if man is created again for the dominion of Melina, then I shall destroy him through the evil imaginings of his own heart.

  You do me an injustice. It is not life I hate, but life that pretends to be like ours. In short, human life. It is that life which I detest, the life of men. Yet, considering, it may be that I do not despise too greatly female human existence, for you will remember that once we looked upon the daughters of men and found them fair, and lay with them and begot sons and daughters of our own. Indeed, as it is written on Terra, there were giants in the earth in those days—flesh of their mothers, essence of ours. Our Father did not forbid that conceiving and begetting. We took upon ourselves a temporary grosser dimension, it is true, but still transcendent, and the daughters of men could not resist us, the lovely treasures! We took them as our wives, and they loved us and bowed before us, and they told their daughters of us, and to this day women dream of us at the side of their husbands. Many of us welcomed the spirits of our wives at Heaven’s gate—or at least you more fortunate of my brothers did so.

  Ah, women! Would that Our Father had created women only, and not men for them! Imagine all those magnificent planets inhabited only by female flesh, waiting for our embraces! The darling eyes and hair and breasts and thighs of women! I have always loved the female creature. Women naturally adore me, even in hell. They are my most assiduous servitors, in flesh or out of it. They bring the souls of men by the multitude to me. The true laughter in hell is the laughter of women, human or diabolic. With what delicacy they seduce! My own demons cannot spin the lies that women spin, nor invent such delicious delights, not even Lilith. The tender loves can imagine horrors that men cannot imagine, and strange and dainty cruelties, for they are of more imaginative stuff than men. The empresses of Rome, the concubines of Egypt, the Aspasias of Greece, the Borgia ladies—what elegance! Who would not have lain with them, angels or men?

  But the women of Terra today are drab wretches, and rare is that loveliness and inventiveness we knew of old, rare that irresistible charm. They vie with men for any office or any condition of life. They are insistent, shrill, grim of countenance, deliberately ugly and contorted, determined that no spot shall be free of them, no employment not their own, no hallowed place unshattered by their peevish voices. It is not enough that they have the power to create beauty and poetry, to bear children, to comfort men, to throw an aura of peace and sanctity about their households. The arts with which God endowed them are now distasteful to them. They would be as men, assuming, against all the Laws of Our Father, the garb of men; they stride like males; they possess muscles. They are fierce and demanding and arrogant, beyond the ferocity, covetousness and belligerence of their men; some now bear arms, they who were endowed with the instinct to nurture and protect life. They go to wars in loathsome uniforms and are proud of their skill with the instruments of death. The tramp of their booted feet is heard in all the cities. They are either imitation men, with men’s vices but not their virtues, or they are weak and whining maggots desirous of all things and deserving of none. Now they would invade the very sacred temples, themselves, as priestesses!

  Naturally, it was I who offered the lure of masculinity to them. I gave them envy of men and assured them that the masculine world was withholding rights from them, which they eminently deserved, for were they not quicker of wit and more durable? I offered them peculiar lusts and irresponsibilities; I made them despise what had made them women and hold it in low regard. Booted and trousered, they are my own. Unfortunately. I could well endure without these near-men, who come shouting into my hells. The ancient ladies look upon them with horror and say, “What are these creatures, and are they male or female?”

  But I owe them gratitude. They emasculate their men and destroy the masculine spirit. They reduce men to the status of cowardly slaves, dependent, desiring little cosinesses and tiny comforts, meager little pleasures and silly consolations. Once the men of Terra were bold and strong and protective, tender with a great strength, delighting in manly pursuits and manly laughter. But now they nestle—there is but one word for it—nestling. They do not guard their houses with the might of their arms, as once they did. No, they brush the hearths and bend over cradles, not to amuse infants or to tease them happily, but to remove excreta and pour milk into their mewling mouths. They wash pots and smooth beds, and, merciful God, they are “companions” to their wives! They are no guardians; they are children, themselves, afraid of their own honest sweat for fear of offending the nostrils of women, or even other men. Their pursuits are feminine, and women have driven them into the designing of garments for their female bodies, or other monstrous occupations.

  And women have turned men from them unto other men for pleasures once designed for only between the sexes, and for the procreation of children. It is true that I invented those pleasures, but had men remained men they would not have been tempted by them, and had women remained women their men could not have seduced other men. Yes, it is true that the old Egyptian and Grecian and Roman men turned
to their fellows, but only after their women became dominant, their mothers seductive, their daughters manly. I have transformed Terra into a hell where women are no longer cherished or deeply desired, but are feared and exploited in self-defense. Bold and harsh and coarse of flesh and skin, women indeed have changed Terra into a fearsome abode, rife with frightful crimes, ranting with ideologies, and thundering in wars. After all, men have to have some respite from their women, do they not? Craven wretches—I find it in my heart, at times, to pity them.

  The women of Terra will destroy civilization as they destroyed it in ancient countries, for nations cannot survive depravity and the reversal of the sexes. Perhaps the holocaust I desire for Terra—and surely it will come soon—is not necessary after all. Meanness and littleness and drabness are a more worthy hell for the men of Terra than universal death—perhaps. Strange, is it not, that it is only the barbarians on Terra who have preserved their masculinity, whereas civilized nations have abandoned it? I muse: Shall I induce the barbarians of Terra to attack the alleged “sophisticated” nations? Perhaps.

  I cannot resist Terra! It is so contemptible. One of their beloved sages, a man called Freud, spoke of Terra: “This detestable world.” He knew it well, and its vilest lusts, for he was incestuous and prideless, a woman at heart and understanding of women. He hated men, for true men were a goad to him and he despised what he could not be, himself. He now has the companionship of women only, as he desired only the presence of his female relatives.

  Do not be tiresome, Michael, and remind me that many women on Terra are still women, loving and nurturing, teaching and sheltering, sacrificing their lives that others might live, and living a life of poetry, reflection, prayer, and faith. They are so few! And they are regarded with scorn by their corrupt sisters and are derided as superstitious or old or backward, or in love with fantasies, or not part of what is called, to my laughter, “this new world.”