Dialogues With the Devil

by Taylor Caldwell

  “You have something to request of me,” said Lucifer to Michael, after they had drunk the perfumed wine.

  “True,” said Michael.

  “If it concerns that miserable little clot, Terra, I pray you to save your breath,” said Lucifer.

  “It concerns you,” Michael answered.

  “Then indeed it concerns Terra. And Our Father.”

  “He would have you repent and return to Him,” said Gabriel, his gray eyes luminous.

  Lucifer held out his goblet to Ariel for more wine, and the young archangel refilled it. Lucifer looked into the deep depths of it. Then he raised his eyes, moved them from heroic face to face, and pondered. And as he did so the light in the pellucid atmosphere dimmed.

  “Let us reflect a moment,” said Lucifer. “It is long since we held a conversation together. I have thought through the ages of the suns, and I doubt if you have followed my thoughts. We agree Our Father is omniscient, knowing time and eternity, the past, present, and future simultaneously?”

  “Yes,” said Michael. Now every eye fixed itself upon Lucifer, waiting.

  “Then, have you considered this? At the moment He created me He knew what I would be—His disputer in time and eternity?”

  Michael hesitated. Finally he said, “So it must have been.”

  Lucifer smiled again. “If He is omniscient—and we do not deny that—He knew even before He created me that I would contend with Him—and His despicable creation, man?”

  Now for the first time the others were uneasy.

  In a caressing tone Lucifer said, “We agree that as He holds all eternity and all time in His Mind, nothing had been hidden from Him?”

  They were still silent, watching him.

  “He knew before, of my hells and my quarrels with Him, from the beginning? Can you deny that?”

  “We do not know the Thoughts of Our Father,” said Gabriel.

  “Sweet brother, that is an evasion, a begging of the question. But, tell me. We have granted Our Father omniscience, as He has claimed, Himself. Why, then, did He create me and through me all the evil of the ages of time?”

  “It is a great mystery,” said Raphael.

  “So it has been said before,” Lucifer remarked with bitter impatience. “I am weary of hearing of the mysteries of Our Father, and taking refuge from questions in obedience and reverence. It is true that I am the creator of pain and despair, of disease and dissolution, of agony and perdition and fire and loss, of waning, of the torments of the flesh, and all the anguishes of man. But these things would not have been—had He not created me. Why, then, did He do so?”

  They did not answer.

  “Unless,” said Lucifer, in the softest and most insidious of voices, “He is not omniscient after all?”

  His shadow brightened like a flame on the grass, and his brothers felt his fearsome power, the passion and darkness and anger and rebellion of his spirit.

  “So?” said Lucifer. “Am I, then, the true creator of evil, and should, therefore, I be condemned?”

  Again the cold blue ferocity of his eyes moved mockingly from face to face, and he saw their perturbation, and a frightful exultation seized him.

  “Perhaps,” he said, with great gentleness, “we should have mercy on Our Father and say that He is not omniscient, knows only the past in time, but not the future?”

  “That would be to deny what He has proclaimed, Himself!” cried the young Ariel.

  “Are you tempting us, Luciel?” asked Michael, and his hand touched the hilt of his sword, and Lucifer saw the gesture and laughed aloud, and now a mutter of thunder disturbed the pent air. He held up his own hand, and the jewels flashed upon it.

  “Tempt you, my brother?” he exclaimed, as if incredulous. “Are you not invulnerable to me?”

  He looked upon the mountains and the seas and the soft land and appeared to muse, but his eyes were excited. Still, when he spoke, it was in a thoughtful tone. “All these glorious worlds! Why was He not content? He could have created legions more of us, who would have adored Him in eternity and gazed upon Him. Why did He create man?”

  “You have asked that endlessly before,” said Raphael of the dark eyes.

  “True. But the answer has never been forthcoming. Are we as stupid as man? Why does He deprecate our ability to understand?”

  “He created man—for Love,” said Gabriel. “We are spirits. We are not involved in gross matter. He would have matter imbued with immortal soul also. He would have sentience in all things, and a knowledge of Him. You will grant that all His worlds are lovely beyond speech, and they are matter. But they are not here for our exclusive frolicking, nor would they be needed at all, for we are spirit. There are infinite possibilities in Our Father’s Mind. You would deny them to Him.”

  But Lucifer said, as if meditating, “‘For Love,’ you say, Gabriel. Was our love not sufficient for Him? Did He have to look for it in the gutters and filthy alleys of men’s minds? In the sewers and the abattoirs? In the carnal pits and in the bowels of man? Why has He abased Himself so, and demeaned us in the abasing?”

  “It is not for us to know,” said Michael sternly.

  Lucifer sipped at his wine, and picked up a rosy fruit and contemplated it. He said, “Then you admit that He abased Himself? And us?”

  Now Michael smiled broadly. “What a temptor you are, Luciel! I am consumed with admiration! Did you believe for a moment that you could tempt us into your own sin?”

  “Not at all, beloved brother. I have asked you only to consider my questions.”

  Michael shook his head in merriment. “We leave both the questions—and the answers—to God. It is sufficient for us.”

  Lucifer sighed. “Always you have wearied me, with your bland acceptance of everything. I will continue to pose questions. When a question is not answered it is a presumption that there is no answer.”

  “Except with God,” said Raphael.

  “Let us return to Our Father’s presumed omniscience, a question you have deftly evaded. If He is truly omniscient, then He, not I, is the Creator of the evil among men. For He created me.”

  “We leave that to God,” said Michael.

  “Sweet obedient son of the Most High! How admirable you are!” The mockery of Lucifer’s voice struck them like a sword. “But men question, though you do not. Therefore, man, gross animal, is less docile than you, and has a more penetrating mind.”

  “You would deny that we have free will?” asked Ariel.

  “No. But you do not exercise it. You do not question. Man questions, therefore can it not be assumed that he has more courage than you, is more inventive and more thoughtful?”

  “You tempt him to ask forbidden questions,” said Raphael.

  Lucifer lifted his hand in denial. “I pose the questions. If man echoes them, and considers them, then he is more vital than you, and exercises his prerogative of free will, which you do not. By the mere asking of questions he raises himself above beasthood.”

  “I am glad to see that you now hold a better opinion of man,” said Michael, with pretended gravity. “Can we, then, hope?”

  Lucifer shook his beautiful head. “How evasive you are! But I expected no more wisdom here than I did in Heaven. Tell me. Has it not been said that no question can be posed unless there is an answer? God’s answer?”

  “True,” said Raphael.

  “Then, why do you not ask the questions, the answers to which God holds in His Heart? Why do you deny Him the opportunity to answer? Is that not, in itself, a deprecation of His Love, and His willingness to enlighten you? Are you not imputing to Him a lack of omniscience?”

  “We are imputing to Him a greater wisdom than ours,” said Michael. “He has not informed us as yet. We await His answers, to the mystery of all creation, including yours.”

  Lucifer dashed the wine in his goblet on the grass, and mysteriously it died at once as if fire had touched it. His voice became louder and was echoed in the first thunder of the planet. “Weak
slaves! I, alone, in Heaven, have questioned Him! I was the greatest of them all. He made my spirit, my mind, my ability to question! Had He not wished me to question would He, then, not have made questions impossible to me?”

  The fruit in his hand withered and dried, and it was the first decay on the planet. Lucifer threw it from him, but his eyes never left the faces of his brothers, and they were full of derision. “Answer me!” he exclaimed.

  “We, too, can question,” said Michael. “But we know that though there are answers it is not yet the hour for them to be given. Is that so hard for you to understand, Luciel?”

  “Then He dishonors His children by denying the answers to them!”

  “In your pride you assume you are completely capable of understanding,” said Raphael. “But He is Our Father, and we are only His Creation, and we are as children before Him, and the time is not yet. This He has given us to comprehend. Only you refused your acceptance. Only you insisted that you must be enlightened at once!”

  “Our Father asks only obedience of us,” said Michael, sorrowfully. “Is that so impossible a request—obedience—to Him Who created us in His Love, and would have all creation know Him to serve Him in joy and delight and wonderment and ecstasy?”

  “Childish raptures!” said Lucifer, with scorn, his eyes flashing like blue lightning. “Are we indeed whimpering and craven children, or slaves? Can we be content with toys and little deliciousnesses? Are we not mind, as well as emotion? And is not the mind, of both angel and man, the noblest of possessions, and worth the exercising? It is in our minds that we approach the closest to Him, Who is all Mind. Mind is the creator of all philosophy, all order, all beauty, all satisfaction, but emotion is the lowliest of the virtues, if it is a virtue at all. Mind has in it the capacity to know all things, or, at least, the minds of angels.”

  “But the mind, whether of angel or man, is noblest and purest when it is faithful and obedient, and acknowledges that it cannot understand the Mind which created it, though It is not separated from it.” Michael’s sternness irradiated his face with cool light. He continued, “Can we not assume that as He has given us free will He has given us the ability to demand to know all, to enter the Area of Dissent and rebellion, and therefore to fall by our own willing?”

  Lucifer rose. He said with contempt, “So we have argued both in Heaven, and through eternity, and never have you satisfied me or answered me as rational creatures. Therefore, it is not sinfulness which is irrational, but virtue, though I prefer to call your virtue weak stupidity.”

  He pointed at each in turn. “Who were you, in comparison with me? I, alone, had the intelligence and the virility to ask Him questions, through the offices of the mind with which He endowed me. Is it possible He refrained from giving you minds, also?”

  “I assure you, Luciel, that we have minds,” said Gabriel, smiling. “And our minds tell us to obey implicitly, that many things are hidden from us by God’s will, and that, if He wills, He shall, one day, enlighten us. In our obedience we discover our greatest joy, just as you, in your disobedience, have discovered your greatest agony.”

  He looked at them, in their serene white robes, and knew that he had lost again, though only for a moment had he dreamed that he might attain his greatest victory. He said, “You weary me. If the intent of your inviting me here was to speak in childish words and tire me, then you have succeeded.”

  “That was not our intention,” said Michael, and he rose also.

  “What, then, was your intention?”

  “To bring you Our Father’s love and to ask you to repent and to return to Him.”

  Lucifer looked at the quiet and statuesque forms he could see over Michael’s shoulder, and he was darkly amused.

  “It is interesting to conjecture,” he said, “that if I had not fallen—which one of you would have done so? After all, when Our Father gave angels and men free will it was necessary for Him to create an area of choice. Did He do so—in me? Or, if I had not fallen, would you, Michael, or you, Gabriel, or you, Raphael, or you, Ariel? Do you think Our Father has been entirely just to me?”

  “We do not question His justice,” said Michael.

  “Dear Heaven! How sententious you are!” said Lucifer. “And how elusive. I am God’s Contending Force. It was necessary for Him to create me. Therefore, I now grant Him omniscience! Am I not magnanimous?”

  His face darkened still more and the gloom of it pervaded the equable atmosphere, and now a wind arose, threatening and dull. The luminous hair of the angels lifted and blew about their faces, and a deep shadow ran over the lovely earth.

  He said, “So gracious a world is this! I know it is Our Father’s intention to create man here also, man who will deface the earth, pollute its seas and rivers, crowd it with his raucous cities, his vile suburbs, his tangled and dusty roads, and drive from Pellissa all innocent life, all gentle beasts and birds, all flowering trees, and make a barren hell and wasteland of what was once full of peace and music and glades and forests. He will set his howling children in every corner, screaming in the winds, bloodying the fields in wars, clamoring in these lucid skies, disturbing the quiet oceans, making a stink of ponds and lakes so that no life can endure there. Has this not always been the history of man, who, in his arrogance believes his species of the utmost value, above all else? He will never learn that he is the ugliest and most revolting of creation. I have vowed to destroy him. Tell Our Father that when I have succeeded then I shall repent the sorrow I have caused Him, though not the cause. He will admit, in time, that I was right from the beginning.”

  Michael regarded that cold and imperial countenance with sadness again, and saw that the bitter blue ferocity of the eyes had not softened. When Lucifer made as if to leave him he put a restraining hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  “Again, Luciel, it is our concern that you return to us. You are not omniscient. That is reserved for Our Father. We know the prophecies. There is still time. If you do what you plot, never again shall we know you or have hope for you, and never again will Heaven be blest and brightened by your presence.”

  Lucifer laughed a little. “You deny Our Father’s compassion, for you have admitted that His prophecies condemn me before the act! Is that just?”

  Michael sighed. “Our Father’s will is conditioned by the will of man, who is corrupted by you. Prophecies are often warnings, not adamantly fixed in the future. You will recall that His Mother has frequently warned Terra of impending doom and the holocaust, if men do not repent and do penance and seek justice and love and peace. Evil is not inevitable, nor is it fate. If prophetic warnings are not heeded, then indeed disaster results. Man—and you—have but to listen, and will life—or death.”

  Lucifer spoke with a sudden impetuousness not usual with him, and he made a fierce and despairing gesture. “I would,” he cried, “that I had never known life nor have been created by Him! I am His puppet! And, at the last, He would throw me eternally into the pit for merely accomplishing what He had designed from the beginning of time! He cursed me with man, and now would punish me for His own anathema!”

  “Withhold, Luciel, before it is too late,” said Michael, in great grief.

  Lucifer looked at him in mockery. “What! Have you forgotten what the Lord has said of these days on Terra? ‘And ye shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars—for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes—these are the beginnings of sorrow. Then shall many be offended and shall betray one another and shall hate one another, and because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold. Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. Then shall the tribes of earth mourn—’

  “Michael, so was the prophecy of the end of Terra spoken by the Lord. And again, I
am merely His puppet, and what I will accomplish was foreordained by Him.”

  “It was not foreordained, Luciel. It was His warning, and the warning of His Mother, also.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Lucifer, smiling again, “it will come to pass. Did not Daniel the prophet warn of it, long before He debased Himself by being born of the flesh of man? Did not Isaias so prophesy, and Joel? Who am I to demand that all this not be, when He has said it?”

  “You mock me, Luciel. Again, I repeat that prophecies are also warnings, and are not inevitably fixed in the future.”

  Lucifer made an impatient though indulgent sound. “Dear Michael, you know Him less well than I know Him, for I was always at His hand and was His morning star. I admit that I never knew His intentions always, but I know His intention in the case of this miserable and darkling little spot of mud, Terra. He will use me to destroy her, and destroy me also.”

  “Man has but to reject you and return to God, and he will be saved, and you, too, Luciel.”

  “You say words, but there is no hope in your eye, Michael.”

  Michael’s glorious face changed and was despairing. “Luciel! Man is of less concern to me, anywhere in the universe, than you, my brother! Perhaps, too, he is of less importance to Our Father, than you!”

  If Lucifer was moved he gave no sign. He said, “Then, let Him obliterate man, His one error in all the universes. Or, again, that will I accomplish. Did you know that the men of Terra, who now proclaim that Our Father is dead, that man is God, that constant riches are now forever theirs, that they have command of the worlds—and they boast they will conquer them—are now consumed by a sense of dread and foreboding, even when they laugh and caper and prophesy, as they call it, ‘the glorious future of mankind’?”