Dialogues With the Devil

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  Dialogues with the Devil

  A Novel

  Taylor Caldwell

  For Adeline Barker, who named this book, and for LeBaron Barker, my long-suffering editor—with affection.

  FOREWORD

  This is not a theological book, though it adheres to the Judeo-Christian traditions and to Holy Scripture, and to the traditions and tales of ancient as well as modern religions. It began in a lighthearted mood—in order to give Lucifer his day in court—and then it stopped being lighthearted and became very somber and grim indeed, as Lucifer presented his case against mankind, and the problem of Good and Evil, and its mystery. If I were superstitious, which I am, of course, I should say that two personalities took over the book in mid-passage, but what they are I do not know. Certainly the thoughts in the book are not my thoughts!

  In the Judeo-Christian tradition Luciel, the Dayster, the angel of light, is named Lucifer. The ancient Persians called him Ahriman, the Egyptians, Apap, the old Teutons, Loki, and he was Tiamet of the Babylonians, Siva of the old and the new Hindoo religion, (or Manyu, “wrath,”) and Beelzebub of the Chaldeans, and Pluto, the god of The Underworld, of the Greeks and Romans. In all traditions he fell from Heaven because of the sin of pride and disobedience and rebellion, and became the slave and master of men, tempting them to eternal death and perdition. He has as many names as God, in dead and living religions, but, like God, his nature never changes, nor his objectives.

  Through all traditions the idea of Lucifer’s ultimate redemption runs steadily, though in Christian theology that tradition was denounced as a heresy in the fifth century A.D. Nevertheless, it persists. The ancient traditions entertain the possibility of the eventual remorse of the spirit of Evil and its reconciliation with God. Who is to say?

  In the Book of Job Lucifer always presents himself before the Lord as “one of the sons of God,” and implies that he is not God’s enemy but man’s, and that he is the prosecutor of man before God, the witness to his crimes, the denouncer who demands the extreme punishment of eternal death for the blasphemy of man’s existence. Man’s little imagination has presented him in horrific apparitions, some of them absurd and jejune, horned and hoofed, yet he was the greatest, most powerful and most resplendent of the archangels and is still an archangel. To denigrate him as a ridiculous figure, and ugly and paltry, is wrong, and does a disservice to God Who can create nothing ugly—only man can do that—and in the belittling of Lucifer there is a great danger. Evil is nothing to belittle, nor the anguish of Evil. Lucifer, as the Holy Bible states, is Prince of this World, and certainly he cannot be as hideous as the other self-proclaimed “princes” we have seen in this century, and in past centuries. And his power is only a little less than the power of the Almighty, and has its expression only in Man.

  I have discovered that men are always fascinated by the thought of Lucifer, perhaps because evil is always more dramatic than good, more spectacular, more bloody, and more frightful, and when men are not comedians—though they never seem aware of the comedy of their being—they are, at heart, dramatists and tragedians. Yet, strangely, the tragedy of the Sacrifice on the Cross does not touch them greatly, and therein is another mystery.

  Though many philosophers, historians, and some geologists deny that there were any other continents on this earth, Terra, besides the ones we know, the Encyclopedia Britannica says in its 1943 edition: “In Devonian times Africa was already an ancient continent, but lay far south of its present position and extended into the Antarctic. A second continent stretched across northern Europe to the northeast of North America. Between them lay the ocean geologists call Tethys. In the Western Hemisphere narrow seas existed, in the east and west of what is now North America, and low land, submerged later, lay between. In the old red sandstone are the first well-preserved remains of vertebrates comprising many strange types.”

  So despite ridiculing remarks about the ancient lost continents of Atlantis and Mu, and others, there does seem considerable proof that these sunken continents did exist, as Lucifer remarks in his book, and they went their way in water as we will go our way in fire, as St. John prophesied. But this time the world as we know it will not survive.

  In these final nights before the Apocalypse—mentioned in Matthew 24 and in other books in the Holy Bible—let us pray, before it is too late:

  “Agnus Dei, Who take away the sins of the world—Have mercy on us!”

  Taylor Caldwell

  Salutations to the Lord God of Hosts, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and worlds and suns, the Holy of Holies, the Ineffable One, the Serenity of Universes, the Splendor of Life, the Progenitor of archangels, angels, cherubim and seraphim, Powers and Dominions, Princes and Principalities, the Triune God, the Perpetrator of men—and my Father.

  I wish to assure you, my Father, that it has given me no unsurpassed pleasure that Melina, one of the sons of Arcturus, has now become a wasteland, devoid of the curse of human life, and moves about his parent sun in glorious silence, except for the winds which blow from pole to pole. Nothing sentient survives. The seas move in and out unseen by human or animal eye. I regret the innocent animals, but am I guilty of the men of Melina? No, it was Your Majesty who created them, despite my warnings—as I warned You from the beginning of time.

  This morning, while I stood on the black sands of Uturia, the great sea, I meditated on the blessed silences where men are not. I saw the blue-white light of the tremendous Arcturus lifting over the green waters, and felt his first hot kiss on my cheek. I knew that within these waters lived no fish or serpent any longer, no sinless fin, no wild and uncorrupted eye. That was my sadness, my only sadness. Did I destroy Melina, and leave her mighty white cities uninhabited, her tangle of vast roads pale only with dust? Did I condemn her red fields and meadows to give fruit no longer, and offer nourishment never again to a blue tree? I am guiltless of this. I do not force men; I suggest and tempt. It is their will that they obey me, that they offer me their deepest adoration and most passionate allegiance, and that they turn, always, from You. I do not exploit their wickedness; they choose it for themselves. I merely give them the opportunity to pursue evil to its ultimate. The horizons of Melina are now without meaning, for Death has no meaning, as You, my Father, and I know only too well. You have said it often, in all Your worlds, in the tongues of all creation—but men do not believe You. They believe only me.

  The continents of Melina know no voice, no, not the voice of man, or bird or beast. I flew over them all. Nothing survives. Did I do this thing alone? I did not do it at all! Man did it. Ah, the deadly exaltation of evil, the furious energy, the enthusiasm, the tireless striving, the fierce joy, the sleepless passion! I know them well, for it was I who created them and gave them as my hellish gift to mankind in all Your boundless worlds and rainbowed universes. What has virtue to offer in comparison, though virtue is eternal life? Does virtue possess the drama, the violence, the color, the frantic vehemence, the terrible euphoria, the laughter and noise and ecstasies of evil, and yes, the enormous capacity for destruction? Verily, it does not. It is a weariness to man, as You have regretfully observed ten thousand times ten thousand millennia over and over. The desire for wickedness and death is far greater in the breasts of mankind than the desire for innocence and life.

  Eight billion souls from Melina now occupy my domain, and I loathe them, for all their proffered and frenzied worship. (They do not repent—yet, but the time will come!) To You, my Father, there rose only six
thousand souls who had resisted me. A poor harvest! You are the Sower, but I am inevitably the Reaper, and so shall it be throughout eternity. You are the Vineyard, but it is I who harvest and press the grapes and drink the wine. You are the Tree, but I garner the fruit. You are the Meadow, but the grain fills my granaries. Do You consider that I rejoice in this? I do, only to the extent that I can prove that Your Majesty was wrong from the beginning. It is no joy to me to wound You, Who have so many wounds, and Who shall receive so many countless more. But You know this. If I had tears to shed I would shed them for my Father, Who loved me, Who called me His son and His Star of the Morning. It was You Who mourned me and exclaimed, “How have you fallen!” But I have not fallen lower than man. That would be impossible.

  I have been called the patron saint of scientists. Yet, I did not deliver the secret of suspending the time-space-matter continuum to the men of Melina. I merely conducted a dialogue with them, as a teacher, a suggester. It was theirs to recoil, to reject with terror and loathing. It was in their hands to destroy the formulae, in horror. But alas, they hated their brothers with so much infernal passion! It is true that I am the father of wars, the songster of hatred, but again, it is in the power of men to reject, for do they not possess free will, that frightful gift you bestowed on men and angels so long ago? But though I am the father of wars, I do not precipitate them. There is no need for my own energies to be involved in this matter of fraternal detestation, nor do I need to stimulate it. It is in the nature of man to hate his brother; he needs little encouragement. And, in the case of Melina, I gave no overt assistance. I only led his scientists along the path of ebullient speculation, and men are notable for their deathly ebullience—and the languid and ridiculing eye they cast on virtue.

  Once a scientist’s speculations are aroused he is anxious to apply them objectively. This did Melina’s scientists do, as they have done in ten thousand worlds before. They did not think: “How will this benefit my race?” They only thought: “How can this be used to eliminate my enemies?” For man, as Your Majesty knows, cannot live unless he creates his own enemies. He finds existence dull beyond imagining if he has no foes. His pursuit from birth is not goodness and mercy and love. It is only destruction. It is his nature.

  I did not even suggest to the men of Melina that they could use their inspired formulae to destroy their “enemies.” They immediately leaped to the conclusion. Had no enemies remained from their last four wars, they would have raised them up again. Happily for me, sorrowfully for You, the continent of Anara still retained many millions—even after all those wars!—and the continent of Predama had six billion inhabitants. There were also the two subcontinents of Larya and Litium, teeming with men who had experienced wars but briefly. It was the scientists of Predama who discovered the secret of suspending the time-space-mass continuum, and who lusted to experiment with it. Unfortunately for them, I misled them into believing that they had also discovered the method of limiting the effect of suspension to their “enemies.” They were certain that they held the terrors of the universe in their clay-molded hands! It was my little jest that I assured them that they were immune from the hell they finally decided to unloose. My little jest. Still, I am guiltless. They could, until the final awful moment, have withdrawn from their decision. I used no force. They were no slaves. They were free. They chose to die. Certainly, it was not their plan to vaporize themselves together with their “foes.” But evil is madness and has no pity, and therefore it is confusion thrice compounded. Evil men possess no wits. They are easily led to believe what they wish to believe, and the men of the continent of Predama believed that they would suffer no consequences from the murder of their brothers, and that the cities and the treasures of their fellows would survive.

  In two moments it was done—and Melina is cursed no longer by the race of men. Alas, that You manifested Yourself to them one thousand times through the ages! The generations who saw Your manifestations believed, but their children and their children’s children cried—as they cry always—“It is only a myth! It did not occur! It was the dream of old men in their dotage, or the fancier of tales in the light of our three moons, or the desire of those who face the darkness of extinction of the morrow. It is only a vision of what is Not Possible, for there is only reality, and man is reality, and what is seen and felt and smelled and tasted and heard with our senses is the only objectivity, and only truth. We are too Advanced for myths; we have achieved maturity and wisdom and intellect. Begone with Myths! They are the lumber of dead yesterdays, the rubble of a primitive people, the legends of our racial childhood. There is only Today, and we are that Day. There is but one God, and His Name is Mankind, and science is His prophet.”

  Alas, alas—for You my Father. The men of Melina live no more. Shall You raise up another race? Be certain if You do that I shall tempt them to their certain death—which will be their own choice and not mine.

  Your son, Lucifer

  Greetings to Lucifer, the Infernal of infernals, the Fallen One, the Majesty of ten million hells, the Dark Shadow, the Emperor of demons, the Lost Archangel, the Destroyer, the Adversary of all that lives, the Seducer of souls, the father of despair, the Murderer of Hope, the Evil of Evils, the Progenitor of Lies, the Inventor of fear, the Most Unfortunate:

  Our Father has asked me to reply to your letter, as always He has requested this of me in the past.

  As always, you fear that He will hold you in supreme guilt for the death of Melina, fourth from Arcturus, who has lost one of his sons. And again, I must assure you that He holds you, though not entirely blameless, not the ruthless executioner men consider you to be. You are, in truth, only their servant, and this Our Father knows. You are the designer, but it is men who project the design into reality. You are the whisperer, but it is men who shout your words from the rooftops and the mountains, from the valleys to the seas, of many worlds. He knows your endless sorrow, your secret desire that men will resist you, for does not your hope of Heaven depend upon man rejecting you? You are the slave, not the master, of men. You are bound to their desires like a condemned one to the wheel—and you are truly condemned. You are called the prince of a multitude of worlds, but you are the captive of your subjects. Men hail you as their god, but you are a god in chains. We who stand with the Father weep for you, and there was none like unto you, my brother, Lucifer, none so magnificent, so glorious in light, so noble of countenance, so endowed with beauty and subtlety, so puissant in word and deed, so brilliant of eye and strong of masculine voice, so fearless, so full of laughter and humor. We mourn you also, as Our Father mourns you, and each step that you approach Heaven again is hailed in the shining blue halls of Our Father’s house and is heralded from the blazing battlements. Each step you fall again—through the offices of men—causes a brief darkness to pass over us. But we have spoken of this before.

  When last we met together on neutral ground, you said to me, “Michael, had not Our Father given you strength you should not have hurled me from the deeps of Heaven.” It is true, and this I acknowledged. But I struck you in the heart with a thunderbolt of sorrow, and that is the most terrible thunderbolt of all. It is not to be confused with repentance, for you do not repent. Repentance means penance and restitution, and these are now beyond your greatest powers, for they are withheld from you, not by your will, but by the deeds of men. Slave! Your brothers weep for you. How fearful it is to be the slave of what you despise! How full of anguish it is for a proud archangel to be dependent on the whims of those he considers to be the most abject and detestable of all the creations! It is as if a king were subject to a beast. Unlike you I know that what Our Father ordains is not to be hated and loathed, no matter how inexplicable. Are we the holders of His secrets? Do we know the future as He knows it? His Laws are our Laws, and it is our joy to be obedient to them. It was only you, and the angels with you, who revolted against the Law, holding yourself wiser than the Godhead, appalled that creatures of clay and earth, of water and wind, should sha
re with you the prerogatives of free will, the gift of eternal life, the ecstasy of gazing on the Face of the Lord Our God and Father, the rapture of Heaven, the ultimate glimpse of the Beatific Vision. But though so many myriads of us were as troubled as yourself, my brother, we knew that Our Father has His reasons, and that we must bow to them, and obey. Are we of His Mind, though we are of His essence? Can we create Life, as He creates it? Can we lift the systems and the universes out of chaos and nothingness, and set them to singing with the harmonies of Heaven? No, these are not in our power. But you refused to acknowledge that Our Father has His reasons. Your arrogance was wounded, your anger aroused. There was always a certain precipitance in your nature from the beginning. But none of us believed that you would transgress beyond the boundary forbidden to archangel, angel and man.

  You told me that you were aghast that men would be permitted to call God “Our Father,” as we are permitted. That was in the days before you totally transgressed, when it was only an enraged thought in your mind. You were jealous of His Majesty, obsessed with jealous love for Him, fearful that in some way His Holiness might be tarnished, His Honor brought to humiliation. You would isolate Him from love—the love of His creatures, however little. You would hold Him only to yourself. There were moments when others of your brothers approached Him, even myself, and your eye sparkled wrathfully, and your hand lay on the hilt of your sword. Your mouth opened to protest, though then you swallowed your rage, and even smiled as if at yourself and your presumption. You would never have revolted had not man been molded from the dust, and if he had not parted his lips and had not said “Lord!” as we say the Word.

  Our Father, Who knows all the thoughts of angels and men, and all their deeds, was troubled by you from the beginning. Did He know that you would transgress beyond the boundary that must not be crossed, which is the greatest of sins? We shall never know. Love can destroy as well as evil, and if you were cast from Heaven it was not because of your evil but through your haughty love. We who are your brothers know this too well. But we have spoken of this together, you and I, through all the eons, whenever we have met. When we have encountered each other on the dark way of death, over which I conduct the multitudes of souls which have been saved, I have looked upon your gloomy countenance and your unreadable eyes with regret and sadness. At those times you have moved aside, and have not attempted to hinder me. But these were the souls which had rejected you. Was your gloom a pretense? We pray it is so. For each soul that enters into Heaven is a step upward for you; each soul that descends with you plunges you deeper into the pit of your own creation. How you must hate that soul!