Great mischief (19 page)

Timothy sat paralyzed. He glanced in anguish at Sinkinda, but her smoky eyes were depthless. What'll I do? he said to himself, hearing a dry rattle as if his entrails had shriveled in the fires beneath and were knocking about inside his crawling skin. Yet a kind of mettle pulsed there under the fatty tissues of caution. Though Satan's imps tear him in pieces . . . He closed his eyes and said in a big voice, "Yes, sir."

"Capital!" cried Satan. "A well-spoken man, Sinkinda. He passes the first test with flying colors."

Timothy opened his eyes, but in his fright they wouldn't focus. Satan and Sinkinda whirled about him in confusion. Presently he found his tongue. "Oh . . . I thought ... I supposed . . ."

"No doubt you did. You've been brought up on heretical ideas by divines who wall stop at nothing to accomplish my disreputation. Those sermons of theirs? Winter's tales and old wives' fables! Why, I hate an atheist above everything. The stubborn, stiff-necked, gristly vermin—the world should be rid of them!"

His vehemence loosened two locks of hair, which stood up, charmingly pointed, from his forehead. He smoothed them down with both palms and went on. "Obviously I can exist only if the Adversary exists: what impudence to deny us! The unbeliever, my friend, sterilizes—denatures—life. Besides, as a practical matter"—he spread his hands and appealed to Timothy with manly reasonableness—"unless people believe in some Good they have no sense of guilt in doing wrong and therefore offer me no hold."

"Naturally ... of course not," said Timothy, mustering his wits as best he could. His intentions seemed to be acceptable, for Satan drew a box of Havanas from his desk and offered Timothy one. From another box he took a small twisted black cigar for Sinkinda: "A brand especially affected by Russian countesses," he said, smiling, and, cracking his knuckles, lighted it for her from a spark.

"Ah, Magister—" Sinkinda murmured, giving him a sultry look from under her great golden fluff.

In a moment they were all puffing away, and Timothy thought he had never been in more congenial surroundings than this handsome study with its rich dark draperies and polished wood, its brilliant and agreeable company. Presently Satan said, "Now perhaps there are some questions you would like to ask me."

As usual, Timothy's list of conversational topics treacherously eluded him. He pulled himself together, however, and made a stab at it. "Tell us a little more about Good and Evil, sir. If you would vouchsafe some enlightenment on that plaguing question—" He hesitated; what he really wanted to ask, namely, had man any hope of rooting out Evil, seemed less than tactful. He went on: "People's good qualities are so often bad; the well-meaning do as much mischief as the wicked— and yet you have to have the good will, the good intention—" He paused, treading water.

"But, my dear man, you exercise yourself quite unnecessarily about that sort of thing. Good and Evil are interactive—they depend on each other for existence. Which camp you prefer is largely a matter of taste."

"But that philosophy just won't do," said Timothy inflammably. "In the end you have to have a moral order, a reason for a course of action. Even you admit that to sin you have to have a code to sin against."

"True enough," said Satan, "and if it's morals you're after, I've a great lumber room full of them, collected down the ages. You might look them over and see if any of them suits your fancy. Some are very quaint and curious."

"But what I want to know is, will any of them stick?" cried Timothy in anguish. "Are there any you can get your teeth into? Besides, there's another, a personal, question that hangs on this: Am I Saved or am I Damned? I can't even find that out!"

Satan smiled and blew three perfect rings before he answered. "You must ask my Opponent about that. He has a perfect mania for saving and damning. I should guess your prospects were poor. The Damned have a rough time of it, I fear." He glanced mockingly toward the grille. "I invite you to avoid all that unpleasantness by joining us voluntarily. We have our Immortals in Hell, too, you know; I could use you as an emissary to the world to bring in recruits—your knowledge of alchemy 'would come in quite handy. Indeed, I may as well confess to having put an inconspicuous mark on you back in the winter. There's a nice position open among the enchanters—a most amusing profession, I promise you! Think it over. But now my presence is demanded elsewhere; the important part of our little celebration is about to take place. Sinkinda, see to it that Dr. Partridge has a good seat and whatever comforts he may require. It is a great pleasure to have you here, sir, let me assure you." He bowed with old-world courtesy and came from behind the desk.

Before Timothy could take his outstretched hand Sinkinda seized it and devoutly kissed the great onyx ring. Satan smiled with paternal condescension and pinched her ear. Then he pushed a panel in the wall and disclosed a shining cage which he entered, turning about to face the door. The ropes inside slatted, the Archfiend began to descend in brass-framed majesty, the panel slowly closed upon his reverse assumption.

"Whew!" said Timothy, "What next, old girl? I declare, they do put on a show in this place!"

Sinkinda darted a surprised look at him, and indeed these familiarities astounded Timothy himself. But this visit to Hell was improving his sense of proportion in several ways.

"He has gone to dress for the Audience. We must hurry if you're going to get a good seat."

Timothy took a last look around to impress the room on his memory, intending to carry home a few ideas for his own house. Suddenly he exclaimed in dismay, "But the throne, Sinkinda! That cane-bottomed armchair can't be the throne of Satan!"

"In Satan's house are many mansions," said Sinkinda loftily. "Have patience, my duck, you're still a rank amateur."

The hall was full of bustle when they returned to it. The guests, sufficiently odd to start with, flopped in and out of weird costumes; it all looked rather like a backstage scene at a performance of high school theatricals. Some imps slid screaming down the banisters of the tall, perilous stairway and roused a juvenile envy in Timothy, but Sinkinda threaded her way steadfastly between them, towing him after her. They went through a low door and along a tunnel, at the end of which they climbed a circular stair and came out on a sort of musicians' gallery overlooking the audience chamber.

Timothy stopped short, his normal sense of scale knocked spinning. The huge room was half dark; the groined roof hung pale above them like thunderheads changed to stone. Occult symbols in brass studded the floor in gleaming asymmetrical scrolls as if an enormous snake had thrown its skin the length of the room to the wide gray curtain at its far bounds.

As he stood there in amaze, several people rushed past him for the front row. "Timothy!" cried Sinkinda sharply, and beckoned him to the railing. He stumbled down the steps and took the chair she was holding for him. "Don't be a ninny," she muttered, "and hang on to it with both hands; these people will stop at nothing to get a front seat. You have to look sharp and move fast," she said, "if you are going to survive around here. Now keep your eyes open, and if there's any flim-flam doing, you do it. I must go now—I'll meet you after the Audience."

The great chandeliers began to bud and slowly to bloom, drawing out with theatrical genius the moment of anticipation. People sifted in through the low-arched doors on either side the hall and soon filled it, but softly, dustily, as if robbed of substance by their awe. A thunderclap crashed on Timothy's ears; the lights blazed up. The curtain at the far end shivered through its velvet length and majestically drew apart in operatic loops. Between them he saw the canopied seat on the dais. Both throne and dais were of basalt, and on the seven steps on each side stood seven attendant demons dressed in red and silver. It was all just as he had imagined it and incredibly satisfying, except that the severely plain black stone gave off a grim sheen. The throne itself was still empty. It looked quite uncomfortable, he thought—no upholstery or anything. However, he didn't mean to be critical, so he hunsr over the balustrade and stared at the Ring of Trumpeters in heraldic dress that had formed before the dais. Settinor their long trumpets to their lips, they blew a cacophonous blast, and in a twinkling the Monarch himself stood in the ring in his robes of state. A long "Ah . . ." went up from the crowd; Satan turned a little from side to side, not recognizing his myrmidons but merely showing himself in his long jeweled mantle. The Ring of Trumpeters opened behind him and he turned and walked up to the throne.

The rout below was forming in a sort of unruly procession, each demon with his own kind. A wild, syncopated music began to throb, pumped into the hall from openings in the walls; and to these strains the first tribe moved up to the throne, singing and hailing Satan as Beelzebub, Prince of the East. The worshipers had the proper air of oriental splendor . . . the Magicians of Egypt in their black and silver capes, sinewy Nubians leading leopards on braided leashes, Philistines with sharp-pointed red beards. The brazen vessels they carried filled the air with sweet smoke from aromatic woods. Beelzebub's robes were magenta, Timothy saw, embroidered with pink and red—a somewhat garish selection for his Western tastes; the gold looked brassy, and everyone seemed overdressed. Still . . .

Other groups surged in behind. Sifting the crowd carefully, he spied Sinkinda wearing a long Babylonish dress in which she appeared taller, more imposing than in the dark green habit she wore for business. Her hair crimped into narrow little braids hung like gold fringe round her head. The sight of her walking haggard and seductive in the galaxy pinched his heart—what a lucky man I am, he thought, almost with tears.

Satan himself seemed to be changing his appearance in the manner of a dream. The jeweled mantle had disappeared, a black velvet suit of antique style set off the incredible grace of his limbs. His finely shaped calves shone in silk; Lucifer's emblem, the daystar, winked in his peaked cap; and he looked down with smiling condescension as the array of witches, wizards, werewolves, and alchemists accompanying Sinkinda prostrated themselves before him. Her party had brought its animals too, among which Timothy especially noticed a brindled cat, splendid in amber and black, and playing a fiddle.

As the rout pressed forward Timothy became confused; at one point he thought he identified his friends the Manichaeans by the elaborate fire effects they set off. The music pounded and throbbed, the worshipers jostled and fought for place. They made way, however, for a group of necromancers carrying skeletons and trailed by ghouls and ghosts that looked impleasantly dead—a malodorous crew, Timothy deduced, from the way the others sheered off from them.

The spectators in the gallery shrieked to their friends below; the din became frenzied—in spite of the cotton in his ears he began to feel beaten to pulp; so it was with relief that he saw what appeared to be the lowest order of spirits take their place before the throne . . . a rabble of fortunetellers, creatures on broomsticks, boo-hags, boo-daddies, and the commoner kinds of satyrs, accompanied by goats, black dogs, and bats. The Master had graciously altered his appearance to suit their rusticity; uninhibited, he waved a fine long tail; his cloven foot, unshod, pawed the dais slightly, his horns stuck jauntily through two holes in his hat; in short, it was Old Scratch himself. Suddenly Timothy wished for Maum Rachel. How she would have loved it all—the color, the theatrical effects, the parade of celebrities!

The unmistakable smell of flowers of brimstone accoinpanied this category of spirits; a fine yellow powder filled the air and made Timothy's throat burn. Coughing, he pushed back his chair, jostled his way out of the gallery, and went down the winding staircase. In the corridor below he became even more confused; dark tunnels he hadn't noticed before led away on either side. He ran into one blind alley after another. He thought he could hear the revelers trampling out of the great hall; Sinkinda's voice wove tantalizingly through the noise, and, calling her name in a despairing shout, he beat on the wall before him. It crumpled like cardboard, and he stumbled forward from his own momentum into a large sort of dressing room, or so he gathered, since it was full of diabolical ladies repairing their make-up before the mirrors. At his sudden appearance they all screamed with laughter.

"Oh, I beg your pardon ... I didn't dream . . . there must be some mistake ..." Paralyzed with embarrassment, he backed towards the rent he had made in the rose-garlanded wallpaper with which the room was hung.

But Sinkinda pushed through the group and took his arm. "Come in, Timothy, and join the ladies. No prudes here, my pet. I'd like to have you meet my friends." She presented Timothy to some of the best-known witches, Hecate and the Weird Sisters, the Witch of Scrapfaggot Green, and Sidonia the Sorceress—who once had done away with the entire ducal house of Hanover. Timotliy began to recover his aplomb; he made a leg and murmured civilly, "I've always wanted to meet you, ma'am . , . delighted, I'm sure ..." He was not even put off when a tall, astonishingly thin witch to whom he held out his hand drew herself up even taller, bent over into a hoop, and rolled across the room without speaking to him, for he recognized Sycorax, whose reputation for bad manners had been long exploited by playwrights.

As a group they did not appeal to Timothy. Wrinkles creased their sharp-featured faces, without make-up their moles and birthmarks showed, their hair needed washing. But their wit was nimble, racy, full of the charm of the unexpected; and some, like Sinkinda and Sidonia, were handsome and accomplished.

They stared unblushingly at Timothy and even fingered his person in a manner that disconcerted him extremely; they asked embarrassing questions, which Sinkinda was kind enough to answer for him. She had found him refreshingly free, she added, from the bigotry and prejudice that dogged witches—indeed, he had plagued the life out of her to bring him here. The ladies seemed delighted with this account of him and only Sinkinda's proprietary snarls when they pressed too close saved him, Timothy divined, from learning more about Evil than he had quite bargained for.

He put his lips to Sinkinda's ear. "Confound it, get me away from here before—"

Sinkinda herself seemed to think it was about time. "Move aside, girls, and let us out; you'll have to go find your own gentlemen just as I did." And she threw back her head and made a sound like a cock crowing.

The witches winced, they fell back, suddenly gray. "What? Morning . . . ? Already . . . ?" In the break thus made, Sinkinda rushed Timothy across the room and through the door. Back in the great entrance hall, she shouted with glee at the success of her ruse. "They are really ridiculous," she said, "ridden with superstition. Look—the dance is beginning. Let's go and join in."

Deeply chagrined, Timothy had to confess that he had never learned to dance. Sinkinda received the news peevishly. "Oh, those puritanical sects! They are always mixing religion and manners and morals in a holy mess. Why can't they learn that they are all separate, really? Too bad, you'll have to miss the best part of the evening." Brusquely she dropped his arm and slipped away into the crowd.

Considerably put out, Timothy decided to find his own amusements. He picked his way across the hall with difficulty, for the revelers were spinning and whirling now, entangled with the younger imps playing anagrams on the floor. Some of these got up and made a rush for an archway Timothy had noticed earlier. The sliding doors had remained closed all evening, and, prompted by sheer curiosity, he fell in behind the imps as they parted them and pushed through the opening. He had time, however, for only a glimpse of a weirdly furnished interior when the last imp turned on him and, shouting, "Devil take the hindermost!" seized the inside knobs and slammed the doors in his face.

Timothy glanced involuntarily over his shoulder, but no Satanic personage stood by. The dancers continued their hypnotized swaying unaware of his existence. Damn those brats—he hadn't expected such childish display in this sophisticated resort; but adolescents were the same everywhere, no doubt. He scrutinized the doors; the desire to see what he wasn't meant to put heart in him; he seized the silver knobs and pulled the doors a little apart.

He stuck his head in the crack and took a quick look around. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, and slammed the doors again. Obscenity he could not get used to.

A throaty chuckle beside him caught his ear. A short, obese man was sitting against the wall, his excess fat pouching over the edges of his chair. He had a sleek head shaped like a melon and he held a wand or divining rod above the floor as if searching for water or precious metals.

"There is entertainment in this place to suit all tastes," he remarked. "I expect what you'd like to see is the lumber room where the morals are in storage. I got word to direct you there if you want to go."

"Oh . . . why, thank you—how very kind—" Timothy took another look at the man, whose fine slanting dark eyes suggested that if a hundred pounds or so were pared off him he would bear the stamp of the royal family. He wore a robe of some gold fabric made in an antique style, and all his pudgy fingers were covered to the knuckles with rings. To be on the safe side Timothy bowed, and murmured, "I am honored indeed. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to show me where the lumber room is."

"Up the grand staircase, turn right, third door on the left." The man got up and pushed his way imper-turbably across the hall with Timothy following in his broad wake. At the foot he paused and motioned upward. "You'll forgive me if I don't go with you ... a steep climb . . . shortness of breath ..." He sat down on the steps and, dipping his rod over the banisters, he angled lazily above what little floor space the dancers left him.

From the first Timothy had wanted an excuse to go up these stairs, so he mounted them nimbly, enjoying the unparalleled view their heights gave him of the revelry. Making many stops to admire the prospect and the stained glass above his head, he at length reached the gallery.

The third door on the left proved to be heavy and its lock rusty. Few of Hell's inhabitants, he supposed, bothered with what lay behind it. He shoved it open, screaming on its hinges, and let himself in. The long apartment was wan and dusty indeed after the magnificent appointments of the rest of Hell, and the air reeked with mold. Stacks and stacks of books and papers stretched away into infinity, it seemed. The light was miserable for reading, he could just make out the titles-tracts, sermons, and precepts, books of taboos, blue laws  and sumptuary laws—these moralists must have produced sinners right and left, he thought in astonishment. Used as he had become to the furnace heat of Hell, this attic made his teeth chatter, or else the task of hunting for a workable moral here chilled his blood, so he went out and descended the staircase again.

As he neared the bottom he looked over the banister and saw Sinkinda spinning in a kind of a saraband with a handsome young demon she had picked up. An unworthy jealousy nipped him; the demon had all of Satan's grace, but softened to the verge of sweetness, which gave his saturnine face a delicate impudicity. He might easily have been the result of one of Satan's indiscretions—the kind of chap, Timothy thought, built to Sinkinda's order. At that moment the dance brought them near; reprehensibly he leaned over the banisters and screamed in the fellow's face: "Devil's get!" The demon turned and made a half bow which he wove with clever improvisation into his pattern of steps; his narrow lips curled in a lazy acknowledgment of his distinguished origins. Then they wheeled again and Sinkinda faced him. Although she was close by, he might have been another spindle in the banisters. Her eyes devoured her partner, but as Timothy caught their pale flicker, his jealousy died within him; that impersonal possessiveness was nothing he cared to see bent on himself. He turned and went down the steps, his shoulders hunched up to his ears.