And on the evening of the ninth day he received, with the author's compliments, a little book that had just been published, by a colleague he admired and detested. He would have admired and loved him if this colleague had lived eighty years earlier, but he detested him because he was alive and in his way. And he read:
EBLIS
'Jesus came to a city at the hour when the heat of the day is at its strongest, and the city was deserted. And hearing a noise of flutes that sounded fearsome in this light, he asked what it was. A stone answered him: "It is Eblis weeping for himself."
'Now Jesus, some time after this, met Eblis, and said to him: "Prince of Delights, it is said that you weep. Is it true?" Eblis answered: "Men have a strange idea of what they call the gift of tears. Demons weep too. And what does that prove? And I too weep, at times." Jesus said: "Why do you weep?" Eblis said: "I weep for the ingratitude of men, to whom I reveal evil and who do not love me the more because of it. Now I know that men do not love happiness." Jesus said: "Is that all you weep for?" Eblis said: "I weep because I, the demon, am forced to believe in God, and I suffer from it." "I too am forced to believe in you," said Jesus. "But is that all you weep for?" Eblis said: "I weep, too, for myself."
'Eblis said: "I have flown above battlefields, and urged on the combatants, for my contempt for them was great. I have pierced with my caresses the flesh of human bodies so tender that they were torn apart. I have crouched beside warm beasts, and killed them by marrying them. When I withdraw to my caverns in the depths of the perfumed desert, I have commerce with no other creature but the objects of my fornication. I need only them. They alone cross my threshold: it is known only to them; I never hesitate when they knock. They do not love me, nor I them. We mingle in silence, like shadows. That is all I do, and it gives me no pleasure."'
'What a fool!' Costals exploded. 'He "has commerce" and gets no pleasure from it! A neurotic devil! From everything we know of God, from the words, the sentiments, the acts which all the religions have attributed to him in saecula saeculorum, we know that God is stupid. The demon being his antithesis, one might therefore expect him to be intelligent; and indeed he gives plenty of proofs of this. If he is stupid too, whom is one to trust!' He went on reading.
'Eblis said: "There are also things about me that are known only to myself. Often I help a stumbling child to carry the burden that weighs him down. I whisper in a girl's ear that her flatterer is deceiving her. When a sleeping man is threatened by his enemy, I bark and he awakens in time. I lie down beside a shivering old man and warm him with my great wings. I love men, strange though it may seem. And I love my round-headed damned, crawling along on top of one another like worms, their hearts beating precipitately...."'
Costals stopped reading, and his own heart-beats quickened at the electric contact of this sentence. He felt an affinity with these round-heads, as with children and animals.
'Jesus said to him: "You are full of the heavens, and that is why you are the Tempter. But can one believe you?" Eblis said: "Why should I not be believed?" Jesus said to him: "Do you not know that it is the punishment of demons not to be believed? I thought that you spoke out of pride." Eblis said: "I have no pride." But Jesus thought to himself: "Do not let us give him his due, for that would give him pride."
'Jesus, having withdrawn a while, began to weep. He returned to Eblis and said to him: "I wept, because I believed you at last. O Lucifer, you who were created in rejoicing, you who were so beautiful in the heavens, offer up a prayer to my Father, that he may recall you to those meadows of grace where once you shone so resplendently." But Eblis said: "That cannot be." Jesus said: "Why? You have said that you did evil and that it gave you no pleasure. You have also said that you did good." Eblis said: "When I do good, it gives me no pleasure either." At this, Jesus left him.
'The beasts came out of the woods and drew near to Eblis, to see him suffering. When it was the hour at which men leave their houses, because the heat subsides, those of the beasts who pray for demons (they are like flowers without stems) said to Eblis: "Go away, for men will see you, and might stone you." So Elbis went off to the cities, and did good and evil there.'
Costals closed the book, placed his fingers on his eyelids, and began to write again.
And he wrote for twelve days, at the rate of ten hours' work a day, full of creative naivety and coarseness, and full of creative amusement. And what he wrote was good.
And then he wrote for four days, at the rate of fourteen hours' work a day. And then he rested, and went hunting woman for three days, and had two adventures.
And then he wrote for fifteen more days, at the rate of twelve hours' work a day. And then he rested: he hunted for two days, and had no adventures.
And then he wrote for fourteen more days, at the rate of thirteen hours' work a day. And then he rested: he hunted for three days, and had no adventures.
And then he wrote for six more days, at the rate of nine or ten hours' work a day. And on the evening of the sixth day, he snorted like an ox. And looking at what he had done, he laughed and said: 'Well, that'll show them!' It was his own substance that he had poured forth, and yet it remained intact in him: in work as in pleasure, he was always full of what he had given out.
And then he wrote for eleven more days, at the rate of fourteen hours' work a day. And on the morning of the twelfth day, which was the seventy-first day of his creation, he had had enough, and returned to Paris.
The Hippogriff Page 16