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 Michael Weller
"The
Island for the Whites". Book IV. Chapter 19.


My devil.

 

I drank, therefore, at Ricardo's – under the door, at night, as usual – half a cup of his mushroom infusion, even in the dark brown, like Coca-Cola, and suffocating, like moldy cheese; I drank and went to my room. I could not sleep, and I sat down on a block of wood at my table covered with knife cuts. I thought for a moment – and lit my precious lamp, which consumes fish oil. And I took out a treasured notebook, thick, 94 pages, the black cover was greasy for a long time. And I opened a small plastic bottle of pills, where I kept ink, made from blackberry juice, burnt rubber powder and urine. And I took out a quill – an ordinary crow feather, picked up ealier, from which I cut off the tip obliquely and cut it in two. And I began to write.

And I wrote what you are reading now. That night I wrote about the laziness and carelessness of blacks, about the hot temper and sexuality of Latinos, that Indians are not like us at all, and that our whole culture is white culture – while all dissenting assholes can go to hell.

This is where he emerged. It was as if the darkness outside the scattered yellow ball of light condensed for a moment and gathered into a twisted, broken body, and it was the body of the devil and the head of the devil, of course. With horns, as expected.

I did not get excited: after all, after mushrooms all kinds of things may appear. On the contrary, my mood was dreary, and the entertainment even made me happy.

"Well," I say, "a horned artiodactyl, what do you need?" I haven't had a soul for a long time, who the fuck knows where it's gone. As to the rest, you would exhaust your fucking self searching for anything…What do you want? To talk to a smart person – or to a rare asshole? Then please – here are both in front of you. Are you seeing double? Why are you keeping silent? One who came in is a guest. One who put a drink is a host.

He gently stroked his goatee beard with his fingers, like a Spanish grandee queen's pussy, when he asks for fucking, but still doubts. Then he says:

"We are related," he says. "You've been deceiving people all your life, and I'm deceiving. You have problems and I have problems. So I came to you for soul searching, as to my buddy, as I have nobody to talk to.

At this moment, I got hell worried, to be frank. His tone is pleading. Well, I think I took off over all of you, like an arrow over a toilet. Because who you must become so that the devil comes to you for complaining about his life?

"Yeah, fucking surprised," I say. – What do you want to talk about? And what do you want for it?

 "For me," he says, "it’s enough that you suffer, and after our conversation you will suffer even more. Because I live according to my social role: your torment is my pleasure and, one might say, my profession. You, however, suffer without any result, without outcome and meaning.

"Am I really suffering so much?" - I ask, pretending as though I were a village fool.

"You are, because they will throw you out of all decent society for your book. You won't get a job anywhere. Only a parking attendant or a window cleaner – but even that is not easy to get through there.

"Why are you so sure?" Look at him how he rolled up his hooves, impudent goat!

And stop picking out with your finger from there, it's disgusting.

"You, my brother, dear friend, are not politically correct, like shit on a festive table. You're always pissing against the wind. Do you know what everyone will say? That you are a fascist, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and who knows what else. In short, it’s not enough to hang you even three times."

At this moment, guys, I was about to laugh. What a devil! What the old horny fag ... The old life is over: is over forever! No more decent society! And for those who consider themselves to be such, I can only piss at the door, but I won't shake your hand. Your wonderful fucking civilization has collapsed – cunt into smithereens, dick cut in half!

So I told him:

"Put your finger into your ass and shut up." Paul Bunyan1 was not afraid of anyone.

Excited, he even moved his horns, issuing a serpent's hiss and shacking his goat's beard:

"They will burn you at the stake, scatter the ashes in the wind, and in the Other World I will meet you at the gate and put you in the fire for all eternity! Did you understand, you brave asshole?

"I look forward to meeting you. Then I'll break your horns at last, a buyer of spoiled souls.

"Think for yourself. Already for a long time there has been no point in any literature, in any fucking books, or in any of your asshole novels! Anyway, no one reads anything anymore and will not read anything! No one will read your ugly novel – and who the hell needs it!

"You are mistaken, horns with hooves in your ass. It does make sense. There was a Cold War – we had an enemy. And we lived! Now there is no enemy: no one strains us against ourselves – and we relaxed and disintegrated becoming fat, flabby, fine-hearted and weak cretins with pink saliva and crazy ideas. The enemy means struggle, the struggle means life. That's what I'm writing about.

"Stop writing your fucking book, you bastard!!" he roared. And this hellish roar filled me with a tense feeling to the ringing, like a hurricane filling an open house. And this feeling is called pride. Pride filled me like hydrogen fills a soaring blimp. My chest straightened, my shoulders slumped, my head leaned back aristocratically, like that of a count before a king, and my hands were filled with inhuman ultimate strength: with two fingers I will now break the neck of this Horned Trash.

And I crossed him with a sweeping cross. He grinned and gave me the middle finger. And we both laughed like accomplices.

I felt pity for him: sitting here, dragging around all sorts of rubbish, powdering the brains of assholes. With whom you met – that's what you get, that's why your face is skinny, and your voice is tired, and it smells like a goat, whose wool was never washed: and so he lives. And after all, no one loves him, no one has pity to him, they only want something from him. Evil is like acid, it dissolves everything it touches, that's why he is unhappy. That's why he's evil and restless. However, what to do? They cannot choose jobs. This is a destiny.

Stop. The devil knows how to invoke pity. I would put it in his mouth, but he would bite it off.

"You are a trash under fence," I said, imitating a spit in his direction. – Have you forgotten how Giordano Bruno went onto the fire? And Savonarola? How did Jesus go to the cross and how did Spartacus go to the cross? Yes, maybe I was born for this, to tell the truth aloud, when everyone around me either became assholes, or pissed from fear?

Here's what I'll tell you, ugly creature. And I'll tell it to all your friends. And to everyone who sold their miserable little souls to you. And actually it will be not I who says it to you. A long time ago a good guy said it. He was an American2, by the way! He said:

"If for all the good that Jesus did for people, they crucified him, then tell me, boy, why should you or me expect anything better?"

The space occupied by the Devil split in two: simultaneously with his black silhouette and in the same place, a light scene appeared, well, like a hologram: I saw in perspective a huge cross, and a golden cross in the hands of a monk on the square, and a fire in front of him: a burning figure was beating in chains between the tongues of flame and shouted:

"The truth, only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!"

And then I thought how good, how wonderful I live!.. In my old age, I do only what I want, and what I don't want, I don't do it at all. As to that there is not enough food, and they beat me, and the lamp is dim, and the wife is nobody knows where – these are all details, this is not the main thing.

A bottle of champagne exploded in my head, sparkling splashes hit from inside of me in all directions as a white-foam star, I jumped up and threw my inkwell into the devil.

He disappeared, yet the ink stain on the wall remained.

  


[1]  Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American and Canadian folklore.

[2]  Dale Breckenridge Carnegie