Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

The little boy still stared at his plate.

“He is sometimes there and sometimes not there,” pursued Mr. Carter. “Sometimes he’s like one thing, sometimes another. You can’t really see him. Not as you see me. I am real. You can’t touch him. You can touch me. I can touch you.” Mr. Carter stretched out his big, white dentist’s hand, and took his little son by the nape of the neck. He stopped speaking for a moment and tightened his hand. The little boy sank his head still lower.

“Now you know the difference,” said Mr. Carter, “between a pretend and a real thing. You and I are one thing; he is another. Which is the pretend? Come on. Answer me. Which is the pretend?”

“Big Simon and Small Simon,” said the little boy.

“Don’t!” cried Betty, and at once put her hand over her mouth, for why should a visitor cry, “Don’t!” when a father is explaining things in a scientific and modern way? Besides, it annoys the father.

“Well, my boy,” said Mr. Carter, “I have said you must be allowed to learn from experience. Go upstairs. Right up to your room. You shall learn whether it is better to reason, or to be perverse and obstinate. Go up. I shall follow you.”

“You are not going to beat the child?” cried Mrs. Carter.

“No,” said the little boy. “Mr. Beelzy won’t let him.”

“Go on up with you!” shouted his father.

Small Simon stopped at the door. “He said he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me,” he whimpered. “He said he’d come like a lion, with wings on, and eat them up.”

“You’ll learn how real he is!” shouted his father after him. “If you can’t learn it at one end, you shall learn it at the other. I’ll have your breeches down. I shall finish my cup of tea first, however,” said he to the two women.

Neither of them spoke. Mr. Carter finished his tea, and unhurriedly left the room, washing his hands with his invisible soap and water.

Mrs. Carter said nothing. Betty could think of nothing to say. She wanted to be talking for she was afraid of what they might hear.

Suddenly it came. It seemed to tear the air apart. “Good god!” she cried. “What was that? He’s hurt him.” She sprang out of her chair, her silly eyes flashing behind her glasses. “I’m going up there!” she cried, trembling.

“Yes, let us go up,” said Mrs. Carter. “Let us go up. That was not Small Simon.”

It was on the second-floor landing that they found the shoe, with the man’s foot still in it, much like that last morsel of a mouse which sometimes falls unnoticed from the side of the jaws of the cat.

translated from the original Italian by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“‘Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni’

Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,”

My Master said, “if thou discernest him.”

As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when

Our hemisphere is darkening into night,

Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,

Methought that such a building then I saw;

And, for the wind, I drew myself behind

My Guide, because there was no other shelter.

Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it,

There where the shades were wholly covered up,

And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

Some prone are lying, others stand erect,

This with the head, and that one with the soles;

Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.

When in advance so far we had proceeded,

That it my Master pleased to show to me

The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,

He from before me moved and made me stop,

Saying: “Behold Dis, and behold the place

Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself.”

How frozen I became and powerless then,

Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,

Because all language would be insufficient.

I did not die, and I alive remained not;

Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit,

What I became, being of both deprived.

The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous

From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;

And better with a giant I compare

Than do the giants with those arms of his;

Consider now how great must be that whole,

Which unto such a part conforms itself.

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,

And lifted up his brow against his Maker,

Well may proceed from him all tribulation.

O, what a marvel it appeared to me,

When I beheld three faces on his head!

The one in front, and that vermilion was;

Two were the others, that were joined with this

Above the middle part of either shoulder,

And they were joined together at the crest;

And the right-hand one seemed ’twixt white and yellow;

The left was such to look upon as those

Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.

Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,

Such as befitting were so great a bird;

Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

No feathers had they, but as of a bat

Their fashion was; and he was waving them,

So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.

Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.

With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins

Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.

At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching

A sinner, in the manner of a brake,

So that he three of them tormented thus.

To him in front the biting was as naught

Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine

Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.

“That soul up there which has the greatest pain,”

The Master said, “is Judas Iscariot;

With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,

The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;

See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.

And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.

But night is reascending, and ’tis time

That we depart, for we have seen the whole.”

As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck,

And he the vantage seized of time and place,

And when the wings were opened wide apart,

He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides;

From fell to fell descended downward then

Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

When we were come to where the thigh revolves

Exactly on the thickness of the haunch,

The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath,

Turned round his head where he had had his legs,

And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts,

So that to Hell I thought we were returning.

“Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,”

The Master said, panting as one fatigued,

“Must we perforce depart from so much evil.”

Then through the opening of a rock he issued,

And down upon the margin seated me;

Then tow’rds me he outstretched his wary step.

I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see

Lucifer in the same way I had left him;

And I beheld him upward hold his legs.

And if I then became disquieted,

Let stolid people think who do not see

What the point is beyond which I had passed.

“Rise up,” the Master said, “upon thy feet;

The way is long, and difficult the road,

And now the sun to middle-tierce returns.”

It was not any palace corridor

There where we were, but dungeon natural,

With floor uneven and unease of light.

“Ere from the abyss I tear myself away,

My Master,” said I when I had arisen,

“To draw me from an error speak a little;

Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed

Thus upside down? and how in such short time

From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?”