Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

Not long after his eightieth birthday, he received a visitor from the town: a doddering priest older than himself, who had come to warn him of imminent danger. The Nazis were massing on the border, and rumor had it an invasion was near. He invited the priest into the main hall, a high-ceilinged room centered by a long table and lorded over by a chandelier of iron and crystal, and he asked who these Nazis were, explaining that it had been years since he had paid any attention to politics.

“Evil men,” the priest told him. “An army of monsters ruled by a madman.”

Intrigued, he asked to hear more and listened intently to tales of outrage and excess, of Hitler and his bloody friends. He thought it would be interesting to meet these men, to learn if their demons were akin to his.

“I sense in you a troubled soul,” said the priest as he made to leave. “If you wish I will hear your confession.”

“Thank you, Father,” he said. “But I have spent these past fifty years in confession and it has served no good purpose.”

“Is there anything else I might do?”

He considered asking for the rite of exorcism, but the notion of this frail old man contending with the fierce horror inhabiting his flesh was ludicrous in the extreme. “No, Father,” he said. “I fear my sins are beyond your precinct. I’m more likely to receive comfort from the Nazis.”

One morning a month or so after the priest’s visit, he waked to find himself alone. He went through the house, calling the names of his servants, to no avail; then, more puzzled than alarmed, he walked to his hilltop vantage and looked east. Dozens and dozens of tanks were cutting dusty swaths across the fields, rumbling, clanking, at that distance resembling toys run wild on a golden game board. Black smoke billowed from the little town, and the church steeple was no longer in evidence. When dusk began to gather, he returned to the lodge, half expecting to find it reduced to rubble. But it was intact, and though he waited up most of the night to greet them, no soldiers came to disrupt the peace and quiet.

The next afternoon, however, a touring car pulled up to the lodge and disgorged seven young men, all wearing shiny boots and black uniforms with silver emblems on the collars shaped like twin lightning bolts. They were suspicious of him at first, but on seeing his proof of German citizenship, they treated him as if he were a fine old gentleman, addressing him as “Herr Steigler” and asking permission to billet in the lodge. “My home is yours,” he told them, and he set before them his finest wines, which they proceeded to swill down with not the least appreciation for their nose or bouquet.

They propped their feet on the table, scarring its varnish, and they told crude jokes, hooting and slapping their thighs, spilling the wines and breaking glasses, offering profane toasts to their venerable host. Watching them, he found it difficult to believe that these louts were creatures of evil; if they were possessed, it must be by demons of the lowest order, ones that would quail before his own. Still, he withheld final judgment, partly because their captain, who remained aloof from the carousing, was of a different cut. He was a thin, black-haired man with pale, pocked skin and a slit of a mouth… Indeed, all his features seemed products of a minimalist creator, being barely raised upon his face, lending it an aspect both cruel and disinterested. His behavior, too, was governed by this minimalism. He sipped his wine, conversed in a monotone, and displayed an economy of gesture that—to his host’s mind—appeared to signal a pathological measure of self-discipline.

“What do you de here, Herr Steigler?” he asked at one point. “I assume, of course, that you are retired, but I have seen no evidence of previous occupation.”

“Poor health,” said the old man, “has precluded my taking up a profession. I read, I walk in the woods and meditate.”

“And what do you meditate upon?”

“The past, mostly. That, and the nature of evil.”

The rigor of the captain’s expression was disordered by a tick of a smile. “Evil,” he said, savoring the word. “And have you arrived at any conclusions?”

The old man gave thought to bringing up the subject of demons, but instead said, “No, only that it exists.”

“Perhaps,” said the captain, with a superior smile, “you believe we are evil.”

“Are you?”

“If I were, I would hardly admit to it.”

“Why not? Even were I disposed against evil, I am old and feeble. I could do nothing to menace you.”

“True,” said the captain, running his finger around the mouth of his glass. “Then I will tell you that I may well be evil. Evil is a judgment made by history, and history may judge us as such.”

“That is a fool’s definition,” said the old man. “To think that evil is not self-aware is foolish to the point of being evil. But you are not evil. Captain. You merely wish to be.”

The captain dismissed this comment with a haughty laugh. “I am a soldier, Herr Steigler. A good one, I believe. This may call for a repression of one’s conscience at times, but I would scarcely deem that evil. And as for my wishing to be so, my only wish is to win the war. Nothing more.”

The old man made a gesture that directed the captain’s attention toward his uniform. “Black cloth and patent leather and silver arcana. These are not the lineaments of a good soldier, Captain. They are designed to inspire dread. But apart from being psychological weapons, they are ritual expressions. Invocations of evil. You had best beware. Your invocations may prove effective and allow evil to possess you. Should that occur, you will have no joy in it. Take my word.”

For an instant the captain’s neutral mask dissolved, as if the old man’s words had disconcerted him, and the old man could see the symptoms of insecurity: parted lips and twitching nerves and flicking tongue. But then the mask reformed, and the captain said coldly, “I fear your long solitude has deluded you, Herr Steigler. You speak with the confidence of expertise, yet by your own admission you have little knowledge of the world beyond these hills. How can you be expert upon anything other than, say, regional wildlife?”

The old man was weary of the conversation and merely said that being widely traveled was no prerequisite to wisdom.

Later that afternoon a second touring car containing five women under guard arrived at the lodge. They were all young and lovely, with dusky complexions and doe eyes, and seeing them, the old man felt a dissolute warmth in his groin, a joyous rage in his heart.

“Jews,” said the captain by way of explanation, and the old man nodded sagely as if he understood.

That night the house echoed with the women’s screams, and the old man sat in his room ablaze with arousal, fevered with anger, his knees jittering, hands clenching and unclenching. He was barely able to restrain himself from taking a knife and hunting through the dark corridors of the lodge. Though wantonness had been imposed upon the women, it was in their nature to be wanton, alluring, and oh how he wanted to fall prey to their allure! Perhaps, he thought, he would ask the soldiers to give him one. No, no! He would demand one. As payment in lieu of rent. It was only fair.

The following morning, after the soldiers had locked the women in the basement and gone about their business, the old man crept down the stairs and peered through the barred window of the basement door. When they saw him, the women pressed themselves against the bars, pleading for his help. They were bruised, their dresses ripped, and they stank of sex. The sight of their breasts and nipples and ripely curved bellies made him faint. He would have liked to batter down the door and flash among them, drawing secret designs of blood across their soiled flesh.