John Domini - Bedlam and Other Stories

So our trysts continued, if somewhat less regularly than before.

Perhaps my overseer’s problem was essentially one of conscience. He wanted to do a good job, but he could no longer be sure what was torture and what was not. Certainly, our duty had never been so open to interpretation, so questionable, or so strangely involving. It was infuriating to admit not knowing where you stood. Myself…but I have already explained my feelings.

During one show — during one climax — which Miplip had begun as a ferocious woman with soft fur covering her hands, one of the damned threw a stone at him. At her? At Miplip? What does it matter — the form was no longer human. The stone struck on the wing, hardly hurting Miplip, but shattering his mood once and for all. He knew that the woman with furry hands was not supposed to have his wings. He jerked upright in the air, in his natural ugliness, alert enough to realize what had happened and smart enough, of course he was smart enough, to understand in a moment that this could not have been the first time.

I cannot describe, because I lack the ability, the look with which Miplip regarded first the audience, convulsed with laughter, and then myself, still straddling him. There was an awareness of betrayal in the look, I can say that much. And a great deal of pain, as well, a pain too large for me to comprehend, because I have never seen anything that large, consigned as I am to a single blankened Division here, above the City of Dis and below Limbo.

This impossible look was quickly gone. Almost immediately his eyes resumed their customary irony. He may even have winked. What had he thought? Nothing. What had he felt? Nothing, nothing. Then he dropped away from me and began to give his usual vigorous lesson to those who had laughed.

For a few long moments I watched him, making sure.

Not that I was frightened of what Miplip might do to get back at me. What more could he possibly do to me? But I wanted to make sure…he was all right. That look he had given me — well, never mind the look, a look can be misjudged, but I knew Miplip better, and I had more tangible cause for worry than a mere look. I mean that my overseer now knew that I had successfully hid something from him and kept it hidden, and so, if one was inclined to put these things on a competitive basis, the day was mine. Miplip now knew that for once I had won.

Can I be blamed, at all? How had I done wrong?

He lay into our charges with a will. After a while he called up to me, perhaps not with all his usual vituperative gusto, but with most of it. How loudly could he shout, anyway, out of breath as he was? So I dropped down beside him; everywhere devils work in twos. What happened just now was only an incident, as much his fault as mine, and Miplip was not one to be bothered by incidents.

While I was distracted — while my back was turned — he disappeared. I found his whip, but he was gone.

With thoroughgoing care, I searched the corridors and enclaves of my Division. I examined the eyes and body of every demon that came through, and those of the Centaurs and hounds as well. I went so far as to embrace them, and whisper in their ears suggestive phrases Miplip would understand. This only served to increase my isolation. I bent my fork on freestanding rocks, hugged riven trees, kissed small dank pools, and caressed shafts of fire. Stumbling and uncaring, I made a blind descent to the monstrous City of Dis and, far exceeding my authority, interrogated the fallen angels guarding its gates. They punished my insubordination. Seeing the bored expressions on the harpies who administered the punishment, and noticing its ritual nature, I understood I was not the first to be disappointed and reprimanded.

I thought: did the others who were punished continue to search? The punishment was hardly slight. Yet the devils who sometimes traveled through my Division were always alone, and though I had never before thought of them as seeking after something, that could well be their situation. Once a demon is chastised — perhaps not the first time, but after a few more times — the aches and festerings must eventually become less painful than the thought of abandoning the quest. Yet the idea of so many devils on so many private crusades raised the most horrifying prospect of all in my mind’s eye, that of a vast place devoid of pleasure, in which there are no overseers and subordinates, no giants and mites, no punishers and punished, but only an infinite calendar of torture and impenetrable silence, in which the ones who can fly are no more free than those who can only walk, and the pain inflicted on whoever happened to pass below was thriftily recycled for a second use higher up, and a two-hundred-million-and-second use, always the same pain, never growing smaller but only narrower and more extensive, until Hell had been dirtied from end to oblivion by that same original drop of blood, or tear, or both, which had been squeezed out at the first instant of the creation of pain. In an effort to break this nightmare cycle, I tried giving up my search for Miplip. Why torture myself pursuing him who had tortured me?

I again took up my attempt to recapture the sound of a human voice. Having so much room to myself, so much time to myself, I was able to vary volume and experiment with echo effects as I pleased. Visiting devils heard me, and no doubt guessed what I was up to, but I felt incontrovertibly separated from them already. I did not care what they heard or surmised. I only wished, from time to time, seeing one pause while flying overhead, seeing him look down at me inquisitively, I only wished that he would lend me a hand. But no one ever mingled his voice with mine. I went on alone. My duties I gave less attention, but after all, considering the doubts I had been suffering, a certain inattention to my duties was the least that could have been expected.

Perhaps it was this laxness, then, or perhaps it was simply the strangeness of a devil trying to imitate human speech, but eventually I began to draw large and quietly attentive audiences from whatever group of damned souls happened to be in the area. Try as I might to chase them off, they always returned to listen some more. My fork caused only the briefest withdrawal, and my renderings of their earth’s beauties were now, without Miplip’s help, no more than vague glosses out of a confused jumble of memories.

Sometimes, when approximating a human voice seemed like too great a task, I instead tried to recreate the special sound that my runaway overseer’s voice had once had, that time he made his odd speech about silliness.

And then…though I fought against it with every weapon I had…once more I felt my insensible spirit rising, rising, though I shrieked out loud against it, tried to lose myself in orgies of torture, ripped apart those unfortunate charges of mine that got in my way, even dragged myself down to Dis and had myself punished again. It was all to no avail. I had got it into my mind, never to be driven out, that I could find Miplip . I reiterated as many of his injuries as I could recall, marking them off on the impartial face of a boulder, but though the stone was so covered with markings it crumbled to bits, it made no difference. I knew he had to be here, he had to be among my charges, and I would find him.

With Heaven and Hell the way they are, he could not be anywhere else. My overseer is more clever than I, but not so clever as the devils around Dis, and they have less wits than the ones farther below.

Therefore he had become one of the damned. The ploy was characteristically wise: there are more of them than anything else in Hell. How could I know, while working my way through a crush of preterites, if one of the bodies ahead of me quietly metamorphoses into a rivulet of vomit running between my feet, and then into another body behind me? Moreover, Miplip’s taking a place among our charges was characteristically proud, as well, for in human form my old overseer would find himself vulnerable to the fearsome geography — he would suffer the heat, the stink, the pestilential lichens — and therefore remaining untraceable would require a tremendous effort of will. One cry of pain at the wrong time and I would have him. I knew that the enormous discipline involved in keeping silent would appeal to my own, my old, lofty Miplip.