John Gardner - Freddy's Book

Suddenly the Devil was filled with terror. He shaded his eyes with both hands, bending his head forward, trying to make out what it was that was wheeling around him. The Lapps! he thought. It was the Lapps from the beginning! But he could make out neither the Lapps nor their reindeer in the blinding whiteness. It was as if, for an instant, all existence had become one same thing, at the center of it a will, a blind force more selfish than the Devil himself, indomitable, too primitive for language, a creature of awesome stupidity, wild with ambition. And now all at once came a smell of Sweden into his nostrils. The Swedes! he thought, and the truth of it almost made him laugh. Of course, of course! he thought, raging. He had always known, he knew now, that it had to be the crafty Swedes.

What a fool, what a poor, stupid fool, thought the Devil, smiling in his despair. First Sweden, then the world! For it was now all perfectly clear to him: after the bloodbath of Stockholm, there were only the people — no kings, no lords, only fools like Gustav Vasa and a few threadbare bishops. There he lost his train of thought. That’s my problem, he thought. I lose my train of thought. What wonder, though, he thought, in this utterly senseless … Again he could not remember what he’d been thinking.

Something tickled his neck, a colder place on the coldness of his skin, and he raised his hand to swat at the annoyance, but then a voice came to his ears, and he hesitated. It was the voice of Bishop Brask. “Dreams, illusions,” the bishop was shouting. “It’s for yourself you do this, my dear Lars-Goren! No one but yourself! What’s your love for your children and wife but greed? What’s your love of justice, your love for all so-called humanity, but a maniac’s greed? Do you think they’ve elected you God, Lars-Goren? You’re a tyrant! Mad as Tiberius! You’d kill them all as readily as you’d save them, you know it! And if killing proves fittest, then it’s killing that will survive! How can you act, then, confronted by such knowledge? Maniac! Animal!” The voice was full of joy and rage, a kind of cackling, crackling glee. It was as if the man’s mind had gone as blank as the face of Bernt Notke’s carved statue, decadent art in all its curls and swirls — ten thousand careful knife-cuts and a face more empty of emotion than the face of the world’s first carved-stone god. I repent me that I ever made man, thought the Devil. His ice-crusted eyebrows jittered upward.

Slowly, thoughtfully, he felt along his shoulder until he came to the bishop’s little body, perched like a cockroach at the end of his collarbone. Almost gently, respectfully, he crushed it. Then he frowned. Had the bishops loud crying, right there in his ear, been a trick of some kind? When he shook his head and tried to speak to himself, he understood that his throat had been cut.

“Whatever it may mean,” said the old woman at the gate, “the Devil has been killed.”

“And my husband?” said Lars-Goren’s wife.

“In fourteen days he’ll be home,” said the old woman. “Tell him I came.” She spoke proudly, as if what she had done was a wonderful thing, a feat no one, living or dead, could conceivably rival. No one’s eyes, even the Devil’s, ever shone with more pride. Liv Bergquist winced at the sight of such terrible arrogance. Then the old woman vanished.

“So Lars-Goren has destroyed the Devil!” Liv Bergquist thought. She smiled, raising her head. She’d known when she married him that Lars-Goren was no ordinary mortal. Otherwise, she’d never have consented to be his wife. She could have had any man she pleased.

She smiled at her son, who stood with his arms folded, beaming as if he himself had killed the Devil — and he could have, she thought; he would have.

In Stockholm, King Gustav was seized by a sudden thought. “No,” he said, “stupidity!” He had a vision which he scarcely understood and, in the heat of it, tore the parchment to shreds. “Let the Riksdag decide,” he thought. “’What concerns all should have the approval of all.’” He smiled, pleased with himself. With his printing press, he’d write a letter to his people, and he would make the press available to his people for response. They’d be reasonable, he knew. They would not dare behave otherwise.

The sky outside his window was as red as blood, whether the blood of God or the Devil Gustav Vasa did not think to wonder.

“Who’ll tell the story?” said the child to the magician. “People should be told.”

“Never mind,” said the old man, smiling like a beaver. “For centuries and centuries no one will believe it, and then all at once it will be so obvious that only a fool would take the trouble to write it down.”

Now the red of the sky was fading. In Russia, the tsar, with ice on his eyelashes, was declaring war on Poland. “Little do they dream,” he said, “what horrors they’ve unleashed on themselves, daring to think lightly of the tsar!” All around him, his courtiers bowed humbly, their palms and fingertips touching as if for prayer.

And now, like wings spreading, darkness fell. There was no light anywhere, except for the yellow light of cities.