Two lines were enough for me to realize an opera had started. I grabbed my remote and turned in my chair to switch the receiver to another station. And there he sat, next to my stereo. Singing. The devil himself.
2
“What the hell . . .” I started.
“No need to be rude, my dear Timothy.” A smile flashed across his face, “I may call you ‘Timothy,’ mightn’t I?”
“Uh, well, sure,” I stumbled over the words.
Somehow, I knew. I knew it was him. Like an appointment you’ve made but forgotten until the person shows up on your doorstep. Surprised but not surprised. Or better, taken aback before realizing that, yes, he’s supposed to be here.
He sat there in a black pinstripe suit, a rich red shirt, and a gray tie. He wore black patent leather shoes. Very sharp. He looked as if he had stepped off the cover of the defunct George magazine—a JFK Jr. look-a-like, though his eyebrows were a bit thinner, his nose a little more narrow. Still, those observations came later. All I knew at the moment was that Jr. had come back to life and was sitting in my living room, singing opera. But I knew it wasn’t little JFK.
“People always know,” the devil said, an avuncular air about him, as if taking the gosh darn naive nephew under his wing to explain a few things about the world. “Who I am, that is. You do know who I am, don’t you, my young Timothy?”
“Yes, yes, I think I do know,” I replied.
“Who, then?” he playfully asked.
I took a long look at him. He must have noticed that my eyes rested on the top of his forehead. A guffaw escaped him.
“Oh, come on, Timothy,” the devil laughed, enjoying himself. “Don’t be so cliched.” Then the smile slid down into a frown, and he shook his head at me, chastising my lack of sophistication.
Okay, so I was looking for little horns.
“Come on, say it. Look me in the eye and tell me who you think I am.”
And I did. I never did it again, not until the end of our time together. But I looked him straight in the eye, long and hard. At first, it was like falling into a deep well, but the further I fell in, the more I realized, in the distance, fires burned; not like bonfires, but like suns ablaze.
And then I was out. I mostly avoided looking too long into his eyes after that, except for once.
“You’re the devil,” I finally said.
A sigh blew past his lips. “Such a name for one as I,” he said. “Though I knew you were going to say that, especially after I saw you looking for horns.” He again took on his avuncular air. “You did study Augustine, didn’t you, Timothy? And yet, still so literal minded.”
“What would you like to be called?” I asked.
“Lucifer,” the devil pronounced. “Call me Lucifer.”
I tried to do as he asked, but in my mind I always thought of him as the devil, pure and simple. And, what the heck, that’s how he sometimes referred to himself, his early protests to the contrary.
I tried to one-up him with what little I knew of biblical scholarship. “Lucifer’s a misnomer, you know,” I started, taking on my most authoritative voice. “Isaiah 14:12 refers to a Babylonian king, not to the devil. ‘Lucifer’ comes from Saint Jerome’s translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, and literally refers to Venus, the ‘day star.’ The term itself has been dropped in most English translations of the Bible since the King James Version. And . . .”
Zwangvolle Plage!
Müh’ ohne Zweck!
The devil could be like that sometimes, just interrupt you when you’re talking. And usually by singing; very loudly.
I stopped parading my scant bit of scholarship and started listening again.
“Good,” the devil said. “Do you have any idea how pedantic you sound when you try to explain things? And it runs through all your writing, except for gift books, which is practically like not writing at all.” This time the sly smile that slithered across his face had an edge to it.
“Jerome had it right, at least in his heart, seeing the hidden metaphor, the secret meaning,” the devil explained. “Man, I remember those days. Going round and round with him about how to translate this word, how to translate that word. And I even remember . . .”
“Wait a minute,” it was my turn to butt in. “You’re telling me you knew St. Jerome?”
“Knew him? Loved the guy!” the devil declared. “Now Jerome, he had an air about him, a no-nonsense approach that I appreciate. A hard man, he could be, in the service of his god.
“Yes, he did right; ‘day star’ for me. The voice of light, the soul of fire. Forget your small-time exegetes; keep with the greats, kid, and learn from them. They’re the ones who go for insight, for truth; scholarship, that’s for weenies who are too afraid to look reality in the face. I am Lucifer.”
He seemed proud to say the word.
“You helped translate the Vulgate?” I asked, incredulity punching the words. Jerome had translated the Bible into Latin, and it stood, unchallenged, as the Western church’s Bible for over a thousand years. It was the basis for all medieval and Renaissance religious art.
“Why surprised?” the devil asked. “I’ve known most of the great theologians. Helped them, best I could. Strengthened them. Toughened their minds. Theology’s no child’s game, you know.”
He gave me a sideways look. Then he continued.
“Truth, hard truth, that’s where I help. I’ll give you an example,” he said, putting his fingers to his lips, pursing them as if in deep thought.
“You know Michelangelo’s Moses, hillbilly boy?”
“Of course,” I said, irritation bubbling up inside me. I didn’t like being reminded of my roots, especially when someone used so-called high culture to try to catch me off guard.
“It’s a statue,” I said, “of Moses seated with the Ten Commandments he’s brought down from Mt. Sinai. In the Bible, it says Moses came down from the mountain, and the skin of his face was radiant. By most accounts,” I said, though not wanting to state it as a fact, because I was pretty sure the devil was out to trip me up, “Jerome mistranslated the Hebrew word for ‘radiant’ as ‘horns.’ That’s why there’s horns instead of a halo on the statue.”
The devil squealed with delight. “Delicious, isn’t it? We wrestled with that one for days. But finally Jerome came around. A man who brings commandments from God? What a trip!” His eyes brightened, experiencing the thrill of some victory had long ago.
“Don’t you see?” the devil asked. “A man who speaks for God, holding God’s commands in his hands. That’s something that makes for power! Moses had a tool, and he used it. Yes sir, Jerome finally got it. At the heart of every man is a desire for power, and when that power comes, even in the guise of a god’s gift—or especially when it comes in the guise of a god’s gift—it turns that man into a force. A force to bend men’s wills; a force to impose order. Darkness creeps into the heart, and little by little, the light goes out.”
The devil exulted in his conquest. “With my help, Jerome finally saw through to reality. Fundamentally, any being who obtains the tools of real power becomes a god unto himself. Jerome knew: coming off that mountain, Moses reflected, more than anything else, everything I stand for.”
He laughed to himself. “No, the critics be damned. Jerome knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote down that Moses came off the mountain with horns. He finally got the story!”
I simply fluttered my hands in the air, as if to shoo away everything the devil had said. Yet, as I got to know him,