“I am thinking that you are an evil, contemptible, stupid and repulsive beast! I am thinking in what springs of life or hell itself I could find for you the punishment you deserve! Yes, I came upon this earth to play and to laugh. Yes, I myself was ready to embrace any evil. I myself lied and pretended, but you, hairy worm, you crawled into my very heart and bit me. You took advantage of the fact that my heart was human and bit me, you hairy worm. How dared you deceive me? I will punish you.”
“You? Me?”
I am glad to say that Magnus was astonished and taken aback. His eyes widened and grew round and his open mouth naïvely displayed a set of white teeth. Breathing with difficulty, he repeated:
“You? Me?”
“Yes. I—you.”
“Police?”
“You are not afraid of it? Very well. Let all your courts be powerless, remain unpunished on this earth, you evil conscienceless creature! The day will come when the sea of falsehood, which constitutes your life, will part and all your falsehood, too, will give way and disappear. Let there be no foot upon this earth to crush you, hairy worm. Let! I, too, am powerless here. But the day will come when you will depart from this earth. And when you come to Me and fall under the shadow of my kingdom....”
“Your kingdom? Hold on, Wondergood. Who are you, then?”
And right at this point there occurred the most shameful event of my entire earthly life. Tell me: is it not ridiculously funny when Satan, even in human form, bends his knee in prayer to a prostitute and is stripped naked by the very first man he meets? Yes, this is extremely ridiculous and shameful of Satan, who bears with him the breath of eternity. But what would you say of Satan when he turned into a powerless and pitiful liar and pasted upon his head with a great flourish the paper crown of a theatrical czar? I am ashamed, old man. Give me one of your blows, the kind on which you feed your friends and hired clowns. Or has this torn sleeve brought me to this senseless, pitiful wrath? Or was this the last act of my human masquerade, when man’s spirit descends to the mire and sweeps the dust and dirt with its breath? Or has the ruin of Madonna, which I witnessed, dragged Satan, too, into the same abyss?
But this was—think of it!—this was what I answered Magnus. Thrusting out my chest, barely covered with my torn shirt, stealthily pulling up my sleeve, so that it might not slip off entirely, and looking sternly and angrily directly into the stupid, and as they seemed to me, frightened eyes of the scoundrel Magnus, I replied triumphantly: