(It pains me, obviously, even to type that – but I promised a faithful rendering.) I helped him into a better sitting position – but he wouldn’t relinquish his glass. ‘And don’t think you can fool me by pretending you’re fishing for the cigar, either, Mr Mandros,’ he said, squinting from the blow to his head.
‘This is utterly absurd,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment in silence before saying, with a compressed grin: ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, my dear.’
It seemed the knock on the head had sobered him. He placed the stem of the glass on the tub’s rim with some care. It was then that I noticed the razor blades, all but one still in the unwrapped pack, this one within a little outline of rust.
‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘Gunn’s. He was going to slash these.’ He held his wrists up for me to see. ‘Not an option I’d have all alone in Nothingness. Not a rope to hang myself with nor a pot to piss in.’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I hope this means you’re finally beginning to see sense.’
‘What did occur to me,’ he said, ’was that if God were to go ahead and get rid of everything except little old me, I’d be in exactly the position He was at the beginning. I’d be Him. Rich, don’t you think? Lucifer ends up where God started.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same and you know it.’
‘How not?’
‘Because you can’t create anything,’ I said.
And that, I believe, was the closest the world came. A few moments in the wake of those words in which – I could feel his capitulation like a great tilted ghost on the ether – I believe he would have turned. If the words for which he opened his mouth had ever been uttered.
But they were not.
It was a measurement of how much of my angelic nature yet remained, that I felt the approaching presence of one of the Firstborn seconds before it tore through. Lucifer, too, knew. The walls shuddered and the bathroom’s minute window cracked; a peculiar, dissonant articulation from the building’s joists and hinges, a tightening of the room’s smoke into a queer little knot – then he was through, and the material world flowed evenly once more.
‘Nelkers!’ Lucifer cried, smiling broadly and raising a hand in welcome. ‘By gum lad it’s good to see you –’
‘My Lord, I must –’
‘As a matter of fact I’d like you to take a look at –’
‘My Lord please! Listen!’
‘Dear God in Hammersmith child what’s the matter with you?’
‘It’s war my Lord.’
The four words nailed a small silence into place. Nelchael and I hadn’t seen each other since the Fall. (Daily, my angelic sight diminishes, but at that hour the cataracts of human vision were gauzy still.) His presence wasn’t pleasant for me – but it was horribly fascinating to see the state – carious, putrid, bleeding and exuding an impossible reek of corruption – of his angelic being. I could see that even in his state – manifestly come straight from the din and fire of battle – he was astonished to find another ex-Firstborn (an unFallen one at that) at his master’s side.
Lucifer got to his feet. ‘Astaroth,’ he said. ‘I knew it. What’s he done?’
‘No my Lord, not Astaroth. Astaroth fights loyally for the preservation of your sovereignty –’
‘Then wh–’
‘Uriel.’
In the moment of silence that followed, the sink gurgled, jovially.
‘Uriel?’
‘With renegades from Heaven, my Lord. Fully half of Hell is now under his command!’
‘Lucifer, let it go,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see that this releases you? Don’t you see His will at work?’
But his eyes were alight with a flame that didn’t belong in the human realm. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Double-crossing. . . mother . . . He was supposed to . . . He was supposed to wait until . . .’
‘He came with half of Heaven under his banner, my Lord.’
‘Well, that was all we could get. Jesus Jehosophat Christ.’
‘And told us that if we joined him we would have might enough for a new assault on Paradise.’
‘And he told you the truth, Nelkers. Now here’s a pretty pickle.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Oh no, no, no.’
Lucifer turned to me and grinned. He had fished out his cigar and slotted it, dripping, between his teeth. Bath foam glimmered on his head and loins.
‘Started without me,’ he said. ‘Can you – I mean can you believe the chutzpah?’
‘Lucifer stop. Please, stop and think.’
‘He told us, my Lord,’ Nelchael continued in a lowered voice (and without managing to conceal a glance at his master’s strange corporeal dress), ‘that you had . . . that you had . . . forgive me, Sire, but he told us that you had deserted Hell to live as a mortal!’
‘Do you know, Nelkers,’ Lucifer said, scratching his head and sucking uselessly on the sodden cigar, ‘it did used to be said that there was honour among thieves.’
He had got to his feet to receive Nelchael. Now, smiling, he laid himself gently back in the tub. (I’ve thought of this, since, that he laid the body down as one might the corpse of a beloved friend.) Nelchael, seeing his master apparently readying himself for sleep, misunderstood. ‘My Lord, I beg you, you must return and order the defence of your –’
‘Relax, Nelks,’ he said. ‘Go. Depart. Vanish. I’ll be at your heels in less New Time than it takes to boil an egg. Tell the faithful of Hell that Lucifer is coming and that Uriel will bow. No new campaign will succeed under him. I’ll lead the attack myself. I give you my . . . Well, just tell them that. Now go.’
What else is there to say? Useless entreaties. I’m angel enough yet to recognize inevitable motions when I see them.
So for a few moments we eyed each other in silence. I could have been mistaken but I thought his hands trembled a little.
‘You did consider it, didn’t you,’ I said. ‘You can’t deny, now, to my face, that you considered it. Lucifer?’
‘Finish my book,’ he said, swallowing the last mouthful of cognac and smacking his lips. ‘So that what little of posterity there may be left . . .’
‘This is the second time I’ve lost you –’ I began – but he closed his eyes.
‘No time for speeches. Super hols. Had a lovely time. Be seeing you.’
‘God be with you,’ I said, reflexively, forgetting. At which the eyes opened again, for a moment, in glittering accompaniment to the sudden and ravenous grin.
‘Do me a fucking favour,’ he said – then went.
I watched the body slacken as his spirit departed. The shoulders sagged, the bowels released a long and noisome fart, which bubbled up through the water as if in announcement of the kraken. The brandy balloon dropped from the lifeless hand; a cheap rug by the tub; it didn’t break. Thunder boomed and rolled
Try ‘like celestial pianos tumbling down Heaven’s stairs . . .’
In the quiet that followed, the steady breathing of Gunn’s deep sleep.
I gathered the papers together and added these notes of my own. Nothing else remains. I shall never see him again.
Except, perhaps, if I’m human enough. Except, perhaps, if there’s world enough and
