Satan’s Diary Leonid Andreyev (ebook reader play store TXT) 📖

meanwhile, let us be cold and restrained, like two gentlemen in misfortune. I cannot say that my respect for you has grown to any extent, although your life and your fate have become my life and my fate: let the facts suffice that I have voluntarily placed my neck beneath the yoke and that one and the same whip are furrowing our backs.

Yes, that is quite sufficient for the present. You have observed that I no longer use a super-capital in writing the word “I”?⁠—I have thrown it out together with the revolver. This is a sign of submission and equality. You understand? Like a king, I have taken the oath of allegiance to your constitution. But I shall not, like a king, betray this vow: I have preserved from my former life a respect for contracts. I swear I will be true to your comrades-at-hard-labor and will not make any attempt to escape alone!

For the last few nights, before I took this decision, I thought much upon our life. It is wretched. Don’t you think so? It is difficult and humiliating to be this little thing called man, the cunning and avaricious little worm that crawls, hastily multiplies itself and lies, turning away its head from the final blow⁠—the worm that no matter how much it lies, will perish just the same at the appointed hour. But I will be a worm. Let me, too, beget children, let the unthinking foot also crush my unthinking head at the appointed hour⁠—I meekly accept all consequences. We are both of us humiliated, comrade, and in this alone there is some consolation: you will listen to my complaints and I⁠—to yours. And if the matter should ultimately reach the state of litigation, why the witnesses will all be ready! That is well: When one kills in the public square there are always eyewitnesses.

I will lie, if necessary. I will not lie in that free play of lying with which even prophets lie, but in that enforced manner of lying employed by the rabbit, which compels him to hide his ears, to be gray in summer and white in winter. What can one do when behind every tree a hunter with a rifle is concealed! This lying may appear to be ignoble from one point of view and may well call forth condemnation upon us, but you and I must live, my friend. Let bystanders accuse us to their heart’s content, but, when necessary, we will lie like wolves, too! we will spring forward, suddenly, and seize the enemy by the throat: one must live, brother, one must live, and are we to be held responsible for the fact that there is such great lure and such fine taste in blood! In reality neither you nor I are proud of our lying, of our cowardice or of our cruelty, and our bloodthirstiness is certainly not a matter of conviction.

But however hideous our life may be, it is still more miserable. Do you agree with that? I do not love you yet, oh man, but on these nights I have been more than once on the verge of tears when I thought of your suffering, of your tortured body, and of your soul, relinquished to eternal crucifixion. It is well for a wolf to be a wolf. It is well for a rabbit to be a rabbit. But you, man, contain both God and Satan⁠—and, oh, how terrible is the imprisonment of both in that narrow and dark cell of yours! Can God be a wolf, tearing throats and drinking blood! Can Satan be a rabbit, hiding his ears behind his humped back! No, that is intolerable. I agree with you. That fills life with eternal confusion and pain and the sorrow of the soul becomes boundless.

Think of it: of three children that you beget, one becomes a murderer, the other the victim and the third, the judge and executioner. And each day the murderers are murdered and still they continue to be born; and each day the murderers kill conscience and conscience kills the murderers. And all are alive: the murderers and conscience. Oh, what a fog we live in! Give heed to all the words spoken by man from the day of his birth and you will think: this is God! Look at all the deeds of man from his very first day and you will exclaim in disgust: this is a beast! Thus does man struggle with himself for thousands of years and the sorrow of his soul is boundless and the suffering of his mind is terrible and horrible, while the final judge is slow about his coming.⁠ ⁠… But he will never come. I say this to you: we are forever alone with our life.

But I accept this, too. Not yet has the earth endowed me with my name and I know not who I am: Cain or Abel? But I accept the sacrifice as I do murder. I am everywhere with you and everywhere I follow you, Man. Let us weep together in the desert, knowing that no one will give heed to us⁠ ⁠… or perhaps someone will? You see: you and I are beginning to have faith in someone’s Ear and soon I will begin to believe in a triangular Eye⁠ ⁠… it is really impossible that such a concert should have no hearer, that such a spectacle should be wasted on the desert air!

I think of the fact that no one has yet beaten me, and I am afraid. What will become of my soul when someone’s grubby hand strikes me on the face.⁠ ⁠… What will become of me! For I know that no earthly revenge could return my face to me. And what will then become of my soul?

I swear I will become reconciled even to this. Everywhere with you and after you, man. What is my face when you struck the face of your own Christ and spat into his eyes? Everywhere with you! And if