Sympathy for the Devil (56 page)

Wagner
: Dearest, I couldn't find the book, but--

Robin's horn honks. Wagner is nonplussed.

Helen
: What are you doing in there?

Wagner opens the door and pulls Robin out by his collar. Robin's face splits in a shy smile of love. Wagner pushes him out the bedroom door and turns to Helen.

Wagner
: Helen?

Helen
: Darling!

She throws her arms around his neck and draws him toward the bed.

Clock
: ELEVEN FORTY-FIVE. LATE LATE LATE.

Mephistopheles, roused by the clock, makes a decision. He goes from the commons into the study. The instant he enters, Faustus and Dicolini speak as one.

Faustus & Dicolini
: Oh, so you're back, eh?

Mephisto
: Your doom is at hand.

Faustus fans out his deck of tarot cards.

Faustus
: Never mind that. Pick a card.

Dicolini
(
taking one
): So, what am I got?

Faustus
: You've got one, I've still got seventy-seven.

Dicolini
: You wrong. Itsa ace of wands.

Faustus
: Wandaful. (
gesturing to Mephistopheles
) Does your wormy friend want to try his luck?

Dicolini
: Hesa outside in the alley.

At this, Robin enters munching a slice of bread. He goes to the alchemical table and smears the bread with some noxious chemicals, takes a bite. He offers the bread to Faustus.

Faustus
: No, thanks. It's bad enough being damned. Indigestion I don't need.

Clock
: IT'S MIDNIGHT. BONG. BONG. BONG... (
continues throughout following action.
)

Mephisto
: Enough! Which one of you is the real Faustus?

At that moment, Albergus, who has found the magic book, strides into the room.

Albergus
: Ha ha! Fools! Now at last ultimate knowledge is mine! My time has come, and I am become the true Faustus!

Mephisto
: Good enough for me.

With that he snaps his fingers and a horde of misshapen demons erupt from the corners of the room. They seize Albergus, and in an explosion of light and smoke, drag him off to Hell. As the air clears the last stroke of midnight dies away. In the next room, the clock moves for the first time in the play. It stretches, shakes its aching legs and arms, gives a little hop of exhilaration.

Clock exits. In the bedroom, Wagner finds he is embracing empty air. He stumbles to the closet, but it is empty.

Wagner
: Helen?

Following the smell of smoke, he enters the study. Faustus and Dicolini are seated around a bonfire smoking cigars. Robin, using Mephistopheles's pitchfork, is shoveling books into the fire.

Dicolini
: Atsa good smoke.

Wagner
: Where is she?

Faustus gestures at Wagner's drooping trousers.

Faustus
: Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.

He pulls the sweaty contract off Wagner's chest and adds it to the fire.

Wagner
: What have you done with her?

Dicolini
: She was one helluva wrestler, eh, partner?

Robin leans on his pitchfork and gives a long, low whistle.

Wagner
: But it's not fair! We were only getting to know each other!

Faustus
: My boy, she was a scarlet woman and you're nothing but a green student. She would have made you blue someday.

Dicolini
: If you didn't turn yellow first.

Faustus
(
offering a hot dog)
: Meanwhile, how about a little roast scholar?

Dicolini
: Atsa no roast, atsa friar.

Wagner stumbles from the room. Lights go down.

Scene Seven

Lights come up on the Boar's Bollocks, where Wagner, moping, is seated at a table telling his story to the barmaid. At the next table a man sits with his back to the audience.

Wagner
: ... and when I came to, she was gone! Did my master Faustus care? Did Dicolini and Robin, my closest friends, care?

Barmaid
: I care.

Wagner
: The story of mankind is a sad story. The saddest story I know.

Barmaid
: Poor Wagner! Were you hurt?

Wagner
: Emotional loss means nothing to the true intellectual.

Barmaid
(
touching his chest
): Let me help you.

Wagner
: The world is a cold place.

Barmaid
: But you told me you were hot.

Wagner
(
standing, beginning to orate
): And I've learned much from all this. The beginning of wisdom is mine. I've learned that despite the centuries that have passed since the beginning of time, despite the wars, heresies and degradations, the corruptions of institutions and loss of faith, the ages of bad behavior, one thing remains. People are, for better or worse, still human. That has not changed. Good and evil co-exist. Some souls are saved, others are lost. The appetites of the body and the mind conflict. Men aspire to the stars, women abandon them, scholars seek knowledge, students...

The barmaid seizes him by the shoulder, bends him over and gives him a furious kiss. They fall off the bench, under the table. Bateman enters.

Bateman
: Has anyone seen my master Albergus?

The man at the next table turns and hails him. It is the Clock.

Clock
: He's busy. Will be for a while. Meanwhile, could you tell me what time it is?

Lights down in tavern. Mephistopheles comes out to address the audience.

Mephisto
: These our revels now are done.

All my power's overthrown.

Wagner's found a girl at last

History has swallowed past.

For me, I'm off to warmer climes

And giving up these wretched ryhmes.

Plagiarize I can no more

From better writers' magic store

Of characters, ideas, words,

Comic mishaps
tres absurd
..

With brothers Marx's sweet inventions

To tell of Faustus was our intention.

Now you must tell us if our play

Justified such rude display

A laugh's the end we're hoping for

Please don't send us back for more.

But if our humor's fit your plans

You may release us with your hands.

Curtain

The Professor's
Teddy Bear

Theodore Sturgeon

"Sleep," said the monster. It spoke with its ear, with little lips writhing deep within the folds of flesh, because its mouth was full of blood.

"I don't want to sleep now. I'm having a dream," said Jeremy. "When I sleep, all my dreams go away. Or they're just pretend dreams. I'm having a real dream now."

"What are you dreaming now?" asked the monster.

"I am dreaming that I'm grown up--"

"Seven feet tall and very fat," said the monster.

"You're silly," said Jeremy. "I will be five feet, six and three eighth inches tall. I will be bald on top and will wear eyeglasses like little thick ashtrays. I will give lectures to young things about human destiny and the metempsychosis of Plato."

"What's a metempsychosis?" asked the monster hungrily.

Jeremy was four and could afford to be patient. "A metempsychosis is a thing that happens when a person moves from one house to another."

"Like when your daddy moved here from Monroe Street?"

"Sort of. But not that kind of a house, with shingles and sewers and things.
This
kind of a house," he said, and smote his little chest.

"Oh," said the monster. It moved up and crouched on Jeremy's throat, looking more like a teddy bear than ever. "Now?" it begged. It was not very heavy.

"Not now," said Jeremy petulantly. "It'll make me sleep. I want to watch my dreams some more. There's a girl who's not listening to my lecture. She's thinking about her hair."

"What about her hair?" asked the monster.

"It's brown," said Jeremy. "It's shiny, too. She wishes it were golden."

"Why?"

"Somebody named Bert likes golden hair."

"Go ahead and make it golden then."

"I can't! What would the other young ones say?"

"Does that matter?"

"Maybe not. Could I make her hair golden?"

"Who is she?" countered the monster.

"She is a girl who will be born here in about twenty years," said Jeremy.

The monster snuggled closer to his neck.

"If she is to be born here, then of course you can change her hair. Hurry and do it and go to sleep."

Jeremy laughed delightedly.

"I changed it," said Jeremy. "The girl behind her squeaked like the mouse with its leg caught. Then she jumped up. It's a big lecture-room, you know, built up and away from the speaker-place. It has steep aisles. Her foot slipped on the hard step."

He burst into joyous laughter.

"Now what?"

"She broke her neck. She's dead."

The monster sniggered. "That's a very funny dream. Now change the other girl's hair back again. Nobody else saw it, except you?"

"Nobody else saw," said Jeremy. "There! It's changed back again. They never even knew she had golden hair for a little while."

"That's fine. Does that end the dream?"

"I s'pose it does," said Jeremy regretfully. "It ends the lecture, anyhow. The young people are all crowding around the girl with the broken neck. The young men all have sweat under their noses. The girls are all trying to put their fists into their mouths. You can go ahead."

The monster made a happy sound and pressed its mouth hard against Jeremy's neck. Jeremy closed his eyes.

The door opened. "Jeremy, darling," said Mummy. She had a tired, soft face and smiling eyes. "I heard you laugh."

Jeremy opened his eyes slowly. His lashes were so long that when they swung up, there seemed to be a tiny wind, as if they were dark weather fans. He smiled, and three of his teeth peeped out and smiled too. "I told Fuzzy a story, Mummy," he said sleepily, "and he liked it."

"You darling," she murmured. She came to him and tucked the covers around his chin. He put up his hand and kept the monster tight against his neck.

"Is Fuzzy sleeping?" asked Mummy, her voice crooning with whimsy.

"No," said Jeremy. "He's hungering himself."

"How does he do that?"

"When I eat, the--the hungry goes away. Fuzzy's different."

She looked at him, loving him so much that she did not--could not think. "You're a strange child," she whispered, "and you have the pinkest cheeks in the whole wide world."

"Sure I have," he said.

"What a funny little laugh!" she said, paling.

"That wasn't me. That was Fuzzy. He thinks you're funny."

Mummy stood over the crib, looking down at him. It seemed be the frown that looked at him, while the eyes looked past. Finally she wet her lips and patted his head. "Good night, baby."

"Good night, Mummy." He closed his eyes. Mummy tiptoed out. The monster kept right on doing it.

It was naptime the next day, and for the hundredth time Mummy had kissed him and said, "You're so
good
about your nap, Jeremy!" Well, he was. He always went straight to bed at nap-time, as he did at bedtime. Mummy didn't know why, of course. Perhaps Jeremy did not know. Fuzzy knew.

Jeremy opened the toy-chest and took Fuzzy out. "You're hungry, I bet," he said.

"Yes. Let's hurry."

Jeremy climbed into the crib and hugged the teddy bear close. "I kept thinking about that girl," he said.

"What girl?"

"The one whose hair I changed."

"Maybe because it's the first time you've changed a person."

"It is not! What about the man who fell into the subway hold?"

"You moved the hat. The one that blew off. You moved it under his feet so that he stepped on the brim with one foot and caught his toe in the crown, and tumbled in."

"Well, what about the little girl I threw in front of the truck?"

"You didn't touch her," said the monster equably. "She was on roller skates. You broke something in one wheel so it couldn't turn. So she fell right in front of the truck."

Jeremy thought carefully. "Why didn't I ever touch a person before?"

"I don't know," said Fuzzy. "It has something to do with being born in this house, I think."

"I guess maybe," said Jeremy doubtfully.

"I'm hungry," said the monster, settling itself on Jeremy's stomach as he turned on his back.

"Oh, all right," Jeremy said. "The next lecture."

"Yes," said Fuzzy eagerly. "Dream bright, now. The big things that you say, lecturing. Those are what I want. Never mind the people there. Never mind you, lecturing. The things you say."

The strange blood flowed as Jeremy relaxed. He looked up to the ceiling, found the hairline crack that he always stared at while he dreamed real, and began to talk.

"There I am. There's the--the room, yes, and the--yes, it's all there, again. There's the girl. The one who has the brown, shiny hair. The seat behind her is empty. This must be after that other girl broke her neck."

"Never mind that," said the monster impatiently. "What do you say?"

"I--" Jeremy was quiet. Finally Fuzzy nudged him. "Oh. It's all about yesterday's unfortunate occurrence, but, like the show of legend, our studies must go on."

"Go on with it then," panted the monster.

"All right, all right," said Jeremy impatiently. "Here it is. We come now to the Gymnosophists, whose ascetic school has had no recorded equal in its extremism. Those strange gentry regarded clothing and even food as detrimental to purity of thought. The Greeks also called them Hylobioi, a term our more erudite students will notice as analogous to the Sanskrit
Vana-Prasthas
. It is evident that they were a profound influence on Diogenes Laertius, the Elysian founder of pure skepticism...

And so he droned on and on. Fuzzy crouched on his body, its soft ears making small masticating motions; and sometimes when stimulated by some particularly choice nugget of esoterica, the ears drooled.

At the end of nearly an hour, Jeremy's soft voice trailed off, and he was quiet. Fuzzy shifted in irritation. "What is it?"

"That girl," said Jeremy. "I keep looking back to that girl while I'm talking."

"Well, stop doing it. I'm not finished."

"There isn't any more, Fuzzy. I keep looking and looking back to that girl until I can't lecture any more. Now I'm saying all that about the pages in the book and the assignment. The lecture is over."

Fuzzy's mouth was almost full of blood. From its ears, it sighed. "That wasn't any too much. But if that's all, then it's all. You can sleep now if you want to."

"I want to watch for a while."

The monster puffed out its cheeks. The pressure inside was not great. "Go on, then." It scrabbled Jeremy's body and curled up in a sulky huddle.

The strange blood moved steadily through Jeremy's brain. With his eyes wide and fixed, he watched himself as he would be, a slight, balding professor of philosophy.

He sat in the hall, watching the students tumbling up the steep aisles, wondering at the strange compulsion he had to look at that girl, Miss--Miss--what was it?

Oh. "Miss Patchell!"

He stared, astonished at himself. He had certainly not meant to call out her name. He clasped his hands tightly, regaining the dry stiffness which was his closest approach to dignity.

The girl came slowly down the aisle steps, her widest eyes wondering. There were books tucked under her arm, and her hair shone. "Yes, Professor?"

"I--" He stopped and cleared his throat. "I know it's the last class today, and you are no doubt meeting someone. I shan't keep you very long... and if I do," he added, and was again astonished at himself, "you can see Bert tomorrow."

"Bert? Oh!" She colored prettily. "I didn't know you knew about--how
could
you know?"

He shrugged. "Miss Patchell," he said. "You'll forgive an old--ah--middle-aged man's rambling, I hope. There is something about you that--that--"

"Yes?" Caution, and an iota of fright in her eyes. She glanced up and back at the now empty hall.

Abruptly he pounded the table. "I will
not
let this go on for another instant without finding out about it. Miss Patchell, you are becoming afraid of me, and you are wrong."

"I th-think I'd better..." she said timidly, and began backing off.

"
Sit down!
" he thundered. It was the first time in his entire life that he had thundered at anyone, and her shock was not one whit greater than his. She shrank back and into a front-row seat, looking a good deal smaller than she actually was, except about the eyes, which were much larger.

The professor shook his head in vexation. He rose, stepped down off the dais, and crossed to her, sitting in the next seat.

"Now be quiet and listen to me." The shadow of a smile twitched his lips and he said, "I really don't know what I am going to say. Listen, and be patient. It couldn't be more important."

He sat a while, thinking, chasing vague pictures around in his mind. He heard, or was conscious of, the rapid but slowing beat of her frightened heart.

"Miss Patchell," he said, turning to her, his voice gentle. "I have not at any time looked into your records. Until--ah--yesterday, you were simply another face in the class, another source of quiz papers to be graded. I have not consulted the registrar's files for information about you. And, to my almost certain knowledge, this is the first time I have spoken with you."

"That's right, sir," she said quietly.

"Very good, then." He wet his lips. "You are twenty-three years old. The house in which you were born was a two-story affair, quiet old, with a leaded bay window at the turn of the stairs. The small bedroom, or nursery, was directly over the kitchen. You could hear the clatter of dishes below you when the house was quiet. The address was 191 Bucyrus Road."

"How--oh yes! How did you know?"

He shook his head, and then put it between his hands. "I don't know. I don't know. I lived in that house, too, as a child. I don't know how I knew that you did. There are things in here--" He rapped his head, shook it again. "I thought perhaps you could help."

She looked at him. He was a small man, brilliant, tired, getting old swiftly. She put a hand on his arm. "I wish I could," she said warmly. "I do wish I could."

"Thank you, child."

"Maybe if you told me more--"

"Perhaps. Some of it is--ugly. All of it is cloudy, long ago, barely remembered. And yet--"

"Please go on."

"I remember," he half-whispered, "things that happened long ago that way, and recent things I remember--twice. One memory is sharp and clear, and one is old and misty. And I remember, in the same misty way, what is happening now--and what will happen!"

"I don't understand."

"That girl. That Miss Symes. She--died here yesterday."

"She was sitting right behind me," said Miss Patchell.

"I know it! I knew what was going to happen to her. I knew it mistily, like an old memory. That's what I mean. I don't know what I could have done to stop it. I don't think I could have done anything. And yet, down deep I have the feeling that it's my fault--that she slipped and fell because of something I did."

"Oh, no!"

He touched her arm in mute gratitude for the sympathy in her tone, and grimaced miserably. "It's happened before," he said. "Time and time and time again. As a boy, as a youth, I was plagued with accidents. I led a quiet life. I was not very strong and books were always more my line than baseball. And yet I witnessed a dozen or more violent, useless deaths--automobile accidents, drownings, falls, and one or two--" his voice shook--"which I won't mention. And there were countless minor ones--broken bones, maimings, stabbings... and every time, in some way, it was my fault, like the one yesterday... and I--I--"

"Don't," she whispered. "Please don't. You were nowhere near Elaine Symes when she fell."

"I was nowhere near any of them! That never mattered. It never took away the burden of guilt. Miss Patchell--"

"Catherine."

"Catherine. Thank you so much! There are people called by insurance actuaries, 'accident prone.' Most of these are involved in accidents through their own negligence, or through some psychological quirk which causes them to defy the world, or to demand attention, by getting hurt. But some are simply present at accidents, without being involved at all--catalysts of death, if you'll pardon a flamboyant phrase. I am, apparently, one of these."