Satan’s Diary by Leonid Andreyev

Author:Leonid Andreyev [Andreyev, Leonid]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Diary fiction, Devil -- Fiction, Russian fiction -- Translations into English, Andreyev, Leonid, 1871-1919 -- Translations into English, Good and evil -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-07-30T19:40:57+00:00

III

March 29

Rome.

Buy the blackest paint available, take the largest brush you can find and, with a broad line, divide my life into Yesterday and Today. Take the staff of Moses and divide the stream of Time and dry it up clear down to its bed⁠—then only will you sense my Today.

Ave, Caesar, moriturus te salutat!

April 2, Rome.

Pallazzo Orsini.

I do not want to lie. There is not yet in me, oh man, any love for you, and if you have hastened to open your arms to me, please close them: the time has not yet come for passionate embraces. Later, at some other date, we shall embrace, but 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.

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