Belial
Sveta Yefimenko
Let’s follow that girl. That one, with eyes like dark moons and a mouth like dying flowers. A man’s brown coat is wound tightly around her too-thin body. She must be very cold. She lunges into an intersection thick with cars and people and noise and night. She runs past flickering lights, sudden music from restaurant doors swinging open, the lilt of gasoline. Someone waves, shouts what must be her name. Maybe he knows her. But she’s running. She’s cold. Past a fire escape, she turns a corner where only the wind roams up and down the narrow street, scattering dry leaves. She pauses beneath a blinking, red traffic light. What’s she waiting for?
But listen, there’s the sound of someone approaching. A man steps into the red circle. He isn’t possible. She doesn’t really believe in him.
Belial: “It’s cold.”
Sophia: “You.”
He takes her elbow and leads her toward the curb. The gesture has all the casual simplicity of a bygone masculinity. He’s old fashioned.
Belial: “Don’t stand in the middle of the street.”
Sophia: “You are—”
Belial: “I’m not. Let’s walk.”
He turns away. But she follows. She has to.
Sophia: “Who are you?”
Belial: “I’m not a who. I’m a what.”
Sophia: “I don’t think a what can speak.”
Belial: “If you listen.”
Sophia: “I’m listening”
Belial: “I am the bad weather beyond your windows. The artificial heat in your living room.”
She doesn’t say anything. They walk with only the click of his heels interrupting their silence. His profile is sharp and pure. He speaks as though to someone else, as though he has forgotten her.
Belial: “Cities. Beautiful comedies. Much better orchestrated than the country, where nothing ever happens. Except time. The country is where only time happens. Here, on the pavement, above subways and sewers, beneath these wires, we are timeless. Absolute.”
Sophia: “Timeless. Why?”
Belial: “We live artificially and, therefore, creatively. When you create, you become godlike. An artist.”
Sophia: “Artists aren’t godlike. They’re ordinary. Nothing is more ordinary than an artist.”
Belial: “Art is timeless.”
Sophia: “Because it lasts forever?”
Belial: “Because it doesn’t.”
Sophia: “What, then?”
Belial: “It belongs to a place where ‘lasting’ has no meaning.”
They’re silent again. A cat sits beside a trash can, illuminating them with electric orange eyes.
Sophia: “Who are you?”
Belial: “Do you know, it’s embarrassing to admit this, but I do get lonely. I like the sound of my voice reverberating in someone else’s skull. What’s your name? Do you have a cigarette?”
She reaches into her man’s coat, pulls out a pack.
Sophia: “You don’t know my name?”
He pauses to take a cigarette with two precise and careful fingers. It ignites suddenly.
Belial: “Why should I? I’m not psychic.”
Sophia: “Sophia.”
Belial: “Philo-sophia. Wisdom. You ought to meet a Phil. Then you’re all set.”
Sophia: “I don’t like the way you say things.”
Belial: “The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose.”
Sophia: “And do you?”
His voice is hoarse when he answers and exhales smoke simultaneously.
Belial: “Sometimes.”
Sophia: “Anyway, I don’t like Phils. Too common.”
Belial: “You don’t like the common?”
Sophia: “No.”
Belial: “I do. Are you very uncommon, then?”
Sophia: “Please don’t laugh at me. I can’t endure it.”
Belial: “I only want to understand.”
Sophia: “Understand what?”
Belial: “Well, for example, why it is that a common Phil dreams of being an uncommon Marlon Brando or a highly unusual Tom Cruise when nothing is so common as a Tom Cruise.”
Sophia: “Maybe they want fame.”
Belial: “And what of integrity?”
Sophia: “What of it?”
Belial: “Exactly. What of it. I once knew a very beautiful creature who betrayed everyone. Then he turned on himself.”
Sophia: “What kind of creature?”
Belial: “The best kind. The only kind capable of betrayal and, consequently, of loyalty. A human being.”
Sophia: “What happened to him?”
Belial: “He died.”
Sophia: “Tell me. Who are you?”
He gestures with the cigarette.
Belial: “Nowadays, I’m everyone. Oh, why not, call me Steve. Steve. A terrible name. American variation, derived from the Greek. It doesn’t matter what you call me. I never come when I’m called, and I’m always the same.”
Sophia: “Not… Mephistopheles?”
Belial: “Don’t be cliché.”
Let’s see Belial in profile again, the cigarette in his mouth. It jerks up and down nervously when he speaks.
Belial: “Sophia. Be wiser. I’m a drug dealer.”
Sophia: “A drug—a what?”
Belial: “A drug dealer. Only not those types of drugs. The drugs I deal are much more addictive.”
She glances back to the intersection, the red traffic light blinking monotonously behind them. Maybe she realizes that she ought to be frightened.
Sophia: “What does that mean?”
Belial: “It means that any bum on a street corner can sell you something to smoke or swallow or inject. Everything will change. The city will suddenly seem coherent. You’ll catch your own reflection in a store window or the handle of a well-polished spoon and you’ll look too beautiful to be real.”
Sophia: “In the handle of the—”
Belial: “The spoon.”
Sophia: “The spoon. In the handle of the spoon, I’ll see—”
Belial: “Yourself. Yourself as you look when it’s very early in the morning and you haven’t slept well and you stand before your canvas and the entire world surges up in you to be captured, tamed, and re-invented. But Sophia. Listen. I deal better drugs. Do you understand? Better. I can give you violent ecstasy or hysterical joy. I can give you glory, triumph, self-love. Inhuman strength. Visions. Genius. I can give you the profoundest love for all mankind. I can give you the means to rule a nation. Power. Eternal youth. Inspiration. All the world’s wealth.”
She gasps and stops.
Belial: “Well?”
Sophia: “Inspiration.”
Belial: “Inspiration? Oh, sure. You’ll be inspired. You’ll be sublime. You’ll love your work as only a master can love it. Others won’t, but that won’t matter. You’ll be at the forefronts of consciousness, seeing what others only think they see.”
Sophia: “That isn’t art.”
Belial: “It isn’t?”
She looks away.
Belial: “You make me want to laugh. I don’t laugh often. Tell me, Wisdom, what is art?”
Sophia: “I don’t have definitions. I don’t need them. But practically speaking—”
Belial: “Does anyone speak otherwise?”
Sophia: “Creation.”
Belial: “What if I am creation?”
Sophia: “Well, let’s pretend you are.”
Belial: “Let’s. What if I am the force which produced the Sistine Chapel? Olympia? The Parthenon? Ulysses? The Iliad? King Lear? Even The Bible?”
Her eyes are narrowed, her mouth is tight.
Belial: “What if, without me, Michelangelo had continued smudging figures in a Medici tomb, and Racine became a lawyer, and poor Edgar Poe drank himself to death in a Baltimore saloon? If Van Gogh’s stars swirled and dripped only in his imagination? If Homer went blind, but no further? If Chopin were just a tubercular invalid, devastating to see?”
Sophia: “Racine, Van Gogh? They didn’t do it—”
He’s laughing.
Belial: “On their own? My God, Sophia! Who does anything on their own?”
Sophia: “Michelangelo exchanged his soul for the sake of the Sistine Chapel?”
Belial: “Don’t you think it was worth it?”
Sophia: “I don’t know.”
Belial: “And the David. And the Pieta. And the Torment of St. Anthony. He gave himself utterly to grasp, for some fifty years, divinity itself. Just think. Can an artist be otherwise?”
Sophia: “But this means that nobody has ever accomplished anything!”
Belial: “I’m sorry.”
Sophia: “Genius is the relinquishment of soul?”
Belial: “Greatness demands sacrifice. Boundless suffering.”
Sophia: “Then the best, what’s the best?”
Belial: “The optimistic best is a dream of the most dangerous kind – it weakens the spirit.”
Sophia: “In that case, what dreams are worth having?”
Belial: “I’ve wondered about that.”
Sophia: “Listen. You said something about the Bible. Did you mean—does that mean the crucifixion, too?”
Belial: “The most important sacrifice of all.”
She wants to speak. She can’t.
Belial: “Of course.”
She raises a limp hand to her temple. It remains suspended, falls.
Sophia: “This is sick.”
Belial: “Could he, burdened as he was by the weight of time and space, have endured the suffering of humanity? Just think, Sophia. Think! To die for all humanity. Can you imagine? Can you begin to imagine? To drag a 300-pound, wooden cross, ignoring the splinters and the heat, through dusty Via Dolorosa, to hear the endless jeering of the people you’re supposed to love? To see Pontius Pilate spread his hands in a gesture of bewildered helplessness, to hear him say, ‘What I have written, I have written?’ And after the sky grew dark for nine hours, to have strength only to cry from the interminable heights of Calvary: Eloi, eloi, llama sabachthani? Can you imagine? No. It is unsayable. There are no words.”
Sophia: “So you just—”
Belial: “I did. I came to him. I was there with him. We died together.”
Sophia: “But why?”
Belial: “Because I collect artists. Because, once, we stood side by side on Mount Quarantania in the Judean desert and I showed him Jericho and told him about the empires of the world. And, like you must do, he turned from me, shouting, ‘Away from me, Satan!’ Oh, it hurt. You see, I loved him.”
Sophia: “Love. Love?”
Belial: “I love mankind.”
Sophia: “You?”
Belial: “Unlike fragmented human beings, I am complete. Because there is nothing for me to want. Because I cannot suffer.”
Sophia: “What’s love without suffering?”
He shrugs.
Sophia: “Have you ever been in love?”
He sighs.
Belial: “All the time.”
Sophia: “Always loving everything is the same as never loving anything.”
Belial: “Because love is jealous? Because love must possess or perish? Because of jealous love, a Socrates is executed, and you go on insisting.”
Sophia: “Socrates didn’t die for such a reason.”
He’s mocking.
Belial: “Such a reason! You sound like a grammarian or, worse, a priest. The most terrifying acts have been committed for just such a reason. Love can kill anyone. Even a god. Or a philosopher. But that’s harder.”
Sophia: “No. Love uplifts. It ennobles. It inspires to greatness.”
Belial: “Where did you pick that up?”
Sophia: “I didn’t. I just know.”
Belial: “People should put less emphasis on what they just know.”
Sophia: “Don’t you know it?”
Belial: “After 15 billion years, I know nothing.”
Sophia: “I don’t believe you.”
Belial: “I don’t, either.”
She gives up. She approaches a scruffy tree and leans against it, looking up through the spindly branches. He searches through the pockets of his trench coat, finds an apple, wipes it on his sleeve, and takes a loud bite.
Sophia: “You know, I really don’t believe you.”
Belial: “And you shouldn’t.”
Sophia: “I mean, about any of it. Not about Racine or Chopin or any of it.”
Belial: “I applaud your skepticism.”
He offers her the apple. She glances at it without interest, then looks at him.
Sophia: “You’re telling such bad stories. But I know better.”
He turns and throws the apple with a sudden violence. She remains motionless, almost indifferent.
Belial: “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
Sophia: “What?”
Belial: “Hamlet. Scene 5.”
She bites her lip.
Sophia: “Speaking of scenes.”
Belial: “Let’s. Let’s speak of scenes.”
Sophia: “You said life is a comedy. Remember? You said—”
Belial: “I remember.”
Sophia: “Well?”
Belial: “What? Do you think it’s a tragedy?”
Sophia: “I don’t see what’s funny about it.”
Belial: “It’s funny. Believe me. I’ve seen the script.”
Sophia: “Massacres and massacres. What can be funny?”
Belial: “You can’t possibly know. And you expect too much. We have, after all, only begun the first rehearsal of the first scene in the first act.”
Sophia: “Is that all?”
Belial: “That’s all.”
She crouches on the ground. He paces.
Sophia: “Please tell me. Tell me about God.”
Belial: “God. I’ll tell you. Also an artist. Arguably, one of the finest. Certainly on par with Ibsen, Moliere, Sophocles. He was so young, then. He had eyes like wilderness. He really did. And a voice just like the whirring air near hummingbird wings. Oh, I loved him. He was spoiled. We all spoiled him, refusing him nothing. Once, he came to me and he said, ‘I want to create a grand spectacle. With masks and disguises and darkness and flowers. With tiny, fragile creatures who suffer and fall in love. I want to create meaning.’”
Sophia: “God called you? Just like I’ve done? Just like the others?”
Belial: “Not like the others.”
Sophia: “You enabled God to create… everything?”
Belial: “I am the creative force. I am oblivion from which meaning is born.”
Sophia: “What does any of it have to do with the artificial heat in my living room?”
Belial: “Oh, that.”
She rises and stands, defiantly.
Sophia: “Why did he want to create the world?”
Belial: “For the same reason any artist creates anything. He makes meaning to conceal from himself that there isn’t any. He, too, wanted to hide from the oblivion that I am. So he made up a world in which the devil doesn’t exist.”
Sophia: “So the devil is truthlessness.”
Belial: “Seems that way.”
Sophia: “If a world of purpose and meaning was God’s intention, he failed. Didn’t he?”
Belial: “Oh, come on, it worked for a while. Quite a while. It worked for thousands of years. Everyone believed in the play he staged. Everyone thought they had a purpose to justify themselves. It’s only lately that the spectacle is unraveling and the props go rolling onto the stage to the embarrassment of the actors. And the audience begins to suspect that maybe the purple and orange backdrop isn’t lakes or mountains after all.”
Sophia: “I’m not afraid of it.”
Belial: “Be careful.”
Sophia: “No. I won’t be careful. I have begun to despise the world because I can’t capture its vividness, I can’t say what it does to me. Have you seen the way sunlight glints on water?”
He smiles.
Sophia: “I’ve been painting the same river for three years. And my sun doesn’t dance and glint. My sun is just a blob of heaviness, and it drowns and drowns and drowns and I don’t know where to look for it, how to see it, how to recognize it, because nothing is worth painting anymore—”
She begins to cry, trying to hide it. He stands very close to her, and lifts her chin with one finger. He’s whispering.
Belial: “I’ve forgotten the art of charming beautiful women out of their sorrow. I can’t be sympathetic because I don’t understand. But Sophia. Listen.”
She steps back.
Sophia: “I’m not afraid. Because I want nothing else. I want only drunkenness and solitude.”
Belial: “Immortal words.”
Sophia: “What?”
Belial: “How exactly like an artist. But I’ve heard it before.”
Sophia: “From whom?”
Belial: “A very beautiful creature who betrayed everyone.”
Sophia: “Human beings again. The common Phil.”
Belial: “You know, Socrates may have been the first to understand that human beings have immortal souls. Oh, of course many had hopes and fears of immortality. But Socrates understood it.”
Sophia: “What happened?”
Belial: “What do you think happens when a human realizes he possesses something so precious? It becomes a bargaining chip.”
Sophia: “But I don’t know what else to do.”
Belial: “He didn’t, either. But before I outline the details of your commitment to me, I’ll give you a chance. A warning.”
Sophia: “Against what? You? It’s probably too late. Besides, I don’t care.”
Belial: “Sophia. You desire inspiration. You can have it. But I must tell you that even a masterpiece won’t be worth it.”
Sophia: “Not worth it?”
He shakes his head. For the first time, he’s gentle.
Belial: “Nothing is. God created a perfect, but incomplete, system. I suspect that its perfection is its incompleteness.”
Sophia: “He did it without you?”
Belial: “Without me.”
Sophia: “So creation is possible.”
Belial: “Of course it is.”
Sophia: “Then why did you say all of that? About traitors and artists and that nobody has ever done anyting?”
Belial: “Nobody has.”
Sophia: “Except God.”
Belial: “Except God.”
Sophia: “Why not?”
Belial: “They didn’t think they were able to.”
Sophia: “And that’s the difference?”
Belial: “That’s it.”
Sophia: “Is that what you said to Michelangelo, Homer, Ibsen?”
Belial: “They didn’t believe me.”
He begins to walk away, the wind in his face. He pauses, turns.
Belial: “So?”
Her eyes widen. She smiles. And there’s the glowing tip of his cigarette arcing through the night.