I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story (20 page)

`Because I'd join whatever group was against the group
that even had such things as camp commandants,' Jack interrupts, without a shred of honesty. `Because I'd get out of the
fucking country.'

1,vouldu't, the internally honest English poet thinks, tossing back another vodka on the rocks, miserably.

`You're given authority, you see,' Todd Arbuthnot of the
Washington connections says. `If you're given the right
framework ... Authority from a higher power and a closed
community within which to exercise it . .

'It's Milgram's electric shock test,' Jack says.

Trent Bintock, having just inhaled, massively, beams and
tears noisily into a new pack of Marlboro Lights. `Who's
Milgram?' he says, in a helium-swallower's squeak.

`Back in the early sixties,' Todd picks up. `In New Haven.
Stanley Milgram ran an experiment designed to test human
willingness to obey orders, even when those orders caused
suffering to others.'

I don't know wlio this Milgram cunt is, the English poet is
thinking, but I know how I'd come out of his fucking experiment...

I'm sitting quietly in the shadows through this, nursing
not just my ravaged bowels and traumatized hoop, but my
outraged sense of sportsmanship ...

`So,' Todd Arbuthnot continues, `the volunteers for the
experiment are told by the "scientist", the guy in the white
coat, that they're taking part in an experiment about learning. They're told that the "learner" next door is hooked up
to electrodes, and that every time he gives a wrong answer to
a question, the volunteer is to give him an electric shock by throwing a switch. Obviously, there's no actual electric
shock - but this learner acts as if there is, every time the volunteer throws the switch.'

`What a disgusting experiment,' the poet says, on the edge
of hysteria. `What a predictable experiment.'

`So anyway,' Todd says (I rather like Todd's voice; it's dry,
and calm, and oaky with ancient New England wealth),
`Naturally, some of the volunteers started to, you know,
baulk, when they heard the learner next door protesting,
kicking on the wall, demanding to be released, screaming ...
But the man in the white coat told them to continue, and
most of them did. Thing is, you know, to give the shocks
they had to pull the switch through a number of positions
from 15 to 450 volts. These switch positions were marked
like "slight shock", "moderate shock", "strong shock" and
so on, all the way up to things like "intense shock",
"extreme intensity shock", "danger: severe shock", and,
finally, at 450 volts, the switch position was marked "XXX
450 volts". More than half the volunteers carried on all the
way through the shock register.!

`Fuck,' Trent says, heartily enjoying all this, seeing, in
fact, the whole thing unfolding dramatically, seeing the
camera angles, the pull-backs, the close-ups. `That's fucking
scary, man.'

'What's worse,' says Todd, `is that when they repeated the
study at Princeton, they got a figure of eighty per cent total
obedience from volunteers.'

`Eight out of ten,' the English poet, says, huskily - then,
with a guilty eye-flash at Trent's fags - `Could I have one of
those?'

`Yeah but what's really cool?' Todd continues, with that
American turn-a-statement-into-a-question intonation, `Is
that one guy in the experiment refused - point blank refused - to administer even the first shock. Just wouldn't do
it.'

Bastard, the English poet is thinking. Lucky bastard ...

`Sure,' Todd says. `And do you know who that one guy
was?' Everyone except me looks blank.

`Who?' Lysette Youngblood asks.

`Ron Ridenhour,' Harriet says, to my surprise. Hadn't
realised she was historically clued-up. Presumably she
optioned the rights to his story.

`Who the fuck is Ron Ridenhour?' Trent demands, with
a stellar smile.

Todd and I smile at each other through the gloom, as if
Ron Ridenhour might be our son. `He's the guy who later
blew the lid on the My Lai massacre in Nam,' Todd says.
`Without him there's a good chance the whole thing
would've been covered up for ever.'

`Still,' Trent says - and I know that through the opium
he's thinking about getting My Lai into the script, some
flash-forward, some satanic prophecy - `eighty per cent's
pretty fucking depressing, right? I mean that's only two out
of ten good guys, right?'

`There's ten of us here,' Jack points out. `Who's who?
Who here knows they'd be in the ethical twenty per cent?
Let's take a secret ballot!'

Oh yes, the English poet is thinking, yes let's. What a bril-
liantfucking idea ...

I never believed I'd get anywhere near eighty per cent.
Nothing like. Of course it tripped off the tongue in Hell, of
course it sounded fantastic - `Eight out of every ten. Do you
hear me? I accept no less. We must work in the garden, my
dears, we must work hard in the garden . . .' but the truth is
I'd've settled for fifty per cent. Hell I'd've been happy enough with twenty. That, actually, was nay real number, twenty per
cent. Two out of every ten. Would've been enough to get
the Old Man's goat. He must be positively cheesed off with
today's numbers. Serves him right. It's His own fault. Oh yes.
Those Commandments. How about those Commandments,
though, eh? Thou shalt honour thy father and mother. Er ...
eeyah. Thou shalt not covet thy neiOhbour's wife. Excuse me -
have you seen my neighbour's wife? Thou shalt love thy neich-
bour as thyself ... I remember thinking even at the time,
He's not serious. He can't, surely, be serious. Thou shalt not
kill. (If only you'd kept that one! The Crucifixion - the
entire New Covenant would have been impossible! All my
work would've been done for me.) Thou shalt not bear false
untness. Oh stop, I thought, you're killing me. Thing was:
nobody was actually going to Heaven.

I remember St Peter getting his new uniform and ticketpunch. Time passed. He wished he'd brought a magazine.
The turnstile booth grew ... oppressively familiar. Whereas
we were taking on extra staff downstairs. Every day a gala
day. I was down to a three-and-a-half-hour week. Spent the
rest of my time lying in a hot hammock and dabbing away
tears of mirth.

I sent Him a telegram. Far be it from me to tell You Your Oivn
business and all that, but ... Stony silence. Still no sense of
humour. On the other hand, it wasn't long after that regrettably indulgent quip that I noticed the goalposts were on the
move. Without so much as a nod or a wink. It was the coveters first, peeling off to Purgatory when they should have
been hurtling straight down to us. Then every other onetheft-only thief. The odd regretful adulterer. Whole
generations with a beef against Muni and Dad. Hang on a
minute, I thought. This is a bit ... I mean you can't just suddenly ... Oh but He could. And did. Dear Lucifer, He should have replied, thanks so much for your helpful suggestions ... I could have respected that. But no, not a word.
And it's me who's the petulant one.

Similar chestnuts come up, now and again, apre's dejeuner in
Hell. You know the setting: belts loosened, brains on the
cusp of drunkenness, hash-smoke genie presiding, the air
wreathed in the scent of port and brandy, an expansiveness of
body, a provocatively meandering mind or two ... `What is
the greatest evil?' someone will say. Thammuz, usually, who's
of an infuriatingly reflective bent, or Asbeel, who just loves to
argue. They're so hung up on torture, you know? On creating individual instances of despair. I tell them - eventually,
after they've prattled for hours of thumbscrews, hot boots and
racks - I tell them that what we need is Systems. Without
Systems, without Seeing the Big Picture, without setting up
a machine that runs itself, our work is mere vandalism.

Take torture, for example. What do you want from torture? You want the suffering of the victim, obviously, the
bouquet of fear, the pa►fium of pain; you want the gradual
revelation of the body's thraldom to physics, the careful journey back to the flesh's sovereignty over the spirit. You want
his appalled grasp of the inescapable ratio: your motivation is
pleasure; your pleasure increases proportional to his suffering;
your capacity for pleasure exceeds his capacity for suffering;
no amount of his suffering, therefore, is ever going to be sufficient. (What kills me about torture is how long it takes the
victim to understand the impossibility of transaction. There's
nothing the torturer wants from him except his suffering. Yet
on and on the victim blabs and whimpers, naming names,
offering up secrets, promises, bribes. Language compels
him - if he has it at his disposal, if his tongue hasn't already
been snipped or broiled - to persist in the belief that it can help him. The victim's voluntary retreat into silence, barring
screams and moans, is always a sign that he's made the shift,
fully realised his situation, got it.) You want, too, his degradation in his own eyes; you want him to observe the
dismantling of his own personhood, his astonished shift from
subject to object. It's why the classier torturers force their
victims into a relationship with the instruments of torture
before those instruments have been torturously employed:
the whip is drawn caressingly over the shoulder or loins; the
rods and prods, the ferruled canes, the probes, the nightsticks, the crops - must be kissed, fondled, or otherwise
venerated by the torturee, as if they themselves are sentient
subjects while he is a mere object of their intention. You
want him to see that in the universe you now control, in your
universe, all prior hierarchies are void.

Sooner or later (you humans can't help it, it's the way
you're made) this leads to despair. The victim's despair. The
torturee's preference, after a certain point has been perspir-
ingly passed, for death over life. The impossible ideal for the
torturer, of course, is that the victim remains alive in this
state of craving-but-not-being-given death f >rever. We don't
call it an impossible ideal in Hell. We call it routine.

Yes yes yes, despair is good, and torture a sure-fire way of
bringing it out - but I have to keep reminding them - the
boozers are nodding off by this point, the dullards daydreaming or picking their teeth - that flavoursome though
these prison cell episodes may be, the real prize is in achieving a state where despair can flourish with barely any
interference from us, when they do it to and for themselves,
when that's the way the world is.

Uffenstadt, Neiderbergen, Germany, 1567. Marta Holtz
stands naked and shivering in the village church. She's beginning to have an idea of why Bertolt has accused her.
The Inquisitors - three Franciscans led by Abbot Thomas of
Regensberg - are seated in a rough semi-circle of mahogany
high chairs between the altar rail and the first pew. A brazier
burns with occasional pops and snaps, tinting the rough
carvings with petals of orange light. Jimbo's crucifixion to
the left of the altar releases a pterodactyl of shadow, and
there's a compact and vivid eruption of daffodils from the
vase at the Virgin's feet. The smell (I imagine) is of incense
and chilled stone. The first pew used to be the fourth; the
brothers have had three pews removed to make room. Marta,
who isn't stupid (that's one of the reasons she's here), has
more than an inkling of what they might need room for.
This more than an inkling began life in her feet and knees,
but soon scurried up into her loins and belly, thence ribs,
breasts, throat and face. Now this more than an inkling is all
over her like a host of hairy spiders. She's beginning to have
the idea that Bertolt accused her because that is his job.
Bertolt came to Uffenstadt three months ago. She's barely
had any dealings with him. Once, he helped her catch a
piglet that had got loose. Another time she gave him a taste
of the damson cake she had baked for her sister's birthday.
On neither of these occasions did she have the slightest sense
that he had any feelings about her beyond the one shared by
most of the men in the village: that she was a desirable
woman and that Gunter Holtz was a lucky sonofabitch. (At
this moment - this moment of Marta's realisation that
Bertolt works for the Franciscans, and that with the first
three pews removed there will be plenty of room for the
good Fathers' manoeuvres - Giinter is being informed by
the Regensberg accountant that should Marta be found
guilty of witchcraft her execution will be followed by
Church confiscation of any property belonging - even Jointly or by virtue of marriage - to her, not to mention an
itemized bill - implements, fuel, labour - for the cost of the
interrogation. At this moment Gunter is looking at the
accountant's broad and porous face and wondering how its
cheek came by those three silver scars like fishbones. He's
thinking, too, of Marta's pale and downy midriff, of her sloe
eyes and oddly deep voice, of her habit of making him laugh
at his own struggle to be a manly roan, of the small mole at
the back of her left knee, of her svheaty breath when she
conies, of the pear-sized baby in her thickened womb. He's
thinking that he'll kill this accountant, no matter what. The
accountant and Bertolt. With the heavy scythe. Bertolt first.
He's thinking these and many other things, none of which is
of any use to Marta, who having been clumsily shaved by
Brother Clement, is now being hand-examined by the trio,
who bring to bear a predictably excessive investigative zeal
when it comes to her vagina, breasts and anus.) Marta -
who, somewhere beneath all this, is trying to single out a
jewel of memory to take to her grave, something of hers and
Giinter's, like the warm night in summer they swam and
made love in the I )onau, skimmed by ghostly fish and overarched by fierce constellations - has never net a Pope. She's
never heard of Pope Pious XXII, who, nudged in the small
and heartburning hours by yours truly, granted formal power
to the Inquisition back in 1320. She's never heard of Pope
Nicholas V, who, 130 years later, extended its authority, nor
of pope Innocent (don't VOL] love these names? Pious?
Innocent%) VIII, whose Bull, which I might as well have dictated, commanded secular authorities to co-operate fully
with Inquisitors and to cede judiciary and executive powers
in matters pertaining to heresy and witchcraft. Marta's never
heard of any of these good prelates, nor of Bulls (except the
ones that cover cows, precariously, standing on their little back legs) nor, indeed, of theology. Marta, as a matter of fact,
can't read or write. (Neither can Gunter, for the record.) She
has absolutely no idea that the coals in the brazier, the branding irons, the thumbscrews, the lances, the cat o'nine tails,
the bullwhip, the hammers, the pliers, the nails, the ropes,
the hot chair, the manacles, the knives, the hatchet, the
skewers - she has absolutely no idea that her impending
relationship with these items has been facilitated by Vatican
scribes and a string of Popes, some shrewd, some spooked,
all quick to catch on to the remunerative potential of witchhunting. Marta has never heard of Brothers Sprenger and
Kramer, my star students among the German Dominicans,
whose labour of love, the Malleus Maleficarum published
eighty-one years earlier, drew a minutely detailed diagram of
how to detect, interrogate and execute nubiles deemed suspect. She's never been to a Sabbat, nor signed in blood, nor
sacrificed babies, nor delivered the acolyte's `infamous kiss'
(the tonguing, thank you my dear, of His Satanic Majesty's
slack and gamy butthole), nor flown on a broomstick, nor -
I'm sorry to say - copulated with me or any of my hircine
proxies. Truly, Marta's venials make a paltry list: stole an
orange; wished Frau Grippel would get a fever; called Helga
a farting sow; sucked Gunter's cock (and a formidable
bratuwurst it is, I can tell you); admired the beauty of my
arms in the Donau; thought I'm the prettiest girl in
Uffenstadt.