I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story (4 page)

Any seasoned deal maker will tell you that spontaneous
negotiation's a had strategy; the ad hoc approach will leave
you ripped-off, busted, conned, stifled, outsmarted and generally holding the shitty end of the stick. The advantage of
being me is that I know where I'm going with a deal from
the get-go. I always know. Fact is there's really no dealing
with me. Dealing's so inappropriate a concept it amounts to
a Rylean category mistake.

I can tell VOL] what ivasri't going to be the deal. The deal
wasn't going to be that I accepted. The most myopic,
cataracted, boss-eyed, occluded and cursory glance at the
proposal should make that obvious. But not taking the deal
didn't mean that I wasn't going to have some_fii -

Do you know something? I'm not being completely
honest. I know: you're shocked. There was - by the flaming
nipples of Astarte - there was the briefest, tiniest, most fleeting sliver of a moment in which I thought (they move fast,
angelic thoughts: you've got to be quick), in which I wondered whether, actually, thinking about it, you know ...
whether in the end it wouldn't be worth -

But like I said: they move fast. They shift. I was laughing
at myself, hysterically, on the inside, before I'd even finished considering whether it might not have been something to
consider. It's not even fair to describe the process as one of
considering. It was more of a rogue or involuntary twitch of
the spirit, analogous perhaps to those in the corporeal realm
which shock you, inexplicably, in that state between being
awake and falling asleep. (What's the matter? Dunno. Just got a
massive twitch. Well you frightened the bloody life out of me. Now
that I come to think of it, not infrequently precipitated by
half-dreams of falling, yes? That sudden yank or jolt just
before you hit the ground?)

Anyway. The point is, moment of professional weakness,
masochistic fantasy, psychodemonic tic - call it what you
like, it was there one instant, gone the next. What it came
down to was -

No no no no no. It won't do. That's not the whole story.
That is not, Lucifer, the whole story. Very well. I hold up my
hand. Economy with the truth. The truth is I had to take it
seriously. Had to, d'you see? In no more or no less the way
than the Old Boy has to take genuine human penitence seriously. It's a condition of His Nature. One doesn't have a
choice about some things - even He'd admit that. Of course
what one wants to do is laugh the whole thing off. `Me back
in Heaven,' one wants to muse aloud with trowelled-on
facetiousness, `yes, I see. Capital idea. Can I roll you another
Camberwell Carrot?'

How long before I'm reinstated with full angelic clout? I asked
Gabriel.

Wholly at His discretion.

So you're saying that even if I make it through the human life
without running amok and get back in Upstairs, it'll be as a human
soul until His Lordship feels like returning me to my former status
and station?

Angelic status, yes. No guarantee of rank.

And what happens, ►ny dearest Gabrielala, should I _Jail to get
through the scribes life without mortal sin?

He shrugged. ([ was at a loss for how to describe what he
did in corporeal terms until yesterday, when the joke fat
man in the Leather Lane chippy said `Sawt'n'vinnigga,
chief?' and I found Gunn's shoulders going up - then down.
Hour on earth should I 'now?) Charming. So you get back in,
but there's no guarantee that you're not going to be polishing some bubble-head's bugle down on the forty-second
level for fifty billion years.

I took the one month 'trial' and sent Gabbers back
Upstairs with a new set of terms and conditions. Not with
any hope that they'd be accommodated, obviously - but to
let them know that I'm taking the proposition - ahem -
seriously.

Now. I've got some moves - but even if I didn't, there's no
reason to pass up a month's vacation in the Land of Matter
and Perception.

You know what Eden was? I'll tell you. Edenic. Susurrating
trees reached out fingers of frothy foliage to catch the languid
landings of turquoise birds. Opalescent streams exhaled the
sweet scent of sewage-free water. Red and silver fish jewelled
obsidian meres. Succulent grass appeared and let green really
show itself. (That grass and that green, they were made for
each other.) Gentle rains fell from time to time and the earth
lifted its face up to receive them. Colours debuted daily in
the sky: aquamarine, mauve, pewter, violet, tangerine, scarlet, indigo, puce. Colours were textures in Eden. You wanted
to roll around naked in 'em. The material world, it was
apparent from the get-go, was my kind of place.

Yes, Eden was beautiful - and if I had to squeeze through
corporeal keyholes to crash it - so be it. (Hasn't it bothered
you, this part of the story, my being there, I mean? What was
I doing there? `Presume not the ways of God to scan,' you've
been told in umpteen variations, `the proper study of
Mankind is Man.' Maybe so, but what, excuse me, was the
Devil doing in Eden?) I took the forms of animals. I found I
could. (That's generally my reason for doing something, by
the way, because I find I can.) I hung around the gates for
quite a while; I made several slow passes at the material
boundaries until I sensed - my hunches are infallible - that
flesh and blood would open to me, that angelic spirit could
cleave and inhabit the body, drawing form around itself in a
meaty cloak. It's claustrophobic, at first, taking on a form.
Your spirit instinct screams against it. Incarnation requires a
strong will and a cool head - well, a cool mind, until an
actual head is available. Imagine you suddenly realised you
could breathe underwater. Imagine you could take water
into your lungs, ditch the hydrogen and hang on to the
oxygen. Taking that first breath wouldn't be easy, would it?
Your reflex would be to kick for the surface and wolf down
air as nature intended. Well, it's the same with corporeal
habitation. Only the single-minded overcome that reflex
panic and yield to the body's fit. And as if you needed
reminding: I am one of the single-minded. So I took the
forms of animals. Birds were the obvious first choice, what
with their bird's-eye view of things. And flying's hardly to be
sniffed at, when you consider it. (One of your most irresistible traits, by the way, is the speed with which you
exhaust novelty. I was on a red-eye from JFK to Heathrow
the other day, working on a rapper who's this close to stabbing
his model girlfriend to death, when I noticed how utterly
indifferent the passengers were to what they were doing, namely, flyin', throq'h the air. A glance out of the window
would have revealed furrowed fields of cloud stained smokeblue and violet as night and morning changed shifts - but
how were they passing the time in First, Business and
Coach? Crosswords. In-flight movies. Computer games. F-
niail. Creation sprawls like a dewed and willing maiden
outside your window awaiting only the lechery of your
senses - and what do you do? Complain about the dwarf
cutlery. Plug your ears. Blind your eyes. Discuss Julia
Roberts's hair. Ah, me. Sometimes I think my work is done.)
Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed flying. And flying at night? Oy.
Like butter. Ask the owls. I bathed in the darkness and
basked in the light. You're poor on basking, you lot. With
the exception of white girls from the northern hemisphere's
urban pits, who, supine on southern beaches quite naturally
allow the sun to strip from them the last tissues of sentience,
humans have everything to learn from lizards. The only
animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is
the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the
sheep's got to teach.

The animals shied away from me, even when I was one of
them. They just ... sensed. They drew away and that was
that. Me and animals would never he friends. I've made use
of them from time to time down the millennia, but there's
never going to be a relationship. Three things: they don't
have souls, they can't choose, and they're dependent on
God - ergo they're of no consequence to me. The absence
of a soul, by the way, makes it easy to inhabit a body.
(Therefore, why is Elton John still pudging around unpossessed% I hear you ask.) Conversely, the presence of a soul is
an absolute hugger to get around. I manage it, periodically,
but it's not like falling ofa log.

However, again I digress.

He knew I was there. God the Holy Spirit knew first and
blabbed to the Other Two, who knew in any case. Who'd
known all along. He let me stay. He created Eden and let the
Devil in. Got that? What else do you need to know about
Him? I mean do I need, actually, to go on?

A word about humankind - and I'm ... you know ...
shooting from the hip here: I was hooked on you, instantly.
The hundred billion galaxies, the stars, the moons, the
cosmic dust, the wrinkles, the loops, the black holes, the
worm-holes ... It was nice stuff, spectacular in a remote,
high-art way. But you lot? Oh, man. Should I say that you
were right up my street? You were right up my street, in the
front door and sitting in the comfy chair with your shoes
off smoking a huge spliff while I made us both a cup of PG.
It wasn't your looks (although I was always a sucker for
beauty, and your pre-lapsarian progenitors make you lot
look like a posse of anthraxed Quazzies), it was your potential. I looked on (from the lowest bough of a laburnum tree
that had burst into blinding yellow bloom almost with an
air of embarrassment at the spectacle of itself) as Himself
coaxed and worried Adam from the dust. I watched the
arrival of bone, the wet birth of blood, the woven tissues,
the threaded capillaries, the shocking bag of skin (less
Michelangelo than Giger meets Bacon meets Bosch).
Those lungs would turn out to be a design flaw, mind you,
with all the breathable nastiness I was going to inspire you
to invent. Ah, and the genitals. Where the smart money
was going. It was, one has to admit, mesmerizing, a gory
wattle-and-daub masterpiece. Give the Maker His due, He
knew how to Make. The nipples and hair were sweet
touches, though you could see from the outset what the
wear-and-tear spots were going to be, where the mileage
was going to be racked-up: teeth; heart; scalp; bum. Still, you really were a piece of work. I lay on my laburnum
bough (I was a feral cat at the time, as yet unnamed) rapt
and, I must confess, a tad jealous. Angels had pure spirit and
a one-dimensional existence blowing smoke up the Divine
Bottom morning noon and night. Man, apparently, was
going to have the entire natural world, sentience, reason,
imagination, five juicy senses and, according to the development leaked before the sear, a get out of jail free card
courtesy of Jimmeny Christmas to be phased in not long
before the fall of the Roman Empire with limitless retroaction.

You'll excuse my flippancy. This is difficult for me. I'd
been feeling peaky ever since I found out about Creation.
On the one hand it gave me a superabundance of material to
work with. On the other ... What am I trying to say? On
the other, it had about it the noxious whiff of finality. Once
the world was up and running, once .titn was abroad, rife
with desires and garrotted by those dos and don'ts, my role
was pretty much set for ... well, for ever. You pause for
reflection at these moments. And while we are pausing
(Adam finished now, toenails, eyelashes, earlobes, fingerprints - that was forward planning, that, fIni'erprints) let's not
forget that I, Lucifer, was still in the first agonizing age of
pain. Imagine having all your skin flayed off. Whilst having
all your teeth drilled. Whilst having your knackers or vadge
nailed to a fridge. LnaL'ine your head heinq on fire all the time.
That's the tip of my iceberg of my pain.

With the pain, curiously, had come the conviction that I
could bear it. Later (much later) by degrees (a lot of degrees)
the conviction proved justified; I found I could shear off a
wafer of myself, the thinnest, tlinuiest wafer (not unlike the
sliced ginger accompanying sushi) and lift it above and
beyond the infernal pain. I've seen exceptional humans do it under torture. Enormously irritating to me and my torturers
of course, but, you know, credit where credit's due and all
that.

So I was, let me repeat, in terrible pain. But I couldn't
keep away. Lying there on my bough watching the shadows
crawling over Adam's loins, I had an intimation of the rage
and loneliness I'd be signing on for from these beginnings, a
glimpse of the appalling waste and destruction, a first gutgrowl of what would be an eternally unsatisfied hunger - a
moment, all in all, of doubt.

Night had crept into the garden. Crocuses and snowdrops were throbbing quills and pearly stars in the dark
grass. The rustle of water and the sibilance of the wakeful
trees. Ink-shadowed stones and the moon a chalky hoof
print. The whole place attended to me with a Lawrentian
intensity. My head sank forward on to my paws and I felt
my breath moist in my nostrils. The bones in my body
were heavy, and for the briefest moment - looking down at
sleeping Adam's brand new limbs and unopened face - for
the briefest moment I must confess ... I must confess ... I
did wonder, despite all that had gone before, despite rebellion, despite expulsion, despite the battlements and cesspits
of Hell, despite my legion cohorts and their chorus of rage,
despite everything, whether there might not be a chance
to -