And that, you will not be surprised to hear, was the root of all the trouble.
Give the Old Boy His due. He was almost right. (Well, actually, He was completely right in knowing that He was wrong in thinking it was all going to turn out okay – but there’s no telling this story without contradictions.) He was almost right. It turned out, once we were around to experience Him, that God was really incredibly nice. It’s quite something, you know, to feel yourself bathed in Divine Love all the time. It’s hard not to feel grateful – and we did. We all really did feel nothing but refulgent gratitude, and spared not our throats in telling Him so. It was obvious – He discovered what He’d known all along – that He loved an audience. The creation of the angels and the first crank of Old Time had shown him Who and What He was: God, Creator, alpha and omega. He was Everything, in fact, apart from that which He had created. You could feel His relief: I’m God. Phew. Cool. Fucking knew it.
Perennial and all-encompassing love notwithstanding, we were aware of our condition, a queasy cocktail of subordination and imperishability. Ask me now why He made us eternal and the answer is (after all time, Old and New): I haven’t a clue. Why I’m still running around mucking things up . . . I’m a proud bird – it’s been made much of, my pride – but I’m not stupid. If God wanted to destroy me He could. It’s the CIA and Saddam. Yet I’ve known from the Beginning (we all knew) that once created, the angels would exist forever. ‘An angel is for life,’ Azazel says, ‘not just for fucking Christmas.’ But I digress. I’m schizophrenic with digression. Awful for you I’m sure – but what do you expect? My name is Legion, for we are many. And what’s more, I have of late . . .
Never mind that for the time being.
He turned a side of Himself to us and from it poured an ocean of love in which we sported and splashed like orgasmic kippers, singing our response in flawless a cappella (those were the halcyon days before Gabriel took up the horn) as reflexively – as unreflectively – as if we had been no more than a heavenly jukebox. Since He was infinitely loveable it never occurred to us that we had any choice but to love Him. To know Him was to love Him. And so it went for what would have been millions of millions of your years. Then –
Ah yes. Then.
One day, one non-material day, nowhere, a thought came unbidden into my spirit mind. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was, and the next again it was gone. It flitted in then out again like a bright bird or a flurry of jazz notes. For the briefest, most titillating moment my voice faltered and the first hairline crack in the Gloria appeared. You should have seen the looks. Heads turned, eyes flashed, feathers ruffled. The thought was: What would it be like without Him?
The Heavenly Host recovered in a twinkling. I’m not sure Michael even noticed, the dolt. The Gloria renewed, saccharine sweet, porcelain smooth, and we delivered ourselves to him in splashed bouquets – but it was there: freedom to imagine existing without God. That thought had made a difference and that thought, that liberating, revolutionary, epoch-making thought, was mine. Say what you like about me. Tempter I may be, tormentor, liar, accuser, blasphemer and all-round bad egg, but no one else gets the credit for the discovery of angelic freedom. That, my fleshly friends, was Lucifer. (Ironic of course that after the Fall they stopped referring to me as Lucifer, the Bearer of Light and started referring to me as Satan, the Adversary. Ironic that they stripped me of my angelic name at the very moment I began to be worthy of it.)
The thought spread like a virus. There were slight signals from some, a freemasonry of freedom. They made themselves known to me, shyly, came out like pubescent boys to a queer professor. Plenty didn’t. Gabriel drew away from me. Michael held himself aloof. Poor, gorgeous, shilly-shallying Raphael, who loved me almost as much as he loved the Old Chap, sang on for a while in tremulous uncertainty. But what, after all, had I done? (And what had I done that He hadn’t known I was going to do?)
A strange few millennia followed. Word got out. The Brotherhood grew. He knew, of course, the Old Man. He’d known all along, even before knowing all along was possible, in the absence of all along. It’s so irritating being with someone who knows everything, don’t you think? You call them know-alls down here. Well your know-alls are empty vessels compared to the One we had to deal with. Everything other than your rapturous celebration of His Divinity – conversation, punchlines, wrapping presents, surprise parties – is pointless. There’s only one response God’s got to anything you might care to tell Him – that your brother’s dying of AIDS, for example, and that you’d really appreciate it if He could help out with a bit of the old razzle-dazzle – and that response is: Yeah, I know.
The Brotherhood’s voices stirred and tried new angles. I was sick of the over-orchestrated molasses of the Gloria anyway. All that legato. No soul, you know? Angels don’t have souls, in case you’re interested. You lot are on your own with souls. I’ve purchased millions in my time, but I’m hanged if I know what to do with them. The only thing they seem to respond to is suffering. These days I delegate. Belial’s got a real taste for it. Moloch, too, though he’s got no imagination: he just eats them, shits them out, eats them, shits them out, eats them, etc. Does the trick, mind you. Those souls scream with a piteousness that’s sweet music to my pitiless tympanum. Astaroth just talks to them. Christ knows what about. Christ does know what about, too, but there’s not a damned thing he can do about it, not once they’re down in the basement. After Yours Truly, there’s no one can bend a soul’s ear like Nasty Asty. Taught the rascal everything he knows. Course he’s hung up on all that pupiloutstripping-the-master nonsense. Thinks I don’t know he’s after my throne. (Thinks I don’t know. I shall have to do something about Astaroth when I get back. I shall have to make arrangements.)
You might be wondering – the hard-men among you, the nutters, the glassers, the thugs – whether you couldn’t hack it in Hell, whether you couldn’t, when it came right down to it, just butch the bastard out. Well guess what: You couldn’t.