‘There are prostitutes on your gland of an island, I take it?’ he said, swallowing a large mouthful. ‘I mean I would, in theory, be able to, you know, socialize with members of the opposite sex?’
‘Not of the calibre it seems you’re used to,’ I said. ‘But yes, of course – and if not on Hydra then on Spetses, certainly in Aegina.’
‘Certainly in Aegina,’ he said. ‘Sounds like some fucking Lawrence Durrell poem.’
‘I’m to take it from the profanities and the erratic observations that you’re drunk,’ I said, feeling, I must confess, desperately angry with him.
‘Liquid sanity,’ he said, raising the balloon in a cheers.
‘Liquid cowardice,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that time’s running out for you?’
‘Time’s overrated,’ he said. ‘Money, on the other hand . . .’
I sighed and took a precarious seat on the edge of the tub.
‘It’s generally recommended that one undresses before getting in,’ he said.
I ran a hand over my face. (Mandros’s hands are sensitive, and store the memory of many things.) Tiredness – a deep tiredness of the bones and nerves – crept up from my feet. His wilful avoidance was like a separate entity in the room with us, draining my strength. ‘Lucifer,’ I said. ‘For love and life please listen to me. You must stay. Whether with me or alone or with someone else. Don’t you see you can’t go back? Haven’t you understood that it’s so soon going to be over? That you’ll. . . That you’ll be . . .’
‘Yes,’ he said, slowly, and seemingly with genuine seriousness. ‘Yes, my dear, I have understood everything. As always, I have understood everything. Now perhaps, if you could . . . the Swan Vestas there . . . I seem to have self-extinguished . . .’
‘Lucifer!’
‘Hmm?’
‘Do you want to spend eternity in the Hell of Nothingness?’
‘Of course I don’t want to spend – Ow! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck FUCK!’
The loss of temper had had him scrabbling to get upright; a slip, and he had conked his head on the back of the tub. He lost a good deal of the balloon’s brandy, and the cigar altogether. ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking cunting Christ.’
(It pains me, obviously, even to type that – but I promised a faithful rendering.) I helped him into a better sitting position – but he wouldn’t relinquish his glass. ‘And don’t think you can fool me by pretending you’re fishing for the cigar, either, Mr Mandros,’ he said, squinting from the blow to his head.
‘This is utterly absurd,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment in silence before saying, with a compressed grin: ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is, my dear.’
It seemed the knock on the head had sobered him. He placed the stem of the glass on the tub’s rim with some care. It was then that I noticed the razor blades, all but one still in the unwrapped pack, this one within a little outline of rust.
‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘Gunn’s. He was going to slash these.’ He held his wrists up for me to see. ‘Not an option I’d have all alone in Nothingness. Not a rope to hang myself with nor a pot to piss in.’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I hope this means you’re finally beginning to see sense.’
‘What did occur to me,’ he said, ’was that if God were to go ahead and get rid of everything except little old me, I’d be in exactly the position He was at the beginning. I’d be Him. Rich, don’t you think? Lucifer ends up where God started.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same and you know it.’
‘How not?’
‘Because you can’t create anything,’ I said.
And that, I believe, was the closest the world came. A few moments in the wake of those words in which – I could feel his capitulation like a great tilted ghost on the ether – I believe he would have turned. If the words for which he opened his mouth had ever been uttered.
But they were not.
It was a measurement of how much of my angelic nature yet remained, that I felt the approaching presence of one of the Firstborn seconds before it tore through. Lucifer, too, knew. The walls shuddered and the bathroom’s minute window cracked; a peculiar, dissonant articulation from the building’s joists and hinges, a tightening of the room’s smoke into a queer little knot – then he was through, and the material world flowed evenly once more.
‘Nelkers!’ Lucifer cried, smiling broadly and raising a hand in welcome. ‘By gum lad it’s good to see you –’
‘My Lord, I must –’
‘As a matter of fact I’d like you to take a look at –’
‘My Lord please! Listen!’
‘Dear God in Hammersmith child what’s the matter with you?’
‘It’s war my Lord.’
The four words nailed a small silence into place. Nelchael and I hadn’t seen each other since the Fall. (Daily, my angelic sight diminishes, but at that hour the cataracts of human vision were gauzy still.) His presence wasn’t pleasant for me – but it was horribly fascinating to see the state – carious, putrid, bleeding and exuding an impossible reek of corruption – of his angelic being. I could see that even in his state – manifestly come straight from the din and fire of battle – he was astonished to find another ex-Firstborn (an unFallen one at that) at his master’s side.
Lucifer got to his feet. ‘Astaroth,’ he said. ‘I knew it. What’s he done?’
‘No my Lord, not Astaroth. Astaroth fights loyally for the preservation of your sovereignty –’
‘Then wh–’
‘Uriel.’
In the moment of silence that followed, the sink gurgled, jovially.
‘Uriel?’
‘With renegades from Heaven, my Lord. Fully half of Hell is now under his command!’
‘Lucifer, let it go,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see that this releases you? Don’t you see His will at work?’
But his eyes were alight with a flame that didn’t belong in the human realm. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Double-crossing. . . mother . . . He was supposed to . . . He was supposed to wait until . . .’
‘He came with half of Heaven under his banner, my Lord.’
‘Well, that was all we could get. Jesus Jehosophat Christ.’
‘And told us that if we joined him we would have might enough for a new assault on Paradise.’
‘And he told you the truth, Nelkers. Now here’s a pretty pickle.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Oh no, no, no.’
Lucifer turned to me and grinned. He had fished out his cigar and slotted it, dripping, between his teeth. Bath foam glimmered on his head and loins.
‘Started without me,’ he said. ‘Can you – I mean can you believe the chutzpah?’
‘Lucifer stop. Please, stop and think.’