“Frater, is concupiscence a sin?” I asked.
He laughed, and immediately after grew angry. “Having made sex a sin, the Church created the orgy. Concupiscence is no sin, my friend. Sex is God’s blessing. Jesus forgave Magdalene but he drove the money-lenders from His Father’s House.”
Mary Magdalen—Mary, my great, my beautiful love! It was so long since I had pronounced her name. It rang in my ear, more mellow than the sheep’s bells I had heard in the morning.
declaimed Luther robustly. Everybody laughed, repeating the verses again and again, and promising to tell them to every one.
I became aware suddenly that Kotikokura had disappeared with the buxom waitress. I had noticed that Kotikokura and she had eyed each other. I rose and walked quietly into the rear of the garden. Suddenly, I heard a stifled cry. I waited motionless.
“My bear! My lion!”
‘Doña Cristina,’ I thought, and could not refrain from laughing.
There was a quick scurrying of feet. The waitress ran into the house, somewhat disarranged. Kotikokura walked directly into me.
“Whither, my lion? My bear? Why the hurry?”
His eyes glittered like a beast’s of the forest and as he grinned, his teeth looked ominous. But walking back to our table, he assumed a crestfallen appearance.
“Why so sheepish, my bear?” I asked.
“Woman!” he grumbled, as he drank several cups of beer in succession.
“Post coitum omne animal triste,” I said.
Luther did not hear me. Still declaiming the virtues of the daughters of Eve, he hiccoughed:
Kotikokura snored majestically as a lion should. I went into the garden. Luther was writing at a table. I walked on tiptoes anxious not to disturb him. Suddenly, he raised his head and glared at me, shouting: “Apage satanas!” I was too startled to stir.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” he shouted again, his blue eyes glittering. Raising the wooden inkstand, the shape of a soup bowl, he hurled it at me. I bent quickly, escaping with a scratch upon my cheek.
“Frater,” I asked, “why this violence?”
He squinted and rose with a jerk.
“Forgive me, I beg of you, my friend. I thought… I saw Satan.” He crossed himself. “He often comes to tempt me.”
‘Mohammed,’ I mused, ‘heard angels and Luther sees devils.’
Luther was crestfallen.
“Did I harm you, sir?” He looked at my cheek. “The Lord be praised! Only a tiny scratch! Will you forgive me?”
I extended my hand which he shook several times.
“It is terrible, sir. He pursues me everywhere.”
“Who?”
“The Evil One! Sometimes, he comes in the shape of a cleric. Once, even, he appeared as the Pope, wearing upon his tonsured head the triple crown of Alexander the Sixth. When it suits his whim, he approaches in the shape of a large black cat or dog. One night he stood over my bed as a vampire with long sharp teeth, and a blue beard, dipped in blood; at dawn he comes to me as a young witch, with tempting lips and inviting thighs.”
“And this time…?”
“I thought I saw him in persona–two large horns like a goat’s, a long tail that twirled about his legs, and flames dashing out of his nostrils. Forgive me—it must have been the beer I consumed last night…and the waitress.”
“The waitress?”
“Yes. The whole night through she tantalized me in my sleep, singing the couplet I recited last evening.”
“If you had yielded to the temptation, master, she would not have tortured you in your sleep!”
He laughed, and bade me sit at his table. I made a gesture, indicating that I did not desire to disturb him. He insisted. “I have just finished an essay. You are a much traveled man whose opinion I value.”
He sprinkled a fistful of sand over the paper and shook it. “Do incubi, succubi and devils really visit human beings?” I asked.
He looked at me in childish wonderment. “Is it possible that you doubt it?”
“I have never seen any.”
“It is because you have not recognized them. They are the subtlest of creatures. I can smell sulphur a mile away…”
“Really?”
“It is only on rare occasions, such as today, that I err.”
“Perhaps not even today, frater,” I smiled.
He laughed. “The Devil is not quite so subtle.” Nevertheless, he threw a rapid glance at my feet.
“Not cloven,” I remarked.
He laughed heartily, rubbing his forehead with vigor.
“This essay,” he said, “is a sort of summary of what I intend to write in the near future. May I read it to you?”
“I am much honored.”
He declaimed the vices, the cruelties, the injustices, the sins of the Pope. I had never listened to a more vivid invective.
“He who dares proclaim this,” I said, “is a man of history.”
“I dare proclaim it and I shall make history!” he exclaimed, raising his right arm. “The Lord Jesus is on my side against the Enemy. Hier stehe ich. Gott helfe mir. Ich kann nicht anders.”
Should I goad him on with offers of material help? I must—once more! If I failed this time, I should consider myself vanquished. And if I win—if I win—what indeed should I win? Who knows what new and bloody idol will usurp Heaven, if Christianity dies!
Luther, his right arm in the air, continued, “I am going back to Wittenberg, and upon the gate of the Schlosskirche I shall nail my ultimatum to Anti-Christ. I shall challenge the Fiend to answer my theses!”
“You may divide Christendom…”
“There is more joy in heaven over a handful of real Christians than over a million sellers and buyers of Popish indulgences…”
I remembered the words of Alexander VI. “It is better to deal with scoundrels than with zealots. Zealots have no sense of humor.” This man was a zealot, but he could be merry. He loved woman and wine. ‘To test once more the truth of logic or its utter bankruptcy, I shall help him!’
“Every man will read for himself the Sacred Word of the Lord. I shall translate the Holy Scriptures into the beloved and simple tongue of my fathers. There shall be no more secrecy or mystery…”
“Is it not dangerous to allow the uninitiated to interpret the Scriptures?”
“Far less dangerous than to allow a set of men, many of whom are more ignorant and more stupid than laymen, to misinterpret. The priests have robbed my poor countrymen until they are on the point of starvation. They have browbeaten us until we dare not raise our heads. They have stultified the intelligence of our peasants until they have become more brutish than the beasts of the field.”
The waitress appeared on the threshold. Luther rose and, stretching out his arms, called to her, “My beauty, my dove, come hither!”
A man who could change so rapidly from divine to mundane affairs was destined to achieve greatness—if no accident intervened. Thus, I imagined Mohammed must have dismissed Gabriel the Arch-angel, to embrace his buxom wives.
“Father, you should be more respectful to the cloth you wear,” the waitress admonished.
“Would you want me to remain a fool my lifelong?”
“What do you mean?”
The waitress laughed. The proprietor, who appeared at the moment, applauded. “Bravo! Bravo!”