The Church of Saint Satan and Pandaemons
Have you seen this, Englebert?” asked Judge Baltazaro Gumperts, tapping the newspaper— one of a dozen or two provided daily by the thoughtful proprietors of the Crown’s-head Coffee House.
“What is that—the Gazette?- haven’t seen it today.”
The jurist, with a sound half-snort and half-chuckle, said, “Did you know there is a woman newpaper editor in the American province of Far-vest?”
“I did not know, and am not surprised.”
“Incredible province.”
The judge sucked in coffee, shook his head.
“What about it?—and her?”
Judge Gumperts smacked the newspaper, perhaps as much to reprove it as to straighten it out for easier reading. “She says that the farmers there should raise less corn and more Hell; fact: just what it says: ‘Raise less corn and more Hell’—what do you think it means?''
Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy watched the waiter pour boiling milk
into his cup from one vessel and hot coffee into it from another, with simultaneous dexterity: half and half. “Why. ... I suspect that it is an invitation to the always-embattled farmers of America to devote fewer energies to the cultivation of maize in order that more emergies may be devoted politico-economic agitations.” He observed the milk forming a skin, nodded his satsifaction. The waiter withdrew. Ezsterhazy raised the glass, held it a moment as he followed a thought. “Something to do with railroad rates, I seem to recall. Our railroads are owned by The Crown, but as there is no Crown in America, the railroads there are owned by what are called investors. He bent his head and sipped.
Judge Gumperts said, “Ahaah!”
“What ‘ahaah!’ ”
And the member of the Court of the Second Jurisdiction said that this was perhaps why the American railroads sometimes imported quantitities of peasants from the Triune Monarchy. “Of the odder sort, too. Give them free land, and all. Which ones was it? Those odd chaps who wouldn’t vote or do military service, oh yes: Mennonites. They won’t make politio-economic agitations, I am sure. All kinds of different religions they have there in America, Engelbert. Fact. Read it in the Gazette. All privately-owned, too: like their railroads. All equal, too, you know. Fact. No State Church and no Concordats, you know. And women can be editors, too, it seems. Well, they can vote there, you know, in the Province of Far-vest.” Once more he sipped, licked his moustaches. "In-cred-ible,” he said.
On that same morning in the late Spring, Count Vladeck, the Minister of Cults to the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, was laying out a game of patience on his inlaid ebony desk, when a soft double-knock followed by an equally soft cough announced the presence of Brno, the Ministry’s Principal Secretary.
"Come in, Most Worthy Servant,” the Minister said, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise. Brno, a stickler for ceremony in all its most antique forms, did not usually call upon his superior without having previously sent a note beginning Exceedingly August and High-born, and concluding, Kissing thus the , and so on. Count Vladeck, accordingly, did not merely look up from the Cards, he laid them down entirely.
Entered Brno, tall, thin, clad in black, pale as wax: the perfect civil servant, treading almost upon his toes. With lips compressed, he laid upon the Minister’s desk a document headed, in very large letters, and in the Gothic, Glagolitic, and Latin alphabets Permission for the Lawful Recognition of the Conventicle Hereunder Described. Count Vladeck did not exactly wince, he did not exactly make a mow, certainly he did not grind his teeth: but his teeth did indeed meet with a perceptible click. And Brno, with a certain air which combined satisfaction and gloom, said, “Exactly so, Exceedingly August and High-born Lord Minister and Count.”
If the conventicle (thereunder described) had been a congregation of the Holy Orthodox Church, no such permission need have been sought of the Ministry of Cults, suflh matters being purely the concern of the Met-, ropolitans of Pannonia and Scythia, and/or the Holy Synod of Transbal- kania. If it had been a Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic matter, the preliminary documentation would have been handled by the Papal Delegate, with the advice and consent of the Primus of Pannonia or the Ethnarch of Scythia or the Byzantine Exilarch of Balkania. And, inasmuch as Count Vladeck had received neither a preliminary visit from the Chief Rabbi nor a box of musk from the Grand Hodja, clearly no newly- planned synagogue or mosque was involved.
More—and on arriving at this point in his cogitations, the Minister of Cults sighed and reached for his snuffbox—More: if it were merely a matter of a new Lutheran or Reformed church congregation, not only would Brno not have come to consult with Count Vladeck, the Regional Secretaries of the Ministry would not have bothered bringing the matter to the attention of Brno.
All of which added up the prospect of another Evangelical Dissenting Group. And from that point on, there was really no knowing.
The last time this had occurred there were riots in Cisbalkania, the Byzantine delegates in the Diet had voted against the Budget, the Hyperboreans had refused to pay their head-tax, and the Papal Delegate, Monsignor Pinocchio, pleading severe indisposition, cancelled the twice- monthly sessions at which he and Count Vladeck (plus Field Marshal Dracula-Hunyadi apd Professor Plotz of the Medical Faculty) played poker—a game which Monsignor Pinocchio had learned as a parish priest in Bruklin, a provincial city on Great Island in the American Province of Nev-Jork.
All most disturbing, of course.
Count Vladeck took snuff rather gloomily.
“Which is it this timew Brno?” he asked, with a sigh and a snuffle. "The Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists? Or the Seventh Day An- tinomians?”
Brno pointed without words to the line reading, Name of the Conventicle for which Lawful Recognition is Sought, and upon which, in a neat and clear hand indicating nothing of any of the emotions which the copying clerk might have been supposed to have felt, was written The Church of St. Satan and Pandaemons.
It was Brno who broke the silence, although it was the Count who twitched convulsively. “The Petition,” he said, as softly as usual, “is signed by the requisite Nineteen Respectable and Loyal Subjects, all of whom were registered in the last Census, all of whom have paid head-tax for the previous five years, all of whom have performed military service, and none of whom have ever been placed under arrest. The requisite engrossing-fee has been paid, and in gold, and so has
the stamp-tax on the receipt for one year’s rent of the premises designated for worship.”
All, in short, was in order, perfectly in order. There was no lawful ground for the Minister of Cults to refuse his seal and signature. And, of course, if he were to apply them, the results .... the results—
“I shall resign,” he said, in a broken voice. “Resign—and take up my duties as Master of the Boarhounds in the remote border province of Ptush, as one is automatically obliged to do after resigning without having been requested to do so by The Throne. Resign . . . and give up my cosy little ten-room flat on the Corso, my so amiable plump mistress who sings coloratura soprano in the Opera, my electrical landau, my membership in the Jockey-Sport Club, and my English manservant ...” He thrust his knuckles into his mouth to prevent a sob escaping. It was impossible even to think of adequately heating a single room in Schloss Ptush, and the Minister was a martyr to chilblains.