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tools. There were only half a dozen other zoo visitors a Norwegian couple and a Japanese
family milling about the panda house. They all looked disappointed at the natural sluggishness of the
famous panda.
Gianna sat at the other end of my bench.  The most mind-boggling part of your existence is that it means
that God exists, too.
 Did you ever doubt it?
 Sure. I went through an existentialist-atheistic phase as a teenager. Even after I returned to Catholicism,
my intellect raised doubts, but I always shut it up with a heaping dose of faith. Somehow I always felt like
my faith was a form of denial. She pulled her feet up on the bench and rested her chin on her knees.
 But if you re real, and if God s real, then the Bible has it right. We have the correct version of the story,
and not just another take on the myth.
 Let s not get carried away. The creator of the universe has many names and forms, as do I, some male,
some female, some many ages extinct. All the myths are true.
 How can that be?
 The truth is much huger than anyone, even we angels, can comprehend. But whenever the
mythmakers writers, artists, thinkers seek the truth with a passionate mind, they ll find it, or a piece of
it, anyway. I slid closer to her.  That s why humans are so special. You re always seeking, always trying
to find or invent bigger and bigger pieces of this truth. You ll never grasp even a fraction of it, but you
keep trying, and that s what we all find so charming, so compelling. I think it s why he loves you all so
much, not because you re more precious in his eyes than pandas, because you re not. What makes you
different from pandas is that you re never happy.
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 And that s a good thing?
 Maybe not good, but it s beautiful. I stood and gestured to the panda.  He s having panda dreams right
now. You know what pandas dream about? They don t dream about lounging in a bamboo field, or a
fight they had with their mate, and they don t dream about their own deaths. Right now that panda s mind
is full of soothing abstract shapes in shades of gray, pieced together from images he saw during the last
two hours before his nap. A child s face becomes a drifting oval next to the cylinder of a bamboo stalk
and the odd shape of his keeper s hat. It s nice, if you like that sort of thing, but it s not beautiful.
 How do you know this?
 I m telepathic, of course.
 Of course. Gianna covered her face.  I should have guessed.
I sat beside her.  I swear to you, Gianna, I ve never probed your mind, not even once. Okay, once.
 When?
 When we first met, I said.  I had to convince you to go out with me, so I gave you a little push.
 A little push?
 Aren t you glad I did?
 No!
The eager expression melted from my face as her declaration sank in.
 I m sorry. I stood and walked out of the panda house.
 Lou, I didn t mean . . . Lou . . . Gianna caught up to me.
 You wish you d never met me.
 I didn t say that.
 You re happy you met me, then? You thank your lucky stars every day that you fell in love with the
Devil?
 No, I 
 Which is it, Gianna? Are you happy or not?
 I m human, aren t I? Her voice tightened.  According to you, I m never happy. She glared at me.
 What about you? Are you happy?
 Since I met you, yes. Closer to happiness than I ve been since I was in Heaven. Right now, though, I m
not happy, because I don t know if in twenty minutes, you ll still be in my life or not. And I don t think
you know either, do you?
Her face contorted, and she took a deep breath.  I need more time.
 Time. I ve got plenty of that. I m twelve billion years old, and unless I do something colossally stupid I
may be permitted to exist another twelve billion years. I touched her arm and felt her flinch.  But Gianna,
nothing would make me happier than spending the next forty or fifty of those years with you.
She began to cry.  Don t say that. I can t be responsible for your happiness.
 Sorry. I guess that was a pretty codependent remark. How about this: if you leave me, I ll set all these
animals on fire, one by one.
 What?! She shoved my hand off her arm.  Don t you dare!
 I was only kidding.
 How am I supposed to know that?
 Because you know me, I said.
 No, I don t. Not anymore.
 Yes, you do. Gianna, forget everything you think you know about the Devil, and remember what you
know about me. You love me. Remember that. I moved towards her again, helpless to stop myself.
 You do still love me, don t you?
Her tear-filled eyes answered me. I bent to kiss her. When my mouth was an inch away from hers, she
said,  Where were you during the Holocaust?
 What?
 You heard me. Tell me the truth. I need to know.
 I wasn t where you think I was, I said.
 Where were you?
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 I wasn t working with the Nazis. Germany produced Hitler all by itself. I never even met the guy not
while he was alive, anyway.
 Then where were you?
 I was . . . uh . . . setting up a gulag in Siberia.
 Oh, that s much better, she said.  No shame in that at all.
 What did you expect? That I was planting victory gardens and running the local USO?
 Did you know what was happening, what the Nazis were doing?
 Of course I knew. I ve always had informants around the world. I knew from the moment the genocide
began.
 And you didn t do anything to stop it? she said.
 Ididn t do anything to stop it? I wanted to shake her.  Gianna, I may be the second most powerful
being in the universe, but I m a very distant second. What about the great and merciful
What s-His-Face?
 You mean God?
 Yes! Where was he during the Holocaust? I ll tell you where he was. He was there. He was there,
because he s everywhere. But he turned away, like he always does in the face of suffering.
 That s not true, she said,  and besides, who are you to accuse God? I know humans who have done
more to alleviate suffering in a few years than you ve done in your whole life.
 You re absolutely right, Gianna. I don t alleviate suffering. In fact, I increase it. But that s my job. That s
why I m the Devil, and he s not. And you re not. And all the very nice people you know, they re not the
Devil, either.
 What if you did something good for a change? Would you still be you?
 What do you mean?
 What if you did something that wasn t in your job description? Like taking care of the one you love
when she s sick, or risking your professional reputation to save hers, or sacrificing your own well-being
to make her and her family happy? Would you suddenly cease to exist?
 Obviously not, I said.
 Suppose for a moment that you did something good that was really big, something that was within your
power to change, an enormous act of generosity or kindness, or even thwarting an act of evil. Would you
still be the Devil?
 I am who I am. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]