The Devil's Storybooks Read online

  Gil found his fortune in the city and married a lovely girl named Belle with whom it never occurred to him to argue. And Flora married a lovely man named Carl with whom she lived in peace without a single quarrel. And down in Hell, the Devil, who’d long since forgotten the signpost, heard of these two happy couples and said to himself, “Disgusting. How do such things happen?”

  LESSONS

  THERE WAS a sharp-eyed parrot once who lived with a doting old woman and was her pride and joy. His name was Columbine, and instead of growing up with pirates, and learning all kinds of nasty language, he had spent his youth with a clergyman and acquired, in his earliest lessons, another kind of language altogether. Then, having outlived the clergyman—for parrots survive to amazing great ages—he moved to the old woman’s cottage, where he learned to say things like “Sweetheart, kiss me quick,” and was just as well content. Still, Columbine was no sissy. He was big and shrewd and liked things on the up-and-up. And to keep them that way, he sat all day on his perch in the old woman’s window, with his eye peeled, and he watched for trouble.

  The old woman’s cottage was on the main road, and all day long the carts went by, and the wagons, and people on horseback or muleback or clumping along on foot, going from here to there and Heaven knows where else. And Columbine looked hard at everyone. When someone went by who looked suspicious, he’d say “Oh-oh,” or “Look out,” or sometimes even “Lock the doors!” But there wasn’t any need for locks with Columbine around. He was better than any lock or bolt, or even any watchdog, just by the way he sat in the window with his eye peeled.

  Now, one day it happened that the Devil came down the road disguised as a strolling musician with a fiddle under his arm. Columbine saw through the costume in a minute—that’s how sharp his eye was—and he squawked, “It’s the Devil! The Devil! Fire! Flood! Pestilence! Run for your lives!” And while he was squawking, he flapped his wings something awful, and hopped up and down, and made such a racket that the old woman hid under the bed.

  The Devil stopped in the middle of the road, right in front of the cottage. “Shh!” he hissed to Columbine. “Hush up, you wretched bird—you’ll give the game away!” But Columbine wouldn’t hush up; he went on flapping, with his feathers every which way, squawking out his warnings at the top of his lungs. And of course the people in the road went running off in great alarm and confusion. Horses reared, carts were overturned, and even the mules were in a hurry. And soon there was no one left except the Devil, alone and feeling foolish, with the fiddle under his arm.

  “Drat,” said the Devil. “That ties it. There’s not a soul in sight.”

  Columbine calmed down. He closed one eye and said, “Pretty bird.”

  “You there,” said the Devil. “Suppose I were to trample your beak in the dust?”

  “Bibles,” said Columbine, very cool and clear.

  The Devil backed off a step. “What?” he said, surprised.

  “Church,” said Columbine. “Church and chapel. And cathedral.”

  The Devil backed off even farther.

  “Parson,” said Columbine. “And priest. Parson, pastor, priest, and preacher. And Pope.”

  “Whoo!” said the Devil with a shiver. And he took himself off in a cloud of smoke and went back down to Hell.

  The road soon filled up again with traffic, and the old woman came out from under the bed and went on baking bread. And Columbine sat on his perch and preened his feathers, but he kept his eye peeled just the same, for he was not so pleased with himself that he thought of neglecting his duty.

  Down in Hell, the Devil trampled the fiddle in the dust and said to himself, “Someone ought to teach that bird a lesson.” But, of course, someone already had, thank goodness.

  THE FALL AND RISE OF BATHBONE

  THERE WAS a little, sweet no one of a man once, named Bathbone, who was not quite right in the head, for he thought he was someone else—a famous opera singer of the time called Doremi Faso. No one was sure how Bathbone had got this notion. He had never sung a note in his life, though he hummed sometimes, and on top of that, there was the fact that he was little and sweet, whereas the real Doremi Faso was quite the opposite, with the shape and weight of a walrus and the ego of several roosters. Still, here was Bathbone, sure they were one and the same.

  Faso, though famous, was not a very good singer. His voice was big and deep, but big and deep like a moose at the bottom of a well. He was only famous because someone important had once said he was a good singer, right out in the newspapers, printed in type and everything, and after that nobody had the nerve to say he wasn’t. But Bathbone didn’t know this. He was only sure that he was Faso and that Faso was he, and no amount of talk could change his mind.

  Things went along this way for quite a while, and then one night Faso met his end at the opera when he gave himself a stroke on a high note he had no business trying for, and he turned up in Hell at once, ego and all, to begin a long series of concerts. Meanwhile, his death was reported in the newspapers. Bathbone, reading of it, was very much astonished. “What can this mean?” he said. “Here I am, the great Doremi Faso, as hale and hearty as ever. How can they say I am dead?” He took to puzzling back and forth on a bridge across a river, waving his arms and mumbling, while he tried to figure it out. And it wasn’t long before he waved and mumbled himself right off the edge and into the water, where he drowned. But the newspapers ignored this second loss and ran, instead, a story about someone who’d grown a four-foot-long mustache.

  Now, when Bathbone fell off the bridge, there was a hasty conference in Heaven. And it was decided that Bathbone had better go to Hell and get himself straight as to who he really was. For in Heaven they like you to know that kind of thing and be content with it. So Bathbone arrived at the gates of Hell, still mumbling and wet from head to foot, and was sent to see the Devil.

  “What’s this?” said the Devil.

  “It is I,” said Bathbone, “the great Doremi Faso.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t,” said the Devil. “We’ve got one of those already. I know about you. You’re Bathbone, that’s who, and you’re dripping all over my carpet.”

  “Sir,” said Bathbone, drawing himself up as tall as he could, “I am not Bathbone. My name is Doremi Faso and my death was reported in the newspapers.”

  The Devil looked annoyed. “Bathbone,” he said, “you’re not quite right in the head. Now, listen. You don’t belong down here, and we don’t want you. You’re much too little and sweet. But I’ve been informed you have to stay till you get at the truth on this business of who you are. So I’ll tell you one more time: you’re not Doremi Faso. The real Doremi Faso has been down here for a week. He’s giving a concert right this very minute.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Bathbone.

  “Then come and see for yourself,” said the Devil.

  So off they went to the concert hall. And there on the stage was the real Doremi Faso, bellowing out some song or other, and striking remarkable poses. But the rows and rows of seats were empty—not a single soul to listen—and no one to play in the orchestra, either. All the instruments lay silent, though on some of Faso’s high notes a cello, leaning in a corner, shuddered its strings faintly.

  “See?” said the Devil.

  But Bathbone said, “That can’t be Faso. That man up there is a terrible singer. And, for another thing, there’s nobody here to listen. Why, people come in droves to hear the great Faso sing.”

  “Not down here they don’t,” said the Devil with satisfaction. “Down here, no one ever comes.”

  “Just my point, if you’ll excuse me,” said Bathbone. “The singer on that stage is an impostor.”

  “You’re a stubborn man, Bathbone,” said the Devil. “Well, all right. We’ll schedule a concert for you. Tomorrow, after you’ve got dried out. And then we’ll see who’s who.”

  The next afternoon, the concert hall was full, and roared with the sound of laughter and talk, while up and down the aisles, hawk
ers were selling peanuts and beer. In the orchestra pit, the musicians were tuning their instruments with a dreadful discord of tweets, blats, and scrapings. The racket was immense, and in the midst of it all, the orchestra conductor came up to Bathbone, who was waiting in the wings, and said, “So—what are you planning to sing?”

  And Bathbone said, “‘Out of My Soul’s Deep Longing.’”

  The conductor made a face. “The Devil won’t like that one very much,” he said, “but if it’s what you want, we’ll do it.” He went away and, appearing below in the orchestra pit, lifted his baton. The chandeliers went dim, the shadowy great hall fell silent. And Bathbone, full of confidence, stepped out onto the stage. Down came the baton, up rose the music, with the flutes and violins fighting for the melody. And Bathbone began to sing:

  Out of my soul’s deep longing,

  These little songs come winging

  Like wee feather’d birds …

  He had never sung a note before. His voice came out little and sweet, not big and deep like Faso’s, and took him so much by surprise that by the time he’d got to “wee feather’d birds” he simply stopped, unable to manage one more note, and the truth swelled up in his heart like a great balloon and exploded, leaving him shocked and limp. “Why, they’re right,” he exclaimed to himself. “I’m not the great Doremi Faso!”

  The people in the audience stood up, jeering and throwing peanuts, and when they got tired of that, they all filed out and went about their business. Even the musicians and the orchestra conductor wandered off, leaving Bathbone quite alone in the middle of the stage, feeling very sad. “I guess,” he said aloud, “I’m only Bathbone after all.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a blaze of light leapt up, and Bathbone vanished, simply disappeared, and was never ever seen in Hell again. And when the Devil was told, he said, “Good. That’s done, then.”

  Bathbone is singing now in a glee club in Heaven with his own name—BATHBON E—on the posters, and the people come in droves to hear him. He is famous there for the songs that require in their solos a little, sweet voice, and the flutes and violins are something wonderful.

  Oh, and by the way, the real Doremi Faso still sings every day in Hell, and has got an audience at last—a walrus and several roosters. They go through an awful lot of peanuts, but they seem to enjoy the music.

  SIMPLE SENTENCES

  ONE AFTERNOON in Hell, the Devil was napping in his throne room when a frightful hubbub in the hall outside brought him upright on the instant. “Now what?” he barked. “Can’t I get a minute’s peace?”

  The door to the throne room opened and a minor demon stuck his head in. “Sorry,” said the minor demon, “but we’ve got two new arrivals here and they’re giving me fits with their entry forms.”

  “Show them in,” said the Devil darkly. “I’ll straighten them out.”

  So the minor demon brought in the two and stood them before the Devil, where the first one, a shabby, mean-looking rascal, dropped his jaw and said, “Well, I’ll be sugared! If it ain’t Old Scratch hisself!”

  And the second, a long-nosed gentleman, opened his eyes wide and said, “Dear me—it’s Lucifer!”

  Now, the Devil isn’t fond of fancy names like Lucifer, preferring simply to be called “the Devil” or, once in a while, “your Highness.” And he certainly dislikes all disrespectful terms, of which Old Scratch is only one. So he scowled at the two who stood there, and said, “See here—I like things peaceful in Hell. We can’t have all this rattle and disruption.”

  At which the two said, both at once, “But—”

  “Hold on for half a second, can’t you?” said the Devil testily. He turned to the minor demon. “What’ve you got on the pair of them so far?” he demanded.

  The minor demon consulted the sheaf of papers he’d brought in with him. “This one,” he said, pointing with his pencil to the rascal, “is in for picking pockets. And that one”—pointing to the long-nosed gentleman—“is down for the sin of pride and for writing books no one could understand.”

  “Well?” said the Devil. “That sounds all right. What’s the matter with that?”

  “But it’s not a question of their sins,” said the minor demon. “We’ve known about those for years. What it is is what happened up there that finished them off, don’t you know. And I can’t get their stories straight on that.”

  “Oh,” said the Devil. “All right.” And he turned to the two, who’d been waiting there, glaring at each other. “You,” he said to the rascal. “What’s your story?”

  “All I know is,” said the rascal in a whiny voice, “I was mindin’ my own business, out on the public streets, when this lardy-dardy lamps me and commences screechin’ fit to blast yer ears. Thinks I, ‘This cove is off his chump,’ so I do a bunk. But he shags me, and we both come a cropper in the gutter and sap our noodles, and—well—that pins the basket. Next thing I know, I’m standin’ here ramfeezled and over at the knees, and he’s comin’ the ugly like I’m the party responsible.”

  “What?” said the Devil.

  “If I may be permitted,” sniffed the long-nosed gentleman. “What actually transpired is that this squalid and depraved illiterate was on the verge of appropriating my purse when I observed the action at the penultimate moment. And whilst I was attempting to apprehend him, we both seem to have stumbled on a curbstone, with resultant fractures and contusions, and I find I’ve been deprived of my life—and my hat—in a most abrupt and inconvenient fashion. Surely I can’t be censured for reacting with extreme exasperation.”

  “What?” said the Devil.

  “I think what they mean is—” began the minor demon.

  “I know what they mean,” said the Devil. “That one tried to pick this one’s pocket. Just write it down like that.”

  “Chalk your pull, there,” cried the rascal. “You’ve got it in the wrong box. Maybe I was on the filch, sure, that’s my job. But I wasn’t after this poor, mucked-out barebones, not for toffee. I know his type. More squeak than wool, you can stand on me for that. A barber’s cat like him ain’t never got a chinker to his name. Why, I’d go home by beggar’s bush if I couldn’t pick better than that!”

  “What?” said the Devil.

  “He means—” the minor demon tried again.

  “I know what he means,” said the Devil. “He means he didn’t try to pick the other one’s pocket. A misunderstanding. So just write it down like that.”

  “Oh, now, really,” exclaimed the long-nosed gentleman. “I must protest. I tell you, I saw this felon’s grubby hand reaching for my purse. I am not in the habit of misinterpreting evidence supplied by my own observations. Why, the meanest intelligence could easily discern that the fellow’s a thoroughgoing prevaricator!”

  “See what I mean?” said the minor demon to the Devil.

  “I see,” said the Devil.

  The rascal stepped a little nearer to the Devil. “Look here, yer honor,” he said. “I don’t want to tread the shoe awry and chance yer gettin’ magged. But it’s above my bend how a chap with yer quick parts could hang in the hedge when it comes to separate between brass tacks and flimflam. I mean, this underdone swellhead could argue the leg off an iron pot, but it’s still all flytrap. Take it from me.”

  The long-nosed gentleman stepped forward then, himself. “I’m cognizant of the fact,” he said haughtily, “that I’m not by any stretch of the imagination in Paradise. And it may be that I’m naive to expect impartiality. All I can do is to iterate the unembellished fact that I observed what I observed, and what I observed was that this clumsy brigand tried to rob me.”

  The rascal narrowed his eyes. “Handsomely over the bricks there, puggy,” he said in a threatening tone. “Clumsy, am I? Just because you’ve got yer head full of bees, that’s no reason to draw the longbow. You never twigged me doin’ my kind of work. Even if I was on the dip with a piker like you, you wouldn’t twig me. When it comes to light fingers, I’m the top mahatma. No
one ever twigs me. So play Tom Tell-Truth or else keep sloom.”

  The long-nosed gentleman’s face turned very red. “Sir,” he said in a strangled voice, “your impertinence is beyond all sufferance. I wouldn’t dignify your statements with rebuttals if it weren’t that I have such respect for veracity. And the plain, unvarnished truth is, you attempted to commit a felony.”

  The Devil clapped his hands with a sound like a pistol going off. “That’s enough,” he said. “I’ve heard enough. The plain, unvarnished truth is there’s only one crime here: neither of you can speak a simple sentence.”

  And at this they both stopped short to gape at him, and both said, “What?”

  The Devil turned to the minor demon. “Write down,” he said, “that what happened was they both tripped over their tongues.”

  The minor demon nodded. “Very well. And what shall I put for their punishment?”

  For the first time, the Devil smiled. “We’ll put them in together, in a room designed for one,” he said. “And there they’ll stay till it all freezes over down here.”

  So the two were led away, both sputtering with shock, and the minor demon folded up his papers. “I do admire that punishment,” he said to the Devil.

  “Thank you,” said the Devil, settling back to get on with his nap. “It was the simplest sentence I could think of.”

  THE EAR

  THERE WAS a clan of very silly people called the Pishpash once, ages and ages ago, who took it into their heads to carve a huge stone idol at the top of a hill, and when it was finished, they sat and sang it songs with words like zum zum zum, and they gave it offerings of turnips, which grew wild in the area around. The idol had the head of a hairless man with ears as big as washtubs, and its body was shaped like a horse sitting down, and needless to say, it didn’t care a bit about turnips—or anything else, for that matter. So the turnips went bad, lying there in heaps, and they smelled something awful. Nevertheless, the Pishpash kept right on piling new turnips on top of the old, and believed something good would come of it. Nothing did, however, and at last a minor earthquake tipped the idol over. Its body was broken to bits, and the head cracked off and rolled like a boulder down the hill, coming to rest with one ear up, one ear down, out on a level plain below. The Pishpash were put off by this, and took it for an evil omen, so they packed up their bowls and spears and babies and wandered off, no one is sure exactly where, but it doesn’t matter because, although the Devil found them entertaining, they were all of them very silly, and good riddance to the lot. The head, however, remained behind and lay there so long that the earth began to cover it up, until finally, after hundreds of years and a lot more minor earthquakes, it was buried under three or four feet of soil.