XII: FROM A MAGIC OPERA


ASMODEUS.   It is not true that she is passive, but she is unresponsive: a remark, a gift, a touch are gravely received and never returned. It is part of her real forbearance: I have benefited from it often enough.

SARAH.   The demon that once walked beside me has made a new home in each hand: instead of the roar and flicker that I could never purge from my head, I am tormented by the sensation of each wrist melding into an immobile wedge of bone.

ASMODEUS.   Even though I do not receive acknowledgement from her, I am not turned away: she will not let me test the limit of her toleration before the act. I occupy her silence with a greater commitment than I had intended.

SARAH.   I could distinguish no form but the angel and the skeleton: even I found it too characteristic that I believed them to exist in parallel. I could never accept this angel sheathed in bone or a skeleton that meat and shit had encrusted.

ASMODEUS.   The fact that she has refused me nothing has made me cautious: I am afraid that I might commit an irrevocable error. Her friends belong to separate parts of her life: her origin is definitive, her allegiance peripheral.