The Rebel Angels

"But a curse? That needs the strongest feeling. Suppose I sell you a curse? I don't hate your enemy; he is nothing to me. So to curse him I have to be very well in with – What? - if I am to escape without harm to myself. Because What? is very terrible. What? does not deal in the Sweet Justice of civilized man, but in Balance, which is not nearly so much concerned with man, and may seem terrible and evil to him. You understand me? When Balance decides the time has come to settle the scales awful things happen. Much of what we do not understand is Balance at work. We attract what we are, you know, Hollier; we always get the dog or the fiddle that is right for us, even though we may not like it, and if we are proud Balance may be rough in showing us how weak we are. And the Lord of Balance is What?, and if I call down a curse just for your benefit, believe me. Balance must be satisfied, or I shall be in deep trouble. I do not think I want to stretch my credit with What? to oblige you, Hollier. I do not want to call on What?, who lives down there in the darkness where Cancer dwells, and whose army is all the creatures of the dark, and the spirits of the suicides and all the terrible forces, to get an old book for you. And do you know what frightens me about this talk we are having? It is your frivolity in asking such a thing of me. You don't know what you are doing. You have the shocking frivolity of the modern, educated mind."

Hollier was not taking this well. As Mamusia talked his face grew darker and darker until it was the colour people mean when they say a face is black; it was bloody from within. Now he faced her, and all the reasonable, professorial manner with which he had been talking for the past hour was gone. He looked terrible as I had never seen him before, and his voice was choked with passion.

"I am not frivolous. You cannot understand what I am, because you cannot know anything of intellectual passion -"

"Pride, Hollier, give it its real name."

"Be silent! You have said all you have to say, which is No. Very well then, say no more. You may have it your own way. When I came here I probably did hope that somehow you might consent to use your powers for my sake. I took you for a phuri dai and a friend. Now I know how far your friendship goes, and I have revised my ideas about the extent of your wisdom. I am no worse off than when I came. Good afternoon."

"Wait Hollier, wait! You do not understand what danger you are in! You have not understood what I have been saying! It is the feeling that is the power of the curse. If I say to What? "My friend here feels very deeply about so-and-so; what will you do for him?" I am only your messenger. To be the messenger I must have belief. You don't need me for a curse; you have already cursed your enemy in your heart, and you have reached What? without me. Man, I fear you! I have seen terrible hate before, but never in a man so stupid about himself as you are."

"Now you tell me I can do it without you?"

"Yes, because you have pushed me to it."

"So, listen to me, Madame Laoutaro: you have done one great thing for me this afternoon. I know now that I have both feeling and belief! I believe! Yes – I believe!"

"Oh God, Hollier my friend, I am in great distress for you! Maria, drive the professor home – and be very careful how you drive!"

I did not speak a word as I drove Hollier back to the gate of Spook. I had not spoken a word during his angry hour with Mamusia, though I was terrified by the awful feeling that mounted in that room, like a poison. What was there for me to say? As he got out of my car he slammed the door so hard I feared it might fall off.

2

The next day Hollier seemed calm, and said nothing to me about his row with Mamusia. Indeed, to judge from appearances, it affected him much less than it did me. I was being forced to come to new terms with myself. I had struggled hard for freedom from my Mother's world, which I saw as a world of superstition, but I was being forced to a recognition that it was out of my power to be wholly free. Indeed, I was beginning to think more kindly about superstition than I had done since the time, when I was about twelve, when I first became aware of the ambiguous place it had in the world in which I lived.