“Exactly. You know what it says in the Book of Job.”

“Remind me.”

“Well, Satan is there in heaven, with God. God says, where have you been? And Satan says, roaming around the earth! It’s a regular conversation. And they begin arguing about Job. Satan believes Job’s goodness is founded entirely upon his good fortune. And God agrees to let Satan torment Job. This is the most nearly true picture of the situation which we possess. God doesn’t know everything. The Devil is a good friend of his. And the whole thing is an experiment. And this Satan is a far cry from being the Devil as we know him now, worldwide.”

“You’re really speaking of these ideas as if they were real beings … ”

“I think they are real,” he said, his voice trailing off slightly as he fell into his thoughts. Then he roused himself. “I want to tell you something. Actually I should have confessed it before now. In a way, I’m as superstitious and religious as the next man. Because all this is based on a vision of sorts—you know, the sort of revelation that affects one’s reason.”

“No, I don’t know. I have dreams but without revelation,” I said. “Explain, please.”

He sank back into reverie again, looking at the fire. “Don’t shut me out,” I said softly.

“Hmmm. Right. I was thinking how to describe it. Well, you know I am a Candomble priest still. I mean I can summon invisible forces: the pest spirits, the astral tramps, whatever one wants to call them … the poltergeist, the little haunts. That means I must have always had a latent ability to see spirits.”

“Yes. I suppose … ”

“Well, I did see something once, something inexplicable, before I ever went to Brazil.”

“Yes?”

“Before Brazil, I’d pretty much discounted it. In fact, it was so disturbing, so perfectly unaccountable, that I’d put it out of my mind by the time I went to Rio. Yet now, I think of it all the time. I can’t stop myself from thinking of it. And that’s why I’ve turned to the Bible, as if I’ll find some wisdom there.”

“Tell me.”

“Happened in Paris right before the war. I was there with my mother. I was in a café on the Left Bank, and I don’t even remember now which café it was, only that it was a lovely spring day and a simply grand time to be in Paris, as all the songs say. I was drinking a beer, reading the English papers, and I realized I was overhearing a conversation.” He drifted away again. “I wish I knew what really happened,” he murmured under his breath.

He sat forward, gathered up the poker in his right hand, and jabbed at the logs, sending a plume of fiery sparks up the dark bricks.

I wanted desperately to pull him back, but I waited. At last he went on.

“I was in this café, as I said.”