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Copyright:
Jordi Rodríguez-Amat
This
text has been registered in the Register of the Intellectual Property
of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
MY PACT WITH THE DEVIL
He was sitting by my side and he seemed like a man of few words. I did not dare look directly at him, but I did out of the corner of my eye. Despite my desire to know his thoughts, I did not dare speak to him. Through my mind passed all kind of conjectures, freely accepting that thinking, imagining and supposing are mental speculations.
He had a book in his hand and I do not know if he was reading or not, because he had it upside down. I was waiting for him to finish reading the page, if he really was reading it, to see how he would go to the next page. After a little while he, looking at me, smiled and obviously with the book upside down he turned the page to the right. I was completely attentive to what this man did, since, having to wait and see the eccentricity of this character due to the way he read, all my mind concentrated on what this person could or could not do. Was he an actor?
We were waiting for our turn. We both had a ticket in our hands with a number. My number was sixty-nine, his seventy. I did not understand, since he had arrived before me and his number was higher. We took it from the same vending machine. There was only one door and, therefore, we were waiting for the same place. Often, our ability does not allow us to have an absolute knowledge and doubts strike our spirit.
The wait started to be long. There were still a great number of people waiting and the screen changed its numbers very slowly, 52 was the number I could see at that very moment. Almost everyone was restless as they did not stop moving. Just a couple of people expressed a certain serenity. Myself, looking around, was a privileged spectator observing everything that happened there. On the screen above the door where people went in, a text in Gothic style letters was written: Pact with the devil.
Once again, the man by my side turned the page of the book he was reading and, despite being upside down, I could read a name: Dr. Faust.
In spite of my subjectivity, I have the conviction of being an emotionally balanced person. Even so, I had to make some effort not to fall into an overwhelming perplexity when, once again paying attention to his paper, I could read this time that he also had the number sixty-nine. At this moment I decided to look directly at his face and not just like I had done before with the corner of my eye. Still more perplexed, I could examine in detail his face and check that it was my own portrait. Then I went to the toilet to look at myself in the mirror and, indeed, we were identical. Would I be myself, the person who was reading the book, or would he simply be my doppelgänger? When I returned from the toilet that man had disappeared and I had the book in my hands. The only explanation my mind could conclude that I was that person. But who was I? I opened the book on page sixty-nine and written in large letters was: you are Dr. Faust, Johan Georg Faust.
What was I doing in that place? It was just at that moment that I saw it very clear, I had come to a pact with the devil. Suddenly there was a small signal on the screen and the number 69 appeared. All other people that were waiting there had disappeared and I approached and entered through the door. You came to a pact with me, said a character with a hoarse voice sitting in a big armchair. I am a Mephistopheles he repeated three times. He made me move to a small room next door and he said: before agreeing, we will drink a glass of wine like the one they will serve us one day at Auerbachs Keller. I recognized the room where we entered; it was the study room where Doctor Faust agreed with Mephistopheles.
At once I thought of Goethe, who had been responsible for my pact with Mephistopheles, and I decided to visit him at the beginning of the 19th century in Weimar. Being there, Goethe sent me back to the late twenties, once he had written his second Faust.
Throughout those years, waiting to meet him again, I was reflecting on myself. The reader of this text will think of me, as being an enigmatic person, exactly the same as a large number of people after my death. The time that fate forced me to live, to be a healer, alchemist, astrologer and fortune teller was absolutely normal. A time subjected to all beliefs of the Middle Ages with animatism, esotericisms, theocratism, occultisms and mysteries, among others, lacking all the objective science of the later Renaissance.
When I returned to Weimar, Johann Peter Eckermann welcomed me, a colleague, secretary and Goethe’s friend. We went to the garden where Goethe, in a meditative state, was talking with Mephistopheles. I sat in front of them and said to Goethe: Johann, you wanted to make me believe and finally I believe that I have had the desire to be like God. You have been the snake that wanted me to fall into the desire for absolute knowledge. You have forced me, Johann, and I, a weak human, being an affable and complacent man, eager to have absolute knowledge, have not been able to free myself and precipitated into Mephistopheles hands. It was you who decided for me to make a pact with Mephistopheles so that I could obtain absolute knowledge. Johann, I'm not afraid and I have accepted the challenge. I know that, if necessary, my pact can be declared void if I repent and return again to the hands of the church as did Theophilus of Adana. I am safe, because I know that I can break the pact whenever I want.
There have been, my friend Johann, a lot of legends in which a human being has agreed with the devil. You know very well how many characters, popes among others, have had magical abilities and, abandoning the dogmas of faith, have immersed themselves in fantastic chimeras, like myself, in search of extraordinary phenomena and miracles, seeking absolute knowledge and power. I had never before had any agreement with the devil and now you have persuaded me.
I know that desire and ambition to achieve wealth and power induce human beings into accepting losing their conditions and their moral values. Johann, you are safe and you are not exposed of losing your soul, but you have had the boldness of losing my respect and forced me into a pact that I had not freely accepted before. You are not the only one who, taking me as a character, has made me agree with the devil. Now, right now I feel the need to agree. Finally, I approached the devil and made a deal with him. I, the same as Eve, wanted to be like God and have absolute knowledge. The snake forced her and she accepted, but she was not afraid of not being able to repent and she punished all her offspring. Now I do not have a pact with God, but with the devil and consequently I enjoy the pleasure of feeling the voluptuousness of sin.
I would like to sin and transgress consciousness the will of a God, but what God? My freedom does not allow me to accept any forced act and consequently my consciousness of sin is dear and desired. I want to be sinful. I'm not afraid. What should I be afraid of? I am human and I feel the strong need to aspire to have power, and I freely accept the pact. The devil offers me what I want; To have wealth, magical power, talent and thus to free my soul from submission to the mortality to which God has condemned us. God will have lost the challenge done with Mephistopheles and I will be able to deliver myself to all the desires that demand my body and my soul. My mind will not have limits and my desires will be satisfied in all its fullness. And what Mephistopheles ask to change? The condemnation of my soul. I accept the pact.
Jordi
Rodríguez-Amat
4 December of 2017
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To the Rodríguez-Amat Foundation