The Devil’s Food

by Peter Miller

October 31, 1778
Bucharest.

I write in haste your Eminence, for I cannot tell when the Lord will call me to account for the the sin I have committed, nor how He shall seek my penance.

I know by the midnight bell that it has just turned All Hallow’s Day. The simple folk of Bucharest, superstitious and fearful, are all safe abed. As I look out into the street below, I can see a light dust of snow on the stone pathways picked out by the red light from dying torches.

In these parts there is perpetually a fearful dread that the departed souls of the dead might return to intrude on the ways of the living. Indeed, on the night of All Hallows Eve above all others, the people of Romania believe that the dead are permitted by some Unholy Law to walk the world and carry out their unfathomable and abominable business. To this end, a festival is organized on this night, and throughout the city people gather to light huge bonfires in the simplistic belief that this might dissuade any wandering ghoul from venturing too close.

It is a strange sight, Your Grace, for the festival also calls for the wearing of masks and costumes that mimic the manner and appearance of ghosts and demons and other restless spirits. It has often entered my thoughts that should some wandering devil enter the city on this night, rather than be driven away he should feel very much welcomed by streets filled with fire and clashing music and cavorting imps and goblins.

For this reason I ventured out tonight feeling unsettled, as if the world were somehow tilted. I fancied that every shadow at the corner of my eye was an evil being, and every masked dancer that leapt in my path a devil.

It was my thought to provide comfort on this night to those who might find these festivities overwhelming, for as I have oft said Your Holiness, the Light of the Society shines brightest in those corners where the shadows are darkest. The line between superstition and real evil is not discerned easily by simple folk of poor education, and while the Festival of All Hallows Eve is seen by most to be harmless merriment, in all truth it is my own feeling that there is a blacker and more serious heart to these matters.

I made my way down to the Piata Vacaresti where I knew there was to be a large bonfire lit. I could hear the raucous music even from several streets away, and when I entered the square the sight that met my eyes might well have been something from the Devil’s own Estate.

It was a theatre of the most frightening debauchery, the musicians clad from head to toe in garb that made them appear as bones, the flesh stripped therefrom. The music, a kind of wailing keening interspersed with the clashing of metal bells, might have been called from Hell itself. In the light of the torches, a huge black bear regaled in red ribbons and chained to a wooden pole, was swaying and growling, almost as if in a trance. The ribbons streaming down its matted hairy hide reminded me of nothing less than streams of blood, and I am certain that that was the desired effect.

The bonfire had not yet been lit, but I could see women dressed in white robes, their faces powdered with chalk, binding large brooms of hazel and fir in preparation for them to put flame to the huge pyre that had been built.

In the small alleyways that flank the Piata, food and drink stalls had been erected in the usual manner and vendors wearing masks in the appearance of the faces of animals—wolves and voles, rabbits and pigs, blackbirds and owls—called their wares out to the crowd that was assembling.

I think you can imagine, Your Eminence, the kind of scene upon which I was gazing.

I stood in the shadows under the eves of the Church of St Anton while the flames and sparks and blood red ribbons and ash white faces swirled through the dark in front of me.

So many minutes did I stand there transfixed that I am sure that some kind of spell must have been laid upon me. I hope you understand my thoughts, Your Grace, when I repeat once more that there is something unholy in these seemingly frivolous carousings. I watched as some kind of fiend with a red face and what seemed to me to be the body of a wolf held aloft a flaming brand and the women with white faces set their brooms of twigs alight from it. Their movement was slow and, I fancied, licentious, as they turned and made their way through the crowd toward the towering pyre. I watched entranced.

I was roused from this palsied daydream by a soft voice, so faint at first that I thought it was but some further part of the musings brought on by these strange and eerie proceedings. I shook my head, and the voice, a woman’s voice I could now tell, called once more, not from the square, but from the alley way just to my left hand and behind me.

I turned to see a figure standing at a table, beckoning me. At that very moment the bonfire behind me burst into vivid flame throwing its bloody light across my summoner. From head to foot she was dressed in a crimson garment in the manner of the women of the merchants from Constantinople. In that moment, Your Eminence, I must confess that all the temptations that beset an isolated Jesuit on his solitary journey washed over me as a wave washes away a sandy shoal. The body of the woman was as perfect in that garment as the body of Botticelli’s Venus, but unlike the Venus, her skin was dusky, the colour of cinnamon. Alas, I could only imagine that her face was even more beautiful, for the mask of a raven hid it from my view.

I stood for several moments, my senses completely addled.

“Would you like to try my sweet delights,” she said.

“I am sorry,” I said, “but I am a man of the Christian order of Jesuits and I have sworn to forego the pleasures of the flesh.”

The cacophony in the square behind was rising to a crescendo as the flames on the great fire leapt higher.

“You misunderstand me Father,” she said. “I know who you are. I have seen you administering to the poor and the infirm in the markets. My meaning was to offer you a sample of my wares.”

She drew her arm in a languid arc over the stall that was set back amongst the flickering shadows behind her. On tables decorated with woven rugs of black and ochre and red I could see silver trays set out with food, and glasses and urns for the tea that the Turks offered always as a politeness.

I was at once embarrassed at my awful assumption, which I can only attribute to the lascivious vapours imparted to the airs of this night by the uncanny music and the smoke from burning birch and hazel.

It was my discomposure, Your Grace, that was my undoing, for had it been otherwise I would not have ventured down the path I took, and my virtue would remain unblemished.

“Oh,” I said, “That is very kind of you. But I have no money.”

“It is enough for me to see you tend to those who have no-one to look after them. Please, help yourself to what you would.”

I looked at the many unusual foodstuffs on the table. There was nothing that was familiar to me. The woman in the mask of the raven sensed my hesitation.

“Allow me” she said, and reached over to a small wooden box that was inlaid with the ornaments of the Moslems. She opened the lid and offered it to me. I could smell her scent, the perfume of desert sand and spice and smoke. Inside the box were small dusty white cubes.

“Please,” she said, “take one.”

I took one of the small foods. It was soft and very slightly cool. Some of the white powder blew off onto my robes. The woman laughed.

“Eat,” she said, and the fire flared up bright on her black mask and her red robes and her chocolate skin.

“Eat”.

Your Eminence, it is then that I committed what must be a sin greater than any of those mentioned by name in our Bible. For when I put that small soft sweet morsel in my mouth, I felt as if all the pleasures of the flesh came crashing down upon me in one calamitous moment. It was as if the carnal delights of all of the East had been captured by some cunning confectioner and distilled into that one small sweetmeat. It was the taste of honey and roses, of almonds and cinnamon, of the stars of the heavens, the flowers of the Garden of Babel, the perfumes of nights with a thousand beautiful women.

As I sit here writing, I can still taste it, as I could when I ran in blind panic from that stall in that fire-lit square.

I know the Lord must surely seek punishment upon me for this unseemly conduct. I know I have done an evil thing, for I feel it as surely as one feels the stab of vanity or the pangs of lust.

And yet, Your Grace, the confession I must make is not that I have done this thing which I have penned for you in detail here, as much as I can remember it.

No, it is is not that I have done this thing, because I can make my excuse that the evil airs of the fire and the night and the strangeness of it all addled my wits and caused me to falter. Any man might have done the same.

My confession, Your Eminence, is not that I have done this thing, but that knowing what I now know, I would, in all certainty, and without hesitation do it again.