Our Gang (29 page)

unspecified location between the Emperor of

Wickedness and the God of Peace. For the sake of

brevity I will read to you only the most pertinent

material.

THE LORD
(speaking of job):
He still
holds fast
to
his

integrity
.

SATAN:...
Put forth thy hand
now, and touch his bone

and his flesh, and he
will curse thee to
thy face.

THE LORD:
Behold,
he
is in your power; only spare his

life.

And having received this second set of instructions,

what did Satan do? Let me read it to you, just

as it is written here in their Bible. "So Satan went

forth from
the
presence of the Lord, and afflicted

job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot

to the crown of his head."

And did Satan spare Job's life, as God in-

206 OUR GANG

structed him to? I am afraid the answer is yes, he did

that too.

We all remember, I am sure, the unhappy ending

to that story. Job's faith was not broken; it was

strengthened and increased. And the Lord, as the

record here states, "gave job twice as much as he

had before."

(Tricky closes Bible. Quickly wipes perspiration

from his scales with the back of his claw)

My fellow Fallen, I challenge Satan to refute these

charges that I have made here tonight. I challenge

Satan to deny his role in the job case. I challenge

him to deny that he acted willingly and knowingly in

behalf of the sworn enemies of Hell. I challenge him

to deny that if this was not an outright act of

treason, it was one so neglectful of the security

interests of the Wicked, that Satan might just as well

have been in the employ of the Righteous.

Now Satan may prefer to call these actions of his

"fiendish" and "diabolical." But I call what he has

done here surrender, and let me tell you something-

I think that's what the leaders in Heaven are calling

it, too. Because make no mistake about it-I know

the other side. I have met with their representatives.

I know the kind of ruthless and fanatical people

they are, and I can assure you, if you surrender to

their Will, if you think it will stop them to surrender

a single

ON THE COMEBACK TRAIL 207

soul to their Righteousness, you are sadly mistaken.

That will only whet their appetite for more.

Because this God of Peace does not just want Job.

He wants all the jobs. And if we do not stop him

each and every time, the day will come, my friends,

when he will be hammering here at the Gates of

Hell.

And that is why I say the time has come to stop

appeasing the God of Peace. That is why I say the

time has come to step up our own activities, and

launch a new offensive in this battle for the minds

and hearts and souls of men. For it is nothing less

than an ideological battle that we are fighting; and

that is why we need a Devil who is willing and able

to stand on his ideals. It isn't the size or the age of a

man's horns that countsit's what he's going to do

with them. It's our whole lives that you should be

judging here tonight. It's what we stand for. It's

what we believe. What I am trying to indicate to you

tonight is that the tide of history is on our side, and

that we can keep it on our side, because we're on

the right side, and that's the side of Evil. And let

there be no mistake about it: if I am elected Devil, I

intend to see Evil triumph
in
the end; I intend to

see that our children, and our children's children,

need never know the terrible scourge of

Righteousness and Peace.

Thank you.

THEN I SAW AN ANGEL COMING DOWN

FROM HEAVEN, HOLDING IN HIS HAND

THE KEY OF THE BOTTOMLESS PIT AND

A GREAT CHAIN. AND HE SEIZED THE

DRAGON, THAT ANCIENT SERPENT, WHO

IS THE DEVIL... AND BOUND HIM FOR A

THOUSAND YEARS, AND THREW HIM

INTO THE PIT, AND SHUT IT AND SEALED

IT OVER HIM, THAT HE SHOULD DECEIVE

THE NATIONS NO MORE...

THE BOOK OF REVELATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHILIP ROTH
is the author of four previous books: the novella and

five stories entitled Goodbye, Columbus (1959), for which he

received the National Book Award for Fiction in 1960; and the

novels Letting Go (1962), When She Was Good (1967), and

Portnoy's Complaint (1969). His shorter fiction has been widely

reprinted in anthologies both in this country and abroad, and stories

have been reprinted in Martha Foley's annual collections The Best

American Short Stories, and in the O. Henry Prize Story annuals.

Mr. Roth has served as a visiting lecturer on the faculties of

several American universities, most recently Princeton, the State

University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of

Pennsylvania.

In 1970, at the age of thirty-seven, he was elected a member of the

National Institute of Arts and Letters.