The MWL was perched on his ladder on a cloudy afternoon when he heard the familiar voice of his sometime employer giving the familiar instructions to everyone who needed instructing. "You stay here. I'll be back for you in a little while, understand." He nodded to the voice in the direction he was facing and he heard Tatanya Schwarz acquiesce with a murmured, "yes."
After her mother had gone, Tatanya Schwarz balanced lightly on the bottom rung of the ladder. "Could I sit on the top today and you sit on the bottom?"
"I don't see why not," the MWL said, and they exchanged places.
"Have things changed much since you were like me?" Tatanya Schwarz asked.
"No," the MWL replied, "they look from down here much like they looked from up there, only a little lower."
"That's not what I meant," said Tatanya. "You know. Are things different now than they were when you were my age?"
The MWL thought about the question for a while.
"Yes and no," he said, "yes and no." He tried to think of himself as he was at five, but the memories stung and harassed him and he brushed them away.
"What things have changed, and why have they changed?" Tatyana asked, doubling up the question without giving him a chance to start to answer it.
"Which do you want to know first," he asked, as if giving a single answer to two questions was much more difficult than giving two answers to a single question which he did all of the time. And then, without giving her a chance to pick, he said, "I don't know why things change."
"You have some idea," she said egging him on, baiting the question with a smile.
"Big things change because people are to smart for their own good," answered the MWL.
"And little things?" Tatanya inquired.
"Little things change because people are not smart enough. I just made that up they're not the real reasons," he confessed.
"That's clever," she said.
"Do you know what clever means?" he asked, not sure that she had complete control of her language.
"Clever is what adults are when they think like children," she said, looking down at him.
"I'm not clever, then," he said, "I'm wise."
"They're not the same," Tatyana said decisively. "Being wise means giving very, very short answers to very, very long questions."
"You are very sophisticated," the MWL said.
"Isn't every five year old," she responded.
He thought about it for a minute, and in the middle of his thought she asked, "What does sophisticated mean?"
"Sophisticated means to be able to do something before you know the name for what you're doing, or why you're doing it."
"Oh," she said, "you mean it's what children do when they are behaving as adults."
"You've been watching late night television again," he commented, adding, "I'm not sure I can take too much more of this kind of conversation, Tatanya," leaving open the question of what kind of conversation it was, and trying to maintain a stern face, and only worry a little about the effect the conversation on his mental equilibrium. "I think before we go any further you had better come down here and sit on the bottom rung and I better move back up to the top."
"I like it here," the little girl said. "I promise not to be too clever or too sophisticated. You never really answered my questions," she reminded him. "Why have things changed?"
"Oh," he said, "I'm not really sure. It's complicated. Maybe things change because people always forget for a while before they remember. I do happen to know why a few things changed." he said. "Not big things but important things."
"You are going to tell me a story," she squealed.
"You promised now, you remember," he reminded her, and she nodded, even though she was not quite sure which promise he had in mind.
"Once a year at the Hilton Plaza in Madrid, the Devil and all the demons of the world hold a convention. Do you know what a convention is?" he asked the little girl who was listening attentively. She shrugged her shoulders. "It's when a lot of people who have spent all year doing the same thing, get together to talk about what they did, and about doing it next year, and have fun to boot," he explained. "Actually it's quite a conventional convention," he continued. "Any plumbing salesman would recognize it right away. It's the regular kind of convention, a lot of fooling around and drinking."
"How come I never heard of it?" asked Tatanya.
"Well, they take over the hotel for a week but they take it over only in demon time which rushes by like an instant for us, and they start about 3:47 in the morning so that no one every notices, although there are rumors and occasionally something is broken. Actually although they hold it once a year our time, it's once a millennium to these dwellers in the underworld and they have a lot of dead time to make up for. Everyday life no pleasure for these types."
"What do they do all day?" Tatanya asked.
The MWL looked puzzled for a moment. "They sit around inventing mischief, making up aphorisms and putting cleverness in the mouths of five year olds," he said, recovering quickly.
"That sounds like fun," his charge said.
"It's a punishment," said the MWL.
"What kind of aphori...things do they make up?" almond eyed Tatanya asked.
"Things like, 'Death has a slogan: return the empties' and 'Sex talks with forked tongue: don't you wish' and 'Reality stands by its illusions'."
"I don't understand any of them," Tatanya said.
"They belong to another five year old," said the MWL. "Can I get on with the story? It was in the midst of a drunken brawl that Beelzebub and some of his minions were having, that one of Old Devil's lesser servants threw out a challenge. You have to understand that in any other circumstance than this, he would have been immediately punished with some ingenious torture on the spot. But this was convention, and Mardi Gras rules prevailed, and the challenge was picked up by a drunken Beelzebub with the relish only a lost soul who dreams mischief can display."
"What is Mardi Gras?" Tatanya asked softly.
"It's a drunken Channuka," the MWL answered.
"Actually the demon who made the challenge wasn't drunk at all. He had thought about it for a few centuries, and was convinced it would get Old Sod in very deep trouble. And he reasoned logically, that even though the Devil would see this, his pride and basic evil streak would not let him reject the challenge. If the truth be known this innocent was ambitious and had his eye on moving up in the underworld. The only thing that worried him was the question of whether evil was good when it was done to evil with the intention of having evil punished. But he decided that since it was being done with evil intent he was safe.
"What he said was, 'I bet you can't remake the world, change it all, every piece then put it together again from memory.'
"What you have to understand," the MWL pointed out, "is that things like changing the world were usually done with a lot of equipment, including a lot of books, and maps, and charts, even when it was done for pleasure. God, in his wisdom and mercy, did not object to infrequent putterings as long as in the end everything was left as it was in the beginning and he was not required to do any kludge re-patching after the evil was done. In fact, it gave him something to do, checking and rechecking to make sure that everything was as he had left it. There was hell to pay if something as much as gas from a comet or a left over meal was misplaced. So interventions like this were never left to so frail a instrument as memory even if a demon's memory was usually much better than a computer's.
"Now Old Sod rose to the bait as the lesser demon knew he would. He swallowed the challenge to the last overtone. 'From scratch,' he yelled, 'every molecule and from memory,' and he pulled himself up from the floor and began instantaneously to change the world."
"It was an awesome spectacle. It even caught God's attention. He didn't approve of course, but he appreciated a good show as much as anyone.
"And the world was changed completely. You should have been there. No, that's not the way to put it. I didn't mean to imply that you are anything like a demon or evil spirit. I just mean you should have seen the world as it was after that transformation. The sun was fusia. Two and two made seven. Politicians told the truth, out of habit. Doctors cured even the most minor illnesses. Little children behaved like little children. And the instant after it was completely changed, the tension became almost unbearable.
" 'Rest for a moment' the demon who had thrown out the challenge urged. But Beelzebub wasn't that drunk. He knew if he concentration was broken even for an instant he would forget some little girls wish for a cabbage patch doll, or some drunkards longing for a pint of sweet wine or one of the thirty equations involving quark colors, and he would be in for one hell of a time with the Old Man. So he did no more than suck in his breath and began putting the world back in place. The right wish here, the proper lust just where it had issued from, each and every apple on the right branch and so on and so on, until he slammed his fist on the table and said in a bright loud voice, 'DONE!' And it was.
"Now the whole convention was impressed. Everyone just stopped what they were doing and applauded and applauded, not only because they enjoyed the tipsy topsy shape of the world when it was changed, or even because they felt comfortable they would all have their old jobs back, but also out of respect, because it was a stupendous accomplishment. Even God nodded. Only Beelzebub knew he missed something and God knew he had missed something. But just then the Lord's attention was captured by something happening light years away and he put off checking every out properly and Beelzebub gave his laziness reign, calculating none of his minions who suspected something would say anything."
The MWL paused.
"And, " the listener inquired
"And the convention ended and everyone went home, a little sadder, a little older you know what conventions are like. But...," and here his voice dropped a little and he hesitated before the next word. "Have you noticed," he said, looking up at the five year old perched at the top of the ladder, "have you noticed that people's smiles don't last as long as they used to when you were three, and that tears are a little wetter, and goodbyes are a little sadder, and that the colors of the rainbow are faded a bit? And," he added a little scarily, "when the moon is full, the darkness faces forward."
Tatanya Schwarz sat quietly examining the story from different angles. "God will get around to making it right, won't He?" she asked.
"Of course, honey," the MWL said. "It might take a little while though," he added. "Until then we'll just have to smile a little more and make do." And at that moment he heard the Tatanya's mother's familiar 'hallo, look what I've brought us.'"
The Conversation