Chapter 7

THE HISTORIA OF FAUSTUS

VII.
How Doktor Faustus settled down With his Spirit Mephostophiles

Doctor Faustus having now, thanks to the servitude of his famulus, every power, every luxury, every possibility at his fingertips, instead of unleashing it upon the world and declaring himself universal king and forcing all citizens to bow to him and do his will; instead of demanding that his famulus make him fabulously wealthy, beautiful and socially desired and inhabiting a house on the sunny Riviera; instead of capturing all the beautiful virgins of the world and placing them in his harem to do his will, as any normal man would do, he instead immediately settled into a comfortable domestic routine that by any standards must be described as strictly unimaginative, even boring.

This was anything but surprising to his famulus, who knew from experience that most men, given the opportunity, would prefer to think small. Indeed, it is a rare man who thinks with a broad and bold vision, an even rarer man who has the courage and determination to pursue it, and a rarer man still who has the possibilities and talent to succeed. Unfortunately for devils such as the famulus, such rare men are usually too busy with their plans to take the time and make the effort of consulting the devil. Ironically, there was such a man living only a few blocks away from Doktor Faustus in Wittemberg, a certain Martin Luther, who at the time of Doktor Faustus' diabolical pact was wrestling with his conscious as a prelude to single-handedly destroying the Catholic church; such a man any devil would have loved to aid and abet, but Martin Luther was too busy torturing himself to hear the lure of devilish temptation. And so in terms of sheer potential, the famulus had to be satisfied with what he could get.

Doktor Faustus main sin was laziness and his greatest evil was theft. All day long he sat around the house in Wittemberg (which was bequeathed to him by a kinsman who had died) on the couch and read or just stare into space or take part in nonsensical, useless discussions with his sidekick, a lazy student named Christoph Wagner. Though officially Christoph Wagner was Doiktor Faustus' student and Faustus claimed he was trying to make a scholar out of him, the boy was so stupid, immobile, unimaginative and loutish that he would laugh and show astonishment at just about any accomplishment, and Doktor Faustus' highest ambition was to entertain Wagner with dumb jokes and cheap tricks.

Doctor Faustus' most spectacular tricks consisted of sending his spirit Mephostophiles out at night to steal food and bring it home. "What do you feel like eating tonight, Christoph?" Faustus would ask, and Christoph would invariably answer, "porridge", at which Faustus would send his spirit some poor farmer's house and steal two bowls of porridge right off the table and bring it back to Wittemberg, much to the delight of Christoph Wagner, but to the abject horror of Mephostophiles, who was bored out of his mind. One day Mephostophiles finally made a suggestion: "Why don't you let me go out and see if I can steal something a little more exciting?"

That night, Mephostophiles returned with a nine-course meal stolen from the table of the Duke of Saxony himself. [DESCRIBE MEAL?] On nights that followed, Mephostophiles similarly provided luxury meals for Faustus and Wagner, and after that, the devil began traveling to other countries and even to other times to bring back exotic foods, even to the distant future, where he found and introduced to Faustus Chop Suey, Pizza, Sushi, Spagetti and Meatballs, and Ice Cream. All the time, however, it was only Faustus who found enthusiasm for these culinary adventures: Christoph Wagner consistently complained that he didn’t like the food and was subsequently brought porridge.

Likewise, Mephostophiles, which was regularly summoned in Doktor Faustus' carefully protected and constantly locked study, provided Doktor Faustus with good wines from the best cellars, even that of his Lord Elector of Saxony as well as those of the Duke of Bavaria and the Bishop of Saltzburg, and clothed the doctor and the boy in sumptuous and mantels and shoes, all stolen at night from craftsmen to royalty in Nuremberg, Augsburg or Frankfurt, and also furnished Faustus' home in luxurious furniture stolen from potentates.

All of this Faustus reveled in and enjoyed greatly, but Christoph Wagner disdained, for he only wanted a comfortable couch to lay about on and was not picky about its upholstery, and was constantly criticizing Mephostophiles's pretentious tastes, so that finally Mephostophiles told Faustus, "There is only one time in the history of the world, past and future, which is in a position to cater properly to the tastes and desires of such a wastrel as Christoph Wagner, and with your permission I will visit it and return." Faustus gave permission, and that evening Mephostophiles introduced Wagner to take-out pizza, a miracle called "PlayStation" complete with a flatscreen TV, a generator and a vast library of ego-shooter games. Though Wagner had shown little dispensation in the past to learn new skills or to in any way accept things which were previously foreign to him, he surprisingly enough immediately took to the foreign custom of PlayStationmanship and attended to the device for most of each day until he fell into an exhausted sleep among the discarded pieces of pizza late at night.

In sum, Doctor Faustus' meat, clothing and furniture, his living in its entirety, was respectable but godless. Indeed Christ our Lord doth through John call the Devil a thief and a murderer, and that is what he is. And though he lived in his house in Wittemberg with two companions – the boy and the devil, who inhabited the house in the guise of a friar, he was in fact alone, for with such blood on his hands as can only taint the hands of the murderer of the spirit, it is so that God Himself and the whole Heavenly Host did turn away from him, and of all the houses in all the world, only Doktor Faustus' house in Wittemberg was devoid and empty of the loving attention of the heavenly hosts, and thus Doktor Faustus was alone.