What the Vintners Buy

“I had a little speech worked out. I was going to say, I seek the ultimate pleasure. But this can’t be the place.”

“But it is, Matt Williams.”

“How did you know my name?”

The other closed the door, gestured to the room’s one comfortable, albeit somewhat shabby chair.

“Are you truly surprised?”

Matt Williams took the seat. “No, I guess not, given the circumstances. However, you don’t look like the devil.”

The other brought up the straight back chair that had stood before the small writing desk. “The words of my last client. It is a balderdash term, Matt Williams. In my time, I have sometimes tried to explain. You will forgive me if I do not go into the etymology still once again?”

Matt Williams’ eyes went about the room in calculation, finally came back to his host.

“If you were what you claim you are, you’d be over in the Waldorf, not in this pad.”

“With a tower suite, a magnum of Champagne de Cru, Blanc de Blanc of Cramant, say, 1937, and with that so charming Italian of the cinema… what is her name? The one with the formidible mammary glands.” The voice was distantly mocking.

Matt Williams was impatient. “ ’37 was a great vintage in its time, but champagne is a white, and a blend besides. It should be drunk fairly young, say within fifteen years after the harvest. I don’t get your point.” He added, “What do I call you? Not Old Nick, I suppose.”

“I have had many names. Call me Azazel, if you wish, an appelation I carried some time ago when I was more romantically inclined. The point I was trying to make, Matt Williams, is that such worldly desirables as penthouse suites, status symbol wines and even pulchitrudinous young ladies have, over the centuries, lost much of their savor.”

“I know what you mean.” Matt Williams came to his feet and made his way to the grimy window. He looked out.

“You know why I am here?”

“You must tell me yourself, Matt Williams. Mine is the, ah, softest sell of all time.”

The other turned back from the window. “That champagne bit I don’t think I’ve bothered with champagne for the past ten years. If I want to get smashed. I take gin. Among other things, it’s quicker.”

Azazel nodded. “Isn’t it, though?”

Williams indicated contempt, though not directed at his host. “Women. You know how many women I had at once, the last time I bothered?”

“From past experience, more than three and matters get somewhat crowded.”

Williams hadn’t heard him. He returned to his chair. “I’ll sum it up for you, Azazel, or whatever you said your name was.”

The other’s face expressed polite interest.

“Pleasure. I live for pleasure. A hedonist, eh? Perhaps in the Oscar Wilde school. No, no, I don’t mean anything abnormal. Tried that, too, but no. I mean, well, simply, I live for pleasure.”

The other nodded encouragingly. “What else?”

Williams looked at him, but then went on. “I’ve figured it out There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow. There is now. And you find your pleasure now, or you never find it There is no other time.”

“How well you put it.”

“I was a kid during the Second War, straight out of the ninety-day-wonder schools, and among other duties, in charge of the ship’s hospital, since it wasn’t large enough to carry even a pharmacist’s mate. It was wartime, nobody knew, nor cared, what was included in the medicine chest When I was approached in Manila by a Philippine, I hadn’t even known myself that we carried a few dozen syrettes of M and about fifty quarter grain tablets. He gave me three hundred for them.”

“Everybody had his little angle,” Azazel said in understanding. “If you didn’t do it, somebody else would. Blackmarket cigarettes, shampoo or perfume from the PX to sell or trade to the girls, wrist-watches.”

“Well, anyway, that was the first. Kind of intrigued me. I tried a syrette, just to see what it did that anybody’d pay that kind of money for.” Williams grunted. “Made me sleepy. Opium in general never showed me much. I tried a pipe a few times over in the Chinese section in Quiapo. But you have to be on it for years to get the full benefit. Now, horse is another thing. Got on it for awhile, after the war, but it’s hard to shake if you get hooked.”

“A bit expensive, too,”

“That wasn’t the problem. I learned my lesson, there with the guy who gave me three bills for the M. There’s nothing people will pay more for than quick kicks.”

“How true.”

Williams waggled a forefinger at his host. “I’ll give you an example from experience. There is no law in Mexico against LSD. You can go to any drug store, farmacias they call them, and order fifty bucks worth of LSD. They have to send to England for it, but England has no rules against exporting LSD to a legitimate drug house in Mexico. So in a couple of weeks you pick up your acid and take it back home. It doesn’t need much space, you drive across the border with it in your pants pocket, along with a few thousand other tourist cars. Back in San Francisco, or wherever, you cut it down and put a small amount on a lump of sugar, 1/200,000th of an ounce to be exact, about 350 millograms. You want to know what one of those sugar cubes retails for?”

“I’d be fascinated.”

“From two to five bucks. Sometimes as high as ten. You know how much worth of LSD is involved?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Perhaps a quarter of a cent’s worth.”

“I’ve always been an admirer of free enterprise,” Azazel said. “I am to understand, then, that you deal in…”

“I pleasure beyond mere pleasure. I am a connoisseur par excellence.”

“I see. And you, yourself, besides dispensing this most recent escape from reality, are familiar with its gifts?”

“I have tried everything… twice,” Williams said flatly. “Among the hallucinogens, cannabis and mescaline, psilocybin derived from the divine mushrooms of the pre-Columbians, yopo snuff from the Orinco basin, and the brew the Peruvians call yaj6. Did you know that the Mexican Indians alone are acquainted with thirteen phantastica?”

“Amazing.”

“And I have known them all.”

“And…”

“And have wearied of them all.”

For a long moment, they both held silence.

“Which brings us to the point,” Williams added finally.

“Yes.”

“I seek the ultimate pleasure. You might say, I have a horror of dying without achieving it. For the past decade and more it has worked on me. Frankly, nothing makes any difference any longer, save attaining the most ultimate pleasure comprehendable by man.”

“Of course.”

“You can deliver it?”

“Yes. In return for that which I seek.”

Williams grunted. “I have never been interested in theology.”

“Many find it quite boring.”

“So far as religion is concerned, I’m not even an atheist.”

“How cleverly put.”

Matt Williams leaned forward, hands on knees. “However, I am also not stupid, and not here to be diddled. How do I know you can deliver?”

“The question is well taken, but somewhat difficult to answer. You see Matt Williams, we live in different frames of reference. Briefly, I have resources beyond your comprehension.”

“I’m listening.”

“Suffice to say that long millenia ago there was a conflict between factions, and…”

“A war of angels,” Williams said cynically.

“If you will. I submit that your information of the matter is based upon the reports of our antagonists who, admittedly, were for the greater part the victors. Have you ever wondered, Matt Williams, how different your opinions might be had Washington lost and the troops of George the Third prevailed? Have you ever wondered what Hannibal’s Carthaginians were like and in what they believed? All the present accounts are of Roman derivation, and largely we have such pictures as parents throwing their first born into the furnace maw of Baal. Have you ever wondered what the Aztec story might be, told by themselves, rather than by the victorious Conquistadores?”

“To sum up your point?”

“I merely indicate that perhaps the war of angels might not have been quite what has come down to you. Tell me, Matt Williams, in what language were the Ten Commandments written when Moses brought them down from the mountain top?”

“How would I know? Hebrew?”

“Written Hebrew was not only unknown at the time, but as yet the alphabet had not been devised by the Phoenecians. Hieroglyphics, utilized by the Egyptians, were familiar only to the priesthood. I was bringing home to you the fact that such knowledge as you possess about the so-called war of angels was handed down by word of month for long millenia before man got around to written records. Can you realize that even the terminology you use is largely nonsense? That you have no capacity to understand the issues involved, the motivations … and needs?”

Matt Williams capitulated. “All right. I’ll accept that you have resources beyond my comprehension. But I want to make it clear I am not interested in some hobblydygook, or having palmed off on me something like true love, whatever that is, or sacrifice for others, or fame, or…”

“Obviously, Matt Williams,” Azazel nodded in understanding. “You have emptied to the dregs the goblet of ordinary pleasures. Now you seek the ultimate, and for it, connoisseur that you are, you are willing to give all.”

“But for nothing short of the ultimate,” Williams insisted.

“You realize, of course, your immortal psyche is involved.”

Williams grunted.

“I am not impowered to make our… our deal, unless that is clear to you.”

“I told you my philosophy. There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow. I ask that I be allowed to enjoy this ultimate pleasure, then live out my normal life span, whatever it would have been, had I never come here. What happens then, I couldn’t care less.”

“Contrary to popular superstition, Matt Williams, we do not cheat. We could not, even if we so desired.”

There was the slightest of twitches at the side of the mouth, of hesitation in the eyes, but Williams said, “So far as I am concerned, the deal is made — if you deliver.”

“So that all is clear, Matt Williams, our pact is that we exchange the ultimate pleasure for what is known as your psyche.”

“Right.”

“Very well.”

Azazel extended his hand. Cupped it it was a… a something.

Matt Williams squinted. He frowned in unhappy perplexity. The object, if it could be called an object, was not exactly visible. It shimmered, but had no exact size or shape. It had a mother-of-pearl quality, a simplicity of beauty. “What is it?”

“The ultimate pleasure.”

“But… well, what do I do with it? Take it like a pill, or what?” He was scowling.

“You may take it that way, if you wish. It is now yours, to take when and as you will. The deal is consumated, Matt. Williams.”

“But what is it?”

“It is one moment of the Ultimate Pleasure.”

“One moment?”

“Duration had no part of our agreement, Matt Williams. Besides, it is all I can possibly give.”

“One moment of what?”

“Paradise.”