Duration: 3 to 5 minutesGender: FemaleAge: AdultGenre: Comedy

Context: Paulinka, a German film actress, tells about the night she may have seen the Devil during a production of Faust.

Paulinka: I’ve seen Him. Well, not Him, exactly, or … When I had just started acting I did two seasons at the Municipal Theater of Karlsruhe. Ever been to Karlsruhe? (She smiles; it is a telling smile.) We were giving Faust, Part One, a play I’ve always detested, and I was playing Gretchen, a part I’ve always detested, and I was not happy, not happy at all. There were nights I thought I’d be stuck in the provinces forever, never see Berlin, never see the inside of a film studio, die, go to hell, and it’d be exactly like Karlsruhe. Black nights, you could imagine your whole life gone …. You know the scene in the play where the black poodle turns into the Devil and offers Faust the world? All that demurring, endless, always seemed so coy to me. Just … But, so, one night I was walking home after a performance and a very strange thing happened. I found myself going down a narrow street, an alley, really, one I’d never been down before, and suddenly …. There was this little black poodle, sitting on a doorstep. Waiting for me. Staring at me with those wet dark dog eyes. And I thought to myself: “It’s Him! He’s come to talk to me!” He’s going to stand up on His little hind legs and say, “Paulinka! Fame, films, and unsurpassable genius as an actor in exchange for your immortal soul!” And that’s when I knew it, and, my dears, I wish I didn’t know: I’d never resist. I couldn’t. I am constitutionally incapable of resisting anything. A good actress, a good liar, but not in truth a very good person. Just give me Berlin, sixty years of success, and then haul me off to the Lake of Fire! Do business with the Devil. But the poodle had other things in mind. I guess I must have startled it when I asked it if it wanted to make me an offer. It leapt up at me, barking and snarling and obviously out for blood. Chased me for blocks. I escaped by ducking into a bar, where I drank and drank and drank …. Probably just somebody’s nasty black poodle. But I’ve always wondered … what if it really was Him, and He decided I wasn’t worth it?

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A Bright Room Called Day