Chapter 8
Mrs Faust opens by stating she married Faust after meeting as university students. They cohabitate, separate, reconcile, marry, buy a house with a mortgage, and both earn successive degrees (BA, MA, PhD) while remaining childless. Their lifestyle expands: two bathrobes, fast cars, a sailing boat, a second home in Wales, and the latest gadgets (computers, mobile phones). Faust is described as clever, greedy, and slightly mad; she admits she is equally bad and that she grew to love the lifestyle rather than the life, while Faust grew to love the kudos rather than her. He takes prostitutes; she copes with yoga, t’ai chi, feng shui, therapy, and colonic irrigation. At dinner parties Faust boasts about lucrative deals in the East and later his nocturnal liaisons in Soho, describing them in lurid terms.
One winter night she returns home hungry; Faust is upstairs in his study holding a meeting. She smells cigar smoke, hears laughter, and senses a demonic presence. Faust then begins to list his conquests: political office (MP, Right Honourable, KG), offshore banking, corporate chairmanships, titles of Lord, Cardinal, Pope, claims to know more than God, traveling at supersonic speed, walking on the moon, golfing a hole‑in‑one, and even lighting a “fat Havana on the sun.” He later invests in smart bombs and arms deals, gets in deep, extracts himself, buys farms, clones sheep, and searches the Internet for “like‑minded Bo‑Peeps.”
Meanwhile Mrs Faust chronicles her own escapades: touring Rome in a day, “spinning gold from hay,” undergoing cosmetic surgeries (facelift, breast enlargement, buttocks tightening), traveling to China, Thailand, Africa, becoming vegan, Buddhist, celibate, changing hair colour repeatedly, going “native, ape, berserk, bananas,” and eventually living alone on the run before returning home. She mentions a night spent with a virtual “Helen of Troy” created by the Devil’s boy.
She confesses she made a pact with Mephistopheles, the Devil’s son, who is now coming to claim what she owes. She describes the Devil’s serpent hissing, the smell of evil, and scaly hands pulling Faust through terracotta Tuscan tiles at his bare feet, dragging him straight to Hell. Faust’s will leaves her everything: the yacht, multiple homes, Lear jet, helipad, loot, and all assets. She later falls ill, buys a kidney with a credit card, recovers, and notes that Faust never possessed a soul to sell, keeping his secret. The chapter ends with her holding the total inheritance and reflecting on the cost of Faust’s ambition.