Demon: A Memoir (11 page)

13

The parade was on TV. Apparently it was Thanksgiving. But all I knew or cared about was that it had been five days. Five days, and nothing. I sifted through the stack of pages comprising my record as an archaeologist brushes dirt through a sieve, searching for details, meaning, reason.
I have lost it.
At best, I was obsessed. The fact that I had not replayed to death my encounter with Aubrey at the museum was proof of that. I had thought I would be compelled to drink, break down, or at least stew for a few days, reliving the years of our marital routine, the arguments, the silent specters between us. But I did none of these, having already transferred my best energies to the account growing on the corner of my desk.

My pulse throbbed in my temple. I was more conscious of it of late, imagining that I felt its thumping shiver through the mattress beneath me as I lay in bed at night. This experience had drained me, this thing that I had fallen victim or privy to.

I checked my schedule by the hour—sometimes more often—lingering at the keyboard like a lover waiting by a silent phone.

In these idling moments of distracted nonproductivity, I looked up articles on Horus, searched for pictures of the falcon-headed god to see if I saw anything of the demonic scowl in the ancient idol’s eyes. In dark, postmidnight hours, I browsed the Internet, following the links through a pantheon of Egyptian gods until, dozing in my chair before dawn, I dreamed convoluted dreams of bird-headed deities with clay bodies, of sarcophagi with wide-eyed funeral masks, of a woman the color of bone singing by the pale light of Lucian’s moon.

I woke up in the afternoon, raked my hands through my hair, scrubbed at the stubble on my cheeks, and realized the holiday had passed. It was the weekend.

That day, as I returned to the account of my meetings with Lucian, I was disturbed by the fragility of the paper it was written on, the fraying edges of the notebook pages, the bloated ink where I had set a glass of water on one of them. I recalled the shambles of the house in Belmont, the splintered table leg.
Tissue paper,
he had called it.

I immediately decided that I should type the entire thing, commit it to a more lasting medium.

When I finished, it was well past dark. I sat back, considered the last line of my account, which ended in the museum with Aubrey and me parting ways again. With Lucifer searching for the weakness in man.

On impulse, I pulled up an online Bible and then faltered. There were at least two dozen translations to pick from. We had read the King James in confirmation, the “thees” and “thous” as mysterious to me as God himself. I randomly chose a more modern version.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

It was so bare-boned. The image of God hovering over the water that had made Lucian shudder was recounted here with all the emotion of a recipe. I read through the days of creation, and though I found no inconsistencies between this account and the demon’s, I found no mention of the angelic host or Lucifer, of the fall that precipitated the earth’s emptiness. I read through the creation of animals and man. I found it retold in the next chapter, this time with more detail, even down to the exact rivers flowing into the garden. The specificity surprised me, as though one might actually locate the place on a map. I read the first two chapters again, this time with a writer’s appreciation for the omniscient point of view, the declarative sentences, the repetition.

Still it seemed much the same as it had been thirty years ago in Sunday school: dry and rote, down to the repetition of the days coming and going in numbered sequence. I was disappointed, tired, and very hungry. My mouse hovered over the X that would close the online Bible, but then something happened: I heard the echo of past conversations with Lucian coming back to me now in fragments like the lyrics of a half-forgotten song.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

. . . the way a sculptor’s fingers roam a block of marble . . .

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”

All those strange green things had within them the power to create . . . manufacturing miniature versions of themselves.

So God created man in his own image.

. . . the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love . . .

“Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

He gave the animals to the man and told him to rule over them.

“It is not good for the man to be alone.”

And he was lonely.

The one thing the demon had not yet mentioned was the tree in the second chapter. I scrolled to Genesis 3.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

He prowled the garden, inspecting for himself the handiwork of El like the jealous critic . . . searching for the slightest weakness.

It now came vividly alive. I scrolled ahead, excited, looking for more. But I found only Cain and Abel, followed by an entire genealogy of men who became fathers in their old age and supposedly lived for centuries. Lucian had said nothing of this part, having come only, as far as I could tell, to the end of Genesis 2. Looking at the screen, I thought with some alarm of the thick, dusty, leather-bound book on the shelf at home when I was growing up. Is that what he meant every time he said time was short—that it could take an entire lifetime to recount the whole thing?

I rethought my obsession, not sure if I was up for all of that. I was exhausted, hungry, and preoccupied—and Lucian had barely covered the first two pages of that dusty book. Did he mean to recount his observation of or participation in every event in the Bible?

And what did any of this have to do, as he contended, with me?

Something scratched at the back of my mind.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Time, not yet created, had begun its phantom tick for us alone. Where I once saw the artful strew of El’s stars, I now saw the cogs and pendulum of a great clock, ticking the finite measure of time.

And then I knew.

The demon’s obsession with time wasn’t about getting through the entire Bible. It was about his own limited quantity of it. In our conversation upon leaving the church that day weeks ago, he said he had never been to hell.

Yet.

On a whim I searched the Internet for
Lucian.

Back came Lucian of Samosata, the rhetorician, author of
Dialogues of the Gods
and
Dialogues of the Dead.
How fitting. Lucian of Antioch, the saint. Why would a demon take the name of a saint? Lucian Freud, the painter. Various blogs, designers, an actor, even a boxer.

Well, what’s in a name anyway?

I typed: “Name meanings: Lucian.”

I received:
Lucian: Latin. “Light.”

Light?

I searched for
Lucifer.
I felt strange, deviant doing it.

Lucifer: “bringer of light.”

I toggled back to the file containing my notes and scrolled to Lucian’s retelling of Lucifer’s attempted ascent, of the darkness after its failure. And then before that, to the flashing stones of Eden that reflected the light of its governor. It had all been noticeably missing from the account in Genesis. I wondered if it was anywhere in the Bible.

Returning to the online Bible, I searched for
Lucifer.
The only linked passage that came back was a reference from Isaiah:

How you have fallen from heaven,

O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!

I searched next for
Eden.
An entire list of references scrolled before my eyes. I dropped down to the index results, to “Garden of Eden.” There I found more Genesis and more Isaiah but nothing that snagged my attention—until this:

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you:

I scrolled down through the passage from Ezekiel.

You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.

You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.

I grabbed my notes and reread them, my heart accelerating. It was the same story except that, as before, the demon’s account was more fantastic. More compelling.

I had sworn I would not publish his story even if he were J. D. Salinger.

Salinger never wrote a story like this.

And again I had to wonder: Why me? I was no high-profile editor. Brooks and Hanover was a small publishing house. With titans like Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, and Random House roaming the earth—with Houghton Mifflin, even, right here in Boston—why choose me?

It drifted back to me from the pile of pages:
My story is very closely connected to yours.

But how could that be?

I searched for
Satan,
half expecting to see a warning on my screen.

Satan: “Accuser.”

For a long time, I read and reread that single word.

I SLEPT, FINALLY, AROUND three in the morning but woke again just after five thirty.

I couldn’t go on like this.
Maybe that is his intent.
I pictured myself five years into the future, a skeleton of a man, my eyes sunken into my skull, dark circles like black halos on pallid, sun-forsaken skin, ranting on street corners, and no doubt jobless.

I got up for water, thinking I ought to return to bed, try to sleep some more. But instead I sat down at my computer, setting the glass atop a pile of proposals I had read the night before, the content of which I could no longer remember.

I touched the pad on my laptop. A page of links on Satan and Satan-related topics sprang to pixilated life. I had asked about Satan on the verge of hysteria that day in the bookstore. Now here I was with a bookmark on him.

Lucian claimed he didn’t know where I was meant to spend eternity. Staring at the screen, I wondered: Was I sealing my own fate with every hour, every minute I passed with him? I felt the cold fingers again, scraping the inside of my chest. Could one be damned by association?

Stop it. You’ll make yourself crazy.

I looked out my window onto the darkness of Norfolk Street. All around me I was surrounded by so-called normal people chasing lives filled with normal things—money, relationships, losing weight. People who went home to families or empty apartments and went to bed worrying about the same, normal things.

I wondered if I would ever return to that life. Assuming Lucian never appeared again, could I ever purge myself of this more vivid reality and go back, reset . . . reboot?

Just as I lifted my finger to the power button, a new meeting notice appeared in the corner of my screen.

14

That Tuesday, Helen, my editorial director, called me into her office.

Helen Ness was a strange mixture of steely, old-school-style politics and a frozen-in-time femininity that, having manifested itself in young adulthood, had never quite progressed into the next thirty years. As I entered her office, she pulled off her glasses. They hung on a beaded chain and dropped down against her sweatered bust. I took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of her heavy oak desk. From here I could see that the lines at the corners of her mouth had directed bits of color from her lipstick away from her lips like tiny irrigation canals.

“I’m worried about you, Clay. Even when you’re here, you don’t seem here. Your skin is pasty, you look thin and worn out. You look terrible.” She smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead. Shoulder-length, curled under at the ends. I doubted it had changed style since her days at Smith College. “I don’t know if it’s your divorce or your health or what. Sheila said you’ve been to the doctor a few times.”

Well, see there’s this demon.

“But I need you to let me know what’s going on.”

He’s following me, and I’m pretty sure he had that runner on Arlington killed.

“Let me help, Clay.”

I’m compiling the story of our encounters, which, by the way, has a nice subplot about Satan.

“I understand. I’ve—” I raked a hand through my hair. It needed a cut. “I’m just run down.”

“I’ve had one viable project of yours make it through the committee in the last three months,” she said.

That’s because the editorial committee can’t make up their minds.
Despite my sick days and missed meetings, I knew for a fact I had three proposals stuck in committee limbo.

“I need a big project to fill a hole—something we can get into production by spring, summer at the latest.” She dropped her hands to her desk. “Do you have anything you can get me? Help me out here, Clay. I know Katrina’s been sending things your way.”

Don’t even suggest it, Clay.
But I could think of nothing else. “Actually, Helen, I’ve been working on something,” I heard myself say. “A novel about a fallen angel—a memoir-style story told from the viewpoint of a demon.” Inwardly, I cursed myself.

“Clay”— a slow, appreciative smile eased across her features—“I had no idea you had gone back to writing.”

Since the failure of Coming Home, you mean.

“Sounds intriguing. Religious fiction is getting hotter, and you do know we get first right of refusal.”

I’m an idiot.
“I know.”

“Give it to Phil or Anu, and we’ll take it to committee.” She replaced the glasses, sliding them down her nose.

“It’s not quite finished—”

“Just get us something to look at.” She smiled, a second reminder that the meeting was over.

I thanked her, eager to get out of her office, to figure out what I had just done. Eager to get on with the day and to my appointment that evening.

I passed Sheila in the hallway, and the sight of her startled me. She looked drawn, thinner than I had ever seen her, and I realized it had been weeks since we’d had a real conversation. I had never seen her look quite like this—she was practically gaunt, and her lavender twin-set matched the smudges beneath her eyes.

“Clay, how are you? I talked to Aubrey over the holiday. She said she saw you. And that you’re seeing someone.” She smiled slightly.

That struck me as hilarious—in a manic, high-pitched laughing kind of way. “It’s, uh, a casual thing. And you? How are you?” I thought of Helen and her “you look terrible.” Apparently it was going around; I had never seen Sheila look so unattractive. I had never seen her look unattractive, period.

She took a long, shaky sigh. “Oh, Dan and I are separated.”

“I’m so sorry.” I said it because it was the proper thing to say. It was the thing I had grown sick of hearing from others about this time last year. But I wasn’t sorry, not really. Despite her haggard appearance, I had a hard time summoning any compassion for her. Thinking back to what Lucian had told me, to the “have to see you” e-mail, I found my sympathies rested solidly with Dan. What was it with Sheila and Aubrey, the adultery twins? I should call Dan. I ought to be having this conversation with him.

“Yeah.” She glanced down at the papers in her hand. She appeared to have been en route to the copy machine. “It’s difficult. I don’t know what will happen.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do . . .” But not only was I sure there was nothing I could do—I was fairly certain I wouldn’t do anything for her if I could.

“I’m glad you’re seeing someone, Clay. I’m not sure Aubrey realizes yet how much she lost.”

I thanked her and excused myself.

Her words stayed with me the rest of the day, as powerful, almost, as Lucian’s.

I REALIZED AFTER MEETING with Helen that I might have a problem. I had just proposed a story based on the memoir that Lucian had apparently submitted—or gotten through otherwise demonic means—to Katrina. Maybe the stack of papers on my desk bore little enough resemblance to the scant pages Katrina had given me that it wouldn’t be an issue, but I couldn’t find the proposal she had given me to know for sure. And I did not like the idea that I was walking what felt like a thin ethical line, especially considering on whose behalf I walked it.

Closing my office door, I phoned Katrina, but she wasn’t in. Not wanting to draw more attention to the matter than necessary and not wanting to talk to her assistant, I sent her an e-mail asking for electronic copies of the proposals she had given me on her visit two weeks before.

That was all I could do. That, and worry.

THE AROMAS OF WARM bread mingled with garlic, salami, and olives. It had once been an endurance test for me to make it to Prince Street without getting sidelined by every temptation on Salem. When Aubrey and I used to come to the North End for dinner, we would stop afterward at the twenty-four-hour bakery to buy turnovers and semolina bread for lunch the next day. In our last year of marriage, we still perused these streets for new restaurants, but the discussions we once had over pasta and veal dwindled to the clinking chatter of our cutlery, and we often forgot the bakery.

On the corner of Prince and Hanover, I paused before the iron gates of Saint Leonard’s, which bore the emblem of nail-scarred hands folded in front of a cross. In the summer, especially on feast days, church ladies sold Saint Anthony’s oil and religious icons at a table around the corner. Tonight the heavy wooden doors beyond the gate were locked tight, as though against sin itself—in addition to editors who cavorted with demons and spent entire nights contemplating Satan. Standing before the crumbling plaster of the church, I felt like more of a stranger to that churchgoing world of my youth than I did to Lucian’s spirit-inhabited realm.

But most unsettling, I felt less and less a part of the secular world in which I lived.

It was nearly seven o’clock. I hurried down Hanover, the smell of the ocean briny in my nose. In summer the restaurants—barely more than little open-kitchen joints boasting no more than eight tables apiece—threw open their doors, spilling tables onto the sidewalk to catch the influx of tourists and saints’ feasts celebrants. Tonight they were closed up against the coastal chill, menus peering out from windows, the flames of tiny candles dancing on the tabletops inside.

On the second-floor entrance of Vittorio’s, I experienced a brief moment of déjà vu when the host informed me my party was already waiting, and again when he led me to a candlelit booth where a woman in her thirties waved at me.

She was a wholesome, if average-looking woman. A gold chain and single diamond pendant dangled over the folded neck of her navy blue turtleneck. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

I slid into the booth and took the menu from the host. When he had gone, I said, “If Aubrey is going to show up, tell me now.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “Not as far as I know.”

I shrugged out of my coat, still winded from the walk, my ears tingling from the cold. Then I noticed the glass of red wine on the table. Had she ordered it for me, to antagonize me? Did she know about my night with the bottle of cheap red wine that day after the walk through the Commons?

I ignored the wine, saying little as the waiter brought us bread and took orders for dinner. “Mussels Fra Diavolo,” I said, gazing at the woman across from me. Lucian rolled her eyes.

“Your name means ‘light,’” I said without preamble when the waiter had gone.

“Yes.”

I tried to see past the faint laugh lines around her eyes, the diamond stud earrings, the indentations through her sweater where bra straps bit into her shoulders, the wedding ring on her finger.

Such elaborate lengths,
I thought, slightly sickened. “An angel of light?”

“Sometimes I still take that form.”

I tried to imagine what an angel of light would look like, but it was like trying to summon a modern-day leprechaun.

“You can’t fathom it, so don’t bother.” She leaned back.

“How long will this go on?”

She tilted her head and seemed, for the first time, to have no ready answer. Finally, she said, “Until it’s finished. Or we run out of time.”

“Until what’s finished?”

“Your story.”

“You mean your story.” I thought of my discussion with Helen, of the proposal from Katrina. I needed time to sort it all through, to figure out how much of a hole I had dug for myself and how I would get myself out. Meanwhile, the only thing that mattered was having more of her story to take home with my leftover pasta tonight.

“Tell me about Adam.” I began the mental calculation of when I might get home and how late I might stay up scribbling, perhaps even in bed, and how many hours of sleep I might get. Helen’s blunt conversation with me today had returned at least a portion of my focus to the routine necessities of my job, no matter how empty they were to me these days.

“All right,” she said, tracing the edge of the table through the tablecloth. “About Adam . . .”

“Wait. How do you know the Bible so well?”

She laughed then and seemed surprised. “Because I lived it! I understand Scripture intrinsically and intellectually better than any of your so-called enlightened churchgoers. Lucifer himself is a master theologian. Better than any of your preachers or seminarians, I assure you.”

Intrinsic understanding. A theological master. It was the claim of thousands of spiritual gurus, self-proclaimed prophets, Kool-Aid killers, and Branch Davidian leaders.

“Now, about Adam”—she propped her chin in her hand—“history and popular myth have done him a great disservice. Let me tell you that Adam was perhaps the best-looking man I have ever seen. Of course, at that time, there was nothing to compare him to, and for the better part of a few centuries, humans were all clay freaks to me. I guarantee you, if your backyard compost pile suddenly got up and started taking over your house, you would feel the same. But in retrospect I can honestly say he was handsome.”

I wondered if I should point out that I didn’t have a backyard, which reminded me—

“How come you’ve never shown up at my apartment?”

Her impatience turned into a moue of distaste. “Please. I’m trying to tell you something. Can we come back to this later? Listen to me now: Adam was an admirable man. For as much as I resented him, I also found myself drawn to him. Sure, the plants were nice to look at, and the animals were entertaining, albeit predictable—all that eating and rutting—but Adam . . . he was dynamic. I never tired of watching him, and neither did Lucifer. Of course, Lucifer hated him because of who he was and who had made him. Adam not only bore the Creator’s stamp; he bore his likeness. He was a brilliant thinker, a creature of reason. He observed the things around him. He was a scientist. He was also an agriculturalist, a botanist, a zoologist, and a horticulturist,” she said, ticking all the “ists” off on her fingers. “He was a husband, a man with responsibility: He cared for the garden; he ruled the animals; he was a family man. And he walked with God. Literally.”

As she spoke, I noticed that she moved differently than she had as the woman in the museum. It reminded me of the effect costumes had on actors.

“And what about Eve?”

She stroked the stem of the glass, silent for a moment. “In Eve,” she said softly, “of all creatures, I saw something that might have inspired me. Something with which I could most identify. She was second-generation mud, of course, but she was intelligent, intuitive, and beautiful—striking in fact. She reminded me a little of myself.”

One of the cooks in the small kitchen had started singing. I recognized the strains of Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma”:

Depart, O night!

Set, you stars!

At dawn, I shall win.

She propped her chin on the back of her hand. “Life then was beautifully predictable and secure. Oh, the bliss of that age! I watched and dreamed and experienced peace vicariously.” She glanced down at the tablecloth, scratching at it with her finger. “But Lucifer remained vigilant, a spider on the periphery of his beautiful web.

“The first glance. Remember it? I did. So did Lucifer.
Your eyes will be opened!
Lucifer told her.
You will be like God.
He was sure of himself, but I less so. The woman was brilliant, perceptive in ways that even Adam was not. I thought to myself:
She is made in the image of God—she will know what you do. She is made in the image of God! What more can there be for her? She will not choose it.
But in the end we were more alike than I had realized. How I wanted to rail at her! Was it not enough that she and her man were the new favorites of God? How greedy they were! How much more did they expect, could they need? And yet I, too, had once known bliss. Still, I began to hate her after that.”

“And so it happened again,” I said.

She nodded slightly. “In Eve’s tempting, all the combined drama of what had gone before played out again, like your play-actors on a miniature stage with the script of a well-known story.