The Angel of History (23 page)

Satan saw it coming.

George slouched in the chair, younger-looking than the other knight protectors, Eustace and Agathius, his dark Palestinian hair severely parted as if with a razor. His grand reputation did not match him, he looked like an adolescent overfond of self-abuse. Short, petit of frame, dainty even, he barely left an impression on the chair. His cross-tipped lance stood thrice his size.

Behemoth adored him on sight, taken by the golden halo. The cat crouched on the television table behind the saint, stalked the halo, threw a glance at Satan momentarily asking for permission, shook his butt right and left a few times, and flew for the kill. In the air, he expanded and dug his claws into the dazzling halo, which was nothing but light, of course, so Behemoth smashed into George’s hair.
The saint sprang up, his lance clanked as it struck the floor, he squealed as if his voice was yet to break, raised his arms up toward the ceiling. The tumbling Behemoth managed to hang on by sinking his claws into the chain mail on George’s back. Satan roared in joy as George pranced around the room with arms flailing at his own back trying to dislodge the great beast.

It was only when George realized he was being laughed at that he stopped flopping about and stood still. Behemoth did not release his hold but slowly climbed the back and sat on the saint’s shoulder. The cat licked the drops of blood from the tiny puncture wounds in the saint’s scalp. George purred.

Back in the seat, George and Behemoth nuzzled noses and whispered sweet endearments.

“This is some fiend,” George said. “Such a healthy little monster.”

“The great emasculating cat,” Satan said. “Did you know that Jacob has been unable to pee standing up since Behemoth commandeered his life? Whenever Jacob tried, Behemoth attacked the stream, and the poet is too softhearted to shut the door. Ever since he has had to sit on the toilet like a good little girl.”

Behemoth returned to eyeing the halo. Atop George’s shoulder, he extended his arm languidly to bat at it.

“I doubt that was much of a sacrifice,” George said. “Masculinity was never Jacob’s forte. May I have something to drink? I’m parched.”

“Tea?”

“With a finger of cognac.”

From the kitchen Satan asked, “Would you like anything else in the tea, milk, sugar?”

“Another finger of cognac would be great,” the saint said. “Why am I here, my dear fellow? I would like to help as I do like Jacob, but he has rarely if ever called on me. You know that. He avoided conflicts, let alone battles. I had little to offer.”

Satan returned with a large-bottomed bottle covered in dust.

“How about we forget the tea?” He swigged the cognac in a noisy gulp and handed the bottle to his interviewee. “Jacob bears the wounds of all the battles he avoided. He no longer eschews conflicts, can’t afford to now that he’s aging. Hell, he fights me all the time. Thankfully, he has become curmudgeonly.”

“Oh, good,” George said in between sips. “Nice people bore me. I have tried to kill Agathius many a time, to no avail.”

“Jacob doesn’t think he can handle this battle,” Satan said. “He wishes to withdraw.”

“We can’t have that,” George said. “Cowardice is the worst of human vices. Why it is not considered one of the seven deadly sins is beyond me.” Blood rushed to his face, he banged his fist upon his chain-mailed chest, and with no little animation declaimed, “We must anneal his heart for battle, toughen it and fill it with courage. The Cross is victorious.
Deus vult!
”

Satan shut his eyes. He reclaimed the bottle and downed the rest of its contents in one gulp.

“No,” he said, with a long sigh. “Not quite.
Non Deus vult,
thank you very much. Jacob has been away for too long and forgotten what few fighting skills he had.”

“Like the hero exiled to the island while the army went off to war.”

“Which hero?” asked Satan. “What island?”

“The master archer who was bitten on his foot by a vile snake. Do you not know the story? His army left him on a desert island because his left foot exuded a noxious odor. The soldiers went off to war for ten years, only to discover they could not win any war without the hero and his bow.”

“Philoctetes,” Satan said.

“Yes, him,” George said. “So Jacob has exiled himself for quite a bit more than ten years, and we need him to win this war. We must sail to the island and bring him with us to fight. We must heal his foot.”

Satan moaned, shook his head, and walked to the kitchen. “Let me see if I can find another bottle of cognac.”

Catherine covered her mouth as she giggled, a modesty that surprised Satan. She arched her eyebrows, gently mocking him, then dropped her hand. A trace of grin remained.

“
Deus vult!
” Satan said, and this time both laughed.

“What did you expect?” she said. “Soldiers have their uses, but once used, we should send them to a stud farm.”

“Glue factory.”

“Or that,” she said. “So you and the toy soldier are supposed to bring Jacob and the bow of Heracles back to Troy? Which one of you would be Odysseus?”

“Not me,” Satan said. “I prefer to be the bow.”

“May your aim be true,” Catherine said. “We must succeed.”

“We must.”

“Are you not afraid that Jacob might not be able to handle that which is at hand?”

“Of course I am,” Satan said. “It’s a risk, but allowing him to live and die duped as a productive member of a comatose society is a neglect of my duties. We must wake him and hazard the consequence. We must offer the apple.”

Catherine positioned her elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned her forehead on her hand. “I wish you had told George that sometimes cowardice is our only choice. Jacob was young, his heart too small to handle such grief. He did what he had to do during the time of sunder, he girded against the dirge.”

“He is no longer young,” Satan said. “A child no more.”

“Only children get scared,” Catherine said. “Men might feel afraid, might even feel terror, but men don’t get scared.”

“We must expand his strictured heart,” Satan said, “a flood of blood.”

“Let it grow,” Catherine said, “and grow, big enough to withstand an arrow’s piercing.”

“You and I together?”

“All of us.”

As he spoke, he frequently grimaced as if he were softening a jawbreaker in his mouth before crushing it, which was not a good tic for a psychiatrist, if you asked me, but there he was, I had successfully moved up the system. I took a deep breath to pacify my mind, I wanted to be calm, or at least appear to be. You’re not serene, Satan said, you’re depressed. What little could be seen of the doctor’s brow was bright red and his nose a purplish potato shade, he had big black eyeglasses and big white hair that he raked away at least three times between introduction and interrogation. He asked how he could help.

I’m unable to cope, I said, I can’t bear life right now, I don’t know what to do. He asked me if I lived alone, what my day-to-day routine was like, I wake up early on weekdays, I said, I go to work, I come home and go to bed, I read, I
write prose and non-poems, do yoga, watch bad television, obsess about government surveillance, count the number of drone killings, get upset with Obama and curse Bush, watch my dreams wither on the vine, things like that, dull this life of mine. Oh, and I told him about you, about Greg, Pinto, about Saint Catherine and Satan, who clung to my ear like a limpet, but I was weary of explaining the unexplainable. I walked through the world like a dead man who cared not at all about the petty miseries of the living, I was tired of scars and stains, of bleared pains and panes.

He seemed particularly interested in Satan, probably because the beast talked so much. What does he sound like, the doc asked. Tell him, Satan said, tell him I sound sophisticated and erudite, I, the star of day, the son of morning, the angel of worship, and the heart of Heaven, I sound like a Miles Davis trumpet, like a Bach partita, no, wait, a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet, whereas you’re a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop, but baby, if you’re the bottom, I’m the top. He sounds weird, I said, says the oddest things, he has a deep voice, as you’d expect, slightly nasal, as if he hasn’t completely recovered from a mild cold, doesn’t sniffle though, he speaks English, his mother tongue, but with a slight angle to his pronunciation, which makes it difficult to pinpoint his origins, upper-class Jamaican would be my first impression. Kiss my ass, Satan said, can’t believe you said Jamaican, such an ingrate, why are you diddling, all this psychiatrist wants to know is whether you’re suicidal, he’s obviously going to prescribe antipsychotics, but if you want three days of rest and recreation, tell him you’re thinking of suicide, contemplating, that’s even better.

I’m not suicidal, I said. That’s good to note, the psychiatrist wrote in his leather-bound booklet. I could not lie, Doc, I have never thought of suicide, during dark night or deep abyss, it never occurred to me. And every morning, Satan said, you blunder along this slushy path like everyone, look at him frantically writing, wearing that translucent shroud of composure, but you’re not suicidal enough, he’s not going to commit you, you’re failing, I’m winning, no insane asylum for you today.

Seventy-two hours, Doc, that’s all I wanted, at St. Francis Psychiatric. I loathe Francis, Satan said, the tree-hugging, animal-loving, organic-eating, leftist pretender, he’s the saint of all things banal, whereas I, Iblis, I am the angel of light, the lord of this temporal world of yours, listen to me. The doctor kept writing and writing, wouldn’t look my way, into his copious notes he spoke, something about a mild antipsychotic and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and I should come back and see him sometime. I felt my heart sink, no restful seventy-two hours for me, and I heard Satan hiss Yesssssssssss.

I lie on my side, head sunk in the pillow, waiting for first light, for the lift of the curtain, waiting for you, how your right hand used to entwine with my left in slow dance, how our bodies fit in bed, yet you didn’t show up, Behemoth cuddled beside my chest soaking up warmth, I scratched below his left ear, which twitched at the sound of the starlings waking up outside our window, and I adjusted the pillow, my cheek felt its new coolness. I knew I was not psychotic, surely not insane, though at times I had to consider that I might have been possessed, Satan had made a bed in my ear and slept in it, and Satan said, This is not possession, if it were, you would do what I tell you and not refuse my counsel, for I am no creature of mere light, I am of fire born, fire of fire, the blood in the veins of the world is lit up by my flame, I am life’s primal force, you are the child at the
end of the diving board afraid to jump into the pool, a mere poet you are, a stiff and common poet who does not know the meaning of words.

But I do, Doc, I do know what possession means, I know Iblis stories too, Auntie Badeea told me a few when I belonged to her, in the evenings, while tucking me in bed, I would dream of the evil one while asleep so I could be wary when awake. Has the story of Iblis come to you, she began, and I held on to the turquoise charm pinned to the shabby sleeping gown I wore every night, for he might lead me astray if my fingers did not grip the apotropaic amulet while the story was being told, and she would tell me the tales of the Garden, of the Fall, of Iblis refusing to bow down before Adam, so the angels genuflected, all of them together, except Iblis, he refused to be with those who bowed down.

Bow no more, Satan said, you know, I was hissed at, never spoken to, of course no one asked me nicely, would you mind bowing down to this piece of stinky clay, it was always bow down, kiss my ring, kiss my ass, by the way, I prefer to be called the Cast-Out Angel, Fallen Angel is just wrong, I didn’t fall out of Heaven, it’s not as if I tripped or something, that would have been a big oopsie.

A Sufi story went like this, one day while Adam was at work Iblis came to visit Eve and with him was his son al-Khannas. He told Eve to watch his son and went on his way, when Adam returned from his job at the office, he recognized the son of Iblis, flew into a rage and killed the boy, chopped him into little pieces and hung each from a branch in a tree like fruit. Iblis returned and asked about his son, Eve explained what had happened, and Iblis called his son, who put himself back together and followed his father
home. The next week, Iblis asked Eve to care for his son again, while he went off on errands. At first Eve refused but Iblis insisted and like a buzzing fly in her ear he went on and on until she relented. Adam berated Eve and yelled and burned al-Khannas and threw his ashes into the wind and into the river and spilled them into the estuary and into the loden-green sea. Iblis resurrected his son from the scattered ashes. The week after that, Iblis returned and this time Eve said no, no, no, but like a serpent, Iblis whispered into her ear and beguiled her with words of a poet and left his son with her. Adam killed al-Khannas and fried him with beer batter, and he ate half of the child and Eve ate the other half, and Iblis laughed because a part of him now resided in Adam and Eve. Within man’s breast was his eternal abode.

Were you already a vegetarian when Badeea told this story, Satan said. I was five, maybe six, when I stopped eating any kind of meat, a young boy at l’orphelinat de la Nativité, mealtime was more troublesome than Mass, the monitoring nuns arched their eyebrows every time they passed me, tsk-tsking as they noted how I ate around the meat. A plump, shortsighted, asthmatic boy always asked, Are you eating that, before fork-stabbing the chicken and transferring it to his plate, his face suffused with joy, happy to mock the only boy with lower status. After dinner, while some boys ran wild and others rushed to the secret smoking area, I hid behind the pines, under sky the color of wet ink, talked to its stars. You talked to me, Satan said, I was always there, the antidote to loneliness, you have always discounted what I meant to you, always pretended that I was a mere inconvenience, a nuisance. You have been the bane of my existence, I told Satan. That’s what I mean,
Satan said, such an ingrate, without me you’re an insipid cog in an indifferent machine, that’s what you are, what I don’t understand is why you don’t unleash an unpunctuated scream, not just you, but all humans, howl at the moon and mourn your losses, those nights behind the pines you desperately wished to cry out to the sky, but no, you didn’t want to attract attention, and I told you then, All right, I said, you don’t want to disturb the peace, you’re too afraid of upsetting the system, go write some poems, and you did, I am your muse, always have been, no one but me.

He wasn’t the only one who considered himself my muse, Doc, a couple of months ago, during my monthly call to Auntie Badeea, she insisted that I tell her why I sounded so unhappy, and I did, a little bit at least, told her I was talking to Iblis in my head, her response shouldn’t have surprised me, for even though she raised me to believe that he was the great evil, she was ever the pragmatist. All poets have jinn as their muses, she said, it was always so, the greatest of them, Imru’ al-Qais, had a muse who went by the name of Lafiz bin Lahiz, the poet was seen walking the desert paths talking to his jinni and what glorious words poured out of his mouth, all muses were considered jinn once upon a time, and she couldn’t imagine me settling for anyone but Iblis, the lord of all the jinn. And Satan said, I wish you had explained to her that I’m not a jinni or a demon, that technically I’m an angel.

Behemoth stirred himself awake, I stroked his tummy, the air in the room felt thick and syrupy.

Well, I am the prince of air, Satan said, Badeea has changed her mind about me, you know that, she doesn’t consider me so evil anymore, I’m just someone who finally
said no to an unreasonable demand, conform or be cast out, those were our options, sure, I’ve done a few naughty things here and there, who hasn’t, and unlike you, she can empathize, she finally said no too, her whole country did, she understands me, Badeea is poetic, not like you.

The light would not come, I could not turn around to note the time on the clock on the nightstand because I didn’t want to disturb Behemoth, my nights grew longer and darker, I wondered at times whether I would wake up and this would be just a bad dream, a nightmare that I could wish away, I had the same fantasy when you were sick, Doc, that I would one day wake up and you all would be healthy and alive. Do you understand me now, Satan said, when things go wrong I seem to be bad, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

My cat turned over, craned his head and licked my lips good morning, and Satan said, All those who say no follow me.

How would I describe my life before Iblis made his latest uninvited appearance? I would say it was pleasant, which in and of itself is a wonderful thing, I mean, people worked awfully hard to arrive at pleasant, paid a lot of money to live in nice, a lovely meadow of spring flowers, of daisies and daffodils and pansies and pussy willows, okay, so maybe my career in the windowless room was not forsythia, and maybe my sexless life would not remind anyone of jasmine and roses, maybe it was a bit lonely, but it was calm, and
I needed calm, Doc, I needed it so much. I blame Iblis for the mud and slush.

After you died, after Jim, the last of the apostles, died, I was dropped into a sea of turbulence without a boat, a dinghy, or a paddle, what was I to do, I was left with so many ashes. Greg wished me to disperse him all the way in Limerick, across the Atlantic, Lou wanted me to leave him somewhere pretty but far away from Oklahoma or Nebraska or wherever he was from, Jim had wanted his ashes mixed with Chris’s but then that became impossible after Chris’s family stole him, and you, you couldn’t care less, you said, you wished me to cast you into the wind. I did not do anything, lived among the ashes for a while, but Odette, who later moved into your room, convinced me that having so many ashes around was morbid, it was, and that I should execute my friends’ wishes. She helped me book a grisly vacation to the Emerald Isle, and to ease my panic, she decided to accompany me. But how do you pack ashes, would they show up in an X-ray, would I have a million American guns pointed at me as I attempted to board, how many people did you kill, murderer? Would the Irish customs agent try to open one of the cans and would Greg’s remains pop-goes-the-weasel onto his countryman’s face because the can might have shifted during the flight and expanded and he could no longer be contained?

Three nights before we flew to Dublin, where we had to connect to Shannon and then rent a car and drive to Limerick, I experienced an apposite panic attack, full quailing and shivering and everything, sleepless at two in the morning, I got dressed and walked to the twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought large containers of vitamin C, ibuprofen,
coenzyme Q10, and echinacea, all of them capsules. Instead of mapping out my vacation or packing, I spent hours and hours and hours stuffing all your ashes into the capsules. First I uncapped every single one and dumped the contents into the toilet, only five capsules at a time before flushing because I was paranoid—I thought that someone, anyone, might be checking the color of my flushed toilet water, I was tormented by an image of a man with a weak chin and a tan windbreaker holding ampules of my toilet water, yelling, Eureka, we got him, the villainous weasel is hiding his friends’ remains in echinacea. The granules in five vitamin C capsules, flush, five ibuprofen, flush, coenzyme Q10, flush, and then putting you all in the capsules was by no means an easy task, and worse was deciding whether I should separate each of you into a different drug, should Greg be ibuprofen, should Pinto be vitamin C, but then, without Chris, there were five cremations of you, and I had bought only four humongous bottles, so I had to mix and match, and I decided that you were all going to share eternity together. Holding the two sides of each capsule, I would dip both sets of fingers into one can of you at a time, and twist it closed. All of your ashes had little bits of bones remaining, like tiny seashells in the sand. My hands were covered in a pallid film of my loves. I couldn’t fit all the ashes in, but I felt all right with that, I scattered what remained under Daphne the laurel and watered the ground so all of you would seep into her widespread roots that creep secretly underground and underfoot, seeking sustenance in shadows. I flew you guys in pill form to Ireland.

A pleasant vacation it was not. It rained nonstop for the entire week, Odette hardly left our room in the inn despite the beige shantung wallpaper, she visited used bookstores in
Limerick, bought books of Irish poetry, Derek Mahon and Paul Durcan mostly, and ensconced herself on the divan, whereas I took long walks in the rain under a rickety umbrella that flipped inside out with each malicious gust of wind. I walked and walked and saw little of anything, if you asked me to describe Ireland, I’d say griseous and verdurous. Before each walk I’d fill my pockets with pills, but I found it difficult to dispose of them at first, did Greg want to be inside St. Mary’s Cathedral or on the grounds outside, I did both, sneakily, like a cat burglar who left things instead of taking them, I’d hold a number of capsules, make sure no one was watching, and relax my fingers a little, allow one or two to drop near a pew, on the grass. Even as I stood by the river pouring its tumbling songs toward the sea, I could not throw the capsules overhand or underhand, just in case someone unseen was spying on me and I would have to explain why I was tossing my friends into the Shannon, I went to the edge of the alluvial bank, pretended to gaze at a hawk or some bird in the far distance, like a sunflower, my hand bloomed, drooped and died and dropped its seeds, and I allowed you to tumble into the halcyon surface of the river.