The Angel of History (8 page)

All I wanted was the caryatids, to me they were not inanimate, they were so impeccably rendered they burgeoned with life. Next to your sickbed the bookshelf stood, and one evening more than a year before you died, before any of you left me, I sat beside your insensate form, held your feverish hand. I noticed that though each drag queen, each mahoganette, was different, they were all suffused with an ache of weariness. They’d been given this Atlantean task of keeping a world afloat, a burdensome commission that drained life out of them bit by bit, breath by breath. When I looked closer I noted a translucent haze surrounding each drag queen, a cloud not of dust motes as I’d first assumed, but of molecules of vitality, their life force seeping out of their pores back into the universe, no joie de vivre for my babies. I began to speak to them, to encourage them and ease their burden, and slowly but most surely, the mahoganettes responded with equal measures of kindness and godly gratitude. They also began to help me, to comfort me. They even performed the more difficult tasks: changing Lou’s diapers, I hated that but not as much as singing him Liza Minnelli songs while he died. I realized then, when three of my mahoganettes sang
Cabaret
a cappella, that they were the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

Remember when we first met, I brought up the Fourteen Holy Helpers, told you one of the nuns taught me how to pray to them, and you said why not just open the box, why would you want to pray to fourteen Hamburger Helpers? I know you don’t believe, Doc, but trust me, I know my saints, I knew the Helpers, people prayed to them during a plague and they came to comfort, they corporealed.

First you have the maidens, the virgins, Saint Catherine with the wheel, Saint Barbara with the tower, and Saint Eustace with the stag and the cross and the Jäegermeister—no, wait, Eustace wasn’t a maiden, let me start again, alphabetically—Saint Agathius if you had a headache, Saint Barbara if you had a fever, Saint Blaise if you had a sore throat, Saint Catherine if you died suddenly, Saint Christopher if you suffered from plague or fear of flying, Saint Cyriac if you had an eye infection or temptation while dying, Saint Denis if you wished to visit a prostitute in Paris, Saint Erasmus for stomach flu, Saint Eustace for family discord although he certainly didn’t help me with your mother, Saint George the vet, Saint Giles if you were a cripple, Saint Margaret if you were pregnant, Saint Pantaleon who was always on call, Saint Vitus if you had epilepsy, and basically all of them if you had bubonic plague or AIDS.

As the mahoganettes sprang out of the bookshelf to help, I began to differentiate one from the other. The short passable Asian was obviously Saint Catherine, who always studied hard, she was easy and first to be figured out. I thought the Cher impersonator was Saint Barbara, but no, Cher could never be a virgin, no, she was Saint Cyriac, Saint Barbara was the one with the crazy hair, which was due to static from the lightning bolt that struck her father. Saint Margaret held you in her gentle arms during your last days, she stroked your face, which looked as if it belonged on one of her painted Romanesque icons, your eyes had grown larger and yellow translucent, she kissed your forehead every so often, kind and so loving, generous with her time always. I loved her. I could see her face as she comforted you even though it was covered with seventy diaphanous
veils of the most exquisite black silk, each as thin as mist, as insubstantial as a flimsy flame, seventy veils because she had His face, and she lifted her veils every time she kissed you, and her lipstick left a cerise stigma upon your forehead. She told you that in Heaven God wipes the tears off His children’s faces. Did you by any chance hear her? With each of her kisses I felt blessed, even though they obviously had no effect on your health, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to carry on without their help. Blaise used to brew a wonderful tea for me when I felt blue, a dark oolong with a slight cherry infusion, whenever I lowered myself slowly onto the couch after a rough patch, there was Saint Blaise with a cup billowing heavenly steam. Pantaleon was the joker among them, some might have thought his jokes were staid or puerile but I found them funny. Does anyone tell worse jokes than physicians, Doc? When I cried, when the high tide of the gulf of sorrow hit my shores, all fourteen dropped whatever they were doing and tried to comfort me, Saint Agathius most of all; one would hold my left hand, another my right, one would hug from behind, usually Erasmus, who is very loving but a bit shy, like a fawn who wants you to stroke him but will not approach until you turn your gaze away, and Agathius would get me to breathe in and out, like a coxswain he set a rhythm for me to inhale hope of a new light and exhale bad worries, in out, in out.

A nun at school, Sœur Salwa, taught us how to pray to the Fourteen Holy Helpers and to remember their feast days, which we, the Arab orphans, must do to keep our traditions alive. She taught us knowing full well she would get into trouble for such lessons, for spreading dangerous dogma and heretical liturgy, according to the French mother superior.
Like her saints, Sœur Salwa believed while knowing what became of true believers. Catherine of the Wheel taught the Word of Christ, Barbara did the same, Sœur Salwa would not let those Western Catholic nuns keep the true Word of Christ at bay, she was true knowing the punishment that truth begot. The pope, blinded by the heretics surrounding him and possibly by Satan himself that day in 1969, had removed the feast days of our Eastern saints from the General Roman Calendar, but just because the Western Catholics stopped believing in our saints didn’t mean that we had to.

Sœur Salwa was not a Roman Catholic, not like the French nuns, she was a Melchite, she followed the pope’s edicts but not when he was wrong. Had the French nuns known that her lessons included more than the Arabic language, its grammar and literature, they would have replaced her in an instant, decapitated her probably. The wan nuns were there to civilize us, and our only purpose in life was to become civilized. That was what I wanted more than anything else in the world. We were allowed to speak our language only in Sœur Salwa’s class, and the nuns spoke none of it. They were unable to fathom what went on in our little world. Heresy, apostasy, place the lentils on wet cotton in a saucer for the feast day of Saint Barbara and watch them grow, light two candles on the third day of February and plead to Saint Blaise the Armenian to free us from all throat afflictions for the year. She showed us icons, out of her front pockets climbed contemporary ones carved and painted in nearby villages, and out of picture books jumped glorious relics haloed in gold leaf. In her windowless classroom, encapsulated in darkness, we sat rapt, infatuated, engrossed in stories of our ancestral heroes, George fighting
the dragon, Erasmus surviving one execution after another because of the intercession of angels, hiding in Lebanon, not too far from our school, surviving on what black crows brought him to eat, I offer you a walnut here, I a slice of peach, I give you two Siamese twins of the blackest cherry, and Christ himself interceding on behalf of Dr. Pantaleon to thwart the near-fatal executions, those were stories as good as any by Dumas.

Don’t you believe the other nuns, Sœur Salwa used to say, we were Christian long before they even had a country. She taught us our history and our language, we were better than them, she told us, but I did not believe her, and when the French mother superior, with her pale face and refined, masculine features, poured limpid tea into a cup and offered me a Petit Écolier biscuit while I was in her offices, whose windows opened unto a sumptuous garden with a large oak, an olive tree, a bitter orange, and a plethora of butterflies, and asked me what kind of foolishness that Arab sister taught in our classes, I told her, just as any other civilized boy would have, which unfortunately meant that I never saw Sœur Salwa again. I lost her and her Fourteen Helpers, lost Saint Margaret, Saint Catherine, Saint Christopher, and Saint Agathius. Diocletian had nothing on me.

“No,” Satan said. “I had nothing to do with his mother-in-law.”

“I didn’t think so,” Death said. “That level of evil is way beyond you, she belonged to Jesus all the way.”

“Yes,” Satan said. “Even I was surprised at such maleficence.”

“No snake is as venomous as wounded privilege,” Death said. “That little foreign Muslim darkie stole her fair-haired boy.”

Death shifted in his seat, sighed; he considered removing his cape but the apartment still felt a little nippy. “What are you hoping to get out of this?” he asked. “Do you think there’s a specific thing he needs to remember, some pearl from within a dank oyster which will lead him to an epiphany? Tell me. If it will bring this interview to a quicker end, I will help.”

“Nothing like that, I’m afraid,” Satan said. “That happens only in Hollywood movies and bestsellers. It isn’t how remembering works. He remembers, he doesn’t forget much, but he doesn’t think about his memories, he chooses not to contemplate what he left behind.”

“Well,” Death said, “what did you expect? Wasn’t short attention span invented in these united states of amnesia? Multitasking? You want contemplation? In San Francisco, that wharf on Lethe itself? You poor sod. You know that when they remember, they come to me to forget. Come with me, a riparian journey, have a sip from the mighty river, a tiny sip, you’ll feel better.”

“Tell me about Catherine,” Satan said.

“Fuck Catherine,” Death said.

“Are you sure he said that?” she asked, a bit nonplussed.

Catherine, in a raincloud-gray gown, sat straight-backed in the same chair Death had used, looking glorious. No full halo today, just a barely perceptible ring of gold light floating about her lush black hair, unbound in keeping with the fashion of unwed women of her time. Next to her, leaning against the chair, was the broken wheel, and on her lap lay the executioner’s sword, its edge dulled after all these years.

Satan did not reply. He too was slightly disconcerted. Catherine induced nervousness in most on most days, and today she had him brew her tea three times before she declared it satisfactory.

“He actually said, ‘Fuck Catherine,’ right here?”

Satan finally nodded. She seemed to need his assurance.

“And I assume he didn’t mean Catherine of Siena?”

“Please,” Satan said.

She was in her usual mood: coolly composed, fractious, and unsociable. She sniffed the teacup; its steam had a distinct, prehistoric aroma that caught Satan’s nose as well.

“Of course he didn’t, the bastard,” Catherine said. “Who other than a few ignorant Italians ever thinks of Siena? Now, what I don’t understand is why you involved him in this.”

“He was always involved. You know that.”

“Don’t be daft,” she said. “You’re better than that. I meant this whole remembering project. Death can ruin everything with a single touch. Oblivion is his trade.”

Satan grinned, he couldn’t help it, which seemed to irritate his interviewee a bit. She glanced down at the sword on her lap, then back at him.

“You have always underestimated him,” she said, “just like all parents. You two have been struggling over our boy forever, and you still think you’re winning. I don’t think you really know how he works.”

And Satan said, “Forgetting is as integral to memory as death is to life.”

It took barely a second for her eyes to shift expression. Her wheel lifted slightly off the floor and began to turn at an unholy speed. The blade of her sword sharpened before his very eyes. Saint Catherine, the preeminent intellectual, the divine bride. For the first time since her arrival, she showered him with her beatific smile, and he felt blessed, in spite of himself.

He would have loved to ravish her right there on the poet’s cheap Persian carpet.

“Forgive me,” she said. “It is I who have underestimated you. You two have always worked together, the angel of remembering and the master of Lethe. You can’t forget if you don’t remember, and you can’t remember without forgetting.”

“It’s a dance,” Satan said, “I’m just trying to lead for a change, without Death or Jacob screwing things up.”

“His tune is especially popular these days,” Catherine said. “Everyone seems to be dancing to the friendly beat of his drums—not many to yours, not here, not now.”

“I’m an acquired taste,” Satan said.

“Not everyone’s cup of tea,” she said, taking a sip.

I have been writing fiction, Doc, you would have liked that, wouldn’t you, you kept telling me you never cared much for poetry, so few do these days, few wish to listen to a soul’s revelations, and I haven’t been able to write verse because Satan is a hungry caterpillar that nibbles at my soul and its insipid revelations, though poetry remains my only love, but I told you once and it remains true, I write to keep ink flowing lest it dry, so prose it is for now. Oh my, Satan interjected, are we discussing your literary oeuvre with a dead person now, do all poets do that, they might as well.

The irritated man unbuttoned swaths of clothing and released astonishing torrents of scents that fractured the air. Shock was first to appear in the bespectacled lady’s eyes, followed instantaneously by horror, then terror. She looked toward me, her mouth and eyebrows questioning,
surely eager to commiserate, and I wanted to tell her to give herself a second or two and she wouldn’t smell anything, that it was the human condition to become inured to even the most intense suffering.

My cell phone vibrated with Odette’s text saying she didn’t believe me, if I were home, why did I ask her to look after Behemoth for three days, I was a big fat liar, and Satan harrumphed, And you call me the father of lies, you say that all my promises are delusions belched from the bowels of Hell, but whose pants are on fire, huh, whose?

The bespectacled lady stared at me, no longer reproving, but she still didn’t seem to have adjusted to the miasmic smell. I told her in a conspiratorial whisper that it could be worse, and when she mouthed a questioning How, I said the clinic could be piping in Kenny G. She snorted, swiveled her head to see if the irritated man was paying attention, and then she smiled, which shifted her beautifully expressive face, every wrinkle could have regaled the world with a story.

Ferrigno returned and nodded at the irritated man, who stood up ever so slowly, the bottom of his sweatshirt did not cover his stomach. His aroma dawdled in the air while Ferrigno seemed utterly unfazed. Before exiting the room, the irritated man told his hand, The carpet crawlers heed their callers, and the bespectacled lady and I looked at each other, delighted, and without missing a beat we sang, We’ve got to get in to get out, extending the last word to six syllables—
aa-ha-aaaa-ha-ha-out
—as Peter Gabriel did in the original.

The bespectacled lady couldn’t be too much older than I if she approved of early Genesis. That was the worst smell
ever, I almost suffocated, she said, no longer any need for whispering, and she began to rummage through the boat-sized pink handbag on her lap.

I texted Odette, Don’t worry about me, I’m going on a three-day rest-and-recreation off-the-grid vacation, should be fun, come in and feed Behemoth and clean his litter box while I’m gone. Your stupidity defies comprehension, Satan said, do you think you’ll be resting and recreating in an insane asylum, if you think waterboarding is torture wait till you try art therapy. That was how I got rid of you the last time, I said, not aloud thankfully.

I saw Genesis, I must show you, the bespectacled lady said as she unpursed all kinds of small papers with surprising earnestness: green, blue, brown, white, white, white, white, yellow, hundreds of them. Ferrigno could not have searched her as he did me, probably no one had, I felt sorry for the big guy for having to be in the same room as the irritated man. I wondered what those pieces of paper were but couldn’t see clearly. Ticket stubs, Satan told me, and he was right, for a change. Kiss my butt, he said, I’m always right, you just never listen. She took out a small tube brush, she might need it because her hair had decided to distribute itself strangely during the handbag search, she placed the brush on the chair to her right, my left, took out a sizable wallet, snapped it open for a quick perusal, then shut it, placed it above the stubs on the chair to her left, I can’t find anything when I need it, she said. I told her I had the same problem, her assiduousness disturbing me.

She took out a cheap click pen, two colors, blue and red, glanced around but could not decide where it should be deposited. Hold this, please, she said, and handed it to
me across the separating space. I held it—held it in my trembling hand, I hadn’t seen one of those in years, a relic of a time long past, my heart did a five-over-four beat, take five. Satan beamed, The poet gets his pen, he said, is this your doing, Catherine?

The bespectacled lady leafed through the ticket stubs and papers, stopped at one, adjusted her glasses, sighed, shook her head, announced to the room in an obstreperous tone, Here are the stubs, where are the fucking memories?