To my surprise I felt Shmarya’s hand on my shoulder. We were eye to eye. I failed Lodovico. That one got away.
“Stop struggling,” he said. His expression was innocent, probing, his eyebrows knitting for an instant as he made his point. “This man’s soul is not in your hands.”
“The Maker has to know all things,” I said. My voice broke. I could hear Ankanoc laughing, but this was memory. Shmarya was here. “And the Maker is the only one who can judge.”
He nodded.
“Where’s The Boss?” I asked. I meant Malchiah.
“He’ll come soon enough,” said Shmarya. “You need to take care of yourself now.”
“Why do I have the feeling that you don’t like him?”
“I love him,” he said simply. “You know this. But he and I don’t always agree. After all, I’m your guardian angel. My assignment is simple. You are my charge.”
“And Malchiah?”
“Again, you know the answer to your own question. He’s a Seraph. He’s sent to answer the prayers of many. He knows things I can’t know. He does things I’m not sent to do.”
“But I thought you all know everything,” I said. It sounded immediately stupid.
He shook his head.
“Then you can’t tell me, can you, whether or not Lodovico went to Hell?” I insisted.
He shook his head.
I nodded. I pulled the blinds over the window. And I turned on the lamp by the bed.
It was powerfully comforting to see him so fully realized in the light. He looked as solid as anything else in the room. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t, and then I remembered that he had just touched me.
I couldn’t read anything into his blue eyes, or the relaxed way in which he studied me. He gave a little lift to his eyebrows, and then he said in a whisper, “Trust the Maker. What you think or what I think does not put a man in Hell.”
“You know why I’m angry?”
He nodded.
I went on, “Because before I saw that man take his own life, I didn’t believe in Hell. I didn’t believe in the Devil or demons, and when I came to God, it was not out of fear of Hell.”
He nodded.
“And now there is Ankanoc, and there is Hell.”
He pondered this and then he shrugged.
“You’ve heard the voices of evil in the past,” he said. “You’ve always known what evil is. You never lied to yourself.”
“I have but I thought the voices came from within me. I thought all the evil I’d ever witnessed came from within individuals, that devils and Hell were old constructs. I felt myself become evil when I first took a human life. I felt myself grow ever more evil as I killed others. I can live with an evil that was inside myself, perhaps because I was able to repent. But now there’s Ankanoc, a dybbuk, and I don’t want to believe in such things.”
“Does it really change things so much?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
“How do we measure evil? By what evil does, isn’t that so?” he waited. Then: “Nothing’s changed. You’ve cast off the ways of Lucky the Fox, that’s what matters. You’re a Child of the Angels. A philosophy of evil does not alter those things.”
I nodded. But I didn’t find this perfectly comforting, true as it was. A wave of dizziness came over me. And the thirst was burning.
I went to the refrigerator in the little dining area, found a bottle of icy cold soda and drank it down in several gulps. The sheer sensuous pleasure of this quieted me and made me feel a little ashamed. Abstract thoughts yield so easily to bodily comfort, I thought.
“Don’t you sometimes hate us?” I asked him.
“Never, and again you know that I don’t.”
“Are you trying to persuade me to ask genuine questions, instead of rhetorical questions?”
He laughed. It was a small agreeable laugh.
The caffeine in the soda was going to my head.
I went to the other windows one by one and drew the drapes, turning on the lamps that I passed—on the desk, and by the bed. The room felt a little safer now, for no good reason. Then I turned on the heat.
“You won’t leave me, will you?” I asked.
“I never leave you,” he said. His arms were folded. He was leaning against the wall by the window, looking at me across the room. Though his hair was red, his eyebrows were more golden, yet dark enough to give his expression a definite character. He was wearing shoes like mine, but not a wristwatch.
“I mean you won’t go invisible!” I said with a little gesture of both hands. “You’ll stay here till I’ve had a shower and changed clothes.”
“You have things to do,” he said. “If I’m distracting you, I should go.”
“I can’t call Liona at this hour,” I said. “She’s asleep.”
“But what did you do last time when you came back?”
“Research, writing,” I said. “I wrote down everything that had happened. I looked up more of the history of what I’d glimpsed. But you know The Boss is never going to let me show my writing about all this to anyone. That little dream of writing it down, being an author, putting it in books, it’s gone.”
I thought again of how I’d boasted to my former boss, The Right Man, that I would write about this great “something” that had happened to me, and about how I’d turned my life around. I’d told him to keep his eye on the bookstores, that someday he might find my name on the cover of a book. How foolish and impetuous that now seemed. I also recalled that I’d told him my real name, and I wished I had not done that. Why did I have to tell him that his trusted assassin, Lucky the Fox, was really Toby O’Dare?
Images of Liona and Toby flashed through my mind.
Those awful words of Ankanoc came back to me. Wouldn’t the Holy Spirit have flooded you with consolation and light?
Well, I’d been filled with consolation and light when I’d spoken those words to The Right Man, and now I was confused. I didn’t mind so much never telling anyone what I did for Malchiah. A Child of the Angels should keep confidential what he does if that is what is expected of him, just as secrecy had always been expected when I was assassin for The Right Man. How could I give the angels less than I’d given The Right Man? But there was more to it, this restlessness and confusion I felt. I felt fear. I was in the presence of a visible angel and I felt fear. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it hurt, as if someone were subjecting me to an electrical current just strong enough to burn.
I took out another bottle of soda, savoring the coldness of it, even though I was still cold, and then drank again.
I sat down in the chair by the desk. “All right, you don’t hate us, of course not,” I said. “But you surely must become impatient with us, with our constant striving for a simple solution.”
He smiled as if he liked the way I’d worded that, and then he answered,
“What would be the point of my becoming impatient?” he asked gently. “In fact, what is the point of your addressing my thoughts and emotions at all?” Again he shrugged.
“I don’t understand when and how you intervene and when and how you don’t.”
“Ah, now that is a valid question. And I can give you a rule,” he responded calmly. His voice was as gentle in all ways as Malchiah’s voice, but he sounded younger, almost boyish. It was like a boy speaking with the restraint of an older man. “Your own free will is what matters,” he explained, “and we will never interfere with that. So what we say or do, or how we appear, will always be governed by that imperative, that you have the free will to act.”
I nodded. I finished off the second soda. My body felt like a sponge. “All right,” I said, “but Malchiah showed me my whole life.”
“He showed you your past,” he said. “What’s bothering you now is the future. You’re talking to me but you are thinking of a multitude of things, all having to do with the future. You’re wondering when and how you might see Liona again, and what will happen when you do. You’re thinking of things you have
to do in this world to erase the evidence of your hateful past as Lucky the Fox. You don’t want your past deeds ever to harm Liona and Toby. And you’re wondering why this last assignment from Malchiah was so different from your first assignment, and what the next assignment might involve.”
All that was perfectly true. My mind was feverish with these questions.
“Where do I start?” I asked.
But I knew.
I went into the bathroom, and took the longest shower in my own personal history. And it did seem my own personal history consumed my thoughts. Liona and Toby. What did their presence in my life require me to do next? I didn’t think about phone calls or checks to them, or visits. I mean, what did it require of me with regard to my ugly past? What did Lucky the Fox have to do about that past?
I shaved and dressed in a clean blue shirt and pressed jeans. I had a little mischievous desire to see if my guardian angel would change his garb because I’d changed mine.
Well, he didn’t. He was sitting in the high-backed chair by the fireplace when I came out, and staring at the empty hearth.
“You’re right,” I said to him as if we’d never stopped talking. “I want to know all the answers as to the future, and as to my future. I have to remember that you are not here to make this easier for me.”
“Well, in a way we are and in a way we aren’t,” he said. “But you have things to do now and you should do them. Do again what profited you the most before.”
He had a slight dip to his eyebrows, his pupils moving ever so slightly but constantly, as though in watching me, he was watching some immense display of movement and detail that I couldn’t comprehend.
“You spend too much time studying our faces,” he offered. “You’ll never be able to read us in this way. We couldn’t explain to you the way we think even if we wanted to.”
“Can your facial expression be dishonest, or deceiving?” I asked.
“No,” he said, with a placid smile.
“Do you enjoy being visible to me?”
“Yes,” he said. “We enjoy the physical universe. We always have. We enjoy your physicality. We find it interesting.”
I was fascinated.
“Do you enjoy talking to me so that I can actually hear your voice?” I asked. “Do you really like it?”
“Yes,” he said. “I like it very much.”
“You must have had a horrible ten years when I was a killer,” I said.
He laughed without making a sound, his eyes moving over the ceiling. Then he looked at me. “Not my best time,” he said. “I have to admit.”
I nodded, as if I’d caught him in a startling series of admissions, but of course I had caught him in nothing.
I went into the little kitchen area and made a pot of coffee. Finally when I had the first cup the way I wanted it, I turned back to him, sipping the coffee, savoring the heat the way I’d savored the coldness of the soda before.
“Why was Ankanoc allowed to test me?” I asked. “Why was he allowed to lead me off like that in Rome?”
“You’re asking me?” he answered. Again came that small shrug. “Special angels come for those who have a special destiny. And special demons target those same individuals in special ways.”
“So there’s more to come.” I said. “He’ll never give up.”
He pondered this and indicated he couldn’t answer. Just a little gesture with his hands, and a little lift to his eyebrows.
“What did you learn about him?” he asked.
“He chose the way of reason to attack me, old arguments, theories I’d read. He ventured into New Age philosophy, the testimony of those who’ve traveled out of body, claimed to have had near-death experiences. But he made a hash of it. The point is, he attacked my faith, through reason, rather than my shaky self-control.”
He drifted into thought again, or into something like it. He looked to be about my age, I figured, but why he’d chosen to appear with red hair I couldn’t guess, and it seemed his body was a little thicker all over than Malchiah’s body. These things had to mean something but what? There might be rules to all this, a vast system of them, but it might be far too intricate and involved for me to understand.
He spoke up suddenly, bringing me back to the conversation.
“There’s an old story,” he said, “about a saint who once said, ‘Even when the Prince of Darkness takes the form of an angel of light, you’ll know him by his reptilian tail.’ ”
I laughed. “I’ve heard that story,” I said. “I knew the saint once. Well, Ankanoc didn’t have a reptilian tail.”
“But he gave himself away, nevertheless. You pegged him for what he was early on—by his speech, the unkind remarks he made about human beings.”
“That’s exactly right,” I said. “And also by the way in which he used the New Age viewpoints on questions of life and death and why we’re here. What’s fascinating about those viewpoints is that they’re put forth by a whole variety of thinkers, that certain patterns of thought emerge from psychic pioneers all over the globe. But Ankanoc treated them as if they were dogma and he tried to ram that dogma home.”
“Keep this in mind,” he said. “No matter what he does and says, he will always give himself away. Demons are too full of hate and rage to be too clever. Don’t overestimate them. That might be as bad as underestimating them. And if you call him by name, he must answer you, so he’s not likely to try a disguise again.”
“So you’re saying that demons aren’t as smart as angels.”
“Perhaps they could be,” he said, “but their state of mind interferes with their intelligence. It interferes with their observations, and their conclusions. It interferes with everything that they do. Theirs is a hideous predicament. They refuse to admit that they have lost.”
That was beautiful. I liked it. I liked the puzzle of it and the truth of it.
“Do you know him personally?” I asked.
“Personally?” He burst out laughing. “Personally!” he said again with a gleaming smile. “Toby, you are a fascinating young man. No, I don’t know him personally. I don’t think he would give me the time of day.” He laughed again. “He doesn’t think he has to worry about me, a ‘mere guardian angel.’ It’s Malchiah who drives him to the brink. He has a great deal to learn.”
“So after work, when I’m asleep for instance, you and Ankanoc couldn’t go to a café together in Angel Time for a drink.”
“No,” he said, laughing again. “And I’m not off work when you’re sleeping, by the way. You probably know that very well.”
“Were you there, with me in Rome?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. I’m always with you. I’m your guardian angel, I told you. I’ve been with you since before you were born.”
“But in Rome, you couldn’t come to me, appear to me, help me?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Oh, not again. You angels keep turning the questions around.”
“Don’t we, though!” he whispered. “But now we both know one reason, at least, why you’re so troubled. You’re angry that I didn’t come to you and help you. But Malchiah came, did he not?”
“Finally, yes,” I responded. “He came when it was all over. But couldn’t either of you have given me a hint that this creature was waylaying me with extraordinary means?”
He shrugged.
“I think you must bow to Malchiah’s wishes,” I said.
“That is one way of describing things,” he said. “Malchiah is a Seraph. I am not.”
“Why are you here now?” I asked.
“Because you need me and you want me to be here, and you’re restless and your ideas of what to do next are unformed. That’s part of it, at least. But I think it’s time you started doing what you did after your last assignment. So perhaps I should go.”
“I wish you were always visible.”
“You think that’s what you wish. You have a short memory. I am not here to interfere with your
being a man.”
“Do Children of Angels get lonely?” I asked.
“You’re lonely, aren’t you?” he asked. “Do you think any amount of angelic company can take away human desire? We’re here because you’re human. You’ll be a human being till the day you die.”
“I wish I knew what you really looked like—!” I said.
The atmosphere around me instantly changed. It was as if some force had shaken the entire room, perhaps the entire building, and certainly my entire point of view.
The contents of the room faded. Gravity was gone. I wasn’t standing anywhere. An immense sound filled my ears, a sound vaguely akin to the reverberations of a huge gong, and at the same time an unending white light filled my vision, shot through with great arcing splashes of gold. All I could see was this exploding light. There was a core to it, a pulsing, vibrant core, from which the enormous sweeps of gold emanated, and quite suddenly it was beyond all the language I had. I struggled in my brain for concepts to describe it, to seize it and hold on to it, but this was not possible. There was movement, tremendous movement, something like convolutions or eruptions. But the words mean nothing compared to what I saw. I had a momentous sense of recognition. I heard myself gasp aloud, “Yes,” but this was over before it had begun. The light defined a space too vast for me to see or grasp, and yet I saw it, saw its limitless reaches. The sound had reached a searing pitch. The light contracted and was gone.
I lay on the floor, staring at the domed ceiling above me. I closed my eyes. What I could reproduce in my mind was nothing, nothing compared to what I’d just seen and heard.
“Forgive me,” I whispered. “I should have known.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WENT TO THE COMPUTER FIRST AND FOREMOST FOR the information I wanted about my time in Rome.
I wasn’t surprised that I could not find the names of those I’d visited in any historical record.
But the horrid and cruel incident that had befallen Giovanni’s son in Florence was recorded in more than one place. No names were given, of the man accused of blaspheming the images, or of his surviving family. But it was definitely the same incident and I was left with a strong memory of the elderly Giovanni, staring at me in the synagogue, after I’d stopped playing the lute.