Twisted (2 page)

And before I can catch my breath to answer, on she goes, “A poor woman such as yourself should know her place, and never argue with her man, let alone with the elders in the village! Your name is not worth all that disrespect, dear. I expected that in a second, lightning would come down to strike you down. I knew, I just knew what was coming.”

“Did you,” I say.

“Indeed,” she says, with a hard glint in her eyes. “There I was, sniffing at your back, itching, itching, itching to take hold of you already...”

I gulp, so she goes on to say, “Unfortunately, the down elevator was broken; stuck down here in the pit. So alas, I had to bide my time.”

The bitch kicks at the fallen angel again—but his time, her big toe is snagged, perhaps by a rock. “Damn, damn, damn it,” says Leila. “And damn you! You and your stupid name and your stupid quibbles and fights with everyone around you.”

“My name,” I insist, “is all I have left.”

“Not anymore,” she corrects me. “It has, by now, been stripped away from you. Looking at your eyes, I can tell.”

“Even so! It’s still mine,” I say, noting a tone of stubbornness in my voice.

“Oh, dream on,” she shrugs. “And not that I care, but did you have to argue with the elders over it? Have you no civility, woman? No respect for them, or for keeping the silence in the village library?”

“Who gives a damn,” I say. “Who cares about those three wrinkly prunes, decking themselves with thick furs, shuffling their fancy quills between their porcelain-white fingers as if they, and no one else but them, were the instruments of God?”

To that she can find no answer, and so I press on, “All the while there I stood, right in front of their long table, trying not to fold over with the pangs of hunger, spotting the bread crumbs on the floor, and bracing myself with nothing but my pride so I don’t bend down before them.”

Leila passes her gaze over me top to bottom. Then with a belittling smile she says, “You had nothing on but stained tatters, dear. Not your best attire, you must admit. Making an appearance in rags like that cannot possibly make a good impression on anyone, let along on those wise guys.”

“Fashion is a crucial thing, normally,” I agree. “But in this case, let me ask you: who on earth gave them the idea that they are in charge of us village folk?”

And she says, “They are the keepers of history, woman. You ingrate! You should kiss their feet for putting your ancestry in writing.”

“Not mine, they don’t,” I say vehemently. “Oh sure, men’s ancestry is carefully kept. Our land, the land of Uz is named after Uz, son of Aram, son of Shem, son of Adam. But then—women? In my village they are of less value than cattle. So you tell me: is there any purpose for keeping the ancestry of cattle?”

She scratches her head, and comes up with, “None other than breeding, I suppose—”

“Exactly! Breeding, that’s what women are good for, in a man’s world. So their ancestry is forgotten, their names erased, their lives become mere anecdotes. In time, they become invisible holes in the fabric of the story. It’s as if they never existed.”

And I hope that somewhere, in her heart of hearts she feels for me when I say, “Look: when I was a little girl I ran up a hill from my house; and across the valley I spotted a pillar of salt. I couldn’t resist coming closer. I stood at her feet, looked up and met the eyes, the empty eyes of Lot’s Wife. And right there and then, seeing the trail of bitter tears running down her neck, I promised myself: I will never let that happen to me!”

She shrugs.

And so I forge ahead. “The elders, all they know is how to brush their long, silvery beard, twirl the tip of it between their fragile thumb and forefinger, and once in a while, draw a cryptic glyph here, and another one there. Pricks! All they do is jot down men’s lives, men’s stories, men’s trials and victories in a scroll that no one but them can read. They have rolls and rolls of papyrus in their fancy library. Fuck them!”

“Gladly,” she winks.

“Oh hell,” I say. “You don’t understand.”

“Fuck you,” says Leila. “You were doomed, dear, the moment you opened your big mouth.”

“I may be doomed,” I say. “But all the same I want my name to live on. Or at least, to have a chance to do so.”

“A dreamer,” she says. “That’s what you are.”

“No,” I say.

She laughs in my face. “Yes,” she says. “You are seeking that which you can’t have.”

“I am a woman on a quest.”

“Same difference. You live in a twisted phantasy. Now as then.”

“Which is why I went in there, just to try, to convince them to write my story, to scribble it back in place, where it belongs—if only for a single sentence—for half a phrase, even! See, I had to act fast, before they submit this scroll to the rabbinical assembly for a possible inclusion, God willing, in the holiest book of all—”

“By which you mean, the bible?”

“Yes. The bible.”

She pleats her hairy eyebrows as if to focus on a thought. Wasted effort, I think. In her place, I would think of nothing else but plucking them so I look halfway decent.

“Well,” she says at last, “You may be surprised! Perhaps this place feels strange to you, but you may find it incredibly cultured. Not that I expect a simpleton like you to appreciate it, but the reopening of the Hellexandria Library is planned to happen soon. I’m pretty sure the collection will include a few editions of the bible.”

“What do I care,” I mutter. “I can’t even read.”

In a flash, Leila grips my shoulder. The uneven, blood-red polish of her nails gets caught in a dim flicker of light.

“Damn you, dear,” she says with an acid smile. “Wake up, wake up already! Don’t you get my drift? Perhaps, once you get to know some of the poor souls around here, you may find someone among them, someone who can read aloud for you, and recite those so-called sacred pages. Perhaps he can figure out if your precious little sentence, precious little phrase made it in after all, I mean, if your name lives on.”

With that, a shadow stirs loose behind her.

Within a second it expands immensely. Then it steps forth from beyond, and is now blocking the entire view. The earth gives a mighty thud with every step he takes, which is rather peculiar for a shadow.

Immediately, she turns from me and takes a deep bow before him. All I can see against the faint light is an outline. Crowning his head is a subtle impression of something curled. Horns.

Sigh. I may be mistaken, but I think I know who this is.

 

 

“Job’s wife, I presume? Hallelujah! I have been expecting you for quite a long while,” says Satan. His voice is sweet. He must have sung in a choir in his youth, because in some ways he sounds as pious as my husband. “Shame, shame, shame on you,” he wags his finger. “You sure made me wait, didn’t you...”

And without allowing time for an answer, he brings a magnifying glass to his bloodshot eye. Enlarged, his pupil is clearly horizontal and slit-shaped.

Which makes me feel quite at home with him, because so are the pupils of the goats in the herds we used to own.

Meanwhile, Satan unfolds a piece of paper and runs his finger through some names listed there. Then, with a gleam of satisfaction he marks a checkbox there, right in the middle of the crinkled page. At once, a whiff of smoke whirls in the air.

Satan blows off a few specks of charred paper, folds the thing and tucks it into his breast pocket, somewhere in his wool. Cashmere, I ask myself? Really? In this heat?

Back home, when I would count my gold coins, this was something I craved with a passion... It would keep me warm during the long winter nights...

Then, without even bothering to look at me, Satan says, “I swear, madam, you look lovely tonight.”

For a moment I am grateful that my husband is among the living. Or so I think. Nowadays, influenced by the elders, he regards swearing as a mortal sin, as bad as cursing. He even plugs his ears, for no better reason than to avoid hearing it. But if you ask me, I swear: without a bit of blasphemy, language would utterly dull, and fit for nothing but endless prayer. Sigh.

Strangely, Satan does not frighten me that much anymore. And so, swaying on my hip bones, I strut out of the cave in his direction. I feel an odd urge to fondle his horns. Along the path toward him I make sure to suck in my belly, because in the company of a gentleman, even a corpse is entitled to look her best.

 

“No—not a corpse,” he corrects me, as if he has just read my mind. “A soul! That is what you are.”

“A damned one, too,” says Leila, cutting in.

And he says, “Aren’t we all.”

And she hisses, “Especially her. She is a nobody. She belongs with the dreamers among us; the losers.”

I figure she does not like me, and she does not appreciate competition. All smiles and giggles, she is batting her eyelashes at him while wiggling her heavy bust and advancing, somehow, in the mud, over her diamond-studded sandals.

Which in a flash, angers him. In spite of a visible effort to remain calm his face turns red, and he shakes his fist at her. I spot a dark feather wagging back and forth behind his neck, nearly tickling him, which is the first clue to what happens next: wings sprout from his back, and they spread out—monstrously massive—with an furious, ear-splitting flutter.

“Go,” he spurts out, no longer in control of himself. “Not now! I am busy here, can’t you see?”

“With her?” says the bitch, utter disbelief ringing in her voice. “Who—what is she to you?”

And he answers, mostly to himself, “First and foremost, she is a case study. An accomplice in my plans, even though she does not recognize it—not yet. When she does, I can use her. Therefore, she is a possible ally. Even one soul can tip the scales, change the balance of power and overturn things, up and down, heaven and hell.”

And she cuts in to complete his sentence for him, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it...”

She croaks, then curtsies awkwardly and shrinks from him. I see her slipping meekly back into the door of the down elevator, which is right next to the mouth of the cave, where the fallen angel on the left used to be.

The fallen angel on the right is still here, swaying in the wind—but now he has given out his last groan. Sigh.

Escaping through the zigzag crack in the door is a stifled sound, the sound of her whimpers. Alas, Leila does not take rejection too well.

 

“Good riddance,” snarls Satan.

And by now his wings have become transparent. They are so fine you can barely see them anymore. Only by reasoning can you guess that they have folded, that they are now coming together, ready to be tucked away somewhere between his pointy shoulder blades.

I can tell this fellow is given to mood swings, although now his fury has left him. He raises his magnifying glass to his eye once more, and with great, scientific calm he moves around me, licking his lips and examining me closely, as if I were an interesting specimen.

Then he winks at me, suggestively so.

Which is quite familiar to me. Since the downfall, every man in the village has tried his hands on me, so to speak.

“Stop that,” I say pluckily. “You know I am a married woman.”

I notice that Satan does not mind my chutzpa. Quite the opposite: he seems to enjoy a spirited reply. Perhaps the poor souls living in his realm have no balls.

Meanwhile, a strange thing crosses my mind: the valley out there, in the distance, is vacant; eerily so. Dare I ask?

And before I know it, I can hear myself saying, “I see the fallen angels here—what remains after them—but where are the rest? I mean, where are the demons?”

Satan leers at me, and his voice resonates deeply, suddenly penetrating the depth of my soul.

“Where else?” he says. “Inside.”

Then he walks down the path, not before waving his hand with an elegant, courteous gesture, which I take to mean, Come now! Come with me!

Which I do—even though with each step, my feet get more and more scalded by the boiling earth. But I don’t give a damn, this pain cannot stop me, nothing can, because somehow I know there is a purpose to this journey. In life or death, I am—and perhaps always will be—a woman seeking a name for herself.

A woman on a quest.

We are traveling together in the direction of my village. Well, the copy of it. As close as can be.

Home.

 

 

Meanwhile Satan leads me away to the village square and with a big flair, opens a door.