Angelology (25 page)

Dr. Raphael held a leather-bound volume in his hands. He opened it and, his voice steady and serious, began his lecture:

“High in the mountains, under a ledge that sheltered them from the rain, the Nephilim stood together, begging guidance from the daughters of Semjaza and the sons of Azazel, whom they considered to be their leaders after the Watchers had been taken below the earth. Azazel’s eldest son stepped forward and addressed the endless crowd of pale giants filling the valley below.

“He said, ‘My father taught us the secrets of warfare. He taught us to use a sword and knife, to fashion arrows, to wage war upon our enemies. He did not teach us to protect ourselves from heaven. Soon we will be trapped on all sides by water. Even with our strength and our numbers, it is impossible to build a vessel like Noah’s. It is equally impossible to directly attack Noah and take his craft. The archangels are watching over Noah and his family.’

“It was well known that Noah had three sons and that these sons had been chosen to assist in maintaining his Ark. Azazel’s son announced that he would go to the seashore where Noah was loading his boat with animals and plants, and there he would discern a way to infiltrate the Ark. Bringing along their most powerful sorceress, the eldest daughter of Semjaza, he left the Nephilim, saying, ‘My brothers and sisters, you must remain here, at the highest point of the mountain. It is possible that the waters will not rise to this height.’

“Together the son of Azazel and the daughter of Semjaza walked down the steep mountain path through the relentless rain, making their way to the shore. At the Black Sea, all was chaos. Noah had warned of the Flood for many months, but his countrymen did not pay attention in the least. They carried on with feasting and dancing and sleeping, happy in the face of utter destruction. They laughed at Noah, and some of them even stood near Noah’s Ark, jeering as he brought food and water aboard.

“For some days Azazel’s son and Semjaza’s daughter watched the comings and goings of Noah’s sons. They were called Shem, Ham, and Japheth, each very different from the others. Shem, the eldest, was dark-haired and green-eyed, with elegant hands and a brilliant way of speaking; Ham was darker than Shem, with large brown eyes, great strength, and good sense; Japheth had fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, the most frail and thin of the three. While Shem and Ham did not tire as they helped their father load animals, satchels of food, and jars of water, Japheth worked slowly. Shem and Ham and Japheth had been long married, and between them Noah had many grandchildren.

“Semjaza’s daughter saw that Japheth’s appearance was close to their own and decided that this was the brother her companion should take. The Nephilim waited for many days, watching, until Noah had loaded the final animals onto the Ark. The son of Azazel stole to the great boat. Its massive shadow fell upon him, blanketing him in shadow as he called for Japheth.

“Noah’s youngest leaned over the edge of the Ark, his blond curls falling into his eyes. Azazel’s son summoned Japheth to accompany him away from the seashore, along a footpath that led deep into a forest. The archangels, who stood guard at the boat’s prow and hull, inspecting every object that entered and exited the Ark so that it fit God’s dictate, paid no attention to Japheth as he left the ship and trailed the luminous stranger into the woods.

“As Japheth followed Azazel’s son deeper and deeper into the forest, the rain began to fall, pounding the canopy of leaves above his head and echoing loud as thunder. Japheth was out of breath when he caught up to the majestic stranger. Hardly able to speak, he asked, ‘What do you want of me?’

“Azazel’s son did not reply but wrapped his fingers around the neck of Noah’s son and squeezed until he felt the brittle bones of the throat collapse. In that moment, even before the Flood wiped out the wicked creatures of the earth, God’s plan of a purified world faltered. The future of the Nephilim race solidified, and the new world came into being.

“Semjaza’s daughter stepped from the forest and placed her hands over the face of Azazel’s son. She had memorized the spells her father had taught her. As she touched Azazel’s son, his appearance changed: His lustrous beauty dimmed, and his angelic features faded. She whispered words into his ear, and he transformed into the image of Japheth. Weakened by the transformation, he stumbled away from Semjaza’s daughter, making his way through the forest to the Ark.

“Noah’s wife took one look at her son and knew in an instant that he had changed. His face was the same and his bearing the same, but something about his manner was strange, and so she asked him where he had been and what had happened to him. He could not speak in human language, and so Azazel’s son remained quiet, further terrifying his mother. She sent for Japheth’s wife, a lovely woman who had known Japheth from his childhood. She, too, discerned the corruption of her Japheth, but as his physical characteristics were identical to those of the man she had married, she could not say what had changed. Japheth’s brothers recoiled, fearful of Japheth’s presence. Nevertheless, Japheth remained on board the Ark as the water began to sweep the ground from below. It was the seventeenth day of the second month. The Flood had begun.

“The rain poured over the Ark, filling the valleys and the cities. Water rose to the base of the mountains and then to the peaks. The Nephilim watched as the water lifted higher and higher, until they could not see land any longer. Terrified cheetahs and leopards clung to trees; the terrible howling of dying wolves echoed through the air. A giraffe stood on a lone hilltop, water gushing over its body as it angled its nose up and up and up until the water overwhelmed it. The bodies of humans and animals and Nephilim floated like dragonflies over the surface of the world, undulating with the tides, rotting and sinking to the ocean floor. Tangles of hair and limbs sloshed against the prow of Noah’s boat, rising and sinking in the soup of water. The air became sweet with the smell of sun-baked flesh.

“The Ark floated adrift over the earth until the twenty-seventh day of the second month of the following year, a total of three hundred seventy days. Noah and his family encountered nothing but endless death and endless water, an ever-moving gray sheet of rain, a wave-tossed horizon for as far as one could see, water and more water, a shoreless world bereft of solidity. They floated upon the surface of the sea for so long that they exhausted their store of wine and grain and lived on chicken eggs and water.

“When the Ark grounded and the waters receded, Noah and his family released the animals from the belly of the boat, took their bags of seed, and planted them. Before long the sons of Noah began to repopulate the world. The archangels, acting out the will of God, came to their aid, bestowing great fertility upon the animals, the soil, and the women. The crops had sun and rain; the animals found sufficient food; the women did not die in childbirth. Everything grew. Nothing perished. The world began again.

“The sons of Noah claimed everything that they saw as their own. They became patriarchs, each founding a race of humanity. They migrated to far-off regions of the planet, establishing dynasties that we recognize even today as distinct. Shem, Noah’s oldest son, traveled to the Middle East, founding the Semitic tribe; Ham, Noah’s second son, moved below the equator, into Africa, forming the Hamitic tribe; and Japheth—or rather, the creature disguised as Japheth—took over the area between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, founding what would one day be called Europe. Japheth’s progeny have plagued us ever since. As Europeans, we must contemplate our relation to our ancestral origins. Are we free of such devilish associations? Or are we in some way connected to the children of Japheth?”

Dr. Raphael’s lecture ended abruptly. He stopped speaking, closed his notebook, and urged us to return to his next lecture. I knew from experience that Dr. Raphael halted his lectures in this manner on purpose, leaving his students expecting more. It was a pedagogical tool that I came to respect after having attended his lectures as a first-year student—I had not missed one of them. The rustling of papers and the shuffling of feet filled the room as students gathered in groups, preparing for dinner or evening study. Like the others, I collected my belongings. Dr. Raphael’s tale had left me in something of a trance, and I found it particularly difficult to come to my senses in a group of people, many of whom were complete strangers to me. Gabriella’s familiar presence at my side was comforting. I turned to ask her if she would like to walk to our apartment to prepare dinner.

Once I saw her, however, I stopped cold. Gabriella’s appearance had changed. Her hair was matted with sweat, her skin pallid and clammy. The thick black kohl she wore about her eyes—a flourish of cosmetics that I had come to think of as Gabriella’s morbid trademark—had smeared even farther below her eyes, whether from perspiration or tears, I could not say. Her large green eyes gazed ahead but appeared to see nothing at all. Her disposition gave her a most frightening appearance, as if she were in the grip of tubercular devastation. It was then that I noticed the bloodied burns that had eaten the flesh of her forearm and the lovely golden lighter clutched in her hand. I tried to speak, to ask her for an explanation for such strange behavior, but a look from Gabriella stopped me before I could speak. In her eyes I saw a strength and determination that I myself did not possess. I knew that she would remain inscrutable. Whatever dark and terrible secrets she held would never be opened to me. For some reason, although I could not understand why, this knowledge both comforted and horrified me at once.

Later, when I returned to our apartment, Gabriella sat in the kitchen. A pair of scissors and some white bandages lay on the table before her. Seeing that she might need my assistance, I went to her. In the sunny atmosphere of our apartment, the burn took on a ghastly color—her flesh had been blackened by the flame and oozed a clear substance. I measured out a length of bandage.

Gabriella said, “Thank you, but I can take care of myself.”

My frustration grew as she took the bandage from me and proceeded to dress the wound. I watched her for a moment, then said, “How could you do such a thing? What is wrong with you?”

She smiled as if I had said something that amused her. Indeed, I thought for a moment she might laugh at me. But she simply returned to dressing her arm and said, “You wouldn’t understand, Celestine. You are too good, too pure, to understand what is wrong with me.”

 

In the days that followed, the more I tried to understand the mystery of Gabriella’s actions, the more secretive she became. She began to spend her nights away from our shared apartment on the rue Gassendi, leaving me to wonder at her whereabouts and her safety. She returned to our quarters only when I myself was away, and I detected her comings and goings by the clothes she left behind or removed from her closet. I would step through the apartment and find a drinking glass, its rim imprinted with a smudge of red lipstick; a strand of black hair; the scent of Shalimar lingering upon her clothing; and I understood that Gabriella was avoiding me. It was only during the daytime, when we worked together in the Athenaeum, boxes of notebooks and papers spread before us, that I was in the company of my friend, but even then it was as if I weren’t there at all.

Worse, I had begun to believe that Gabriella examined my papers in my absence, reading my notebooks and checking my place in various books we’d been assigned, as if gauging my advancement and measuring it against her own. She was too cunning to leave evidence of her intrusions, and I had never found proof of her presence in my room, so I took extra care of what I left lying about my desk. I had no doubt that she would steal anything she found useful, even as she maintained her disposition of blithe apathy toward our shared work at the Athenaeum.

As the days went by, I began to lose myself in daily routine. Our tasks were tedious in the beginning, consisting of little more than reading notebooks and making reports of potentially useful information. Gabriella had been given work that suited her interest in the mythological and historical aspects of angelology, while I had been assigned the more mathematical task of categorizing caves and gorges, working to isolate the location of the lyre.

One afternoon in October, as Gabriella sat across from me, her black hair curling at her chin, I drew a notebook from one of the many boxes before us and examined it with care. It was an unusual notebook, short and rather thick, with a hard, scuffed binding. A leather strap—fastened by a golden clasp—bound the covers together. Examining the clasp more closely, I saw that it had been fashioned into the likeness of a golden angel no bigger in size than my smallest finger. It was long and narrow, with a stylized face containing two inlaid blue sapphire eyes, a flowing tunic, and a pair of sickle-shaped wings. I ran my fingers over the cold metal. Pressing the wings between my fingers, I felt resistance and then a satisfying pop as the mechanism gave. The notebook fell open, and I placed it flat upon my lap, straightening the pages under my fingers. I glanced at Gabriella to see if she had noticed my discovery, but she was engrossed in her reading and did not, to my relief, see the beautiful notebook in my hands.

I understood at once that this was one of the journals Seraphina had mentioned having kept in her later years of study, her observations consolidated and distilled into a succinct primer. Indeed, the journal contained much more than simple lecture notes. Flipping to the beginning of the book, I found the word ANGELOLOGY stamped into the first page in golden ink. The pages had been cluttered with consolidated notes, speculations, questions jotted down during lectures or in preparation for an exam. As I read, I detected Dr. Seraphina’s burgeoning love for antediluvian geology: Maps of Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Turkey had been drawn meticulously over the pages, as if she had traced the exact contours of each country’s border, sketching every mountain range and lake. The names of caves and mountain passes and gorges appeared in Greek, Latin, or Cyrillic, depending upon the alphabet native to the region. Tiny notations appeared in the margins, and it soon became apparent that these drawings had been created in preparation for an expedition. Dr. Seraphina had had her heart set on a second expedition since she was a student. I realize that by resuming Dr. Seraphina’s work with these maps, there was a chance that I myself could uncover the geographical mystery of Clematis’s expedition.