Have they noticed him?
One of them takes a few steps through the water, he hears how it splashes against the angel’s feet, but then it goes quiet again, and slowly he raises his head above his cover. This time it is only with the greatest caution that he allows his gaze to close in on them. Slowly he lets it sweep across the water’s black surface, into the glare of the torch, at first visible only as a glossier texture of blackness, then lighter and lighter, until it reaches the very reflection where the water flames up yellow and orange.
Then he sits up and takes in everything in one single glance.
Their faces are white and skull-like, their eye sockets deep, cheekbones high, lips bloodless. They have long, fair hair, thin necks, slender wrists, clawlike fingers. And they’re shaking. One of them has hands that shake.
Just then the other one tilts its head back, opens its mouth, and lets out a scream. Wild and lamenting it reverberates up the walls of the ravine. No human being is meant to hear that cry. An angel’s despair is unbearable, and almost crushed by terror and compassion, Antinous presses his face into the earth once more. He wants to help them, but he can’t, he wants to be something to them, but he can’t be, he wants to run away from that place, but he can’t run.
Again he hears the hissing. This time it’s followed by a splash, and when he looks in their direction again, one of them is just lifting the spear from the water. The fish it has impaled thrashes its tail a few times, twinkling in the light from the torch, before the angel pulls it off the point and breaks its neck.
The other one comes a few steps closer. Antinous now sees that its jaw, too, is shaking. But its expression is firm, its eyes cold and clear. The first one bites into the fish and pulls off a piece with a jerk. Then it takes the torch for the other, which grips the fish in both hands and bends its head slowly forward. It is as if the effort increases the shaking, and the first one places a supporting hand on its arm. And so, standing close together, the light flickering across their faces and the bottom of their cloaks trailing in the water, they stand eating the fish. Antinous stares at them, spellbound. The teeth that sink into the fish’s flesh, the scales that cling to their chins, the eyeballs that now and then turn up and make them look white and blind. Then they look like statues standing there, for without the life of the eyes, the deadness of their faces is emphasized. Each time he sees it, Antinous recoils in fear. They’re dead, he thinks. They’re dead. But then the eyeballs correct themselves, the faces again fill with life, and what a moment before was loathsome in them is now beautiful again.
The angel with the shaking hands stretches his head forward once more. Its wings, the upper part of which Antinous can just make out over its shoulders, glimmer green and black. Its neck is long and slender, its skin white as snow, and its eyes so blue that they almost seem artificial, as if made from glass or porcelain. Or perhaps it’s their stillness that creates that impression. They look ahead the whole time, seemingly independent of the body’s movements as it slowly and laboriously lowers its head to the trembling hands. But then, just as the mouth opens and the teeth are bared, just as it’s about to bite into the soft fish, the eyes swivel to the side.
They’ve seen him.
As if dazzled by a sudden light, Antinous shuts his eyes. At the same moment there’s a leap in his breast. It feels as if a cord is being tightened around his heart. He tries to fill his lungs with air, but it’s impossible, his heart feels even more constricted. Unable to move, he lies and breathes in small, short spasms as the angels begin to move toward him. He can’t see them as the light continues to burn on his retina, but he can hear them, the water splashing over their feet with every step they take, the almost imperceptible swish of their clothes, the chinking of the rings of chain mail. And he can sense them: the coldness in the air increases as they approach.
When they stop before him, he’s lying with his face to the ground. He hears their breathing, and feels the darkness that emanates from them, the icy coldness. He’s never been so frightened in his life. Even so, he wants them to stay, it is as if something inside him discerns the vacuum their absence will leave, that he will long to return here, to this moment. Perhaps that’s why he stretches out his hand and reaches out for them.
FOR SOME reason the cherubim, those chubby, rosy-cheeked little boys that throng the paintings of the late Renaissance and Baroque period, have stuck in our consciousness as the true image of angels. And it may not be a complete misconception, for in many ways it was during this period that the angels enjoyed their heyday. At the same time it represents a turning point in their history. Few knew it then, but their demise had already begun, and for those of us who can look at paintings of them with the benefit of hindsight, the signs are clear: there is something greedy and cosseted about them, which not even the most ingratiating pose can conceal, and here, perhaps, the hardest thing to understand is how innocence and purity, attributes they always steadfastly displayed, could so easily be turned into their diametric opposites. But that was precisely what happened. Many will say that the angels got what they deserved, because they didn’t have the sense to stop, but allowed themselves to be tempted further and further into that world they had been sent to serve, until finally they got caught up in it. It strikes me that the terrible fate they suffered isn’t wholly commensurate with their sins. But that’s my own view. As for the angels, it doesn’t concern them now anyway. They no longer remember where they came from or who they were, concepts like dignity and solemnity have no meaning for them, all they think about is eating and reproducing.
The origin of angels is uncertain. Around BC 400 Jerome claimed that angels were around long before the world was created, and based this assertion on their notable absence from the story of the creation, in which angels are not mentioned at all, whereas the opposite view was taken by Saint Augustine, who for his part argued that the angels were mentioned in the creation story, albeit indirectly, by being included in God’s first command, Let there be light! and so were created on the first day. This argument, expanded and refined by Saint Thomas Aquinas, presupposes that the relationship between angels and light isn’t merely metaphorical, as we normally assume, but a complex one that sees them as approaching the identical. Light is not angels, but angels are light. Beautiful though this thought is, and much as it tells us about the angelic condition, unfortunately it doesn’t hold water. Light is only one of the angels’ many manifestations according to the Bible, and why should that be the one used to indicate when these perfect, God-favored creatures came into existence? Are they, in their otherworldliness, impossible to describe or comprehend? If so, it seems very strange that immediately after this, in the Garden of Eden story, their name is spoken without the least reticence and that there, on the first occasion angels are directly alluded to in the scriptures, their existence is so tangible and solid that they even appear equipped with swords.
So I think Jerome was right in his deduction: angels aren’t mentioned in the creation story because they had long since existed by then. Whether they have always existed, as claimed by Antinous Bellori and others, it is clearly impossible to say. Everything about the angels is shrouded in a mist of obscurity: we don’t know when they were created, we don’t know where they came from, we don’t know what characteristics they have, how they think, or what they see when they look at us. But at the same time, all through the Bible they are endowed with a kind of familiarity, as if their existence is so ineluctable that it permits no explanation. Such ambivalence is natural, because angels’ most important characteristic is that they really belong to two worlds, and always carry the one into the other. Nowhere is this clearer than in the story about the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is something alien about them — as soon as Lot catches sight of them outside the city gate at dusk, he runs to meet them and bows down in the dust at their feet — but also something familial, because immediately afterward he invites them into his house, bakes bread, and prepares a feast, which they eat. Presumably it is this familiarity that makes the author feel it’s not worth the trouble to describe the situation in more detail. Here are two angels eating at a kitchen table in Sodom, having been sent by God to decide the city’s fate, perhaps to annihilate it, and we are told nothing about the atmosphere, what they look like, what they say to each other. Only the laconic statement, . and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. That’s all. But the angels must have been sitting there a good while, at least as long as it takes to bake bread, and their presence must have made Lot nervous, as he was the only person who knew their mission. I picture him standing there in front of his oven, darting frequent glances at the two angels seated silently at his table, his desperation growing with each new noise outside in the street, for he knows what they are capable of, these citizens who have learned of the presence of strangers and who have now begun to gather in the darkness outside. The angels display a certain reluctance — at first they turn down his invitation, as they had planned to spend the night in the streets, but Lot is so insistent that they finally give in — while Lot for his part seems overeager and chatty, his concern being to prevent them from realizing what is happening outside.