This may look to you, who have lived for some time now without a Single God to trouble your equilibrium, like wanton cruelty on His part, the idle malice of a well-fed cat toying with whatever squeaks. In fact He meant harm primarily to Himself. Like all creative forces He was bent on apocalypse and ruin — the grand destruction of His grand design. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away? No, no — He is not so whimsical. The Lord giveth in order that the Lord may take away.
A thousand times a thousand years before He made the world He must have itched to flood it. Destruction was such a powerful impulse in Him it is a miracle — perhaps the miracle of all miracles — that He was ever able to stay His hand long enough to fashion something to destroy. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt. Behold! Did I not know it! Did I not tell thee!
Ah, the bliss of it! Vindication! Ah, the joy of it!
And this His own handiwork. Was there ever artist who hated his own artistry so feverishly? Or lover so intent on proving himself betrayed?
A thousand times a thousand years before He made the world He itched to flood it, burn whatever in it was flammable, flatten whatever in it was round. And there is no reason not to believe that He laid plans as far back as then to drop the angels Azael and Semyaza before my mother on a day so hot it was necessary to close one’s eyes against the unendurable harshness of colour, on a day so moist it seemed as though rain had forgotten gravity and was falling upwards, from earth to heaven.
They landed soundlessly, showing every consideration for her afflicted senses, fanning the air about her cool with their pinions, their breath winnowing her hair, a soft soothing tinkling, flatter than the sound of ice-cold water playing over stones, more like wind rattling a banana plant, coming from the jewellery Azael wore — it seemed to me defiantly, as a reproach — around his wrist and throat.
It was an age before my mother became aware that they were there. When she raised her head, she found herself held by Semyaza’s insistent gaze. So it would be wherever they went, whomsoever they called on: Semyaza demanding first notice, his stare bold, unwavering, his plumage high and tense, and Azael to one side, crestfallen and peevish, fingering his ornaments.
Semyaza folded his feathers and bent low over my mother. ‘Better?’ he inquired, his voice as naked as his face. ‘Is that better for you?’ She was to understand that he was the one who had watched over her, he was the one who had blown her cool.
She nodded, screwing up her eyes as though to shield them, as though to shield herself and her credulity, from the dazzling irradiation of the angel. I recognised the expression. She had used it on me when I had impressed her with a sentence; on my father when his great boyishness had softened her heart; on Abel when he blew bubbles in the mud. Deities, the expression said, Everywhere I look I see deities; who shall protect me from Their Glory?
Where would gods be without the devotion of women? Here is why my father had been put into a deep sleep and a help meet extracted from his side. It was not Adam’s welfare the Lord of Creation had been concerned for. The one craving love and companionship, homage and adoration, was Him. H-M.
Semyaza, too, was greedy for a woman’s regard. From the steep planes of his unguarded and unshadowed face his thirsty spirit looked out, on watch for any movement or response that could be construed as admiration. At the moment of positive identification — such as now, when my mother screwed up her eyes against his splendour — his very bones shone; but should nothing be returned to him, his features offered no hiding place and bitter disappointment burned on his countenance like fever.
He was larger than any angel that had been sent to us before, half as tall again as Azael, with a wing span surely double that of his companion’s and with a more profuse feathering at his waist and heels. He was not resplendent, though — neither of them was resplendent — despite my mother’s impersonation of a mere mortal woman entirely overcome. There was something soiled about them both, as if they had journeyed too far without refreshment, or had decided to travel in borrowed plumage. This was an effect partly, as had been noticed on earlier visitations, of a fault in their engineering. Advantageous as it must have been for them, in matters relating to survival, to have arms unencumbered by feathers, in addition to wings, the drawback was an over-elaboration of musculature that impeded ordinary terrestrial movement. Sometimes the wings got in the way of the arms, sometimes the arms interfered with the functioning of the wings. They were not always certain which part of themselves to employ. They walked awkwardly. They toppled easily. The extra load told on the shoulders and the spine, creating problems of posture and any number of dermatological complications. I never once saw an angel who was not round-shouldered and stiff-necked, or whose skin was not chafed and frayed by the weight and irritation of his feathers. And this is to say nothing of lice and ring-worm and all the other consequences of careless grooming.
Even from where I was hidden, a bowshot away, I could see that Azael’s flesh was broken wherever that section of him that was bird joined that section of him that was man; and that Semyaza had only to begin to stretch a wing or scratch a scapular for a small snowstorm of snapped quills and ruined skin to fill the air around him. You invariably knew where an angel had been from the droppings of down and covert, plume and flesh, he left behind him.
Although it was not her function to notice imperfections in men or gods or angels, my mother was not able to pretend for long that she was unaware of how seriously her visitors itched and flaked. What would later become a ritual, a service expected and fought over by Semyaza and Azael, began as an act of common charity. Why don’t you let me, she said, when for the hundredth time Semyaza stood on one leg, reached behind him, and tried to rip his back apart.
‘Let you?’
Yes, she said. Adding — inconsequentially, it seemed to me — I have sons of my own.
Semyaza knelt before her, bent his neck and drew in his wings. It was a motion intended to suggest a willing submission either to execution or to pleasure — she might choose; a gesture as winning as a pet parrot’s; but from behind, as I saw him, he appeared hooded and predatory, a tattered carrion crow the colour of a dirty pigeon.
I think you need more than a scratch, my mother said when she saw how badly he was damaged. Be still. Be still, I will try not to hurt you.
‘You cannot hurt me,’ the angel told her.
She had her baby balms by her. Her Abel remedies. Her salves and balsams for sucklings and angels. Using an ointment made from crushed camomile, she bathed Semyaza’s chaps and ulcerations. Then she dusted them, as she once dusted mine, in a powder of mica and talcum.
And now you, she said to Azael.
The whole time she attended to Azael, whose shoulders were like rotten fruit, the entire rind ready to fall away in her fingers, Semyaza stood where she had to see him and be aware of his relentless attention. His eyes would not leave hers. It didn’t matter if she looked away or stared only into Azael’s sores, Semyaza was always there, claiming her thoughts.
‘I’m extremely persistent,’ he said to her. ‘That’s one of the reasons I enjoy so much trust.’
He didn’t suppose she needed to be told whose trust.
She made no reply, treating him instead to her blurred and blinded look. I had never much cared for it, even in the days before I had a brother and it was mainly I who had blinded her; but ever since she had sat down in the mud and become careless of her weight I had not thought it suited her to be bedazzled. Her jowls had grown too heavy to be tipped up in blithe innocence of all meaning; her cheeks too rounded to risk a girl’s tremor.