Demon_ A Memoir Part 2

"I was. Lucifer is a cherub."

With some confusion I conjured chubby-winged children in diapers and practically heard his answering scowl. "It isn't what you're thinking," he said, more loudly than before. "The cherubim are the highest of our order, the most powerful of us all. Know that on Lucifer's creation, El called him perfect."

I turned toward him, openly studying him now. He had a broad forehead and long, high cheekbones. The angular lines of a short moustache exactly delineated the curve of his upper lip, which was perfectly matched to the lower one. A hint of stubble smattered his chin and neck, like lichen growing on a great, smooth stone.

"He called him perfect with good reason. Lucifer was his masterwork. He was powerful, anointed by G.o.d, and so very beautiful."

I thought I heard him sigh.

"Then what about seraphim?" I asked, not because of any spectacular knowledge of my own, but according to literary lore, CHERUBIM and SERAPHIM had once been the license plates on Anne Rice's two limousines.

"The seraphim are fearsome fighters, but the cherubim outrank them. And then there are the archangels. You've heard of Gabriel and Michael-"

There was a slight, just-perceptible intonation to his words when he spoke these names, as well as the name of Lucifer, and even his own name. Not quite an accent, it was more an elongation on the tongue, as though the pure names in another language might be unp.r.o.nounceable in ours. Hearing it now, I remembered it in the speech of the woman in the bookstore and of the man in the cafe.

"I won't go into detail about all the various kinds of cherubim and seraphim. It may be best that I not describe them, lest, with all those faces and wings, you think us a spiritual freak show."

Beyond his profile, a stained-gla.s.s saint stared out upon us both with hollow, fractured eyes. "And you? What about you?"

"Ah, me." He spread his hands on his lap. They were lighter colored on the inside, the creases in them dark. The calluses on his palms struck me as aberrant. A stainless-steel watch peered beneath the edge of his cuff. "I was a member of the Host. A s.h.i.+ning light, mere and marvelous."

"How did it happen then-your change, I mean?" The question tasted surreal on my lips.

Lucian reached up to rub the back of his neck. I had seen Sheila do the same at the onset of her migraines. "I should tell that story from the beginning. But this place isn't conducive to talking."

"Because of the crosses?"

"No, because the praying of those people is giving me a headache."

"The crosses don't bother you?"

"They should bother you a great deal more. They were used to kill humans."

I had not thought of that.

"Stay if you like, but I'm going." He rose and moved down the length of the pew to the side aisle where he'd entered. Two weeks ago I would have gladly let him go. I would have camped out, in fact, in the front pew and inquired about moving in. But now I needed to know what this, any of this, had to do with me.

This, the question that had niggled at me these last two weeks, was helped not at all by his cryptic answers.

We stepped out, blinking, into the cold afternoon light. Now I could see the wiry gray hairs above his ears, the dark spots dotting his cheeks, betraying his age. He had a presence about him, an unflappability that I found slightly unsettling. He was casually dressed, his pants not dissimilar to mine that day in the bookstore, albeit softer around the knees. To any other eye he might have been a local academic out for a casual weekend. An accountant on his day off. A tourist.

"So you popped up from h.e.l.l to meet me in church." I shoved my hands into my pockets.

"I've never been there."

"To church?"

"To h.e.l.l."

I squinted at him.

"You've got so much of this wrong, Clay. Your conventional wisdom lacks one thing: wisdom. None of us have been to h.e.l.l."

"So it doesn't really exist."

"Not now, no."

"So you mean you haven't been to h.e.l.l yet. yet."

He flashed me such a baleful glance that my heart tripped in my chest. I started down the street, stiffly, my shoulders having risen toward my ears in the chill. A moment later, the demon fell into step beside me.

"To begin my story I should say that my beginning predates yours by a brief infinity."

"You're not making sense." I didn't look at him.

"The beginning of the world is only the beginning of time. Your Scriptures, being written for your benefit, begin at the point where you enter history. But my beginning came long before."

"In heaven, I suppose."

"No, Eden."

"What, the garden of Eden?"

"Yes. That garden, the green one, was in Eden. And Eden is here. This." He spread his hands out toward the expanse of sidewalk in front of us. "Eden preexisted that garden and the first of your kind. It was Lucifer's-and my-home first."

I raised my brows.

"What-you thought the world was full of nothingness before your creation?" He gave a short laugh. "Rather ethnocentric of you, isn't it? Do you believe the earth is flat, too? Listen to me: Elohim created Eden. He also created us. And that includes Lucifer-which is important because no creation is equal to the creator. What that means for you is that, contrary to popular myth, Lucifer is no evil opposite of G.o.d."

"I thought Lucifer was G.o.d's nemesis."

He stopped. "Clay, for this to work you have to let go of that. This is not your so-called cla.s.sic human tale of the struggle between good and evil. Hades, but you humans always have a way of distorting the truth into something utterly simplistic and ba.n.a.l-not to mention trite."

We walked again, and for several moments there was nothing but the steady sound of our heels on the sidewalk and the occasional brittle leaf that skittered across it, joined from time to time by the orphaned bits of conversations from pa.s.sing pedestrians and the cars on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. In the distance a church bell chimed the half hour.

At length he said, "Elohim was my G.o.d before you ever existed. We called him that-'Mighty G.o.d and Creator'-though the name implies so much more. I say this for you because the fearful names we have known since those first days cannot be formed by human tongues."

I thought again of the barely perceptible lilt of his words that I had noticed earlier.

"El made a garden in Eden and lavished Lucifer with everything-all government, total power. He lived there like a favorite first son, the hawk to our sparrows, the jewel to our quartz."

"So why did he make you? Especially if he knew you would turn out . . . like this."

"I could ask you the same thing." But he didn't. "Why El made us, I've never known. One could surmise that El was lonely, but the fact is that he didn't really need us. You, created in his image, might actually have more insight into that question than I do. We're not so privileged as you in that way. As for me, my purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to wors.h.i.+p, to praise, to wait upon the word of El."

"That sounds really boring."

"Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one's created purpose."

I couldn't. "Why do you sometimes call him El El-irreverence?"

"Here is where your language fails you utterly. El El means 'Mighty G.o.d', though that does the meaning no justice. means 'Mighty G.o.d', though that does the meaning no justice. Elohim Elohim implies more, including plurality-'the G.o.d of G.o.ds,' you might say. Regardless of what you call him, he was all things to us then, which is very different from what he may be to you. Not a father-no, never that for us-but the reason for our very existence. The Great Initiator. Ever Enduring. Alpha and Omega." The demon sighed. "As for us, we were a sight to behold, glorious, unequivocal, each of us distinctly individual but of one purpose. s.h.i.+ning, more than brilliant; we had spent a brief infinity reflecting Shekinah glory like so many polished mirrors. How radiant we were! It was my happiest, most glorious moment. For a small eternity-if you can fathom such a thing-I was happy." implies more, including plurality-'the G.o.d of G.o.ds,' you might say. Regardless of what you call him, he was all things to us then, which is very different from what he may be to you. Not a father-no, never that for us-but the reason for our very existence. The Great Initiator. Ever Enduring. Alpha and Omega." The demon sighed. "As for us, we were a sight to behold, glorious, unequivocal, each of us distinctly individual but of one purpose. s.h.i.+ning, more than brilliant; we had spent a brief infinity reflecting Shekinah glory like so many polished mirrors. How radiant we were! It was my happiest, most glorious moment. For a small eternity-if you can fathom such a thing-I was happy."

There was poignancy in the rich timbre of his voice. Walking with me like this, he might have been any man retelling the tale of a happy, thirty-year marriage before his wife died. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. "So why did you turn your back on it?"

He tilted his head skyward, narrowed his eyes. "I was promised more."

We were on Brattle Street and had come to a drugstore advertising a post-Halloween sale. Masks hung in the window, a motley a.s.sortment of orcs, Klingons, zombies, and former presidents-the presidents looking too much like the zombies for any zombie's comfort. In the corner a red-faced Satan peered out between Yoda and Spider-Man. The sight of it startled me, as though Lucifer himself, having heard his name, had come to eavesdrop on us.

Lucian stopped before the red face, the stubby, polyurethane horns that protruded from the forehead. He studied it so thoughtfully I wondered if it were possible he hadn't ever seen one like it before.

"I remember the first time I ever saw a rendering of one of my kind," he said, finally, seeming to gaze beyond the gla.s.s, beyond even the store. "Belial took me to see it with such pa.s.sion and insistence that I expected a wonder, a thing of marvel-anything but the hideous vision before me with the man's body and bird's taloned feet. It was covered with fur like a mangy goat and had dark and hideous wings. I was stupefied and not a little offended. 'What kind of abomination was that supposed to be?' I demanded. Belial, finding this uproariously funny, bowed and pointed. 'Behold, the fearsome Belial!' he said, which was ridiculous, as he has always been beautiful."

He turned a baffled look on me. "I thought your mad and genius artists were supposed to succ.u.mb to higher visions beyond the corporeal world. But there you are, still painting your devils red with horns, making Lucifer, our s.h.i.+ning star, into a grotesque goat-man. And these are the images that remain to this day: ugly, marred, toppling from heaven, herded toward h.e.l.l by the swords of s.h.i.+ning blond men with stoic faces and bleached togas-Michael and Gabriel, I presume." He turned away.

"Just think," I said, in a moment of facetiousness, "you can dress up as a devil on Halloween and no one will recognize you." I regretted my recklessness the moment I said it.

"Just think," he said, too lightly, "you might pa.s.s me in the street and never know it. If I wished, you might even feel l.u.s.t for me."

He glanced sidelong at me, and I shrank back at the memory of copper hair, of a silver ankh swinging against smooth skin, pointing at the b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath.

"Why do you show up like this, in these different guises?" I hated the feeling of being caught always unawares.

"I like the feel of trying them out," he said, as though they were nothing more than new shoes or a bicycle.

I thought of the calluses on his hands, the telltale record of a history not his own. I wondered if they belonged to someone, or once had.

I shook the thought away. I might be a seeker, but there were some things I did not want to know.

ONE BLOCK FARTHER, LUCIAN stopped in front of a tea shop. "They have a good oolong here. Didn't you take a fancy to oolong in China?" He pushed through the gla.s.s-paned door of the shop.

I knew I had never mentioned the trip I had taken nearly twenty years ago. I had fallen in love with the country, and, at one point in our marriage, even suggested adopting a baby from China.

Of course, that was all moot now.

In a show of defiance, I did not order oolong but decaffeinated Earl Grey. The demon, for his part, preferred jasmine.

The wall at the back of the shop was plastered with academic, activist, and personal notices, ads seeking dog-sitters and lesbian roommates and advertis.e.m.e.nts for Pilates instruction and colonic irrigation. Lucian was silent as he plucked the tea ball from his cup and set it aside on the saucer. It occurred to me then, with a sense of strange intuition and even stranger incredulity, that he was procrastinating.

"You were promised more?"

He'd been right that first night in the cafe: I hadn't forgotten a phrase, a detail. While I'd never had an eidetic memory, his words came back to me with such repet.i.tive insistence that the only way I could exorcise them from my consciousness was to write them down. Even now his last words on the street echoed in my mind and, I suspected, would continue to do so until I was at my desk.

He ignored me, and I thought about prompting him again, but just then he did something so subtle as to wring at reason: He pursed his lips, the chapped skin creasing reluctantly, dry as a newly fallen leaf. And I marveled at the mundane aspects of his humanity, against which I must remember the truth of what he was: Demon. Demon. All around me life hummed along like a machine, oblivious to any sound but its own, as unaware of the interloper among its cogs and wheels as the diners in the cafe had been that first night, deafened by the drone of the everyday. All around me life hummed along like a machine, oblivious to any sound but its own, as unaware of the interloper among its cogs and wheels as the diners in the cafe had been that first night, deafened by the drone of the everyday.

"With the clock on the wall over there ticking so loudly," he said, "I've just realized I can't tell you how long it went on like that-my life before. Isn't that funny? I just can't say. You can point to the calendar and say you were born on such-and-such a date and married for five years. But as for me, I could not begin to guess. Eons must have pa.s.sed. Millennia. Ages. Or maybe it was really only a moment. I don't know. When one pre-exists time, an epoch can pa.s.s like a day, and who would know it? It's so cliche, a trite line from novels about lovers: 'Time had no meaning.' But that's how we were: enrapt, enthralled with our very situation, with every aspect of our circ.u.mstances, our whole purpose for being. It was the golden age of ages-of which every age since has been only the palest shadow."

He took the tea ball from the saucer, squeezed the hinges together just enough to crack the sphere open but not enough to let the ma.s.s of sodden leaves fall out. "It all ended with a glance."

"What do you mean, 'a glance'?"

"How does anything new begin? How does an extramarital affair begin?"

"I wouldn't know."

He looked up at me. "Then I'll tell you. With a glance. A thought. And the possibility of that thought acted upon. Even your Narcissus of legend, who might most resemble my master in this account, started his own infatuation with a glance into a pool where he found . . . himself."

He dropped the tea ball into his cup. He was silent for a moment, stirring the tea that had gone, so far, unsampled. "Clay, I want to tell you something. I'm going to tell you a secret. One I hardly dare whisper. When you write down this conversation and append it to the others, this is the page I would condemn to molder first were it not so central to everything."

I had a sudden vision of a demonic Pied Piper luring me not with music but with words and story to some unknown end.

"I was swept up in the ecstasy of wors.h.i.+p, of praising Elohim for all that he was and had been and was yet to be. And I had lifted my arm to s.h.i.+eld my eyes-the Shekinah glory is too great even for us. And I had wept with it, with the fervency of it, until my tears nearly choked me. My awareness of G.o.d was, in that moment, so great that I was overwhelmed. It was always that way." He didn't so much look at me as through me. "But this time, as I lowered my arm, the tears hung like prisms in my eyes, like crystals held up to the brilliance of the sun. And I gaped at the beauty of the garden, at the refracted beauty of my own kind filling it. Suddenly, one thing stood out to me as more brilliant than all the rest of that dazzling host, blinding me through the lens of my tears so that I wiped them from my eyes like scales."

"Lucifer," I whispered.

"Yes. Our prince and governor come down to walk among us like so much wheat in an open field. I was dazzled! So help me, I stared and thought myself blinded. Can you fathom it? Can you possibly understand? His head was more brilliant than your sun. His wings, like a metal so pure that your quicksilver is a pathetic comparison, glimmered like so much pave jewelry, crystals set so closely together as to appear like one winking eye of a diamond. Even his hands and feet were as perfect as unclouded ice, smooth as alabaster. But it was the power, power, the power and the glamour that overwhelmed me. I knew then, in a way I had not known before, that I stood in the presence of the greatest being under G.o.d. I staggered at the sight. Light. Glory. My beautiful one!" He closed his eyes as he spoke, each word falling like a boulder between us. the power and the glamour that overwhelmed me. I knew then, in a way I had not known before, that I stood in the presence of the greatest being under G.o.d. I staggered at the sight. Light. Glory. My beautiful one!" He closed his eyes as he spoke, each word falling like a boulder between us.

Lucian leaned his cheek into his hand. "And Lucifer, my prince, heard my heart and turned his eyes to me. It was almost more than I could bear, the direct brunt of that gaze-such a long and considering glance. As for me, I was rapt, seared by the stars, scorched by perfection. I fell down on my face, as I had before El a million times before, but this time to Lucifer. And my heart praised him-not for the work of the Creator in him, or even his office under G.o.d, but simply for the sake of his own magnificence. And Lucifer knew it."

"And that made you a demon?"

"No. The sin isn't in the temptation."

I could not help but think of Aubrey. I never knew when she crossed that line. I had tortured myself with trying to pinpoint exactly when she betrayed me-in spirit, if not yet in deed-and at what moment I lost her. Even after she was gone, I scoured phone receipts, credit card statements, the caller ID log. I reconstructed the entire schedule of her off-site meetings and business trips during our last month together, mad with it, obsessed despite the futility.

The demon curled his fingers around his teacup as though to warm his hands-another human gesture I found somehow grotesque-and said, "I sometimes wonder what he must have seen at that moment: a lowly angel, prostrate before him-a being beautiful in its own right but so dull by comparison? Or maybe a reflection of himself, cast back as though from the watery and unworthy mirror of Narcissus. I don't know. I don't know why he even looked at me. I suppose he felt my adulation and was pleased by it. In fact, I know he was."

"How do you know that?"

"I felt it. Keep in mind we aren't like you. When we share the same purpose, we are a legion of one accord. The perfect army. So I felt it, too, when he looked away from Elohim, and then at me . . . and finally, at himself. And among our perfect awareness, the ripple it caused spread through us like the falling of dominoes, one against the other. But unlike your ivory pieces with their neat and shuffling clinks, the momentum of that disturbance was a roar-thunder-in my ears. You can't comprehend what it is for an angelic being to hear the fabric of perfection rent." He rubbed his forehead, pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's deafening . . . deafening. And Lucifer rose up, inspired by that mayhem, his eyes terrible, his bearing resolute. How beautiful, how awful, was the look on his face! I believe the sight of it will be with me forever, burned into the retina of my mind, the sentence of perfect recollection."

He dropped his hand and abruptly stood up. "More hot water?"

4.

As he rounded the bend of the front counter, I fully expected that he might not return. To my surprise, though, he came back a moment later with a small pot of water. He refilled my cup before pouring a drop into his own-all the cup would allow, as he had never drunk any of it.