Chapter XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
Jennifer had long ago realized that what she saw was not a real lake—or was it more properly an unreal lagoon ? She could never be sure—just as the dead were not being carried out to an actual sea. Instead, it was like a film projected on a layer of smoke over a chasm, a falsehood concealing the terrifying vastness beneath: call it, perhaps, eternity. Whatever name it was given, the reality would be sufficient to unnerve even the dead were they to be confronted by it. Better to disguise it, to present it as something welcoming: a warm, still body of water that lulled whatever passed for their remaining faculties, gently tranquilizing them so the transition would not be so disturbing and they would accept an easeful drowning.
The stone thrown by Jennifer broke the surface but left no ripples as it sank. Slowly, and without obvious surprise, the figures by the lakeside turned to see who had thrown it. In their faces, Jennifer glimpsed versions of all those she had loved or who had cared about her in life—friends, a kindergarten teacher, her favorite crossing guard, her mother’s family, her mother—the angels presenting themselves as amalgams of joy and consolation, drawn from whatever they picked up from her, because Jennifer could feel them sifting through her memories, seeking what they might use to calm her. They were considerate intruders, but intruders nonetheless.
But they had underestimated her. Time moved differently here, if it could really be said to move at all, but whatever the manner of its progress, Jennifer had spent too much of it in that place to be so easily fooled. Just as she had come to grasp the reality of the lake and sea, so also did she perceive what lay behind the angels’ facade: the awfulness of their beauty, the violence of their passions, the blindness of their loyalty. Under the skin of each—spotless, unwrinkled—cyclonic spirits roiled.
She had been preparing for their coming, even before her mother’s warning. Now, as they tried to comb her history, drifting through the version of her former home in which she stored all she once had been and something of what she now was, they came upon doors locked against them, toyboxes that would not open, photographs that disintegrated at a glance, books that could not be read. Jennifer felt their puzzlement shade into annoyance. She was a child and a child should not be able to do this. But surely a child had nothing to hide, or nothing worth hiding, so they had no reason to be worried.
“Hello, Jennifer,” said the female, and in her voice, as in her appearance, Jennifer detected dissonance. The form the angels had assumed bore no relation to their actuality; they had appeared as a man and a woman because that would be less threatening to a child.
“Hello,” said Jennifer.
The female took a step forward and Jennifer retreated a step in turn. The female looked to the male, as if uncertain how to proceed in the face of such wariness.
“We don’t mean you harm,” he said. “We saw you by the water’s edge and were concerned for you. We’d like to know why you stay here, why you don’t join the others.”
Jennifer had to try not to lie; the angels would pick up on a lie of commission. But a lie of omission? That, she thought, was different. It was why she had spent so long training herself to visualize locked doors and keyholes without keys.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she replied.
“For whom?”
“My father.”
“If he’s not here, it’s because it’s not yet his time. He will be with you soon, I promise. In the end, all pass this way. But it’s not right that you should be so isolated. Those who wander are often unable to find their way back, or they’re taken by the ones in the woods. It would be safer for you to come with us. We will walk with you into the sea, and when you surface, it will be into a new life.”
“I’m afraid that I’ll forget him,” said Jennifer. “I’m afraid that he’ll be lost to me and I to him.”
She spotted a crack in the male’s veneer. Redness flared, and she knew she had hit upon a truth.
“It is a different way of being,” he responded, but only after a pause.
Ah, so you have to be wary of lying too.
“Nevertheless,” said the female, “we think you should let us take you away.”
Jennifer regarded the angels. To them, she was a misguided, mildly recalcitrant child who required only to be steered gently in the right direction. They did not know who she was, which meant they were also unaware of who her father was. Either they had not been given that intelligence before being dispatched or—
Or he had been forgotten. Was that even possible? If so, the cycles of pain he endured were the actions of a system set automatically to repeat, like a torture device activated before being left unattended, or an eternal oubliette. Jennifer, her face as much a mask as those of the angels, endured a cascade of emotions. First, rage at such a punishment for its own sake; then, despair that it should continue without the possibility of an ending, whether through mercy or redemption; and finally, a chilly sense of conviction.
We will stop it, he and I.
“I choose to remain,” said Jennifer.
The female looked sad, the male angry. Jennifer prepared to run, though she doubted she’d get very far. If they were determined to force her to leave, there would be nothing she could do to stop them.
Suddenly, Jennifer became aware of footsteps approaching from behind. She reacted to the new threat, expecting to be confronted by another angel, only to see a burly, bearded man wearing a clerical collar with a worn black shirt, his hands buried deep in the pockets of ill-fitting trousers. Through the straps of his sandals, gray socks showed, his big toe poking from a hole in the left.
“Why don’t you two just fuck off back where you came from,” he said, “and not be bothering young girls.”
Understandably, the angels looked dumbfounded. Even Jennifer was taken aback by the newcomer’s temerity. After all, what kind of priest swore at angels?
In the end, it was the female who spoke first.
“You are lost,” she said to the man, not without pity. “You want company in the purgatory you’ve created for yourself. But the path has never been closed to you and never will be. It was you who elected to turn away from it. Like this child, you can choose to come with us. There is a place for you, Martin, as there is for all. But if you’re not yet ready to accept it, don’t lead her astray out of malice. You were a shepherd once, when that collar still meant something to you.”
The man addressed as Martin tilted his head, like one listening to a melody formerly familiar but now bygone.
“It’s been a while since I’ve heard that name spoken aloud,” he said. “I’d almost forgotten it was mine. And you’re not far off quoting Matthew 7:7 to me, which I regard as a cliché that should be beneath you. Next, you’ll tell me that Matthew himself is somewhere over the rainbow, ready to give me a personal performance backed by an orchestra of harpists and a choir of cherubim.”
The male angel extended a hand.
“Let it end, Martin. Show the child that she has nothing to fear. All you have to do is reach out.”
But Martin kept his hands fixed in his pockets.
“You heard what she said. She doesn’t want to go with you. She’s waiting for her father. If you’re worried about her being alone, which is a credit to your tenderness, let your minds be at rest. I’ll keep an eye on her, because I don’t want to go with you either.”
The male let his hand drop. Nothing more was said by him or the female, and then they were gone.
Jennifer looked to Martin.
“Will they be back?” she asked.
“That depends. They can’t compel you to go with them, but they’ll try to wear you down, so eventually you might be tempted to give in just to shut them up. Those two are bureaucrats, divine box-checkers. The Vatican was full of fuckers like them. Your presence here is an irritant. You’re a child who refuses to line up with the other kids at school and risks setting a bad example. They’ll stew over the problem and try to devise a different approach. They may even decide it’s in their best interests to say nothing more about it and pretend they never noticed you. But if that doesn’t work—”
His expression became apprehensive.
“Well,” he continued, “others might be summoned, and it would be best for you to avoid some of them.”
“Why?”
“Because they could pick up on what the first two missed: that you’re different, and if that’s true, the one you’re waiting for may also be different, which is when the real probing will commence. You’ll have to watch your step from now on. Like the poet said, the woods are lovely, dark, and deep. I’d consider keeping to them, if I were you. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Jennifer stared into the trees.
“I don’t like the woods,” she said. “They scare me.”
Martin laughed. It was a great, booming sound, and Jennifer saw the drowning dead react with confusion to this alien outburst of joy.
“Let me tell you this,” he said. “Anything in there is more scared of you than you could ever be of them. You move between worlds, with agency in each, which makes you very special and very dangerous. Even the ones who don’t actively fear you will keep their distance. They certainly won’t try to hurt you. It’s not in their interests. They’ve decided that whatever you’re up to, it can’t make their position any worse.”
“And what about you?” Jennifer asked. “Are you frightened of me?”
The laughter had left behind a smile. Jennifer watched it die.
“Oh yes,” Martin replied, “very much so, because I have an inkling of what you plan to do when your father finally arrives. You see, I knew him many years ago, when your half sister was just an infant. We were looking for a statue, a statue of an angel. He found it. I died. I thought he was an unusual man then, but I was wrong: he’s so much more than that. Now he’s the only thing that frightens me more than you do.”
“Will you try to stop us?”
“Stop you? I doubt that I could, even if I wanted to—which I don’t. Like you, I’ve had an opportunity to reflect. Pain will do that to a man. I can remember my death, the agony of it. I’m just glad I no longer have cause to sleep, or else I imagine I’d be revisiting that moment in my nightmares, which would be like dying all over again. Things are bad enough as they are.”
He pointed to the dead.
“How many of them remember their passing, do you think? How many went easy? Fewer than went hard, I’d wager. So you and I, we’ll wait together: for your father and for the reckoning to come. If you need me, call my name. You know it now. I’ll never be far away.”
He made as if to leave, but she called out to him.
“Stay.” She realized her tone made it sound like an order, and she recalled what Martin had said about being scared of her. “If you’d like to,” she added.
She saw from his face that he might be about to weep for gratitude. His loneliness was like a fog that surrounded him.
“I would like that a lot,” he said.
He found a patch of grass to sit on and a tree against which to rest his back.
“Tell me about my father,” said Jennifer. “Tell me how you came to know him…”