Angelology (24 page)

Gabriella and I found seats in the back of the chapel as Dr. Seraphina arranged her papers and began her lecture.

“Today I will share a story familiar to most of you in some form or other. As the founding story of our discipline, its central position in history is indisputable, its poetic beauty unassailable. We begin in the years before the Great Flood, when heaven dispatched a fleet of two hundred angels called the Watchers to monitor the activities of creation. The chief Watcher, according to these accounts, was named Semjaza. Semjaza was beautiful and commanding, the very image of angelic bearing. His chalk-white skin, pale eyes, and golden hair marked the ideal of heavenly beauty. Leading two hundred angels through the vault of the heavens, Semjaza came to rest in the material world. Among his charges were Araklba, Rameel, Tamlel, Ramlel, Danel, Ezeqeel, Baraqijal, Asael, Armaros, Batarel, Ananel, Zaqiel, Samsapeel, Satarel, Turel, Jomjael, Kokabiel, Araqiel, Shamsiel, and Sariel.

“The angels moved among the children of Adam and Eve unseen, living quietly in the shadows, hiding in mountains, taking shelter where humanity would not find them. They traveled from region to region, following the movements of men. In this fashion they discovered the populous civilizations along the Ganges, the Nile, the Jordan, and the Amazon. They lived quietly in the outer regions of human activity, dutifully observing the ways of man.

“One afternoon, in the era of Jared, when the Watchers were stationed on Mount Hermon, Semjaza saw a woman bathing in a lake, her brown hair twisting about her. He called the Watchers to the edge of the mountain, and together the majestic beings looked upon the woman. According to numerous doctrinal sources, it was then that Semjaza suggested the Watchers choose wives from among the children of men.

“No sooner had he spoken these words than Semjaza grew anxious. Aware of the penalty for disobedience—he had witnessed the fall of the rebel angels—he reasserted his plan. He said, ‘The Daughters of Men should be ours. But if you do not follow me, I will suffer the penalty of this great sin alone.’

“The Watchers made a pact with Semjaza, swearing to suffer the penalties with their leader. They knew that the union was forbidden and that their pact broke every law in heaven and earth. Nonetheless, the Watchers descended Mount Hermon and presented themselves to human women. The women took these strange creatures as their husbands and soon became pregnant. After some time children were born to the Watchers and their wives. These creatures were called Nephilim.

“The Watchers observed their children as they grew. They saw that they were different from their mothers and also different from the angels. Their daughters grew to be taller and more elegant than human women; they were intuitive and psychic; they possessed the physical beauty of the angels. The boys grew to be taller and stronger than normal men; they reasoned with shrewdness; they possessed the intelligence of the spiritual world. As a gift, the Watchers brought their sons together and taught them the art of warfare. They taught the boys the secrets of fire—how to kindle and keep it, how to harness it for cooking and energy. This was a gift so precious that the Watchers would be mythologized in human legend, most notably in the story of Prometheus. The Watchers taught their sons metallurgy, an art the angels had perfected but kept hidden from humanity. The Watchers demonstrated the art of working precious metals into bracelets and rings and necklaces. Gold and gemstones were pried from the ground, polished and made into objects, and assigned value. The Nephilim stored their wealth, hoarding gold and grain. The Watchers showed their daughters how to use dyes for cloth and how to color their eyelids with glittering minerals ground into powder. They adorned their daughters, causing jealousy among the human women.

“The Watchers taught their children how to fashion tools that would make them stronger than men, instructing them to melt metal and fashion swords, knives, shields, breastplates, and arrowheads. Understanding the power the tools gave them, the Nephilim made caches of fine, sharp weapons. They hunted and stored meat. They protected their belongings with violence.

“And there were other gifts the Watchers gave their children. They taught their wives and daughters secrets even more powerful than fire or metallurgy. They separated the women from the men, taking them away from the city and traveling deep into the mountains, where they showed the women how to cast spells and to use herbs and roots in medicines. They gave them the secret of the magical arts, teaching them a system of symbols to record their spells. Soon scrolls were passed among them. The women—who had until then been at the mercy of men’s strength—became powerful and dangerous.

“The Watchers divulged more and more of these heavenly secrets to their wives and daughters:

“With these gifts the Nephilim organized into a tribe, arming themselves and taking control of land and resources. They perfected the art of warfare. They began to amass more and more power over humanity. They identified themselves as lords of the earth, cutting out huge domains of land and claiming the kingdoms as their own. They took slaves and made flags to represent their armies. They divided their realms, assigning men to be soldiers, merchants, and laborers to serve them. Equipped with the eternal secrets and a hunger for power, the Nephilim dominated mankind.

“As the Nephilim ruled over the earth and men perished, mankind cried to heaven for help. Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel, the archangels who had observed the Watchers from their first descent to the world, also monitored the progress of the Nephilim.

“When commanded, the archangels confronted the Watchers, surrounding them in a ring of fire. They disarmed their brothers. Once defeated, the Watchers were shackled and transported to a remote, unpopulated cavern high in the mountains. At the lip of the abyss, their chains heavy upon them, the Watchers were ordered to descend. Through a crevice in the earth’s crust they fell, plummeting deeper and deeper until they came to rest in a prison of darkness. From the depths they grieved for air and light and their lost freedom. Separated from heaven and earth, awaiting the day of their release, they prayed for heaven’s forgiveness. They called out for their children to save them. God ignored their pleas. The Nephilim did not come.

“The angel Gabriel, messenger of good news, could not abide the Watchers’ anguish. In a moment of pity, he threw his lyre to his fallen brothers so that they might diminish their suffering with music. Even as the lyre fell, Gabriel realized his mistake: The lyre’s music was seductive and powerful. The lyre could be used to the Watchers’ benefit.

“Over time the Watchers’ granite prison came to be called the underworld, the land of the dead where heroes descended to find eternal life and wisdom. Tartarus, Hades, Kurnugia, Annwn, hell—the legends grew as the Watchers, chained to the pit, cried for their release. Even today, somewhere in the depths of the earth, they cry to be saved.

“It has been a source of speculation as to why the Nephilim did not rescue their fathers,” Dr. Seraphina said in conclusion. “Surely the Nephilim would have been stronger with the assistance of the Watchers, and surely they would have assisted in their release if they had the power to do so. But the Watchers’ prison remains unknown. It is in this mystery that our work takes root.”

Dr. Seraphina was a gifted speaker, with a dramatic ability to animate her point for first-year students, a talent that not many of our professors possessed. As a result of her efforts, she often appeared exhausted by the end of an hour’s lecture, and that day was no exception. Looking up from her notes, she announced a short break. Gabriella gestured for me to follow her, and, leaving the chapel by a side exit, we walked through a series of narrow hallways until we reached an empty courtyard. Dusk had fallen, and a warm autumn evening settled over us, scattering shadows on the flagstones. A great beech tree towered above the courtyard, its skin strangely mottled, as if it suffered from leprosy. The Valkos’ lectures could last for hours, often bleeding into the night, and I was keen to take in the outdoor air. I wanted to ask Gabriella’s opinion about the lecture—indeed, I had grown to be her friend through such analysis—but saw that she was in no mood.

Taking a cigarette case from the pocket of her jacket, Gabriella offered one to me. When I refused, as I always did, she merely shrugged. It was a shrug I had come to recognize, a slight but insouciant gesture that made it clear how much she disapproved of my inability to enjoy myself.
Celestine the naïf
, the shrug seemed to say;
Celestine, child of the provinces.
Gabriella had taught me much by her small rejections and silences, and I had always watched her with particular care, noticing the way she dressed, what she read, the way she wore her hair. In the past weeks, her clothes had become prettier, more revealing. Her makeup, which had always been distinct, had become darker and more pronounced. The spectacle I had witnessed the previous morning suggested the reason for this change, but still her manner captured my interest. Despite everything, I looked up to her as one does to an older sister.

Gabriella lit her cigarette with a lovely gold lighter and inhaled deeply, as if to demonstrate all that I was missing.

“How beautiful,” I said, taking the lighter from her and turning it in my hand, the gold burnishing to a roseate hue in the evening light. I was tempted to ask Gabriella to tell me how such an expensive lighter had come into her possession, but I stopped myself. Gabriella discouraged even the most superficial questions. Even after a year of seeing each other every day, we spoke very little about our personal lives. I settled, therefore, upon a simple statement of fact. “I haven’t seen it before.”

“It belongs to a friend,” she said without meeting my eye. Gabriella had no friends but me—she ate with me, studied with me, and if I happened to be occupied, she preferred solitude to forming new friendships—and so I knew at once it belonged to her lover. Surely she must have discerned that her secrecy would make me curious. I could not restrain myself from asking her a direct question.

“What sort of friend?” I said. “I ask because you have seemed so distracted from our work lately.”

“Angelology is more than studying old texts,” Gabriella said. Her look of reproach suggested that my vision of our endeavor at the school was deeply flawed. “I have given everything to my work.”

Unable to mask my feelings, I said, “Your attention has been overwhelmed by something else, Gabriella.”

“You don’t know the first thing about the powers that control me,” Gabriella said. Although she had meant to respond with her typical haughtiness, I detected a crack of desperation in her manner. My questions had surprised and hurt her.

“I know more than you think,” I said, hoping that a direct confrontation would lead her to confess everything. I’d never before taken such a strident tone with her. The error of my approach was evident before I had finished speaking.

Snatching the lighter from me and tucking it into the pocket of her jacket, Gabriella tossed her cigarette onto the slate flagstones and walked away.

 

When I returned to the chapel, I found my seat next to Gabriella. She had placed her jacket upon my chair, saving it for me, but she refused even to glance my way as I sat. I could see that she had been crying—a faint ring of black smudged the edges of her eyes where tears had mixed with the kohl. I wanted to speak with her. I was desperate for her to open her heart to me, and I longed to help her overcome whatever error in judgment had befallen her. But there was no time to talk. Dr. Raphael Valko took his wife’s place behind the podium, arranging a sheaf of papers as he prepared to give a portion of the lecture. And so I placed my hand upon her arm and smiled, to let her know that I was sorry. My gesture was met with hostility. Gabriella pulled away, refusing even to look at me. Leaning back in the hard wooden chair, she crossed her legs and waited for Dr. Raphael to begin.

During my first months of study, I learned that there were two distinct sets of opinions regarding the Valkos. Most students adored them. Drawn in by the Valkos’ wit, their arcane knowledge, and their dedication to pedagogy, these students hung upon their every word. I, along with the majority, belonged to this group. A minority of our peers remained less adoring. They found the Valkos’ methods suspect and their joint lectures pretentious. Although Gabriella would never allow herself to be categorized with either lot, and had never confessed how she felt about Dr. Raphael and Dr. Seraphina’s lectures, I suspected that she was critical of the Valkos, just as her uncle had been in the assembly gathered at the Athenaeum. The Valkos were outsiders who had worked their way to the top of the academy, while Gabriella’s family position gave her instant rank. I had often listened to Gabriella’s opinions about our teachers, and I knew that her ideas often diverged from the Valkos’.

Dr. Raphael tapped the edge of the podium to quiet the room and began his lecture.

“The origins of the First Angelic Cataclysm are often contested,” he began. “In fact, looking over the various accounts of this cataclysmic battle in our own collection, I found thirty-nine conflicting theories about just how it began and how it ended. As most of you know, scholarly methods for dissecting historical events of this nature have changed, evolved—some would say devolved—and so I will be frank with you: My method, like that of my wife, has changed over time to include multiple historical perspectives. Our readings of texts, and the narratives we create from fragmentary material, reflect our larger goals. Of course, as future scholars, you will draw your own theories about the First Angelic Cataclysm. If we have succeeded, you will leave this lecture with the kernel of doubt that inspires individual and original research. Listen carefully, then. Believe and doubt, accept and dismiss, transcribe and revise all that you learn here today. In this way the future of angelological scholarship will be sound.”