Read The Angel of History Online
Authors: Rabih Alameddine
The Angel of History
An Unnecessary Woman
The Hakawati
I, the Divine
The Perv
Koolaids
A NOVEL
Rabih
Alameddine
Copyright © 2016 by Rabih Alameddine
Cover design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
“Danse Macabre,” copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W.H. Auden; from W. H. AUDEN COLLECTED POEMS by W. H. Auden.
Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or
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.
First published by Grove Atlantic, October 2016
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-8021-2576-7
eISBN 978-0-8021-9011-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alameddine, Rabih, author.
Title: The angel of history / Rabih Alameddine.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016018029| ISBN 9780802125767 (hardback) | ISBN
9780802190116 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary.
Classification: LCC PS3551. L215 A83 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016018029
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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For Randa,
Rania, Raya, and Nicole
We must forget in order to remain present, forget in order not to die, forget in order to remain faithful.
—Marc Augé,
Oblivion
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
—Milan Kundera,
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Death
There is a dignity in decay, Satan thought, as he regarded the terra-cotta planter basking on the kitchen windowsill. The sage shrublet growing within was silver-green fresh, yet seemed puerile and fatuous, like an ill-mannered child compared with its cracked, aging container. From the living room, Satan could just see the only window in the dim kitchen, a small rectangle above the always dry dish drainer that had not held more than a single plate in months. Jacob ate his lonely dinners standing next to the counter every night of the week, staring at the blank wall like a waiter in an empty restaurant.
“Are we ready?” Satan asked. “Shall we begin the interview?”
He leaned forward a little in his seat, a black olefin armchair that contrasted with his white suit, and reached for the mini digital recorder on the coffee table, a gesture
to emphasize his question; he placed his thumb on the red button but hesitated before he pressed, waiting for some sign from Death that they could begin.
“Wait,” Death said. “What interview?”
“You can’t have forgotten already,” Satan said. “You agreed to do this interview. It’s why you’re here.”
“Sorry, I was thinking of something else.” All in black, of course, Death shifted in his chair to a more comfortable position. He had an unmistakable whiff of history about him, and of formaldehyde. “I wish it on record,” Death said in a slightly amused voice, a glint returning to his eye, “that you wanted me here. Your asking for my help is highly unusual. It makes me feel so—I don’t know exactly—needed, maybe even happy. I want to shout from rooftops, from mountaintops: you like me, you really like me. You want us to work together, Father. I want that in a memo.”
“Fine, most fine,” Satan said. “Let’s tape your gloating for the record, shall we?”
Satan disliked the machine’s unobtrusive silence. Long gone were the days of cassette tapes, or better yet, reel-to-reel players whose fluttery noises might have unsettled his interviewee. He had made sure to place himself between Death and the door, anything to discomfit his nemesis. Almighty Death, Lord of the Underworld, Master of Lethe, imperturbable Death, whose pale angular face and bloodless lips rarely exhibited anything but frosty inviolability, whose usual demeanor was imperiously incurious, looked interested, maybe eager.
“Go ahead,” Satan said. “The machine is recording. Tell everyone that I asked you here to negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” Death said. His black beret drooped rakishly over one ear. “What’s to negotiate? You’re losing Jacob and you want my help.”
Satan rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner. He allowed himself a long sigh. “On this evening my first interview with Mr. D dealing with Jacob.”
“Wait,” Death said, fixing his pert green eyes on Satan. “What do you mean ‘first’? Will I be required to meet with you again? I agreed to an interview—just one. You said we must help your protégé. Fine. Though why I should help him or you is beyond me. Work with me, you said. We need you, you said. We haven’t even started and you want more. What will I get for all my troubles? Tell me.”
“You get my company and so much else,” Satan said. “You could have rejected my invitation, but you’re here. You may not wish to admit it, but you love him as much as any of us. Look, I can’t do this project without you. It’s our dance, you and I.”
Death sat up in his chair, a grimace flickering briefly across his face. “Do you think this is going to work?” he said, contemplating his finely tapered fingernails, recently manicured and polished in glossy blue-black. “You don’t know, do you, Father? A shot in the dark is what this is. Tell me you have a plan at least.”
“I do have a plan,” Satan said, emphasizing his statement with a grin and a simple eyebrow lift. “Let us begin.” He spoke into the microphone. “On this evening, this thing of darkness joins me.”
“And you’re the prince of light,” Death said with a sneer.
Satan dismissed the interruption. “We conduct this interview in Jacob’s apartment, which we both know intimately. My partner is unshaven, seems harried and duressed, for in his look defiance lurks. He can’t seem to remove his tormented gaze from the photos on the fireplace mantel, all the young men he snatched well before their time. This interviewer believes that guilt nibbles at my friend’s usually arid heart, that heinous acts and egregious errors have been committed.”
“Oh, come, come,” Death said. “Why are you lying? Well, that’s a silly question.” As he lifted his arm to flick a bony finger, his sleeve dropped and revealed an intricate forearm tattoo: the rape of the Sabine women collaged with various other slayings, Daisy Duck hanging from the gallows, Nietzsche roasting on a spit, Peter Pan drawn and quartered. “Did you bring me here to provoke me? I can play that game. But tormented gaze? Me? Please.”
Death stared at the pictures, six of them in silver frames with filigreed roses, Jacob’s friends looking young and deathless. He saw everything that had been on the mantelpiece before Jacob’s roommate began to spend every night with her lover, before the recent rearrangement: two netsuke Buddhas, one lounging and laughing, the other meditating; a black onyx rosary with twenty-two beads plus one; a small, suffering Jesus with his cross on a short pedestal; and a sand-colored seashell that whispered its longing for home. All were now bunched closer together, a mismatched potpourri, in order to make room for the photographs, each with a small branch of dancing lady in a tiny silver vase before it, yellow oncidiums. The poet mourned anew.
“I’m sorry,” Satan said. “I was trying to set the scene. This is for Jacob, not for us. He needs us to help him remember, to harrow the soil and dislodge the silt.”
“But you’re doing such a magnificent job,” Death said. “Too magnificent. You’ve been back in his life for a year and some, and already your spade-fork has unearthed so much of what he long ago buried. He remembers so often now that he’s seeking professional help.”
“And thou art most gracious,” Satan said. “Yet my role here is not done.”
“He will probably check himself into that nuthouse called St. Francis.”
“I loathe that narcissistic nincompoop of a saint,” Satan said.
“We can agree on that at least,” said Death. “Holier-than-thou, PETA-idolizing numbnuts.”
“On that convivial note,” said Satan, “and without further ado, we begin. How long have you known our boy?”
Death sighed. “Since conception, of course. Where there is congress, I am.”
“Why do you remember him?” Satan asked. “What was so special? Of all conceptions, why his?”
“Well, I remember him for many reasons,” Death said, “probably the same as yours. He is an Arab, so I would have to attend to his loved ones sooner rather than later. He should have accompanied me early on, such a sickly child he was, but you chose him.” He inclined his head against the chair, shut his eyes for a moment, remembering; when he tilted his head back, the beret returned slightly off-kilter, his eyes were brighter, and a rascally grin creased his face. “I tell you, Arabs make my life worth living, such pleasure
they have given me through the years, just as much as Jews. Arab Jews are the best, of course, their lives full of suffering and dying and no little whining, Yemeni Jews, my, my. But back to Jacob, he is a strange pervert. Obviously, he was wedded to me, so I kept watch, as you have.”
“Conception?”
“Oh, that,” Death said. “I remember his wondrous conception because of the carpet, what a treasure, what a fucking glorious masterpiece. How could I forget that carpet?”
Carving Poems
After letting me off, the taxi driver reversed out of the alley at an unholy speed, almost as if he were going to take off into the quilt of lowering clouds now that he was unburdened. I watched with a certain level of dispassion. I had to remind myself that most likely, his risking so much to leave quickly had little to do with me. Perhaps he was in a hurry, hoping to find another fare before returning to his small one-bedroom apartment, or maybe he always drove that way when he did not have a client in the backseat. I had said not a word after I told him where I wished to go. Maybe he wanted to be as far away from the Crisis Psych Clinic as possible.
I turned around, had to pay attention to where I placed my feet because of the numerous puddles around me. It had just stopped raining, so maybe the driver wished to get home before the storm rebooted. Fresh rain ameliorated some of
the noxious odors of the alley, less urine, less decay, less putrid human soup. The aging spherical lamp above the clinic’s door graced me with a soft, diffuse light, made a sump on the sidewalk glimmer. I walked into the brick building, wondered if it was earthquake-safe since its sloping floor did not inspire confidence.
An older receptionist with frizzy hair dyed satanic red was manning three windows, two under signs that read
TRIAGE
, and the other
REGISTRATION
. She was Triage at the moment, yet gave the impression that she could slide over to register me before you could say Mephistopheles, or even just Poodle, which was how Satan made his first appearance to Faust, as a black poodle, Here I am! The redhead receptionist smiled awkwardly, kept updating her cheerful demeanor even though I was unable to reciprocate. In reply to whether she could help me, I told her that I needed to see a psychiatrist, I was having hallucinations, hearing Satan’s voice again—again after a long absence, and his voice was becoming more insistent. My employers wanted me to seek help, it seemed I made the attorneys uncomfortable even though I had little if any contact with them and preferred it that way. I’d had contact with Greg, also a redhead and a lawyer at the firm, but he’d been dead for a quite a while, almost twenty years now. Her face did not change expression, stuck in smile. Yes, having hallucinations and being in contact with dead redheads qualified me to see someone at the clinic. I passed Triage, praise be. Let me get you to fill out this form, she said, handing me a stack of sheets in small print, which told me that it might be time to update my eyeglass prescription.
A sign on the peeling white wall to my right promised that the clinic would provide quality medical and
psychological services with compassion, dignity, and respect for its clients in a collaborative environment. In the spirit of collaboration, the receptionist said she considered my employers wonderful for allowing me to take time off to deal with my little problem, for not firing me, because so few people, and fewer companies, understood that people like me needed to see a doctor to work things out like everybody else. She went on and on while my pen tried to jot the right words on the correct line and check the appropriate boxes. Her voice seemed déjà vu, or rather déjà entendu, but I couldn’t place where I had heard it before; it seemed to emanate independently of her, as if she were speaking not out of her mouth but out of the miasma surrounding her, as if the air particles themselves vibrated to carry her voice, which they did, or so science told us.
I was lost, Doc. I would not have come to the clinic had this horrid day not dawned with the news of another drone strike in Yemen, this morning’s killings closer to home. Six men, one woman, two boys, and one girl, smithereened with one Hellfire, all al-Qaeda militants according to a Yemeni military official but not according to the CIA, which rarely commented on its killings, in the southern province of Abyan, in the small village of Mahfad, my mother’s village, which may or may not have been where I was born, my mother could not remember, because even though she had just returned there, she left or was kicked out as she was unwed. Drone killings were so regular these days that they merited barely a mention in the newspaper or on news programs, but I had yet to grow inured.
Redhead receptionist spoke loudly, so I paid attention and noted that she had black Frida Kahlo eyebrows and a
squint nose, she told me I didn’t remember her but she did me, she didn’t recognize me at first, it had been twenty years maybe, I had grown older, she had grown older and redder, ha-ha, but as soon as she heard my name she recognized me as the one and only Jacob, the clinic’s infamous poet. I had no idea what she was talking about. I had arrived at this clinic one night years ago, I remembered that fact but not her, I was in some form of fugue, delivered here by Jim or another worried friend, I was exhausted and strung out, probably from speed, unable to cope with the dying. I remember coming here before being admitted to St. Francis Hospital for three days. That was all I knew before she reminded me. It seemed that while I waited for the doctor I had carved a four-line stanza into the wall of a room and signed my name. I had used an unfurled paper clip, or so everybody decided after the fact, because they had searched me before putting me in the room as protocol required, and I should not have had anything that would cause damage to a wall or to a vein, and they had to change their search procedures because of my fabulous stunt. For months, whenever regulars complained about having to suffer the new indignities, they were told to blame the poet, which I thought was delightful, and the receptionist laughed and laughed, a joyous sound, and earthy. I didn’t remember the act or the poem. It was an original, she said, and one of the residents thought it was strangely amusing if not terribly good, he copied it before the patch of wall was spackled and repainted, he handed it out to each visitor to the clinic as he or she was peeled and poked, but then the resident died, and everyone just assumed I was dead like all the rest of us.
What was the poem? She could not remember exactly, it had been so long, but she remembered I was Egyptian, and she had thought of me when millions of my people gathered in Tahrir Square and toppled our dictator. I told her I wasn’t Egyptian, which confused her. Wasn’t I with my mother Catherine in Mount Lebanon, which was in the Sinai? I did not wish to explain once again that the Middle East was not one country, that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was only a metaphorical mother, I told the receptionist of course everything was in the Sinai, we were all there, the Middle East was one big jumble of odoriferous trash. My father was Lebanese, my mother Yemeni, I spent a few years of my childhood in Cairo, so you could say I was Egyptian, I was all Arabs, look how dark. We laughed and laughed, and I asked whether she was going to search and poke me with the procedure I had inaugurated, whether we should call it autoeroticism, and we laughed and laughed some more, and she said not her, but the big guy was going to, and on cue, the big guy arrived in the waiting room, looking like no one if not Lou Ferrigno, in an ill-fitting white T-shirt that highlighted every steroid-inflated bulge, a teal Lipitor logo emblazoned above his prominent nipple. Would I be able to take him home with me after I was done here, I asked, and all three of us laughed and laughed, and Ferrigno was much bigger than me, his hand could have wrapped twice around my biceps, but only once was needed as he led me into a room.
Together alone Ferrigno’s eyes avoided me, I thought he wanted me naked but I felt bare already, as if I were skinless. I, Marsyas, you, hulky hunky Apollo. He would not look at me and that was all right. I closed my eyes, and
you know who was there in my head, sitting next to the examining table. Don’t worry, Doc, I’m not crazy, I knew Satan wasn’t there, I knew I was imagining the indefatigable Iblis as I saw him, I needed company, he was always there. His blazing, insanely blue eyes would not leave me as he said, Let’s get out of this goddamn place.