The Angel of History (16 page)

As the world turned to darkness, I waited in the room all by myself, through the page-sized window I saw dark gray blackening from the top of one building to the top of another. Then the door opened and smacked into the wall. Sorry, she said, embarrassed, almost giggling, as she strolled amiably into the room. She casually introduced herself as Jeannie, I’m one of the counselors here, she said, bubbly voice, It says here, gesturing to the form in her hand, that you wish to see a psychiatrist because you’re having problems, let’s see if I can help first. She lowered herself onto the opposite chair, the office was so small that I could practically smell her mouthwashed breath and the hand lotion she used. Everything about her screamed high school, her chestnut pigtails, the three-tiered gingham skirt, the blue leggings, the black ankle-high boots, she was all reined-in energy, a cheerleader
anxiously waiting to cheer a touchdown. Don’t be fooled, Satan with the insanely blue eyes said in my head, look at the tightness around her eyes, no makeup can cover pain if you know how to look. Her eyes were blue as well, watery blue, like a baby’s.

What brings you to our happy home, she asked, her voice, her tone changing, she might have looked young, but in an instant she seemed less so, she had an ease and effortlessness about her that I envied, I wanted to tell her everything, everything from the beginning, not just mine, but the beginnings of this very world of ours. I can’t afford to fall apart, I said, I just can’t. Just then, a light outside the window went on and the room felt fresher. We work with metaphor, Satan said, a translucent slick of sweat lay on his Adam’s apple, tell her you’re afraid of remembering, terrified of this bubbling well of memory, tell her.

How can I help, she asked, opened her notebook, uncapped her ballpoint, and leaned forward. I told her I talked to imaginary people, mostly you, Doc, my partner who had been dead for almost twenty years. She waited, as if what I had just said was not enough to certify me insane, but just in case, I emphasized that I was not insane in that I knew you and all the rest resided only in me. A seam in my mind had come undone, but the dress still held its shape.

She smiled and scooted back in the chair, the streetlamp threw faint light upon her, if I moved my head just slightly, I could see the high stanchion the lamp dangled from outside. Do they talk back, she asked. Sometimes, I said, yes, sometimes the imaginary people talk to me, but not you, Doc, you’re just there, silent, shunning me, I live while you died. Tell me about him, she said, and I wanted to know what she
meant. What could I tell her about you? I don’t know, she said, anything, maybe start with his name so we don’t have to just call him your boyfriend. What an odd way of putting it: name you and lose you, the banality of demystification.

What was your name? His name was John, but he went by Doc, we always called him Doc, he was in med school when we met, became a pediatrician because he liked children except he didn’t like the work that much, he hated how awful the parents turned out to be, he didn’t consider that when he was in school and when he began to work he thought adults with ill offspring behaved awfully, he received the hurricane brunt of their anxiety, but then, you know, he didn’t get the chance to practice much because he became quite a bit sicker than the children he ministered to and died. How did he die, she asked, and Satan replied before I could, Heartbreak, he said, AIDS, I said, AIDS killed all of us.

She hesitated, looked down at her chart, then her well-worn notebook, When did he die, she asked. A long time ago, middle plague, I’ve always thought I handled it well, all the deaths, but then this denial thing is amazing, I mean, I was hospitalized, I had a breakdown, I had to get cleaned up, get all the drugs out of my system, I replaced them with prescribed ones, I’m clean now, of both kinds, no Haldol, no Stelazine, no weed, no meth, are you going to put me back on antipsychotics, I’m sure you have new ones now, Stelazine used to drive me crazy, and the Haldol, oh my, Haldol turned the whole universe into elevator music, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Barry Manilow and Yanni got gay-married.

We do have new drugs, she said, I would probably recommend that you start a new regimen, but let’s see how
this goes and what the psychiatrist says, no drugs at all, she asked, you didn’t write down any antivirals in your chart. I was never infected, I said, I deserved the disease most, but the virus never visited me, or maybe it did, and then the Fourteen Holy Helpers cured me, kicked the virus and its malicious affiliates out. What was that? Oh, nothing, I said, in those days I had saints as imaginary friends but then Doc’s mother stole them.

She scribbled in her notebook, at least a paragraph or two, when she concentrated, she was the one who looked insane, And how did John die, she asked again. Badly, I said. Very badly, Satan said, snickering, funny you should credit the silly saints with healing you, and not me, Death came for you and I intervened, busy man he was those days, I sat him down, told him your soul was mine, a long time ago I claimed you, you child of pestilence, you squashable worm, after all I have done for you, you ungrateful Arab, I sat Death down in the corner, told him he’d accompany you to Sheol over my dead body, we negotiated your survival, I offered much.

I told Jeannie the counselor that you died over a period of eighteen months, and I felt so helpless, you were the fifth, in order, Lou the lovelorn was first, I’m not sure who voted me primary caretaker, maybe you guys thought of me as the natural servant, every nonwork moment was devoted to loving Lou into the next world, changing his diapers, besmeared with shit and shame, I so hated that, and then Chris, then Pinto, bless him, and then Greg, that was so awful, I loved my redhead Curmudgeka, work gave me a three-month leave, he was the attorney who hired me after all, and then it was you, not two weeks later, and then Jim
after that, which was unfortunate because poor Jim always got lost in my mind since your death made everything else seem minor, although, God knows, your death was anything but minor, you couldn’t go quietly into the night, could you, you want this, you want that, I’m hurting you, you think I’m happy you’re dying, I’m poisoning you slowly, you think I think you’re not dying soon enough, Doc, I wish you could just shut the hell up.

Finally, Satan exclaimed.

Why now, she asked, the two words announced with a long breath in between, almost a sigh. I can’t afford to lose my job, I said, I wouldn’t know what to do, I have nowhere else to go. She wrote in the notebook. I understand, she said, but what I meant was why has your boyfriend returned after all these years. I have been feeling more alone lately, I said. She remained quiet, observing me, waiting for me. Triggers, Doc, she was looking for triggers, maybe she was hoping for just one, but they were numerous, so many, where would I start. This morning, I said, when I walked into the office, I usually arrive early, long before anyone else, I wake up at four in the morning so I can put in my eight hours without being disturbed too much and I wake up early anyway so it’s not much of an inconvenience, I walked in at five thirty, which is an hour and a half before Joanna comes in, the other two word processors at nine, and today she was there earlier, like me, because she had a lot of briefs to work with, but what surprised me was not her presence as much as what she looked like, what she wore, an old-fashioned dress, a French one, I presume, from the sixties, maybe even the fifties, she’s much younger than I so she must have bought it used or inherited it from some relative, it was gorgeous,
white dotted with cerise fleurs-de-lis, tight only at the belt, and the way she pinned her hair back, bunched up with lots of unhidden bobby pins, she looked so young, yet matronly, from a time long past, she looked like a number of my aunties, and I stood there rooted, gobsmacked, she looked like my mother. Joanna asked me if anything was wrong, and I replied that the dress was lovely, she twirled coquettishly but I had already sat down at my monitor.

I was tired for some reason, and at noon, when all four of us were there, I must have slept while sitting, which had happened before, certainly not often, maybe twice, and while sleeping I dreamt I was in front of the monitor watching a YouTube nature video of an unnaturally large snake slithering along asphalt, I could see only part of its trunk, and then there was a little bunny eating out of a small bowl and the snake swallowed the bunny and the bowl in one bite and kept on slithering, except I noticed that the body was viscous, mucusy gray, and it was not a snake but a snail with its proportionally large gastropod shell, spirally coiled, of course. I was frightened, it seemed so unnatural, I might have screamed, and this voice in my head, this Satan with insanely blue eyes began to laugh, and I told him to shut up and that was when my officemates called the office manager with her high nasal Oklahoma accent and it was decided that I should take the rest of the day off, which was basically a little more than an hour, and maybe seek psychiatric help, so here I am.

I wanted to run to my father, my short legs began to, but I hesitated, halted in mid-run, an indescribable crowd, waiting, coming, going, who were all these people interrupting the reverie, between him and me were bouquets of balloons, of flowers, so many faces disappointed that those of us coming out of customs were not their loved ones, accusing looks, knots of people gathered behind the barriers, my father among them but separate. The accompanying stewardess asked if I knew which one he was, I nodded, of course I did, I had memorized every feature of his beautiful face, the handsomest man in the universe, I pointed to him, while he looked at the Polaroid in his hand to make sure before bathing me with a gracious smile. He wore white like me, a fine linen suit and a pale lavender shirt, a movie star to
my eyes, and a crocodile belt of the same color as the shirt, not only was he the most dashing man in the entire airport hall, he had the lightest skin of all, the stewardess offered him my paltriness and her most seductive smile, Take him, she wished to say, though I am more worthy.

My father shook my hand. Next to him stood an older man whose purpose in life seemed to be to provide a contrast to my father’s youth and health, I assumed at first he was my grandfather but he was introduced as Monsieur Lateef, it took me a few years to understand that he was the family attorney, there to make sure that the transaction flowed smoothly. The car trip from the airport to Monsieur Lateef’s house, me in the back with my father, the driver and the lawyer up front, turned out to be the longest stretch of time I would ever spend with my father, forty-five holy minutes. I would see him a few more times, and he would talk to me on the phone every now and then, but he was busy, of course, he had just graduated with a master’s in business and was embarking on a nepotistic career, so you could excuse him, he did his job, fulfilled his sacred obligation, he extracted me from the whorehouse.

I was lost in the grandness of the fancy car’s backseat, he asked all the ritual questions, repeating those he had asked in his postcards, how was I, what did I enjoy, was I looking forward to my new life, I did not have time to ask him anything, thinking I would have other opportunities. He entered Monsieur Lateef’s house with me, showed me the guest room, where I was to stay for only two nights until Monday, when I would move into my new home, but he had to leave now, he would see me the following day,
wished me a good night’s sleep. It was not, the bed was too soft, too luxurious, I tossed and turned all night, sank into the mattress, drowned, thought I was going to disappear inside it, swallowed whole by this leviathan. All my life, Doc, I never got used to soft comforts and box springs for slumber, you wanted us to sleep in different beds, then in different rooms, my asceticism troubled you, you said, harshed your mellow.

Next on my father’s list was the extirpation of all my sins, the killing of my prophets, on Sunday, the Lord’s day of rest, the priests’ day of labor, he and Monsieur Lateef led me by the hand to church, For my greatest good, my father said, I was to be civilized, to be taught the manners and customs of the sophisticates. What a place to annihilate my upbringing, to cede my being and its vast lands, my first church, saffron in its stones, bright red tiles, crowned with a tragic and nondescript cross, from where I stood its verdigris looked like moss. Framed by the brilliant sky, Heaven’s azure, another cross, this one of Lebanese stone, smaller and more intricate, reigned atop an outdoor arch that I had to pass under as the bell pealed, my father’s palm on my back guiding, nudging, prodding me forward, through archaic doors I entered, in the nave of the church I lost my balance, I stumbled but caught myself, my heart lurched in my chest, my father clutched the back of my shirt, he grinned, Monsieur Lateef remained stoic, had not changed his expression since I met him. Long pews filled with parishioners who all glanced back to mark my entrance, indiscreetly examining this convert in ill-fitting attire, I was led up the middle aisle, the church’s runway, to be judged by the fashionable, to the front pew, to face the altar.

Once the service began, the heavily decorated priest rambled on and on in Aramaic, Jesus’s language that I assumed few worshippers understood, the thudding of my heart was louder than his voice. I watched only a dark-haired boy, not much older than me, sitting back within the apse, clutching an openmouthed dormant censer, around his neck, like a scarf, fell a beautiful saffron-yellow stole with tile-red crosses, my eyes would not leave him, but his jaded eyes remained on the painting of his Savior upon the wall, He whose thorn-wrapped heart burned with an intense flame, whose wondrous eyes watched us all. It was in that church that I took my first Communion, that I fell to my knees and stuck out my receptacle of a tongue, waiting, waiting for the host. Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you, take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins, do this in memory of me. God, I miss quaaludes.

It was in that church that I was baptized into a new life in the constant company of low-grade terror and Christ, my savior, it was in that church that I became civilized, almost human in their eyes, the congregation congratulated Monsieur Lateef and my father for their great charity, both were happy to receive the plaudits for they knew they had done a most magnanimous deed, a mighty service for the Lord, reviving my soul, saving me from condemnation, whoever believed and was baptized would be saved. That night after my father had bidden me farewell, he was bound to leave me, always, I slept with the Holy Spirit for the first time, slept in that sinfully luxurious bed for the last time, and the next morning, Monsieur Lateef, whom I never saw again,
delivered me to the disapproving French mother superior and l’orphelinat de la Nativité, his hand on the low hollow of my back shoved me into my naked new life.

AIDS was a river with no bed that ran soundlessly and inexorably through my life, flooded everything, drowned all I knew, soaked my soul, but then a soaking, a drenching, was not dying, and I swam, floated when I could, and I thought I had triumphed, only to discover years later that the river’s persistence, its restlessness, trickled into tiny rivulets that reached every remote corner of my being. But you know, Doc, rats always survive floods—both floods and sinkings.

When Ibsen was writing
Brand,
he kept a scorpion caged in an empty beer glass, and if the scorpion grew listless and lethargic, the playwright dropped in a piece of fruit, upon which the creature would cast itself in a rage and inject it with all its pent-up venom, after which the arthropod was rejuvenated, whistling happily. Homos, homos, homos, kill, kill, kill, fags, dykes, sting ‘em, smite ‘em, there, there, we feel much better, but now we’re gay-married in the armed forces, so al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, kill, kill, kill, Hamas, Ayatollah, bomb ‘em, drone ‘em, I’m so tired of all this, Doc.

Don’t lose it now, my Iblis said, you’re still mildly sane, bid adieu to this forsaken place.

At some point in the middle of the night, I woke and didn’t know where I was, dread, wide awake, who was I, where was I, I twisted about in panic like a cat in a bag, like Behemoth when he thought I was about to bathe him, but I calmed when I heard the sound of the tiny tinkling bells of my mother’s anklet in a far room, distant, the distance from Cairo to San Francisco, what I heard was not the gentle, comforting sound of her sensuous gliding from one corner of the kitchen to another, carrying her plate to serve herself another helping, seconds, but the jarring, parlous jingling of rough intercourse, my mother wishboned, her ankles way up, lifted in the night air, soles facing ceiling, which was when I realized that it was all imagined, the work of a sickening mind, a joke of Satan’s, for I had never heard or seen my mother’s assignations, she was always careful to lock the heavy door to her room, she was discreet in that, at least.

One trigger led to another, Doc, I used to think that a depression was built brick by brick into a great wall, but no longer, my depression was a large pile of stones thrown haphazardly by God, Satan, fate, while I added the choice pieces. In a rucksack, I carried bricks down a spiral to Hades. I arrived home drunk, I had not had a drink in years, not even a glass of wine, but after work, I got out of the subway station, was attacked by fuzzy city lights, assaulted by a frenzy of anxious people spreading in all directions, and there was a
bar and it was happy hour and I was unhappy, I was siren-called, When was the last time you had a martini, a desert-dry one, come in, come in, so I did. Two gin martinis only, no more mostly because I could not bear to be in that bar where young preppy gay boys with pastel sweaters tried too hard to be delightful and delighted, all of them mushroom stumps of the same fungus, two martinis and I swayed all three hundred and some paces to my door, not the man I used to be, soused, my mind insensate, my body walked me home by rote, a beast of burden without its Sherpa, I could not fit the key into its hole for at least a few minutes. One of the landladies downstairs opened her door to check on me, you might remember her, Kim, the kind lesbian, she held my hand, steadied it, key into its slot, she hugged me before letting me stumble into my apartment, I did not weep.

I lay down on my bed, stared at the oscillating yellow ceiling, layered with a few more coats of paint since you left, I shut my blurry eyes, purple spots rimmed with fiery green floated between my eyeballs and eyelids, thoughts spun in a spiral like a sandstorm, whorls of memories, while the world kept marching forward, I continued to sink inward. Satan lay beside me in a white dishdasha and headdress in Saudi fashion, his bulk shifted the mattress and canceled my indentation, his massiveness pressed heavily upon my heart, I could feel his smile, his glee, without my having to open my eyes, Come to Papa, he whispered, his breath moistened the skin below the first ridge of my earlobe.

Dear Mother, I wrote in my head for the millionth time, Though a million times I should ask your pardon, it would not be enough to cover my sins which cause me intolerable shame, nowhere near enough, I should never have
left, I should not have wanted to leave so much, I wished for something different, for something better, every night cats meowed about the five million ways I missed you, I blundered on but I was not living, in Beirut, God did not wipe the tears off His children’s faces, He did not wipe them in Stockholm, San Francisco, or anywhere else, I was wrong, we both were, forgive me.

I wrote to my mother on the day I landed in that impenetrable country, Lebanon, and once every three days thereafter. I still heard her, Don’t write to me every day, she told me while I was leaving, that would be too much, but every other day, no, you must write to me every three days, I can’t last more than that without hearing your voice. Of course, she would not hear my voice, she could not even read my words. One day I had this brilliant idea of sending her my voice, I had seen another boy recording on a cassette tape, I copied him and made and mailed a tape to my mother, I poured all my love and longing into it. I did not know whether she received it, she never mentioned it, and I did not ask, did not want to embarrass her just in case she could not afford a cassette player. I regret not asking. Her letters back were always perfunctory and precise, like a well-considered levy: how was I, she missed me, what the weather was like, what astounding things I was learning, whether I had enough food, warm clothes to deal with the inhumanly freezing cold of Beirut, she wanted to know everything about my daily, even hourly life, yet she rarely shared hers. She sent some pictures, none of which remain.

I worry so much now, Doc, I worry that I have forgotten what she looked like, every day I make sure to paint her face in my memory in order not to forget, but the moths of
elision eat at the final canvas, her eyes so black and how she looked at me, her smooth skin was what she was most proud of, as smooth as warm marble in a mausoleum, her smile, forever and ever and ever, I try hard now, but the fear that my camphor has aged, that I have failed, haunts me.

The last letter I received was not written by Auntie Badeea, my mother sent one to both of us, I was thirteen. She had journeyed to Mecca for hajj, she wanted her sins forgiven, her errors absolved, she was so happy, Auntie Badeea was terrifically proud, my mother hired a local scribe, who signed her name in the lower right corner, to regale us with her joys, she circled the Kaaba counterclockwise, seven circumambulations, she kissed the black stone, ran between the two hills, she sent us a picture standing all alone under a blood hot sky among the women’s tents, all in white, no veil, though the camera was too far from the subject, her face was no more than a smile and a squint against the sun, she smiled as if God had just approved of her and had delivered the news a few moments earlier.

That was it. No one had heard from her since. When she did not return to Cairo, Auntie Badeea inquired for her whereabouts with the travel agency, with the Saudi embassy, with the Egyptian government, the Yemeni government, nothing. There was no record of her leaving Saudi Arabia, dying, or anything, she simply vanished. My father tried to help, he called a couple of Lebanese politicians, even asked a minister to intervene, nothing. Auntie Badeea wrote me letter after letter trying to explain, but there was nothing to explain. My mother might have met a man who charmed her into being his wife, and she could do so only by starting afresh, releasing all dues and obligations of her life before,
she would have had to, he was a hajj, she a hajji, it could have happened, it could. At the hajj of the year before my mother’s disappearance, two hundred and seventeen pilgrims died during the stoning of Satan ritual, I would not be able to find out how many died while my mother was there and whether she could have been one of them, Auntie Badeea was told all deaths were accounted for.