The Angel of History (18 page)

The fur on Behemoth’s back bristled as soon as he saw Denis holding his mitered head on his lap. Behemoth hissed, unleashed a rending meow, and jumped right back into the closet.

“Funny cat,” Denis said.

“Bothered by the head,” Satan said.

Had Satan doubted for a moment that the cephalophore was the most vain of the fourteen, the cloak would have ensured that he would never do so again: it was of the most luscious silk, a radiant Yves Klein blue with a needlepoint illustration of the city of Paris in gold thread. His crosier was emblazoned with golden luster and more inlaid gems than a magpie’s nest.

“Are you?” Denis raised a recently waxed eyebrow.

“Of course,” Satan said. “Standard rule: if cats dislike something, I usually do as well. I feel uncomfortable talking to you and you know that. Instead of looking at where your head is supposed to be, I’m staring at your crotch. I can’t concentrate on much else than the autoerotic possibilities. I know that’s the point, but can you at least hold your head in the crook of your arm?”

“If I hold my head higher while I’m seated, my two halos clash.”

“Put it on, then.”

“I usually wear my head only when I need to think,” Denis said.

Satan enunciated his command slowly. “Put. It. On.”

“Oh, all right.” Denis returned his head to his shoulders; it fell into place with the subtlest of clicks.

“Why did you abandon him?” asked Satan.

“I did not,” Denis said. “He abandoned me, he abandoned us. I was with him from the start, not because of him, but because of his mother. She needed me and I was there. Now, she—she was devoted to me and my arts. But the boy was different, slow in some ways. Surrounded by desire, he knew not how to partake. He was a virgin for I don’t know how long. He was Catherine’s boy long before he became mine. And then he unleashed his desires and I thought there would be no stopping him, but he stopped. He stopped, not me. Can I have some tea, please?”

“No.”

Every time Satan met the dandified bishop, he felt a wrench of urges: he wanted to slap Denis, to knock the idiotic miter off his head—he wanted to behead him.

“Go back to the beginning,” Satan said. “When did you first meet Jacob?”

“Catherine came first. The rest appeared to him when he began to recognize us, but we were there long before. He simply never saw us. I remember things Jacob doesn’t.”

“Tell me,” Satan said. “This is what we’re here for. What do you think he has forgotten?”

“Well, for me, I think the important erasures are the whorehouse years. He has skipped over much, his remembrances are a surreal game of hopscotch. He remembers the Cairo house in detail, but he erased most of the city. It’s not just what he remembers, it’s how he does. He remembers in his head. If I were to remind him about Cairo—if, mind you—I would ask him how the light felt falling on his face during winter afternoons. How gooey was the riparian mud he stuck his hand in the first time he walked along the Nile south of the city? A haptic memory perhaps?”

“An expedition into the depth of his tactile memories,” Satan said. “The brush of the coarse bricks on his calves as he dangled his legs over the midget wall across the street from the house.”

“Yes, yes. Does he recall feeling nervous during a visit with Badeea to Khan el-Khalili when he was five? He held her hand as she shopped, how his hand felt in hers, how small he felt next to her, the scent of fresh eggplant and green squash, the pots cooking Egyptian mallow, the smell of fresh rabbit turd under the cages. Does he remember? And the crowd thickened as if a ton of roux had been dropped into the human soup, everyone so much larger than him. Fear, anxiety, he was terrified of being trampled. Badeea lifted him up with her left arm, that woman had
the strength of ten men. Does he remember touching her cheek, laying his head on her shoulder like a drooping tulip on the rim of its vase, looking back at the gathering crowd, safely tucked atop her bosom, the feel of her forearm on his behind? You see, he thinks he doesn’t remember, but of course he does. It’s just that our memories are rarely where we think they are.”

“So you think you can help him remember Cairo?”

“Yes, I do,” Denis said. “There was a small mosque but two streets away from the house. The boy used to love hearing the muezzin’s melodious call, and that teenager had a glorious voice by any standard, and he was blind as he was supposed to be. The child Jacob was so enamored by the sound that he wondered aloud why the household didn’t attend the mosque. Badeea took him that one time. Does he remember the ablutions, the warm water on his skin, it was summer, the rug beneath his bare feet in the women’s section of the mosque? He might recall why he never went back, how unwelcome he was made to feel because of Badeea, how the other women shunned her, did not look her way. Even as little more than a toddler, he knew what that was; he was as sensitive to ostracism as any budding homosexual.”

“He thinks he has never been inside a mosque,” Satan said, “but too many times inside a church.”

“Well, he’s wrong, isn’t he?” said Denis. “Not that he received better treatment in the church.”

Denis tilted his head back and sniffed the air twice. A scowl began at his brow below the miter, eyebrows scrunched, nostrils dilated, lips turned downward, chin rising up, a rictus. The red scar of his beheading made a theatrical appearance from behind the robe’s neckline.

“Who’s been smoking in here?” he asked.

“You know who,” Satan replied.

“That son of a night. He knows I’m allergic to tobacco.” From one of his robe’s pockets, Denis brought out a hand-sized gold thurible, from another, an antique gold lighter with an engraved crest of the city of Paris. Without moving from his seat, he shook the smoky apparatus all around him. “The standards,” he said. “Frankincense and myrrh.”

In the closet, Behemoth hissed loudly.

“Are we done?” Satan asked.

“Yes, sorry.” Denis placed the censer on the hardwood floor between his feet. “As I was saying, I remember more than Jacob does.” He did not return the lighter to his pocket, flicked it on distractedly a couple of times.

“I need to clarify something,” Satan said. “Now, do you truly believe that he remembered the Cairo house in detail, but not the city?”

“Yes,” Denis said. “Well, no, not exactly. He remembers the specifics of the house in detail, but not what happened in it. He writes that the men who visited the brothel ignored him, but you know that’s not accurate, not always. When he was old enough he had to help with a number of chores. His first incarnation was as a brazier boy.” He lifted the thurible off the floor and swung it gently a few times. “When the room was full, the boy had to rush around replenishing charcoal in every dying hookah. If he was slow, a man noticed him. His second was foot massager, of course. For some men, especially the Russians, this was part of a sensuous evening. A customer would lounge on the couch, call the boy, who had to run over, get on his knees before the man, take the shoes and socks off, and work the feet.”

“On his knees before the man,” Satan said.

Denis flipped the top of the lighter and struck it seven times in a row. “Why does he choose not to remember these details?”

“He will now,” Satan said.

“What about the henna incident? How could he forget that? He wrote that the prepubescent Joseph’s hairless crotch was the first he’d seen.”

“Tell me.”

“He learned to henna his mother’s hands and feet at an early age. She used to decorate herself, whenever she knew a client wanted something different or less familiar. Then the boy turned out to have a talent for it. Once every ten days or so, his mother let her son draw on her skin. He did so for about six months before a soused East German noticed the designs from across the room. He demanded to know what was on her hands and feet even though the poor woman was entertaining another man. She explained, pointing to her son as the designer. The loud East German demanded his own henna design, a strange request obviously, but the brothel was known for being accommodating. The boy rushed over with the gourd and reed, and knelt before the seated man, golden blond he was, big and sturdy. He looked at the boy, who was gazing up at him, waiting for instructions. The East German snickered, stood up before the kneeling boy, undid his pants while the whole room, European men and subaltern women, watched. Out jumped his fully erect blutwurst, almost slapped the poor boy’s face. The boy didn’t move, but even had he wanted to, he wasn’t quick enough because Badeea jumped up from her divan, lifted the boy by his shirt collar, and pulled him behind her. She berated the man, but he grew belligerent,
demanding that his penis be drawn upon or the house would suffer unspecified consequences. The men were amused, the women horrified, no one budged. Badeea was about to call on the lazy oaf who was supposed to be the bouncer when the intervention occurred.”

“Halimeh,” Satan said.

“You remember her too,” Denis said, resting his chin on the palm of his hand. “The girl with the pigtails—love her now, worshipped her then. She was thirteen, still a virgin but not for very long. While Badeea was telling off the ugly rascal, who refused to pack his insistent penis, Halimeh, seemingly out of nowhere, knelt before him, shocking everyone, including the uncouth European himself. While all gasped, she dipped the reed in the gourd, held the penis in her left hand, and began to draw with her right. No one but the girl moved, the only sounds were the tap of the reed on the gourd and the East German’s heavy breathing. He almost erupted at least twice. For the entire time the girl went about her chore, everyone including our boy remained still, observing the unfurling image, the tiny dark girl on her knees before the giant with overgrown blond pubic hair. The penile design was nothing exceptional of course, and it was ruined because he couldn’t maintain his erection long enough for the henna to take root, so ogees, swoops, and arabesques were nothing but blotches at deflation. But what Halimeh did was exceptional. She became the most desired Arab whore ever. The East German pleaded to take her back to one of the rooms, but even he knew that he could not afford her virginity. They brought in a West German for that. He paid a considerable fortune for her Arab hymen.”

“And the poet recalls only her pigtails,” Satan said.

Ferrigno the Iraqi, who was to lead me back to the waiting room, failed to keep a straight face, quickly glanced around the examining room, grinned, No poetry, he said, not questioning, just matter-of-fact, he knew I wouldn’t, and Satan said, The staff probably had a pool on whether you’d break, I wonder whether this inflatable Iraqi bet for or against, let’s graffiti the walls, no, no, ask him if you can write on his badass booty, I wonder what he’d say to that, I bet he’d let you, ass for art’s sake, ask him, you can write Ass You Like It.

I told Satan, Do not go gentle into that good butt.

Ha, screeched Satan, he’s the emperor of ass cream, now compose an ode to a gluteus turn. I told Satan,

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though off your ass I had drunk

Some dull opiate that emptied all my brains

And all my senses Lethe-wards had sunk.

No, no, said Satan, we’re not to mention that damned river.

I followed Ferrigno’s callipygian semaphores, up and down with each step my eyes kept track. His pen dropped, I began to lunge for it, but it swung from a string that connected it to the clipboard he held against his sizable forearm that had a barbed-wire tattoo, I flashed on an image of Auntie Badeea pulling thick thread through vegetables, making rosaries of peppers, sights and sounds of my early years reconfigured for my modern world, with each step now my head would shift from the pendulum pen to Ferrigno’s sliding butt muscles as if I were at a Wimbledon final. My cell phone vibrated, Ferrigno heard the buzz, didn’t glance back, I knew it was another text from Odette but I did not want to look, I did not want to be connected to anything, I wanted the wet wool of my mind sheared, I desperately needed to pee.

Ferrigno waited outside the bathroom, he was grinning when I came out, he leaned his head through the door, I guess a black ink pen would have been better, he said. I like this guy, Satan said, he’s mocking you, as all should. Nah, I told Ferrigno, brown is just fine, I’m limbering up, once I get going, your ass will be wiping poems all night. His ass is a kneaded eraser, Satan said, we need to get him to drop his pants.

At the entrance to the waiting room, Ferrigno told me he would be back for me when the doctor was ready. See, Satan said, he’s playing with you, even he knows you’re not insane, let’s go home. The waiting room was empty and
quiet, no one, the bespectacled lady was probably getting counseled. I looked at Odette’s texts: the first was, Please don’t shut me out, you fucker, and the second was, I’m your best friend and I’ll mess you up if you don’t tell me what’s going on, and the third was, Now, bitch. So I did, I asked her to please not interfere, said I was a bit depressed, that I was having hallucinations, not dangerous, but disturbing enough that I needed to get rid of them, that I was waiting to see a doctor, and that I would not pick up if she called because of where I was, and no, I wasn’t going to tell her where that was. As soon as I pressed the last send, I felt lighter, even Satan’s snickering couldn’t weigh me down.

You look tired, Satan said, I told him I was, that I did not think I would have trouble sleeping in this uncomfortable chair even though I was without my two primary sleep aids, Behemoth and a YouTube recording of a vacuum cleaner, the Hoover WindTunnel. I don’t know why I find the sound comforting, Doc, when I was a child in Cairo, my afternoon naps coincided with the rhythmic beating of carpets outside the bedroom, I was used to sleeping to that sound, but no one beat carpets anymore, a shame, though lo and behold, I found that not only did a vacuum cleaner remove dirt more effectively, it summoned Hypnos just as well as a beating, and there were twelve-hour-long recordings of all kinds of household machines online, welcome to America, now go to sleep.

Maybe I should have told Ferrigno that a black ink pen would be better, I had a fountain pen once, beautifully lacquered, with a silver nib, belonged to my father, a Christmas present he deigned to offer me from afar when I was twelve, I filled it with real, honest-to-goodness ink from an
inkwell, encaustic the color of night sky, deliberate, slow to dry, so very patient. Disloyal I was, my infidelity marked me, I do not even remember when I abandoned the pen, ink, black like the inside of my head, the precise color of sorrow. Not only do we drink from the black river, we drop bodies into it as well, objects we once loved, tools we once used, rusted treasure litters the bottom of Lethe. I took the brown Sharpie out of my pocket, Praise be, Satan said, and I pulled back the left sleeve of my shirt, upon the hairless skin of my inner forearm I wrote:

When Death came to visit me

I had nothing to offer

My cupboard was bare.