“Why are you here now?” I asked.
“Because you need me and you want me to be here, and you’re restless and your ideas of what to do next are unformed. That’s part of it, at least. But I think it’s time you started doing what you did after your last assignment. So perhaps I should go.”
“I wish you were always visible.”
“You think that’s what you wish. You have a short memory. I am not here to interfere with your being a man.”
“Do Children of Angels get lonely?” I asked.
“You’re lonely, aren’t you?” he asked. “Do you think any amount of angelic company can take away human desire? We’re here because you’re human. You’ll be a human being till the day you die.”
“I wish I knew what you really looked like—!” I said.
The atmosphere around me instantly changed. It was as if some force had shaken the entire room, perhaps the entire building, and certainly my entire point of view.
The contents of the room faded. Gravity was gone. I wasn’t standing anywhere. An immense sound filled my ears, a sound vaguely akin to the reverberations of a huge gong, and at the same time an unending white light filled my vision, shot through with great arcing splashes of gold. All I could see was this exploding light. There was a core to it, a pulsing, vibrant core, from which the enormous sweeps of gold emanated, and quite suddenly it was beyond all the language I had. I struggled in my brain for concepts to describe it, to seize it and hold on to it, but this was not possible. There was movement, tremendous movement, something like convolutions or eruptions. But the words mean nothing compared to what I saw. I had a momentous sense of recognition. I heard myself gasp aloud, “Yes,” but this was over before it had begun. The light defined a space too vast for me to see or grasp, and yet I saw it, saw its limitless reaches. The sound had reached a searing pitch. The light contracted and was gone.
I lay on the floor, staring at the domed ceiling above me. I closed my eyes. What I could reproduce in my mind was nothing, nothing compared to what I’d just seen and heard.
“Forgive me,” I whispered. “I should have known.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WENT TO THE COMPUTER FIRST AND FOREMOST FOR the information I wanted about my time in Rome.
I wasn’t surprised that I could not find the names of those I’d visited in any historical record.
But the horrid and cruel incident that had befallen Giovanni’s son in Florence was recorded in more than one place. No names were given, of the man accused of blaspheming the images, or of his surviving family. But it was definitely the same incident and I was left with a strong memory of the elderly Giovanni, staring at me in the synagogue, after I’d stopped playing the lute.
I had no doubt that my mission had been amongst real people. And I read on amongst the various sources about the times.
I soon learned what I should never have forgotten, that Rome was sacked in 1527, at which time thousands of lives were lost. Some sources said the whole Jewish community was annihilated at this time.
This meant just about everyone I’d known in Rome might have died at this point in history, only some nine years or less after the time of my visitation.
I thanked God that I hadn’t known this part of the story while I was there. But more importantly, I realized in an instant what I hadn’t grasped in my entire selfish life: that it is imperative for us in this world not to know for certain what the future holds. There could be no present if the future were known.
I might have known this intellectually at the age of twelve. But now it struck me with a mystical force. And it reminded me that I was dealing with creatures in Malchiah and Shmarya who knew much more about the future than I wanted to know. To be angry with them or resentful of them because they lived with this burden made no sense.
There were many things I wanted to ponder.
Instead I typed a brief and concise account of all that had happened to me since my last “report.” I wrote down not only the story of my adventure in Rome, but also the story of my meeting with Liona and Toby, and what had taken place.
It occurred to me as I finished that there were distinct reasons why my second assignment had been different from my first. In the first adventure, I’d been sent to do something fairly straightforward—save a family and a community from an unjust charge. I’d solved the problem presented to me with duplicity, but there had not been the slightest doubt in my mind that it was the right path to take.
Maybe angels couldn’t encourage lies as I had done in Angel Time, but they had let me do it, and I felt that I knew why.
Many in this world have lied to save themselves from evil and injustice. Who would not have lied to save Jews in our own time from genocide at the hands of the Third Reich?
But my second assignment had involved no such situation. I had sought to use the truth to solve the problems confronting me, and found it a very complex and hard thing to do indeed.
So was it safe to assume each of my missions would be more complex than the last? I was just beginning to reflect on these things, when finally I broke off.
It was noon. I’d been awake for ten hours, and writing for most of that. I’d eaten nothing. I might start seeing angels who weren’t there.
I put on my jacket and went down for lunch in the Mission Inn Restaurant, and found myself sitting there pondering again after the dishes had been cleared away.
I was drinking my last cup of coffee when I noticed a young man at another table staring at me, though when I fixed on him, he pretended to be reading his paper.
I let myself stare at him for a good while. He seemed neither angel nor dybbuk. Just a man. He was younger than me, and as I watched him, he looked at me more than once, and finally got up from the table and left.
I wasn’t surprised to see him in the lobby, seated in one of the large chairs, with his eyes turned towards the restaurant entrance.
I memorized what I saw: he was young, maybe four or five years my junior. He had short brown wavy hair and almost pretty blue eyes. He’d worn dark-rimmed glasses when he’d been reading. And he was dressed a bit nattily in a well-fitted brown corduroy Norfolk jacket, with a white turtleneck sweater, and gray pants. There had been a certain vulnerability to his expression, an eagerness, that completely negated any question in my mind of danger, but I didn’t like it that I was being noticed by anybody, and I wondered who he was and why he’d been there.
If he was another angel on the case, I wanted to know. And if he was another devil, well, he didn’t have the presence or the confidence of Ankanoc and I couldn’t figure his approach.