The Angel of Losses Read online

  It was before I was born, Solomon said.

  But you cannot be so ignorant as you claim—not of your father’s feats.

  Like the rebbe, Zipporah could see the truth written on a man’s face even as he lied to her. She was a creature Solomon had never encountered before, something like a tzaddik, but a woman.

  My sister was seduced by a man, she continued, a wealthy gentile merchant as terrible to me as a demon. He took her away from the ghetto. To us she was dead, while in the city, she lived on. But now she is dead, truly dead. I do not know what killed her—a sickness, an accident, maybe. They say her ghost haunts the rich man and the people of the city. They see her wandering the alleys, standing on the bridges, her gown shining with moonlight. Two men have drowned—drunks, of course, but the people blame the ghost. They think she is a Jewish curse. As long as she stalks the city, any misfortune will be attributed to her, and therefore blamed on us.

  All the times I went beyond the gates to spy on her, all the times I paid the ferryman to take me past her windows, I could never see inside—the glass was opaque with daylight. Now when the sun sets she goes outside, and I’m locked in the ghetto all night. It’s not death that keeps me from seeing my sister. It’s this prison.

  I can bring her to you, Solomon said.

  Zipporah’s eyes shone with tears in the instant before the lantern burned out.

  The next night, while everyone slept, Solomon paced the ghetto. He reached back into his memory to the time his father, who always bathed alone, invited Solomon to accompany him to the river. When the rebbe removed his robe, a great light forced the boy’s eyes shut—the sun cutting through the clouds, he thought—but not before he glimpsed the blemish covering his father’s breast, rich black ink on parchment.

  This is the emblem of our line, the rebbe had said. Someday it will be yours, and with it, my power.

  Now Solomon bared his own chest in the cruel breeze of the lagoon, and in his mind’s eye the symbol appeared as if at a great distance. He knelt and put his hand in the water, warm as blood despite the nighttime chill. He brought his wet hand to his chest and approximated the figure, something like the crawl of ore in stone, like flame in wind, like the veins of a leaf.

  He stood. The wind blew. His breast was cold and wet along the slopes and swells of the mystical letter written on his body. He didn’t know what the symbol meant, or what it might conjure. He waited for his father’s magic—whatever form it may take—to come to him.

  The tides coursed around him, dragging at the earth, fog rose from the canals, and Solomon squinted to see the stone alley, the tall buildings with their secret pockets of temples and sleepers. The lagoon’s murmur grew into a roar, and the water leapt onto the stone paths. The mist burned, a lightless smoke transfusing the dark night, and when he thought the world had spun away from him, he heard a sound, the rhythm of footsteps punctuated by the tapping of wood against stone.

  At first glance it appeared to be an ordinary man, but then Solomon saw the veins reaching from his sleeves and collar, green and undulating like the sea, and his eyes, red and flickering like flame. He held the Wonder Rebbe’s staff in his hand. Solomon had never before seen it out of his father’s possession, and he grew afraid for his family.

  I am Yode’a, the holy creature said. The Angel of Losses.

  He held out the staff. Here is your torch.

  Solomon gripped the staff, and the angel swelled into a towering figure with eyes vast as an inferno and a beard that churned like a storm-wracked sea. The rebbe’s son turned away from the terrible sight and found that the ghetto was filled with people, clustered at the doorways, clawing soundlessly at the locks. They stood in groups, swaying like grass in the wind, children playing with marbles, women holding babies. Who are they? he breathed.

  Yode’a closed Solomon’s cloak over the young man’s chest. They are the dead, he answered. With the staff, you are Akiba; you will recognize them, and they will recognize you. Now he placed a smoldering hand on the young man’s shoulder, and the rebbe’s son was outside the gates, standing between the two sleeping guards. Yode’a was gone.

  Solomon walked through the city. The dead floated on their backs in the canals, looking up at him. They crowded the windows, glowing like reflections of the moon. They sat on the bridges, weeping.

  He followed the path until it uncurled along the water and a great house rose across the canal. The gilded door was set behind a dock littered with crosses and flowers and icons, and standing among it all was a woman in a long white robe, her hair blowing around her like a second cloak. Her voice laced the wind with mourning.

  My love, she moaned, and Solomon’s blood ran cold. Let me come back to you, my love.

  Solomon gathered his courage. He closed his eyes and gripped the staff, and when he dared to look he was across the water, standing on the dock, flowers beneath his shoes, the woman before him, three inches of air between her bare white feet and the ground.

  Even though he was close enough to touch the space she occupied, her voice came from far away. My love, she cried. Her eyes were two dark holes in her face. Her cheeks and chest were streaked with blackened blood, and he pulled his shirt aside, the mystical letter stinging in the night air, her unseeing face turned toward it. Then she vanished.

  Solomon stood in the new silence for a moment, and then the door creaked open and a man holding a lamp appeared.

  Who are you? he demanded.

  I was sent by the Jews, Solomon said. I’ve come to put the woman to rest, so that no harm will come to the city, and no harm will be visited upon the ghetto.

  Come inside, quickly, the man said, and Solomon entered the parlor, with its towering ceiling, its walls draped in brilliant tapestry, its door frames edged in gold, its floors a mosaic of rainbow tile. He had seen such wealth only in his imagination, conjuring the rooms of the celestial academy, where the holiest souls spent eternity studying the Almighty’s law. He could not guess what it was—the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes—that had convinced the man he should be invited into such a place.

  There were tears on the rich man’s face. It is my fault, he said. Yes, I made her a whore, a case of death-in-life to her family. But we loved each other more than we loved our own lives, and we couldn’t be apart. Others see her and flee, but I wait for her each night.

  What have you done? Solomon asked.

  The rich man covered his face with his hands. She is buried on one of the islands, he confessed. But her heart and eyes remain with me, in a golden box hidden in the wall of my chamber.

  You must bury them with her body, Solomon said, and in his voice he heard the authority of his father. It’s the only way she can rest.

  The rich man looked at him in awe. What kind of magician are you?

  No magician.

  Have you come from far away?

  Very far.

  And then a new cry filled the house, the tender and naked cry of an infant. Because how does a young, healthy woman in love die? She dies in childbirth.

  You have challenged the Almighty’s law, Solomon said.

  The rich man hung his head, for he knew the rebbe’s son was right.

  You must do as I say, Solomon continued. When you return I will be gone. You will not find me. You will live in peace so long as you never trouble my people again.

  Solomon watched from the parlor window as the rich man sailed off, the golden box clutched to his chest, the ferryman taking him to the island where the dead slept. When they disappeared from sight, the young man followed the sound of the baby’s cries.

  Solomon had never held such a small baby, but when he lifted him, swaddled in thick blankets, the child stopped crying. The tides surged outside, and a wisp of smoke threaded his throat. The angel had returned. One hand, heavy as ice, capped Solomon’s shoulder, and another, soft as cinder, took his staff. The young man held the baby close, and in an instant they were standing in the little ghetto plaza, and the dead were invisible o
nce again.

  Return the baby to his grandparents, Yode’a said, and then we will return to your father’s school.

  I’m not going, Solomon said. I’m staying. I’m home.

  He heard a voice calling his name. There was Zipporah, rushing forth with her mother behind her. The angel was gone.

  The baby, the family agreed, was a miracle, and they set to rejoicing. Rumors began to filter through the alleys that the ghost had been exorcised, that order had returned.

  Weeks went by, happy weeks for the others, now that the hand of the church had receded. It was decided that Zipporah and Solomon would marry, but their wedding plans were soon set aside, for her sister’s child had fallen ill. The family’s grief at the loss of their daughter combined with their horror over the infant’s suffering, and a dark cloud settled over them all.

  And in every stolen moment, every private whisper, Zipporah demanded, you must save him; she pleaded, can’t you save him?

  But Solomon couldn’t. He raised his hands over the child. He prayed the night into morning. Still, the fever wouldn’t break. Solomon realized that the power the angel had given him was only temporary, and he became determined to win it back—not just for the baby but for Zipporah, who was in anguish.

  Finally, Solomon rose at midnight to walk along the canal, and again he drew the angel’s symbol in water on his chest. In an instant, the moon pulled the tide free, sending the lagoon lapping at its walls, and the clouds expanded to fill the sky, a white haze obscuring the ghetto, save for a black figure perched on an arching bridge. The silhouette disappeared in a flash of light; the angel had turned to look at him through burning eyes.

  Solomon and Yode’a stood together over the water.

  Power over the dead is cheap, the angel said. Power over death is costly.

  Then the angel told him a story—a terrible story, of nearly inconceivable suffering—just as Solomon’s father had warned him he would, but the story wasn’t about the old rebbe. It was about Manasseh.

  Solomon finally understood his father—why he had insisted Manasseh be spared leadership, why he spoke of the angel who gave him knowledge and power as an enemy, even why he hardened his own son’s heart against him. In the end, though, it was for nothing.

  Then we are in agreement, the angel said. Someday I will call on you to satisfy your debt.

  Some day far from today, Solomon answered.

  Very far away, the angel assured him. Yes, very.

  Solomon leaned against the stone rail and saw his reflection in the starlit lagoon. The angel was gone, and in his place a many-armed fish broke the surface. It was the magic symbol, full and complete. Its many angles cast a light unlike any the rebbe’s son had seen before.

  His father’s emblem. The Sabbath Light. Its power and responsibility now his alone to carry. It wasn’t until later, when the angel became his enemy, that he would wonder if he had made a terrible mistake.

  He turned back into the clotted alleys of the ghetto. He thought Manasseh would be pleased with him, with the end of his rebellion and his new life of devotion, but in fact, he was never to see Manasseh again.

  Finally Solomon came to the tiny plaza where the dead congregated and found Zipporah waiting for him, a pillar of flame among the shadows, smiling among the invisible wraiths that passed around her like pestilence, and he was afraid to see her walk through this place alone, the land of the dead.

  She visited me, like you promised, she said. My sister, in a dream. She said that her son will live.

  Yes, Solomon said. Take me to him.

  The light in her eyes contracted, piercing as stars. She saw that he was changed.

  My father is dead, he told her. My brother too.

  The Wonder Rebbe?

  No, he said. There is no more wonder in that place.

  But you can return it, she said.

  She believed in the future he could not yet envision: that he, of all the rebbes in his line, would be the greatest; that legends of his good deeds would spread far and wide; that people who never saw him themselves would be able to describe him, his hair and beard gone white with holiness, his eyes a dizzying blue.

  Holding her hand in his, staring into her eyes aglow with dark fire, he became aware of another alphabet, not the silky black glyphs of the Torah or the fiery symbols of God’s secret language but a set of letters known only to one’s beloved. For the rest of their years, and there were many of them, the hearts of the White Rebbe and his wife were as one.

  Solomon healed the baby, and he and Zipporah were married in that city of islands. After saying their good-byes, they set out at night while everyone slept, and came to the gates of the ghetto. A shadow grew on the street, lengthening until a figure appeared, his hair wild and gray as smoke, his cloak purple as the deep. It was time for the angel to take them on their journey, and Zipporah grew frightened.

  Will I feel it?

  It’s like the story of the Messiah, Solomon told her. The redeemer goes into the desert, and the sand rises in a great storm, spinning around him, blinding him, and it becomes his whole world, and he is lost.

  But I will protect you, he promised his beloved. When you open your eyes, you will see a world of mud and small houses and people who think only one way, but our love will make it a kingdom.

  Two

  When I returned to school after Grandpa’s funeral, I realized the Wandering Jew, the subject of that semester’s research, was just another White Magician. So that was why the tale, tucked inside a two-hundred-year-old novel, had gripped me. No one had spoken of the White Magician since that night long ago when Holly had seen the ghost; perhaps that’s why it took so long for me to notice the similarities between the two figures.

  In this particular tale, the one I would claim for my dissertation, the Wandering Jew was a traveling sorcerer with a walking stick and a velvet strap tied across his forehead, summoned to exorcise a restless ghost. When the spirit appeared, shrouded and chanting, the wanderer unbound the velvet strap, baring the fiery symbol etched in his skin, an image the living could not bear to look upon and the dead must obey.

  Soon I found the Wandering Jew everywhere, the same man wearing different clothes: a Faust or the Ancient Mariner, demon or tragic hero, ancestor or harbinger, but always immortal, a presence simultaneously fleeting and eternal, the embodiment of an unspeakable power. I felt like I was in the company of Grandpa’s hero again. I wrote about that first story and its related literature with a single-minded intensity through my senior year of college and three years of graduate school. My family was proud of my accomplishments, but they didn’t understand my work, not really, and my grief took on a new shade: Grandpa would have understood. I was like him. We both had dark tastes.

  I EMERGED FROM THE SUBWAY EXHAUSTED BY MY VISIT WITH Holly and the strange world of The White Rebbe and the Sabbath Light, which I had read on the train. Still, I went straight to the university library. I had received an email that my book order had arrived, an order I couldn’t remember placing.

  I had spent June and July in the library stacks—treading the narrow aisles, triggering the weak track lighting, skimming the canvas spines. The rows of books, the palette of a November tree, were endless. I drilled through database taxonomies; I went to the shelves in search of one title and left with eight or nine. My back ached and my ribs were tender from hugging the books so close. I wasn’t burdened, though. I was driven. Obsessed. If I found one useful sentence, one fact, in four hundred pages, I felt triumphant, like I had pulled a rare fossil from a great desert. Every notecard, every typed bullet point helped me forget the nagging anger and shame my relationship with Holly had become.

  Loss is the origin of all drives and desires.

  Every drive aims to reclaim something lost.

  Traumatic dreams repeat endlessly in a futile attempt to articulate a horror.

  Words assume the power to call their object into being.

  The Wandering Jew asks the ghost: “What distu
rbs thy sleep?”

  I worked and worked, slept the whole night through, and greeted my work again rested. It was a strange sort of peace, and I cultivated it, knowing that it was finite. We were all meeting at my parents’ place in Florida for Christmas. Holly insisted, even with the new baby. She said she missed the coast, but I was sure she missed the holiday. She had been the guardian of all our family traditions. She loved ritual. She was good at it. In that respect she was suited to her new life. I never cared much what we ate or when we gathered, but now I longed for Holly’s orchestrated Christmas instead of the dysfunctional reunion that waited at the end of the semester.

  The library building resembled a domed cathedral, its stone façade inscribed with the names of philosophers and slit with dark, glittering windows. Inside, marble lobbies, two-story reading rooms, innocuous doors that led to millions of books stacked from sea level to sky. Beneath all of that, a labyrinth of dusty, fluorescent-lit administrative suites. In the basement interlibrary loan office, a dazed student clerk handed me a brown canvas-covered book, barely half an inch thick, the spine stiff and the pages coffee-tinted with age. An Account of Juan Espera en Dios in the Americas, translated into English by Abraham Ghazzati and published in 1907.

  “I didn’t order this,” I told the girl.