Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  “About what?” Verlaine asked, growing more concerned by the second. “What did she say?”

  “I don’t understand it exactly,” Evangeline said. “It was as though she were speaking in riddles. When I tried to puzzle out their meaning, it made even less sense.”

  Verlaine was torn between an impulse to embrace Evangeline, whose complexion had gone completely pale, and wanting to shake her. Instead he ordered two more Coronas and slid his handwritten copy of the Rocke-feller letter across the table. “Read this again. Maybe Celestine Clochette was carrying an artifact from the Rhodope Mountains to St. Rose Convent? Did she tell you anything about this expedition?” Forgetting that he hardly knew Evangeline, he reached across the table and touched her hand. “I want to help you.”

  Evangeline pulled her hand away from his, glanced at him suspiciously, and looked at her watch. “I can’t stay. I’ve been gone too long already. You obviously don’t know much more about these letters than I do.”

  As the waitress set two beers before them, Verlaine said, “There must be more letters—at least four more. Innocenta was clearly responding to Abigail Rockefeller. You could look for them. Or perhaps Celestine Clochette knows where we can find them.”

  “Mr. Verlaine,” Evangeline said in an imperious tone that struck Verlaine as forced, “I am sympathetic to your search and to your desire to fulfill the wishes of your client, but I cannot participate in something like that.”

  “This has nothing to do with my client,” Verlaine said, taking a long drink of his beer. “His name is Percival Grigori. He’s unbelievably awful; I should have never agreed to work for him. In fact, he just had some thugs break into my car and take all my research papers. Clearly, he’s after something, and if this something is the correspondence we’ve found—which I haven’t told him about, by the way—then we should find the other half before he does.”

  “Broke into your car?” Evangeline said, incredulous. “Is that why you’re stranded here?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Verlaine said, hoping to appear unconcerned. “Well, actually, yes, it does matter. I need to ask you for a ride to a train station. And I need to know what Celestine Clochette brought with her to America. St. Rose Convent is the only possible place it could be. If you could find it—or at least look for the letters—we would be on our way to understanding what this is all about”

  Evangeline’s expression softened slightly, as if weighing his request with care. Finally she said, “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll look.”

  Verlaine wanted to hug her, to tell her how happy it made him to have met her, to beg her to come back to New York with him and begin their work that very night. But seeing how anxious his attention made her, he decided against it.

  “Come on,” Evangeline said, picking up a set of car keys from the table. “I’ll give you a ride to the train station.”

  St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

  Evangeline had missed the communal meal in the cafeteria, just as she had missed lunch, leaving her ravenous. She knew that she could find something to eat in the kitchen if she chose to look—the industrial-size refrigerators were always filled with trays of leftovers—but the thought of food made her feel ill. Ignoring her hunger, she walked past the stairway leading to the cafeteria and continued toward the library.

  When she opened the library door and turned on the lights, she saw that the room had been cleaned in her absence: the leather registry (left open on the wooden table that afternoon) had been closed; the books piled on the couch had been returned; a meticulous hand had vacuumed the rugs plush. Obviously one of the sisters had covered for her. Feeling guilty, she vowed to do twice as much cleaning the next afternoon, perhaps volunteer for laundry duty, even though, with the abundance of veils to hand-wash, it was a much-hated chore. It had been wrong to leave her work to the others. When one is absent, the rest must carry the load.

  Evangeline placed her bag on the couch and squatted before the hearth to kindle a fire. Soon a diffuse light folded over the floor. Evangeline sank into the soft cushions of the couch, crossed one leg over the other, and tried to arrange the cluttered pieces of her day. It was such an extraordinary tangle of information that she struggled to keep it orderly in her mind. The fire was so comforting and the day had been so trying that Evangeline stretched out on the couch and soon fell asleep.

  A hand on her shoulder startled her awake. Sitting upright, she found Sister Philomena standing over her, looking at her with some severity. “Sister Evangeline,” Philomena said, still touching Evangeline’s shoulder. “Whatever are you doing?”

  Evangeline blinked. She had been so soundly asleep that she could hardly gain her bearings. It seemed to her as though she were seeing the library—with its shelves of books and flickering fireplace—from deep underwater. Quickly, she shifted her feet to the floor and sat.

  “As I’m sure you are aware,” Philomena said, sitting on the couch next to Evangeline, “Sister Celestine is one of our community’s oldest members.

  I do not know what happened this afternoon but she is quite upset. I have spent the entire afternoon with her. It has not been easy to calm her.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Evangeline said, feeling her senses click into focus at the mention of Celestine. “I went to see her to ask her about something I found in the archives.”

  “She was in quite a state when I found her this evening,” Philomena said. “Exactly what did you say to her?”

  “It was never my intention to distress her,” Evangeline said. The folly of attempting to speak to Celestine about the letters struck her. It had been naive to think that she could keep such a volatile conversation secret.

  Sister Philomena gazed at Evangeline as if gauging her willingness to cooperate. “I am here to tell you that Celestine would like to speak with you again,” she said finally. “And to ask that you report back to me about all that transpires in Celestine’s cell.”

  Evangeline found her manner odd and could not discern what Philomena’s motives might be, but she nodded in assent.

  “We must not allow her to become so overwrought again. Please be cautious in what you say to her.”

  “Very well,” Evangeline replied, standing and brushing lint from the couch off her turtleneck and skirt. “I’ll go immediately.”

  “Give me your word,” Philomena said severely as she led Evangeline to the library door, “that you will inform me of everything Celestine tells you.”

  “But why?” Evangeline asked, startled by Philomena’s brusque manner.

  At this, Philomena paused, as if chastened. “Celestine is not as strong as she appears, my child. We do not want to put her in danger.”

  In the hours since Evangeline’s last visit, Sister Celestine had been moved into her bed. Her dinner—chicken broth, crackers, and water—sat untouched on a tray by the bedside table. A humidifier spewed steam into the air, blanketing the room in a moist haze. The wheelchair had been rolled into the corner of the room, near the window, and abandoned. The drawn curtains gave the chamber the aspect of a sanitary, somber hospital room, an effect that heightened as Evangeline closed the door softly behind her, shutting out the sound of the sisters gathering in the hallways.

  “Come in, come in,” Celestine said, gesturing for Evangeline to approach the bed.

  Celestine folded her hands upon her chest. Evangeline felt a sudden urge to cover the old woman’s white, fragile fingers with her hand, to protect them—although from what, she could not say. Philomena had been right: Celestine was painfully frail.

  “You asked to see me, Sister,” Evangeline said.

  With great effort Celestine pushed herself up against a bank of pillows. “I must ask you to excuse my behavior earlier this afternoon,” she said, meeting Evangeline’s eye. “I do not know how to explain myself. It is only that I have not spoken of these things for many, many years. It was quite a surprise to find that, despite the time, the events of my youth are still so vivid and so
upsetting to me. The body may age, but the soul remains young, as God made it”

  “There is no need to apologize,” Evangeline said as she placed her hand upon Celestine’s arm, thin as a twig under the tissue of her nightgown. “I was at fault for upsetting you.”

  “Truthfully,” Celestine said, her voice hardening, as if she were drawing upon a reserve of anger, “I was simply taken by surprise. I have not been confronted with these events for many, many years. I knew there would be a time when I would tell you. But I expected that it would be later.”

  Once again Celestine had confounded her. She had a way of tipping Evangeline off balance, upsetting Evangeline’s delicate sense of equilibrium in a most disturbing fashion.

  “Come,” Celestine said, looking about the room. “Pull that chair over here and sit with me. There is much to tell.”

  Evangeline lifted a wooden chair from a corner and brought it to Celestine’s bedside where she sat listening carefully to Sister Celestine’s faint voice.

  “I think you know,” Celestine began, “that I was born and educated in France and that I came to St. Rose Convent during the Second World War.”

  “Yes,” Evangeline said lightly. “I was aware of this.”

  “You might also know . . .” Celestine paused, meeting Evangeline’s eyes, as if to find judgment in them “. . . that I left everything—my work and my country—in the hands of the Nazis.”

  “I imagine that the war forced many to seek refuge in the United States.”

  “I did not seek refuge,” Celestine said, emphasizing each word. “The war’s deprivations were serious, but I believe I could have survived them had I stayed. You may not know this, but I was not a professed sister in France.” She coughed into a handkerchief. “I took my vows in Portugal, en route to the United States. Before this I was a member of another order, one with many of the same goals as ours. Only”—Celestine held her thought for a moment—“we had a different approach to attaining them. I ran away from this group in December of 1943.”

  Evangeline watched as Celestine edged herself higher up in the bed and took a sip of water.

  “I left this group,” Celestine said at last. “But they were not quite done with me. Before I could leave them, I had one final duty to perform. The members of this group instructed me to carry a case to America and present it to a contact in New York.”

  “Abby Rockefeller,” Evangeline ventured.

  “In the beginning Mrs. Rockefeller was no more than a rich patron attending New York meetings. Like so many other society women, she participated in a purely observational capacity. It’s my guess that she dabbled in angels the way the wealthy dabble in orchids—with great enthusiasm and little real knowledge. Honestly, I cannot say where her real interests lay before the war. When war struck, however, she became very sincere in her involvement. She kept our work alive. Mrs. Rockefeller sent equipment, vehicles, and money to assist us in Europe. Our scholars were not overtly affiliated with either side of the war—we were at heart pacifists, privately funded, just as we had been from the beginning.”

  Celestine blinked, as if a mote of dust had irritated her eyes, then continued.

  “And so, as you can guess, private donors were essential to our survival. Mrs. Rockefeller sheltered our members in New York City, arranging their passage from Europe, meeting them at the docks, giving them refuge. It was through her support that we were able to undertake our greatest mission—an expedition to the depths of the earth, the very center of evil. The journey had been in the planning for many years, since the discovery of a written account outlining a previous expedition to the gorge. This account was brought to light in 1919. A second expedition was undertaken in 1943. It was risky driving into the mountains as bombs were falling over the Balkans, but—due to the excellent provisions Mrs. Rockefeller donated—we were well equipped. You might say that Mrs. Rockefeller was our guardian angel during the war, although many would be unwilling to go that far.”

  “But you left,” Evangeline said quietly.

  “Yes, I left,” she replied. “I will not go into the details of my motivations, but suffice it to say that I no longer wanted to participate in our mission. I knew that I was finished even before I arrived in America.”

  A fit of coughing overtook Celestine. Evangeline helped her to sit up and gave her a sip of water. “On the night we returned from the mountains,” Celestine continued, “we experienced a terrible tragedy. Seraphina, my mentor, the woman who had recruited me when I was fifteen years old and trained me, was compromised. I loved Dr. Seraphina dearly. She gave me the opportunity for study and advancement that few girls my age had attained. Dr. Seraphina believed I could be one of their finest. Traditionally our members have been monks and scholars, and so my academic skills—I was quite precocious in school, having a working knowledge of many ancient languages—were especially attractive to them. Dr. Seraphina promised that they would admit me as a full member, giving me access to their vast resources, both spiritual and intellectual, after the expedition. Dr. Seraphina was very dear to me. After that night all of my work suddenly meant nothing. I blame myself for what happened to her.”

  Evangeline could see that Celestine was deeply upset, but she was at a loss for how to comfort her. “Surely you did all that you could have done.”

  “There was much to grieve for in those days. It may be difficult for you to imagine, but millions were dying in Europe. At the time I felt that our mission to the Rhodopes was the most vital mission at hand. I did not understand the extent of what was happening in the world at large. I cared only for my work, my goals, my personal advancement, my cause. I hoped to impress the council members, who decided the fate of young scholars like myself. Of course, I was wrong to be so blind.”

  “Forgive me, Sister,” Evangeline said, “but I still don’t understand—what mission? What council?”

  Evangeline could see the tension growing in Celestine’s expression as she contemplated the question. She ran her desiccated fingers over the bright colors of the crocheted blanket.

  “I will tell you directly, just as my teachers told me,” Celestine said at last. “Only my teachers had the advantage of being able to introduce me to others like myself and to show me the Angelological Society’s holdings in Paris. Whereas I was presented with solid, incontrovertible proof that I could see and touch, you must believe me at my word. My teachers were able to guide me gently into the world I am about to reveal to you, something I am unable to do for you, my child.”

  Evangeline began to speak, but a look from Celestine stopped her cold.

  “To put it simply,” Celestine said, “we are at war.”

  Unable to respond, Evangeline held the gaze of the woman before her.

  “It is a spiritual warfare that plays out upon the stage of human civilization,” Celestine said. “We are continuing what began long before, when the Giants were born. They lived on the earth then, and they live today. Humanity fought them then, and we fight them now.”

  Evangeline said, “You extrapolate this from Genesis.”

  “Do you believe the literal word of the Bible, Sister?” Celestine asked sharply.

  “My vows are based upon it,” Evangeline said, startled by the alacrity with which Celestine struck out at her, the note of chastisement in her voice.

  “There have been those who interpret Genesis 6 as metaphorical, as a kind of parable. This is not my interpretation or my experience.”

  “But we do not ever speak of these creatures, these Giants. Not once have I heard them mentioned by the sisters of St. Rose.”

  “Giants, Nephilim, the Famous Ones—these were the ancient names for the children of the angels. Early Christian scholars argued that angels were free of matter. They characterized them as luminous, spectral, illuminated, evanescent, incorporeal, sublime. Angels were the messengers of God, infinite in number, made to carry His will from one realm to the next. Humans, created less perfect—created in God’s image, but from clay�
��could only watch in awe at the fiery disembodiment of the angels. They were superior creatures characterized by lustrous bodies, speed, and holy purpose, their beauty befitting their roles as the intermediaries between God and creation. And then some of them, a rebellious few, mixed with humanity. The Giants were the unhappy result.”

  “Mixed with humanity?” Evangeline said.

  “Women bore the children of angels.” Celestine paused, searching Evangeline’s eyes to be sure the young woman had understood her. “The technical details of the mingling have long been an object of intense scrutiny. For centuries the church denied that reproduction had occurred at all. The passage in Genesis is an embarrassment to those who believe that angels have no physical attributes. To explain the phenomenon, the church asserted that the reproductive process between angels and humans had been asexual, a mixing of spirits that left women with child, a kind of inverse Virgin Birth where the offspring were evil rather than holy. My teacher, the same Dr. Seraphina I spoke of earlier, believed this to be utter nonsense. By reproducing with women, she asserted, the angels proved that they were physical beings, capable of sexual intercourse. She believed that the angelic body is closer to the human body than one might expect. During the course of our work, we documented the genitalia of an angel, taking photographs meant to prove once and for all that angelic beings are—how shall I say it?—endowed with the same equipment as humans.”

  “You have photographs of an angel?” Evangeline asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

  “Photographs of an angel killed in the tenth century, a male. The angels that fell in love with human women were, by all accounts, male. But this does not preclude the possibility of female members of the heavenly host. It has been said that one-third of the Watchers did not fall in love. These obedient creatures returned to heaven, to their celestial home, where they remain to this day. I suspect they were the female angels, who were not tempted in the same manner as the male angels.”