Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  Seraphina stayed close by, watching our reactions to the objects that surrounded us, paying particular attention to Gabriella.

  “This is the point of departure for all treasures this side of the Maginot Line,” Dr. Seraphina finally said. “Once properly boxed and cataloged, they will be moved to safe locations throughout the country. My only worry,” she said, pausing before a carved ivory diptych laid out upon a bed of blue velvet, a fan of pale tissue paper crinkled about its edges, “is that we won’t get them out in time.”

  The anxiety Dr. Seraphina felt at the possible invasion by the Germans was evident in her manner—she had aged considerably in the past months, her beauty tempered with fatigue and worry.

  “These,” she said, gesturing to a number of wooden crates, each one nailed shut, “are being sent to a safe house in the Pyrenees. And this lovely depiction of Michael,” she said, bringing us before a glossy Baroque painting of an angel in Roman armor, his sword raised and his silver breastplate gleaming, “will be smuggled through Spain and sent to private collectors in America, along with a number of other precious pieces.”

  “You have sold them?” Gabriella asked.

  “In times like these,” Dr. Seraphina said, “ownership matters less than that they are protected.”

  “But won’t they spare Paris?” I asked, recognizing the moment I spoke how silly the question was. “Are we really in such danger?”

  “My dear,” Dr. Seraphina said, her wonder at my statement clear, “if they have their way, there will be nothing left of Europe, let alone Paris. Come, there are some objects I would like to show you. It may be many years before we see them again.”

  Pausing at a partially filled wooden crate, Dr. Seraphina removed a parchment pressed between sheets of glass and brushed its surface free of sawdust. Drawing us close, she placed the manuscript on the surface of a table.

  “This is a medieval angelology,” she said, her image reflected in the protective glass. “It is extensive and meticulously researched, like our best modern angelologies, but its design is a bit more ornate, as was the fashion of the era.”

  I recognized the medieval markings of the manuscript—the strict, orderly hierarchy of choirs and spheres; the beautiful renderings of golden wings, musical instruments, and halos; the careful calligraphy.

  “And this tiny treasure,” Dr. Seraphina said, stopping before a painting the size of an outstretched hand, “dates from the turn of the century. Quite lovely, I think, as it is painted in a modern style and focuses solely upon the representation of the Thrones—a class of angels that has been the focus of interest for angelologists for many centuries. The Thrones are of the first sphere of angels, along with the Seraphim and Cherubim. They are conduits between the physical worlds and have great powers of movement.”

  “Incredible,” I said, gazing at the painting in what must have been obvious awe.

  Dr. Seraphina began to laugh. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Our collections are immense. We’re building a network of libraries throughout the world—Oslo, Budapest, Barcelona—simply to house them. We are hoping to one day have a reading room in Asia. Such manuscripts remind us of the historical basis of our work. All of our efforts are rooted in these texts. We depend upon the written word. It is the light that created the universe and the light that guides us through it. Without the Word, we would not know from where we came or where we are going.”

  “Is that why we are so interested in preserving these angelologies?” I asked. “They are guides to the future?”

  “Without them we would be lost,” Seraphina said. “John said that in the Beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God. What he did not say is that in order to be meaningful the Word requires interpretation. That is our role.”

  “Are we here to interpret our texts?” Gabriella asked lightly. “Or to protect them?”

  Dr. Seraphina gazed at Gabriella with a cool, assessing eye. “What do you believe, Gabriella?”

  “I believe that if we do not protect our traditions from those who would destroy them, soon there will be nothing left to interpret.”

  “Ah, so you are a warrior, then,” Dr. Seraphina said, challenging Gabriella. “There are always those who would put on armor and go to battle. But the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.”

  “In times like these,” Gabriella said, walking ahead, “one has no choice.”

  We examined a number of objects in silence until we came to a thick book placed at the center of a table. Dr. Seraphina called Gabriella over, watching her intently, as if she were reading her gestures for something, although I could not say what.

  “Is it a genealogy?” I asked, examining the rows of charts drafted upon the surface. “It is filled with human names.”

  “Not all human,” Gabriella said, stepping closer to read the text. “There are Tzaphkiel and Sandalphon and Raziel.”

  Squinting at the manuscript, I saw that she was correct: Angels were mixed into the human lines. “The names aren’t arranged in a vertical hierarchy of spheres and choirs, but in another kind of schema.”

  “These diagrams are the speculative charts,” Dr. Seraphina said, a gravity to her voice that made me believe she had brought us through the maze of treasures so that we might at last come to this very place. “Over the course of time, we have had Jewish, Christian, and Muslim angelologists—all three religions reserve a central place in their cosmology for angels—and we have had more unusual scholars: Gnostics, Sufis, a number of representatives from Asian religions. As you might imagine, our agents’ works have deviated in crucial ways. The speculative angelologies are the work of a band of brilliant Jewish scholars from the seventeenth century who became engrossed in tracing the genealogies of Nephilistic families.”

  I came from a traditional Catholic family and, having been educated in a strict fashion, knew very little about the doctrines of other religions. I did know, however, that my fellow students were from many different backgrounds. Gabriella, for example, was Jewish, and Dr. Seraphina—perhaps the most empirically minded and skeptical of all my teachers aside from her husband—claimed to be agnostic, to the chagrin of many of the professors. This, however, was the first time I fully understood the range of religious affiliations incorporated into the history and canon of our discipline.

  Dr. Seraphina continued, “Our angelologists studied Jewish genealogies with great care. Historically, Jewish scholars kept meticulous genealogical records due to inheritance laws, but also because they understood the essential importance of tracing one’s history to the very root, so accounts can be cross-referenced and verified. When I was your age and intent upon researching the finer points of angelology, I studied Jewish genealogical practices. As a matter of fact, I recommend that all serious students learn these methods. They are marvelously precise.”

  Dr. Seraphina turned the pages of the book, stopping before a beautifully drawn document framed in gold leaf. “This is a genealogy of Jesus’s family trees drawn in the twelfth century by one of our scholars. According to the Christian schema, Jesus was a direct descendant of Adam. Here we have Mary’s family tree, as it was written by Luke—Adam, Noah, Shem, Abraham, David.” Dr. Seraphina’s finger traced the line down the chart. “And here is the family history of Joseph written by Matthew—Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Zerubbabel, and so on.”

  “Such genealogies are rather common, aren’t they?” Gabriella said. Clearly she had seen a hundred such genealogies. Since I’d had no previous exposure to such a text, my reaction could not have been more different.

  “Of course,” Dr. Seraphina said, “there have been many genealogies tracing how bloodlines matched Old Testament prophecies—the promises made to Adam and Abraham and Judah and Jesse and David. This one, however, is a bit different.”

  The names branched one to the next, creating a vast net of relations. I found it profoundly humbling to imagine how each name corresponded to a person who had lived and died, had wor
shipped and struggled, perhaps without ever knowing his or her purpose in the greater web of history.

  Dr. Seraphina touched the page, her nail gleaming in the soft overhead light. Hundreds of names were written in colored inks, so many thin branches lifting from a slight stalk. “After the Flood, Noah’s son Shem founded the Semitic race. Jesus, of course, emerged from that line. Ham founded the races of Africa. Japheth—or, as you learned in Raphael’s lecture last week, the creature posing as Japheth—has been credited with the propagation of the European race, including the Nephilim. What Raphael did not emphasize in his lecture, and something I believe to be of great importance for more advanced students to understand, is that the genetic dispersion of humankind and Nephilim is much more complex than it first appears. Japheth went on to father many children with his human wife, resulting in an array of descendants. Some of these children were fully Nephilistic, some were hybrids. The children whom Japheth—the human Japheth, killed by the Nephilistic creature who posed as Japheth, that is—had fathered before his death were fully human. And so the descendants of Japheth were human, Nephilistic, and hybrid. Their intermarrying brought forth the population of Europe.”

  “It is so complicated,” I said, trying to work out the various groups. “I can hardly sort through it.”

  “Now you’ve hit upon the very reason for keeping these genealogical charts,” Dr. Seraphina said. “We would be in something of a mess without them.”

  “I have read that a number of scholars believe that Japheth’s bloodline mixed with Shem’s,” Gabriella said, pointing to a branch of the speculative genealogy and isolating three names: Eber, Nathan, and Amon. “Here and here and here.”

  I leaned in close to read the names. “How can they be sure?”

  Gabriella smiled, something cruel in her manner, as if anticipating my question. “I believe there is documentation of some sort but in all truth they cannot be one hundred percent sure.”

  “That is why this is called speculative angelology,” Dr. Seraphina said.

  “But many scholars believe it,” Gabriella said. “It is a valid and ongoing part of angelological work.”

  “Surely modern angelologists do not believe this,” I said, trying to hide my intense reaction to this information. My religious beliefs were strong even then, and such crude speculation about Christ’s paternity was not accepted doctrine. The chart, which only seconds before had seemed wonderful, now upset me a great deal. “The idea that Jesus had the blood of the Watchers is absurd.”

  “Perhaps,” Dr. Seraphina said, “but there is a whole area of angelological study about this very subject. It is called angelmorphism, and it deals strictly with the idea that Jesus Christ was not even human, but an angel. After all, the Virgin Birth occurred after the Angel Gabriel’s visit.”

  Gabriella said, “I believe I’ve read something about that. The Gnostics believed in Jesus’s angelic origins as well.”

  “There are—or there were, I should say—hundreds of books in our library about it,” Dr. Seraphina said. “Personally, I don’t care who Jesus’s ancestors were. My concern is entirely elsewhere. This, for example, is something I find utterly fascinating, speculative or not,” Dr. Seraphina said, leading us to the next table, where a book lay open as if waiting for our examination. “It is a Nephilistic angelology that begins with the Watchers, moves through Noah’s family, and branches out with great detail throughout the ruling families of Europe. It is called The Book of Generations.”

  I glanced over the page, reading the descending ladder of names as the angelology moved through the generations. Although I understood the power and the influence the Nephilim had upon human activity, I was taken aback to discover that the family lines moved through nearly every royal bloodline in Europe—the Capetians, the Hapsburgs, the Stuarts, the Carolingians. It was like reading the history of Europe dynasty by dynasty.

  Dr. Seraphina said, “We cannot be completely certain that these lines were infiltrated, but there is enough proof to convince most of us that the great families of Europe have been—and still are—deeply infected with the blood of the Nephilim.”

  Gabriella hung upon all that Seraphina said as if she were memorizing a timeline of dates for an examination or—and this was more apt to be at the heart of it—studying our teacher to discover her motivation for bringing us to this strange text. At last Gabriella said, “But the names of nearly all the noble families are listed. Are they all implicated in the terrors they have perpetuated?”

  “Indeed. The Nephilim were the kings and queens of Europe, their desires shaping the lives of millions of people. They kept their stronghold through intermarriage, primogeniture, and brute military force,” Dr. Seraphina said. “Their kingdoms collected taxes, slaves, properties, and all kinds of mineral and agricultural wealth, attacking any group that acquired even the smallest degree of independence. Their influence was so unrivaled during the medieval period that they did not even bother to hide themselves as they once had. According to accounts of angelologists of the thirteenth century, there were cults dedicated to fallen angels that were fully orchestrated by the Nephilim. Many of the evils attributed to witches—the accused were nearly always women—were actually part of Nephilistic rituals. They believed in ancestor worship and celebrated the return of the Watchers. These families still exist today. In fact,” Dr. Seraphina said, looking at Gabriella with a strange, almost accusatory look, “we are keeping very close watch on them. These families in particular are under surveillance.”

  While I glanced at the page and saw a number of names, none of which meant anything in particular to me, the effect of Seraphina’s words upon Gabriella was intense. As she read the names, she stepped back in fright. Her manner reminded me of the trance of horror I had witnessed come over her during Dr. Raphael’s lecture, only now she seemed on the verge of hysteria.

  “You are wrong,” Gabriella said, her voice rising with each word. “We are not watching them. They are watching us.”

  With this, she turned and ran from the room. I stared after her, wondering what could have caused such an emotional outburst. It seemed to me that she had gone mad. Turning to the manuscript once again, I saw nothing more than a page filled with family names, most of them unknown to me, some of prestigious ancient families. It was as unremarkable as any page from any of the history books we had studied together, none of which had caused Gabriella any measure of distress.

  Dr. Seraphina, however, appeared to understand Gabriella’s reaction exactly. In fact, from the sanguine manner in which she had assessed Gabriella’s reactions, it was as if Dr. Seraphina had not only expected her to recoil from the book but had planned it. Seeing my confusion, Dr. Seraphina closed the book and tucked it under her arm.

  “What happened?” I asked, as astonished by her manner as by Gabriella’s inexplicable behavior.

  “It pains me to tell you,” Dr. Seraphina said, leading me from the room, “but I believe that our Gabriella has gotten herself into terrible trouble.”

  My first impulse was to confess everything to Dr. Seraphina. The burden of Gabriella’s double life and the pall it had cast over my days had become nearly too much for me to bear. But just as I was about to speak, I was startled into silence. A dark figure swept before us, stepping from a shadowy corridor like a black-cloaked demon. I caught my breath, momentarily unbalanced by the interruption. After a brief examination, I saw that it was the heavily veiled nun—the council member I had met in the Athenaeum months before. She blocked our path.

  “May I speak with you a moment, Dr. Seraphina?” The nun spoke in a low, lisping manner that I found, to my embarrassment, instantly repulsive. “There are some questions we have regarding the shipment to the United States.”

  It comforted me to see that Dr. Seraphina took the nun’s presence in stride, speaking to her with her usual authority. “What questions could there be at this late hour? All has been arranged.”

  “Quite correct,” the nun said. “But I wish
to make certain that the paintings in the gallery are to be shipped to the United States along with the icons.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dr. Seraphina said, following the nun into the hallway, where a large gallery of crates and boxes awaited shipment. “They are to be received by our contact in New York.”

  Looking over the crates, I saw that many of them had been marked for shipping.

  Dr. Seraphina said, “The shipment will leave tomorrow. We need only to be sure that everything is here and that it gets to the port.”

  As the nun and Dr. Seraphina continued their discussion of the shipment and how they had, in the increasingly tightened schedule of vessels leaving France’s harbors, secured the evacuation of our most priceless objects, I returned to the hallway. Holding back the words I’d wished to speak, I walked away in silence.

  Moving through the dark, stone corridors, I passed empty classrooms and abandoned lecture halls, my footsteps echoing through the pervasive silence that had fallen over the rooms months before. The Athenaeum proved equally still. The librarians had left for the evening, turning out the lights and locking the doors. I used my key—given by Dr. Seraphina at the outset of my studies—to let myself in. As I opened the doors and examined the long, shadowy room, I felt utterly relieved to be alone. It was not the first time I’d felt thankful that the library was empty—I often found myself there after midnight, continuing my work after everyone else had left the school—but it was the first time that I had come in desperation.