Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  “You’re awfully dressed up,” she said, eyeing his tuxedo. Her voice was high-pitched and emotional, the exact opposite of Gabriella’s cold, uninflected manner of expression, an inversion that damaged Percival’s fantasy in an instant. He had wanted to believe he’d discovered Gabriella, but it was clear that this person was not as similar to Gabriella as he’d hoped. Nevertheless, he yearned to speak to her, to look at her, to re-create the past.

  He gestured for her to sit across from him. She hesitated just a moment, glanced once again at his expensive clothing, and sat. To his disappointment, her physical resemblance to Gabriella diminished even further when he examined her at close proximity. Her skin was peppered with fine freckles; Gabriella’s had been creamy and unblemished. Her eyes were brown; Gabriella’s had been brilliant green. Yet the curve of her shoulders and the way her blunt-cut black hair rested upon her cheeks was similar enough to hold his fascination. He ordered a bottle of champagne—the most expensive bottle available—and began to regale her with stories of his adventures in Europe, altering the tales to mask his age or, rather, his agelessness. While he had lived in Paris in the thirties, he told her he’d lived there in the eighties. While his business interests had been entirely directed by his father, he claimed to run his own enterprise. Not that she noticed the finer points or details of what he told her. It seemed to matter little what he said—she drank the champagne and listened, utterly unaware that she caused him such utter discomfort. It didn’t matter if she were as mute as a mannequin, so long as he could keep her there before him, silent and wide-eyed, half amused and half adoring, her hand draped carelessly over the table, her fleeting similarities to Gabriella intact. All that mattered was the illusion that time had fallen away.

  The fantasy allowed him to recall the blind fury Gabriella’s betrayal had caused him. The two of them had planned the theft of the Rhodope treasure together. Their plan had been precisely calibrated and, to Percival’s mind, brilliant. Their relationship had been one of passion, but also of mutual advantage. Gabriella had brought him information about angelological work—detailed reports on the holdings and whereabouts of angelologists—and Percival gave Gabriella information that allowed her to advance through the hierarchy of the society with ease. Their business interactions—there could be no other word for these worldly exchanges—had only served to make him admire Gabriella. Her hunger to succeed made her all the more precious to him.

  With Gabriella’s guidance the Grigori family learned of the Second Angelological Expedition. Their plan had been brilliant. Percival and Gabriella had set up the abduction of Seraphina Valko together, designating the route the caravan would take through Paris, making certain that the leather case remained in Gabriella’s hands. They had wagered that a trade—releasing the angelologists in exchange for the case containing the treasure—would be instantly approved by the Angelological Council. Dr. Seraphina Valko was not only an angelologist of world renown, she was the wife of the council leader, Raphael Valko. There was no possibility that the council would let her die, no matter how precious the object in question. Gabriella had assured him that their plan would work. He had believed her. Yet it soon became clear that something had gone terribly wrong. When he realized that there would be no trade, Percival killed Seraphina Valko himself. She had died in silence, although they’d done all they could to encourage her to divulge information about the object she’d recovered. But worst of all, Gabriella had betrayed him.

  The night she had given him the leather case containing the lyre he would have married her. He would have brought her into their circle, even against the objections of his parents, who long suspected that she was a spy working to infiltrate the Grigori family. Percival had defended her. But when his mother had taken the lyre to be examined by a German specialist in the history of musical instruments, a man often called upon to verify Nazi treasures, they found that the lyre was nothing more than a well-rendered replica, an ancient Syrian specimen made of cattle bone. Gabriella had lied to him. He had been humiliated and ridiculed for his faith in Gabriella, whom Sneja had never trusted.

  After the betrayal he’d washed his hands of Gabriella, leaving her to the others, a decision he found painful. He learned sometime later that her punishment had been exceptionally severe. It had been his intention that she die—indeed, he had instructed that she be killed rather than tortured—but through some combination of luck and extraordinary planning on the part of her colleagues she had been rescued. She recovered and went on to marry Raphael Valko, a match that assisted her career advancement. Percival would be the first to admit that Gabriella was the best in her field, one of the few angelologists to fully penetrate their world.

  In reality he had not spoken to Gabriella for more than fifty years. Like the others, she had been kept under continual surveillance, her professional and personal activities monitored at all times of the day and night. He knew that she was living in New York City and that she continued her work against him and his family. But Percival knew very little about the details of her personal life. After their affair his family had made sure that all information about Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko be kept from him.

  The last he’d heard, Gabriella was still struggling against the inevitable decline of angelology, fighting against the hopelessness of their cause. He imagined that she would be old now, her face still beautiful but fallen. She would look nothing at all like the frivolous, silly young woman now sitting across from him. Percival leaned back in his chair and examined the woman—her ridiculously low-cut blouse and her uncouth jewelry. She had become drunk—in fact, she had more than likely been so even before he’d ordered the champagne. The tawdry woman before him was nothing at all like Gabriella.

  “Come with me,” Percival said, throwing a stack of bills on the table. He put on his overcoat, took up his cane, and walked out into the night, his arm about the young woman. She was tall and thin, larger-boned than Gabriella. Percival could feel the pure sexual attraction between them—since the beginning it had been thus, human women falling prey to angelic charm.

  This one was no different from the others. She went along with Percival willingly, and for some blocks they walked in silence until, finding a secluded alley, he took her by the hand and led her into the shadows. The unbearable, almost animal desire he felt for her fueled his anger. He kissed her, made love to her, and then, in a rage, he encircled her delicate, warm throat with his long, cold fingers and pressed the bones until they began to snap. The young woman grunted and pushed him away, struggling to free herself from his grip, but it was too late: Percival Grigori was caught up in the kill. The ecstasy of her pain, the sheer bliss of her struggle, sent shudders of desire through him. Imagining that it was Gabriella in his grasp only made the pleasure more acute.

  St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

  Evangeline woke at three in the morning in a panic. After years of abiding a rigorously strict routine, she had the tendency to become disoriented when she deviated from her schedule. Glancing about her room and feeling the pull of sleep weighing upon her senses, she decided that what she saw was not her chamber at all but a small, orderly room with immaculate windowpanes and dusted shelves that existed in a dream, and she went back to sleep.

  The fleeting image of her mother and father appeared before her. They stood together in the apartment in Paris, her childhood home. In the dream her father was young and handsome, happier than Evangeline had seen him after her mother’s death. Her mother—even in the midst of dreaming, Evangeline struggled to see her—stood in the distance, a shadowy figure, her face obscured by a sun hat. Evangeline reached for her, desperate to touch her mother’s hand. From the depths of her dream, she called for her mother to come closer. But as she strained to be near to her, Angela receded, dissolving like a diaphanous, insubstantial fog.

  Evangeline woke for a second time, startled by the intensity of the dream. The bright red light of her alarm clock illuminated three numbers—4:55. A shot of elect
ricity sparked through her: She was about to be late for her scheduled hour of adoration. As she blinked and looked about the room, she realized that she had left the drapes open, and her chamber absorbed the night sky. Her white sheets were tinted grayish purple, as if covered in ash. Standing at her bedside, she stepped into her black skirt, buttoned her white blouse, and fitted her veil over her hair.

  As she recalled her dream, a wave of longing enveloped her. No matter how much time passed, Evangeline felt her parents’ absence as acutely as she had as a child. Her father had died suddenly three years before, his heart stopping in his sleep. Though she observed the date of his death each year, performing a novena in his honor, it was difficult to reconcile herself to the fact that he would not know how she’d grown and changed since taking vows, how she’d become more like him than either of them would have thought possible. He’d told her many times that in temperament she was like her mother—both were ambitious and single-minded, eyes trained blindly upon the end rather than the means. But in truth, it was the stamp of his personality that had been impressed upon Evangeline.

  Evangeline was about to leave when she remembered the cards from her grandmother that had so frustrated her the night before. She reached under her pillow, sorted through them, and, despite the fact that she was late for adoration, decided to try one more time to understand the tangled words her grandmother had sent to her.

  She removed the cards from the envelopes and placed them upon the bed. One of the images caught her attention. In her exhaustion, she had overlooked it the previous night. It was a pale sketch of an angel, its hands upon the rungs of a ladder. She was certain she had seen the image before, although she could not recall where she’d come across it or why it seemed so familiar. The hint of recognition compelled her to move another card next to it, and as she did so, something clicked in her mind. Suddenly the images made sense: The sketches of angels on the cards were fragments of a larger picture.

  Evangeline rearranged the pieces, moving them into various shapes, matching colors and borders as if constructing a jigsaw puzzle until a whole panorama emerged—swarms of brilliant angels stepping up an elegant spiral staircase and into a burst of heavenly light. Evangeline knew the picture well. It was a reproduction of William Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder, a watercolor her father had taken her to see in the British Museum as a girl. Her mother had loved William Blake—she had collected books of Blake’s poetry and prints, and her father had bought a print of Jacob’s Ladder for Angela as a gift. They had brought it with them to America after Angela’s death. It was one of the only images that had adorned their plain apartment in Brooklyn.

  Evangeline opened the top left card and removed the piece of paper from inside. She opened the second card and did the same. Holding the pieces of paper side by side, she saw that her grandmother’s message worked in the same fashion as the images. The message must have been written at one time, cut into squares and sealed into envelopes that Gabriella had sent in yearly intervals. If Evangeline placed the creamy pages side by side, the jumble of words came together to form comprehensible sentences. Her grandmother had found a way to keep her message safe.

  Evangeline arranged the papers in the proper order, placing one sheet next to another, until a whole expanse of Gabriella’s elegant writing lay before her. Reading over it, she saw that she had been correct. The fragments fit together perfectly. Evangeline could almost hear Gabriella’s calm authoritative voice as she scanned the lines.

  By the time you read this, you will be a woman of twenty-five and—if everything has worked according to the wishes of your father and me—you will be living a safe and contemplative existence under the supervision of our Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at St. Rose Convent. It is 1988 as I write this. You are just twelve years old. Surely you will wonder at how it came to pass that you are receiving this letter now, so long after it was composed. Perhaps I will have perished before you read it. Perhaps your father will be gone as well. One cannot glean the workings of the future. It is the past and the present that must occupy us. To this I ask you to turn your attention.

  You may also wonder why I have been so absent from your life in recent years. Perhaps you are angry that I have not contacted you during your time at St. Rose. The time we spent together in New York, in those most important years before you went to the convent, has sustained me through much turmoil. As has the time we spent together in Paris, when you were but a baby. It is possible that you remember me from that time, although I doubt it very much. I used to take you through the Jardin du Luxembourg with your mother. These were happy afternoons, ones that I cherish to this day. You were such a little girl when your mother was murdered. It is a crime that you were robbed of her so young. I often wonder if you know how brilliantly alive she was, how much she loved you. I am certain your father, who adored Angela, has told you much about her.

  He must also have told you that he insisted upon leaving Paris immediately after the incident, believing that you would be safer in America. And so you left, never to return. I do not fault him for taking you far away—he had every right to protect you, especially after what happened to your mother.

  It may be difficult to understand, but no matter how I wish to see you, it is not possible for me to contact you directly. My presence would bring danger to you, to your father, and, if you have been obedient to your father’s wishes, to the good sisters at St. Rose Convent. After what happened to your mother, I am not at liberty to take such risks. I can only hope that by twenty-five you will be old enough to understand the care that you must take, the responsibility of knowing the truth of your heritage and your destiny, which, in our family, are two branches of a single tree.

  It is not in my power to guess how much you know about your parents’ work. If I know your father, he has not told you a thing about angelology and has attempted to shelter you from even the rudiments of our discipline. Luca is a good man, and his motives are sound, but I would have raised you quite differently. You may be utterly unaware that your family has been taking part in one of the great secret battles of heaven and earth, and yet the brightest children see and hear everything. I suspect that you are one of these very children. Perhaps you uncovered your father’s secret by your own devices? Perhaps you even knew that your place at St. Rose was arranged before your First Communion, when Sister Perpetua—in accordance with the requirements of angelological institutions—agreed to shelter you? Perhaps you know that you, daughter of angelologists, granddaughter of angelologists, are our hope for the future. If you are ignorant of these matters, my letter may bring you quite a shock. Please read my words through to the end, dear Evangeline, no matter the distress they cause.

  Your mother began her work in angelology as a chemist. She was a brilliant mathematician and an even more brilliant scientist. Indeed, hers was the best kind of mind, one capable of holding both literal and fantastic ideas at once. In her first book, she imagined the extinction of the Nephilim as a Darwinian inevitability, the logical conclusion of their interbreeding with humanity, the angelic qualities diluted to ineffectual recessive traits. Although I did not fully understand her approach—my interests and background resided in the social-mythological arena—I did understand the notion of material entropy and the ancient truth that the spirit will always exhaust the flesh. Angela’s second book about the hybridization of Nephilim with humans—applying the genetic research founded by Watson and Crick—dazzled our council. Angela rose quickly in the society. She was awarded a full professorship by age twenty-five, an unheard-of honor in our institution, and equipped with the latest technological support, the best laboratory, and unlimited research funding.

  With fame came danger. Angela soon became a target. There were numerous threats upon her life. Security levels around her laboratory were high—I made sure of this myself. And yet it was in her lab that they abducted her.

  It is my guess that your father has not told you the details of her abduction. It is painful to relate, and I
myself have never been able to speak of it to anyone. They did not kill your mother immediately. She was taken from her laboratory and held for some weeks by Nephilistic agents in a compound in Switzerland. It is their usual method—kidnapping important angelological figures for the purpose of making a strategic trade. Our policy has always been to refuse to negotiate, but when Angela was taken, I became frantic. Policy or no policy, I would have traded the world for her safe return.

  For once your father agreed with me. Many of her research notebooks were in his possession, and we decided to offer these in trade for Angela’s life. Although I did not understand the details of her work in genetics, I understood this much: The Nephilim were getting sick, their numbers were diminishing, and they wanted a cure. I communicated to Angela’s kidnappers that the notebooks contained secret information that would save their race. To my delight, they agreed to make the trade.

  Perhaps I was naive to believe they would keep their end of the agreement. When I came to Switzerland and gave them Angela’s notebooks, I was given a wooden casket containing my daughter’s body. She had been dead for many days. Her skin had been badly bruised, her hair matted with blood. I kissed her cold forehead and knew that I had lost all that mattered most to me. I fear that her last days were spent in torment. The specter of her final hours is never far from my mind.

  Forgive me for being the bearer of this horrible story. I am tempted to remain silent, keeping the ghastly details from you. But you are a woman now, and with age we must face the reality of things. We must fathom even the darkest realms of human existence. We must grapple with the strength of evil, its persistence in the world, its undying power over humanity, and our willingness to support it. It is little comfort, I’m sure, to know that you are not alone in your despair. For me Angela’s death is the darkest of all dark regions. My nightmares echo with her voice and with the voice of her killer.