He opened his heart to me when I gave him a broken egg. I will open mine to the mysteries of the life he offers me.
“Owa,” I say, and a shiver goes through me. I’ve never before spoken an adult’s first name before.
He smiles. I’ve never seen him smile before. “Wait right there,” he says. “I’m coming down.”
The Book of Judgment
Helen Marshall
Let us say that she was sitting at needlework when he came for her; that her fingers were still deft, that they moved without a stumble as the thread tucked in and out; or perhaps it is better if she were at the pianoforte, playing, and she did stumble, her fingers slipped on a jarring note. It might have been something by Handel or Haydn or Dibdin or Samuel Webbe; or, were she venturing farther afield, she might have attempted Corelli or Cramer. But, no, despite what they say I know better, and she had no especial taste for the pianoforte; she did not care for it though all the world said she did; I know she did not, I know it.
And so it could not have been that she was at the pianoforte, when the stranger came, but let us say she was, let us not unsettle the sensibilities of those who claim intimate knowledge of her practices, let us say she was there, bent just so, rapt in the rhythm of Handle, then, (for I admit I am partial to Handel even if Jane was not) and let it be a jest between us against my detractors if it were not as I have described it exactly.
When the stranger entered, he may have startled her, so that the “March” in Judas Maccabeus was insensibly altered, and her chin might have nodded up at the unexpected sound of the door, and perhaps a slight gasp even escaped her lips when she saw him; this Hun invading the centre of her quiet domesticity. Some might describe him as tall, and that would be a perfectly adequate description; he was tall. But to say that is not to capture the sense of magnitude he brought with him, the grandeur. I have been told that some hear a rushing noise like a cataract when they first look upon him, the sound of pounding blood, and it may be this that she heard, her heartbeat accompanying the forever marred Handel. I cannot say. And to say he was handsome, again, might be seen as somehow a lessening, and such falsehoods, such tendencies toward understatement are inappropriate in a chronicle such as this, which requires the strictest veracity in all things; his hair was soft as lamb’s wool, curled gently over his forehead; black, most likely; he had dark, piercing eyes, possessed of intelligence and keenness, and sensuous lips of the kind true lovers, or lawyers, possess. Perhaps, she had some subtle premonition when she first saw him; perhaps she heard a note like a bell, tolling, as some saints do. But there was almost certainly something; that, at least, is not in question.
And so her pen might have fallen from nerveless fingers, yes, it was a pen after all, and so it was the writing desk at which she sat and not the pianoforte. And he will have said to her, “Fear not, madam, that I should disturb you at this late hour, for I have come with tidings.” And she will have been shocked, but that stubborn grace to which she was born will have steeled her resolve, and she will have said, “Indeed, sir.” And he will have said, “You are to die.” And she will have said, “That is known. For is it not that every woman on God’s earth is appointed an hour of death?” And he, with a terrible smile, though not terribly meant, of course, but frightening, nonetheless, to a mortal, will have said, “Yes, Miss Austen. That is so.”
Since the beginning of Time, there has existed in Heaven a perfect record of all deeds, an accounting of each man and woman upon which they will be judged, a great Book written with words of gold, watched over by Saint Peter, the holiest and most trusted of the Apostles. All this I revealed to the astonished Miss Austen, her face flushed to a beautiful pink, like the first blossom of a rose; all this I revealed and something more: that I, myself, had been chosen as the Author of that Book. Certainly, she was wonderstruck that such a task had been entrusted to one so beautiful and terrible, though, of course, not willingly terrible, never willingly terrible to her. Certainly, she will have felt as if her story were perfectly safe, that each notation should accord perfectly with how it had been performed in History, that the accounting should be true and her immortal soul safe.
And I assured her, eagerly, that this was so; that there had never been a keener observer of her manners than I; that none had been so attuned to her every thought, the reveries, the little meanderings of her brain, than the one who stood before her. And she might have nodded, just a little, but at this point I will have noticed that the wonderment she felt, the jarring to her soul had jarred her hand as well, and a thin pool of ink might have been gathering on the pages before her. Gallantly, I might have said something to draw attention to this, “Madam, the ink is running.” And she will have said, “Why should ink matter when an Angel of the Lord stands before me?” and I will have said, “Because it is all that matters. Was not the universe brought into being with a Word?” And she will have said, “Yes, perhaps.” And I will have laughed gently, “Then you must attend to words, to your little creations, lest some force of evil enter into the world.” Perhaps this was not a very kind joke.
The other angels had little in the way of poetic sensibility; they were wise, yes, and terrible, certainly that, but none of them, at their hearts, were aesthetes. They were messengers, servants, builders, killers even—you might say that there was a certain creative flair in, for example, that little episode with Lot’s wife, but you have to realize that even Azrael was a little embarrassed about it, he didn’t know what had come over him, and the others, they wouldn’t trust him with anything apocalyptic for centuries. You see, they wanted wisdom; they wanted terror; but poetry, that was a thing for mortals, that was a way of imagining the world not how it was but how it could be; and as the world was exactly how God had ordered it in his Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Knowledge, it was, therefore, Infinitely Perfect. Why sadness, you might ask? Why death? Why pillars of salt and punishment? Why manna in the wilderness and the twelve plagues of Egypt and the forbidden fruit if not for the sheer poetry of it? I asked Azrael once, but he only looked at me with those eyes that had seen the passing of eons, that had basked in the radiance of a most perfect love and had delivered thousands upon thousands of mortals from one world to the next—eyes that did not want questions, only thousands put to the sword, not even a fiery sword, just a simple iron sword with two sides honed for cutting down mortals like wheat—and he said, “I don’t know why I did it, mate. I don’t.”
Jane did not like jokes. That was very clear to me; she might have, in youth, enjoyed the odd frivolity but in old age her mind had hardened into a shell around her frail body, and she did not smile.
“Am I to do die, then?” she will have said, and I will have said, “Yes. I have said as much.”
“But when?” she will have asked me. “When?” But I could not tell her, I could not tell. To do so would make me anathema, and besides, I was not there as a messenger, nor as a servant, nor even as a killer—I was there to record. And it would be then that I heard a knock at the door, and in will have come a great clod of a man wearing his bulk upon him as if it were an expensive suit, tailored to fit, a plain-looking man, aggressive in conversation and almost completely tactless, with a quite unappealing stutter. And he will have said, “You have r-r-r-ruined the Handel.” Stricken, she will have apologized though I am sure she did not wish to. “Indeed,” he will have said, “again please.” And he will have left the room as abruptly as he had entered.
“Mister Harris Bigg-Wither,” I will have stated, and even then words were written, somewhere, in shining gold on pages white as snow. A great clod of a man . . .
“My husband.”
“I know.”
“He proposed after his time in Oxford.
“I know.”
“Marriage might offer many practical advantages. A permanent home for Cassandra, assistance for my brothers in their careers. . . .”
“I know, Miss Auste
n,” I might have whispered, and, somewhere, the words many practical advantages . . .
“Do not call me that.”
God, it is said, sees all things at once; for Him there is no such thing as Time, for indeed, He exists outside of Time and for Him all things are immediate, all things perpetual. God has no understanding of narrative; how can He? For narrative is the pleasing arrangement of one incident after another, the compelling build of drama and the proper, appropriate resolution when all things have occurred, as they must, in a certain order.
In Heaven, it is said, there sits the Book of Judgment and each mortal is recorded there so that upon the day of death, Saint Peter might open the book and find ascribed there a full recounting of their deeds. But it is not said, that albeit the words are of the finest gold and they shine like the light of Heaven itself, albeit the parchment is of the finest white vellum, as smooth as newborn flesh, as white as newfallen snow, when one reads from the Book of Judgment it is a fast and simple thing: Missus Clara Crawford lived a good life and is deserving of reward; or Mister Timothy Branton was good for many years but fell under the influence of evil friends.
And I read from the Book and I examined the lives of those I had been sent to watch over, and each of them seemed like such a tiny thing, so tiny, and I would turn the page and ask, “But where are they, the little loves and betrayals, the tests and mishaps and abandonments and reversals?” and Peter, with an infinitely loving look, with the weight of ages sitting upon his poor, beetled brow, would say, “Just leave it, already. We don’t have time for plot.”
Miss Austen played very nicely this second time, and the G Major was sweet and pleasing to the ear, her transition to the “Duet” flawless. I said nothing. I simply watched her at the pianoforte, watched the elegant curve of her neck bowing toward the keys, the litheness of her fingers; the way her eyes would close for a moment as she played and then flutter open furiously. She was a beautiful woman, this Miss Austen, or as she preferred, Missus Bigg-Wither, and as one who has seen the many specimens of Creation, I can say with some authority that here was a remarkable creature, here was a creature of virtue and kindness, deserving in every way of the especial attention of one such as myself.
When the piece came to an end, she sat for a moment, utterly composed, and I thought she would speak but she did not, not immediately, she listened as if to some phantom music of her own; but that was not it, it was not some inner symphony she attended to, no, but the creak of the house, the sound of footsteps in the hall. There was none. She relaxed.
“Are you here to haunt me?”
“No,” I said, “this is not one of your Gothic tales, with wild-haired men and buried secrets.”
“I do not have time for stories.”
“No,” I said. “Not any longer.”
“Why do you look at me like that?”
“Like what?” I replied, startled.
“As if you were a child, and I a much sought after sweet that had suddenly turned sour in your mouth.”
I regarded her in silence for a time; her body shuddered with the effort of playing, and I found myself listening too, for the sound of footsteps, for the sound of something beside her breath coming in and out of her lungs in ragged little bursts. There was light streaming in from an open window and it touched her hair, burnished it to gold.
“I think you are very beautiful,” I said.
“You must not say such things.”
“But I am bound to truth in all things.” She was very beautiful . . .
“I am not,” Miss Austen replied, and she turned her head so that the light slide off her hair, touched her lips, her eyes. “Truth is a not a thing for a woman, or novelists, to be concerned with; it is only the appearance of truth that touches us, for a thing feigned becomes true enough given only sufficient time and inclination for the masquerade.”
“It is different for an angel.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I would very much like to imagine it is.”
Let us say, now, that her husband, Mister Bigg-Wither, never entered the room; let us say that we sat, the two of us listening, for some time, and we heard only birdsong or, perhaps, the pianoforte, but no footsteps in the hall.
At the beginning of the War—and even I do not remember, good record-keeper, good servant that I am, which it was—Azrael was thrilled. “It will be good to see action again,” he said, “just to try my hand at it again. A sword is an easy thing to lose touch with, a sword requires practice, effort, and I,” he confessed, “have not done much of either.” Azrael went to the Peninsula where the French were massacring the British and the British were massacring the French, and as I visited Miss Austen, so did he watch the course of the War creep across those other lands; when I saw him, he was gleaming, resplendent, and there was a thrill to his voice when he spoke, as if the crack of cannons had infused him with a thunderous rapture. Azrael was happy with the simple tasks of warfare.
“Let them do as they will,” he would say to us, “it’s all the same. French. English. Not a Joan of Arc to look out for among them, not a vision to dispense with. Just mind the cavalry and keep out the way. Easy work.” He smiled then, happy to have something to do, happy to be of service. But the next time he didn’t bother with bringing his sword. “All muskets now, isn’t it? Not like the old days. Muskets and cannons. Good things, cannons, I’m not complaining, but it’s all a bit imprecise, isn’t it? They just fire and, hey, maybe it’ll hit, maybe it won’t. But never let it be said that I’m complaining, I like a good war, a good war is a thing.”
But he looked sad, somehow, and after that he confided to me, “I don’t know what I’m doing there. I just don’t know. There aren’t any orders. I just watch, now, it’s all just watching. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Shouldn’t I be trying to inspire them? Shouldn’t one side have a moral right over the other?”
“It means that history is advancing, and Creation is more infinitely complex than we can possibly imagine,” I said.
“I stride about the battlefield,” he said, “and I watch the cannons go off, and the charge, and then I sort through the dead, and when I come across one, someone writes down his name and puts a little tick beside the box. And they respect me, the ones from Records, they absolutely respect me, you can see it in their eyes. But all they want to know is did that one manage to hit anything? Because if he did, that’s it then, isn’t it? The little bastards know which box to tick.”
When Jane’s beauty left her she still had the pianoforte, and her skill at it was extreme, sublime. Her fingers were precise if arthritic; and when she played it was as if a tremor rippled through me, as if she were revealing some hidden part of the divine plan, some especial function of grace that I had never been privy to. And I would listen to her, sometimes, and we would speak, sometimes.
“I do not understand why you have come,” she would say to me.
“It is my purpose to discover your secrets, that I might see the truth of you and write it in Heaven.”
“There is no truth to me that you have not seen,” she would say, “for I have no pretensions to that sort of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man, and as such I have laid bare for you whatever you ask.”
“Ah,” I would exclaim, “what I search for is the parts of yourself that you do not yet, and may never, understand; for that is where the true character of a woman is written, not in what she knows she can reveal and does however willingly, but in what she is unaware of, even in herself.”
“Then you assume I do not know myself.”
“No mortal can.”
“And yet I have made a study of it, these long, lonely years, a perfect study so that I could paint a likeness of myself for your Book that, I have no doubt, would be suitable to your purposes.”
“What would you say?”
“That I am
a woman.”
“That would not be enough.”
“It was enough for Eve,” she would say, “and it is enough for my husband.”
“It is not enough for you.”
It is said that in Heaven there is an order to things, and we angels understand it perfectly, that we lack the requisite means to question, those of us who stayed, that is, who did not fall in the War. And so I did not question when Azrael came to me, no longer resplendent, the crack of cannonfire gone from his voice. “They’ve taken me off Warfare,” he said, and his voice was melodious and sad. “They say that I do not understand the New Order, that I am a cog in a perfectly ordered machine but, perhaps, it is the wrong machine, not the machine of Warfare. I don’t even know that that means,” he confessed, “but one of them, one of the dying ones, asked for a sign. And so I appeared to him, I let him see that God’s love was infinite and that he was safe, and that flesh was just a little thing, just a very little thing, and he had a place in the cosmic order. That God was merciful.
“Did you know that they have a Book? And in that Book are the names of the angels—everyone one of us? And it says, Azrael—a good servant for many years. For many years, what does that mean? Am I not eternal? Am I not free of flesh and beyond the scope of Time? For many years. And one of them found me. He said to me, ‘Azrael, you are made to serve.’ And I was. I am. I live to serve, service is the very truth of what I am, that’s what I told him. ‘Good,’ the little bugger said.”
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