by Michele Lang
She tensed in my arms, and then hugged me even harder. “You just answered my fervent prayer. Hallelujah, Angel Magduska.”
My eyes prickled with tears; nobody had ever called me an angel before. When I stayed silent, she poked me in the ribs, dug in until both of us laughed and laughed, peals of hard mirth that still ring in my ears.
“You’ll never guess who bought us all these goodies,” Eva said as she wiped at her eyes. “I am sitting on a pirate’s treasure of explosives.”
“The Hashomer, the Young Guard, right? Or wait, is it Knox?”
“No. You aren’t going to believe it. Bathory’s carpet merchants! They are convinced that if Poland somehow holds out, they can break away from Stalin. So they want to help us fight. In three days.”
We looked at each other for a long minute in the sudden silence. “I have to get to the leader of the Hashomer, Eva. It’s not just the Azeris who need us to hang on in Poland. If we can turn Hitler back, maybe Gisele’s prophecy can be averted even now.”
Eva looked and looked at me, as if she saw a ghost in her arms. “You feel solid as wood, little star, but you seem so far away, another galaxy.”
“No, my darling, I’m here with you.” I tried to smile, to hide my grief. But I longed for Raziel, ached to know where he had gone to from this world.
But I could not speak of it. Instead, chin up. “We’ve got to keep our spirits high.”
She shrugged. “I’m all out of jokes, downright grim I am. I’ll talk to my group leader and see if you could meet with the Budapest chief before we are deployed. But, Magda, I’m just a courier, a nobody. It’s the Zionist faithful who run the show.”
I shrugged back in reply. “Or so they think. You’d be amazed who really runs the world, my darling. Amazed.”
I put my leather satchel on the floor and took out a white paper bag filled with almond horns. “From Gisele. She said you have to keep your dimples up.”
That finally made Eva smile, for real this time. “Bless you, Magduska! If you need a girl without a drop of magic, I’ll be here, fighting, win or lose . . .”
Ah, Eva. She was braver than the rest of us put together, magic or no magic. I kissed her cheeks, made sure she at least tasted the cookies Gisele had sent. And at the threshold, I turned and said in farewell, “Be strong, Evuska. Be strong.”
I left her there, surrounded by tools of war. But not alone, never alone. Celestials are not the only angels; when the messengers of heaven must leave us, we can be angels to one another.
32
The Kozma Street Cemetery was the final resting place of ballerinas, engineers, and famous thieves. Swimmers and potentates, unbelievers and rabbis, their only commonality their Jewishness, their final neighborhood the ultimate ghetto. Tired-looking gray clouds drifted across the face of the flat summer sky, so pale blue it looked almost white.
The cinder path through the cemetery wound long and low through a row of weeping willows. All around me echoed the souls of my predecessors, brushing past me in silent benediction.
My parents’ graves lay side by side, near the grave of the wonder rabbi Oppenheimer. The rabbi’s gravestone was inundated with a veritable avalanche of pebbles left by supplicants, seekers, and sincere mourners; my parents’ graves looked windblown and wild, and the long grass covered over their names on the single headstone.
I worked no magic; I swear it. I kneeled at my mother’s grave, pressed my hands against the cool ashy marble of her marker, and I silently prayed for her and for myself. My cheek rested against the scratchy edge of the stone, and after my prayer was done, I dozed.
And in my mind’s eye, my mother appeared, her soul mended and at peace, her fingers interlaced with my father’s fingers. I could not see my father’s face, but his loving presence brought the worn remnants of my own soul back to life.
“Go in peace, daughter,” Mama said. “I lift my curse from you. Take your soul back, go back to life. Go, go.”
I murmured my thanks, wept silent tears both in my dream and over my living face. And I watched as the Witch of Ein Dor rose up behind them, a shielding presence, not a curse.
I would have traded places with my mother, if she wanted to return and if it were possible. But the world does not work in this way, one life traded for another, except in moments of grace granted by the Almighty Himself.
My questions were all for my ancient grandmama, the Witch of Ein Dor. “Why didn’t you come back when you could, at your will?”
“Simple, little star. We need to make room for you.”
I looked over her shoulder. No guardian angel stood over the Witch of Ein Dor to protect her. No sheltering wings to canopy my brave family matriarch in glory: she no longer needed any protection.
The gift was too big. “I don’t know if I can do what I am supposed to do.”
The Witch of Ein Dor shrugged her bony shoulders. “Do what is right, and everything else will fall into place. The afterworld is a busy place. It is now your time for life, and we go to our place in the plan of the world. Never doubt that God made you, little star. You have the right to live, to sin. To love.”
“But your curse?”
She laughed and shook her head. The three of them faded away, an ordinary dream, and they left me weeping in the silence of an August afternoon in Budapest.
When I awoke, the feeling had returned to the tips of my fingers, I could smell the peppery chrysanthemums planted in beds all along the pathway, and the mossy grass underneath the weeping willows.
I was alive. Time to leave my beloved parents to their peace, and time to return to Budapest, still fighting for her life. But words, magic itself, had failed me.
I knelt by my parents’ headstone, my forehead resting against the cool marble. Loving fingers brushed against my shoulders, warm, living fingers, and I closed my eyes against their kindness. But I wiped my eyes, smoothed back my hair, and rose to face the gentle soul who stood with me in my grief. I hoped it was Gisele, suspected it was Eva.
But I was wrong. It was Raziel. He wore a charcoal gray suit and smart fedora, and he stood silent in the August heat.
I held my breath, unwilling to shatter the illusion with tears. Our eyes met, his hands reached for mine, and only after he drew me close did the realization hit me: his wings were gone. Folded out of sight, rendered invisible, or taken away.
Did I still dream? “My God, it’s you,” I whispered.
“Yes, I’m back. To stay, this time.”
My heart fluttered like a little bird looking to escape, to fly free. It was true. Raziel lived. “You are an angel no more.”
He smiled, inclined his head to look down at me. “No. But I am still in. And ready to fight.”
I tilted my head back to look into his whiskey brown eyes, squinting into the sunlight, my mind full of doubt—
And Raziel’s lips closed slowly over mine, answering all of my questions with a single, sublime, soul-shattering kiss.
33
AUGUST 30, 1939
DOHÁNY STREET, BUDAPEST
And now it’s war. I told Eva the truth—Hitler will indeed invade Poland on September 1, 1939. The day before, a small group of SS soldiers, disguised in Polish uniforms, will cross the border from Poland into Germany and seize the Gleiwitz radio station, in a false demonstration of Polish anti-German aggression. To add a note of realism to the counterfeit attack, the soldiers will execute a Polish sympathizer, dress him in the uniform of the provocateurs, and leave his body, riddled with bullet holes, at the station.
Thus the Nazis will ignite the war with lies. Hitler is the king of lies, and he wants to convince the world he was provoked to act, you see. A good Führer, he guards the honor and dignity of the Reich, protects her from unbearable provocation. Or so he likes the world to believe.
Asmodel told me all of this, knowing it was too late for me to act upon his information and try again to change the war’s destiny. Hitler met with his generals last week and said, “I shall give a p
ropaganda reason for starting the war, whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.”
So it will be that the truth will die on September first. Hitler’s host will roll into Poland, with tanks, his human armies, and with the power of The Book of Raziel investing the killers of the Reich with an infernal power.
But Hitler will not invade unopposed. The Polish Army, duly forewarned by the Young Guards, will be waiting, noble cavalrymen and infantry standing to fight against artillery and planes. Zionist guerillas will join them, as will an army of the demons and the dead.
And I? I will come from out of the shadows, and I will show no mercy when I appear. A girl with a talent will use it, win or lose, damned or saved. And if I die along with the truth, I will refuse to stay dead for long.
Every epoch has its magic, tales of the old country, tales of triumph and dream. The Book of Raziel was first offered in solace and passed from one loving soul to another when the world was young. Now the Book and all the world hover at the edge of destruction, and the truth of my tale is a fragile amulet indeed. Can anyone avert what is ordained? We know that we must: at least it will be said that we fought to stop it.
Now I ask you on the eve of war, because neither my story nor your own is fully told, because these are the questions that matter, hidden within the shadow of death:
Who do you love?
Do you seek the darkness or the light?
LADY LAZARUS by Michele Lang
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
How do places such as Budapest, Amsterdam, and Paris function as characters in Lady Lazarus? Do these settings change over the course of the story? How and why?
Lady Lazarus is a fantasy based on historical events. How would the world be different today if World War II had started at some point later than September 1939, or if Hitler had been stopped before the war ever broke out?
Does the presence of celestial and demonic creatures in Lady Lazarus imply that an Almighty being does exist in the world of Lady Lazarus and is involved in the world’s affairs?
Can magic be a metaphor, and if so, for what—creativity, connection with a Creator, a destructive exercise of human will? How does magic interact with the reality of death in the world of Lady Lazarus?
Raziel is safe within his role as a divine messenger. Why does he struggle with his traditional role and his safety in the celestial realm, and how does he transcend that role?
Do you think the story of Lady Lazarus could have been told in any other historical setting? Why or why not? What lessons of 1939 are relevant to the world of today?
Do you think that Magda will survive the war? Gisele? Raziel? Why or why not?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lady Lazarus is Michele Lang’s first historical urban fantasy novel. Like her protagonist, she is of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry. Lang is the author of the science-fiction novel Netherwood. She and her family currently reside on the North Shore of Long Island, New York.
BOOKS BY MICHELE LANG
Netherwood
Lady Lazarus*
Dark Victory* (coming in 2011)
*A TOR BOOK
Read on for a preview of
Dark Victory
Michele Lang
Available in January 2012 from Tom Doherty Associates
A Tor hardcover by Michele Lang
One
August 30, 1939
Dohány Street
Budapest, Hungary
11 a.m.
My doom was trapped inside a tin of Hungarian paprika.
I rolled the thin metal canister between my fingers and almost dropped it; the tin was hot enough to burn my skin. In the silence of my dusty little kitchen on Dohány Street, in Budapest’s Seventh District, my pulse pounded in my ears. I knew that if I could not control the demon I had captured, Hitler would invade Poland. And the world would explode.
The situation was just that simple and that difficult. I had captured Hitler’s personal demon. But I didn’t know how to use him.
We simply didn’t have any time left. Hitler was going to invade Poland in two days, on September 1st, 1939. I knew it. Gisi had seen this dark future in a vision more than a month ago. And knowing this, as a Jewish witch, I was in mortal danger.
But on this hot and over-bright August morning losing my own life was the least of my problems. My breath caught in my throat. I longed to put the tin down, curl up on my cot, and hide from the demon in dreams.
But I could not rest—not with war so close. I had warned the diplomats of the Polish embassy of the imminent war. I also had sent word to the Zionists through my best friend, Eva Farkas, who had joined their number. But now I had to put this demon, Asmodel, under my power, somehow.
I licked my lips and forced myself to breathe. It was time to call forth the bound and hidden Asmodel; only he could tell me what September first would truly bring. Only he could stop Hitler before he unleashed the war.
I had the strength to bind him, but I had to find out whether I had enough magic to compel him to my will.
My little sister Gisele had begged me not to take Asmodel out of the tin; my beloved Raziel, once an angel but now a mortal man for my sake, only shook his head and laughed when I told him I meant to challenge my captive spirit.
I sat in my chair at the kitchen table and cupped the paprika tin in my hands, my fingertips dancing over the hot metal. Raziel stood behind me, and I was grateful that I could not see the expression on his face. Only a day or two before, the demon had fought Raziel, an angel of the Lord, hand to hand, and Raziel stopped him, but at the cost of sacrificing his very place in Heaven.
Gisele, trembling like a wind-tossed leaf, sat next to me, her left arm trailing over my shoulder as we stared together at Asmodel’s makeshift prison. The paprika tin Gisele had found proved a surprisingly sturdy prison for Asmodel’s soul, with only a dusting of paprika left inside.
“Have a care,” Gisele whispered, and her arm tightened around mine. Her sweet solicitude drew tears to my eyes. The cleverest part of me, the part that had seen Gisele and me through the hard years after my mother’s death, wanted nothing more but to throw the tin in the Danube and run away to Paris, like my friend Robert Capa had done. I could save Gisele that way.
But Gisele, my little mouse, was also the one who had dared me to rise above my craving for self-preservation. In her quiet way, Gisele dared to resist. Some heroes, like my little sister, are born that way. Other people, like me, are forced by sheer desperation into daring.
I struggled to hold back the tears, and tried to paste a brave-looking, enigmatic smile onto my lips—bravado will carry a person surprisingly far in this world of illusions. The demon was well-bound with the spells I had recently learned from an ancient and powerful witch in Amsterdam. But despite all these precautions, Asmodel was by far the stronger of the two of us, and we both knew it.
I flipped open the sifter with my thumb, and immediately I heard Asmodel’s low, creepy laughter. Powdered paprika wafted out of sifter like a pestilent little cloud, and I fought the sudden urge to sneeze. I ran my palm over the top of the sifter, made sure Asmodel wasn’t trying to slip into the little cloud and away.
I took a deep breath and a sudden calm descended over me. “Peace, ancient one,” I said. I recited the central verses of the Testament of Solomon, the ones that the King himself had used to bind Asmodel, to make sure the demon stayed put.
Somehow the great king had compelled this very demon to serve a larger good, long ago. I was a Lazarus, a witch of the blood, and I now had the power to cast spells. Could I too rule Asmodel?
The low, rumbling, laughter stopped, and for that I was grateful.
“You disturb my peace, Jewish witch.”
His peace? The creature locked inside the paprika tin disturbed my peace far more, as did his former host and master, the Fϒhrer of Germany. In fact like Hitler, Asmodel disturbed the peace of all the world.
My voice trembled as I spoke, thou
gh my nerves stayed steady. “September first, Hitler invades Poland.”
The demon scrabbled against the bottom of the tin like a trapped mouse, and the tin twisted ominously in my fingers. “Maybe, maybe not,” he growled. “Who knows?”
Tension knotted the base of my skull. “You know, Asmodel. And you will tell me.”
The laughter rose again, muffled but clearly intelligible from inside the tin. “How will you make me? You have the power to bind me, but not the power to compel my speech, witchling.”
“And yet, a baby witch like me somehow bested and captured an ancient, cunning creature like you. How embarrassing. Your humiliation was witnessed by my own army of imps and demons, by other mortals. And by the Angel Raziel himself.”
The laughter devolved into an inarticulate, furious roar. But I ignored Asmodel’s outburst; he still resisted me. “I cannot summon the truth out of your soul, demon. But I can convince you to speak the truth of your own volition.”
I began singing the 91st Psalm to him in Hungarian, my favorite Psalm for banishing and parrying evil spirits. I am not known for my melodious voice, so I am not sure whether it was the substance or my delivery that tormented him more.
After a minute or two, Gisele joined me in the tender serenade; Raziel’s hard laughter from behind my shoulder fortified me even as Asmodel snarled.
Gisele and I started singing again, and tried harmony this time. The snarl rose to a shriek. “Stop it! For Lucifer’s sake, shut up!”
I paused, took a deep breath to steady myself. I had won the first move, in the deadly game we played. “So shut me up then, Asmodel. Tell us.”