The Angel of Losses

by Stephanie Feldman

  He hesitated. “I mentioned him to the grad student, the Hasidic one. He comes from a really religious family—they nearly disowned him for entering the anthro program. Even he thinks the Berukhim Penitents are pretty out there.”

  “What does that mean, out there?”

  “Each group follows a rebbe, like a guru. They have dynasties. But there’s no current Berukhim Rebbe—hasn’t been for generations. The last one died centuries ago.”

  “He didn’t die,” I said. “He ascended directly to heaven.” Just like the White Rebbe’s father. Although that wasn’t exactly how it happened in Grandpa’s story. Solomon’s father, alight with an eerie magic, had disappeared during a thunderstorm, his ultimate destination unknown.

  I remembered when Nathan and I first met, lunch at the Indian restaurant, when I had described the Berukhim Rebbe’s end the same way—ascending directly to heaven—and Nathan had shrugged off that explanation. Only one thing was certain, he had said. The rebbe never died.

  FINALLY WE ARRIVED AT THE HOUSE. I WAS RELIEVED TO FIND only two cars in the driveway—Holly’s station wagon and a maroon minivan. I wouldn’t be too badly outnumbered. Nathan answered the door. “Marjorie,” he said. He couldn’t shake my hand; I couldn’t kiss his cheek to keep up appearances. Even in this time—a family crisis—our greeting was a staring contest.

  Holly was sitting at the kitchen table with a man I recognized as one of the watchers. Crawling through the earth behind the house while Eli cried. He’ll get sick, my mother had warned. The man didn’t meet my eyes.

  Holly was dressed in a shapeless black sweater, a denim skirt to her ankles, and brown slippers. Her hair was twisted against the back of her head. She turned her face to me, as pale as the moon, her eyes the smudge of craters, and instead of my sister, I saw Chava.

  Finally she stood and hugged me. Our arms circled each other weakly and then fell away. “Thanks for coming,” she said. She forced a smile for Simon, who had come in behind me. “Hi, I’m Chava.”

  He lifted his arm to offer her his hand, and I caught it before it left his side. “Simon,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Do you want some tea?” Holly asked.

  I ignored her offer. “Eli’s upstairs?” I asked.

  She filled the kettle with water. “He’s asleep.”

  “I just want to look,” I said. “I won’t wake him.”

  She set the kettle down on the counter with a clang. “If he wakes up, I’ll have to feed him. I need a minute to sit down by myself.”

  I put the kettle on the stove and turned on the flame. “So go sit down,” I said, imitating my mother’s tone. She had spent those first days after Eli’s birth urging Holly to take care of herself, to sleep for a minute, to eat something. Even now, Holly, stubborn as ever, stood motionless by the stove. “Go,” I said again, and finally she sat down at the table.

  We waited silently for the water to heat, and when Nathan laughed in the front hall, we both flinched. I wondered what Simon could have said to him, but more than that, I was relieved they had removed themselves. I was embarrassed by our standoff. It was easy to blame Holly for what had become of our relationship when she wasn’t there to defend herself implicitly, accusing me with her stiffly crossed arms and quick rebuttals.

  The kettle whistled. I filled a mug and put it on the table in front of her. She stared at it for a moment, and then laced her fingers around the warm porcelain.

  “Just be quiet up there,” she said.

  “I promise,” I said.

  Upstairs, I nudged open the door to the nursery. The room was cast in cool-blue light from the cheap drapes over the windows, and the green light of the baby monitor glowed from the changing table. I took careful steps, determined to be soundless, but as I leaned over the crib, I saw two alert and shining blue eyes looking back at me. Eli was awake, his hands balled into tiny ruddy fists against the white sheet, his dimpled chin shiny with spit, his hair a few dark strands of silk against his scalp.

  “Hey there, little guy,” I whispered, reaching in to touch him gently above his belly button, still a wound in my mind. “Your mommy thinks you’re sleeping.” He kicked his legs and stretched his arms, his gaze on the mobile hanging above him. I picked him up carefully, my thumbs under his arms and my fingers sliding to the soft skin where his neck met his head. I wondered how long he’d stay so tiny, nearly weightless.

  I sat in the rocking chair by the window, my elbow bent to make a pillow for his head.

  “How are you feeling?” I held an open palm over him, and he beat a little fist against it. “Better? We were so worried about you. Did you know your mommy and I grew up in this house too? And this room was your great-grandpa’s study. This is where he kept his books and read the newspaper and wrote in his journals.” I looked around the room—spare, smooth, and peaceful. “He would be happy that this is your bedroom now.” And for the first time, all of my grandfather’s belongings stacked in the basement didn’t seem like a sad thing.

  “He loved his family very much,” I said, my throat catching. “He took care of us when we were little. He took care of us when we were sick.” Holly’s boy will need help, he had warned me. It was just a coincidence, I told myself—an anxiety dream—just as predicting the gender had been a coincidence, my subconscious triggered by the blue nursery, and with a 50 percent chance of being correct.

  The baby had a perfect, doll-shaped mouth and a tiny freckle next to his nose. “Would you like to hear a story?” I asked him.

  I closed my eyes, rocking the chair slightly, as if the motion would transport us back in time.

  “Once upon a time, many years ago, there was an evil king. All the people in the land feared him. Every year, he would send his soldiers into the towns and villages to collect taxes from the people—their gold and their food and their horses. Sometimes people would try to hide what they owned from the king, because they were very poor, but the king’s soldiers always knew where to look, as if by magic, and if they found what the people were hiding . . .”

  They would kill them. Had Grandpa really said that? We were so little.

  Eli wrapped his hand around one of my fingers. I tugged his collar up to wipe his chin.

  “They would be in a lot of trouble. Anyway. The king wasn’t the only person in the land who knew magic. There was also the White Magician.” I paused. “The White Rebbe.” The baby, of course, was oblivious. It was safe here to try this: imagining another version of the story, how Grandpa might have written it in one of his notebooks.

  “The White Rebbe,” I said again. “He came from a very special family. In every generation, a son was born who would grow up to be very wise and holy. So holy that he could do things no one else could—like find things that were lost, and heal people who were sick, and bring children to families who thought they could never have them. The White Rebbe traveled throughout the land, appearing just when he was needed most, and not staying a moment longer. Everyone loved him, and everyone knew his name, even the evil king.

  “When the king grew very old, he sent his soldiers in search of the White Rebbe. They stopped at the center of every town in the kingdom and cried, ‘If the White Rebbe doesn’t appear before the king in ten days, then the king will destroy your whole village!’

  “On the morning of the last day, the soldiers rallied outside the castle, prepared to go back out into the countryside and carry through with the king’s threat. A sweet wind blew, and all of the soldiers’ horses lay down. The White Rebbe, with his long beard and his magic staff, was standing in the center of the crowd.

  “Now the soldiers parted again, for the king, who was being carried in the arms of servants to meet the rebbe. Even though he was the same age as the rebbe, the king was stooped and hard of hearing and close to blind—though still meaner than ever—while the rebbe stood taller than all the men of the court.

  “ ‘I command you to make me young again,’ the king said.

  “ ‘No
magic can do that,’ the rebbe answered. ‘Every man will come to the end of his life someday, and there is no door in nature that offers escape from this journey.’

  “But the king had heard the story of the rebbe’s own childhood,” I improvised. “He had been very sick as a little boy, close to death, and his father had summoned the power of life itself to heal him.

  “ ‘If you don’t do as I command,’ the king said, ‘I’ll destroy all the people of the land.’ ” I paused. “Sorry, Eli, I know that sounds terrible. But you’ll have to get used to it. It’s a common trope.” Eli just stared at me. His face was calm, his eyes clear. I felt like he was enjoying the story. I enjoyed telling it to him.

  “Anyway, the White Rebbe answered, ‘I’ll do what you ask. But if I succeed, you must not send your soldiers to collect taxes for one hundred years, and you must never take food from your hungry subjects again. If you ever break the contract, you’ll break the spell with it, and instantly transform back into a man so old that he can see death’s shadow in his doorway.’

  “The king agreed to the deal.

  “ ‘You must build a bath,’ the rebbe said, and the king set a hundred workers to complete the task. Following the rebbe’s instructions, they built a swimming pool, tiled it with precious stones and filled it with water from the deepest well. The king’s servants carried him, still in his purple robes, into the bath. The White Rebbe came and drew—” I paused. Grandpa had called it a magic formula in the version he told us so many years ago. But I thought of the image Solomon saw reflected in the water when he agreed to the Angel of Losses’s demands. Grandpa had struggled to capture it in words, just as he had struggled to complete the symbol in the notebook. Surely that’s what the picture was, I realized. The picture on the page and in my skin: the Sabbath Light.

  I changed the story. “The White Rebbe drew the Sabbath Light on a piece of parchment and dropped it into the bath. The water began to bubble and steam and rise. The servants rushed to the king, but he sent them away, and they watched his face, twisted with fear, until it disappeared in the fog, and they all disappeared from one another, each man alone inside the cloud. When it finally cleared, the purple-robed man in the pool was young and healthy, and the White Rebbe was gone.

  “The king and all his servants searched the pool for the charm the rebbe had dropped in the water, but all they found was a single slip of paper, soggy and completely blank.

  “The king had ruled over the land for fifty years as an evil monarch, and he ruled over the land for fifty years more as a good one. And that’s how the White Rebbe finally defeated the evil king.”

  Eli was asleep in my arms, his fists against his cheeks. Someday he might tell this story to his own children and grandchildren, and they would describe it as Eli’s story. The stories Eli once told. Sharing a name was powerful. In a real way, Grandpa would be alive a century after his death.

  I laid Eli in his crib, sound asleep. The mobile above him cast sparks of light as it rotated, like it was skidding against flint. A silver chain wound tightly around two spokes, a tiny blue coin wedged in the joint between them. It was the old man’s charm necklace, the amulet of protection, finally returned to its rightful owner.

  For some reason, I imagined it was a tiny replica of the Sabbath Light, the same way a stick figure might replicate a human. I didn’t know what the Sabbath Light represented—some agreement between the rebbe and the angel, some metaphor of what we lose and what we keep, or what we think we’ve lost and what cannot be shaken. I had printed my own version on my skin, just like Grandpa had the White Rebbe do. My gesture was grand but also quaint, childhood memories and bedtime stories. It didn’t feel that way now.

  Holly was in her studio next door, humming to herself, head tilted, calligraphy pen in the air, surveying her drafting desk. She looked up at me and smiled. For an instant, it was like a lens had swung over the world, and everything was reconfigured; how beautiful it must be for her to paint, here in her own room, while her baby slept next door.

  “What are you working on?” I asked quietly, mindful of my volume. She cocked her head, inviting me to come around. A tiny strip of parchment, the width of a receipt, was secured on the wide expanse, and taped beside it, crisp black Hebrew text on a white sheet. She held up a magnifying glass, nearly the size of a dinner plate, so I could see her work, the sloping liquid letters.

  “Do you like it?” I asked. “Copying?”

  “It’s meditative. I want to do other things, bigger projects, but I need to prove myself. Besides, right now, creatively, I’m cooked.” She leaned in to see her text, moved a finger over it, and then sat back again. “Not like this is easy. Everything has to be perfect. The rabbis say that if you copy the Torah and mess up a single letter, you can destroy the world.”

  “No pressure there.” I paused. “So listen. I’m sorry about fighting with Nathan before the circumcision.” It was true; I was sorry I had upset her. And then there was that nagging, irrational fear that Nathan was right. I had interrupted the protection ritual. I was the reason Eli was vulnerable. I was at fault for Eli’s seizure.

  She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry too. That I got mad. I have a short fuse right now. I didn’t know it was possible to be this tired and also be alive.”

  It seemed like the right moment to end the conversation—everyone’s sorry, everyone forgives, get out while you still can. But she continued: “I’m worried.”

  “Eli seems fine,” I said.

  “We have a follow-up appointment tomorrow. I’m nervous,” she said. “And Nathan. I’m worried—” She stopped, shook her head.

  “Did something happen?”

  She picked up her pen and magnifying glass, leaning close to the desk. “He’s fasting.” Her fist pulsed around the pen, though the point remained safely suspended above the surface. “And sometimes he observes . . . it’s like a day of silence.”

  “Now I know when to schedule my next visit.” I paused. “I’m kidding.”

  Holly was silent.

  “Why is he doing it?” I asked.

  “It helps him feel closer to God. I’m awake all night up here with Eli, and he’s up all night with his teacher, praying downstairs.” She shook her head. “A teacher who shows up in the middle of the night. Now that I think about it, I guess Nathan never said he was from the yeshiva. I just assumed.”

  “Is he very old?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she said.

  “With really blue eyes?” The same shade as Eli’s.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “His eyes? Why do you ask?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Hey,” I said, leaning forward. “If you need me to come down and stay with you, just say the word.” I suddenly felt like she and Eli were in danger. “Or you could go stay with Mom and Dad.” A thousand miles away from the old man. “They would be thrilled. And they have a swimming pool. You can be as immodest as you want out there.”

  She laughed, and I felt a thawing between us, but then she said, “You’re so predictable. I can’t tell you anything without you insulting me.”

  We sat in a thick silence.

  Over the past couple of years, I had deliberated making peace with her, arrogantly, as if it was my decision alone. I was at her mercy as much as she was at mine. But she needed me, even if she didn’t know it.

  DOWNSTAIRS, I FOUND SIMON AND NATHAN AT THE DINING room table, staring intently at a laptop and speaking easily, as if in the middle of a long-standing conversation. And I couldn’t even talk to my own sister. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Come look,” Simon said. “We’re trying something new.”

  “Tudela said it’s eighteen miles north of Chaibar,” Nathan said, his gaze still fixed on the screen.

  “Who’s Tudela?” I asked. “What’s eighteen miles north of wherever?”

  “Twelfth-century traveler,” Simon said. “The home of the Lost Tribes.” He hit a key triumphantly and sat ba
ck from the computer. “There.”

  A single blue flag appeared in the middle of the map.

  “Good,” Nathan said. “The more stories, the closer we’ll get to the answer.”

  “Like an average?” Simon asked.

  “No, of course not,” he answered, irritated. “It’s more like triangulation. Add the next flag.”

  “I don’t understand yet,” Simon said. “But let’s keep going.” Nathan’s rudeness rolled right off him. “We’re adding Joseph Della Reina,” Simon explained to me. “He’s in An Account of Juan Espera en Dios in the Americas. He traveled to the edge of the world to try to bring the apocalypse.” He loved these stories. They were entertainment.

  “I know who he is,” I said. The man in the celestial academy, looking down as the Berukhim Rebbe fooled the Angel of Death.

  “Not the apocalypse,” Nathan said. “The Messiah.” He exhaled noisily, impatient. “Well, yes, the end of the world, but the Messiah will bring paradise. Now, how do you enter different endings?”

  “What do you mean?” Simon asked.

  “Different versions,” Nathan said. “In one, Della Reina’s condemned to be born again for a thousand lifetimes. In another, he wanders in madness. Once he’s turned into a black dog, and then goes mad when he realizes what’s happened to him.” My spine chilled, like the first touch of fever. The White Rebbe and Berukhim Rebbe had black dogs too.

  “His punishment is immortality,” I said.

  “No.” Nathan gave one sharp shake of his head. “Della Reina’s never immortal.” He paused. “No one is immortal.”

  Simon sat back from the computer. “Each version has to be a new entry.”

  “But that’s not right,” Nathan said. He was growing increasingly animated—angry, almost. Holly had insisted many times that Nathan just liked to argue. He wasn’t mad. It wasn’t personal.

  I stood up. If I didn’t stop them, they would play with the map forever. “We should go. In case there’s traffic.”

  Nathan shrugged but then followed us out the door and to the car. “They’re not different legends—they’re the same legend. One man, different faces. They only make sense if you look at them together.”