“Shallem perceived all spaces outside of our realm, the spaces where time doesn’t exist because there is no movement, decadence nor death, but rather only the supernatural life of the eternal and immutable angels.
“Do you know anything about those evil spirits?” the priest asked. “Did he tell you anything about them?”
“Yes.” the woman affirmed. “But I don’t know if...”
“Oh please! I’m begging you,” Father DiCaprio pleaded earnestly.
“Okay. You wouldn’t understand my story if I didn’t explain. Eonar’s disciples weren’t anything other than human spirits, just like my spirit and your spirit. They weren’t necessarily or particularly perverse during their mortal lives. They were spirits whose mortal flesh had died but who had yet to attain the Glory of God and their only other option was to return to Earth in a new body. However, this idea terrified many of them and they refused to return. When that happens, angels in heaven intervene and force the spirits to take a new body. Sometimes Eonar, or some other fallen angel, would interfere and protect those spirits preventing their brothers in heaven from accomplishing their mission. Those rebellious angels rarely demanded anything from the spirits in exchange for this favor. All they wanted was the pleasure of taking the spirits away from their treacherous brothers thus reaffirming their rebelliousness, and knowing that they were submitting the spirits to the horrors of eternal abandonment in an unnatural and agonizing state. However, many of those spirits who were lost to never ending isolation in an eternal void wanted to find angels, like Eonar, who cared for nothing except achieving their own goals. The lost spirits wanted their tutelage, their guidance; it didn’t matter where the angels sent them. If you think about it, you don’t have to be dead to also behave this way.”
“And these were the spirits Eonar sent after you?”
“That’s right. Of course they couldn’t do anything to Shallem. However, they must have been well trained since they were able to accomplish their mission in Egypt. That is, to separate me from Shallem.
“Shallem, his brother Cannat and a few other loners were considered the most rebellious of all the rebel angels. First, in a way that Shallem never clarified, they had rebelled against God and were banished to a realm outside of our world. Then, I also don’t know how, they rebelled against the other exiled angels.
“Shallem and Cannat were the first to escape the realm where God had imprisoned them.
Not all angels had the power to escape, nor could all of them bear to be around humans, like Eonar, who preferred never to mingle with mortals. In fact, the majority of those who could escape, couldn’t stand to be around humans for too long and would return to what had been their prison but which now had turned into the closest thing to paradise. After they recuperated, they would decide to leave again and thus established a continual cycle.
“The realm had turned into a type of beach resort where the angels could rest,” the priest noted.
“Yes, exactly. A deserted tropical island where the angels enjoyed each other’s company but which wasn’t enough to satisfy their restlessness. Only one of them, Cannat, never had to go back. He adapted perfectly to living around humans. But Shallem wanted to return to the realm. When he tried, he discovered how much Eonar hated him and Cannat. Eonar thought it was their fault the angels left and blamed them for the escape of his most powerful brothers. He thought that Cannat and Shallem had become their leaders, but that wasn’t true. They never wanted to lead or be led. They never accepted Eonar or any others as their leader.
“Later, you’ll understand everything better. I must tell you the important facts in the same order, same context and same time that I myself discovered them. My knowledge suffered a, I don’t know whether to say slow and gradual, or abrupt and delayed, evolution. I want you to follow this evolution and understand it as much as possible.”
The woman placed her hands on her waist and stretched her back and then her arms. Meanwhile, the priest noticed her indecisive and alternating glances at the bottle of water and her empty glass. He hurried and filled the glass for her, she grabbed it and drank eagerly.
“I appreciate what you did,” she told him as she placed the glass on the silver platter. “You told them not to handcuff me to this metal table.”
“Oh, yes. Well, that just didn’t sound like a good way for us to start.”
“Let’s continue. As was expected in a city as prosperous as Florence, we received numerous invitations from nobles and the bourgeois that we constantly declined. We didn’t want to have contact with any people unless it was strictly necessary: our servants, the tailor and dressmaker, when they were needed, and very few others, if any at all.”
“Wait just one minute, please.” the priest interrupted, leaning anxiously across the table. “You’re always mentioning all the riches you both enjoyed: clothes, jewelry, servants. Where did the money come from?”
“Good God,” the woman whispered and placed her hand over her mouth as she inclined her head in a gesture of disbelief. The she turned toward the priest. “You think an angel would have a hard time getting a few miserable pieces of gold?”
Father DiCaprio seemed embarrassed but he still didn’t understand.
“Then, he stole it?” he insisted.
She breathed a sigh of frustration and looked at him as though he were a stubborn and obnoxious little boy whose questions just had to be answered.
“Yes,” she answered abruptly.
It was very difficult for Father DiCaprio to continue delving into the topic but he didn’t lose his nerve.
“How did he do it?” He gripped the arms of his chair as if the woman staring at him would, at any moment, pounce on him like an animal. He swallowed and said, “I mean... Did he kill to steal?”
“Well...” she hesitated a few seconds, her expression immutable. “I don’t think he needed to.”
“You don’t know?” he asked, frightened and shocked.
“I’m not sure,” she repeated pensively, as if it were the first time in her life that she worried about that detail. “It’s possible he could have, on occasion. In fact, I remember this one time... no, we don’t have time for that. Please don’t distract me with petty details. I’m going on.
“For more than two months, we were extremely happy in the city of flowers. We made love everywhere. At night, we would make love in the Piazza della Signoria beneath the imposing gaze of Michelangelo’s David. We’d make love in the Basilica of Santa Croce, wrapped in the colored lights that passed through its stained-glass windows, or in the San Marcos convent where Shallem imitated the angel in Fray Angelico’s painting Annunciation who stood at the Virgin Mary’s feet with his multicolored wings extended and his arms crossed over his chest as if declaring his love. We made love as we admired the frescos inside the Santa Maria Novella and the Santa Trinita and, of course, the Duomo. We made love submerged beneath the waters of the Arno. However, we enjoyed ourselves most on top of the hills that stood beyond the city’s outer walls and away from any neighborhoods. From those hills, the Duomo’s tall cupola looked as if it were wrapped in a rosebud. The hills were a place no human or immortal could interrupt our bliss; it was a calm, silent place filled with the serenity of a black sky studded with eternally immutable and pulsating stars.
“We spent hour after hour talking about thousands of different things on those hills. We talked about mankind, the beauties of nature scattered in every corner of the world, which I had yet to visit, and the fabulous animals that inhabited them. We also talked about art and music, human creations that interested Shallem and about how uncomfortable we felt wearing fashionable dresses and suits and how we normally took them off as soon as we were alone.
“At times, after having enjoyed a serene afternoon beneath the sun, nightfall would catch us by surprise. We would admire the twilight in absolute silence, speechless with wonder. We watched that most common daily miracles as though for the first time. Then we would lay down, always on the
hilltop, and watch how the sky slowly and completely lost all color until it was flooded by the moon’s white clarity. Shallem was the most romantic being. The beauty of dawn could have made him cry; but he hadn’t been created to cry, no matter how much God now struggled to bring him to tears. We would sleep on the hilltop, covered by the celestial dome, embracing until dawn and when we woke, we would let the Arno shake us awake as its rapid currents massaged our bodies. We couldn’t have been more happy. Or perhaps we could have.
“I was worried about my unjustifiable infertility so one day I asked Shallem, ‘How come I haven’t gotten pregnant?’
“Shocked, he looked at me and asked, ‘Would you like to be?’
“ ‘Of course!’ I exclaimed, surprised by his doubt. ‘Why do you even ask? Am I not transparent? You know all my questions and all my answers.’
“ ‘How boring that would be if it were true!’ He answered throwing his small, blue velvet hat in the air. He accidentally ripped away the feather and then tried to amuse himself by putting it back in place. ‘I know some of your questions but I like to hear them coming from you, from your voice.’
“ ‘You’ve prevented me from getting pregnant, right?’ I asked because, after making love so many times, I had already come to that conclusion.
“ ‘Yes,’ he answered and stood still as he looked at me attentively, as if he were truly surprised it mattered to me.
“ ‘But, why? I’d give anything to have your child, Shallem. Why won’t you let me?’
“For some moments, it seemed like he didn’t believe me. He looked at his hat as he absentmindedly tried to reaffix the feather. Two times he started to answer but hesitated like he was reconsidering his response.
“Finally, he asked, ‘Haven’t you heard the old saying, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I answered, not knowing exactly where he was headed.
“ ‘I killed Eonar’s son...,’ he stated uneasily and waited until I figured out the rest. I stood there for a minute completely dumbfounded.
“ ‘But... he was also my son. Eonar doesn’t have the right to seek revenge using my children.’
“ ‘That doesn’t matter to him.’ Shallem walked toward me. He seemed very upset because he suddenly realized how much it would hurt me to never have his child. ‘He doesn’t care about you. His unresolved debt is with me and he wants to settle this debt with my first child. He doesn’t care who he has to destroy to do it, and much less if it’s only a human.’
“It was an unexpected and terribly painful blow to hear those words. From the moment I found out I was pregnant with Chretien, I had eagerly imagined what it would be like to have Shallem’s child. For the first few years of Chretien’s life I had fantasized, imagining and dreaming, that Shallem was the father. Then, while Jean Pierre lived with us, I couldn’t help but wish that he would soon have a little brother or sister.
“Yes, I spent a lot of time forging dreams I was certain, one day, would come true. How could that monster do this to me? Rape me, use me to conceive his child and then threaten to kill my second child. I wished I were God and had the power to destroy him.
“ ‘Shallem, there must be something we can do. I can’t be condemned to never have a child. I yearn to have your child. A baby with your sweet face and wild spirit, a little you who I could rock in my arms and kiss all over. Please, let me have your baby,’ I begged, on the verge of bursting into tears. ‘Don’t take away all my hopes. Never say it’s not possible.’
“ ‘I never knew it was that important to you,’ he said as he rested my head against his shoulder.
“ ‘It is.’
“ ‘If we try to...,’ he hesitated. ‘I don’t know...’
“ ‘Then there’s a possibility?’ I raised my head to look at him.
“ ‘No, not exactly. But if it’s that important to you, maybe... Maybe we could negotiate with Eonar.”
“ ‘You mean offer him something so our child could live?’
“ ‘Yes. He may accept an offer. He likes agreements, but only when they are sufficiently... tempting.’
“ ‘And what would he ask for in exchange?’
“ ‘An eye for an eye...’
“ ‘Another innocent life?’ I asked and my heart jumped in my chest.
“For a long time we were silent. Shallem was letting me think, weigh the options. He waited for my answer.
“ ‘I still have a long life ahead of me, God willing. I want to have your child. I’ll get used to the idea that the first one won’t survive, that he or she will be still born or something like that. But then we could have a second one.’
“I should have known that Shallem would never be as miserably submissive and resigned as I was.
“ ‘Well,’ he whispered as he wrapped me in his arms. ‘If you want this so much, let’s not give the baby up for dead before we even try to conceive him. We’ll fight for him.’
“That very night I became pregnant.”
–II–
“What’s that noise, Father?” the woman asked as she pointed to the door.
“I don’t know. It sounds like the prisoners are protesting.”
“Yes, that’s what it sounds like. They must be protesting the food.” She gave him a slight ironic smile and he smiled back. Then she breathed in deeply.
“Okay, let’s continue. On Sundays, merchants of all kinds gathered at the market beneath the ample arcades of the Lonja dei Lanzi. I loved to go there to enjoy the happy bustle of people as they walked around sheathed in their most dashing fineries. I enjoyed rummaging through the antiques, choosing flowers for our vases, smelling different perfumes, running my fingers over rich fabrics, twill and yarn.
“The entire Piazza della Signoria would fill with noisy crowds that browsed around craft stands. Young students would sit around the Palacio Viejo and watch parades of beautiful women pass by. There were many students, especially art students. Happy, beautiful, cultured, elegant, and daring students.
“One of them, Leonardo di Buoninsegna, fell hopelessly in love with me. He was an exceptionally talented painter. I met him one afternoon when I went to buy meat in what is now called the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio had the best butcher shops and this is where I saw him for the first time. I was alone since Shallem hated to see slaughtered animals. I must admit that it was Leonardo who caught me shamelessly staring at him. I couldn’t help it, he was a stunning man. His hair was cut in a shoulder length bob and was such an incandescent black the sun made it shine with all the colors of the rainbow. And his eyes... his eyes were violet and were bordered by a line of fine eyebrows lending him a certain mischievous appearance. And on his smooth face, his thin lips were fixed into a smiling grin. I enjoyed the allure of happy people. That allure radiated from within them and made them irresistibly charming. I watched him and appraised his beauty just as I would appraise any piece of artwork I chanced upon. That’s what he was for me: a work of art to admire but never own. I didn’t want him. My enjoyment was in the mere contemplation of beauty. The cathedral’s beauty, the beauty of Michelangelo’s David, a human beings beauty. What’s the difference? My spirit was aroused with the same pleasure when I contemplated anyone of them.
“But he wasn’t an admirable living sculpture, distant and unobtainable, but rather a man who at that moment was sending me his most seductive looks as he approached. And when he spoke, he irretrievable broke the spell with his sweet words.
“There he was, gallantly courting me as my eyes were reflected in the clear window of his eyes. I didn’t pay any attention to the nonsense he was telling me. Later, as he walked me home, he declared his love for me and said I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and that all the students in the city were crazy about me. He told me it wasn’t a coincidence he had been at the Ponte Vecchio; he had been following me around for two weeks, waiting for an opportunity to speak to me.
“ ‘You never saw the students leaning over the balconies w
hen you walked by?’
“I was shocked by his insolence and said, ‘How dare you approach a married woman like this.’
“He told me his immense love for me gave him the courage; that all he wanted from me was a glance, a smile that could kindle the small flame of hope that had ignited in his heart.
“ ‘Don’t get your hopes up, sir. For your own good, forget about me,’ I told him when we reached the doorway to my house.
“ ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, my lady.’ He took my hand as if it were a precious jewel and brushed it sumptuously over his cheek. Then, he kissed it. I don’t know why I let him take my hand. But I do know that I felt very relieved when he bowed to say good-bye and I was able to go inside. I could never love him, not him nor any other mortal. My old saying came to mind: Who could want honey after tasting the sweetness of ambrosia?
“Anxious to throw myself into my lover’s arms after such an unpleasant and unusual experience, I ran upstairs. I thought Shallem would be sprawled out in his chair, amusing himself by reading one of his funny books about the licentious habits of that era. I wanted to throw myself at him and devour him with kisses. Oh, how I wanted to look into his eyes! I’d never leave the house alone again. Never, never again.
“When I opened the door to the parlor, Shallem was standing and watching the street through the window. He had seen everything. I called his name cheerfully but he didn’t turn around. He just stood there, extremely rigid and still with his arms crossed over his chest. It didn’t even seem like he was breathing.
“I felt like a little girl who had just been caught being flagrantly naughty and was about to be scolded by her father. My heart pounded like mad, I didn’t know what to do. I decided since I really didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, the most logical thing would be to act as if nothing had happened.
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