Part 8 (1/2)
That night, as I sat atin particular set e: his capricious moods, especially in relation to ain to his near-violent response-for a moment he really had looked possessed-to my question about why he never ate To the way he had called huh ere a vile species
Or a hated ene a member of the Museum of Fine Arts It here Aubrey and I liked to spend days holding hands, standing with our ar into each other's ears I had planned to take her here for our anniversary last year Instead, here I was on yet another stop of raphy in the long Islaht my eye The Arabic ritten in the shape of a boat The placard translated: ”I seek God's protection from the cursed devil” I wondered at the symbolism of the boat-but wondered more what had prompted the writer's need for protection
I wandered into the Asian gallery, past busts fro hair and wide, broad lips, past Indian cave paintings faded into soft palettes of color, past the statue of an Indonesian deed teeth The placard read: ”The demon Manisha”
Demons everywhere Why had I never noticed this commonality between cultures before? Why had I assumed demons to be property of the Christian church? I suddenly felt, as aproof of retrograde enlightenment
Beyond the allery, the rooyptian collection Even the yptian Funerary Arts,” the parenthetical ”(Mummies)” for those who had come here solely to see dead people Aubrey had always found the idea gauche, so we never invested much time there; the impressionists, existential and vibrant, were ether shards of a bowl that had been buried with the wife of a king when a wo lasts, does it? It all turns to dust”
”I suppose you'd know”
In my peripheral vision I saw her turn and stare atyour pardon!” The skin between her chin and neck shook as she said it I iine it did, too, when she walked deliberately out the direction I had just come in from your pardon!” The skin between her chin and neck shook as she said it I iine it did, too, when she walked deliberately out the direction I had just come in frohter The crimson stain was still on my face when the source of the sound, a caramel-skinned wo in her eyes
”Not one of your s Her hair fell in a wave past her shoulders, and I inwardly groaned at the sight of it, even as I foundto touch it She was tall, svelte, her peacoat not reaching the hem of the short skirt that bared her knees They were coltish, those legs, skin showing through the open weave of her tights like sun through a thousand tiny s She had turned her heart-shaped face to the broken bits of bowl, but I was staring at the profile of her mouth, at the pouty curve of her upper lip She was the kind of beauty other women seemed to hate on principle
”This is quite old, in terh it see myself, aren't I?”
”I hate it when you do that” I turned away
”Do what?”
”Make your s demon jokes”
”What else can I do in this divine comedy that sums up your huether andered past gold necklaces, aned to protect the wearer from evil-Lucian seemed unfazed by any of these-past scarabs and Eyes of Horus to a collection of ninth-century BC jewelry
She studied a weathered gold ring ”This is much closer”
”Closer to what?”
”The time when God came to Eden”
”Cah ,” she said in a low, seductive tone ”Everything so far had appeared by word, had come into existence by the sheer will of God But now El ca over the land, rushi+ng upon meadow and valley, the animals excited in his wake, their chorus raised to the sky In the garden I felt hiround in consideration He cah the reeds” She looked at ?”
”The unthinkable!” she said in a whisper She seemed unusually convivial today ”There now, by the river, the earth was gathering upon itself, forh El himself had bent down and scooped up mounds of the foul stuff in his hands” She covered herto escape her of its own volition, inadvertent as a hiccup, the sound of it peculiar and cracked
”We on the periphery lingered in the hu in the muck We looked at each other Even Lucifer stared, dumbfounded You should have seen the look on his face!”
She broke out in sudden, trilling laughter There again was that slight hint of ained her composure startled me nearly as much as how quickly she had lost it It occurred toher-the way her voice shot up in register and lowered to a whisper and then broke out in laughter-ht she was unbalanced
She steered s, preserved all these years in a Nubian toht about pulling away fro the tiny hairs in , so this ti, she gestured i for words ”In person, Clay As though by hand! by hand!”
I looked at her, baffled
”We were all staring, gape- He was everywhere around it, as if he had gathered the dirty thing in his arms and cupped it by the head And then I heard heard it” it”
She was clutching lad I had worn a sweater, sure that she would have left half-moon punctures with her nails in my forearm
”The sound, it was the same expectant sound at the dawn of all the world A breath exhaled into theas surely as if he had set his ainst those dirty lips and breathed
”Oh, divine exhale! It was hi-the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love, to nurture, to create And he endowed it all upon this new creature made of mud” The plush ht I had noted before blazed like a black nova ”And the clay chest filled, and expanded, and warhed and fell down, alive” Much -the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love, to nurture, to create And he endowed it all upon this new creature made of mud” The plush ht I had noted before blazed like a black nova ”And the clay chest filled, and expanded, and warhed and fell down, alive”
I stared ”But you're saying-”
”Yes, Clay Clay”-her e of El, breath of God In such an unworthy vessel So far more precious than diamonds, denied even to us but entrusted to a container of mud”
”I take it Lucifer was as thrilled as you seeh ”His jealousy exploded in a fiery blast, the fallout infecting us with his cancer”
She shrugged out of her coat, and I instinctively moved to help her She wore a sleeveless turtleneck beneath, and the skin of her arms was smooth, luminous I wanted to touch it
”Eden, once the seat of his government, had been -and prepared for another” She took the coat from me and draped it over her arht ”No more stones like mirrors-this was a handcrafted cradle for no creature of our kind”
”So he-El- about”
”Yes This new garden, planted by Elohied to a cherished new creature made of mud”
”You said yourself that Lucifer didn't want it anymore”
”Not as it as Not ruined But El had done soiven it away Worse yet, El hio there He went down fro the creatures, speaking with the s beneath the trees Oh, intied to be a clay creature!” Not ruined But El had done soiven it away Worse yet, El hio there He went down fro the creatures, speaking with the s beneath the trees Oh, intied to be a clay creature!”
All this time we had been alone, the museum unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon
”By now Lucifer was no longer content to sit by The earth was his, had been since its inception He e life now roving about and sprouting from this planet of his jurisdiction” She stopped to peer at an assortment of jewelry: shell bracelets and necklaces, their tiny conches perfectly intact ”Fro to the numbered notation