Of Love and Evil (The Songs of the Seraphim 2)

I saw, far to my left, the alleyway through which I’d come to this place, and I hurried towards it, and then down the long alley towards the piazza before Vitale’s house.

I was running with my head down when, just before the gate of the house, Pico caught me and threw a mantle over my head and shoulders. He brought me inside the gateway, out of the rain, and quickly dried my face with a clean dry cloth.

A lone torch blazed in its iron sconce, and on a small table was a simple iron candelabrum with three burning candles.

I stood shivering, hating the cold. It was only a little warmer here, but gradually the sharpness of the chill was going away.

In my mind, I saw the face of Ankanoc and I heard his words again, “a belief system,” and I heard the long sentences he’d spoken and all the familiar phrases that had spilled from his lips. I saw the passion in his eyes. Then I heard that hiss when he’d confessed his name.

I saw the fire again and heard the deafening roar that came with it. I rested my weight against the damp stone wall.

A growing awareness came to me: you never know anything for certain, even when your faith is great. You don’t know it. Your longing, your anguish, can be without end. Even here, in this strange house in another century, with all the proofs of Heaven given to me, I didn’t really know all that I longed to know. I couldn’t escape fear. Only a moment ago an angel had spoken to me, but now I was alone. And the longing to know was pain, because it was a longing for all tension and misery to end. And they do not really ever end.

“My master says for you to leave,” said Pico desperately. “Here I have money for you from him. He thanks you.”

“I don’t need money.”

He seemed glad of that and put away the purse.

“But Master,” he said, “I beg you. Do not go. My master is locked up now in Signore Antonio’s house. Fr. Piero has demanded that he be locked up until more priests come. They are holding him on account of the demon.”

“I won’t abandon him,” I said.

“Thank Heaven,” said Pico, and he started to weep. “Thank Heaven.” He said it over and over. “If my master is tried for witchcraft the verdict will be certain. He will die.”

“I will do my best to see this never happens!”

I turned to go into the house.

“No, Master, please, don’t go in. The demon has been quiet only a few hours. If we go towards the stairs, he will know it and start again.”

“Stay here then, but I’m going to talk to this demon,” I said. I picked up the iron candelabrum. “I’ve just been talking to another one, and this demon holds no new fear for me.”

CHAPTER TEN

AS SOON AS I REACHED THE STONE STAIRS, I HEARD the dybbuk. He was high above me. I thought of Vitale’s words to me that “upstairs” he had found the synagogue of the house, with its sacred books. I went on upward, shielding the shivering flames of the candles, past the doors of Vitale’s study and towards the top story of the house.

The noises grew louder and more insistent. Something shattered. There were thumps and knocks, as objects perhaps struck the walls.

Finally I found myself in the open doorway to a large room. Silence. Its ceiling was somewhat lower than those below, but not by much.

At once the light revealed the distant gleaming silver doors of the Ark or repository which no doubt held the sacred books of Moses. This was set into the eastern wall. To one side, a podium of sorts faced the room, with several dusty benches before it, and further to the right there stood a large painted and gilded screen. Behind this was a long bench, once intended in all probability for the women who might attend the service or sermon here. The walls were paneled in dark wood, very rich, but not so dark that I couldn’t see the many inscriptions on them, painted in black Hebrew letters. A table lay to one side of the podium on which there was a heap of scrolls.

Fine silver chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The windows were shuttered and bolted. And my candelabrum was of course the only light.

Suddenly the benches before me started to vibrate, then to move, one bench slamming into another, and the chandeliers began to creak on their silver chains.

A small bound book was lifted from one of the benches and this came flying at me, so that I had to duck. It landed behind me on the floor.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “If you’re a dybbuk, I demand that you tell me your name!”

All the benches were moving, crashing into one another, and the painted screen came down with a huge clatter. Again objects were being hurled at me, and I had to get out of the doorway, shielding myself instinctively with my right hand. There was a hollow sound, a rumble, rather like the noise I’d heard when Ankanoc had been banished, but this seemed made by a human voice. It was so loud I covered my ears.

“In the name of God,” I said, “I demand that you tell me your name.” But this only increased the creature’s fury. One of the chandeliers began to rock furiously back and forth until it was ripped from its chains, and thundered into the benches below.

I slumped down on the floor, as if I was cowering, but I was not. I watched another chandelier come crashing down on the benches, and tried not to blink or shudder at the sheer noise.

Putting the candelabrum on the floor, I sat very still. If this thing blew out the lights, I would be very uncomfortable, but so far it had not done that, and as I remained there without moving or speaking, it grew quiet again.

Slowly, I reached back for my lute and brought it around into my lap. I wasn’t sure what I meant to do, but I tightened the strings of the lute, plucking it very softly, to tune it. Closing my eyes, I began to play from memory that melody that I’d heard in the Cardinal’s palace. I thought, without words, of what that music had meant to me when I’d been arguing with Ankanoc. I thought of the coherence, the eloquence of it, the way it spoke to me of a world in which harmony was infinitely more than dream, in which beauty pointed to the divine. I was almost weeping suddenly as I gave in to the music, trusting myself to reconstruct the melody and make it my own with any changes that memory couldn’t support.

The soft notes of the lute echoed off the walls. I grew a little bolder, playing faster, and with greater variation, and slowly taking the melody into a melancholy comment on itself. I began to hum with the lower notes, and then to sing under my breath in low monosyllables, na nah, na nah nah, na, letting my fingers and my voice take me where they would. The tears came to my eyes. I let them spill down my face. I began to sing under my breath the words of a psalm.