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

“Yes, what!” I demanded angrily.

This clearly startled him but he recovered immediately. I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment in his face. But he only smiled when he spoke. His voice was as always caressing, filled with a careful tenderness that made his words penetrate.

“Other humans would give almost anything to see the proofs of Providence that you’ve seen,” he said. “But you’re still human.”

“What would you know about that?” I asked. “And what makes you think I don’t know all about it?”

“You don’t mean what you say,” he said soothingly. He sounded very convincing.

“You may have been watching humans since the dawn of time,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to be one.”

He didn’t answer. His loving and patient expression made me furious.

“Are you going to be with me forever, till the day I give up the ghost?” I asked. “Will I never be alone again with a woman without you two being there, you and that guardian angel? That is what he is, right? My guardian angel? What’s his name? Are you two going to be hovering over me forever?” I turned and jabbed my finger at him as if it were the barrel of a gun. “I’m a man,” I said. “Human, a man! I’m not a monk, or a priest.”

“You certainly lived like one when you were a killer.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You denied yourself the warmth and love of a woman year in and year out. You didn’t think you deserved it. You couldn’t bear to be around the innocence of women, or the warmth of a woman who might accept you. Do you deserve it now? Are you ready for it?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured.

“Do you want me to go away?” he asked.

I had broken out in a sweat, and my heart was racing.

“Simple desire is making a fool of me,” I whispered. I think I was pleading with him. “No, I don’t want you to go,” I murmured. “I don’t want you to.” I shook my head, defeated.

“Toby, the angels have always been with you. They’ve always seen everything that you’ve ever done. There are no secrets from Heaven. The only difference is, now you can see us. And that should be a source of strength for you. You know this. Your guardian angel’s name is Shmarya.”

“Look, I want to be filled with awe, with gratitude, humility, fine feelings! Hell, I want to be a saint!” I stammered. “But I can’t be. I can’t—. What did you say his name was?”

“Can’t what?” he asked. “Can’t live with restraint? Can’t deny yourself the immediate gratification of your passions with this woman when you’ve been with her less than twenty-four hours? Can’t keep yourself from running roughshod over her vulnerability? Can’t be the honorable man your son might expect you to be?”

His words could not have stung more if they’d been spoken in anger. The gentle persuasive voice was fatal to all the lies I’d been telling myself.

“You think I don’t understand,” he said calmly. “I’ll tell you what I think, that if you were to overwhelm that woman now, she would hate herself for it, and hate you too when she’d had time to think on it. For ten years, that woman has lived alone for the sake of herself and her son. Respect her. Win her trust. That takes times, does it not?”

“I want her to know that I love her.”

“Did I say you couldn’t tell her this? Did I say you couldn’t have shown her some small measure of what you were holding in abeyance?”

“Oh, Angel Talk!” I said. I was furious again.

Once more, he laughed.

For a long moment we stood there in silence. I was ashamed again, ashamed of having gotten angry.

“I can’t be with her now, can I?” I asked. “I’m not talking about desire. I’m talking about genuine love and companionship, and learning to love everything about her, being saved every day by her. You wanted me to know my son for his sake, and for her sake. But I can’t have them both, not as an intimate part of my life, now, can I?”

“Yours has been a dark and dangerous path, Toby.”

“Am I not forgiven?”

“Yes, you’ve been forgiven. But is it wise that you walk away from the kind of life you lived, without anticipating repercussions?”

“No. I think about that all the time.”

“Is it right that you make no reparation?”

“No. I must make reparation.”

“Is it right you break your vow to work with me to do good in this world, instead of evil?”

“No,” I said. “I never want to break that vow, never. I owe the world a crushing debt for the things I did. Thank God, you’ve shown me a way to pay that debt.”

“I will go on showing you,” he said. “And in the meantime be strong for her, the mother of your son, be strong for him and the man he can become. And don’t delude yourself as to the things you once did, the enormity of them. Remember that beautiful young woman has her angel, too. She doesn’t begin to guess who you’ve been all these years. If she did, she might not let you near that child. Or so her angel reminds me.”

I nodded. It was too painful to think about, too obvious to deny.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Even if I left you now, if you never saw me again, if you came to believe that my visitations had been a dream, you could never slip into a settled domestic life without your conscience destroying you. Extraordinary deeds require extraordinary amends. Indeed, conscience can demand things of human beings that the Maker does not, and which angels do not suggest, because they have no need to do it. Conscience is part of being human. And your conscience was destroying you before I ever came to you. You’ve never been without conscience, Toby. Your guardian angel, Shmarya, could tell you that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said under my breath. “I’m sorry for all of this. I’ve failed you here. Malchiah, don’t give up on me.”

He laughed. It was a gentle reassuring laugh.

“You haven’t failed me!” he said kindly. “Miracles happen in time for humans. And there isn’t world enough and time for humans to get used to them. They never do. And I have been watching them since the dawn of time, yes. And humans are always surprising me.”

I smiled. I was spent and far from serenity about any of it, but I knew he was speaking the utter truth, of course. The anger was gone.