“Not so,” said the man. “You’ll outlive me. It’s imperative that you trust me. Do you know what ‘imperative’ means?”
Toby nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “And for the moment, I don’t think I have too many choices, so yes, I trust you.”
The man was thoughtful.
“You could go into New York, do the job, and keep on going,” said the man.
“And how would I be paid?” Toby asked.
“You could take half up front, and just disappear.”
“Is that what you want me to do?”
“No,” said the man. He pondered.
“I could love you,” the man said under his breath. “I mean it. Oh, not, you know, that I want you to be my bitch, I’m not saying that. Nothing like that. Though at my age, I don’t much care whether it’s a boy or a girl, you know. Not when they’re young and fragrant and tender and beautiful. But I don’t mean that. I mean, I could love you. Because there’s something beautiful about you, about the way you look and talk and about the way you move through a room.”
Exactly! That is what I was thinking. And I was understanding now, what they say angels cannot understand, about their two hearts, both of them.
I was thinking about Toby’s father and how he used to call him “Pretty Face” and taunt him. I was thinking of fear and the utter failure to love. I was thinking of the way that beauty on earth survives though thorns and wretchedness try perpetually to choke it. But my thoughts were in the background here. The foreground is what matters.
“I want these Russians pushed back,” said the man. He looked off, musing, finger curled for a moment under his lip. “I never planned on these Russians. No one did. I never even dreamed of anything like these Russians. I mean I never thought of them operating on so many levels. You can’t imagine the things they do, the scams, the rackets. They work the system in any conceivable way they can. That’s what they did in the Soviet Union. That’s how they lived. They have no concept that it’s wrong.
“And then these crude kids come along, somebody’s third cousins, and they want Alonso’s house and his restaurant.” He made a disgusted sound and shook his head. “Stupid.”
He sighed. He looked at the open laptop on the little table to his right. Toby hadn’t noticed it before. It was the laptop he’d taken from the lawyer.
“You keep pushing them back for me, over and over again,” the man said, “and I’ll love you even more than I do now. I’ll never betray you. In a few days you’ll understand that I just don’t betray anybody, and that’s why I’m … well, who I am.”
Toby nodded. “I think I understand already,” he said. “What about the lute?”
The man nodded. “I know people, yes, of course. I’ll find out what’s on the market. I’ll get it for you. But it can’t be the finest. The finest of lutes would be too ostentatious. Cause talk. Leave a trail.”
“I know the meaning of the word,” said Toby.
“Fine lutes are on loan to young soloists, never really given to them, I don’t think. There are only so many in the entire world.”
“I understand,” said Toby. “I’m not that good. I just want to play a good one.”
“I’ll get you the finest that can be bought without any trouble,” said the man. “Only you have to promise me one thing.”
Toby smiled. “Of course. I’ll play it for you. Anytime that you like.”
The man laughed. “Tell me where you come from,” he said again. “Really. I want to know. I can place people like that,” he snapped his fingers, “by the way they talk, no matter how much training they’ve had, no matter how much polish has been added. But I can’t figure your voice at all. Tell me.”
“I’ll never tell you,” Toby said.
“Not even if I tell you that you’re working for The Good Guys now, Son?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Toby. Murder is murder. He almost smiled. “You can think of me as coming from no place. Just someone who popped up at the right time.”
I was astonished. This is just what I was thinking. He is someone who has popped up at the right Time.
“And one more thing,” said Toby to the man.
The man smiled and opened his hands. “Ask me.”
“The name of that piece of music you just played. I want to buy a copy of it.”
The man laughed. “That’s easy enough,” he said. “The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.”
The man was beaming at Toby, as though he’d found someone of priceless mettle. So was I.
By noon, Toby was deep asleep and dreaming of his mother. He was dreaming that he and she were walking through a big beautiful house with coffered ceilings. And he was telling her how grand it was all going to be, and his little sister was going to go to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Jacob would go to Jesuit.
Only something was very wrong in this spectacular house. It became labyrinthine, and impossible to comprehend as one wholesome dwelling. Walls rose up like cliffs, floors tilted. There was a giant black grandfather clock in the living room and on the front of it was the figure of the Pope, as if hanging from a gibbet.
Toby woke up, alone, and for a moment frightened and unsure of where he was. And then he began to cry. He tried to hold it in, but it became uncontrollable. He turned over and buried his face in the pillow.
He saw the girl again. He saw her lying dead in her little short silk skirt and ludicrous high-heel shoes, like a child playing dress-up. She had had ribbons in her long blond hair.
His guardian angel laid his hand on Toby’s head. His guardian angel let him see something. He let him see the soul of the girl rising upwards, retaining the shape of her body out of habit and out of ignorance that it now knew no such bounds.
Toby opened his eyes. Then his cries became worse, and that deep chord of despair grew louder than ever.
He got up and began to pace. He looked at his open suitcase. He stared at the book about angels.
He lay back down and cried until he fell asleep, the way a child might do it. He was also saying a prayer as he cried. “Angel of God, my guardian dear, let ‘The Good Guys’ kill me sooner than later.”
His guardian angel, hearing the despair in that prayer, hearing the grief and the utter misery, had turned his back and covered his face.
Not me. Not Malchiah.
He’s the one, I thought.
Flash forward ten years of your time to the point where I began: He’s Toby O’Dare, to me, not Lucky the Fox. And I’m going for him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Songs of the Seraphim
IF EVER I’D BEEN STUNNED IN MY LIFE, IT WAS NOTHING compared to what I felt now. Only gradually did the shapes and colors of my living room emerge from the haze in which I’d plummeted as soon as Malchiah had stopped.
I came to myself, seated on the couch and staring forward. And I saw him, with utter clarity, as he stood against the wall of books.
I was shattered, broken, unable to speak.
All he’d shown me had been so vivid, so immediate, that I was still reeling to find myself in the present moment, or anchored securely in any moment at all.
My sense of sorrow, of deep and terrible remorse, was such that I looked away from him, and slowly dropped my face in my hands.
The thinnest hope of salvation sustained me. In my heart of hearts I whispered, “Lord, forgive me that I ever separated myself from you.” Yet I felt at the same moment that I formed these words, You don’t believe it. You don’t believe it, even though he’s revealed you more intimately than you could ever have revealed yourself. You don’t believe. You’re afraid to believe.
I heard him move towards me and then I came to myself again with him beside me.
“Pray for faith,” he whispered in my ear.
And I did.
An old ritual came back to me.
On bitter winter afternoons, when I’d dreaded going home from school, I’d shepherded Emily and Jacob into Holy Name of Jesus Church, and there
I’d prayed: Lord, set my heart afire with faith, because I am losing faith. Lord, touch my heart, and set it afire.
The old images I’d used returned to me, as fresh as if it were yesterday. I saw the faint design of my heart and the bursting yellow flame. My memory lacked the vibrant inescapable color and motion of all Malchiah had shown to me. But this I prayed with all my being. The old pictures faded suddenly, and I was left with the words of the prayer alone.
It was no ordinary “being alone.” I stood before God without moving. I had some instantaneous flash of walking up a hillside on soft grass, and seeing ahead of me a robed figure, and the old ruminations came to me: That’s the glory of it; thousands of years have passed, and yet you can follow Him so close!
“Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry,” I whispered. For all my sins because of the fear of Hell, but most of all, most of all, most of all, because I have separated myself from You.
I sat back on the couch, and I felt myself drifting, dangerously close to losing consciousness, as if I’d been beaten by all I’d seen, deservedly so, but my body couldn’t sustain the blows. How could I love God so much, and be so utterly sorry for what I had become, and yet not have faith?
I closed my eyes.
“My Toby,” Malchiah whispered. “You know the extent of what you’ve done, but you can’t comprehend the extent of what He knows.”
I felt Malchiah’s arm around my shoulder. I felt the tightness of his fingers. And then I was aware that he’d risen, and softly I heard his footfall as he moved across the room.
I looked up to see him standing opposite me, and once again there was that sense of his vivid coloring, his distinct and beguiling shape. A subtle but certain light emanated from him. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d seen this incandescent light when he first appeared to me at the Mission Inn. I hadn’t had an explanation for it and so rejected it as fancy, out of hand.
Now I didn’t reject it. I marveled. His face was stricken. He was happy. He seemed almost joyful. And something came back to me from the gospels, about the joy in Heaven when one penitent soul returns.
“Let’s make swift work of it,” he said eagerly. And this time no jarring images accompanied his softly spoken words.
“You know well enough how things went afterwards,” he said. “You never told The Right Man your real name, no matter how he insisted, and in time, when the agencies named you Lucky, it became The Right Man’s name for you as well. You took it to yourself with bitter irony, accomplishing one mission after another, and begging not to be idle when you knew what those words meant.”
I said nothing. I realized I was looking at him through a thin veil of tears. How I had gloried in my despair. I had been a young man drowning, and fighting a sea beast as if it mattered, as the waves closed overhead.
“In those first years, you worked in Europe often. No matter what the disguise, your height and your high blond coloring served you well. You penetrated banks and fine restaurants, hospitals and fine hotels. You never used a gun again, because you didn’t have to. ‘The Needle Sniper,’ said the reports that detailed your obvious triumphs, and always well after the fact. They shuffled the dim conflicting video images of you in vain.
“Alone, you went to Rome and wandered St. Peter’s Basilica. You traveled north through Assisi and Siena and Perugia, and on to Milan and Prague and Vienna. Once you went to England just to visit the barren landscape where the Brontë sisters had lived and written their great books; alone you watched performances of Shakespeare’s plays. You roamed the Tower of London, colorless and lost among the other tourists. You lived a life devoid of witnesses. You lived a life more perfectly alone than anyone could imagine, except perhaps for The Right Man.
“But soon enough you stopped your visits with him. You didn’t care for his easy laughter or agreeable observations, or the casual way in which he discussed the things he wanted you to do. Over a phone you could tolerate it; at a dinner table you found it unbearable. The food was tasteless and dry in your mouth.
“And so you drifted far from that last witness who became instead a phantom at the end of a lifeline, and no longer a pretended friend.”
He stopped. He turned and ran his fingers over the books on the shelves before him. He looked so solid, so perfect, so unimagined.
I think I heard myself gasp, or perhaps it was a dull choking sound that might have meant tears.
“This became your life,” he said in the same muted, unhurried voice, “these books of yours and safe trips within this country because it had become too dangerous for you to risk the borders, and you settled here, not nine months ago, drinking in the southern California light as if you’d lived your earlier days in a darkened room.”
He turned around.
“I want you now,” he said. “But your redemption lies with The Maker, with your faith in Him. The faith is stirring in you. You know that, don’t you? You’ve already asked for forgiveness. You’ve already admitted the truth of all I revealed to you, and seventy times more. Do you know that God has forgiven you?”
I couldn’t answer. How could anyone forgive the things I’d done?
“We’re speaking here,” he whispered, “of Almighty God.”
“I want it,” I whispered. “What can I do?” I asked. “What is it that you want of me that might make up for the smallest part of it?”
“Become my helper,” he said. “Become my human instrument to help me do what I must do on Earth.” He leaned against the book-lined wall, and brought his hands together, as any man might, to make a steeple of his fingers, just below his lips.
“Leave this empty life you’ve fashioned for yourself,” he said, “and pledge to me your wits, your courage, your cunning, and your uncommon physical grace. You’re remarkably brave where others might be timid. You’re clever where others might be dull. All that you are, I can use.”
I smiled at that. Because I knew what he meant. Actually I understood everything he was saying.
“You hear the speech of other humans with the ears of a musician,” he continued. “And you love what is harmonious and what is beautiful. For all your sins, yours is an educated heart. All this I can put to work to answer the prayers that The Maker has told me to answer. I’ve asked for a human instrument to do His bidding. You are that instrument. Entrust yourself to Him and to me.”
I felt the first inkling of true happiness I’d known in years. “I want to believe you,” I whispered. “I want to be this instrument, but I think, for the first time in my life perhaps, I am genuinely afraid.”
“No, you’re not. You haven’t accepted His forgiveness. You must trust that He can forgive a man like you. And He has.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond.
“You cannot imagine the universe that surrounds you. You cannot see it as we see it from Heaven. You cannot hear the prayers rising everywhere, in every century, from every continent, from heart after heart.
“We’re needed, you and I, in what for you will be a former era, but not for me, who can see those years as clearly as I see this moment now. From Natural Time to Natural Time you’ll go. But I exist in Angel Time, and you’ll travel with me through that as well.”
“Angel Time,” I whispered. What did I envision?
He spoke again. “The glance of The Maker encompasses all time. He knows all that is, was, or will be. He knows all that could be. And He is the Teacher of all the rest of us, insofar as we can comprehend.”
Something was changing in me, completely. My mind sought to grasp the sum total of all he’d revealed to me, and as much as I knew of theology and philosophy, I could only do this without words.
There came back to me some phrases of Augustine, quoted by Aquinas, and I murmured them softly under my breath:
“Although we cannot number the infinite, nevertheless it can be comprehended by Him whose knowledge has no bounds. ”
He was smiling. He was musing.
A great shift in me had now taken place.
I remained quiet.
He went on.
“I can’t rock the sensibilities of those who need me as I’ve rocked yours. I need you to enter their solid world at my guidance, a human being as they are human, a man as some of them are men. I need you to intervene not to bring death, but on the side of life. Say that you’re willing, and your life is turned from evil, you confirm it, and you’re at once plunged into the danger and heartache of trying to do what is unquestionably good.”
Danger and heartache.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I wanted to repeat the words, but they seemed to linger in the air before us. “Wherever—only show me what you want from me, show me how to do your bidding. Show me! I don’t care about danger. I don’t care about heartache. You tell me that it’s good, and I’ll do it. Dear God, I believe You have forgiven me! And give me this chance! I’m Yours.”
I felt an immediate and unexpected happiness, a lightness, and then joy.
At once the air around me changed.
The colors of the room blurred and brightened. It seemed I was being lifted out of the frame of a picture, and the picture itself grew larger and fainter, and then dissolved around me in a thin and weightless and shimmering mist.
“Malchiah!” I cried out.
“I’m beside you,” came his voice.
We were traveling upwards. The day had melted into a fine purple darkness but the darkness was filled with a soft caressing light. Then it shattered into a billion pinpoints of fire.
An inexpressibly beautiful sound caught me. It seemed to hold me as surely as the currents of air were supporting me, as surely as Malchiah’s warm presence guided me, though I could see nothing now but the starry heavens, and the sound became a great deep beautiful note, like the after echo of a great bronze gong.
A sharp wind had risen, but the echoing tone rose over it, and there came other notes, melting, vibrant, as if from the throats of so many pure and weightless bells. Slowly, the music dissolved the sound of the wind into itself entirely, as it swelled and quickened, and I felt I was hearing a singing more fluid and rich than anything I had ever heard. It transcended the anthems of the earth so obviously and indescribably that all sense of time left me. I could only imagine listening to these songs forever and I felt no sense of myself at all.