Demon: A Memoir - By Tosca Lee Page 0,35

piece of calligraphy in the long Islamic gallery caught my eye. The Arabic was written 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 from Angkor with curling hair and wide, broad lips, past Indian cave paintings faded into soft palettes of color, past the statue of an Indonesian demon with bulging eyes and a broad-lipped smile full of fanged 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 a modern and educated man, that I might be living proof of retrograde enlightenment.

Beyond the marble statue of infant Moses and his mother lay the Nubian gallery, the room typically rushed through en route to the morbid Egyptian collection. Even the museum guide had printed, beneath “Egyptian 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 much more romantic.

I was considering the pieced-together shards of a bowl that had been buried with the wife of a king when a woman in her fifties came to stand next to me. “Nothing lasts, does it? It all turns to dust.”

“I suppose you’d know.”

In my peripheral vision I saw her turn and stare at me as I realized my mistake too late.

“I beg your pardon!” The skin between her chin and neck shook as she said it. I imagine it did, too, when she walked deliberately out the direction I had just come in from.

Across the small exhibition hall, I heard soft laughter. The crimson stain was still on my face when the source of the sound, a caramel-skinned woman, strolled toward me, mirth and the devil dancing in her eyes.

“Not one of your smoother moments,” she said, still chuckling. Her hair fell in a wave past her shoulders, and I inwardly groaned at the sight of it, even as I found myself wanting to 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 windows. 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 terms of your history. Though it seems like yesterday to me. I’m dating myself, aren’t I?”

“I hate it when you do that.” I turned away.

“Do what?”

“Make your smug demon jokes.”

“What else can I do in this divine comedy that sums up your human existence? It is a joke! It’s all a joke.”

Together we wandered past gold necklaces, amulets designed 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.”

“Came to Eden?”

She looped her arm through mine. “We had no idea what he was doing,” 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 came down to this new Eden. We felt him moving over the land, rushing upon meadow and valley, the animals excited in his wake, their chorus raised to the sky. In the garden I felt him, circling as one paces upon the ground in consideration. He came to the edge of the river and lingered there, roaming through the reeds.” She looked at me, her eyes luminous and wild.

“Why? What was he doing?”

“The unthinkable!” she said in a whisper. She seemed unusually convivial today. “There now, by the river, the earth was gathering upon itself, forming up from the ground as though El himself had bent down and scooped up mounds of the foul stuff in his hands.” She covered her mouth, a strange half laugh seeming to escape her of its own volition, inadvertent as a hiccup, the sound of it peculiar and