Of Love and Evil - By Anne Rice Page 0,60

appear to me, help me?” I asked.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Oh, not again. You angels keep turning the questions around.”

“Don’t we, though!” he whispered. “But now we both know one reason, at least, why you’re so troubled. You’re angry that I didn’t come to you and help you. But Malchiah came, did he not?”

“Finally, yes,” I responded. “He came when it was all over. But couldn’t either of you have given me a hint that this creature was waylaying me with extraordinary means?”

He shrugged.

“I think you must bow to Malchiah’s wishes,” I said.

“That is one way of describing things,” he said. “Malchiah is a Seraph. I am not.”

“Why are you here now?” I asked.

“Because you need me and you want me to be here, and you’re restless and your ideas of what to do next are unformed. That’s part of it, at least. But I think it’s time you started doing what you did after your last assignment. So perhaps I should go.”

“I wish you were always visible.”

“You think that’s what you wish. You have a short memory. I am not here to interfere with your being a man.”

“Do Children of Angels get lonely?” I asked.

“You’re lonely, aren’t you?” he asked. “Do you think any amount of angelic company can take away human desire? We’re here because you’re human. You’ll be a human being till the day you die.”

“I wish I knew what you really looked like—!” I said.

The atmosphere around me instantly changed. It was as if some force had shaken the entire room, perhaps the entire building, and certainly my entire point of view.

The contents of the room faded. Gravity was gone. I wasn’t standing anywhere. An immense sound filled my ears, a sound vaguely akin to the reverberations of a huge gong, and at the same time an unending white light filled my vision, shot through with great arcing splashes of gold. All I could see was this exploding light. There was a core to it, a pulsing, vibrant core, from which the enormous sweeps of gold emanated, and quite suddenly it was beyond all the language I had. I struggled in my brain for concepts to describe it, to seize it and hold on to it, but this was not possible. There was movement, tremendous movement, something like convolutions or eruptions. But the words mean nothing compared to what I saw. I had a momentous sense of recognition. I heard myself gasp aloud, “Yes,” but this was over before it had begun. The light defined a space too vast for me to see or grasp, and yet I saw it, saw its limitless reaches. The sound had reached a searing pitch. The light contracted and was gone.

I lay on the floor, staring at the domed ceiling above me. I closed my eyes. What I could reproduce in my mind was nothing, nothing compared to what I’d just seen and heard.

“Forgive me,” I whispered. “I should have known.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I WENT TO THE COMPUTER FIRST AND FOREMOST FOR the information I wanted about my time in Rome.

I wasn’t surprised that I could not find the names of those I’d visited in any historical record.

But the horrid and cruel incident that had befallen Giovanni’s son in Florence was recorded in more than one place. No names were given, of the man accused of blaspheming the images, or of his surviving family. But it was definitely the same incident and I was left with a strong memory of the elderly Giovanni, staring at me in the synagogue, after I’d stopped playing the lute.

I had no doubt that my mission had been amongst real people. And I read on amongst the various sources about the times.

I soon learned what I should never have forgotten, that Rome was sacked in 1527, at which time thousands of lives were lost. Some sources said the whole Jewish community was annihilated at this time.

This meant just about everyone I’d known in Rome might have died at this point in history, only some nine years or less after the time of my visitation.

I thanked God that I hadn’t known this part of the story while I was there. But more importantly, I realized in an instant what I hadn’t grasped in my entire selfish life: that it is imperative for us in this world not to know for certain what the future holds. There could be no present if the future were known.

I might have known this intellectually at the age of twelve. But now