Miss Garnet's Angel (34 page)

‘Indeed. Also something of a coward, which is why Marco, here, is named for him. Come, Marco. Enough of these sad sights. You and I must go home.'

And in the mind of Julia Garnet rang these words:
East, West, Home's best!

I
no longer worship the great God Yahweh though I do not tell my father this. But I think my father understands because he changed too, that day. Who could not, seeing what we saw?

It was a slower business travelling home to Nineveh: I had my wife Sara and her maids to attend to, and all the goods her father had heaped on me for a dowry, and out of gratitude for what I was supposed to have done, which took many packhorses, mules and camels.

Azarias did not walk with me but ahead or behind with the muleteers—he liked animals best, I have thought since. But Kish remained at my side, and for all I was so engrossed with my wife I was glad of his company.

It was exciting when we reached the banks of the Tigris again for then I knew we were only days from home. And that night, before I went to Sara's tent (for we never spent a night apart), Azarias came to me by the fire.

‘Tobias,' he said, ‘have you the gall of the great fish I told you to stow away in your bag? When we come close to Nineveh let us go ahead before your wife. Your father will come out to you. Now listen and I will tell you what you must do to cure his blindness…'

I told my wife I would go ahead to prepare my parents for her
arrival and my heart was quick with the thrill of this and of seeing them again and guessing their joy. My stride had lengthened since we first set out and now I kept pace easily with Azarias along the river bank. It was good to be back there beside him by the fast-flowing water.

Azarias was whistling as we walked and I felt some awkwardness because there were many things I wanted to ask him and for the life of me I didn't know how.

I must have been grimacing because he said suddenly, ‘Don't look so gloomy, man. Don't you know care's an enemy of life?'

Well, this was a new idea to me—but then Azarias was always full of surprises. ‘How so?'

‘Humankind has a right not to be miserable,' was all he said, and walked on.

Kish, who had come with us, had run along ahead after his old foes the water rats but he turned back now and settled into trotting at Azarias's heels.

‘Azarias,' I said. ‘You told me once I may find out who or what you worshipped when we got to Ecbatana. Might you tell me now?' I had been thinking about the tribes of Israel and how they had deserted their God for the old leafy shrines. I had been thinking, since I left Ecbatana, I might have deserted too.

‘How would courage and truth and mercy and right action strike you?'

‘But those are not gods,' I protested.

At this Azarias stopped stock still and Kish stopped
beside him. I remember a long loose chain of flamingo flying behind his great curly head. They looked like flaming angels in the rose-coloured evening light.

‘Tobias, for heaven's sake, what do you think a god looks like when he works in men?'

And to that I had no answer, so we hurried on without more talk towards Nineveh.

I
t was past midnight when the Monsignore's boat drew up by the wide, weed-covered steps which led up to the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele.

Stepping out Julia Garnet looked aloft to see the group of stone figures: the fish, the dog, the boy and, over and behind all, the figure of the Angel Raphael.

She thanked the Monsignore's boatman and watched his shoulders square as he took the boat up the
rio
and round the corner out of sight.

In the light of the moon she could see the wrinkled stockings of the Archangel and looking up she winked at him,
‘Ciao, Raffaele!'

The moonlight fell especially bright and unable to sleep,
or to shut the beams from her room, Julia rose and made herself a cup of tea. What was the meaning of the Monsignore's story tonight? To distract her? How he loved to talk about women's breasts! Perhaps it had no other meaning.

Opening her notebook she read what she had written on the plane home, after the twins' wedding:
Despite the hazards the Magi trusted their vision and followed it, even to a strange land (and a stranger god!).

The Magi, the ‘wise men', had followed the star where it took them, and, in the persons of Nicco and his friends, she had followed them. So perhaps she was an honorary Parsi after all?

Long ago she had decided that history does not repeat itself; but perhaps when a thing was true it went on returning in different likenesses, borrowing from what went before, finding new ways to declare itself; and always there were the Nasu, and the Nasu's accomplices and inheritors; but always too, beside them, the Angel Raphael. Even old Tobit saw him in the end.

There was the end of a pencil by the telephone and taking it she wrote in her book:
Let the dead bury the dead!
Maybe that was the point of the Monsignore's story: a belief in your own rightness was a kind of death.

Sleep seemed to be eluding her that night: her arm had begun to ache again and she was overcome by a restlessness in her limbs, making her want to stamp them. Outside the Chiesa dell'Angelo Raffaele shone obliquely. Across the way she saw a shape and, imagining at first it
was a cat, she made out at last a small dog nosing around the wellhead.

Still there was no desire to sleep and her legs felt so restless she almost wanted to dance. Setting the notebook aside she slipped her tweed coat over her nightdress and pulled on the green wellingtons. Then, recalling her father's dictum, as a last-minute gesture to health she put on Harriet's hat.

Outside the dog had vanished, but alone in the square it was peaceful with the moon for company.

‘I will walk around the
campo
three times and then back to bed,' she announced to herself. But after the third perambulation, still feeling unusually wakeful, she stole over to the bridge which crossed the
rio
by the church.

The peculiar moonlight must have brought others out from their beds, for, across the bridge, she saw an old man with a beard.

The old man lifted his hand and waved to her as if he knew her and she waved back—companions in the night.

Ah, the dog must have been his, for suddenly she saw it, a black shape pattering noiselessly over the bridge, and walking across the bridge herself she saw Harriet.

‘Harriet?' she said.

Behind Harriet, in the blue shadow, framed in a brightening doorway, stood another figure; and looking into his eyes she beheld myriads of infinite whirlpools pulling her towards the end of time.

I
knew already, before Azarias told us, before he made the revelation. All the things he had spoken of on our journey, all the strange events which had transpired, dovetailed in my mind before he spoke the words.

‘I am Raphael,' he said, ‘one of the seven holy angels which go in and out before the glory of the Holy one,' and he said it so lightly, casually you might say, that I wanted to laugh. But my heart hurt, as if it was melting in a fire.

He took us, me and my father, apart to tell us; while my mother was embracing my wife and weeping and asking questions about the journey and her parents in Ecbatana. Kish was there too. Kish howled as Azarias left us, a great yearning howl, and then whimpered and fell silent. I think Azarias might have been sad at leaving Kish.

My father has gone ahead now. He has crossed the Bridge of Separation and I know he will be judged fairly—Azarias will see to that. He was a good man, my father, and tried to live by his own lights. Today, for the first time, I found myself able to read what I know it took him all the remainder of his days to find a way of writing down.

My belief is it changed him: for one thing, from that day he recovered his sight, the day when Azarias charged him to write down what he had seen, my father left the dead alone.

For myself it changed everything: I gave up the idea of a jealous god (for I had walked and slept and talked and argued with Azarias, and the god who had Azarias to serve him could not be jealous). I have come to think that the
only true god must be one who allows for all manner of ways of worship and who fosters all parts of creation: after all—fish, dog, man, woman and angel—I met each of these on my journey, and in the end each proved their necessity.

And also this changed nothing for me—for I have come to see there will always be the same things in this world—the water, the land, the skies, and fish, flesh and fowl to inhabit them; and humankind which mis-takes things.

And until time ceases altogether there will be the spirits ready to take us from ourselves, and, if we are fortunate, those as well to aid us in recovery.

E
xtract from the Last Will and Testament of Julia Ann Garnet:

UT MIHI CONTINGAT TUO BENEFICIO POST MORTEM VIVERE

Valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas…ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere.
*

P
ETRONIUS

*
I ask that you paint a small dog at the foot of my statue…that by your kindness I may find life after death.