The afternoon shadows had stretched by increments across the room, and Louis had a strange urge to distance his feet from the encroaching dark, that it might not touch him.
“You think they were there, waiting for us all along,” said Louis.
“I think they had knowledge of what was to come.If they were cast down, it was to a still-forming earth.Perhaps the time passed quickly for them—what is four and a half billion yearscompared to eternity?—or they slept through the millennia until the first biped became self-aware, which was the signal for them to wake.As a myth, it’s as good as any other.But what I find fascinating about Iblis is what his fate implies.”
“Which is?”
“Not one fall,” said Epstein, “but many: a succession of acts of defiance.It posits God as a ruler confronting the same challenges faced by any king: rebels, rival claimants, traitors.Just because the Creator is perfect, it does not follow that His creations are.Since I am being open with you, and this is an exchange of ideas between intelligent men, I have never embraced the concept of a perfect deity.Even to skim the Tanakh is to perceive a wrathful God, a God who loses His temper.One cannot be perfect and impatient, or perfect and prone to rage.The New Testament, which I do not accept as divinely inspired, attempts to present God afresh through the prism of a gentler son, if one also prone to bouts of anger.But the New Testament is the work of men; only in the Tanakh do we glimpse the true face of God, and it is one to be feared.”
“Why are you telling me this?”Louis asked.
Epstein began further unfastening his high-collared shirt, the top button being already undone.He usually wore a tie, but not today.Louis had not noticed its absence until now.With three buttons opened, Epstein pulled back the shirt to expose the skin at the side of his neck.Louis hissed involuntarily at the sight of the swollen lymph nodes.
“Because I’m dying,” said Epstein.
By the lake, Jennifer Parker’s features softened with pity.
“Oh, old man,” she whispered.“I’m sorry.But we will watch for you when you come.”
Chapter 20
In the umbrous regions of the apartment, the oversweet odor became more pronounced to Louis, like ignoble rot, so that he might have been smelling the cancer itself.He looked away as the rabbi rebuttoned his shirt.His eyes turned to Liat, but her face was impassive.
“How long?”Louis asked.
“Months, if I’m lucky,” said Epstein.“Or unlucky, depending on the pain.That has already commenced, but it is tolerable so far.It can be managed.”
“Treatment?”
“Great effort would be expended for scant reward, and I do not want those extra days so badly.I have made my peace with death, there being little point to the alternative.”
Louis did not say he was sorry.He did not say anything at all.Epstein leaned forward to place a hand on Louis’s knee, the long fingers splayed like the talons of a bird.
“Listen to me,” said Epstein.“Parker cannot remain hidden forever, not from others and not from himself.His nature is ambiguous, though I have not concealed from you the direction of my thoughts, but whatever the truth, his identity is the reason they are drawn to him, both those in pain and those who thrive on the pain of others.But is he good?This is someone with blood on his hands.He is capable of extraordinary violence, and he holds such wrath inside, but also such sorrow.Where does it come from?What is its cause?”
“He returned home to a dead wife and child,” said Louis.“That’s the cause.”
“No,” said Epstein.“I think it was there long before the Traveling Man arrived at his door.I think it’s very old.”
Louis felt his anger flare.He turned to Liat.
“Is that why you slept with him?”he asked.“Were you sent to find out what you could by sharing his bed?I hope you paid for breakfast.”
Liat took a step forward.Epstein raised his other hand and she came to a halt against it, though her fingers continued signing rapidly.Louis would have understood none of it had her lips not formed words in unison.Most were profanities, but he could see the hurt in her eyes.He did not take back what was said because he was convinced there was a veracity to it, even as he accepted that Liat cared deeply for Parker.He wished only that he had kept his mouth shut.What he had directed at her should have been beneath him.
Louis’s mind wandered elsewhere, drawn back decades to a labyrinth of cells beneath an ossuary in the Czech Republic, where a creature named Brightwell—his nature, too, less or more than human—sought to free an angel imprisoned in a statue.Brightwell believed Parker to be like himself, one of the angels who rebelled against God and was punished with exile, the spiritual corruption of the worst of them reflected in a physical transformation, so they became blighted beings.Parker rejected this assertion and put a bullet through Brightwell’s forehead, silencing him, and Louis had barely given him another thought, not until Brightwell returned years later in the guise of a boy, come to seek revenge in the Great North Woods.It was not that Louis had failed to spot signs of the peculiar in Parker, which would have required a degree of self-delusion bordering on actual blindness.But what if Brightwell was not wholly in error?
“Parker has brought too much attention to himself,” said Epstein.“There are others who now think as I do, and not all of them mean him well.”
Epstein’s hand loosened its grip on Louis.He sat back in the chair, his face suddenly gray with exhaustion.
“But for the moment,” he said, “Parker can wait.You have more pressing concerns.If Sturgis is telling the truth, he has been made an instrument of vengeance.If this vengeance is empyreal,then we must ask why you have been targeted.You, Louis: not your lover, not Parker, but you.”
Liat put a hand on Epstein’s shoulder.He held it, stroking her fingers gently.But still Liat would not look Louis in the eye.
“I hope Sturgis is unhinged,” said Epstein.“If he is not, then I hope he’s lying to cover a more prosaic motive.After you speak with him, you might tell me what he says, no matter how self-serving.”
“I will,” said Louis.“Is there anything I can do for you, anything that might ease what’s to come?”
