But if angels didn’t belong in “living things” or “dead things” or even “the living dead,” where did they belong?
God?
No, even though God was eternal, like the angels, and was like man, he was the creator of everything. It was his creative act that each species of “living things” continued through its progeny. While the angels’ creative act led only to the life of the Nephilim, each of which died out of its own accord.
Noah gave a deep sigh. Sometimes he could have wished that angels hadn’t existed at all. Then everything would have worked out. Of course, he could institute a special category for them, but that wouldn’t help much, because where would he place it? Angels had links to the sun, dead things, living things, and to God, but didn’t belong with any of them.
In some way or other he knew that the answer lay elsewhere. Not in living things or the force of life, nor in dead things or the force of death, but in the third force that permeated everything in existence. The force of image.
Man was fashioned in the angels’ image. So the distance between mankind and angels was the distance of image. The same as the distance between the insect and the insect in the stone, or the flames on earth and those in the sky in the winter. The one alive, the other dead, the one hot, the other cold.
Could angels possibly be some kind of negative human being?
Were angels dead perhaps?
No. Oh, no, no.
Was that why the Nephilim were deformed? Had the seed of the dead fertilized living women?
With his soul frozen to its depths, Noah rose from his writing table, turned the drawing of the Nephilim over, because he couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, went across to the cupboard and filed it at the bottom of the pile of paper, put the stones back in their place on the table, he didn’t look at them either, for they had something to do with that horrifying thought as well, picked up the oil lamp, and hurried out.
On the ground floor where the windows weren’t curtained, the rooms were filled with a bluish gray dawn light, and he placed the lamp on the kitchen table before starting to wander through the downstairs rooms. He’d long ago discovered that he derived more comfort from the traces his family left behind them than from his family itself. He never felt more tenderness for Barak than when he looked at one of his small sweaters lying on a sofa or over the back of a chair, while Barak himself lay sleeping in another part of the house. Or Anna’s shoes in the hallway, so daintily placed side by side, or his mother’s head scarf deposited on the hallway table, or his father’s battered straw hat, which he took so much care of that Noah suspected him of thinking that it was lucky.
He sat down on the sofa, put his legs on the table, and looked out at the apple orchard in front of the house. The house was quite still. And bit by bit the same stillness settled on him. He held Barak’s jumper up in front of him, and felt a great wave of affection for him. It was green with a pattern of blue, and much smaller than you’d have thought. He was only a small child! He must remember that, he thought. It was so easy to forget. For although Barak aspired to adulthood, and the sudden elements of childishness in his nature were easy to see as some kind of regression, even calculated regression, as it often seemed when he wanted something in particular, the opposite was equally valid: that he was really a child, and it was the adult elements that were the true calculation in his character.
Noah brought the sweater to his face and sniffed.
It smelled of forest. Earth, spruce, leaves, grass, mire.
He replaced the sweater, fetched the lamp from the kitchen, and went back up to his room. He no longer found it unpleasant, perhaps because the tranquillity of the downstairs had displaced the sensation of horror, or perhaps because of his own sudden weariness; so when he undressed, doused the lamp, lay down, and pulled the bedclothes over him, it was in the next instant to fall heavily asleep.
As if from far away he heard a strange, banging sound. Half asleep he sat up, peered up at the ceiling, where it was coming from.
There it was again.
Three thumps followed by a kind of scraping, then three more thumps.
Could there be animals in the attic?
Then he realized. His mother had sent a man up onto the roof to deal with the leak.
It must already be broad day then, he thought, and fell asleep again.
About an hour earlier Lamech had emerged from the forest and caught a glimpse of the farm buildings for the first time in a fortnight. White and red they stood out at the end of the meadow, beneath the familiar hill, where the trees, in contrast to the ones he’d seen higher up the mountain, were still green and summery.
He dumped his pack on the ground before him, stretched his arms above his head, rolled his shoulders round a few times, squatted down, opened the pack, and took out what food he had left, closed it, and seated himself on the edge of the forest, his back against a tree.
He’d got down off the mountain earlier than he’d expected, and as it wasn’t much fun coming home when everyone was asleep, he reckoned he might just as well have his breakfast out here. A hunk of bread, a little ham, a drop of beer. That was what he had to offer himself. Not a meal fit for a king exactly, but good it certainly was.
After he’d finished eating, he rested his head back against the trunk and closed his eyes, only to open them again the next instant: if he fell asleep now, he’d be dead to the world for hours.
He’d been awake all night, first in company with Obal and Tarsis, who late in the evening had nodded off in their chairs, while he, filled for some reason with disquiet, had remained sitting and mulling things over on his own. In the first light of dawn he’d gone out, propped himself up against the wall of the summer farm, and stared out across the valley. Perhaps it was the market’s hustle and bustle that still worked within him, the tumult of faces that still hadn’t settled down.
How frantic it had been. New heads, new eyes, new noses, new mouths all the time. No matter where you turned you saw new faces. Heard new voices. Smelled new bodies. Sensed new motives. For everyone wanted something from you. If your eyes lighted a second too long on some piece of merchandise at a stall, the vendor would immediately begin haranguing you, even if you were yards away, and it was like that all the time, everyone tugged and tore at you, you were buffeted this way and that, between these wills that all, naturally, had specially singled you out. And before you knew it, you found yourself caught up in a situation of some kind. Usually he was prepared for whatever might happen, and could take precautions, but in this chaos of objects and people, eternal proddings, irate glances, greedy fingers, and dreams of easy money, all dignity might vanish in the twinkling of an eye: and presto, there you were allowing yourself to be treated like a child.
But perhaps that was only to be expected, in what was after all this child’s world, with its trained monkeys and cages of rare animals and birds, stalls with glass beads, musical boxes, dolls and mirrors; cockfights and dressage exhibitions, cotton candy and rock, merry-go-rounds and acrobats, flashing knives and spinning wheels one could gamble money on. There were many temptations to give in to, there were many traps laid, especially for men from the villages like him: if you were a little slow, if you really didn’t look like much, if you weren’t particularly highly regarded at home, it wouldn’t take a lot to flatter you, and even though, deep down, you probably knew they weren’t really interested in you, it was hardly surprising that you gave in and savored it. Perhaps you’d go with a woman up to a room, only to wake up without a penny in your pocket, perhaps naked in the bargain, with not so much as a sock within reach; that sort of thing happened, and not that uncommonly either, he had helped someone from home with money for clothes, not just once, but twice — or maybe you’d go into a back room with some men to play cards and drink the night away, with the same sorry result, pockets completely empty. And perhaps it would be even worse than that, perhaps you’d lost more than you had with you, because if you were broke, you could still carry on playing, that was all right provided you signed here, down here at the bottom.