Dr. Seraphina came to check on us each day at noon, bringing a basket of bread and cheese, a pot of mustard, and a bottle of cold water for our lunch. Usually I could hardly wait for her arrival, but that morning I had been so engrossed in my work that I did not realize it was nearly time for a break until she swept into the room and deposited the basket on the table before us. In the hours that had passed, I had barely noticed anything at all but the seemingly endless accretion of data, especially the Valkos’ field notes from their earliest expedition, a grueling journey through the Pyrenees, with measurements of caves, their gradations and densities of granites filling ten field journals. It was only as Dr. Seraphina sat with us and I was able to pull myself away from my work did I realize that I was extremely hungry. Clearing the table, I gathered the papers and closed the notebooks. I made myself comfortable on the settee, my gabardine skirt slipping on the textured vermilion silk, and prepared for lunch.
After arranging the basket on the table before us, Dr. Seraphina turned to Gabriella. “How are you progressing?”
“I have been reading Enoch’s account of the Watchers,” Gabriella replied.
“Ah,” Dr. Seraphina said. “I should have known you would be attracted to Enoch. It is one of the most interesting texts in our canon. And one of the strangest.”
“Strangest?” I said, glancing at Gabriella. If Enoch was so brilliant, why hadn’t Gabriella shared his work with me?
“It is a fascinating text,” Gabriella said, her face brimming with intelligence, the very passionate brilliance that I usually admired. “I had no idea that it existed.”
“When was it written?” I asked, not a little jealous that Gabriella was once again ahead of the game. “Is it modern?”
“It is an apocryphal prophecy written by a direct descendant of Noah,” Gabriella said. “Enoch claimed to have been taken into heaven and given direct access to the angels.”
“In the modern era, The Book of Enoch has been dismissed as the dream vision of a mad patriarch,” Dr. Seraphina said. “But it is our primary reference to the story of the Watchers.”
I had discovered a similar story in our professor’s journal and began to wonder if I had read the same text. As if detecting my thoughts, Dr. Seraphina said, “I copied some sections of Enoch into the journal you have been reading, Celestine.” Picking up the journal with the angel clasp, she turned it over in her hand. “Surely you came across the passages. But The Book of Enoch is so elaborate, so filled with wonderful information, that I recommend you read it in its entirety. In fact, Dr. Raphael will require you to read it in your third year. If, that is, we will be conducting courses next year at all.”
Gabriella said, “There is a passage that particularly struck me.”
“Yes?” Dr. Seraphina said, looking delighted. “Do you recall it?”
Gabriella recited the passage. “‘And there appeared to me two men very tall, such as I have never seen on earth. And their faces shone like the sun, and their eyes were like burning lamps, and fire came forth from their lips. Their dress had the appearance of feathers: their feet were purple, their wings brighter than gold; their hands were whiter than snow.”’
I felt my cheeks grow hot. Gabriella’s talents, which had once made me love her, now had the opposite effect.
“Excellent,” Dr. Seraphina said, looking both pleased and circumspect at once. “And why did that passage strike you?”
“These angels are not the sweet cherubs standing at heaven’s gate, not the luminous figures we see in Renaissance paintings,” Gabriella said. “They are fearsome, frightening creatures. I found, as I read Enoch’s account of the angels, that they are horrible, almost monstrous. To be honest, they terrify me.”
I stared at Gabriella in disbelief. Gabriella returned my gaze, and I sensed-for the briefest moment-that she was trying to tell me something but could not. I longed for her to say more, to explain herself to me, but she merely turned a cold eye on me once more.
Dr. Seraphina thought Gabriella’s statement over for a moment, and I wondered if she might know more about my friend than I. Standing, she walked to her cupboard, opened a drawer, and removed a hammered-copper cylinder. After slipping on a pair of white gloves, she twisted it, popped off a wafer-thin copper lid, and tapped out a scroll. Flattening it on the coffee table before us, she lifted a leaded-crystal paperweight and anchored one end of the scroll upon the tabletop. The other she held with the palm of her long, thin hand. I stared at the yellow, crinkled scroll as Dr. Seraphina unfolded it.
Gabriella leaned over and touched the edge of the scroll. “That is Enoch’s vision?” she asked.
“A copy,” Dr. Seraphina said. “There were hundreds of such manuscripts circulating during the second century B.C. According to our chief archivist, we have a number of the originals, all slightly different, as these things usually were. We became interested in preserving them when the Vatican began to destroy them. This one is not nearly as precious as those in the vault.”
The scroll was made of thick, leathery paper, the rubric in Latin and the words drawn in precisely articulated calligraphy. The margins were illuminated with slender golden angels, their silver robes curling against folded golden wings.
Dr. Seraphina turned to us. “Can you read it?”
I had studied Latin as well as Greek and Aramaic, but the calligraphy was difficult to make out and the Latin seemed strange and unfamiliar.
Gabriella asked, “When was the scroll copied?”
“The seventeenth century or so,” Dr. Seraphina said. “It is a modern reproduction of a much older manuscript, one that predates the texts that became the Bible. The original is locked up in our vault, as are hundreds of other manuscripts, where they are safe. We have been scavengers of texts since our work began. It is our greatest strength-we are the holders of the truth, and this information protects us. In fact, you would find that many of the fragments collected in the Bible itself-and many that should have been included but were not-reside in our possession.”
Leaning closer to the scroll, I said, “It is difficult to read. Is it Vulgate?”
“Let me read it for you,” Dr. Seraphina said, smoothing the scroll once again with her gloved hand. “‘And the men took me and brought me to the second heaven, and showed me the darkness, and there I saw the prisoners suspended, reserved for and waiting the eternal judgment. And these angels were gloomy in appearance, more than the darkness of the earth. And they unceasingly wept every hour, and I said to the men who were with me: ”Why are these men continually tortured? ’””
I turned the words over in my mind. Although I had spent years reading the old texts, I had never heard anything like it before. “What is it?”
“Enoch,” Gabriella said, instantly. “He has just entered the second heaven.”
“The second?” I asked, confused.
“There are seven,” Gabriella said authoritatively. “Enoch visited each one and wrote of what he found there.”
“Go,” Dr. Seraphina said, gesturing to a bookshelf that spanned the entire wall of the room. “On the farthest shelf, you will find the Bibles.”
I followed Dr. Seraphina’s directions. After choosing a Bible I found to be particularly lovely-with a thick leather cover and a hand-stitched binding, a book that was heavy and difficult to carry-I brought it back to the table and placed it before my professor.