HE had been rebuffed elsewhere and wanted confirmation of affection. (This would explain the lengths the angel was to go, explaining the protocol of oblation.)
HE had observed that my parents were no longer keeping company at night and that there was therefore no imminent prospect of further offspring — no sisters, that is, for Abel or for me to mate with (supposing such coupling to be allowable, exceptionally, for the purposes of procreation). If we weren’t to die out as promptly as we’d sprung up, some intervention, some initiative for change, was necessary.
HE disliked the aromas rising from my garden.
HE was bored with Divine Vacancy. An appetite for drama is incident to whoever comprehends time, and we were His theatre.
HE had begun to notice Abel’s beauty.
I do not offer this as an exhaustive list. They are the motives I most favour, that is all. I am aware, therefore, that they might say more about the complexion of my mind than they do about the Tetragrammaton’s. Especially in the case of the last motive — no, I must return to my original word: the last prompting — I have attributed to Him.
It is certainly a delicate matter. And full of contradictions. Have I not already stated that this God was no gatherer-in of grapes or grape-boys? Yet something has to explain why, as soon as Abel reached his thirteenth birthday, the Lord,
Suddenly made the removal of the prepuce — a superfluity of skin for which He alone had originally been responsible — an issue of the first importance in relations between man and God…
Suddenly expressed a desire to taste the best of my brother’s flock…
Suddenly demanded a comparable tribute from me, at which He promptly turned up His nose…
Suddenly put the idea of holiness into my brother’s head, and the words with which to express it into my brother’s mouth…
Suddenly sent down an angel, one of whose functions, whatever else he had dropped to earth for, was to make my brother more than ever aware that he was fair, and found grace in the eyes of whosoever beheld him…
Suddenly decided it was time to make it known to me, by that same angel, that I wasn’t, and that I didn’t…
Suddenly had all of us, in short, imbuing my brother’s penis with piety, and Abel himself, stripped down to his shirt, dancing between his sheep, lighting fires, and perspiring prettily.
The angel’s name was Saraqael, but we had to force that information out of him. Unlike Semyaza, he was unforthcoming about himself; though unlike Azael, he was not surly in his reserve. We had to guess him — that’s what it came to. He was an angel of the personal enigma, and we had to work him out.
This did not apply to the new regimen of rituals and duties he had been sent to institute. In every instance this was punctilious and undeviating: a specific code of regulations governing cuts of meat, precise frying times, just this amount of seasoning and no more. Aside from metaphysical questions — the wheretos and the wherefores of all this ceremonial circumcision and cookery — his instructions were unambiguous. Here’s the blade, there’s the spirit; there’s the ox, here’s the skillet. Which might be why he made such a puzzle of himself. Men who practise the routine, pedantic professions — keepers of rolls and registers, collectors of duties, temple functionaries and monitors — frequently like to drape gaudy veils and gauzes around their wheretos and wherefores. And officiant angels are presumably no different.
But guessing him was only the half of it. Once we’d guessed him — that’s to say, guessed close — we had to please him. And this was a tougher proposition still. For he was an austerely melancholy angel, with a blazing black stubble on his chin, and blazing black eyes that held the memory of tears but the promise of reproof, and a strange coronal of blazing black hair, cut severely, as though to suggest abstemiousness, but worn somehow with dash, with a consciousness of styling and design, as though also to appease whatever vanities (and there, perhaps, abstemiousness is a vanity) obtained in the celestial courts. As for his wings, these he carried high and inflexibly, gathered into his sides like a cloak. And they too were the colour of a raven. To bring relief to that solemn countenance, to coax the light of laughter or approval out of those funebral eyes, at the very least to send a flutter through his rigid feathers, became, for each of us, our first and sometimes our only concern. We lined up to lighten him. We competed for the privilege. And when we failed — and we failed more often than we succeeded — we took our failure to heart and thought the worse of ourselves as a consequence.
In this way do the heavy in spirits wreak their terrible revenge on the light.
It is a law as immutable as gravity. And it was devised by the same Heavy Hand. Whatever is dark draws brightness into it. Wherever the lugubrious gather, there you will find the frivolous dancing their hearts out for a sign of favour. I am a jealous God, said the Lord, and what I am above all jealous of is your gaiety. You will therefore expend the lightness of your hearts in My heavy service.
So it was; so Saraqael dropped like a stone to remind us it should be; so it still is.
Light? Us?
These things are relative. Had you seen my father skipping to the high places with buckets of dung and slush slung over his shoulders, the wherewithal to build altars to the exact specifications laid down by Saraqael, you would have said, There goes an alacrious man.
Had you seen my mother sifting flour and beating oil — a tenth deal of one for every quarter hin of the other — you might have thought, now that is a willing woman.
And had you seen my little brother sorting through his flock, separating those without spot from those with spot, divorcing those with blemish from those without blemish, inclining his golden head to be certain he understood the angel’s words — ‘Then shalt thou kill the ram, and take of his blood, and put it upon the tip of thy right ear, and upon the thumb of thy right hand, and upon the great toe of thy right foot’; had you beheld the concentration in his wandering eyes as he took the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul that is above the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them; had you watched the slow, sensuous movement of his fingers, the caressing of the carcass, the obedient washing and cutting and sprinkling round about, that family look of low triumph disfiguring his lips, parting them so that the white of his teeth might do something to touch the heart or tickle open the pinions of Saraqael; had you taken in the sudden starts of astonishment he managed, the seizures of amazed fleshly disquiet, whenever he caught the gaze of the blazing black angel fixed upon him, the blazing blond boy; had you beheld his shivering suspense, his tantalising trepidation, his compliant palpitating passivity, promising everything, everything, even unto hell — then, then might you have taken a stone to him yourself, long before I did.
And this is to say nothing on the subject of the commotion he raised when it came time for circumcision. Perhaps I should say nothing. I am mindful that I am addressing an audience — at least that part of which is male — renowned for the erectness of its carriage and for wearing its foreskins with a pride bordering on fervour. I have not forgotten I am in Babel. I have my own feelings to consider. I will not willingly expose myself to ridicule. Suffice it to say that when the moment came and I found myself unable to budge the angel from his appointed course, I took the sharpened flint from him, bundled the medicaments in a pouch, refused the good wishes of my parents who not only approved this barbarism but actually seemed to be exhilarated by it, and set out for the consoling privacy of my garden where, attending promptly to my own amputation, I was able to bleed in peace, and I like to think with dignity, among my flaming amaryllids.