Page 23 (1/2)

23

NEED I SAY they are the perfect companions? Neither of them cared about the murders I could not for the life of s, such as world peace, the poor suffering ho winter cold of New York, the price of medicines for the sick, and how dreadful it was that Israel and Palestine were forever in battle with each other But they did not care one whit about the horrors they’d beheld with their own eyes They did not care that I killed every night for blood, that I lived off it and nothing else, and that I was a creature wed by my very nature to human destruction

They did not care one whit about the dead brother (his name was Fox, by the way, and the last name of my beautiful child is best left unmentioned)

In fact if this text ever sees the light of the real world, you’re bound to change both her first name and that of Benjamin

However, that’s not es, except that they are very much for her, as I mentioned to you before, and if I’m allowed to title them I think it will be Symphony for Sybelle

Not, please understand, that I love Benji no less It’s only that I haven’t the sa for hireat and adventurous life, no matter what should befall me or Sybelle, or even the ti Bedouin nature He is a true child of the tents and the blowing sands, though in his case, the house was a dismal cinder block hovel on the outskirts of Jerusalem where he induced tourists to pose for overpriced pictures with hi camel

He’d been flat out kidnapped by Fox under the felonious tere for which Fox paid Benji’s father five thousand dollars A fabricated eain He’d been the genius of the tribe, without doubt, hadhome and had learnt in the New York streets to steal, sh he swore up and down he couldn’t read, it turned out that he could, and began to do so obsessively just as soon as I started throwing books at hilish, Hebrew and Arabic, having read all three in the newspapers of his homeland since before he could re care of Sybelle He saw to it that she ate, drank ed her clothes when none of these routine tasks interested her He prided himself on the fact that he could by his wits obtain for her whatever she needed, no matter what happened to her

He was the frontnormal talk at the front desk, which included remarkably finespun lies about the whereabouts of the dead Fox, who had becoa a fabulous world traveler and arapher; he handled the piano tuner, as called as often as once a week because the piano stood by the , exposed to sun and cold, and also because Sybelle did indeed pound it with the fury that would indeed have ireat Beethoven He spoke on the phone to the bank, all of whose personnel thought he was his older brother, David, pronounced Dahveed, and then made the requisite calls at the teller’sfor cash as little Benja with hiive hiivenhis choice of universities, professions or a substance I didn’t overplayof boarding schools for hiold-buttoned blue blazer-wearing American East Coast social conquistador

I love hih to tear lier on him

But between me and Sybelle there lies a sympathy which sometimes eludes mortals and immortals for the space of their entire lives I know Sybelle I know her I knew her when I first heard her play, and I know her now, and I wouldn’t be here with you if she were not under the protection of Marius I will during the space of Sybelle’s life never be parted fro she can ever ask of ive

I will endure unspeakable anguish when Sybelle inevitably dies But that has to be borne I have no choice now in the matter I am not the creature I hen I laid eyes on Veronica’s Veil, when I stepped into the sun

I am someone else, and that someone else has fallen deeply and coo back on it

Of course I a happier than I have ever been in th fro these two as my co but utterly accidental

Sybelle is not insane She is nowhere near it, and I fancy that I understand her perfectly Sybelle is obsessed with one thing, and that is playing the piano From the first ti else And her "career," as so generously planned for her by her proud parents and by the burningly a to her

Had she been poor and struggling perhaps recognition would have been indispensable to her love affair with the piano, as it would have given her the requisite escape from life’s dreary domestic traps and routines But she was never poor And she is truly, in the very root of her soul, indifferent as to whether people hear her play her music or not

She needs only to hear it herself, and to know that she is not disturbing other people

In the old hotel, mostly full of rooms rented by the day, with only a handful of tenants rich enough to be lodged there year by year, as was Sybelle’s fa anyone

And after her parents’ tragic death, after she lost the only titnesses who had been intimate to her development,, she simply could not cooperate with Fox’s plans for her career any further

Well, all this I understood, al I understood it in her incessant repetition of the Sonata No 23, and I think if you were to hear it, you would understand it too I want you to hear it

Understand, it will not at all faze Sybelle if other people do gather to listen to her It won’t bother her one whit if she’s recorded If other people enjoy her playing and tell her so, she’s delighted But it’s a si with her "Ah, so you too love it," she thinks "Isn’t it beautiful?" This is what she said to me with her eyes and her smiles the very first time I ever approached her

And I suppose before I go any further-and I do have more to put down about my children-I should address this question: How did I approach her? How did I co, when Dora stood in the Cathedral crying to the crowds about theco skyward?

I don’t know I have rather tiresome supernatural explanations that read like tomes by members of the Society for the Study of Psychic Phenomena, or the scripts for Mulder and Scully on the television show called The X-Files Or like a secret file on the case in the archives of the order of psychic detectives called the Talamasca

Bluntly, I see it this way I have most-powerful abilities to cast spells, to dislocate e over distances, and to affect ht Ijourney towards the clouds, have used this power Itpain when I was for all purposes deranged and coht have been a last desperate hysterical refusal to accept the possibility of death, or of the horrible predicament, so close to death, in which I foundfallen on the roof, burnt and in unspeakable torht a desperate th into Sybelle’s aparth to kill her brother It certainly is possible for spirits to exert enough pressure on e it So perhaps that is exactly what I did-project myself in spirit form and lay hands upon the substance that was Fox, and kill him

But I don’t really believe all this I’ll tell you why

First off, though Sybelle and Benja detachment, on the subject of death and its subsequent forensic analysis, they both insisted that Fox’s body was bloodless when they got rid of it The puncture wounds were apparent on his neck In sum, they believe to this very hour that I was there, in substantial form, and that I did indeed drink Fox’s blood

Now that a projected ie cannot do, at least not insofar as I know it No, it cannot devour the blood of an entire circulatory syste to the cicatricula of the mind from which it came No, that is not possible

Of course, Sybelle and Benji could be wrong What do they know about blood and bodies? But the fact is, they let Fox lie there, quite dead for some two days, or so they said, while they waited for the return of the Dybbuk or Angel whom they were sure would help them Now in that time, the blood of a human body sinks down to the very lowest part of the carcass, and such a change would have been visible to these children They noted no such thing

Ah, it ot to their apartment, or why I don’t kno it happened And I do know, as I have already said, that as regards the entire experience- everything I saw and felt in the great restored Cathedral at Kiev, an impossible place-was as real as what I knew in Sybelle’s aparth it is small it is crucial After I had slain Fox, Benji did seefrom the sky He did see me, just as I saw him, from the

There is one very terrible possibility It is this I was going to die thatto happen My ascent was driven by immense will and an immense love of God of which I have no doubt as I dictate these words now

But perhaps at the crucialsoe from the sun, some way to thwart my martyrdom, I struck upon the predicareat need of me, I commenced to fall towards the shelter of the roof on which the snow and ice quickly coveredto this interpretation, only a passing illusion, a powerful projection of self, as I’ve said, a wish fulfillirl about to be fatally beaten by her brother

As for Fox, I killed him, without doubt But he died from fear, from failure of the heart, perhaps, froile throat, froestion

But as I stated before, I don’t believe this

I was there in the Cathedral in Kiev I broke the egg with my thumbs I saw the bird fly free

I know my Mother stood at my side, and I know that my Father knocked over the chalice I know because I know there is no part ofAnd I know too because the colors I saw then and theI had ever experienced

Now, there is simply no other dream I have ever had about which I can say this When I said the Mass in Vladiredients which ination simply does not have at its disposal