When the Angels Left the Old Country: Chapters 9–16

Thus the two impostor creatures had been sent to the place where families were waiting for steerage boarding.

She had found that any relaxation of the muscles in her face inevitably led her back to crying.

The docks smelled of fish, the odor having a strange and unfamiliar effect on its insides, and whenever it closed its eyes it only saw the letters to spell Uriel, frustratingly obtuse in their intended meaning, as if each letter somehow represented an entire task.

“Our papers say we’re cousins, but that’s a lie,” said Little Ash, blithely.

Rose assumed the odd word choice was some artifact of whatever out-of-the-way corner of the Pale these two had come from, and she used up all her tact on not commenting.

His mother was a water demon, employed in the business of sometimes ambushing women at the mikveh and infecting them with madness to punish their husbands for thoughtless behavior. With such a mother’s blood in his veins, he felt quite invigorated by the damp air and the scent of the ocean.

Rose glanced up for long enough to fix him with a baleful look.
“What an ayin horeh, a real evil eye that one has,” he said to the angel, with satisfaction.

He didn’t mind sharing a bed with it; even if it had been present in its body, he would have had no compunctions about sprawling all over it, and since it wasn’t there, it certainly couldn’t stop him from putting his limbs wherever he pleased.

He therefore conceded reluctantly that a trunk full of books was not a bad companion for an ocean voyage, even if it was not as exciting as a dormant golem, or a heap of treasure, or any of the other secret things one might keep in one’s luggage.

I wouldn’t come home and ignore all her good efforts just to hear myself discoursing.

Perhaps, she thought, they were Litvaks: everyone said the Jews in Lithuania, for all their modern scholarly pretensions, didn’t speak properly, and she was sure she remembered something odd about the way they used pronouns, in particular, which she assumed would explain Little Ash’s insistence on referring to Uriel as something other than a him.

The angel’s instincts, unerring as always, led them through a labyrinth of suitcases and cradles and human legs until they found, up on the open deck, a little circle of elderly Jews, with some middle-aged ones around the edge, smoking cigarettes and counting for the minyan without particularly being involved in the minyan.

The rhythm of prayer it found soothing. Also soothing? The way the old men erroneously complimented it for being such a dedicated young person in these days of iniquity, although perhaps, as a modest creature, it shouldn’t have been pleased at the praise.

Rose, having been buffeted from Jewish mother to Jewish mother along the deck like a piece of driftwood with two good hands, eventually found herself up above, trying to clean porridge out of the bottom of someone’s cooking pot with the aid of a bucket of saltwater and a rag she had bullied off of a sailor who spoke only enough Yiddish to know when he was being threatened.

Angels tend toward equanimity in the timing of things, whereas demons are always in a rush.

Nursing was not precisely her area of expertise, the need for a gentle bedside manner being somewhat superfluous in her eyes, but she had helped her father with the goats enough times that she understood the very basics of medicine, and it was good to feel a solid plan under her feet, if not solid ground.

Besides, the grandmother, whose name was Rivke, had not seemed like the type who needed much in the way of coddling; she had cracked a joke about her own frailty that made her son-in-law look even more seasick.

Rose found herself hoping very much that the girl in the portrait was not the fiancée of either the angel or Little Ash. If she had to hear about another impending marriage, she thought she’d be queasy all over again, and what’s more she didn’t want to share a bunk for the whole journey with any starry-eyed, lovesick boys.

I am glad they won’t be left to molder in that sinner’s home.

“I need to cling to you,” said the rebbe. “As an ibbur, a benevolent possession, until we’ve crossed the sea. I can’t travel so far on my own, and I can’t hold onto something so light and changeable as an angel. Your soul is like a soap bubble, beautiful and fragile, until you encase it in a name. The touch of my hands would destroy you.”

It was aware now that the rebbe might be listening to their conversation, and it wished its friend could make a good impression and not be rude and callous.

It looked at Rose, and added apologetically, “Also, it is private.”
Rose felt unaccountably snubbed by this.

This was the second unprecedented revelation from the angel in as many minutes, and he found it deeply disturbing.

As she picked listlessly at the plate of potatoes, she tried to guess what they were discussing.

“I’m sorry. I told him you’re not like how one would imagine a demon at all, only—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Little Ash, bristling.

And if the angel had changed itself, he did not understand why, which meant that he would not be able to see further changes coming. What if, in finding new parts of itself, it discovered a part that felt toward demons as the rebbe did, unwilling to look at Little Ash except as an example of an immutable demonic nature?

As it could simply think of wanting a book and have a book, so it had always simply thought of the trappings of prayer and found itself dressed.

He had simply been lying next to the angel with his eyes shut, grinding his teeth and feeling stupid. This did not predispose him to placing a look of concern on his face.

She had thought she had a great deal of goodwill toward Uriel, but, given that she hadn’t had breakfast before traipsing up and down the ship, she was now applying to it some of the irritation engendered in her by Dinah’s husband.

She had thought she had a great deal of goodwill toward Uriel, but, given that she hadn’t had breakfast before traipsing up and down the ship, she was now applying to it some of the irritation engendered in her by Dinah’s husband.

Angels subsist primarily on the honey-sweet essence of holiness that is created when a human performs an act of goodness, and holiness has very little in common with the steerage food on a steam liner.

He did not find much with which to work any sort of demonic charm, or to turn the angel against its new friend by revealing hitherto unsuspected sins.

Despite Rose’s animosity toward his disciple, Saul Lehman, the rebbe was not so terrible a person.

There was a sense of futility beginning to spread through everyone’s souls, the sort of dullness which could allow more serious sickness to enter.

The rebbe straightened the fringes of his ghostly tzitzis.

“If you hurt it, I will drag you out and tear you to pieces. I know how to exorcise a dybbuk. They teach us the rituals in our yeshiva.”

Besides, there was a little spark of wickedness in the old woman’s eyes, as if she knew she was imposing and didn’t mind at all. He couldn’t help but respect the brazenness.

As long as you haven’t come along to spread pestilence in steerage, I’ll leave you to your own business.

Asher, wasn’t it? That’s an auspicious name. And with your cousin, you’re Asher and Uriel—joyful, and light of God. You’re bringing good fortune with you.

Rose had some experience with medicine for goats, but less with medicine for people, and was interested to hear Rivke explain the experience she’d gleaned from years of midwifing—a combination of Holy Names, herbs, and appealing to gentile spirits or demons in the gravest emergencies.