Angels and Man by rafael nicolás

Author:rafael nicolás [nicolás, rafael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: rafael nicolás

CHAPTER 24

Samyaza stared at his wife, lying in the bed with her, staring at her, blinking occasionally, but often just staring. They had to speak of it, and they would soon, he was sure — his lips were parted already — and yet he found himself caught on the curve of her large nose, the wrinkles by her closed eyes, the curls of hair that tousled down to cloud by her throat and sprawl over her breasts. ‘They’re larger,’ he thought. ‘The same as her stomach.’ Gingerly, he reached, grasped her hand, which was still her hand despite all these other transformations, but he supposed that Idith was still Idith — regardless of the swelling. It reminded him of injury; once, he had watched as Raphael showed him the broken ankle of an angel, all the skin around the joint bloated, like something was beneath it, alive and trying to break free.

But pregnancy was not an injury but its opposite. It was life, not death – ‘though it can kill.’ It was like injury, then. Except beautiful, at least Samyaza supposed so. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Raphael had said, showing the younger angel the skin that had split open and revealed the meat of the ankle within. That day, Samyaza had struggled to find anything beautiful about the gore. And he was struggling again.

‘I’m sorry.’ Samyaza leaned in and kissed his wife’s forehead, then slipped away, off the bed, hearing the wood beneath the mat creak. ‘I’m sorry.’ He stopped just before running into one of the hammocks where the three other children of his wife slept. His children, too, he supposed. The youngest two, a girl and her tiny brother were cuddled together in one hammock, which he saw as he walked past, lifting a hand to brush the curls by their forehead, then leaning down to press a kiss to their head each, the quiet smack of his lips reverberating in his ears. Then, he was feeling his feet move beneath him, sandals on the dirt, crunching beneath.

Outside, he met the sun, the sky still lingering with the pinks and yellows of dawn but blue enough to be sure that a new day had come. Samyaza stared at it, like he had his wife. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Oddly, he found it a nicer sight than the golden sphere above the city of Heaven that was never-changing, always constant in its glow and hue. Change was nice, was pretty. Change was so antithetical to angels, to their world and to their bodies. But humans changed — their world and their bodies. Samyaza listened to steps behind him, turned, then smiled at his child — the new oldest daughter, who he pulled close and delighted in the tenderness of the girl’s snicker. She would grow old. She would grow taller. Samyaza kissed her hair and smiled against it. ‘Beautiful,’ he thought. And so he didn’t speak about the pregnancy with Idith, not for a while; he looked to the sky instead, waiting to see if Michael would return.

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