FALL: The Watcher (complete)
"The Watcher"
Prologue to "Fall"
by Eric Scott
It is a Friday afternoon, and as always, Oz leaves his work early as a stockboy at the local Walgreens to go to salat.
Oz is a perplexing man to most of his coworkers. He has dark, olive skin, but his features are strangely unremarkable; sometimes, they think he is black, or perhaps an Indian, or an Arab; he has no accent other than the usual Midwestern one that his fellows have, except perhaps a little quieter, softer than theirs. The only feature he has which stands out is his eyes; they are bright blue, unnaturally so, and remind his fellows of nothing but ice. When asked, he says it is a condition he has had since he was a child, which explains the dark sunglasses he often wears when out in the sun.
Oz drives an old Chevrolet pickup truck, once green and now mostly rust. It is raining when he leaves work, a slow and persistent drizzle. This is weather to be expected in April. It is a very short drive from the Walgreens on East Broadway to his mosque, the only one in Columbia; a sign out front labels it as the Islamic Center of Central Missouri. He has been coming to this mosque every Friday for almost a year now, since he moved to Columbia. He parks in the lot and inspects his clothes; they are clean and unfrayed. He gets out and walks past the small playground and to the door; people are congregating outside. Many of them, when they spot Oz, smile and call out "Assalaamu'alaikum!" to him. He characteristically smiles back and returns their greeting. Quietly he moves past them and into the chamber between the outside and the building proper; he places his sandals, wet from the rain, into one of the alcoves and quietly enters the dark interior of the building.
He walks into the ablution chamber and cleans himself; he feels obligated to undergo ghusl today. The chamber is simply a shower stall; most of the people here do not use the showers at the mosque itself, but instead perform the rite at home. Due to his work schedule, this is impractical for Oz. He makes his intention and says the basmala, then begins the process of cleansing himself: he takes water to his body, first his penis and other private parts, and then the usual wudu routine. He washes his right hand thrice, then his left; next is his mouth. He cleanses his nostrils next, accidentally sneezing in the middle of the third exhalation of water. Then follows his face, his right arm and left; then the masah, bringing his wet hands from his hairline to the back of his neck and back again. Cleaning his ears, he finishes the wudu. Then he quickly washes the right side of his body, then the left, and his feet in the same manner; knowing that the prayer will start soon, he only does this once, though he wishes he could do it twice more.
Oz dresses again and leaves the chamber. As he goes upstairs he whispers the shahadah to himself: "ʾašhadu ʾan lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muḥammadan rasūlu-llāh."
The Jumu'ah is held in a room with orange carpet; at the front of the room is the qibla, where the imam, a short man who Oz believes to be in his early thirties, will deliver the Friday sermon. Behind him is a wall separating them from the room the women pray in. Some of the men are sitting and talking, many of them in Arabic. If Oz knows Arabic beyond the recitations the others in the mosque make during prayer, he has not shown it.
Oz does not speak to anyone. He takes a green leather-bound copy of the Qu'ran from a shelf in the wall and reads from it carefully, poring over every word.
In a few moments the imam comes in, wearing a loose white shirt and glasses. The adahn is said, and there follows the imam's sermon; this week he speaks of marriage, and in particular of how there is no shame in the love of man and woman within the bounds of marriage; these things are part of the greater plan of Allah. Oz stiffens at the sermon, but he does not think any of the others notice. He is comforted by this. The issue is one that brings up uncomfortable feelings in him.
He intones with the rest during the two raka'ahs that follow. He recites the suras and follows the stances with the others, and when Oz speaks the tashahuud- the final part of the raka'ah, which states that all worship is for Allah, and wishes for peace for the Prophet and all the servants of Allah, which testifies that Allah is the only God and that Muhammad is his messenger, Oz believes it. He believes every word of it, through every part of his soul.
The only part of the prayer that he omits, quietly, is the taslim, the final part of the raka'ah, in which the supplicants offer greetings to the angels who record their good and bad deeds. Oz does not offer such greetings; he knows they would do him no good.
After the prayer, as he is walking to his truck, one of the men from the mosque flags Oz down and introduces him to his wife and his small daughter. The man asks Oz if he would like to come and have supper with them tonight. Oz thanks them but politely refuses. He always does. He knows that before too long, people will quit asking him such questions, and shortly thereafter, he will have to find a new mosque.
Oz gets into his truck and starts the engine. Before he leaves the parking lot, he pauses, eyes closed, and thinks of Allah. He believes in Him completely. This brings Oz no peace.
* * *
Oz wakes up at 9:00 on Saturday. Two candles are burning in the window of his studio apartment near the edge of downtown Columbia; there is little else in the apartment other than the appliances that came with his lease and a bookshelf that is next to the cot he sleeps on. Outside there is a small balcony with a barbecue pit on it. He does not turn the lights on, although the sunlight only lights the room dimly; he will not turn lights on today. Oz does his best to maintain the sabbath.
He puts on good clothes and a yarmulke and leaves the apartment. It is a long walk to the synagogue; it usually takes him an hour and a half to make it out to Congregation Beth Shalom, located on the outskirts of town next to a farmhouse. Many cars pass him as he makes his way away from the university district, and eventually he finds himself trudging along the sides of sparsely developed roads. Many people would be tired after walking for so long, but there is not a drop of sweat on Oz's forehead when he finally turns into the parking lot of the synagogue. Most people drive here.
This synagogue is not what Oz would prefer; it is a Reform institution, and the services and atmosphere are very relaxed. People drive here, where their Orthodox cousins would walk, and in general they are less concerned with upholding the sabbath laws as other denominations of Judaism would be. But this is the only synagogue for hours in any direction, and Oz prefers it to not attending services at all.
He hurries past the farmhouse and turns right at the sidewalk, rushing past the windows that look in on the congregation room, and he realizes that he is late. He sees that the rabbi is already leading the service; his walk must have taken him longer than he expected. He stands in the hallway of the long, modern building, listening to the congregation. They are singing in Hebrew. Unconsciously, he finds himself whispering along with them as he hangs his jacket up on the coat rack and throws a prayer shawl around his shoulders. He waits for a break in the music and then grabs a siddur and enters the room to join the congregation.
The worship chamber is very modern looking, with large picture windows and gray chairs. The whole place is well lit by the copious sunlight as well as the electric lights, which Oz regards, as always, with some measure of disdain. The rabbi stands at a podium in the center of the room, facing the massive ark on the far wall; behind him, occupying the opposite position of the ark, is a table with coffee and bagels arrayed on it. Oz sits down near two elderly men and quietly opens his siddur, waiting for the rabbi to indicate which page they are currently reading from.
“Now then, let us turn to page two fifty one,” says the rabbi. The rabbi is a gray-haired man who wears a red dress shirt and a tie beneath his shawl, and his voice is heavily accented. Oz knows him to be a kind man. The congregation flips to the correct page; there, at the top, is a quote that comes not from the Torah, but presumably from the words of the siddur's editors: “What happens once upon a time happens all the time.” Oz has never noticed this phrase before. He also supposes that the notion of timelessness it evokes must surely be more comforting for his neighbors than for himself.
One of the men near him, who Oz knows from previous weeks is originally a Texan, leans over to him and extends a hand. The man, who wears dark tinted glasses and a tan suit, smiles beneath his large, graying mustache. “Shabbat shalom.”
Oz shakes his hand and nods. “Shabbat shalom to you as well.”
They soon bring the Torah scrolls out of the ark. The rabbi and his wife, along with another member of the congregation, bring the scrolls from the massive cabinet and lay them on the podium, where the rabbi unfurls them for the week's Torah reading. Today's portion comes from Leviticus and Jeremiah, specifically Leviticus 25 and Jeremiah 32. The Leviticus reading is concerning the year of the Jubilee, when the land was to be left fallow and all things were able to be redeemed. Along with this, and seeming to attract more attention from the congregation, were the commandments on aiding the poor: that if one among the people fell poor, it was the duty of his fellows to support him, to, as the rabbi interpreted it, “to jump into the hole with them and push them up.”
Oz became uncomfortable when the last Torah reader was called up; it was a middle aged woman, celebrating the anniversary of her bat mitzvah, which was also the day of her conversion to Judaism. Oz did not like the mixing of the sexes in this synagogue, and of all the things he found disquieting of the more liberal congregation, this bothered him the most. In the old days, men and women were never allowed in the same sections during services; here, the rabbi called a woman up to read from the Torah before everyone. It was even more disturbing when, in the middle of the reading, another man appeared with his daughter, who looked to Oz to be about thirteen. They sat near him, and the girl looked over to him and smiled. She whispers “Shabbat shalom!” to him quietly as soon as the woman finishes her reading of the Torah.
“Shabbat shalom,” he says to the girl, though he was not sure he meant it.
The supplemental reading of Jeremiah was also supplied by the woman, which told of Jeremiah's purchasing of a field from his cousin despite the incumbent Babylonian invasion and conquest of Israel. The woman smiles as she finishes the reading of the prophet's book.
“I chose this day for my bat mitzvah,” she says, “because it was the day of my conversion, and so it was an important day for me. But I was not especially happy with these verses, because they did not have, well, much excitement. A man buys a field from his cousin... So what? And I brought this up to a friend of mine, and she said, simply, 'read it again.'” The woman nodded. “And I did, and this time I realized what it really meant; that it was important to buy that field, even though in just days the Babylonians would lead the Jews into exile, because it meant that one day we were going to come home. One day that field would be ours again, even if right now we were being driven off of it.
“In other words, the verse says that there is always hope for the future.” The congregation claps as she finishes, and the rabbi shakes her hand and congratulates her. Oz claps with the rest, though his claps are quiet and his thoughts uneasy.
After the readings, the congregation turned to a discussion of the verses. The back and forth of the discussion, the congregation to the rabbi, is always fascinating to Oz, and though he does not participate openly, he listens carefully to each comment made and considers every point. His resolve only falters once, when a stocky man with gray hair and beard on the other side of the room mentions something that they had read previously.
"There is that one phrase that I just can't get over," says the man. "The one from Leviticus... 'You shall be holy, as I, Adonai, am holy.'"
Oz quietly excuses himself for a moment after the man says this and leaves the worshippers; he goes down the hall to the men's room and stands there, staring into the mirror at his dark face for three minutes until he feels comfortable enough to re-enter.
When the service is over, the rabbi's wife, a handsome middle-aged woman with short hair and glasses, approaches him and asks, as she sometimes does, if Oz would like to share a Shabbat meal with the rabbi's family. Oz gracefully declines, though he will probably eat nothing else today except for the bread that the congregation shares after the services have ended. The rabbi's wife does not press the issue.
Oz watches the congregation discussing the Torah, and the synagogue's Jewish Film Series program, and the upcoming meetings of the Men's and Women's Clubs, from a distance. He does not get involved; he never has, or at least, not for a very long time.
Quietly Oz slips away and makes his way to the door to begin walking back home. As always, he stops in the doorway and looks at the painting to his left. It is a small, framed picture that looks like a strange diagram of lines and spheres, surmounted all over by Hebrew letters. Oz once overheard the rabbi himself confess that he did not know much about the picture's meaning, save that it was a deep and mystical thing.
Oz knew what it was. It was the Tree of Life, the map of mankind, and Creation, and God, expressed in the ten sephiroth that represented ten different phases of experience. Beginning with Keter, the Crown, the path traced its way downward through Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Netzah, Hod, and then finally Yesod and Malkuth; yet this was an odd picture, for it showed the ten spheres in a different way than usual. In most representations, the tenth sphere is Malkuth, the Kingdom, the physical world, and it is at the very bottom of the diagram, connected to Yesod, the Foundation. In addition, there is a blank space- an abyss- between the three sephiroth closest to God, Keter, Chokmah, and Binah, and the lower spheres.
However, in this particular picture, there was no Malkuth at all, and a sphere now inhabited the area between the top three sephiroth and the rest. Oz had once heard a young man ask the rabbi why this was and the rabbi again confessed that he did not truly know.
Oz knew, but he did not tell them.
As he walks out of the shade of the trees around the farmhouse near Congregation Beth Shalom, Oz looks up into the bright, bright light of the sun and only slightly winces. The highway is barren, and heat rises from the asphault in a thoroughly oppressive manner. Oz does not sweat. He never does.
Oz looks to the ground. In his heart, he thinks of Adonai, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves Him completely, with all hisbeing. This brings him no peace.
* * *
Oz's alarm clock wakes him at 9:35 AM on Sunday morning. He wakes up to his tiny studio apartment, the emptiness making it seem much larger than it really is. He stands up and goes to his closet, taking down his good blue suit from its hanger. A few moments later, he is dressed; he eats a bowl of corn flakes and then heads out the door, to his rusty green pickup truck.
Oz attends church every Sunday, but which church he goes to varies. He is easily dissatisfied with them; most are too lax or too carried away in their "fundamentals," and neither of the extremes is to Oz's tastes. For the past month or so, he has been attending the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which he finds tolerable.
Oz is not a Catholic, officially. He has never been baptized or received communion. However, of the Christian denominations, he frequently finds himself returning to Catholicism; perhaps it is something in the ceremony of Sunday mass that he finds comfortingly archaic. Perhaps it is simply that, for better or for worse, the Catholic Church maintains the long history of Christianity to a degree that only some branches of the Orthodoxy have matched, and Orthodox churches are not especially prevalent in the American Midwest.
The church is a traditional building, with two towers and a rose window above the main doors. Oz enters and dips his fingers into the bowl of holy water near the door, crossing himself, and then enters the nave. He kneels as he enters the pews and sits next to a group of three young men, each of them dressed only semi-formally in polo shirts and khakis. Oz holds his tongue as the three of them joke around before the mass begins, ribbing each other and discussing their plans for the summer to come; they seemed to be college students.
The priest appears in white robes and welcomes the gathered church to mass; today is Trinity Sunday, a day of celebration and affirmation of the unity of God in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Oz would be paying more attention to this, but he is distracted as a line of small girls walk down the aisles carrying flags; in addition to being Trinity Sunday, it is also the Girl Scout mass. Oz is uncomfortable with this, but especially with the older girls, on the verge of womanhood, who will soon be too old to join the others in this march; the sight of them brings up old, chilling feelings in Oz, and he quickly turns his sight back to the priest to dispel them.
Oz listens intently to the homily, though he finds it a trifle silly; there are two stories, one of a frog princess and one of a broken down parish that is rejuvenated by the introduction of new and youthful people into it, and neither one is especially meaningful to Oz. The young men nearby snicker and mention quietly how much they like the father, who is known for being funnier and more casual than some of the others; Oz does not find it especially admirable.
There are hymns, and readings, from Exodus and Daniel, Corinthians and Revelation, and when he is supposed to Oz says them without needing to look at the missal; to all appearances he is the model of a Catholic worshiper, his every word in sync with the order of the liturgy. And yet Oz finds himself constantly distracted, by the snickering young men, by the sounds of crying babies, by the girl scouts standing far ahead of him at the front of the church.
There is only one place where Oz does not speak as the others do; as the others kneel, he says, with them, "Lord, I am no worthy to receive you." But when the others say "But say the word, and I shall be healed," Oz is silent, for although he loves Jesus, loves the Trinity of God, he knows they will give no healing to the likes of him.
Oz does not receive communion today either. Soon, the service is over, and Oz returns to his truck. As he turns the key in the lock, he hears a shout from behind his shoulder. He looks and sees the three young men leaning against a car, much nicer than his truck, with a young woman who had not been with them earlier. She is very pretty, a brunette with large, brandy eyes, wearing a black dress. Oz stares too long at her, and the young men notice. Before they say anything, Oz gets into his truck and drives away; in the rearview mirror he sees one of the boys, spiky haired and wearing an orange polo and glasses, shrug and go back to laughing.
He thinks of the girl scouts. He thinks of the babies. He thinks of the girl in the black dress.
And he thinks of God, of Jesus, and the Father, and the Holy Spirit, of their perfect, simple love, but it brings him no peace.
* * *
Oz takes off his suitcoat when he gets home, but leaves his tie in place. In his right hand is a cage; inside it is a live chicken, which he purchased at a farmer's market a few blocks from the church. He sets the cage down near his bed and walks over to his small kitchenette to make lunch. It is a simple affair, like everything else material in Oz's life, a bowl of tomato soup from a can, purchased at work three days before. He warms it in a saucepan and eats it carefully, paying little attention to the squawking of the chicken across the room. As he eats, he looks occasionally to the small window in his wall and shakes his head, softly. He has seen so many cities in his time in the world, and Columbia is just one more. But perhaps it will be the last; he hopes so.
He finishes his soup and washes the bowl in the sink next to the stove, and walks over to the bed. He lifts up the cage with the chicken inside and brings it over to his kitchen counter. He stares at the chicken mournfully and taps the cage twice, affectionately. He reaches into his drawer and pulls out a large, sharp knife. He opens the door of the cage and entreats the chicken to come out.
Oz stabs the chicken three times with his gleaming knife, and then cuts off its head. He watches the blood seep from the bird's body and stain its white feathers red, and the body convulses and then, slowly, far too slowly, the wrenching of the corpse fades and it lies still. Oz watches this silently, and when the chicken is dead, he at last gathers the dead thing up and takes it out to the balcony. He sets it in the ashes of the barbecue pit and begins to light a fire.
It takes a long time before the bird is ablaze. It will be a far longer time before the flames do as they are meant to- to consume the carcass, to transmute it to smoke, to carry it away as an offering. It is not a bull or a ram, but then, he is not in the Temple in the time of the scriptures, either. Of all the methods he has tried, he has the least faith in this one. Despite how strange and varied the other three are, how different from what they are from what they once were, what they all profess to attempt to replicate, there is still a sense of holiness that Oz feels every time he walks into those buildings. This, though... This just makes him feel empty and evil. And yet perhaps this is why he does it, most of all.
Besides, sometimes, the old ways- even distortions of the old ways, long removed from their original time and context- are the best ways. It is worth a chance, at least.
Oz watches the fire from inside the apartment for hours, until the sun is beginning to set in the distance. Satisfied in his work, he goes to the closet and searches behind his clothes for a small black case. Inside is a silver revolver and one bullet; he does not anticipate needing another one.
Oz sits with his back to the open balcony door. He believes the force should send his body backwards, and hopefully there will be as little mess as possible... He dislikes doing this to his landlord, who is a quiet old woman who really deserves better, but that does not stop him.
He smells the burning chicken, sees the trail of its blood on the tiled floor leading to the balcony. He feels the smooth gun in his hand.
The barrel is terrifying in his mouth, this cold, hard thing that points straight to the back of his throat. Oz's finger caresses the trigger. He thinks of the Muslim family who offered him dinner. He thinks of the rabbi's wife. He thinks of the three young men and the girl in the black dress.
But most of all, Oz thinks of God.
He pulls the trigger.
* * *
They are standing in the desert, he and Semyaza and the others. They are standing, waiting, their wings silent in the darkest night possible in the Garden. They see the prophet in the distance, walking towards them.
Their words are not the words he dreams. The tongue they spoke then was a tongue known to only a handful of humans throughout history, the language of the first children of God. He has forgotten it now, after so long. They speak in Hebrew in his dream, ancient Hebrew, the Hebrew of the scriptures.
Semyaza is the one who speaks, not him. "What is the answer, Enoch? Have you plead our case? Does the Lord understand? Does He forgive us?"
The prophet looks at them, and his face is inscrutable. They cannot tell if there is true regret there, or just something put there to console them, when the prophet looks at Semyaza and says, quietly, "No, He does not..."
Oz wakes up in his apartment in Columbia, Missouri. The chicken has long since turned to ashes and bone in his barbecue pit on the balcony. The sun is beginning to rise, greeting a new Monday. He blinks and groans, and sits up. He feels the back of his beck; it is tender, and painful to touch, but there is no bullet hole there. He looks back at the floor, and sees the spray of red blood there, and sees the pistol on the floor near where he fell. He quietly stands up and picks up the gun, putting it back in its case, and then gets out his work clothes, his polo shirt embroidered with the Walgreen's logo.
It did not work. This does not surprise him. He has tried drowning, hanging, stabbing himself in the heart; once, he even tried to poetically throw himself on the fire as well, Isaac and Abraham all at once. But always he found himself washed ashore, or on the floor with a broken noose around his neck, or in an emergency room being told how miraculously the knife had missed his heart, although he knew for certain that it had not.
But it was his Sunday ritual, and the hope that it would work- the hope that one week, this mortal form would die at last and he could go home, that he would at last be forgiven or damned and allowed to move on- was all that kept him going, all that allowed him to function. It was madness, and he knew that, but it was all he had.
His name was not Oz; Oz was a contraction, a construct. A useful tool for their world, their societies, here in the Garden in which he was imprisoned for the crime of loving them too much. He was Azazel, and he had walked the roads of this world since the time of the prophets or longer.
As he slips off his dress shirt and tie and replaces them with his minimum wage stockboy clothes, Oz watches the sun rise over the city, over Malkuth. He thinks of the diagram in the synagogue.
He knew the meaning of the diagram- why the tenth sephiroth hung below the three highest aspects of God there when Malkuth was normally so far below it. He knew, but could not bring himself to tell the rabbi; indeed he pitied the person who had painted the thing and wondered if they were as lost as he was.
It was the world before they forsook it. It was the world as it was in the Beginning: the world they could not think of, could not conceive of, lost to them for so long they did not know they had lost anything at all. Perhaps that was their last blessing, or his last punishment; for Azazel had been there, had known that world firsthand. He knew exactly what he was missing.
Oz grabs his keys, ready at last for work. His hand wraps around the shoddy, corroded brass doorknob. He smells the last of the poor, dead chicken, and thinks of the world before the Fall.
Prologue to "Fall"
by Eric Scott
It is a Friday afternoon, and as always, Oz leaves his work early as a stockboy at the local Walgreens to go to salat.
Oz is a perplexing man to most of his coworkers. He has dark, olive skin, but his features are strangely unremarkable; sometimes, they think he is black, or perhaps an Indian, or an Arab; he has no accent other than the usual Midwestern one that his fellows have, except perhaps a little quieter, softer than theirs. The only feature he has which stands out is his eyes; they are bright blue, unnaturally so, and remind his fellows of nothing but ice. When asked, he says it is a condition he has had since he was a child, which explains the dark sunglasses he often wears when out in the sun.
Oz drives an old Chevrolet pickup truck, once green and now mostly rust. It is raining when he leaves work, a slow and persistent drizzle. This is weather to be expected in April. It is a very short drive from the Walgreens on East Broadway to his mosque, the only one in Columbia; a sign out front labels it as the Islamic Center of Central Missouri. He has been coming to this mosque every Friday for almost a year now, since he moved to Columbia. He parks in the lot and inspects his clothes; they are clean and unfrayed. He gets out and walks past the small playground and to the door; people are congregating outside. Many of them, when they spot Oz, smile and call out "Assalaamu'alaikum!" to him. He characteristically smiles back and returns their greeting. Quietly he moves past them and into the chamber between the outside and the building proper; he places his sandals, wet from the rain, into one of the alcoves and quietly enters the dark interior of the building.
He walks into the ablution chamber and cleans himself; he feels obligated to undergo ghusl today. The chamber is simply a shower stall; most of the people here do not use the showers at the mosque itself, but instead perform the rite at home. Due to his work schedule, this is impractical for Oz. He makes his intention and says the basmala, then begins the process of cleansing himself: he takes water to his body, first his penis and other private parts, and then the usual wudu routine. He washes his right hand thrice, then his left; next is his mouth. He cleanses his nostrils next, accidentally sneezing in the middle of the third exhalation of water. Then follows his face, his right arm and left; then the masah, bringing his wet hands from his hairline to the back of his neck and back again. Cleaning his ears, he finishes the wudu. Then he quickly washes the right side of his body, then the left, and his feet in the same manner; knowing that the prayer will start soon, he only does this once, though he wishes he could do it twice more.
Oz dresses again and leaves the chamber. As he goes upstairs he whispers the shahadah to himself: "ʾašhadu ʾan lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muḥammadan rasūlu-llāh."
The Jumu'ah is held in a room with orange carpet; at the front of the room is the qibla, where the imam, a short man who Oz believes to be in his early thirties, will deliver the Friday sermon. Behind him is a wall separating them from the room the women pray in. Some of the men are sitting and talking, many of them in Arabic. If Oz knows Arabic beyond the recitations the others in the mosque make during prayer, he has not shown it.
Oz does not speak to anyone. He takes a green leather-bound copy of the Qu'ran from a shelf in the wall and reads from it carefully, poring over every word.
In a few moments the imam comes in, wearing a loose white shirt and glasses. The adahn is said, and there follows the imam's sermon; this week he speaks of marriage, and in particular of how there is no shame in the love of man and woman within the bounds of marriage; these things are part of the greater plan of Allah. Oz stiffens at the sermon, but he does not think any of the others notice. He is comforted by this. The issue is one that brings up uncomfortable feelings in him.
He intones with the rest during the two raka'ahs that follow. He recites the suras and follows the stances with the others, and when Oz speaks the tashahuud- the final part of the raka'ah, which states that all worship is for Allah, and wishes for peace for the Prophet and all the servants of Allah, which testifies that Allah is the only God and that Muhammad is his messenger, Oz believes it. He believes every word of it, through every part of his soul.
The only part of the prayer that he omits, quietly, is the taslim, the final part of the raka'ah, in which the supplicants offer greetings to the angels who record their good and bad deeds. Oz does not offer such greetings; he knows they would do him no good.
After the prayer, as he is walking to his truck, one of the men from the mosque flags Oz down and introduces him to his wife and his small daughter. The man asks Oz if he would like to come and have supper with them tonight. Oz thanks them but politely refuses. He always does. He knows that before too long, people will quit asking him such questions, and shortly thereafter, he will have to find a new mosque.
Oz gets into his truck and starts the engine. Before he leaves the parking lot, he pauses, eyes closed, and thinks of Allah. He believes in Him completely. This brings Oz no peace.
* * *
Oz wakes up at 9:00 on Saturday. Two candles are burning in the window of his studio apartment near the edge of downtown Columbia; there is little else in the apartment other than the appliances that came with his lease and a bookshelf that is next to the cot he sleeps on. Outside there is a small balcony with a barbecue pit on it. He does not turn the lights on, although the sunlight only lights the room dimly; he will not turn lights on today. Oz does his best to maintain the sabbath.
He puts on good clothes and a yarmulke and leaves the apartment. It is a long walk to the synagogue; it usually takes him an hour and a half to make it out to Congregation Beth Shalom, located on the outskirts of town next to a farmhouse. Many cars pass him as he makes his way away from the university district, and eventually he finds himself trudging along the sides of sparsely developed roads. Many people would be tired after walking for so long, but there is not a drop of sweat on Oz's forehead when he finally turns into the parking lot of the synagogue. Most people drive here.
This synagogue is not what Oz would prefer; it is a Reform institution, and the services and atmosphere are very relaxed. People drive here, where their Orthodox cousins would walk, and in general they are less concerned with upholding the sabbath laws as other denominations of Judaism would be. But this is the only synagogue for hours in any direction, and Oz prefers it to not attending services at all.
He hurries past the farmhouse and turns right at the sidewalk, rushing past the windows that look in on the congregation room, and he realizes that he is late. He sees that the rabbi is already leading the service; his walk must have taken him longer than he expected. He stands in the hallway of the long, modern building, listening to the congregation. They are singing in Hebrew. Unconsciously, he finds himself whispering along with them as he hangs his jacket up on the coat rack and throws a prayer shawl around his shoulders. He waits for a break in the music and then grabs a siddur and enters the room to join the congregation.
The worship chamber is very modern looking, with large picture windows and gray chairs. The whole place is well lit by the copious sunlight as well as the electric lights, which Oz regards, as always, with some measure of disdain. The rabbi stands at a podium in the center of the room, facing the massive ark on the far wall; behind him, occupying the opposite position of the ark, is a table with coffee and bagels arrayed on it. Oz sits down near two elderly men and quietly opens his siddur, waiting for the rabbi to indicate which page they are currently reading from.
“Now then, let us turn to page two fifty one,” says the rabbi. The rabbi is a gray-haired man who wears a red dress shirt and a tie beneath his shawl, and his voice is heavily accented. Oz knows him to be a kind man. The congregation flips to the correct page; there, at the top, is a quote that comes not from the Torah, but presumably from the words of the siddur's editors: “What happens once upon a time happens all the time.” Oz has never noticed this phrase before. He also supposes that the notion of timelessness it evokes must surely be more comforting for his neighbors than for himself.
One of the men near him, who Oz knows from previous weeks is originally a Texan, leans over to him and extends a hand. The man, who wears dark tinted glasses and a tan suit, smiles beneath his large, graying mustache. “Shabbat shalom.”
Oz shakes his hand and nods. “Shabbat shalom to you as well.”
They soon bring the Torah scrolls out of the ark. The rabbi and his wife, along with another member of the congregation, bring the scrolls from the massive cabinet and lay them on the podium, where the rabbi unfurls them for the week's Torah reading. Today's portion comes from Leviticus and Jeremiah, specifically Leviticus 25 and Jeremiah 32. The Leviticus reading is concerning the year of the Jubilee, when the land was to be left fallow and all things were able to be redeemed. Along with this, and seeming to attract more attention from the congregation, were the commandments on aiding the poor: that if one among the people fell poor, it was the duty of his fellows to support him, to, as the rabbi interpreted it, “to jump into the hole with them and push them up.”
Oz became uncomfortable when the last Torah reader was called up; it was a middle aged woman, celebrating the anniversary of her bat mitzvah, which was also the day of her conversion to Judaism. Oz did not like the mixing of the sexes in this synagogue, and of all the things he found disquieting of the more liberal congregation, this bothered him the most. In the old days, men and women were never allowed in the same sections during services; here, the rabbi called a woman up to read from the Torah before everyone. It was even more disturbing when, in the middle of the reading, another man appeared with his daughter, who looked to Oz to be about thirteen. They sat near him, and the girl looked over to him and smiled. She whispers “Shabbat shalom!” to him quietly as soon as the woman finishes her reading of the Torah.
“Shabbat shalom,” he says to the girl, though he was not sure he meant it.
The supplemental reading of Jeremiah was also supplied by the woman, which told of Jeremiah's purchasing of a field from his cousin despite the incumbent Babylonian invasion and conquest of Israel. The woman smiles as she finishes the reading of the prophet's book.
“I chose this day for my bat mitzvah,” she says, “because it was the day of my conversion, and so it was an important day for me. But I was not especially happy with these verses, because they did not have, well, much excitement. A man buys a field from his cousin... So what? And I brought this up to a friend of mine, and she said, simply, 'read it again.'” The woman nodded. “And I did, and this time I realized what it really meant; that it was important to buy that field, even though in just days the Babylonians would lead the Jews into exile, because it meant that one day we were going to come home. One day that field would be ours again, even if right now we were being driven off of it.
“In other words, the verse says that there is always hope for the future.” The congregation claps as she finishes, and the rabbi shakes her hand and congratulates her. Oz claps with the rest, though his claps are quiet and his thoughts uneasy.
After the readings, the congregation turned to a discussion of the verses. The back and forth of the discussion, the congregation to the rabbi, is always fascinating to Oz, and though he does not participate openly, he listens carefully to each comment made and considers every point. His resolve only falters once, when a stocky man with gray hair and beard on the other side of the room mentions something that they had read previously.
"There is that one phrase that I just can't get over," says the man. "The one from Leviticus... 'You shall be holy, as I, Adonai, am holy.'"
Oz quietly excuses himself for a moment after the man says this and leaves the worshippers; he goes down the hall to the men's room and stands there, staring into the mirror at his dark face for three minutes until he feels comfortable enough to re-enter.
When the service is over, the rabbi's wife, a handsome middle-aged woman with short hair and glasses, approaches him and asks, as she sometimes does, if Oz would like to share a Shabbat meal with the rabbi's family. Oz gracefully declines, though he will probably eat nothing else today except for the bread that the congregation shares after the services have ended. The rabbi's wife does not press the issue.
Oz watches the congregation discussing the Torah, and the synagogue's Jewish Film Series program, and the upcoming meetings of the Men's and Women's Clubs, from a distance. He does not get involved; he never has, or at least, not for a very long time.
Quietly Oz slips away and makes his way to the door to begin walking back home. As always, he stops in the doorway and looks at the painting to his left. It is a small, framed picture that looks like a strange diagram of lines and spheres, surmounted all over by Hebrew letters. Oz once overheard the rabbi himself confess that he did not know much about the picture's meaning, save that it was a deep and mystical thing.
Oz knew what it was. It was the Tree of Life, the map of mankind, and Creation, and God, expressed in the ten sephiroth that represented ten different phases of experience. Beginning with Keter, the Crown, the path traced its way downward through Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah, Netzah, Hod, and then finally Yesod and Malkuth; yet this was an odd picture, for it showed the ten spheres in a different way than usual. In most representations, the tenth sphere is Malkuth, the Kingdom, the physical world, and it is at the very bottom of the diagram, connected to Yesod, the Foundation. In addition, there is a blank space- an abyss- between the three sephiroth closest to God, Keter, Chokmah, and Binah, and the lower spheres.
However, in this particular picture, there was no Malkuth at all, and a sphere now inhabited the area between the top three sephiroth and the rest. Oz had once heard a young man ask the rabbi why this was and the rabbi again confessed that he did not truly know.
Oz knew, but he did not tell them.
As he walks out of the shade of the trees around the farmhouse near Congregation Beth Shalom, Oz looks up into the bright, bright light of the sun and only slightly winces. The highway is barren, and heat rises from the asphault in a thoroughly oppressive manner. Oz does not sweat. He never does.
Oz looks to the ground. In his heart, he thinks of Adonai, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves Him completely, with all hisbeing. This brings him no peace.
* * *
Oz's alarm clock wakes him at 9:35 AM on Sunday morning. He wakes up to his tiny studio apartment, the emptiness making it seem much larger than it really is. He stands up and goes to his closet, taking down his good blue suit from its hanger. A few moments later, he is dressed; he eats a bowl of corn flakes and then heads out the door, to his rusty green pickup truck.
Oz attends church every Sunday, but which church he goes to varies. He is easily dissatisfied with them; most are too lax or too carried away in their "fundamentals," and neither of the extremes is to Oz's tastes. For the past month or so, he has been attending the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which he finds tolerable.
Oz is not a Catholic, officially. He has never been baptized or received communion. However, of the Christian denominations, he frequently finds himself returning to Catholicism; perhaps it is something in the ceremony of Sunday mass that he finds comfortingly archaic. Perhaps it is simply that, for better or for worse, the Catholic Church maintains the long history of Christianity to a degree that only some branches of the Orthodoxy have matched, and Orthodox churches are not especially prevalent in the American Midwest.
The church is a traditional building, with two towers and a rose window above the main doors. Oz enters and dips his fingers into the bowl of holy water near the door, crossing himself, and then enters the nave. He kneels as he enters the pews and sits next to a group of three young men, each of them dressed only semi-formally in polo shirts and khakis. Oz holds his tongue as the three of them joke around before the mass begins, ribbing each other and discussing their plans for the summer to come; they seemed to be college students.
The priest appears in white robes and welcomes the gathered church to mass; today is Trinity Sunday, a day of celebration and affirmation of the unity of God in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Oz would be paying more attention to this, but he is distracted as a line of small girls walk down the aisles carrying flags; in addition to being Trinity Sunday, it is also the Girl Scout mass. Oz is uncomfortable with this, but especially with the older girls, on the verge of womanhood, who will soon be too old to join the others in this march; the sight of them brings up old, chilling feelings in Oz, and he quickly turns his sight back to the priest to dispel them.
Oz listens intently to the homily, though he finds it a trifle silly; there are two stories, one of a frog princess and one of a broken down parish that is rejuvenated by the introduction of new and youthful people into it, and neither one is especially meaningful to Oz. The young men nearby snicker and mention quietly how much they like the father, who is known for being funnier and more casual than some of the others; Oz does not find it especially admirable.
There are hymns, and readings, from Exodus and Daniel, Corinthians and Revelation, and when he is supposed to Oz says them without needing to look at the missal; to all appearances he is the model of a Catholic worshiper, his every word in sync with the order of the liturgy. And yet Oz finds himself constantly distracted, by the snickering young men, by the sounds of crying babies, by the girl scouts standing far ahead of him at the front of the church.
There is only one place where Oz does not speak as the others do; as the others kneel, he says, with them, "Lord, I am no worthy to receive you." But when the others say "But say the word, and I shall be healed," Oz is silent, for although he loves Jesus, loves the Trinity of God, he knows they will give no healing to the likes of him.
Oz does not receive communion today either. Soon, the service is over, and Oz returns to his truck. As he turns the key in the lock, he hears a shout from behind his shoulder. He looks and sees the three young men leaning against a car, much nicer than his truck, with a young woman who had not been with them earlier. She is very pretty, a brunette with large, brandy eyes, wearing a black dress. Oz stares too long at her, and the young men notice. Before they say anything, Oz gets into his truck and drives away; in the rearview mirror he sees one of the boys, spiky haired and wearing an orange polo and glasses, shrug and go back to laughing.
He thinks of the girl scouts. He thinks of the babies. He thinks of the girl in the black dress.
And he thinks of God, of Jesus, and the Father, and the Holy Spirit, of their perfect, simple love, but it brings him no peace.
* * *
Oz takes off his suitcoat when he gets home, but leaves his tie in place. In his right hand is a cage; inside it is a live chicken, which he purchased at a farmer's market a few blocks from the church. He sets the cage down near his bed and walks over to his small kitchenette to make lunch. It is a simple affair, like everything else material in Oz's life, a bowl of tomato soup from a can, purchased at work three days before. He warms it in a saucepan and eats it carefully, paying little attention to the squawking of the chicken across the room. As he eats, he looks occasionally to the small window in his wall and shakes his head, softly. He has seen so many cities in his time in the world, and Columbia is just one more. But perhaps it will be the last; he hopes so.
He finishes his soup and washes the bowl in the sink next to the stove, and walks over to the bed. He lifts up the cage with the chicken inside and brings it over to his kitchen counter. He stares at the chicken mournfully and taps the cage twice, affectionately. He reaches into his drawer and pulls out a large, sharp knife. He opens the door of the cage and entreats the chicken to come out.
Oz stabs the chicken three times with his gleaming knife, and then cuts off its head. He watches the blood seep from the bird's body and stain its white feathers red, and the body convulses and then, slowly, far too slowly, the wrenching of the corpse fades and it lies still. Oz watches this silently, and when the chicken is dead, he at last gathers the dead thing up and takes it out to the balcony. He sets it in the ashes of the barbecue pit and begins to light a fire.
It takes a long time before the bird is ablaze. It will be a far longer time before the flames do as they are meant to- to consume the carcass, to transmute it to smoke, to carry it away as an offering. It is not a bull or a ram, but then, he is not in the Temple in the time of the scriptures, either. Of all the methods he has tried, he has the least faith in this one. Despite how strange and varied the other three are, how different from what they are from what they once were, what they all profess to attempt to replicate, there is still a sense of holiness that Oz feels every time he walks into those buildings. This, though... This just makes him feel empty and evil. And yet perhaps this is why he does it, most of all.
Besides, sometimes, the old ways- even distortions of the old ways, long removed from their original time and context- are the best ways. It is worth a chance, at least.
Oz watches the fire from inside the apartment for hours, until the sun is beginning to set in the distance. Satisfied in his work, he goes to the closet and searches behind his clothes for a small black case. Inside is a silver revolver and one bullet; he does not anticipate needing another one.
Oz sits with his back to the open balcony door. He believes the force should send his body backwards, and hopefully there will be as little mess as possible... He dislikes doing this to his landlord, who is a quiet old woman who really deserves better, but that does not stop him.
He smells the burning chicken, sees the trail of its blood on the tiled floor leading to the balcony. He feels the smooth gun in his hand.
The barrel is terrifying in his mouth, this cold, hard thing that points straight to the back of his throat. Oz's finger caresses the trigger. He thinks of the Muslim family who offered him dinner. He thinks of the rabbi's wife. He thinks of the three young men and the girl in the black dress.
But most of all, Oz thinks of God.
He pulls the trigger.
* * *
They are standing in the desert, he and Semyaza and the others. They are standing, waiting, their wings silent in the darkest night possible in the Garden. They see the prophet in the distance, walking towards them.
Their words are not the words he dreams. The tongue they spoke then was a tongue known to only a handful of humans throughout history, the language of the first children of God. He has forgotten it now, after so long. They speak in Hebrew in his dream, ancient Hebrew, the Hebrew of the scriptures.
Semyaza is the one who speaks, not him. "What is the answer, Enoch? Have you plead our case? Does the Lord understand? Does He forgive us?"
The prophet looks at them, and his face is inscrutable. They cannot tell if there is true regret there, or just something put there to console them, when the prophet looks at Semyaza and says, quietly, "No, He does not..."
Oz wakes up in his apartment in Columbia, Missouri. The chicken has long since turned to ashes and bone in his barbecue pit on the balcony. The sun is beginning to rise, greeting a new Monday. He blinks and groans, and sits up. He feels the back of his beck; it is tender, and painful to touch, but there is no bullet hole there. He looks back at the floor, and sees the spray of red blood there, and sees the pistol on the floor near where he fell. He quietly stands up and picks up the gun, putting it back in its case, and then gets out his work clothes, his polo shirt embroidered with the Walgreen's logo.
It did not work. This does not surprise him. He has tried drowning, hanging, stabbing himself in the heart; once, he even tried to poetically throw himself on the fire as well, Isaac and Abraham all at once. But always he found himself washed ashore, or on the floor with a broken noose around his neck, or in an emergency room being told how miraculously the knife had missed his heart, although he knew for certain that it had not.
But it was his Sunday ritual, and the hope that it would work- the hope that one week, this mortal form would die at last and he could go home, that he would at last be forgiven or damned and allowed to move on- was all that kept him going, all that allowed him to function. It was madness, and he knew that, but it was all he had.
His name was not Oz; Oz was a contraction, a construct. A useful tool for their world, their societies, here in the Garden in which he was imprisoned for the crime of loving them too much. He was Azazel, and he had walked the roads of this world since the time of the prophets or longer.
As he slips off his dress shirt and tie and replaces them with his minimum wage stockboy clothes, Oz watches the sun rise over the city, over Malkuth. He thinks of the diagram in the synagogue.
He knew the meaning of the diagram- why the tenth sephiroth hung below the three highest aspects of God there when Malkuth was normally so far below it. He knew, but could not bring himself to tell the rabbi; indeed he pitied the person who had painted the thing and wondered if they were as lost as he was.
It was the world before they forsook it. It was the world as it was in the Beginning: the world they could not think of, could not conceive of, lost to them for so long they did not know they had lost anything at all. Perhaps that was their last blessing, or his last punishment; for Azazel had been there, had known that world firsthand. He knew exactly what he was missing.
Oz grabs his keys, ready at last for work. His hand wraps around the shoddy, corroded brass doorknob. He smells the last of the poor, dead chicken, and thinks of the world before the Fall.