The Fallen Angel by Cristina Peri Rossi

 

The Fallen Angel

by Cristina Peri Rossi

Translated by Mary Jane Treacy

THE ANGEL PLUMMETED TO THE EARTH exactly like the Russian satellite that while spying on the movements of the American Tenth Fleet lost height when it should have been thrust into a strong nine hundred and fifty kilometer orbit. It fell exactly like the American satellite that while spying on the movements of the Russian fleet in the North Sea also fell to earth after a wrong move. But while both of these incidents brought about innumerable catastrophes – part of Canada turned into desert, several types of fish became extinct, local people’s teeth crumbled, and neighboring lands became polluted – the angel’s fall didn’t cause any ecological disturbance. Because it was weightless (a theological mystery that cannot be doubted upon pain of heresy), it didn’t destroy anything in its wake, not the trees on the road nor the electric wires; it didn’t cause interference in TV programs nor in radio stations; it didn’t open up a crater in the face of the earth, nor did it poison the waters. No, it just settled down on the sidewalk and stayed there without moving, confused and with a terrible case of motion sickness.

-----At first no one noticed it. That was because the inhabitants of the place, sick and tired of nuclear catastrophes, had lost the ability to be surprised and were busy putting the city back together, cleaning out debris, analyzing food and water, putting houses back up and finding furniture, just like ants when the ant hill is destroyed, but with much more sadness.
-----“I think it’s an angel,” said the first observer, contemplating the little figure fallen at the base of a statue beheaded in the last conflagration. Actually, it was a rather small angel with mutilated wings (it’s not known if this was due to the fall) and an unhappy expression.
-----A woman walked right by, so busy pushing a baby carriage that she didn’t notice it. But a hungry stray walked right up and then stopped short: that thing, whatever it was, didn’t smell, and anything that doesn’t smell can’t really exist, so the dog wasn’t going to waste its time. Slowly (it was lame) it did an about face.
Another man stopped, curious, and looked the angel over cautiously but didn’t reach out to touch it, afraid that it might be radioactive.
-----“I think it’s an angel,” repeated the first observer, who by now felt as he had the first dibs on the visitor.
-----"It’s pretty beaten up,” noted the latest observer. “I don’t think it has any use at all.”
-----At the end of an hour a small group had assembled. No one touched it; instead they chatted among themselves and put forth a variety of opinions though nobody doubted that it was an angel. As a matter of fact, most thought that it was a fallen angel, although they couldn’t come to any agreement on the reasons for its descent. Several hypotheses were bandied about.
-----“It may have sinned,” said a young man made bald by the pollution. It was possible. Now then, what kind of sin could an angel commit? It was too skinny for the sin of gluttony; it was too ugly for the sin of pride; according to one of those present, angels didn’t have parents so it was impossible for it to have dishonored them; it clearly lacked sexual organs so lust, too, was rejected. Insofar as curiosity was concerned, it didn’t have the smallest sign of having any.
-----“Let’s ask it in writing,” suggested an elderly man with a cane under his arm.
-----The proposal was accepted and a clerk was named, but when he was ready, with great formality, to begin his task, a discouraging question arose: what language do angels speak? Nobody knew the answer, although it seemed to them that as a matter of courtesy the visiting angel should be familiar with the language they spoke in that region of the country (which was, by the way, an uncommon dialect of which they were inexplicably proud).
-----Meanwhile the angel gave a few signs of life, although nobody could say for sure what would be signs of life in an angel. It stayed in its original position, perhaps because it was comfortable or perhaps because it couldn’t move, and the blue tone of its skin neither lightened nor darkened.
-----“What’s its race?” asked a young man who had arrived late and who leaned over the others’ shoulders to get a better view.
-----No one knew how to answer him. The angel was not pure Aryan, which caused some disappointment; it wasn’t black, which made some hearts warmer; it wasn’t Indian (can anyone imagine an Indian angel?) or yellow: it was really blue, and there weren’t any prejudices yet about this color, even though some showed signs of forming with incredible speed.
-----The age of angels was another problem. Although one group asserted that angels were always children, the appearance of the angel neither confirmed nor refuted this theory.
-----But the most surprising thing was the color of angel’s eyes. No one noticed until someone said, “The prettiest part is its blue eyes.”
-----Then a woman who was near the angel said, “What are you saying? Can’t you see that they are pink?”
----- A science professor, happening by, leaned down to observe the eyes better and exclaimed: “You are all wrong. They are green.”
-----Everyone saw a different color. For that reason, they deduced that the eyes weren’t one special color, but rather made up of all colors.
----- “This will bring it problems when it has to give proof of identification,” thought a retired bureaucrat who had false teeth and a big gold ring on his right hand.
----- There was no doubt about its sex; the angel was sexless, neither female nor male, unless (a hypothesis that was readily rejected) its genitals were hidden in some other place. This bothered some of those present quite a bit. After a period of real confusion about the sexes and unfettered promiscuity, the pendulous movement of history (simple as a compass) had returned us to the happy era of differentiated, perfectly recognizable sexes. But the angel seemed uninformed about this evolution.
-----“Poor thing,” commented a pleasant lady who had been leaving her house to go shopping when she ran into the angel. “I’d bring it to my house to recuperate, but I have two adolescent daughters, and if no one can tell me if it’s a man or a woman, I won’t do it. It just wouldn’t be right for it to live with my daughters.”
----- “I have a dog and a cat,” murmured a well-dressed gentleman with an agreeable baritone voice. “They’d get very jealous if I took it home with me.”
----- “Moreover one would have to know something about its background,” proclaimed a man with rabbit teeth, a narrow forehead and tortoise-shell glasses, dressed all in brown.
----- “Maybe a permit is needed.” He had the appearance of a police informant, and this displeased those present so they didn’t answer him.
----- “And nobody knows what it eats,” whispered a nice man with a very clean appearance who smiled, showing a line of bright white teeth.
----- “They eat herring,” asserted a beggar who was always drunk and whom everybody normally scorned on the account of his body odor. No one paid any attention to him now.
----- “I’d like to know what it thinks,” said a man who had the bright look of those with a curious spirit.
-----But the majority of those present were of the opinion that angels didn’t think.
----- Someone noted that the angel seemed to move its leg slightly, which caused great expectations.
----- “Surely it wants to walk,” commented an old woman.
----- “I never heard of angels walking,” said a woman dressed in fuchsia, with wide shoulders and hips and narrow, somewhat skeptical mouth. “It should fly.”
----- “This one is broken,” responded the man who had been the first to approach.
----- The angel again moved almost imperceptibly.“
----- Maybe it needs help,” murmured a young student with a melancholy air.
----- “I advise you not to touch it. It’s gone through space and can be full of radiation,” observed a quick-witted man who was proud of his common sense.
----- Suddenly an alarm sounded. It was time for the air raid drill, and everyone was supposed to run to shelters in the basements of buildings. The procedure was intended to take place as quickly as possible. Not an instant was to be lost. The group dissolved rapidly, leaving the angel behind.
----- The city emptied in a few seconds, but the alarm kept sounding. Cars were left on sidewalks, stores closed, plazas emptied, movie houses darkened, and televisions became mute. The angel made another small movement.
----- A middle-aged woman, with slouched shoulders and an old red coat that at one time had been the height of fashion, walked calmly down the stairs as if deliberately ignoring the sound of the sirens. Her pulse was somewhat erratic, she had blue circles around her eyes and her skin was very white, still rather youthful. She had gone out initially for cigarettes, but once in the street, she decided not to pay any attention to the air raid. The idea of taking a walk through the abandoned, empty city was very seductive.
When she got to the beheaded statue, she saw a bundle on the ground next to the pedestal.
----- “Gosh! An angel,” she cried.
----- An airplane flew over her head and dumped out a sort of chalk dust. Instinctively, she looked up and then turned her gaze below to the silent bundle that could barely move.
----- “Don’t be frightened,” the woman told the angel. “They’re disinfecting the city.” The dust covered the shoulders of her red coat, her brown, rather disheveled hair, the dull leather of her worn shoes.
----- “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep you company for a little while,” said the woman and sat down by its side. In truth, she was rather intelligent woman with a great sense of independence who tired not to bother anyone. Still she knew how to value a good friendship as well as a nice solitary walk, good tobacco, a good book and a good opportunity.
----- “This is the first time I’ve met an angel,” commented the woman, lighting a cigarette. “I suppose it doesn’t happen very often.”
----- As she expected, the angel didn’t say anything.
----- “I suppose, too,” she continued, “that you didn’t have any intention of paying us this visit. You simply fell due to some mechanical defect. What doesn’t happen in millions of years happens in one day, my mother used to say. And it happened precisely to you. Surely you realize that any angel who fell out of the sky would feel just as you do. Certainly you weren’t able to pick your landing spot.”
-----The alarm had stopped and an imposing silence filled the city. She hated this silence and tired not to hear it. She took another drag on her cigarette.
----- “You live as you can. I’m not happy in this place either, but I could say the same about many others I know. It’s not a question of choice, but of endurance. And I don’t have too much patience, believe me. I’d like to know if someone is going to miss you. Surely someone will have noticed your fall. An unforeseen accident in the smooth running of the universe, a change in fixed plans, just like a bomb bursting into flames or a faucet dripping. One chance in billions, but nevertheless, it does happen, isn’t that so?”
----- She didn’t expect an answer and she wasn’t concerned about the angel’s silence. Sometimes she thought that it was wrong to construct the universe on the invention of language. However, she felt the silence that was now overwhelming the city was like an invasion by an enemy army that takes over a territory like a multifaceted star slowly falling apart.
----- “You’ll see right away,” she informed the angel, “that here we go by the rules of time and space, which nevertheless don’t reduce our insecurity. I think this will be an even more difficult blow to you than your fall to earth. If you can distinguish bodies, you’ll see that we divide ourselves into men and women, a distinction that has no importance because we all die without exception and death is the most significant event in our lives.”
----- She put out her cigarette. It had been unwise to keep it lit during the air raid but her philosophy included some snubbing of the rules as a way of rebelling. The angel suggested another little movement, but seemed to cut it off before finishing. She looked at it with pity.
----- “Poor little thing!” she exclaimed. “I understand you don’t feel very much like moving. But the drill lasts almost an hour. It will be better if you have learned to move by then; if not, you could be run over by car, asphyxiated by a gas leak, arrested for causing a public disturbance and interrogated by the secret police. And I advise you not to go up on that pedestal —” (it seemed to her that the angel was looking at the top of the column as if it might be a comfortable resting spot) “because politics in our city are very volatile, and today’s hero is tomorrow’s traitor. Moreover, this city doesn’t raise monuments to foreigners.”
----- All of a sudden out of a side street, a group of soldiers, dense as beetles, began to move, taking over the sidewalks and highways and crawling through the trees. They moved in an order that surely had been prearranged and they wore helmets that emitted strong beams of light.
----- “They’re here,” sighted the woman with resignation. “It’s certain they are going to arrest me again. I don’t know what kind of heaven you fell from,” she told the angel, “but these guys really seem to have climbed out of the hellish depths of the earth.”
Just so, the beetles advanced slowly and surely.
----- She got up because she didn’t like to be taken by surprise or to be touched too much. She took out of her purse a driver’s license, an identification card, a housing registration, some food coupons, and then took a few resigned steps forward.
----- The angel got up on its feet. It slowly shook off the chalk dust that covered its legs and arms and tried to flex its muscles. Afterwards it wondered if anyone would miss the woman who had fallen before being violently forced into the armored car.