It's November 1880, and the Angel of Death is having a bad day
By Joanne Greenberg
Published September 5, 2008 at 3:17 p.m.
Photo by Charles Chamberlin, The Rocky
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AUDIO: Gabriella Cavallero reads "It's November 1880, and the Angel of Death is having a bad day"
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The Angel of Death for the 4-year-old state of Colorado has overslept. An hour after his normal waking, he heaves himself from his lumpy mattress. In the old country, he remembers with a pang, they had feather beds, deep, warm and soft. You could lie by the chimney and ... He sighs. He is in his frailer years and had dreamt yet another dream of happier times.
On the whole, here, human mortality has gone its regular, steady course. Wars, which demand the calling up of hundreds of assistants from miles away with all those logistical and personality problems, hadn't been a worry in this country since Appomattox. This year is a phenomenal year, even though its calls are nothing like those of the plague years of Europe or those that had brought him to these shores, the smallpox and diphtheria that had ravaged the continental tribes.
He is presently unmarried. His last wife had left him over the mess of Sand Creek. She had been A Curse Wife. People don't make those old Yiddish curses any more: "May your daughter marry the Angel of Death." The Middle Ages had given him the choice of thousands of those daughters, some as crisp as autumn apples, wished on him in the airy innocence of curse-makers.
Scratching his unshaven face, he goes downstairs to check the weather and the day's assignments. These usually appear on a blank, whitewashed wall of his kitchen, the delicate fingers of a man's hand inscribing the details.
The year has been hard. The children have begun their deaths in the drafty houses of Cripple Creek and Merino, in Guffey and Fairplay, in Georgetown and Creede. The Angel likes kids. They are direct, no fuss and none of the bargaining and conditions-altering the old folks hand out. The Chinese are a problem, worse than the Italians and Irish. They all want passage home, impossible distances. There are tears and rages and undignified bargainings in difficult languages.
When he was young, the Angel struggled to know the future weeks in advance. He was serving the Russo-Polish sector then, very junior, and, as he looked back on it, annoyingly eager. Since his reassignment to America and to this very plum placement in what was just now Colorado, he had never failed to say a prayer of thanks for his good luck. The population here was small, the spaces wide, the scenery beautiful, the climate ideal. Even the native populations had never made permanent settlements here, so long-laid intergenerational squabbles were few, as were the tiresome demands for precedence and pretentious display. There were no untruthfully remembered glories. The people here were as sharp as the air.
There had been an uprising against the Chinese, with deaths, this year in Denver. Men were hanging from lampposts, reminding the Angel of past times and distant cities. The deaths in no way equaled those in the mines from bad air and no safety precautions, but they were more terrifying with the sudden, acute knowledge of the capacity of the animal in mankind to run mad.
He had a collection of outfits with which to comfort the dying. He had procured the Chinese round hat and long gown on Wazee Street. The newspapers reported that the Jews out here were building a hospital. It would be a blessing. Of course, his interest was not centered in how many people would be saved by such an institution, but he wasn't getting any younger, and with the Encounters taking time and all the indignation and bargaining so many of them went through, it would be a far more comfortable location to work from than the streets and the doorways in the din of horse and cart traffic and the footfalls of this restless, aggressive people.
Twenty-five today: two Chinese, placer miners in Fairplay, from a fight over a gambling game, one in an hour; fifteen kids here and in Central City and Georgetown of illness; six accidents; one hemorrhage; one female, age fifty-six, on Larimer Street.
He breakfasts on cold biscuits left over from a weekly baking. His meal is, as usual, disturbed by the falling of insects and tiny spiders that have caught his breath. At his feet a mouse lies dying from the touch of his slipper in the closet the previous night. The situation is worse in summer, but it pays him to concentrate on the contents of his plate.
He eats, then goes back upstairs, chanting quietly, showers, shaves, dresses, then comes down again ready to begin his work. In his suitcase are the garbs and appearances that bring comfort, or at least familiarity, to the Encountered — there's the gray cloak, the fold-up scythe, the Chinese things, the eagle feather outfit. With another sigh he opens the door and steps out into the street.
It's bone-cold. People huddle in coats and shawls, mufflers and muffs. The breath pours from their mouths in vapors, although, no one notices, not from his. He twists himself into a slit in the air and is away to his first Encounter.
He follows the route of the old Spanish trail up Mount Vernon Canyon past the place where the five Utes, lost in the storm, had built a snow cave back in 1804. He had taught all of them pinochle and they had died, one by one, playing happily with him until their moments came.
Fairplay and the Encountered: one does the usual carrying on about being delivered home to Canton. This costume — the long white beard, the long scholar's gown and a white braid, hip length — saves the day. He speaks Cantonese well, but these miners have developed some new expressions and he takes the time to learn them.
Granby is next: a little girl. "It's all my fault ... " She's not crying now, but she has been. "Mama told me not to play in the snow." Costume change: none. She seems to like the old Chinese man very much. He likes it when they take his hand. Now come Gothic and two kids. He takes them on a sled down a hill always forbidden to them because of the rocks and fall-off places. They thank him as he sends them on.
The woman in childbirth pleads, begs, bargains and then gets angry. There's a husband and children. "You promised me last time I would live. Why destroy us now?"
"I'll do this for you: I won't take the baby. That way, your husband and the others will have something to work on, to save."
"But he has trouble with liquor — he'll use it for his pain and later for his excuse. I was holding the world together; didn't you know that? I'm needed here."
"I don't make the list."
It's late afternoon when he returns from the accident in Creede, and he's feeling distinctly out of sorts. Breakfast had been insufficient, and there was no place to pick up a snack between any of his far-flung meetings. His position as Angel of Death has its share of liabilities, too. More than insects die without plan. Yesterday he had stroked a cat absentmindedly and ended its life on the spot. Calling at a ranch one day for a meal, the rancher's wife had brushed his shoulder as she served him. What a bureaucratic mess that had been, not to mention his genuine sorrow at a moment that had made a family's generosity turn tragic.
Who this Larimer Street person is and what the Encounter is like will determine his evening. Sometimes there are notes on the wall about long-term illnesses, exceptional circumstances, last-minute corrections, but there had been nothing this morning but name, age, time and place.
He has an hour to wait before the Encounter, which has been set for the almost-twilight of this icy and miserable day. He has appeared all over the state: sunny Granby; Creede, with the blue-purple snow reflecting back into the deep bowl of a liquid blue sky; Georgetown, where it had been snowing; Merino, where it had not yet begun to snow.
Here, an acid fog is lowering. The coal this city burns isn't the hard, clean anthracite of Eastern cities, but a local coke, a greasy, gritty product that people hawk up mornings or as they stand on corners, in the cone made by street lamps fighting the fog.
Against this expectoration of cigar juices, coal dust and cheek-wad, women baste long strips of cloth around the bottoms of their skirts and, on the warmer days, stay off the mud-melting roads entirely, if they can. Here and there, even on a large, populous street such as Larimer, the smell of the rotting corpses of small stray animals and the effluvium of the seldom-collected garbage hang in the air.
There is less of that penetrating odor now that most of the detritus is frozen, but people hurry along because the cold is so penetrating. The Angel stands looking down the length of Larimer Street, from which even the shining ramparts of the mountains to the west have been blotted out by the fog.
Larimer Street is wide, sided with substantial brick buildings and, during the day, rattling with the business of the city. Now, weather and the oncoming twilight have modified the uproar, although drays, carts, carriages and foot traffic still move on it. The Angel chooses a line of travel close to the edge of the wooden walkway, where he is unlikely to touch or be touched by anyone. At Fifteenth Street, he pauses in front of Monk and Strapper's jewelry store. What kind of adornment is fashionable now? He, himself, has sported many jewels, rings, stickpins, belts, even a baldric now and then. When necessary, in dealing with royalty, for example, he wears a crown. The children like to see him in a crown. He doubts that Monk and Strapper's will have them for sale.
Ah, wait — here she comes. He sees her from a block away, with that preternatural knowledge he sometimes has so that even in the rain, fog or oncoming darkness he is able to pick out the anticipated one.
She's a small, tight woman, determinedly breasting a flow that is mostly moving the other way. She's in black, standard outerwear here for winter clothing, but this looks thin, and as he sees her more clearly, he's aware that much of the coat is worn and threadbare and has the grayish look of its contact with a charcoal burner and brushes against rough inner walls' lath and plaster. In the old country, even its poorest tried for a distinguishing scarf, a ribbon, some cheap adornment to set them aside from the utterly destitute. Here, too, among the tribes, there would be wrist feathers, a quill chest piece, fringes on a woman's garment. She is like a black bat, pulling darkness to it. He stands, waiting, and she approaches, but he sees with surprise that she's not walking to pass him. "Beth ... " he says, putting out a hand in greeting, at least to identify himself. She's stopped before him, bristling.
"Where the hell have you been? I've been stood up for a year, a whole year, while you were plucking the low branches, collecting children!"
"Beth ... "
"Beth nothing. Do you know what your incompetence has cost me? My relatives got wise. I had had them all lined up to get me through this last year in style. Will I be dying in a good, warm place, dry, clean? I live in a shanty by the river. There are rats there, and garbage, and it's all because of your blundering. You know I have consumption. You know I have a rheumatic heart. What were you waiting for, cancer?"
"I can take you now," the Angel says, wondering how he has been put on the defensive.
"Here? On the street? Are you insane? It's freezing here!"
"We might go to your cousin's place; it's only a few blocks away."
"You don't think I've tried that? They shut the door in my face. I heard the lock snap."
"Isn't there some group — what about a church?"
She cuts him off with a "prrt" of contempt. "Well?" she says, tapping her foot.
Things are tightening up. He has one other Encounter today, and time is passing. It's considered bad form not to be on time.
"Take me with you," she says.
"Impossible."
"This is America. Nothing is impossible. Take me where it's warm — what about that Chinese laundry on Wazee?"
"They'll get the blame for your body. Things have been difficult enough. Wait — I have an idea. Stay where you are; I won't be more than a few moments."
The Angel turns and glides swiftly the two blocks back to the large clothing store he noticed on his way. It is almost closing time. He turns himself around the door, carefully eluding a woman who is leaving, and who would live. The store is warm, the wood floors magnifying the sound of movement. "No Spitting" signs and the prominent placement of cuspidors keep them from becoming slippery.
The Angel lies down in the air, supine, and flows up the staircase one flight, two. The first floor had been humming with activity, but here it is all but silent. A clerk is beginning to pull dust sheets over the dresses and suits hanging on the racks. The Angel passes millinery, shoes and there — ah — outerwear.
No one sees him glide over to the racks where the fur cloaks are hanging. He takes the heaviest one, mink, probably from skins trapped up Mount Vernon Canyon, sent to Chicago to be made up, then returned. This one is sumptuous, satin lined. He looks at the price tag: $15.95. The cost is no problem. People often press money on him. The problem now is that he is out of time.
The Angel slips the cloak on, which renders it invisible, and rides the banisters down to street level. The whole action has taken two minutes, one later than the expected Encounter. There will be repercussions from this. Before Beth Amy Miller can reopen the conflict, he whisks off the cloak and wraps it around her. She is dying, warm and dry, at the side of the store.
He stands, exhausted and disheveled, already more than brushed with the chill on the street, sorting among his marks, drachmas, lire, pesos and rials for the price of her acceptance.
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