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  The Nephilim told Lilith their names, thus enabling her to rule over them, to deprive them of their God-given eternal life.

  They crowned her queen, supreme goddess.

  A divine voice decreed their banishment; the Gates of Heaven were forever closed to them. But Shamhazai and the other Nephilim did not care. They were still in possession of their old-new love, Lilith.

  Years passed, hundreds and thousands. Shamhazai and the order of the Nephilim were still on earth, but Lilith disappeared, leaving behind her daughters. Generations come and go; the blood is diluted. Future generations failed to resemble Lilith the goddess.

  Once more, Shamhazai found himself serving a substitute.

  And as in the days of yore, a fervor gradually awoke in him, until he was consumed by the knowledge that those women who knew his name were not worthy of pronouncing even one of its letters.

  Shamhazai looked at the brothers standing around him. In them, he saw his reflection.

  All the figures peering through the windows were identical, so perfectly replicated that even Mother Earth herself would not be able to tell them apart. Their faces were like Noh masks of supreme beauty, glowing in majestic splendor.

  They all had blond hair, pale, barely discernible eyebrows, blue eyes, cheekbones that plastic surgeons might post in their “after” photos, and thin, pink lips – the chiseled faces of Michelangelo’s angels, without a hint of the childlike plumpness of Raphael’s cherubs. Shamhazai made his way to the long table, warming a glass of Armagnac in his perfect hand; brandy that was poured into oak barrels when the First World War was still called the The Great War.

  Armaros was next in line to leave his post by the window.

  Removing a silver pocket-guillotine from his suit, he snipped the tip off a Cuban cigar.

  “Why does he have to make such a grand entrance?”

  Azazel’s voice reverberated around the room. “Shall we go out to greet him, Shamhazai?”

  “No, he comes to talk.”

  “How do you know?” asked Barakiel, who had been made uneasy by the scene at the foot of the hill.

  “He left his fiery chariot outside. He doesn’t want to ruin the lawn, as he did last time.”

  They made their way to the lobby, where they formed a semicircle, and trained their eyes on the entrance. Soon a cane was heard tapping at the door. Evidently, Elijah had not lost his manners.

  “I’ll talk to him,” said Shamhazai.

  The Nephilim turned to the door. Another knock was heard, and he ordered the others to respond in a loud voice:

  “Pour out thy wrath upon the heathens that have not known thee and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name,” they recited monotonously. At once the door opened, revealing Elijah.

  “Do me a favor, Eli, wipe your feet before you enter,” Shamhazai said.

  Elijah scanned the assembled group, a raggedy old man in the presence of gorgeous glorious youth.

  “To what do we owe this honor?” asked Shamhazai when they had all repaired to the parlor.

  “He has a message for you.”

  Whenever Elijah mentioned Him, silence would descend on the room.

  “What is it?”

  “Angels don’t belong on this earth. It’s time to restore the order of creation.”

  Shamhazai picked up his Armagnac and swirled the drink around the glass.

  “That might have been a possibile, had she not given her daughters the key to the chain that shackles us.”

  “And no man saw it, nor knew it, nor awakened, for they were all asleep. And the vision of all is to become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned saying, read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed.”

  “Elijah, what is the message you were sent to deliver?”

  “The Power of the Names was taken from them seventy years ago.”

  Shock waves shot through the room. Azazel was the first to recover.

  “And nobody bothered to tell us?” he bellowed.

  “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. We’ll take sweet counsel together.”

  They looked at each other, stirred by thoughts of freedom.

  “There are five words I learned to dread in all this time we’ve been here,” Shamhazai said, looking warily at the Lord’s servant.

  “What are they?” asked Elijah.

  “I am the Lord’s emissary.”

  “I have five new ones for you.”

  “What are they?”

  “Turn back, O backsliding sons.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  This night was different from any other night; it was “night that is neither day nor night,” a night of deep silence and earsplitting noise.

  Across the table sat mother and daughter, with candles burning in their holders – patches of flickering light, kindled and extinguished in a complete cycle of life. The guests sometimes eat and sometimes are eaten, in some ancient ritual of creation and destruction, as they sit around the round wooden table at Rachel’s Seder.

  Rachel had few weaknesses, and at the moment she was busy hoisting one of them above her head, catching her midair as she emitted her resounding laughter that was part hysteria, part pure pleasure.

  Noga, the only daughter of Mazzy and Gaby, was two-and-a-half years-old, a scion in a long line of Simantov girls.

  Mazzy felt an irritating twitch of jealousy. She looked across the table at her little daughter, now affectionately perched on her grandmother’s knee, and tried to remember the last time Rachel had shown her such affection. Rachel was not in the habit of hugging people for no reason; there was always an ulterior motive to her displays of affection.

  She passed the torch to Noga, whispering instructions as sweet as honey in her ear. Judging by the girl’s wide eyes, it was clear that Rachel’s storytelling skills had not dulled over the years.

  On the other hand, the fact that Noga was not speaking yet had led Mazzy to always focus on her eyes. Entire conversations between mother and daughter were conducted by exchanging looks.

  It was not easy to watch Noga spellbound, soaking in the thick honeyed words, because Mazzy already knew the story being narrated; she had heard it hundreds of times.

  “When the world was first created, there were no names because there was no need for names. There were no things that needed names, and there was no one to give them names. There was only earth and sky. Human beings had not been created yet, and the only names were those of angels. Their names glowed above their heads. Then God created man in His image, male and female. Adam and Lilith, the first woman and her man. They saw the angels’ names and realized that objects needed names to tell them apart. Then Adam tried to give her a name, to call her by a name he had chosen.

  “Lilith decided to change things, to take matters into her own hands, to find a kingdom of her own. She came down to earth, east of Eden, to Kedem.

  “Adam, who was afraid of change, stayed behind, and God decided that it was not good for him to be alone, so he created helpmates to keep him company. He made the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky, and Adam gave names to each living thing. When he was done giving names and being the boss, he was ready to receive a new woman…”

  That was enough. Mazzy resolved that this night would be different, that she would change it. Mothers don’t like people interfering with how they bring up their kids. Mazzy was grudgingly tolerant toward Gaby’s mother when she sang to Noga in Yiddish. She figured this was her mother-in-law’s way of coping with her successful son’s marriage to the daughter of a Sephardi witch. Perhaps a little Yiddishkeit would counteract the bad luck, and her granddaughter would finally start talking.

  But there is a fundamental difference between a sentimental song about a lonely tree at the roadside and indoctrinating a two-and-a-half year-old with the battle of the sexes.

  This night will be different. Tonight she will restrain
herself and not let herself be sucked into Rachel’s mind games. As a child, her questions had always received the same answer.

  Why? Because! You are a Simantov.

  At her mother’s insistence, Mazzy addressed her as Rachel, not Mom, a practice that elicited whispers on the rare occasions Rachel came to parent-teacher conferences. Only once did Mazzy ask her mother to explain why their family unit was so small; she wanted people to understand where she came from. Rachel told her she had been born out of wedlock to an illegitimate mother.

  Even though this was her childhood home, Mazzy felt like a guest in it. This was the home of the Great Mother; it was her domain, and when Mazzy tried to summon up memories of her childhood bedroom, she failed.

  Several days after Mazzy had moved into a new apartment with roommates, she came back to collect a few items, and was shocked to find them packed in plastic bags, ready to go. Renovations were already underway to restore the house to its previous state. Every sign of life from the previous twenty years had been erased. Rachel’s kingdom returned to its natural dimensions, stretching east, west, south, and north. Mazzy had been swept out like dust.

  Now that Noga had been transferred from Rachel’s lap to her mother’s, Mazzy could feel her mother’s gaze on her from across the candlelit table. She tried to ignore it.

  When some women enter a room, all eyes turn on them; when Rachel enters a room, people feel like they are being watched.

  Her green eyes, two smoldering embers that had seen too much, peered through a frame of black tresses and caught Mazzy’s cheerful face framed by a garland of brown curls. When a wind blew through them, you could hear peals of laughter rolling in the distance.

  If such a thing were possible, Rachel’s look at once conveyed expectation, disappointment, satisfaction and resentment.

  Many people feared Rachel; some hated her. That was OK with her; like all truly powerful rulers, she preferred being feared to loved.

  Rachel was endowed with a rare gift for interpreting coffee grounds, and this was just one of her talents of divination. All noted soothsayers and clairvoyants had consulted her at least once. Rachel was the sun around which all heathens and idolaters revolved.

  After coffee cups were emptied into saucers, Rachel would examine the dregs. At that moment all people became equal, regardless of whatever special gifts they might possess. Rachel would stare at the sediments that foretold the future and everyone held their breath. She revealed the future to the clueless, leading them by the hand, one overturned cup after another, to the point where they dared not look ahead.

  Rachel did not read the future to simple folk; she read to readers.

  All the guests at Rachel’s Seder table were readers and seers. Mazzy realized she and Gaby had been invited only as Noga’s chaperones.

  “Let her taste something,” Rachel said.

  There was nothing inherently offensive in this, but Mazzy sensed some slight in the words which sent spasms of anger through her veins. It was an instinctive, conditioned response.

  She took a deep breath, and once more resolved not to pick a fight with her mother, nor to dwell on the past. Tonight she would change; tonight she would lead herself out of slavery and into freedom. She wouldn’t give Rachel an excuse to make a big row; she’d ignore the comments that were bound to drive her crazy, and exercise restraint. And if she succeeded tonight, for the next five minutes, just for now – Dayenu, it would be enough!

  She dipped a spoon into the honey, and secretly thanked Noga for pushing it away. Surrounded by so many strangers and an abundance of colorful distractions, Noga could hardly be bothered with food. Her beautiful eyes eagerly drank in the scene.

  Rachel’s Seder table was conspicuously not kosher for Passover. It was all unabashedly laid out: bourekas, Laffa bread, Yemenite pitas, all flanking the Haggadas and causing Gaby to assume an expression that said, “This would never happen in my mother’s house.” Like most strictly secular people, he was extremely serious about the few commandments that he did observe.

  “Why does she insist on serving non-kosher food? You call this Passover?” Gaby grumbled.

  “This is how it’s done by the aristocracy. If there’s no bread, let them eat cake,” his wife responded.

  Though he had been Mazzy’s partner for several years, Gaby made it a point to take no interest in the family business or the running of Rachel’s court. The couple had a tacit agreement, a deal aimed at avoiding fights over mysticism.

  There were clashes over ancient and modern beliefs, deep rifts and contradictions reflecting the differences between a Sephardi policewoman and a Western surgeon, between a progressive woman and a conservative man.

  Gaby was skeptical when it came to un-provable phenomena. Mazzy explained that it was a matter of cumulative experience, that proof could not be found in the places he was looking. For his part, Gaby invoked the theory of probability, cited statistics and mentioned self-fulfilling prophecies. Loudly, they engaged in a dialogue of the deaf.

  Eventually, Mazzy decided to spare him the details, and Gaby refrained from asking questions. As a new dad as well as a surgeon in training, he had little time for sleep, and the few spare hours he did have he preferred to spend unconscious, rather than worrying about the kind of home his wife had grown up in.

  For Mazzy, this was an easy task. She kept Rachel out of her life as much as she could.

  Rachel noticed Gaby’s distress. From her seat at the head of the table she managed to solve the problem, but immediately planted the seed of another one.

  “Don’t worry, we have matzo, too,” she told him, then switched to Gaelic with a short guttural phrase.

  Ashling, a blind Irishwoman who, despite her age, retained the translucent skin of a gecko, rose from her seat. Gaby felt uncomfortable that she of all people had been entrusted with bringing the matzo, which he hadn’t wanted in the first place, but Ashling gracefully made her way to the kitchen without a cane.

  Mazzy knew what talents had earned Ashling her seat at the table. She was a seer with quite a few tricks from her Druid ancestors under her belt. Not many women were in possession of such lore, and Ashling must have been gifted from an early age in mind reading and fortune telling.

  There was no room in Rachel’s entourage for new-age gurus in need of recognition and adulation. It was all about work, not idolatry. They had been there from time immemorial, spinning spells, conjuring and auguring, long before those skills were discovered by the seekers of self-realization.

  Next to Mazzy sat Nikko, an old Macedonian, sporting a purple French beret. Nikko had always been old, and had always worn a purple beret since the first time Mazzy saw him as a child.

  Nikko practiced gut feeling, literally: he could tell your future by rubbing your tummy. When Mazzy was eight years old, she cried bitterly when the stranger tried to examine her. Fourteen years later, she allowed Nikko to prod her pregnant belly, despite Gaby’s protests; his fierce objection was no match for Mazzy’s superstition.

  At that time she had a feeling that something was wrong with the baby she was carrying. All the medical experts summoned by Gaby and his mother could not allay her fears. She knew as only a mother knows. For the sake of her baby girl, she was willing to listen to Rachel and her cabal, to mumbo-jumbo and then to Nikko. The Macedonian explained that pregnant women are difficult customers, especially when carrying a female, because two stomachs are involved, making the findings inconclusive. Still, he was intimidated by the Simantov women and agreed to examine her.

  Nikko put on latex gloves and, with rhythmic, circular motions, applied olive oil to her belly. Then he took off the gloves and laid his fingers on her protruding bellybutton. At this contact with her skin, he recoiled, flapped his hands as if scorched, and tried to shake off static electricity. Mazzy demanded an answer, and Nikko took a long time before pronouncing that she and the baby would be fine; it was the others who should worry. One of those others was Gaby, her significant other.


  A moment before the hiding of the Afikoman, all the dishes were brought out at once and in no special order. The plates were passed from one side of the table to the other, pounds of grub to be sampled, savored; each guest had brought an offering to Rachel. Trout from Lake Ohrid, compliments of Macedonian Nikko, stood next to an Irish beef stew that had simmered the whole night. Herring and eel salad – a traditional Estonian dish – was courtesy of Kaya, who was now consuming most of it. Everyone seemed to enjoy Aelina’s dishes – fava beans and hummus served in deep bowls next to flakey baklava and sugary kanafeh arranged neatly on shiny copper platters. The plump Egyptian with the swollen ankles stared indignantly at the East European food while chomping on greasy, blood-dripping kebob.

  Blood and droppings were part of her trade. Aelina also worked with the stomach, but from the inside. There were not too many women around who still practiced hepatoscopy, divination using the entrails of slaughtered animals.

  Potatoes with rosemary garnish landed on Mazzy’s plate with a thud.

  Mazzy hated potatoes and had managed to dodge them until now; but Kaya, whose job it was to dish them out, took advantage of Mazzy during a moment of daydreaming, and ambushed her.

  Kaya was about sixty years old and had a talent for finding treasures on a map, with the help of a stick and pendulum.

  From her seat at the head of the table, Rachel gestured to Gaby to start reading from the Haggadah. The clatter of utensils and plates ceased at once. Gaby seemed pleased that at least part of the holiday ritual was being preserved.

  “This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry enter and eat, and all who are needy come and celebrate the Passover. This year we are here, next year in the Land of Israel. This year we are slaves, next year free men!”

  Mazzy gulped down the second glass of wine that Aelina had poured, but Rachel had forbidden her to fill the ceremonial cup for the prophet Elijah.

  The guests waited for Rachel to continue reading, but she ignored them. She motioned to Mazzy to hand over her grandchild, and Gaby hastened to comply.