(no subject)

[lurrey]

"It's about an angel who lives on Ludlow Street. Not far from me. He's lived there for so long he can't remember why God put him on earth. Every night the angel talks aloud to God, and every night he waits for some word from Him. To pass the time he walks through the city. In the beginning he is in the habit of marveling at everything. He starts a collection of pebbles. Teaches himself difficult math. And yet. With each day that passes he's blinded a little less by the beauty of the world. . . .The more sadness he sees the more his heart begins to turn against God.  He starts to roam the streets at night, stopping for any one who looks like they need an ear. The things he hears-- it's too much. He can't understand it. When he asks God why He's made him so useless, the angel's voice cracks trying to hold back angry tears. Eventually he stops talking to God altogether. One night he meets a man under a bridge. They share the vodka the man has in a brown bag. And because the angel is drunk and lonely and angry with God, and because, with out even knowing it, he feels the urge, familiar among humans, to confide in someone, he tells the truth: that he is an angel. The man doesn't believe him, but the angel insists. The man asks the angel to prove it, so the angel lifts up his shirt despite the cold and shows the man the perfect circle on his chest which is the mark of an angel. But that means nothing to the man who doesn't know from the mark of angels, so the man says show me something God can do, and the angel, naive like all angels, points to the man. And because the man thinks he's lying, he punches the angel in the stomach, sending him tottering backwards off the pier and plunging into the dark river. Where he drowns because one other thing about angels is they can't swim."

An excerpt from The History of Love,  by Nicole Krauss copyright 2005 Penguin Books pgs 23-24