Plastered Wings

By Vin

Had an angel fly south for winter, said Earth was his favourite zoo but he could never quite stand the stench of desire, said it made him itch all over. So I ran him a cold bath to soothe his mood and quench his soul.

Sometimes I’d hear him crying. It was always something fierce; he’d hang his wings up to dry from all the soaking tears. I asked him why, said he was bored. He’d lend me a feather for every question I asked. He called it heaven’s cheapest staircase, and so I’d climb until the hooks of my question marks were close enough to excavate guano from heaven’s underbelly, and by then, the feathers were bone dry. So I’d knit myself a pair of wings and then he’d ask to take ‘em for a test flight, just to ensure they were safe enough for my final inquisitive stretch and he’d only return at the crest of midnight and I’d only know he was back cuz the ebb and flow of his sobs would crawl beneath my door and wake me up and I’d ask him why and he’d say he was bored. He’d lend me a feather for every question I asked. He called it heaven’s cheapest staircase, and so I’d climb…

We were in the middle of winter when I noticed that the elephant in the room was missing. Had a feeling the angel had something to do with it, said he’d buried it in the heart of the attic together with some white lies. Told him we’d fetch the shovels after we’d had dinner, well, I had dinner and he simply watched. Something about past-life reflux— all it took was a well-timed meal and you’d be reeled back to your mother’s dinner table sometime in the 60s in some middle-income neighbourhood, saying Grace, staying your dog’s snout as it begged for some scraps, asking your brother to pass the salt, telling your friends that you won’t be long and that you’ll save ‘em a plate—

I told him I never knew angels had souls in any real sense and he told me I had it all wrong. It was a furious fixation. Not reincarnation. So I asked him what he really meant and he said if he had to put a face to it he’d chalk it up to a curious case of vicarious Déjà vu. Something that came with the profession —listening in on nighttime confessions and dinnertime grace just before a meal— he was just another angelic appendage, earning his keep as God’s wallflower turned earpiece.

“Prayer…” I whispered.

“All the way downstairs,” he replied.

He led the way to the attic and I followed close behind, slow and steady, what with the meal still settling in my stomach. We pulled out the shovels and dug up an old, dusty trunk and out spilt some passports, old-fashioned jackets, portraits, car keys, Bourbon, Brandy, crumpled confessions, an art piece, blue prints, allergies and a deflated purple elephant. He told me he had to knock the wind from its lungs; it was the only way it would fit. Asphyxiation aside, I fed it some milk, nursed it back to health and the elephant turned white as Christmas.

And so I asked the angel what the big idea was; how did prayer work; when didn’t it; was there ever a backlog; what about competing interests and everything else I couldn’t fit above. He told me to grab my shovel and wrap the leathery trunk of the elephant round both of our eyes— we’d scoop through the elephant one bite at a time by faith not by sight…

And so we chewed through the white elephant and when it asked what we were doing, we explained that we were offering it a premium massage and that it would feel lighter by the end of the session. It smiled nervously… I think… seeing as my eyes were still blindfolded. On my four hundred fifty-three thousandth, six hundred and thirteenth bite, I turned to the angel, or at least in his direction, and asked him if all the letters we sent to heaven simply piled up on their doorstep. He said that would be barbaric, callous even. He said they used them to light fires or start small talk. I asked him if he’d ever heard of sleep. He told me eternal slumber was a veil upon a flightless wind and so he learnt to sleep with his eyes open, that way he could watch the Earth roll by. ‘Twas his first and only dream.

The white elephant was no more.

II

Grabbed me a pair of them wings the other evening, grabbed a corner of the sky and tore open the eyelid of the night, hoping to catch God by surprise, but He was wide awake and weeping all the while; there were prayers stuck in his eye with no way of getting them out. I fell back to Earth, fierce as a comet and unrepentant as lightning. My landing was less dramatic; no casualties or three-letter agencies to commemorate my sudden arrival with clandestine laboratories. I promised myself that the next flight would be fruitful with a garden for a landing. Practice was all I really needed.

After a night of shaky and uninspired test flights, I returned to our home only to find the angel in the bathroom practising his smile for the next time he’d need it, I could tell he’d been in there for hours— wrinkles formed on either side of his mouth like contour lines on a map, equal in elevation, equal in function and on the other side of his calculated smile was mine to balance out the equation. It worked and I felt no shame for taking the bait.

And from my smile poured a question from all the frustration foaming beneath, “Do you pray before a flight?”

“My every breath is a prayer,” the reply came from behind his perfect teeth, which were leaking blood from all the effort it took to maintain the screen of white.

“That’s awfully convenient, albeit touching. Now wipe your mouth, there’s more to discuss,” I concluded, offering him a crumpled napkin.

“Alright then, out with it. What’s on your mind?” Spitting the question out with blood and some teeth that would likely grow back by dinner time.

I knelt before him, whipped out a pocketknife and sliced off my scalp and a portion of skull, honouring his request to show him what was on my mind. “What’s your least favourite place to fly?”

“Over warzones. There’s a lot of temporal density in such places; too many folks trying to make their final moments last forever, stretching and stretching…”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Am I on record? I dunno, maybe don’t stink up the place with all that desire, it’s prickly, unsightly, really itchy. I’m craving one of your baths just talking about it. What I’m trying to say is… Am I still on record? What I’m trying to say is that you’re better off accepting that life on Earth was always a knockoff to begin with.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, like it’s naive…”

“I tell it how it is because you asked me how it is.”

“We’re fish in water, it’s all we’ve known, you charming bastard. But if it were up to you, what would you do with your dying breath? Would you stretch and reach for ‘eternity’s grasp’ or settle for this, for life?” I shouted, gesturing at myself and the trees outside the bathroom window and the sparrows and starlings perched on their branches, which were so close to the glass that you’d think they were listening in, which is how it always feels when you have to contend with that solipsistic error, that Freudian slip upon the wet mirror we call consciousness.

“I’d settle for the first, it’s the best sleep you’ll ever have. Granted, it’s the only sleep I’ve ever had. Eternal slumber is a veil upon a flightless wind and so I’ve learnt to sleep with my eyes open, that way I can watch the Earth roll by—”

“I heard you the first time around.”

The conversation turned stale and jagged by that point; nearly impossible to manoeuvre around without being harmed by the tension. So, I thought of something else in between everything else, something temperate, something edible, safe.

“Do you do a lot of house calls?” My voice rose, rejuvenated by the open meadow of possibilities that are partially encircled by the curve of a question mark.

“Not in such places, not anymore. There’s nowhere to land and temporal density aside, it’s claustrophobic what with missiles and jets for neighbours in the sky. You can’t fly, you can’t land, what a lovely economy you lads have! I’m better off on the road, although there are no trees left to cool down in the shade, considering all the napalm and bomb craters congress promised. But still,” he paused, savouring something in his mouth, a memory perhaps. “I am much better off on the road, amongst the Samaritans, lots of open hearts to slip into. Nothing can carry you better than faith in places like that. Everyone has it but no one ever knows exactly how much. If I were to ask, you might say you have enough faith to get by. But is that really a response? Faith is a funny thing, then, precisely because it’s pliable.”

“There you go again, saying it like it’s a bad thing, as though it were naive.”

“I tell it how it is because you asked me how it is.”

After an intermission about the length of a reprieve, he taught me how to fly by faith, not by sight, to run my wings over the geography of the Earth like a hand upon a section of braille. This was the diction of flight. Of faith. To be pliable enough to carry truth, though only a middling portion of it, like a teaspoon trying to lap up the ocean on its shiny, metallic tongue and I couldn’t have been more grateful because I saved a lot on fuel costs that year and watched it ooze down the drain all the same with all the booze in my frame. As for God, I visited him a few more times, peeling the eyelid away yet again and again, night after night, until he got a restraining order— my longest visit was a day.

III

We were nearing the end of winter by the time I returned. I’d missed the angel something fierce but decided against crying myself to sleep. So I pulled out a pack of cold ones for the two of us, whistling to Sukiyaki’s tune as I ambled down the hallway, only to find a note on his door saying he’d gone to meet some old friends at a garden in the cemetery. He figured that would be the best way to dissolve the homesickness that had been stalking him since his arrival.

I was halfway through the pack of beer when I felt the doorbell cut through my stupor. I figured it wasn’t him; he often slipped in through the window or the back door of my dreams if he ever had to enter the house. He said it was a habit he picked up after watching that old Wim Wenders flick from the 80s. So I took half a gulp of my beer and answered the door only to spit the rest at my feet— my landlord had decided to pay me a visit with his dog in tow; a mixed breed of some sort that slobbered all over the ‘welcome’ mat and breathed so voraciously you’d think all the air was about to run out.

As for the landlord, I was still registering that he was there at all, for I had tucked him away in some forgotten sock drawer in the back of my mind and yet here he was, with his body gradually materialising like some sort of living montage or double exposure, with layers of organisation stitching themselves in ascending order to the vacancy enclosed by his vague outline: circulatory system; nervous system; muscular system; skeletal system until he was some fuller thing, with skin and clothes draped over and finally tied together by the unceremonious bow he called a name, a personality, an identity… a landlord. That this should be the culmination of millions of years of evolution or seven days of creation was enough to make Jesus weep.

Leaving the miracle of spontaneous embryogenesis and maturation aside, I was astonished that my landlord didn’t just call, although I wouldn’t have answered. I’m sort of shy like that.

I pointed to the sign beside the door, ‘No Quadrepeds’ it read.

“Forgot I put that up there,” he chuckled, then proceeded to strangle his dog.

Maybe the dog was onto something.

I avoided eye contact and led the landlord down the hall. Although he didn’t need much instruction. This was once his home, after all. He would pause every now and again, wiping his snotty nose and watery eyes with a handkerchief, letting sweet childhood memories pour back into the desert of his soul, that, or dust from the bookshelves I hadn’t cleaned.

He asked what was for dinner and I tossed him a can of beer. I figured the angel would forgive me.

We sat in the dark for some artificial ambience as he waited for me to page through my dictionary— my tongue was slow and shaky like a lousy hand when the chips are down; I’d forgotten how to speak to people, let alone myself.

“Rent is due, long overdue in fact.”

“What year is it?”

“No idea,” he shrugged as he signalled for another beer.

“How serious is this rent thing?”

“I drove all the way down here, didn’t I?

“Look, I’m a little tight on cash…”

“Why is that the only thing that ever comes out of your mouth?”

“Force of habit, I guess. Look, can you lend me some cash to sort this whole thing out?”

“I could always ask my brother, Garreth. He’s pretty flexible.”

“Great, could you pass along his number?”

“So you do know how to use a phone,” he chuckled as he punched the number in on my behalf.

“I suppose I do, it’s one of my least redeeming qualities,” I replied as I underlined the corresponding word in my dictionary page. “Anyway, lemme give him a call.”

Blue light bulged and pounced upon the darkness between us like an animal on the hunt as my landlord’s phone suddenly rang. He pulled out a pair of spectacles and adorned a baseball cap he’d kept in his back pocket and, after concluding his theatrics, answered the phone.

“Garreth speaking,” he responded.

I put the beer down and sighed.

He looked at me with eyes too eager to deny, so I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth and conceived a smile.

“Hi, Garreth. Your brother said we could arrange a loan,” I replied, playing along with his stubborn routine. “What are your rates and how soon can we make the exchange?”

“My brother, you say? He’s a real pain in the ass.”

I wasn’t sure if it was okay to agree.

“But he’s real good for business, what with all the referrals. Tell you what, you sound like a good guy, so no interest rates for you.”

“I think I’m honoured,” I replied.

“It’s really good to think, no one does it these days. Speaking of thinking, do you think you could do me a favour?”

“Sure,” I sighed, scratching the forest patch I called a beard.

“I’ll give you the loan but it’s worth about an angel’s breath and some change.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. But I can refer you to a doctor.”

“Don’t act smart. My brother knows you’ve been harbouring an angel these last few months.”

“If you really don’t want to lend me the cash, that’s fine. I’ve got other means.”

“Then why the hell did you call me down here?”

“I didn’t. Your brother did.”

“Why you gotta drag this whole ordeal any longer than you should? Damnit, don’t scoff, you little bastard. You ain’t even trying to hide it!”

In truth, he’d got me, I thought the dark would shelter me from any facial exchange but the conversation at hand was set alight by the friction between us, casting a warm glow that evicted the shadows that should’ve been there.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Garreth.” I offered, ducking from the flames.

He drew closer and perhaps he drew some blood as he squeezed his response through his yellow, gritted teeth. “You’ve got an angel in your midst. That’s against the law. You of all people should know!”

“First I’m hearing of this and it’s not like he doesn’t have his papers! Look, what’s really going on here?”

He dug his fingertips into his temples, leaving indents that reddened for about the extent of a moment like hot coals at the end of their rope. His eyes gradually softened and offered to meet mine with an embrace in place of a knife.

“Alright, you got me. It’s just… how do I put this…”

“As gently as you can,” I said as I offered Garreth his first beer of the night.

“Thanks, that’s the stuff. You see, I’m…. I’m trying to get a taste of eternity. Everyone dreams of it, right? I’m sure you do, too, behind that jaded veneer. Would it really hurt to be on the right side of history when the centuries change hands, to live beyond your years and never look back?”

The hum of the fridge undercut the silence between. I couldn’t help but think of the landlord’s dog, perhaps for a little too long, as my response got caught in the barbed wire in my throat.

“Look, I didn’t hop onto this phone call for an argument, if that’s what you think this is. I came here for a mutual agreement and an amicable one at that. Besides, winter hasn’t been kind to anyone this year. They had to scrape some homeless people off the park benches just the other morning. They were frozen real bad. Real bad. I mean, there were bits of ‘em still left and there was nothing the groundskeepers could really do. The birds had to come and scoop up the rest once it got a little warmer by midday. It was a real scene, I mean, birds, flocks and flocks of ‘em, just flying off with bits of ears and noses and fingers in their beaks whilst children played tag just a little way off. It was Lynchian. Brutal stuff, I tell ya. A floating, fragmented, morbid mosaic of mankind’s leftovers, the dejected and rejected. Don’t need to visit an art gallery when you’ve got one just overhead, you know what I’m saying? But it didn’t even make the headlines, that sorta stuff never does. But it’s just as well, I like to have my breakfast without the extra baggage. Man like me, I already have enough to worry about: the Mrs, the kids, the Lakers and old dreams… Way too much to worry about. Now you wouldn’t want an old man like me worrying about your face being scraped off a bench, or attached to some bird, just watching me have breakfast through the window like we’re in a damn surveillance state, now would you? You’ve got a good face on your head and you’ve got a good home on your hands, central heating and everything. Good deal. Real good deal you got going. Now, why would you go ahead and mess that up? You listening to what I’m saying?” Garreth continued in a recently adopted whining, pleading tone.

“I’m listening, alright. Don’t give me that look, I said I’m listening!” I replied, scratching at my beard until there was nothing left, like deforestation had swept across my face.

“An angel’s breath and some change. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I suppose it can be arranged…” I offered weakly as I felt a weight being lifted from my right shoulder.

“Thanks, Judas.”

“Don’t mention it… Please.”

I was burying my landlord’s dog beneath the tree right by the shed when the angel returned. He waited a few moments before stirring me from the trance of the cinema verité ensuing before me, the soil had become transparent enough for me to see the dog lying in its freshly dug tomb. I watched as the dog was ferried along a time-lapse of decay.

It was truly a feat of reverse engineering, a superimposition of every stage that signalled the end: the dog began to bloat and for a moment I was convinced that all the air he ever wanted had returned in full force, but it wasn’t air, not the usual mix we’ve come to love, the 21:79 ratio of oxygen to nitrogen, more a parody of helium. It was an explosive concoction of gases from the bacterial banquet in the halls of his digestive tract leaking from every orifice on his stiffened body, making him larger than life, so to speak, until he shrank and contorted like a dejected balloon. And then he was alive again. Twitching and heaving but it was only a parody of movement like newlyweds on the dancefloor. It turns out the putrid bacterial stench had stained the soil, drawing millions of maggots the colour of sour milk to the dog’s corpse; his body leapt toward nowhere then ducked away from nothing, the maggots puppeteering his locomotive functions as they began to gorge themselves like the scissors of a seamstress working through fabric needed for a dress the very next day, tearing away a patch over here and just beyond there until the white marrow of his bones was vulnerable, exposed, aching from assault.

There was something about it that suggested more than just a mundane procession from the sacred to the profane —if I were more zealous, more optimistic, which only ever happened on Wednesdays, I might have been inclined to see it the other way round— a sublime procession from the profane to the sacred. And all the time I watched, as transparent as the soil was, I hadn’t thought about my place in all this —that poor habit of thinking death is for everyone else, as though time ever made exceptions for us like a concession on a ledger for good and mild behaviour— until I could’ve sworn I caught a faint reflection of myself floating over the scene below, and worst of all, he was smiling and I nearly balanced the entry on the ledger with my own smile. But it didn’t end there; something protruded from my peripheral vision until it was well along the horizon of my eyes, my line of sight. It swayed from side to side like a branch in the wind, as though it were cleaning a smudge on a windshield or pushing the air aside. I thought, how strange, how asinine, please stop this fruitlessness and to my surprise, though it took a few seconds, it did— it was my own hand, the right one, attached to my arm, attached to my shoulder, attached to my person, waving back at my reflection floating upon the dog’s corpse.

I vowed to quit alcohol.

The angel finally floated over and perched on the branch of the tree at an obtuse angle.

“You don’t look so good,” he acutely observed.

“I— I think I was smiling…”

“Yet another miracle for modern man. You may even be the first of your kind.”

“Never mind all that. I saw your note. What took you so long? Did your friends at the cemetery miss you nearly that much?”

“We decided to hitchhike on our way back. We wanted to know how far we could make it with the kindness of strangers. It’s our version of a leap of faith—”

“I sold you out for—”

“I know, I was in the room.”

“Whatever happened to privacy?”

“I was filling in a vacancy left behind by your conscience.”

“Economy must be rough…”

“Been that way for as long as I can care to remember.”

“Look, there’s some beer left in the fridge if you’d like.”

“I’m afraid I don’t drink on the job.”

---

Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky