The President’s Angel

Sophy Burnham

ALSO BY SOPHY BURNHAM

Nonfiction

The Art Crowd
The Landed Gentry
A Book of Angels
Angel Letters
For Writers Only
The Ecstatic Journey
The Path of Prayer
The Art of Intuition

Fiction

Buccaneer
The Dogwalker
Revelations
The President’s Angel
The Treasure of Montségur

Plays

Penelope
Prometheus
The Study
The Witch’s Tale
The Nightingale

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

ANSWERS TO LITERARY TRIVIAL PURSUIT IN THE INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

The President’s Angel is the third and last of my angel cycle. Three books, two nonfiction and one novel, were written in a rush of creativity, all on some aspect of the spiritual journey. All three are about the visits of angels and what happens when you’ve seen an angel.

This last little novel came to me both instantly—all in a flash—and slowly, painfully, crawling from my pen, my flesh. And yet, as with the two nonfiction angel books, the writing was also accomplished in a transport of joy.

It was in the mid-eighties, I forget what year. The world was gearing up for Star Wars and anxiety ran high. According to one poll, one-half of the American men under thirty believed an all-out nuclear war would occur within a decade.

A good friend in New York called to urge me to take to the barricades with the other artists in her group. “We’re all marching this weekend against the XYZ Military Installation. You HAVE to come.”

“Oh, Ellie,” I said. “I don’t do that.”

But I felt miserable about my inability to engage, and lying on my bed one afternoon I began to think about the fragile state of the world, and my own inadequacy. I had just finished reading a biography of Padre Pio, the Italian priest who died in Apulia in 1964. He was blessed with stigmata, the bleeding hands of Christ. He performed miracles, could bilocate, and was sainted, years after first publication of this book, in 2002. It was said that whoever prays to Padre Pio will immediately receive that prayer. Lying on my bed that afternoon, I prayed to him and God.

“I wish I could do something,” I prayed wordlessly. “I wish I knew something. I wish that I had some insight into what is happening, and since I cannot demonstrate with the others, that I could be of some help to this poor pretty little suffering world.…” Prayers like that, wordless yearnings.

A sentence came into my head. “It was on the 695th night of his reign that the President saw the angel.” And another: “He awoke from a light and fitful sleep to see the form balancing on the end of his bed.” By then I had reached for the pen by my bed and I was writing furiously. The words were pouring out. I wrote in a kind of delirium for possibly fifteen minutes, came to the end of the chapter, and stopped cold. Nothing. The Muse had fled.

But I read the chapter over in wonderment, feeling its power and knowing that I wanted to know the end of the story, what happened to the President—and knowing too that I had perhaps been given an answer to my prayer.

Then began the slow construction of the tale, and the sense of gnawing at the story. Sometimes it came pouring out of me, thundering from where I had no idea, and sometimes I would wait for days, straining to hear the etheric words that did not come. I don’t mean to sound magical about it. All writers believe their words are sometimes gifts of the Muse, and at the same time the writer works and works, preparing the soil to produce this fruit.

People familiar with my work will recognize two images in this novel. That of the picnic you can find in my novel, Revelations, and the story of the black dog and prayer in Angel Letters. But apart from those two images, this work is entirely its own. Indeed this fact of constantly breaking new ground presents a problem for the publisher—and also for an audience perhaps—that I, the writer, will not be contained by any form, but write novels, nonfiction books, plays, essays, journalism, children’s stories … heedless of the marketplace that slots the writer to a certain form and place and subject and style.

But all my work is similar in having a spiritual as well as a physical dimension, in its hope and joy and love for the courage and idealism of humankind.

Writers have their own jokes. For those people happy enough to have had a classical education, I have hidden a little treasure in this book. It is a game of fox and-hare, a literary Trivial Pursuit, in which the reader may come across a phrase—five words, a line—that rings a bell of recognition. Shakespeare, Gerald Manley Hopkins, John Cheever, Dante, Arthur Miller, Milton, Rilke, Voltaire… See how many you can find. There are twenty such little gold nuggets buried in the text, unmarked. Their presence is of no importance whatsoever; the text makes perfect sense without their recognition. You can read the book straight through and never notice one, and you should feel neither victory nor defeat either way; but for me they act as private, friendly signs, like the smile of a secret lover flashed across a crowded room. So I give them to the literary hound, an extra puzzle to sniff out, or to the casual reader as a kind of valentine. At the end of this e-book you’ll find the answers, something I neglected to do with the earlier editions.

One other change has been made to this e-book, but I doubt if anyone will care. I have changed the name of the newspaper reporter, Jake, to Scotty, because not even I, the author, could keep Jim and Jake apart.

When I finished The President’s Angel, it was met (as were all the other works in this cycle) by my agent’s loud disinterest. Time passed. I had grown discouraged by then. My work was too philosophical. Or too unusual. It didn’t fall into any category or genre by which an agent or publisher could sell the stuff.

No publisher, therefore, saw this little novel, although several of my writing colleagues read, edited, and gave wise comments.

Time passed, and to my surprise I found that many of the things I thought outlandish when writing them, like peace among enemies, have come about.

Is it possible that there are more things, Horatio, than this world dreams of? Are there angels—principalities, powers, virtues, and dominions—governing our nations and political affairs? Mystics say that we should have no doubts.

1

It was on the 695th night of his reign that the President saw the angel. He awoke from a light and fitful sleep to see the form balancing on the end of his bed. The President no longer slept with the First Lady by then. She said she could stand the snoring but not the moans. He had moved into the East Bedroom, where he found an unexpected benefit: Each morning through the east window, he could watch dawn break open the shell of night. Somehow that had become important to him.

The President had no trouble dropping off to sleep. He finished work around ten P.M. (and he counted state dinners as work these days, he who had always been ready to dance and talk till one). By eleven he retired to his rooms, to read or brood. Twice recently he found himself desperately holding on to Anne. “How was your day? What did you think of the Ambassador’s new young wife?” He didn’t want to face another pile of memos placed on the nightstand for him to consider before he slept. But the President was in bondage to the White House, to rules, to procedures, and to computer printouts. Sometimes his eyes were too tired to focus at night. He asked Frank to read the memos aloud while he lay in bed, eyes closed. They usually brought bad news. The economy recovering … means rising inflation …. The Other Party is preparing an attack; your advisors recommend …. This is the latest news of war in the Middle East, war in Central America, war in Ireland, war in Africa, war in Asia, war in the Far East …. Good night, Mr. President. Sleep well.

Each night he fell into a pool of sleep, where he stayed suspended dreamlessly for as long as three hours at a time, before jerking awake, alert as an outlaw. A night-light on the bedside table permitted him to find his glasses. He would read mystery novels, plowing through one paperback after another until, eyes blurring with fatigue, he’d fall asleep again, but this time fitfully and fighting off the dreams.

Therefore it was not unusual for the President to awaken with a start at four A.M.

He regarded the specter without surprise. It was white. It was luminous. It seemed to have a human form, and yet no definition at the edges of its shape, as if, being made of light, it blurred away. And yet it had a face. An aureole of hair. And clothing of some sort of light. He (or was it she? The President could not tell its gender) it balanced on one foot playfully, then hopped onto the other in a kind of minuet. Seeing the President watching, it stopped and seemed to melt until both feet settled on the footboard, then slipped on past, or possibly through the solid wood, until they rested on the coverlet. Then the angel sat on the footboard and smiled at him with such compassion that the President felt a sob catch in his throat. Its eyes were filled with love. He wanted to weep. He passed one hand across his eyes, in hopes the hallucination would disappear, but when he opened them again, it was still there, resting its elbow on one knee and contemplating him, head cocked with puzzlement.

The President spoke aloud. “Aren’t you going to tell me to Fear Not?”

He meant it as a joke, the quick good humor that had won him six elections before a landslide presidential race. It came out too loud and his voice quavered at the end. The angel, startled, faded almost into dusk. At the same moment, the President heard a knock on the door.

“Are you all right, sir?” It was Frank, his aide-de-camp, his valet, his guardian and guard. The angel shimmered dimly on the bed.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Go to sleep. I‘m just talking to myself.”

He sat up higher in bed and tucked a pillow behind his back. The silence drew out and the angel reappeared full force, an aurora of colors flaming in the room. He caught his breath, for the light was blinding him and the colors were no longer in front of his eyes but inside them too, and the light was no longer at the foot of the bed but surrounding him. He was electrified with heat. Again he cried aloud. Frank opened the door.

“Sir? Do you need anything?”

Officious bastard, thought the President. He lay on the pillows, washed in light. All he wanted was to be left alone.

“Your light’s burned out,” said Frank, and he slammed his kneecap against the bed. “It’s black as pitch in here. I‘ll get a bulb.” He knew the President didn’t like the dark.

The President wondered why he bothered when the room was full of light. He wondered why Frank did not comment on the angel smiling from the foot of the bed. His next thought was whether he was having a stroke or possibly dreaming. But Frank screwed the new light bulb into the lamp and turned on the switch.

“There.” He shook the old bulb at his ear, then looked puzzled. “Oh. It wasn’t dead.” He tossed it in the trash basket anyway, not having registered his own words. “Good night, sir. Sleep well.”

“Good night, Frank,” the President said, and relaxed into that radiating light, the angel flaring, flaming on his bed.

The Premier sat bolt upright in bed. The angel stood, colossal and rectilinear. It was so large that its head touched the ceiling, brushing against the decorative plasterwork. In one hand it held a sword, hilt up, and from every corner of the room he could hear singing, a paean of praise.

The Premier, who had grown up in the godless state and never set foot in a church, crossed himself. Slowly the light went out. Slowly the angel disappeared.

And no one knew anything untoward had happened in the Enemy capital. The Premier did not mention it. He was ashamed of his gesture—a superstitious cross. Several times during the next days, he tried to erase it. He didn’t know how. In his imagination he traced a backward cross. And once, in defiant rage, he tried the Star of David over the soiled spot. Heart, throat, forehead: How did his hand know exactly how to make a cross? For a week after the apparition, he found it hard to sleep. His mouth turned down in a grimace and his aides slunk by or jumped to do his bidding. The Premier’s mood was black. Little things set him off. He made ferocious decisions. He took a mistress. He was not about to allow an apparition to deflect him from his appointed course.

The morning after the angel appeared, the President found himself thinking about the apparition during a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and again in the afternoon with his economic advisors. He caught himself up short. He had too much to do to daydream about the implications of a spirit realm. Later in the week he asked Rosemary, his secretary, to call his doctor: He had the beginnings of a cold, he said, but don’t tell anyone the doctor had been called. The last thing he wanted was the Press on his tail.

“Have you ever known anyone who had apparitions, John?”

“Only madmen.” The doctor laughed. “Why? You seeing things now?” John Deering had been the President’s physician for twenty years.

“Not likely. Book I was reading last week. Can’t even remember the name of it now,” the President lied. “But the question was raised about whether everyone seeing things is sick. The author’s premise was, no.”

“It makes for dramatic impact, I suppose. Breathe out.”

The stethoscope lay cold against his skin.

“Your lungs are clear. Stress would make you see things. What kind of apparitions?”

“Oh.” The President gave a hearty laugh: “Ghosts, spirits, angelic manifestations. Whatever.”

“Overwork would do it,” the doctor said, pulling his ophthalmoscope out of its case. “Did the character in the book actually see them wide-awake or just dream them in his sleep?”

“Saw them, wide-awake. Waking up from sleep. In the book they turned out to be real,” the President added.

“Well, they never are. Hold still. If I were seeing things or dreaming them, I‘d attribute it to stress, or maybe food intolerance or lack of exercise. You’re fit as a fiddle, Matt. Do you get enough sleep?”

“Oh sure. They keep guard on me.”

“Wake up in the middle of the night?”

“I read for a while.”

“Have trouble going back to sleep?”

“Sometimes.”

“Trouble eating? Loss of appetite?”

“No.”

“Feeling low? Depressed?”

“They work me here.” He realized he had lied for the last two questions.

In the end the doctor prescribed a mild sleeping pill and cautioned his friend to get more exercise, an hour a day if possible. He recommended swimming, but anything the President liked would do.

That night the President took two pills. The angel did not come. The next morning he climbed through drugged and heavy clouds to reach the light of day.

In those days, the major problem confronting the two Empires was economic. The U.S. subsisted as a garrison state, as did its sister nation, the Eastern Orthodox. Arms and armaments comprised the major sale commodity of both nations. These were sold to the lesser nations in the world, which resold them to each other. Food was scarce, but arms of war remained the major standard of currency. Arms had the advantage of always going out of date. Also they were expensive. They required hard machinery and high technology, an educated populace to service them, and constant replenishment of parts.

They served small purpose beyond the scope of war, which is to say, the destruction of ones enemies. This kept the focus of attention of every nation turned on the enemies whom the weapons were supposed to guard against.

Since weapons were the major currency of the world, the only way to pay for them was through interest-bearing loans from the banks of the civilized, armament-producing nations. Sometimes one or another small country would default on a loan, or not pay interest on its debt, as happened with several Latin countries. It created economic panic. Then the banking nations, which were located north of the Equator, met in convocation and decided by a mental and mathematical prestidigitation to rearrange the terms. Feeling much better, they so advised the nations to the south. The entire system was a house of cards held together by the willing suspension of disbelief.

“But that can’t stick,” said the President, when the situation was first explained. His economic advisors assured him that it could, for the nation was enjoying unprecedented growth, due to the sales of armaments.

“The only thing holding the framework together, then, is the agreement of the banks and loaning nations to hold it together, is that right?”

“Yes sir,” answered the head of the Federal Reserve.

“It’s an illusion,” the President said.

“It’s not an illusion if we all agree it’s real.”

The President thought of the story of the Emperor parading naked down the street.

“All that’s needed,” he told the head of the Federal Reserve, “is one little child to shout, ‘He hasn’t any clothes!’ The whole structure will come tumbling down around our ears.”

“You forget the rest of the story, Mr. President.” The chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank leaned forward, grinning wickedly. The ice cubes tinkled in his scotch.

“Oh?” said the President. “What’s that?”

“The little boy shouted: ‘But he’s naked. The Emperor has no clothes.’ At which suddenly everyone could see the truth. The people were so shocked they turned on the child and beat his brains out with cobblestones.”

“Goodness.” The President gave a laugh. The banker sank back in his chair and sipped his scotch. The two White House economic advisors looked at him quizzically.

The banker nodded for emphasis: “Then the horses pranced, the flags waved, and the Emperor continued to sashay down the street. Everyone agreed he looked magnificent in his magic clothes.”

At night sometimes the President thought of that. The economic recovery was based on fraudulent statistics. Rooms were filled with the calculations of computers. Forests fell for the paper on which to print the numerals that described the past or foretold the future growth of world economies.

The President knew the fiction could not be continued forever. At some point the economists would turn the page and find themselves at the end of the book.

The President was also concerned about the arms race. Nation after nation had nuclear weapons now: many of them overpopulated, and poor. Any one of them could detonate a weapon that would destroy a million or two of the ten billion people on the earth, leave a hole in the ozone layer, burn out the radiation shield that protected the eyes of mankind from the sun—as well as those of insects, dogs, and the pigeons in the air.

There were fifty thousand nuclear weapons in the mid-eighties. By the time of the events recounted here, these had increased to the hundreds of thousands in landscapes plotted and pieced—fold, fallow.… Everyone agreed they did not want nuclear war, but no one agreed on how to prevent it.

In the night, alone, the President lay awake. He was not sure if he was the Emperor or the child.

The President’s name was Matthew. He was called Matt. His middle name was Madison, and his last name was Adams. He had won the election partly on his name. The name Adams recalled a period of principled Puritans. The name Madison recalled uneventful serenity, coupled with Virginia aristocracy. Matthew was the name of a saint, and Matt a comic book hero. His election occurred at a time when the nation felt nostalgic for high ideals. Very few people knew the President’s forebears had taken the surname after dropping a Middle Eastern one. The country had been whiplashed by a decade of change. All it wanted was to stop.

Matt had the requisite presidential thick hair which he could run one hand through when he was putting on an “aw gee” act with the Press, and which, coupled with an engaging grin, could make a woman’s heart twist. Also he was smart. He was direct, directed, and tough, and he had politically cunning advisors.

His concern was to run the country.