“Cairo?” she said. “No, I wasn’t there. I don’t particularly care for that truculent city, never did: too crowded, too dirty, too new. I’m sure it has some redeeming virtues, but I have yet to discover them. I hail from Alexandria, after all. If you wish to talk about Cairo and the whorehouse, try Agathius, or even Pantaleon, who showed up quite early. I didn’t appear till Beirut.”
Catherine noticed Behemoth coming into the room. She extended her hand, hoping the cat would approach, but Behemoth hissed as if face-to-face with a mortal enemy.
“It is the sword,” Catherine said, “which frightens some animals.”
Behemoth sauntered over to Satan and jumped onto his lap. His sharp claws dug into Satan’s thighs as he kneaded before lying down. Satan winced but did not interrupt, even as a small dot of blood stained his white linen pants.
“I’m sure it’s the sword,” he said. “Now, why did I think you were the first?”
“I was the first to appear to Jacob, not the first in his life,” she said. “In later years, Jacob would revise his stories, remembering a certain light during a thunderstorm, erroneously thinking it must have been Saint Elmo’s fire. So of course he thought Erasmus appeared to him, but he didn’t know who that was as a child. Erasmus may have been there in Cairo. I don’t know. The boy was so sickly then, he was seen by many doctors, even an Italian living in Cairo at the time. So he may have misremembered seeing Pantaleon, who was indeed in the Egyptian capital with the boy, but it was by no means for healing. He loved to watch fools fornicating. It’s one of his many vices, charming as they may be. No, the healing was left to Agathius. He arrived because the boy grew up with intermittent migraines, and when you prayed while in the excruciating grip of one, Agathius was there. He watched over the boy in his early years probably more than any of us. It should have been Denis because of the boy’s latent sexual proclivities, but Denis dealt mostly with ordinary headaches, hence his nickname, Saint Aspirin. Agathius should be called Saint Triptan. He has always been the kindest of us in any case.”
She lifted the teacup off its saucer, held it with her pinky pointing out. As she bent her head to take a sip of the still-steaming tea, the circle of gold intensified momentarily before settling back into a mild buzz.
“Do you believe the migraines could have been psychosomatic,” Satan asked, “or were they genuine?”
“Genuine, of course. He was in pain, that much was certain. Did he receive the attention he so desperately craved because of the migraines? Of that there could be no doubt. Even though Badeea was his primary caretaker, his mother looked in on him when he was suffering, and for that I can tell you he would have endured any pain. We all knew that. Even Agathius mentioned a number of times that whenever his mother entered the room, or simply acknowledged him while passing in the dimly lit hallway, the boy’s heart released its anchor no matter the suffering. But I doubt he ever induced a migraine to get attention. With the nuns, every time he had one, he ended up sleeping alone in the infirmary, which had a much better mattress than the one in his room. No one disturbed him, he was left alone with his thoughts. He treasured those times and their priceless solitude. And then, you know, the migraines brought us to the fore, not just Agathius. In that tenebrous infirmary, when darksome night through the window blued his world, I introduced him to the rest of us. I told him, and I can’t recall the exact words now—I told him it was time to meet his salvation.”
“And then the migraines stopped,” Satan said.
He petted Behemoth, who purred in his sleep, his fur emitting tiny sparkles of static each time Satan’s hand passed through.
“That they did, for a while. Denis would tell you that he cured him, his aspirin better than any of the triptans, and you know, he is right in some ways, but it was by no means his healing that did so. For generations, sufferers prayed to Denis for help with their headaches, but I never understood the logic. Having one’s head chopped off does not make one a head healer. A number of our order were beheaded—Barbara was by her father, but no one assumes she can manage headaches. Now, Agathius has a talent for it. During the plague, the entire population prayed and begged for help. Agathius did all the work and Denis’s reputation grew. How these things work remains obscure to me. People were never my forte. Denis ended up helping the boy accidentally when he led him down that deliciously aberrant path.”
“Getting whipped cures migraines?” Satan said. “Whoever markets that will become a zillionaire.”
“Don’t be obtuse,” Catherine said. “It is unbecoming. Who knows how these mechanisms operate? All we know is that as soon as the boy understood his needs, the moment ecstasy revealed herself, pain vanished. I do not know why. However, it seems that migraines, like desires, are recrudescent. Once Death purloined the souls of his friends and he decided to be a proper citizen of this scurvy world, the migraines returned, maybe not as frequently, but he still suffered.”
“Could it be that migraines are caused by boredom?” Satan asked.
“Once the boy gave us up, he confined himself to a life of inanition.”
“Well, I for one loved Cairo,” Agathius said, running his fingers through his palm leaf, which still appeared as if it had been broken off a tree only a few moments earlier. “Still do.”
He had a large head with more scalp than hair. The centurion’s chest guard reflected the golden light of his halo, and its ringlet engravings looked like fish scales. Agathius looked like a giant goldfish—a five-foot-three goldfish, he was a short Greek, after all. Worse, with the layered steel shoulder protectors, he could have easily walked on for a part in a number of television shows from the eighties.
“Why would you show up for the boy?” Satan asked. “He was a Muslim at the time.”
“He asked for help,” Agathius said.
“But you hate Muslims,” Satan said.
“I do?”
When he was confused, Agathius’s eyes grew large and more transparent, making him look like his painted icons.
“You were the patron saint of the Greeks and Slovenes fighting against the Ottoman Empire,” Satan said.
“Yes, I was,” Agathius said. “The Greeks called on me, as did the Slovenes, and even the Croats.”
“The Ottomans were Muslim,” Satan said.
“They were?”
“I’m getting a headache,” Satan said.
“I can help with that.”