Of Love and Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

man,” I said. “Human, a man! I’m not a monk, or a priest.”
    “You certainly lived like one when you were a killer.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “You denied yourself the warmth and love of a woman year in and year out. You didn’t think you deserved it. You couldn’t bear to be around the innocence of women, or the warmth of a woman who might accept you. Do you deserve it now? Are you ready for it?”
    “I don’t know,” I murmured.
    “Do you want me to go away?” he asked.
    I had broken out in a sweat, and my heart was racing.
    “Simple desire is making a fool of me,” I whispered. I think I was pleading with him. “No, I don’t want you to go,” I murmured. “I don’t want you to.” I shook my head, defeated.
    “Toby, the angels have always been with you. They’vealways seen everything that you’ve ever done. There are no secrets from Heaven. The only difference is, now you can see us. And that should be a source of strength for you. You know this. Your guardian angel’s name is Shmarya.”
    “Look, I want to be filled with awe, with gratitude, humility, fine feelings! Hell, I want to be a saint!” I stammered. “But I can’t be. I can’t—. What did you say his name was?”
    “Can’t what?” he asked. “Can’t live with restraint? Can’t deny yourself the immediate gratification of your passions with this woman when you’ve been with her less than twenty-four hours? Can’t keep yourself from running roughshod over her vulnerability? Can’t be the honorable man your son might expect you to be?”
    His words could not have stung more if they’d been spoken in anger. The gentle persuasive voice was fatal to all the lies I’d been telling myself.
    “You think I don’t understand,” he said calmly. “I’ll tell you what I think, that if you were to overwhelm that woman now, she would hate herself for it, and hate you too when she’d had time to think on it. For ten years, that woman has lived alone for the sake of herself and her son. Respect her. Win her trust. That takes times, does it not?”
    “I want her to know that I love her.”
    “Did I say you couldn’t tell her this? Did I say you couldn’t have shown her some small measure of what you were holding in abeyance?”
    “Oh, Angel Talk!” I said. I was furious again.
    Once more, he laughed.
    For a long moment we stood there in silence. I was ashamed again, ashamed of having gotten angry.
    “I can’t be with her now, can I?” I asked. “I’m not talking about desire. I’m talking about genuine love and companionship, and learning to love everything about her, being savedevery day by her. You wanted me to know my son for his sake, and for her sake. But I can’t have them both, not as an intimate part of my life, now, can I?”
    “Yours has been a dark and dangerous path, Toby.”
    “Am I not forgiven?”
    “Yes, you’ve been forgiven. But is it wise that you walk away from the kind of life you lived, without anticipating repercussions?”
    “No. I think about that all the time.”
    “Is it right that you make no reparation?”
    “No. I must make reparation.”
    “Is it right you break your vow to work with me to do good in this world, instead of evil?”
    “No,” I said. “I never want to break that vow, never. I owe the world a crushing debt for the things I did. Thank God, you’ve shown me a way to pay that debt.”
    “I will go on showing you,” he said. “And in the meantime be strong for her, the mother of your son, be strong for him and the man he can become. And don’t delude yourself as to the things you once did, the enormity of them. Remember that beautiful young woman has her angel, too. She doesn’t begin to guess who you’ve been all these years. If she did, she might not let you near that child. Or so her angel reminds me.”
    I nodded. It was too painful to think about, too obvious to deny.
    “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Even if I left you now, if you