The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks Read Online Free PDF

Djinn’s reaction, hoping against hope that he would immediately descend. I nearly called out to him myself. But I couldn’t. His face was still lit by a knowledge or emotion or memory that was more powerful and clarifying than anything we here below had ever experienced. He looked like a man to whom everything had at last been elucidated. There was something new there, however, something that he seemed to have obtained only in the last few moments, or possibly obtained only from his perspective on high.
    This must be the true face of love , I thought, and in that instant felt myself transformed, not into a beloved object—which, when viewed by a lover, would more normally be the case—but into a beloved subject . Which is dramatically, even metaphysically, different. Djinn’s large brown eyes gazed down on all of us with a compassion and humor that could not help but make us feel truly beloved—most of us for the first time in our lives. I know that I was not alone in this. Many of the people around me had left their chairs just as I had and were staring up at Djinn, wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, struck dumb with awe and inexplicable gratitude.
    “Come on down now, Djinn, or I’ll have to shoot you! Last chance!”
    Djinn climbed to the top rail of the balcony and balanced there momentarily, then nonchalantly reached above his head and grabbed onto the clay tiles of the roof with both hands. He swung free of the balcony, caught the top ledge of the French window with his toes, and hefted himself toward the roofs, when the policeman fired, once, then a second time, the bullets jarring Djinn as they hit him in the middle of his back. For a second he clung there, unmoving, as if he might have actually absorbed the bullets into his body and rendered them harmless. But, no, he let go of the roof tiles, his toes slipped off the window ledge, and he tumbled backwards, off the building, down to the cobblestone street, where his body slammed against the stones with bone-breaking force. We heard the bones break and the flesh rip and tear like rotted cloth. All of us. Not just me. And yet not one of us, not even me, acted as though anything untoward had happened. The policeman walked slowly back to his table, and the others returned to their seats, and everyone seemed to pick up eating, drinking, and talking where he had left off.
    Andrew, looking sour and impatient, hurried from his kitchen with two teenage helpers in tow, dishwashers or busboys, and the three of them swiftly lifted the body of the madman and dragged it up the street, disappearing with it around the corner at the square. I watched, aghast, bewildered, astonished. What had happened? When, a few moments later, the barman returned, he stopped next to my table and untied his bloodstained apron with evident irritation. He started to move on, and I grabbed his arm. “Where did you take him?” I asked.
    “Who?”
    “The madman! Djinn!”
    “Oh. To the police station,” he said, and headed toward the bar, where customers were awaiting his return. Over his shoulder, as an afterthought, he called to me, “The police will take care of the body, sir. Don’t you worry yourself.”
    I sat a long time, stunned and very confused by what I had seen. Finally, I paid and left the café, hoping that I had at least partially imagined what I had seen tonight. Or maybe I had imagined all of it. That would be even better.
    I wanted to be alone and to sleep. I very much wanted to sleep.
    The following day, I arrived early at the Industrial Park, distracted and cross. From the start of the day to its end, I couldn’t seem to cope with the usual difficulties of training the natives. I could not accept those difficulties as being natural and legitimate. This was not like me. I was trying to teach them to operate the German-made lathes that turned the heels of our sandals out of mahogany that we imported at great expense from the Cambodian highlands, milled in Goa, and transshipped