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The Devil's Throat Cavern, Rhodope Mountains, Trigrad, Bulgaria
Winter 1943

The Angelologists examined the body. It was intact, without decay, the skin as smooth and white as parchment. The lifeless, aquamarine eyes gazed heavenward. Pale curls fell against a high forehead and sculptural shoulders, forming a halo of golden hair. Even the robes—the cloth woven of a white shimmering metallic material that none of them could identify exactly—remained pristine, as if the creature had died in a hospital room in Paris and not hundreds of meters below the earth.

It should not have surprised them to find the angel in that preserved condition. The fingernails, nacreous as the inside of an oyster shell; the long smooth navel-less stomach; the eerie translucency of the skin—everything about the creature was as they knew it would be, even the positioning of the wings were correct. And yet, it was too lovely, too vital for something they had studied only in airless libraries, prints of quattrocento paintings spread before them like roadmaps. All of their professional lives they had waited to see it. Although not one of them would have admitted it, they secretly suspected to find a monstrous corpse, all bones and fiber shreds, like something unearthed from an archeological dig. Instead, there was this: A delicate tapering hand, an aquiline nose, pink lips pressed in a frozen kiss. The Angelologists hovered above the body, gazing down in anticipation, as if they expected the creature to blink its eyes and wake.

[…]

Saint Rose Convent, Hudson River Valley, Milton New York
December 22, 1999 4:45 AM

Evangeline woke before the sun rose, when the fourth floor was silent and dark. Quiet, so as not to wake the Sisters who had prayed through the night, she gathered her shoes, stockings and skirt in her arms and walked barefoot to the communal lavatory. She dressed quickly, half asleep, without looking in the mirror. From a sliver of bathroom window she surveyed the convent grounds, covered in a pre-dawn haze. A vast snowy courtyard stretched to the water's edge, where a scrim of barren trees limned the Hudson. Saint Rose Convent perched precariously close to the river's edge, so close that in daylight there seemed to be two convents—one on land and one wavering lightly upon the water, the first folding out into the next, an illusion broken in summer by barges and in winter by teeth of ice. Evangeline watched the river flow by, a wide strip of black rubbing against the pure white snow. Soon, morning would gild the water with sunlight.

Bending before the porcelain sink, Evangeline splashed cold water over her face, dispelling the remnants of a dream. She could not recall the dream, only the impression it made upon her—a wash of foreboding that left a pall over her thoughts, a sensation of loneliness and confusion she could not explain. Half asleep, Evangeline peeled away her heavy flannel night shift and, feeling the chill of the bathroom, shivered. Standing in her white cotton briefs and cotton undershirt (standard garments ordered in bulk and distributed bi-yearly to all of the Sisters at Saint Rose), she looked at herself with an appraising, analytic eye—the thin arms and legs, the flat stomach, the tussled black hair, the golden pendant resting upon her breastbone. The reflection floating upon the glass before her was that of a sleepy young woman.

Fingering the gold chain, Evangeline felt its warmth against her skin. The pendant, a tiny golden lyre, had belonged to her mother, Angela Valko DeFlorian, and had come into Evangeline's possession upon her mother's death. Although the charm was beautiful, the antique lyre finely wrought pure gold, for Evangeline its value remained purely emotional. Her grandmother, Gabriella Levy-Franche Valko, had brought the necklace to Evangeline after her mother died. At the funeral, Gabriella had taken Evangeline to a benitier and, cleaning the pendant lightly with water, fastened the necklace about her throat. Leaning close, the smell of her grandmother's perfume overwhelming Evangeline's senses, Gabriella showed Evangeline an identical lyre fastened at her neck. "Promise me you will wear it at all times, day and night, just as Angela wore it." Her grandmother pronounced Evangeline's mother's name with a lilting accent, swallowing the first syllable and emphasizing the second: An-gel-a. She preferred her grandmother's pronunciation to all others and, as a girl, had learned to imitate it perfectly. Gabriella was a terse and intellectual woman, stylish and severe, who dressed in crisp tailored clothing, as if preparing for a business meeting. Always, every time Evangeline had visited her grandmother, Gabriella had been perfectly composed, calm and organized, smelling of rich perfume. But she had not seen her in years. Like her parents, Gabriella had become little more than a powerful memory. The pendant, however, felt substantial against her skin, a solid connection to her mother and grandmother.

Evangeline shivered again from the cool air and turned to her clothing. She owned five identical black knee-length skirts, seven black turtlenecks for the winter months, seven short sleeve cotton button-up shirts for the summer, one black wool sweater, fifteen pairs of white cotton underwear and innumerable black nylon stockings: Nothing more and nothing less than what was necessary. She pulled on a turtleneck and fit a bandeau over her short brown hair, pressing it firmly against her forehead before clipping on a black veil. She stepped into a pair of nylons and a wool skirt, buttoning, zipping and straightening the wrinkles in one quick, unconscious gesture. In a matter of seconds, her private self disappeared and she became Sister Evangeline, Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. Rosary in hand, the metamorphosis was complete. She placed her nightgown in the bin at the far end of the lavatory and prepared to face the day.

—from Angelology