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It was 1946 and Crowley was miserable and hungover. He also hadn’t been in a synagogue since the Disraelis were Jewish so it had to 200 years or so, give or take a couple of centuries.
He tried to keep his feet on the footstool if he could help it.
The siddur stung a little bit through his gloves but it was also strangely soothing.
People were milling about in the aisle and entrance way gossiping and schmoozing in a whole Babel-load of languages: Polish, German, Yiddish, English, Hungarian. Some were even speaking multiple languages simultaneously sprinkling English terms over a conversation like salt over a pot of soup.
The whole building thrummed with love and live and sanctity. All those lovely goodly things that blistered his skin in places and left a hollow feeling in wherever it is his soul was supposed to be.
A light tap on his shoulder drew him out of his self-commiserating. A young woman was standing in the aisle beside him with a boy of about ten, the boy was the one with his hand on Crowley’s shoulder but it was fairly evident that he was just a vehicle for the woman to get his attention.
“I’m sorry sir...” Her English was uncertain and uncomfortable like new leather shoes she hadn’t quite worn in yet.
“Yes? How can I help?”
“My uncle is in aveilus, he normally comes to shul with us? This is Oskar’s first time alone and I...” she trailed off and gestured broadly towards the woman’s section upstairs.”
“Oh I see, so you want me to watch him?” He asked.
“I’m sorry to bother you... I just don’t know any of the men here... um oh! that sounds bad...” She trailed off awkwardly fidgeting with her sleeve. “I’m sure they’re all fine!”
“No, no. Ikh Farstey.” Crowley smiled to put the woman at ease.
She physically deflated with relief.
“Gut, gut! Thank you!”
She turned her attention to the boy.
“Oskar.” She really didn’t need to say much else the boy pouted, crossed his arms in his lap and stared straight ahead at the pew in front of him.
“Ikh veis, ikh veis. Geh weg!” He mumbled, shooing her with a hand.
“Don’t be rude!” She hissed back, her fluidity and pronunciation suggested this was probably an English phrase she used extremely often.
She glanced back at Crowley,
“Thank you again, I hope he isn’t trouble.”
She smiled tightly and disappeared back down the aisle.
Leaving Crowley a hungover and existentially despairing sheyd in a synagogue on Shabbat, now in the care of a child, just as things were starting to boil down and the service was starting to begin.
“Oy, Oskar, was it?” He said glancing at the kid
The boy narrowed his eyes at him. “Yes.”
“Redt ir yidish?” He asked. Even though he was fairly sure of the answer.
The boy nodded. “Trogstu briln in shul?”
Crowley sighed and touched his glasses subconsciously.
“Yeah.” He didn’t really want to have the conversation about his eyes right now. He glanced around to see if the rabbi had finished arguing long enough to remember he was supposed to be leading the service.
“Katzenjammer?” Oskar asked again with the same blasé calm of a Jewish child who has been told always to question but not yet to shut up.
Crowley chuckled at that, the word was a loan from the German, the English ‘hangover’ was never quite as evocative or relatable as “the howling of cats.”
“No.” Lied Crowley, who was more than capable of removing the alcohol still present in his system but one, it was Shabbat and he considered that too much like work and two, perhaps more truthfully he was languishing in his misery.
“Farvas ton zey trogn?” Oskar asked again gesturing at his sunglasses.
Crowley was stuttering. His brain in its hungover depression haze wasn’t spitting out comebacks to his serpent tongue
To his rescue came an older man from the pew behind them, “Watch your manners, son.” He said You shouldn’t ask people about these things. You don’t know what battles they’ve fought.”
This was a sufficient answer for Oskar who evidently was now trying to imagine how Crowley could have lost an eye in the war.
“Thanks,” Crowley said with a nod to the guy behind them.
The man waved his gratitude off. “It’s no problem. The kinderlekh will learn to adapt to these things soon enough.”
Back on the bimah, the Rabbi had finally decided to start the service that was at least ten minutes late already.
“Gut Shabbos, everyone. Can we begin? Nisim B’chol Yom. Page two hundred. Tsvey hundert. dwieście.”
The rabbi started up and it was suddenly okay. Crowley knew the words and the trop he remembered the way the Hebrew coiled and released like a snake on his tongue. Oskar was mumbling along beside him occasionally stealing a peek at Crowley’s siddur.
There had to be over two hundred Jews in here at once all davening together. The thought became adrenaline in his veins as he began to move with the rhythm of everything.
Baruch atah HaShem Elokeinu Melech Ha’olam Poke'ach ivrim.
Blessed are you HaShem our G-d Sovereign of the Universe who helps the blind to see.
The adrenaline was starting to burn off the discomfort of being in a consecrated space.
Crowley didn’t cry because he was a demon and demons didn’t do any outward emotion that wasn’t based in contempt but his glasses did fog ever so slightly.
He was, however, a Jewish demon, and this meant there was an emotion he was very good at and that emotion was spite.
He mumbled along with the woman’s bracha getting him a confused look from Oskar.
Baruch atah HaShem Elokeinu Melech Ha’olam She’asani kirtzono
Blessed are you HaShem our G-d who made me according to Her Will.
His adrenaline buzz was starting to form in a slow enrapturing smirk on his face too.
He had a an ancient memory knocking around his skull of the first woman (no not that one, the one before her the first of the first) washing her hair in the river of Eden and giving him a look like he was a sweet little idiot corn snake.
“She made me, Crawly. No one asked Her to do that. She made you too with all your sense and questions. If she doesn’t like us that sounds like a Her problem.”
Baruch atah HaShem Elokeinu Melech Ha’olam She’asani Yisrael.
Blessed are you HaShem our G-d who has made me a Jew.
Because if he wasn’t an angel what was he? He felt as attached to ‘demon’ as he did ‘accountancy’ or ‘shop clerk’
He said every Hebrew syllable that blossomed into a word, every word that slotted piece by piece into a blessing with the same kavanah or intention as if he was saying his own name. His true name the one She gave him before they saddled him with all that Crawly shit.
He meant it, and it hurt but he barely felt it through the raw righteous spite that carried him through the whole two-hour service.
Oskar kept to himself mostly though Crowley caught him watching him multiple times
“Have you got to say Kaddish for anyone, Oskar?” he asked when the time came for such things.
He shrugged. “Yeah, But I don’t count. I’m eleven. I’m not bar mitzvah yet.”
Crowley rolled his eyes behind his glasses. “You count, how else are you gonna learn how to say it by thirteen? Come on I’ll say it with you. Who are you saying it for?”
The boy looked away mumbling.
“What was that?” Crowley asked, aware that others were starting to stand and recite at their own pace.
“Meyn mameh, meyn tateh an meyn bruder Yosef.”
This answer, Oskar mumbled in Yiddish starting at the same point on the pew in front of him so his voice wouldn’t crack, was the flame to the candle wick inside of Crowley.
He offered the child his hand and they stood together to recite the prayer, sharing a siddur between them.
It was a flame that burned through the blessings of the final Aleinu.
He was still burning up in quiet fury when he returned Oskar to the young woman who he came with who introduced herself as his elder sister Sara, herself more or less a still child at only sixteen.
From what he could ascertain from talking briefly to her before kiddish was that she and Oskar had made it to London about six years earlier from Austria as Kindertransport to live with their mother’s brother and his wife who had no children of their own.
They hadn’t heard from their parents and elder brother since. But Oskar had said Kaddish Yatom for them. He may have been eleven but he wasn’t naïve.
Crowley said goodbye to Oskar and Sara after downing kiddish wine like it was water and wished them both a gut shabbos, he then proceeded to go to the nearest bottle shop that was open to try and quench the flame.
Aziraphale came home from a lovely pub brunch with the ladies of the local WAAF Book Club expecting to settle down with a cup of tea and a biscuit and maybe have a flick through the T.S Eliot play he’d been perusing the night before. These plans, however, were quickly mislaid on account of the demon half-lying half-sitting on their closed bookshop floor. Completely inebriated.
Aziraphale took a moment to survey the scene. If he was just drunk Crowley could sober up so either he didn’t want to or...
“Crowley! oh my dear boy! What’s happened to you are you hurt? Are you...ill?” Aziraphale dumped his satchel and coat hurriedly aside and rushed over to the other man.
Crowley grinned blearily up at him from the floor with a wince of pain.
“Hullo, angel. Don’t worry about me. I’m great, I’m absolutely kicking arse.” He said before completely slipping down and out lying like a starfish on the bookshop hardwood floor.
“Yes, yes, dear...” the angel soothed pulling his glasses off his face with a tender hand and placing them neatly on the end table. “Whose, um, posterior are you kicking exactly?” He asked, a hand to the demon’s forehead searching for some type of flush or fever.
Could demons even get fevers? Aziraphale certainly didn’t. The only thing he could think of that he’d personally be susceptible to would be consuming something damned.
Which meant for Crowley that was anything blessed…
Oh, Oh dear.
“Crowley?” He murmured his voice timorous and soft with concern. A hand on his cheek. A hand in his head.
“The game is Chillul HaShem and I’m winning, angel,” Crowley said with all the smug fury of a literal demon who had drunk four bottles of blessed kiddish wine out of unchecked Jewish spite and just a little bit of trauma.
And with that odd little bit of blasphemy, he promptly went unconscious.
“Oh.” Said Aziraphale. “Oh bugger.”
He stood there for a full minute crouched down low to check his friend was still breathing and in fact, quite obviously snoring.
“I suppose I’ll set you up on the couch then, you silly old devil.” He whispered fondly.
If demons could dream Crowley would have dreamt of winning an argument with G-d. But then again, if demons could dream, well that’s exactly what She would want him to dream of.