Servant of the Bones

  " 'I won't give you cause,' said Cyrus. 'Turn your hatred from me. It wounds me. I can feel it.'

  " 'So can I,' I said. 'And it feels divine to hate! To be angry! To destroy!'

  "I took a step towards him.

  "He didn't move an inch. He stared at me, and I felt myself gently transfixed, unable to do anything really but look into his eyes. I didn't try very hard to oppose him, but I felt his domination, rooted in fearlessness and victory, and I stood still.

  " 'Trust in me, Azriel, for today you made me King of the World, and I will see that you are taken to the Magus who will teach you all a spirit can be taught.'

  " 'King of the World? Did I do that for you, beautiful man?' I asked. I shook myself all over. Of course, I knew him. I knew the drama. The lion's breath.

  "But then I didn't. I knew nothing.

  "Marduk spoke up, but by now Marduk was merely a spirit standing there, friendly and good.

  " 'Azriel, do you know who I am?'

  " 'A friend, a spirit friend?'

  " 'What more?'

  "I was anguished. 'I don't remember,' I said. I told him that I could remember the cauldron, murdering that nameless priest and the dead old woman. I knew the King. I knew him. But I couldn't really remember. I caught the sudden scent of roses. I looked down and saw the floor was littered with petals.

  " 'Give them to him,' said Cyrus, pointing to the petals as he spoke to the harlot.

  "And the sweet gentle harlot gathered up the petals in handfuls.

  " 'Put them in the casket for me,' I said. 'What is this city? Where are we?'

  " 'Babylon,' said Cyrus.

  " 'And you are sending me to Miletus to a great wizard. I must know and remember his name.'

  " 'He'll call you,' said Cyrus.

  "I took one last look at them. I walked to the windows which were open to the river and I looked out and I thought, What a beautiful city this is, it is so filled with burning lights tonight, and so much laughter and merriment.

  "Without raising my voice, I dissolved my form once more, raging at the souls as they surrounded me and plunged again into the velvet blackness, only this time I could smell the roses, and with the roses there came a memory, a memory of a procession, and people cheering and crying, and waving, and a handsome man singing with a beautiful voice, and petals tossed so high they showered down on us, on our shoulders...but the memory faded.

  "I was not to remember these moments, these things, what I have told here for two thousand years."

  Azriel sat back.

  It was almost daylight.

  He closed his eyes.

  "You have to rest now, Jonathan," he said, "or you'll be sick again, and I must sleep, and I fear what will happen. But I'm tired, tired!"

  "Where are the bones, Azriel?" I asked.

  "That I'll tell you when we wake. I'll tell you everything that happened with Esther, with Gregory and the Temple of the Mind. I'll tell you..."

  He seemed too weary to continue.

  He stood up and then very firmly helped me up from the chair. "You must drink more broth, Jonathan."

  He gave it to me, from a cup by the hearth, and I drank it, and then he helped me into the small bathroom of the cabin and politely he turned his back as I made water, and then he helped me to bed.

  I was shaking badly. My throat was thick, my tongue swollen.

  I could see that he was in great anxiety. The telling of the tale had been an ordeal.

  He must have read my sympathy. "I'll never tell it again to anyone else," he said. "I don't ever want to say it again, I don't ever want to see the boiling cauldron--" His voice dried up.

  He shook his head and his thick hair to wake himself, and then he helped me into the bed. He made me drink more cool water, which was very good.

  "Don't fear for me," I said. "I'm well. Only a little tired, a little weak." I took one last deep drink of water then offered the bottle to him and he drank more deeply. And he smiled.

  "What can I do for you now?" I asked. "You're my guest and my protector."

  "Would you let me sleep beside you?" he said. "As if we were just boys together in the field, so that...that...so that...if the whirlwind comes for me, so that if the souls come, I can reach out and touch your warm hand."

  I nodded. He put me under the covers, and then he climbed in beside me. I turned towards him and he faced away. I put my arm over him. The red velvet robe he wore felt comfortable and thick and warm. I had my arm around him. He went limp, as it were, in the covers, his head deep into the pillow, the big mass of black curls close to my face, and smelling of the clean air outside and the sweet smoke from the fire.

  The sunlight was just creeping under the door. And I could tell by its brightness and the warmth of the room that the snowstorm had slacked off. The fire was healthy. The morning was quiet.

  I woke once at noon.

  I was hot and mumbling and having a horrible dream. He lifted me up and gave me a big drink of cool water. He had put snow in it, and it tasted clean. I drank and drank, and then I lay back down.

  He seemed to shimmer, a figure clad in red with deep black eyes. His beard and hair looked silky, and I thought of all the old texts that tell of ointments and oils and perfumes for hair; his hair was worthy of all that, I thought. There came back to me a panorama of the wall carvings I'd seen all over the world.

  I saw the great Assyrian carvings in the British Museum. I saw the pictures in books. "The black-headed people," that was what the Sumerians had called themselves. And we had come from them, or somehow mingled in them, and I knew now that those strange carvings of bearded kings in robes were nearer to me than European emblems I'd cherished as familiar when in fact they mattered very little at all.

  "You slept well?" I asked, but I was already drifting off.

  "Yes," he said. "You sleep now. I'm going out into the snow to walk. You sleep, you hear me? I'll have your supper for you when you wake."

  8

  In the very late afternoon I awoke. I could tell again by the light beneath the door that we must have a blue sky and a brightly dying sun.

  He wasn't in the house, which was little more than one room. I got up, wrapping my heaviest robe around me, a cashmere robe, and then I looked for him--in the little rooms off the back, the bathroom, the pantry. He wasn't there. I remembered what he said about walking in the snow, but his absence unnerved me.

  Then I stared down at the hearth, and I saw the large pot of broth filled with potatoes and carrots he'd put in it, and that meant I hadn't dreamt all this. Someone had come. I also felt very faintly sick. My head wasn't wondrously clear yet, the way it would feel when the illness was completely flown away.

  I looked down at my feet. I had on thick wool socks with leather soles. He must have put these on me. I went to the door. I had to find him, find out where he was. I was in terror suddenly that he was gone. Utter terror.

  I was in utter terror for a whole series of reasons, and I don't know what they were.

  I put on my big boots, and my greatcoat, which is an enormous bulky garment, weighing a ton and made to cover the thickest sweaters, and then I opened the door.

  The dying sun was still gleaming on the distant snow of the mountains, but otherwise the light was gone from the sky. The world was gray and white, metallic and growing dim.

  I didn't see him anywhere. The air was still and tolerable as it can be in the worst winter, when for a moment there is no wind. Icicles hung from the roof above me. The snow showed no tracks. It looked fresh, and it wasn't impossibly deep.

  "Azriel!" I called out to him. Why was I so desperate? Did I fear for him? I knew I did. I feared for him, for me, for my sanity, for my wits, for the security and peace of my entire life...

  I shut the door, and walked out some distance from the house. The cold began to hurt my face and hands. This was plain stupid and I knew it. The fever would come back. I couldn't stay out here.

  I called to him several times, and heard nothing.
It was a beautiful snow-laden scene around me in the dusk. The firs wore their snow with dignity, and the evening stars were beginning to shine. The sun had gone. But it was twilight.

  I noticed the car some distance away; I had been looking at it all this time, more or less, but had not noticed it because it was all covered with snow. A thought came to me. I hurried to the car, realizing that my feet were already numb, and I opened up the back of it.

  There was an old television set there, a portable, the kind they make for fishermen to take on boats. It had a tiny screen, and it was long and with a built-in handle, rather like a giant flashlight. It ran on D-cell batteries. I hadn't used it in years. I picked it up, closed the Jeep, and ran back to the house.

  As soon as I shut the door, I felt like a traitor to him. I felt as if I wanted to spy upon the world he'd spoken of--the Belkin world, the ugly, ugly world of terrorism and disgusting violence spawned by the Temple of the Mind.

  I shouldn't need this, I thought. Well, perhaps it won't even work. I sat down by the fire, took off my boots, and warmed my hands and feet. Stupid, stupid, I thought, but I wasn't shivering. Then I went to the big stash of batteries and I filled up the little television, which I held by its handle, and brought it back so that I could sit in my chair.

  Pulling up the aerial, I turned the dial. I had never used this thing here. It had been in the car forever. If I'd remembered it before I had left, I would not have taken it out.

  But in a boat I'd used it, fishing five summers ago, and now, as then, it worked. It brought in flashes of black and white, zigzag lines, and then finally a "news voice," very distinct, with the authority of a network, summing up the latest events.

  I turned up the volume. The picture danced and wiggled and then flipped, but the voice was coming clear. War in the Balkans had taken another terrible turn. Shells heaved into Sarajevo had killed people in a hospital. In Japan, the cult leader had been arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. A murder had happened in a nearby town. It went on and on, the packing of fact into swift crisp sentences...the picture was steadying. I saw an anchorwoman, a news face, not distinct, but I could focus now more clearly on the voice.

  "...horrors of the Temple of the Mind continue. All members in the Bolivian temple are now dead, having set fire to the compound themselves rather than surrender to international agents. Meanwhile, arrests of Gregory Belkin's followers continue in New York."

  I was excited. I picked up the little thing and held it close to look at it. I saw blurry fast coverage of those arrested, handcuffed, and chained.

  "...enough poisonous gas in New York City alone to have killed the entire population. Meantime, Iranian authorities have confirmed to the United Nations that all members of Belkin's Temple are in custody, however the question of extradition of the Belkin terrorists to the United States will, according to officials, take considerable time. In Cairo, it has been confirmed that all Belkin's followers have surrendered to authorities. All chemicals in their possession have been impounded."

  More pictures, faces, men, shooting, fire, horrid fire reduced to a tiny flash of black and white in my hands. Then the bright face of the newswoman, and a change of tone, as she looked directly in the eyes of the camera and into mine.

  "Who was Gregory Belkin? Were there in fact twin brothers, Nathan and Gregory, as those closest to the mogul-cult leader suspect? Two bodies remain, one buried in the Jewish cemetery, the other in the Manhattan morgue. And though the remnants of the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, founded by Belkin's grandfather, refuse to talk to authorities, the coroner's office continues to investigate the two men."

  The woman's face vanished. Azriel appeared. A photograph of him, coarse and remote, but unmistakable.

  "Meantime the man accused of the murder of Rachel Belkin, the man who might in fact be deeply involved in the entire conspiracy, is still at large."

  Then came a series of still pictures, obviously gleaned from video surveillance cameras--Azriel beardless and without his mustache walking through the lobby of a building; Azriel in the crowd crying out over the body of Esther Belkin. Azriel in close-up, beardless without his mustache, staring directly in front of him as he went through a door. There was a string of shots, almost too blurry to mean anything, obviously taken from other surveillance cameras, including one of the beardless Azriel walking with Rachel Belkin herself, mother of Esther, wife of Gregory, or so the commentator informed me. Of Rachel, all I saw was a slender body, impossibly high-heel shoes, and mussed hair. But there was Azriel, no doubt.

  I was enthralled.

  The face of a bald male official, also suffering in freezing weather, probably that of Washington, D.C., appeared suddenly with the reassuring assertion:

  "There is no reason at all to fear the Temple or its grandiose schemes. Every single location has been either raided by police, burned during the raid by its own members, or thoroughly cleared, with all members under lock and key. As for the mysterious man, we have no eyewitnesses to him at all after the night of Rachel Belkin's death, and he may very well have perished in the New York Temple along with hundreds of others during the fire that lasted a full twenty-four hours before police could get it under control."

  Another man, even more authoritarian and perhaps angry, took the microphone. "The Temple is neutralized; the Temple has been stopped; even as we speak, banking connections are being investigated and arrests have already been made in the financial communities of Paris, London, and New York."

  There was a crash of static, of glittering white lights on the little screen. I shook the tiny television. The voice talked again, but this time it was about a terrorist bomb in South America, about drug lords, about trade sanctions against Japan. I put down the little thing. I turned it off. I might have cruised a while for another channel, but I had had enough.

  I coughed a couple of times, caught off guard by how deep the cough sounded and by how much it hurt me, and then I tried to remember: Rachel Belkin. Rachel Belkin murdered. That had happened only days after Esther Belkin. Rachel Belkin in Miami. Murdered.

  Twins. I remembered the picture Azriel had shown to me--the Hasid with the beard and locks and the silk hat.

  From some giant filing system in my mind it came to me that Rachel Belkin had been the socialite wife of Gregory, a conspicuous critic of his Temple, and the only time I had even noticed the woman's name, reputation, or existence is when I'd caught a fragment of the funeral of Esther. And the cameras had followed her mother to a black car, voices clamoring for her opinions. Had Belkin's enemies killed her daughter? Was it a Middle Eastern terrorist plot?

  A wave of dizziness came over me. It threatened to get worse. I put down the television and went back to the bed. I lay down. I was tired and thirsty. I covered up, then sat up enough to drink more of the water. I drank it and drank it and drank it and then lay back and I thought.

  What seemed real was not the television set and its cryptic reports.

  What seemed real was this room, and the way the fire danced, and that he had been here. And what seemed real was the image of the cauldron filled with boiling liquid and the unspeakable, unimaginable idea of being cast into such a thing. Cast into boiling liquid. I closed my eyes.

  Then I heard him singing again:

  "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." I heard myself singing it.

  "Come back, Azriel, come back! Tell me what else happened!" I said, and then I slept.

  The sound of the door opening woke me. It was completely dark outside now, and it was deliciously warm in the room. All the chill was gone out of my bones.

  I saw a figure standing by the hearth looking down at the flames. I let out a little cry before I could catch myself. Not exactly manly or courageous.

  But a steam rose from the figure, or a mist, and the figure appeared to be Gregory Belkin, to have that man's head at least and hair, and then to be shifting back into the massive curls of Azriel, and Azriel's scowl. Anothe
r attempt was made. A putrid smell filled the room, as foul as the smell in a morgue. Then it grew faint.

  Azriel, restored to himself, was there, with his back to me. He spread out his arms and he said something that was probably Sumerian but I don't know. He called for something, and the something was a sweet fragrance.

  I blinked. I could see rose petals in the air. I felt them fall on my face. The morgue smell was gone.

  Before the fire, he stretched out his arms again and he changed; it was a pale image of Gregory Belkin; it flickered, and at once his own form swallowed it. And he let down his arms with a sigh.

  I climbed out of bed and went to the tape recorder.

  "May I turn it on?" I said.

  I looked up and saw him in the full light of the fire now, and I realized he was wearing a suit of blue velvet trimmed in an old gold motif around the collar, the ends of the sleeves, and the pant legs. He wore a thick belt of the same color embroidered in gold and his face looked slightly older than it had before.

  I stood up and came close to him as politely as I could. What had changed, precisely? Well, his skin was slightly darker, like that of a man who lived in the sun, and his eyes definitely bore more detail, the lids having softened and become less than perfect and perhaps more beautiful. I could see the pores of his skin and the small random hairs, dark, fine, at the edges of his hair.

  "What do you see?" he asked.

  I sat down, near to the tape recorder. "Everything is a little bit darker and more detailed," I said.

  He nodded. "I can no longer summon the shape of Gregory Belkin at will. As for the semblance of anyone else, I cannot hold it very long. I am not a scientist enough to understand it. Someday it will be understood. It will have to do with particles and vibration. It will have to do with things mundane."

  I was in a fury of curiosity.

  "Have you tried to take any other form, the form of someone you like perhaps a little more than Gregory Belkin?"

  He shook his head. "I can make myself ugly if I want to frighten you, but I don't want to be ugly. I don't want to frighten anyone. Hate has abandoned me, and it's taken some power with it, I imagine. I can work tricks. Watch this."