Servant of the Bones

  "God guides in all this?" I asked derisively.

  "I will guide things as I think God wants me to," he answered. "Who can do better?"

  "You would seduce me to love you, wouldn't you? You are so used to love, love from people who open your doors and pour your drink and drive your car..."

  "I have to have it," he whispered. "I have to have the love and recognition of millions. I love it. I love it when the camera shines on me. I love when I see my grand scheme ever expanding."

  "Well, maybe you won't get it from me for very long. Before I ever saw Esther die, I was damned tired of being a ghost! I'm tired of serving masters. I don't see any reason for me to do what it says on the casket!"

  Anger again. Heat. But it was no more than might come from the body of a man.

  I stared at the casket. I ran back my own words through my head. Had I said such a bold thing? Yes, I had, and it had been true, and it had been no curse or supplication to anyone.

  Silence. If he said anything I didn't hear him. I heard something, but it was a cry of pain, or worse. What's worse than pain? Panic? I heard a cry that was right between the ultimate agony one can feel and the madness which is about to obliterate all sense of it. I heard a fine scream, you might say, right there between the light and the dark, like a vein of ore on a horizon.

  "You saw your own murder?" He was talking to me. "Azriel, perhaps now you will come to see the reason for it."

  I could hear the fire beneath the cauldron. I could smell the potions thrown into the boiling gold!

  I couldn't answer. I knew that I had, but to speak it, to think on it, was to realize and remember too much. I couldn't. I had tried before. I had memory upon memory of trying to remember and not being able to remember at all.

  "Listen, you miserable creature," I said to him in a fury. "I've been here forever. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I don't remember. Maybe I was murdered. Maybe I was never born. But I am forever and I'm tired. I'm sick to death of this half death! I'm sick of all things that stop short of the full measure!"

  I was flushed. My eyes were wet. The clothes felt rich and embracing, and it was good to fold my arms, to clutch at my shoulders with my crossed hands, and to look up suddenly and see the faintest shadow of the tangle of my own hair, to be alive, even flooded with this pain.

  "Oh, Esther. Who were you, my darling?" I asked aloud. "What did you want of me?"

  He was enrapt and silent.

  "You ask the wrong person," he said, "and you know you do. She doesn't want vengeance. What can I do to convince you, you were destined for me?"

  "Tell me what you want of me. I am to witness something? What? Another murder?"

  "Yes, let's proceed. You have to come with me into my secret office. You have to see the maps for yourself. All the plans."

  "And I'll forget about her death, forget about avenging her?"

  "No, you'll see why she died. For great empires somebody must die."

  This sent a rivet of pain through my chest. I bent forward.

  "What is it?" he asked. "What good would it do to avenge the death of one girl? If you're an avenging angel, why don't you walk out there in the streets? There are deaths happening now. You can avenge them. Come out of the pages of a comic book! Kill bad guys. Go ahead. Do it till you're tired of it, the way you're tired of being a ghost. Go on."

  "Oh, you are one fearless man."

  "And you're one tenacious spirit," he said.

  We stood glaring at one another.

  He spoke first:

  "Yes, you are strong, but you're also stupid."

  "Say this to me again?"

  "Stupid. You know and you don't know. And you know I'm right. You gather your knowledge from the air, the way you do the matter that creates your clothing, even your flesh perhaps, and the knowledge rains on you too fast. You are confused. Is that the better word? I can hear it in your questions and your answers. You long for the clarity you feel when you talk to me. But you're afraid that you need me. Gregory is necessary for you. You wouldn't kill me or do what I don't want."

  He drew in closer, eyes growing wide.

  "Know this thing first before you learn any more," he said. "I have everything in the world a man could want. I am rich. I have money beyond counting. You were right. I have money the Pharaohs never had, nor the Emperors of Rome, or even the most powerful wizard who ever bombarded you with his Sumerian poetry! The Temple of the Mind of God I invented, whole and entire and worldwide. I have millions of followers. Do you know what the word means? Millions? What does this mean? It means this, Spirit. What I want is what I want! Not some fancy, or longing, or need! It's what I want, a man who has everything."

  He looked me up and down.

  "Are you worthy of me?" he demanded. "Are you? Are you part of what I want and what I'll have? Or should I destroy you? You don't think I can. Let me try. Others have gotten rid of you. I could get rid of you. What are you to me when I want the world, the whole world! You're nothing!"

  "I will not serve you," I said. "I won't even stay here with you."

  He had been all too right. I was beginning to love him and there was something deeply horrible in him, something fiercely destructive which I'd never encountered in any human.

  I turned my back on him. I didn't have to understand the loathing I felt or the rage. He was abhorrent to me and that was enough. I had no reason now, only pain, only anger.

  I went to the casket, opened the lid, and looked down at the grinning skull of gold that had been me and still had me somehow, like a flask has its liquid. I took the casket up into my arms.

  He came after me, but before he could stop me I carried the casket and its loose cover to the marble hearth. I shoved it noisily on the pyre of wood, and watched the sticks tumble as the heap shifted to receive it. The lid fell to one side.

  He stood right beside me, studying me, and then looking down at it. We were looking to the side at each other, each of us, to the side of the hearth.

  "You wouldn't dare to burn it," he said.

  "I would if I had a bit of flame," I said. "I would bring flame, only if I bring flame I may hurt that woman, and those others who don't deserve it--"

  "Never mind, my bumbling one."

  My heart pounded. Candles. There were no burning candles in this room.

  There came a snap. I saw the light in my eye. He held a tiny burning stick, a match.

  "Here, take it," he said. "If you're so sure."

  I took the stick from him. I cradled the flame in my fingers. "Oh, this is so pretty," I said, "and so warm. Oh, I feel it..."

  "It's going to go out if you don't hurry. Light the fire. Light the crumpled paper there. The fire's built up. The boys do it. It's made to roar up the chimney. Go ahead. Burn the bones. Do it."

  "You know, Gregory," I said, "I can't stop myself from doing it." I bent down and touched the dying flame to the edge of the paper, and at once the paper was laced with flame and rising and collapsing. Little burning bits flew up the chimney. The thin wood caught with a loud crackling sound and the blast of heat came at me. The flames curled up around the casket. They blackened the gold, oh, God! What a sight, the cloth inside caught fire. The lid began to curl.

  I couldn't see my own bones for the flames!

  "No!" He screamed. "No." He reached over, chest heaving, and dragged the casket and the lid out onto the floor, dragging some of the fire with them, but this was only paper fire, and he stamped it out angrily. His fingers were burnt.

  He stood astride the casket and he licked at his fingers. The skeleton had spilt out, into a weak and gangling figure. The bones lay unburnt, smoking, glowing. The lid was charred.

  He dropped to his knees, and drawing a white napkin from his pocket, he beat out all tiny bits of smoldering fire. He was muttering in his annoyance and rage. The lid was blackened but the Sumerian I could still read.

  My bones lay amid ashes.

  "Damn you," he said.

  I had never seen him really angr
y at all, and he was more angry now than most angry people I'd ever seen. He was raging inside, worse than the Rebbe had raged. He glared at me. He glanced down at the casket to make sure it wasn't burning. It wasn't. It was only very slightly scorched.

  "The smell is bitumen," I said.

  "I know what it is," he said. "And I know where it comes from, and I know how it was used." His voice trembled. "So you've proved yourself. You don't care if the bones are burned."

  He climbed to his feet. He brushed off his pants. Ashes fell to the floor. The floor was filthy with ashes. The fire in the fireplace burned on, consuming itself, purposeless, wasted.

  "Let me throw them in the fire," I said. I reached for the skull, and picked up the gangling dead thing.

  "Enough, Azriel. You do me wrong! Don't be so quick! Don't do it!"

  I stopped. That was all it took, and I too was afraid, or the moment had passed. Five minutes after the battle, can you still slice a man in half with a sword? The wind blows. You stand there. He is lying among the dead, but not dead, and he opens his eyes, and murmurs to you thinking you're his friend. Can you kill him?

  "Oh, but if we do it then we will both know," I said. "And I would like to know. Yes, I'm afraid, but I want to know. You know what I suspect?"

  "Yes. That this time it doesn't matter about the bones!"

  "Not even," he said, "if they are crushed to powder with a mortar and pestle." I didn't reply.

  "The bones have completed their journey, my friend," he said. "The bones have come down to me! This is my time, and your time. This is what is meant. If we burnt the bones, and you were still here, solid, and beautiful and strong--impertinent and sarcastic, yes, but still here as you are now, able to breathe and see and wind yourself with shrouds of velvet--would that deliver you into my hands? Would you acknowledge the destiny?"

  We glared at one another. I didn't want to take the chance. I didn't even want to think of the whirlwind of the restless dead. The words came back to me, the words engraved on the casket. I shivered, in terror of being formless, impotent, wandering, knocking against spirits I knew were everywhere. I did nothing.

  He went down on his knees, and he gathered up the casket and the lid, then rose, one knee at a time, walked over to the table, gently laid down the casket, put the burnt shriveled lid on top of it, carefully, and then he sat down on the floor, leaning against his table, legs sprawled, but looking remarkably formal still in his seamed and buttoned clothes.

  He looked up. I saw his teeth flash, and bite. I think he bit down on his lip to his own blood.

  He stood up and ran at me.

  He came so fast, it was like a dancer leaping to catch another, and though he stumbled, he caught me with both his hands, around my neck, and I felt his thumbs press against me, and I hated it and ripped his arms away. He smacked my face hard this way and that and drove his knee into my abdomen. He knew how to fight. With all his polish and money, he knew the dancing way to fight, like the Orientals.

  I backed away from these blows, barely hurt, only amazed at his grace, and how he reared back now and kicked me full in the face, sending me many paces back.

  Then came his worst blow, elbow rising, hand straight, the arm swinging around to knock me backwards.

  I caught his arm, and twisted it so that he went down on his knees with a snarl of rage. I pushed him flat to the carpet and held him pinned with my foot.

  "You're no match for me in that realm," I said. I stepped back and offered him my hand.

  He climbed to his feet. His eyes never moved from me. Not for one second had he really forgotten himself. I mean, even in these failed attempts he held a dignity and lust for the struggle and for winning it, too.

  "All right," he said. "You've proven yourself. You aren't a man, you're better than a man, stronger. Your soul's as complex as my soul. You want to do right, you have some fixed and foolish notion of right."

  "Everybody has a fixed and foolish notion of right," I answered softly. I was humbled. And I did at that moment feel doubt, doubt of anything except that I was enjoying this, and the enjoyment seemed a sin. It seemed a sin that I should breathe. But why, what had I done? I determined not to look anymore into memory. I pushed the images away, the same ones I've described to you, Samuel's face, the boiling cauldron, all of it. I just said, Be done with it Azriel!

  I stood in the room vowing from then on to solve this mystery there and then with no looking back.

  "You're flattered that I said you had a soul, aren't you?" he asked. "Or is it merely that you're relieved that I recognize such a thing? That I don't consider you a demon like my grandfather did. That's what he did, right? He banished you from his sight, as if you had no soul."

  I was speechless with wondering, and with longing. To have a soul, to be good, to mount the Stairs to Heaven. The purpose of life is to love and better know the beauty and intricacy of all things.

  He sat down on the velvet hassock, He was out of breath. I had been slow to realize this. I wasn't out of breath at all.

  I was hot all over again, with a thin sweat, but I was not soiled yet. And of course some of what I had been saying to him was bluff and lies.

  I didn't want to go into darkness or nothingness. I couldn't even bear the thought of it. A soul, to think I might truly have a soul, a soul that could be saved...

  But I wasn't serving him! This plan, I had to know what it was; the world, how did he mean to get it when armies fought each other all over it? Did he mean the spiritual world?

  There were voices in the hall. I could pick out the mother's voice easily, but he ignored it, just as if this were nothing. He only looked at me, and marveled at me, and pondered what I had said.

  He was radiant in his curiosity and in what he had allowed to happen here without fear.

  "You see how it lures me," I said. "The marble, the carpet, the breeze through the windows. Being alive, the great lure."

  "Yes, and there's me to know and love, too, and I lure you."

  "Yes, you do," I said. "And something tells me that life has lured me in the past, lured me to serve evil men and men I can't recall. I am lured each time by life itself and flesh itself and when there comes a moment and the door opens to Heaven, and I cannot go through. I'm not allowed to go through. My Masters may go through. Their beautiful daughters may go through. Esther may go through. But I don't go through."

  He drew in his breath. "You've seen the Door to Heaven?" he asked calmly.

  "As surely as you've seen a ghost appear to you," I said.

  "So have I," he said. "I've seen the Door to Heaven. And I've seen Heaven here on earth. Stay with me, stay with me, and I swear to you when the door opens, I'll take you with me. You'll be deserving of it."

  The voices came loudly from the hall. But I looked at him, trying to answer what he said. He seemed as resolute, as without conflict, as determined and courageous as he had been before our fight.

  The voices were too loud to be ignored. The woman was angry. Others talked to her as if she were a fool. It was all far away. Beyond the windows lay the black night with the lights of New York so bright that the sky itself was reddened like the dawn coming when there was no dawn. The breeze sang.

  I looked down at the box. I could have wept. He had me and the world had me. At least for now, for as long as I would allow it.

  He drew close to me. And I turned, letting him come close, and between us there was a tenderness and a sudden quiet. I looked into his eyes, and I saw the round black circle within his eyes, and I wondered if he saw in my eyes only blackness.

  "You want the body you have now," he said. "You want the body and the power. You were meant to have it. You were meant to be mine, but as of this moment and forever, I respect you. You're no servant to me. You are Azriel."

  He clasped my arm. He raised his hand and clasped the side of my face. I felt his kiss, hot and sweet on my skin. I turned and locked my mouth on his for one instant, and then let him go and his face blazed with love for m
e. Did I feel the same heat for him?

  There was a loud noise from beyond the doors.

  He made a gesture to me, as if to say, be patient, and then I suppose he would have gone to the door, but it opened, and the woman appeared there, the mother with the black-and-silver hair who before had been wrapped in red silk.

  She was sick, but she had groomed and clothed herself in a proper stiff way, and she marched forward. Wet and pale, and trembling, she carried a bundle, a purse, a portmanteau that was too heavy for her.

  "Help me!" she cried. She said this to me! And she looked directly at me. She came up to me, turning her back on him. "You, you help me!"

  She was dressed in gray wool, and the only silk on her was wrapped high around her neck, and her shoes were fancy with raised heels and beautiful straps across her arched feet, so thin, so full of blue veins beneath the skin. She gave off a deep and rich perfume, and the smell of chemicals unknown to me, and of decay and death, very advanced, death all through her, struggling to wrap its tendrils around her heart and brain and make them go to sleep forever.

  "Help me now get out of here!" She grabbed my hand, wet and warm and as seductive as he was.

  "Rachel," said Gregory, biting his tongue. "This is the medicine talking." His voice grew hard. "Go back to your bed."

  Female attendants in white had come into the room, also gawky boys, in stiff servile little coats, but this entire assemblage stood about idle and frightened of her, nurses and lackeys, and waiting upon his every gesture.

  She wrapped her arm around me. She implored me.

  "You help me, please, just to get out of here, help me to the elevator, to the street." She tried to make her words careful and persuasive, and they sounded soft, drunken, and full of misery. "Help me, and I'll pay you, you know that! I want to leave my own house! I am not a prisoner. I don't want to die here! Don't I have the right to die in a place of my own choosing?"

  "Take her back," said Gregory furiously to the others. "Go on, get her out of here and don't hurt her."

  "Mrs. Belkin," cried one of the women. The gawky youths closed in on her like a flock that had to move as one or be scattered.

  "No!" she cried out. Her voice took on youthful strength.

  As the four of them set upon her, all with anxious and tentative hands, she cried out to me: