Servant of the Bones (18 page)

“You pay attention to those people?”

“Of course. I have no fear of death. I hope that my light will rejoin the light of God, but perhaps it won’t. But I pay attention, lots of attention to what others believe. This isn’t an age of indifference, though it may seem so.”

“Yes, I agree with you,” he said. “It’s a practical, pragmatic time, when decency is the prime virtue—you know, decent clothes, decent shelter, decent food—”

“Yes,” I said.

“But it’s also a time of great luxurious spiritual thinking, maybe the only time when such thinking carries no penalty, for after all, one can preach anything and not be dragged away in chains. There is no Inquisition in the heart of anyone.”

“No, there’s an Inquisition, alive in the hearts of all fundamentalists of all sects, but they don’t in most parts of the world have the power to drag away the prophet or the blasphemer. That’s what you’ve observed.”

“Yes,” he said.

There was a pause.

He sat up, obviously refreshed and willing to talk again. He turned slightly towards me, his left elbow back a bit, his arm outstretched on the arm of the chair. The gold on the blue velvet ran in loops and circles, which no doubt had a venerable history as a pattern, perhaps even a name. It was thick gold thread. It was twinkling in the light of the fire.

He glanced at the tapes. I made the gesture that we were all ears, all of us, the tapes and me.

“Cyrus kept his word,” he said, with a shrug. “To everyone. He kept his word to my father’s family, to the Hebrews of Babylon. Those Hebrews that wanted to, and not all did, by the way, but those that wanted to, went back to Zion and rebuilt the temple and the Persians were never cruel to Palestine. Trouble came only centuries later with the Romans, as we’ve said. And you know too that many, many Jews stayed in Babylon and they studied there and wrote the Talmud there, and Babylon was a place of great learning until some horrible day in later centuries when it was burnt and then destroyed. But that came much later. I wanted to tell you first of the two masters who taught me everything that would be of use.”

I nodded. He let a silence fall and I didn’t disturb it.

I looked into the fire, and for a moment I felt a dizziness, as if the pace of life, my heart, my breath, the world itself, had gradually slowed. The fire was made of wood I hadn’t brought here. The fire was full of cedar as well as oak and other wood. It was perfumed and crackling, and for a moment I thought again that perhaps I was dead, that this was some kind of mental stage. I could smell incense, and a feeling of ineffable happiness came over me. I knew I was sick. I had a pain in my chest and my throat, but these things were of no importance at all. I merely felt happy. What if I am dead, I thought.

“You’re alive,” he said in a soft, even voice. “May the Lord God Bless you and Keep you.” He was watching me. He said nothing. “What is it, Azriel?” I asked.

“Only that I like you,” he said. “Forgive me. I knew your books, I loved them, but I didn’t know…that I would like you. I foresee now what my existence is going to be…I see something of what God has planned, but never mind on that. We talk of the past, not God and the future…”

N
ow, I begin the story of my two masters and what they taught me. And I assure you that this will be the briefest part of my tale. I am eager to get on to the present. But I want this known and written down by you, if you will be so kind. So…

“Zurvan announced himself to me dramatically. As I told you, I had gone into the bones. I was in darkness and sleep. There was an awareness in me, and there always is, but I can’t express it in words, this awareness. Perhaps I am like a tablet in my sleep upon which history is being written. But that image is too clumsy and concrete.

“I slept, I knew neither fear nor pain. I certainly didn’t feel trapped. I didn’t know what I was or where. Then Zurvan called me:

“ ‘Azriel, Servant of the Bones, come to me, invisible, your tzelem only, fly with all your might.’ I felt I had been sucked up into the sky. I flew towards the voice that called me and as before, I saw the air full of spirits, spirits in all directions, and spirits through which I moved with great determination, trying not to hurt them, yet deeply dismayed by their cries and the look of desperation in their faces.

“Some of these spirits even grabbed onto me and tried to stop me. But I had my command, and I threw them off with wondrous strength, which made me laugh and laugh.

“When I saw the city of Miletus below me, it was midday; the air was clearing of spirits as I neared the earth, or at least I was now moving at a different rate of speed and they weren’t
visible lo me. Miletus lay on its peninsula, the first Ionic or Greek colonial city that I had ever beheld.

“It was beautiful and spacious, containing wondrous open areas and colonnades and all the perfection of Greek art even at that early age. The agora, the palaestra, the temples, the amphitheater…it seemed all of it to be like a hand open to catch the summer breeze.

“And on three sides of it was the deep sea, filled with Greek and Phoenician and Egyptian merchant ships, and the harbor swarming with traders and with long lines of slaves in chains.

“The lower I dropped, the more I saw the beauty of it, which of course was not entirely unfamiliar to me in Babylon, but to see a city with so much splendid marble, to see it white and shining and not barricaded against the desert winds, that was the spectacle. It was a city where people went outdoors to talk and walk and gather and do the business of the day, and the heat was not unendurable, and the desert sands did not come.

“Into the house of Zurvan I came immediately and found him sitting at his desk with a letter in his hand.

“He was Persian, maybe I should say Median, black-haired, though with plenty of gray on his head and in his beard, though not too old, and with large blue eyes that looked up at me at once, perceiving my invisible shape perfectly, and then he said,

“ ‘Ah, make yourself flesh; you know how to do it. Do it now!’

“This was exactly the tack to take, I guess, because I took great pride in calling for a body. And I didn’t really know any words then other than what had been on the tablet. But I had the body made and well made within seconds, and he sat back laughing with delight, his knee up, looking at me. I suppose I looked as I do now.

“I remember being too astonished by this lovely Greek house with its courtyard and doors open everywhere, and paintings on the wall of slender, big-eyed Greek persons in sinewy flowing garments that made me think of Egypt, but were definitely Ionic, unto themselves.

“He put his foot down on the floor, turned his folded arms, and then stood up. He was dressed in the looser, more naked Greek manner of clothing without fitted sleeves as we always wore, and he wore sandals. He studied me fearlessly as my father might have studied a piece of the silversmith’s craft.

“ ‘Where are your fingernails, spirit?’ he asked. ‘Where is the hair on your face? Where are your eyelashes! Be quick! Hereafter you need only say “Bring to me all those details which I require at this moment” and nothing more. Fix an image and you’ve finished your work. That’s it. That’s it.’

“He clapped his hands.

“ ‘Now you are plenty complete enough for what you have to do. Sit there. I want to see you move about, walk, talk, lift your arms. Go on, sit down.’

“I did. It was a Greek chair, graceful with high arms and no back. Everywhere around me the light seemed glorious and different; outside, the clouds were piled higher. The air was clearer.

“ ‘That’s because you are on the shores of the sea,’ he said. ‘Do you feel the water in the air, spirit? That will always aid you. That is why the addle-headed ghosts of the dead and the demons like damp places, they need the water, the sound of it, the smell of it, the coolness creeping into them, in whatever form they possess.’

“He made a long stroll about the room. Arrogantly I just sat there, showing him no respect. He didn’t seem to care.

“A Babylonian or Persian full suit would have been more flattering to him with his thin old legs and feet. But it was too warm.

“I drifted from looking at him. I was marveling at the mosaic floor. Our own floors at home had often been as colorful and as well crafted, but this floor was not full of stiff rosettes or processional figures, but with frolicking dancers and great clusters of grapes for ornament, and there was every kind of inlaid marble around its borders. The designs were fluid and jubilant. I thought of all the Greek vases I had handled in the marketplace, and how I had loved their graceful work. The murals on the walls were equally lovely and lively,
and there were the repeated bands of color which utterly delighted my eye.

“He stopped in the middle of the room. ‘So we admire the beautiful, do we?’ I didn’t answer him. Then he said: ‘Speak, I want to hear your voice.’

“ ‘And what shall I say?’ I answered without rising. ‘What I want to say? Or what you tell me to say? What my true thoughts are, or some servile nonsense—that I am your spirit-slave!’

“I broke off suddenly. I lost all confidence in myself. I realized I didn’t know quite why I was saying these things. I struggled to remember. I had been sent to this man. This man was a great magician. This man was supposed to be a Master of his craft. I was a Servant. Who had made me that?

“ ‘Don’t make yourself dissolve with all this petty worry,’ he said. ‘You speak well and clearly, that’s what I wanted to know, and you think, and you are most powerful. You are perhaps the greatest angel of might I’ve ever seen, and nothing I’ve ever conjured has had your strength.’

“ ‘Who sent me? It was a King,’ I said, ‘But my mind is muddled suddenly, and it’s agony not to know.’

“ ‘It’s the trap of spirits, it’s what keeps them weak, it’s the hobbling of them provided by God, you might say, so that they don’t ever gain strength enough to hurt men and women too much. But you know who sent you. Think! Make yourself come up with the answer. You are going to start remembering things now, you are going to start paying attention. And first, let go of the raging scream in you. I had nothing to do with those who hurt you and killed you. And I suspect there was much bungling to the whole affair, which a weaker spirit than you might never have overcome. But you did overcome it. And the man who sent you? He did as you asked him to do, remember? He did what you asked.’

“ ‘Ah, yes, King Cyrus, he did send me to Miletus as I asked.’ It came clear and it was all the more clear when I tried to let the anger pass from me like so much air out of my lungs. I even felt my lungs. I felt myself breathe.

“ ‘Don’t waste your time on that,’ he said. ‘Remember the
questions I put to you? Your fingernails? Your eyelashes? Details that are visible. You need no inside organs. Your spirit fills up the perfect shell that you are, which no one can tell from a real man. Don’t waste your strength making hearts for yourself, or blood or lungs, just to feel human. That’s stupid and foolish. Only now and then you’ll need to make a little blood flow from your body. That’s nothing, but don’t go hungering after your human form. You’re better now!’

“ ‘Am I?’ I asked, still slouching in the chair, ankle on my knee, as this older wiser man put up with my arrogance. ‘Am I good, or am I something to do evil? You said angel of might. I heard the King use those words. But then he also said demon. Or was it someone else?’

“He stood in the middle of the room, rocking a little, and composed, studying me through narrow eyes.

“ ‘I suspect you will be what you want,’ he said, ‘though others may try to make you what they will. You have such hatred in you, Azriel, such hatred.’

“ ‘You’re right. I do hate. I see a boiling cauldron and I feel terror and then hate.’

“ ‘Nobody’s ever going to be able to hurt you like that again. And remember, you rose above the cauldron, did you not? Did you feel the scalding gold!’

“I shuddered all over. I gave way to tears. I can’t even stand to talk now of it, and I didn’t want to talk to him. ‘I felt it for an instant,’ I said, ‘one instant I felt it and what it would mean to remain in it and die in that pain. I felt it…I felt it piercing through some covering on me, some thick numbing armor, but where it hurt me…was my eyes.’