Servant of the Bones (32 page)

The smell of dust rose in my nostrils. I could see the dust rising beneath the light. I heard the books tumble. Oh, it was sweet to hear with ears and to see with eyes. Don’t weep, Azriel, not in the presence of this man who despises you.

I lifted my fingers to my lips without willing it. I just did it,
natural, as if I were ready to pray in the face of disaster. I felt the hair’ above my mouth, and the thick mass of my beard. I liked it.
Like yours, Rebbe, when you were young?

The old man was rigid, indestructible, superior, and wary.

Gregory stepped out from behind the bookcase, and back into the light.

In his arms he held the casket!

I saw the gold still thick on the cedar. I saw it, and I saw it bound carelessly in chains of iron.

Iron! So they thought that could hold me? Azriel! Iron could hold such a thing as me? I wanted to laugh. But I looked at it, the casket in Gregory’s arms, which he held like an infant, the casket still covered with gold.

A faint memory of its making came back to me, but I did not see anyone clearly in this memory. I only remembered the sunlight on marble and kind words. Love, a world of love, and love made me think again of Esther.

How proud and fascinated Gregory was. He cared nothing that his wool coat was full of dust. That dust was in his hair. He stared down at this thing, this treasure, and he turned to lay it before the old man like an infant.

“No!” The old man raised both hands. “Set it there on the floor and back away from it.”

Bitterly, I smiled.
Don’t defile yourself with it.

He paid no heed to me, but looked down at the casket as Gregory put it on the floor.

“Good God, do you think it will burst into flame?” asked Gregory. Carefully he positioned the casket directly under the light, directly before the old man’s desk. “This is ancient, this writing, this writing isn’t Hebrew, this is Sumerian!” He drew back his hands and rubbed them together.

He was passionate and overcome.

“Rebbe, this is priceless.”

“I know what it is,” said the old man, his eyes moving freely from me to the casket. I did not change. I did not even smile.

Gregory stared rapt at this thing as though it were the Christ
child in the Manger and he were one of those shepherds come to see the Son of God made flesh.

“What is it, Grandfather? What’s written on it?” He touched the iron chains, slowly, as if ready to be commanded by the old man to stop. He touched the links, which were thick and ugly, and he touched a scroll that was tucked beneath the iron chains, where links crossed links.

This I hadn’t seen till now, this scroll, until Gregory’s fingers gently tested the edges of it. The gold of the casket itself blinded me and made the water come up in my eyes. I smelled the cedar and the spices and the smoke that saturated the wood beneath its plating. I smelled the flesh of other humans, and I smelled the perfume of offerings.

My head swam suddenly.

I smelled the bones.

Oh, my own god, who has called me? If only I could see his cheerful face for a minute, my god, my own god. My own god who used to walk with me, the god that each man has unto himself, his own god, as I had seen mine, and if only he would come now!

This wasn’t really memory, you understand, it was a sudden longing without explanation that left me cold and confused.

But I kept thinking of this person, “my god.” Would he laugh? Would he say, “So your god has failed you, Azriel, and even amongst the Chosen, you call to me again? Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t I caution you to escape while you could, Azriel?”

But he wasn’t there, my god, whoever that had ever been, and he wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t at my side, like a friend who’d been walking with me in the cool of the evening along the banks of the river. And he didn’t say those things. But he had been with me once, and I knew it. The past was like a deluge that wanted me to fall into it, and be drowned.

A wild hope grew in me, a hope that made my breath come quickly, and the scents of the room suffocated me in my passion.

Maybe nobody has called you, Azriel! Maybe you have come on your own, and you are your own master! And you
may hate and disregard these two men to your heart’s content!

It was so sweet, this strength, this smile, this seeming joke that I should at last have that power myself. I almost heard my own little laugh. I closed my right fingers over the curls of my beard and tugged ever so gently.

“This scroll is intact, Rebbe,” said Gregory eagerly. “Look, I can slip it out of these chains. Can you read it?”

The old man looked up at me as if I’d spoken.

Do you find me beautiful, old man? I know what you see. I don’t have to see it. It’s Azriel, not made to measure by a Master, not shifted into this or that shape for a Master, but Azriel as God made me once, when Azriel was soul and spirit and body in one
.

The old man glared.
I command you! Don’t show yourself, spirit
.

Do you, indeed, old man, and I hate your cold heart! Some link binds us one to the other, but you are so full of hate and so am I, how are we ever to know if God had his hand in this, for her, for Esther!

Spellbound, he stared at me unable to answer.

Gregory crouched over his trophy, and touched the scroll gingerly and fearfully.

“Rebbe, this alone is worth a fortune,” he said. “Name your price. Let me open the scroll.” He laid his hand suddenly right on the wood, and opened his fingers, in love with this thing.

“No!” said the old man. “Not under my roof.”

I looked into his pale filmy eyes.
I hate you. Do you think I asked to be this thing that I am? Were you ever young? Was your hair ever this black and your lips this ruddy?

He didn’t answer, but he had heard.

“Sit down there,” he said to his grandson, pointing to the nearby leather chair. “Sit there and write the checks I tell you to write. And then this thing—and all I know of it—is yours.”

I almost laughed out loud. So that was it! That was it! He knew I was here and he would sell me to this grandson whom he despised. That would be his awful price for every wrong done him and his God by the grandson. He would put me in
the grandson’s unsuspecting hands. I think I did laugh, but soundlessly, only so that he could see it, see a twinkling in my eye perhaps and a curl to my lip as I sneered at him, and shook my head in reverence for his cleverness, his coldness, his loveless heart.

Gregory backed up, found the chair, and sat down slowly, the old leather peeling and flaking. He was overcome with excitement.

“Name your price.”

My smile must have been bitter, knowing. But I was calm. My old god would have been proud.
Well done, my brave one, fight them! What have you to lose? You think your God is merciful? Listen to what they have in mind for you!
But who spoke those words down the long length of the years? Who spoke them? What was it near me and filled with love that tried to warn me? I stared at Gregory. I would not be distracted, drawn away into the mesh of hurt, I would get to the bottom of this mystery first. My own mystery could wait.

I let the nails of my right fingers dig just a little into the hardened flesh of my palm. Yes, here. You are here, Azriel, whether the old man despises you or not, whether the young man is a murderer and a fool, and whether you are being sold once more as if you had no soul of your own and never had and never would. You are here. Not in the bones which lie in the casket!

I pretended my god was there. We stood together. Hadn’t I done that with other Masters, without ever telling them, just brought my god close up to be near me, but had he ever really come?

In a cloud of smoke, I saw my god turning, weeping for me. It was in a chamber, and the heat rose from a boiling cauldron! My god, help me! But this was an image without a frame. That was something unspeakable that must never be relived! I had to see things here now.

Gregory drew a long leather wallet from his pocket. He opened it on his knee, and with his right hand held a golden pen.

The old man spoke the sums in American dollars. Huge
sums. He gave the parties to whom these checks were to be written. Hospitals, institutions of learning, a company which would then pass the money on to the yeshiva in which the young men of the Court studied Torah. Money would be sent to the Court in Israel. Money would be sent to the new community of the Hasidim who tried to make their own village in the hills not far from this city. The Rebbe spoke all the words with the briefest of explanations.

Without a single question, Gregory began to write, carving the letters into the bank drafts with his sharp, gold pen, then flipping one check up so that he might write another, and another, scrawling his name as mighty men are wont to do.

Gregory finally laid the checks on the desk before the Rebbe. The Rebbe stared at them carefully. He moved them wide apart in a long row, and he studied them and seemed ever so slightly surprised.

“You would give me this much,” the Rebbe asked, “for something about which you know and understand nothing?”

“His name was the last word my daughter spoke.”

“No, you want this thing! You want its power.”

“Why should I believe in its power? Yes, yes, I want it, to see it, to try to figure how she knew about it, and yes, yes, I give those sums.”

“Take the scroll out of the chains, and give it to me.”

Like a boy, Gregory obeyed, so eager. The scroll was not old, not old like the casket of the bones. Gregory put the scroll into the old man’s hand.

Will you wash your hands afterwards?

The Rebbe didn’t acknowledge me. He carefully unrolled the vellum, moving his hands to the left and to the right, so that he had the full writing before him, and then he began to speak, translating the words in English carefully for his grandson to hear:

“ ‘Return this thing to the Hebrews for it is their magic and only they can put it deep into Hell where it belongs. The Servant of the Bones no longer heeds his Master. Old vows no longer bind him. Old charms no longer banish him. Once summoned, he destroys all that he sees. Only the Hebrews know
the meaning of this thing. Only the Hebrews can harness its fury. Give it freely to them.’ ”

Again I smiled. I couldn’t help it. I think I closed my eyes with relief, and then opened them, looking at the old man who looked only at the vellum.

But have I truly come on my own?
I didn’t dare believe it yet. No. There could be some secret to snare me, some trap in which Esther’s death was merely the bait.

The old man sat with the scroll open, staring down at it. He said no more.

Gregory broke the silence.

“Then why haven’t you destroyed it!” He was so excited he could scarcely stand there at attention. “What else does it say! What is the language!”

The old man looked up at him and then at me, and then back to the scroll.

“Listen to what I read now,” said the old man, “because I will translate it for you only once:

“ ‘Woe unto him who destroys these bones, for if it can be done, which is not known even to the wisest, that one should loose into the world a spirit of incalculable power, masterless and ungovernable, doomed to remain in the air forever, unable to mount the Ladder to Heaven, or unlock the gates of Perdition. And who knows what shall be the cruelty of this spirit against God’s children? Are there not demons enough in this world?’ ”

Dramatically, he looked up at his grandson, who evinced only fascination.

Gregory did everything but rub his hands together in greed.

The old man spoke again, slowly.

“My father took it because he felt that he must take it. And now you come to me and you ask for it. Well, it is almost yours.”

The younger man seemed delirious suddenly, or possessed of a divine joy.

“Oh, Rebbe, this is too marvelous, too wondrous,” said Gregory. “But how could she have known, my poor Esther?”

“That’s for you to discover,” said the old man coldly. “For I
cannot possibly know. Never have I called it forth, this spirit, nor would my father. Nor would the Moslem who gave it over into my father’s hands.”

“Give me the scroll. I’ll take it now.”

“No.”

“Grandfather, I want it! Look, the checks are there!”

“And tomorrow the money will be in the bank, will it not? Tomorrow, when the sums are transferred, when the transaction is finished—”

“Grandfather, let me have it now!”

“Tomorrow, then you come to me, and you take it, and it’s yours. And you will be the Master of the Servant of the Bones.”

“You stubborn, impossible old man. You know these checks are good. Give it to me!”

“Oh, you are so anxious!” said the elder.

He looked at me. I could have sworn he would have shared a smile with me had I invited him to do it, but I didn’t.

Then he looked again at his grandson, who was in a paroxysm of frustration, staring at the golden casket at his feet, not daring to touch it, but wanting it so much he groaned.

“Why did you kill her?” the old man said.

“What?”

“Why did you have your daughter killed? I want to know. I should have made that my price!”

“Oh, you’re a fool, all of you are fools, belligerent and superstitious, the idiots of your god!”

The old man was outraged.

“Your temples, Gregory, are the houses of the deceived and the damned,” he said. “But let’s have no more invectives. We know each other. Tomorrow night, when my bankers tell me that your money is in our hands, you come and you take this thing away. And keep the secret. Keep the vow. Tell no one that you are…that you were…my grandson.”

Gregory smiled, shrugged, opened his hands in a gesture of acceptance. He turned to go, never so much as glancing in the direction of where I stood.

He stopped before the door and looked back at his grandfather.

“Tell my brother Nathan for me that I thank him that he called me with his condolences.”

“He didn’t do this!” cried the Rebbe.

“Oh, yes, he did. He called me and spoke to me, and tried to comfort me in my loss, and to comfort my wife.”