Servant of the Bones (36 page)

I saw rows of lighted windows high above.

The doors of the car had been unlocked with a loud distinct click. Now someone meant to open the door to my right and his left. In a split second, I saw a pathway made for him, beneath an awning. Ropes hung from bronze stanchions held back the multitude. There were television cameras bearing down upon us. I saw men in uniforms restraining those who screamed and cheered.

“But can they see you?” Gregory asked now, confidentially, as if we shared a secret.

It was a break in an almost perfect chain of gestures for him. Out of generosity I was tempted to let it go. But I didn’t.

“See for yourself whether or not they can see me, Gregory,” I answered. I reached down and gathered up the casket, and holding it firmly under my left arm, I took a grip of the door handle and stepped over him and out of the car before him onto the sidewalk in the blazing electric light.

I stood on the sidewalk. A great building rose before me. I held the casket of the bones tight to my chest. I could barely see the top of this building.

Everywhere I looked were shouting faces. Everywhere I looked, I looked at those who looked at me. It was a babble of people calling for Gregory, and others calling for blood for Esther, and I couldn’t untangle the prayers.

Cameras and microphones descended; a woman shouted questions furiously at me and far too rapidly for me to understand. The crowd almost broke the ropes, but more uniformed men came to restore order. The people were both the young and the old.

The television lights gave off a powerful heat that hurt the skin of my face. I raised my hand to shield my eyes.

A thunderous and united cry rose as Gregory appeared now, with the helping hand of his driver, brushing his coat that was covered with dust from the casket, and he took his place at my side.

His lips came close to my ear.

“Indeed, they do see you,” he said.

The dimness hovered, cries in other tongues deafened me, and I shook away again the mantle of sadness and looked right into the blaring lights and screaming faces that were here.

“Gregory, Gregory, Gregory,” the people chanted. “One Temple, One God, One Mind.”

First it overlapped, prayer atop prayer, as if it were meant to do so, coming at us in waves, but then the crowd brought their voices together:

“Gregory, Gregory, Gregory. One Temple, One God, One Mind.”

He lifted his hand and waved, turning from left to right and all around, nodding and smiling and waving to those who stood behind him, and to those far off, and he kissed his hand, the very hand I’d kissed, and threw this kiss and a thousand other such kisses to the people who shrieked and called his name in delight.

“Blood, blood, blood for Esther!” someone screamed.

“Yes, blood for her! Who killed her!”

The prayer came roaring over it, but others had taken it up, “Blood for Esther,” stamping their feet in time with their words.

“Blood, blood, blood for Esther.”

Those with cameras and microphones broke through the ropes, pressing against us.

“Gregory, who killed her?”

“Gregory who is this with you?”

“Gregory, who is your friend?”

“Sir, are you a member of the Temple?”

They were talking to me!

“Sir, tell us who you are!”

“Sir, what is in the box you’re carrying?”

“Gregory, tell us what the church will do?”

He turned and faced the cameras.

A trained squadron of dark-dressed men rushed to surround us and separate us from those questioning us, and en masse they pushed us gently up the lighted path, past the throng.

But Gregory spoke loudly:

“Esther was the lamb! The lamb was slain by our enemies. Esther was the lamb!”

The crowd went into a frenzy of approbation and applause.

Beside him, I stared right at the cameras, at the lights beaming down, at the flash of thousands of small hand-held cameras snapping out still pictures.

He drew in his breath to speak, in full command, as any ruler might, standing before his own throne. Loudly, he intoned his words:

“The murder of Esther was only their warning; they have let us know that the time is come when any righteous person will be destroyed!”

Again, the crowd screamed and cheered, vows were declared, chants were taken up.

“Don’t give them an excuse!” Gregory declared. “No excuse to enter our churches or our homes. They come clothed in many disguises!”

The crowd pressed in on us in a dangerous surge.

Gregory’s arm closed around me, caressingly.

I looked up. The building pierced the sky.

“Azriel, come inside,” he said, again speaking close to my ear.

There came the loud sound of shattering glass. An alarm bell clanged. The crowd had pushed in one of the lower windows of the tower. Attendants rushed to the spot. Whistles sounded. I could see garbed police on horseback in the street.

We were drawn in through the doors across a floor of shimmering marble. Others held back the crowd. But still others surrounded us, making it near impossible for us to do anything but go where they forced us to go.

I was madly exhilarated, alive in the midst of this. Astonished and invigorated. Something told me that my former masters had been men of stealth, wise, keeping their power to themselves.

Here we stood in the capital of the world: Gregory sparkled with the surety of his power, and I walked beside him, drunk on being alive, drunk on all the eyes turned to us.

At last a pair of bronze doors rose up before us, carved with
angels, and when they parted we were thrust together inside a mirrored chamber, and Gregory gestured for all the others to remain outside.

The doors swept closed. It was an elevator. It began to rise. I saw myself in the mirrors, shocked by my long and thick hair and the seeming ferocity of my expression, and I saw him, cold and commanding as ever, watching me, and watching himself. I appeared years younger than him, and just as human—but we might have been brothers, both of us swarthy, with sun-darkened skin.

His features were finer, eyebrows thinner and combed; I saw the prominent bones of my forehead and my jaw. But still, it was as if we were of the same tribe.

As the elevator moved higher and higher, I realized we were now completely alone, staring at one another, in a floating cabin of mirrored light.

But no sooner had I absorbed this little shock, this one of many, and no sooner had I righted myself and anchored my weight against the slight swaying of the elevator, than the doors were opened again upon a large sanctuary that appeared both splendid and private: a demilune entranceway of inlaid marble, doorways opening to left and right, and just before us a broad corridor leading to a distant chamber whose windows were wide open to the twinkling night.

We were higher than the mightiest ziggurat, castle, or forest. We were in the realm of the airy spirits.

“My humble abode,” Gregory murmured. He had to rip his eyes from me. But he recovered.

From the doorways came the sounds of voices, and padded feet. A woman cried somewhere in agony. Doors were shut. No one appeared.

“It’s the mother crying, isn’t it?” I said. “The mother of Esther.”

Gregory’s face went blank then grew sad. No, it was something more painful than sadness, something he had never revealed in the presence of the Rebbe when they spoke of the dead daughter. He hesitated, seemed on the verge of saying something and then merely nodded. The sadness
consumed him, his face, his body, even his hand, which hung limp at his side.

He nodded.

“We should go to her, should we not?” I said.

“And why would we do that?” he asked patiently.

“Because she’s crying. She’s sad. Listen to the voices. Someone is being unkind to her—”

“No, only trying to give her medicine that she needs—”

“I want to tell her that Esther didn’t suffer, that I was there, and Esther’s spirit went up so light it was like air itself in the Pathway of Heaven. I want to tell her.”

He pondered this. The voices died down somewhat. I couldn’t hear the woman crying anymore.

“Heed my advice,” he said, reaching out for me and taking a firm grip of my arm. “Come into my parlor first and talk to me. Your words won’t mean anything to her anyway.”

I didn’t like this. But I knew we must talk, he and I.

“Still, later at your leisure,” I said, “I want to see her and comfort her. I want to—”

No words. No human cunning, suddenly, nothing but the crashing realization that I was on my own. Why in the name of Heaven had I been allowed to return with the full strength of a man? Or strength even greater.

Gregory studied me.

In a thinly lighted anteroom, I saw two women clothed in white. A man’s voice rose husky and angry behind a door.

“The casket,” said Gregory, pointing to the golden box in my arms. “Don’t let her see such a thing. It would alarm her. Come with me first.”

“Yes, it’s a strange thing, this,” I said, looking at the casket, at the gold flaking from it.

Dimness. Grief. The light changed just a fraction.

Go away from me, all doubt, and worry, and fear of failure, I said in a whisper in a tongue that he could not possibly understand.

There came the familiar reek of boiling liquid, of a golden mist rising. You know why. But I didn’t. I turned and shut my
eyes, and then looked again down the hallway, to the far window open to the night sky.

“Look at that,” I said. I had only a vague point in mind, something to do with the raiment of Heaven being as beautiful as the marble that surrounded us, the archways above us, the pilasters flanking every door. “The stars beyond, look,” I said again, “the stars.”

All was quiet in the house. He watched me, studying me, listening to my every breath.

“Yes, the stars,” he said dreamily, with seeming respect.

His quick dark eyes broadened and there came his smile again, loving and tender.

“We’ll talk to her later, I promise you,” he said. He grasped my arm firmly and pointed. “But come now to my study, come now and let’s talk together. It’s time, is it not?”

“I wish I knew,” I said in a half murmur. “She’s still crying, isn’t she?”

“She’ll cry till she dies,” he said. His shoulders were heavy with sorrow. His whole soul ached with it. I let him lead me down the hall. I wanted to know things from him. I wanted to know everything.

I didn’t respond.

W
e made our way down this corridor, Gregory leading boldly, letting his feet ring on the marble, and I corning behind him, dazzled by the peach-colored silk panels affixed to the walls. The floor itself was this same lovely nourishing color.

We passed numerous doors, and one of them to our right lay open. It was her room. She was in there.

I came to a halt and peered in, rudely, but the sight which struck me amazed me.

It was a lavish bedchamber, done wildly in crimson with festoons of red silk coming from its ceilings down over the pillars of the bed The floor was again marble and this time snow white.

But this in itself was not as remarkable as the sight of a woman—the woman who had been crying—sitting on a low couch, her gown airy and shimmering and as red as the trappings of the room. She had jet-black hair, like the hair of Esther, like my hair for that matter—and the same immense eyes of Esther with near glistening whites to them. But her hair was stranded through and through with silver; it seemed almost decorated by greater age. It spilled down behind her back. Nurses in white surrounded her. One moved quickly to shut the door.

But she looked up, saw me. Her face was drawn and sallow and wet with tears. But she was not old. She’d been very young when she’d given birth to Esther. At once she sat up.

The door was shut, the lock turned. I heard her call out: “Gregory!”

He walked on, reaching back for my hand, his own warm and smooth and leading me alongside him.

Others whispered behind other doors. There were wires in the walls that carried whispers. I couldn’t hear the woman crying.

We entered the main room, a grand demilune of splendid detail with a lofty half dome of a ceiling. A row of floor-length windows, each cut into twelve different panes of glass, ran across the street side of it, which was flat, and behind us doors of the same frame punctuated the half circle at equal intervals.

It was more than magnificent.

But the view of the night caught me with all its timeless sweetness. Across a deep dark divide I saw towers, patterned with lights set in rows of incredible regularity, but then I came to realize that all of these buildings had these straight rows of windows, that this age was very mathematically precise.

My head was swimming. Information was pouring in on me.

I saw that the room faced not a dark river, as I had supposed, but a broad dark park. I could smell the trees. I looked down and was amazed to see how truly far we were above the earth, from the tiny crowd still clogging the little thoroughfare and the mounted policemen moving awkwardly like trapped cavalry amid a battle. A swarm of ants.

I turned around.

The doors behind us, in the curved wall, were closed now. I couldn’t even tell which door had been our door. I was distracted and obsessed suddenly with the brief glimpse of the weeping mother.

But I cleared this for the present.

In the very center of the half circle wall stood a hearth, monstrous, made of the usual white marble and cold and grand as an altar. Lions were carved into this hearth, and a shelf stood above it and above that a huge mirror which caught the reflection of the windows.

Indeed reflections bounced about all around me. The twelve-paned doors of the rear wall were mirrored, rather than glassed! What an illusion it was. We were drifting in this
palace, and comforted by the city as if it had taken us in its arms.

A great heap of wood stood ready in the hearth, as if it were cruel winter, which it was not.

All the doors, both real and mirrored, were double doors with gracefully twisted handles of plated gold, and fancy curving frames for their narrow and shining panes of mirror or glass.