Servant of the Bones

4

I was almost sick by the time we reached the house. My brothers were carrying me. And outside the gate, what should we see?

“First were two of the other prophets, the more quiet ones who merely echoed the old words of Jeremiah sent from Egypt, and with them an old woman whom everyone feared and despised. Her name was Asenath, and she was one of our tribe but she was a necromancer, everybody knew, and such things were forbidden, whether the great King Saul had ever called up Samuel with the Witch of Endor or not.

“Also, everybody went to her for help from time to time. So you know, it wasn’t so great to see her outside our gate, but she had known my mother and my grandparents, and she wasn’t the enemy, just someone with an unsavory reputation who could mix up poisons to kill people and potions to make people fall in love.

“She had straggling hair, very white, and eyes which had turned a perfect brighter blue with age, rather than pale, and a withered long face and a great triumphant expression, and she wore all scarlet, defiant scarlet, silks all over her, as if she were some Egyptian whore or something, and she carried a crooked staff, with a snake on the end of it, not so unlike the staffs of the prophets, and she said to me:

“ ‘Azriel, you come to me. Or you let me in.’ ”

By this time all the household was in the courtyard inside screaming and yelling at her to get away from our house, old witch, and my brothers told her to go, but to my surprise my father said, ‘Come inside, Asenath, come inside.’

“Next I remember lying on my bed, and listening to people talk. My brothers wanted to know how in the hell I had gotten into this, and how could I believe this demon was Marduk when he was obviously a demon, and why had I not told them that I was conversing with other gods! My sisters kept saying, ‘Oh, leave him alone,’ and for a moment I thought I saw the ghost of my mother, but this might have been a dream.

“All the uncles and elders were gathered in the long rooms of the scriptoria which flanked the courtyard for half its distance…it was quite big, as I told you. And I didn’t know where my father was.

“At last, he sent for me, and my brother propped me up, and got me on my feet and took me to him. I didn’t like the door through which we passed. This was a small antechamber off the chamber of the ancestors, that is, the little room in which earlier Assyrians and Akkadians of this very house had buried their dead. This little room was part of their old pagan worship and we had never cleaned the paintings of priests and priestesses and ancestors of other people off the walls. Superstition stopped us, and after all, heathens that they were, their bones lay under the floor.

“There were three chairs in the room, simple chairs, you know the kind, of leather and crossed painted legs, but they were our very finest, and also there were three lamp stands, and in each the wick was burning the olive oil brightly, so the room had a splendid but frightening look.

“Old Asenath sat in one chair, and my father in the other, and they were whispering, which they stopped when I came in. I sat down in the free chair, and my brothers left us, and there we were among painted Assyrians, in the flicker of these lamps, in an airless place. I closed my eyes. I opened them. I deliberately tried to see the dead. I tried to see them as I had seen them when Marduk was with me. And for a moment I did. I saw them as wraiths throughout the room, sort of shuffling and mumbling and pointing, and then I shook my head and said, ‘Be gone.’

“Asenath, who had a very young voice for such an old hag, laughed at me.

“ ‘You learnt your imperial ways from the great god Marduk, didn’t you?’

“Silence from me.

“Then she said, ‘What? Won’t you own up to your loyalty to your god in your father’s presence? It doesn’t surprise. You think you are the first Hebrew who has worshipped the Babylonian gods? The hills around Jerusalem are filled with altars where Hebrews still worship pagan gods.’

“ ‘Which means what, old woman?’ I said, surprised at my own anger and impatience. ‘Get to the point. What do you have to say to me?’

“ ‘Nothing to you. It’s all said to your father. You make your choice. You make it. Ten years since the Festival has been celebrated but many, many more years since the true miracle of the Festival has been brought about. And the old priests; they know how to do it; but they don’t know everything; and for this, this which I hold here’—and she drew a cumbersome package out of her garments—‘they would give me anything and they will.’

“I looked at it. It was an ancient Sumerian clay envelope which meant that the ancient Sumerian tablet was untouched inside. It had never been tampered with. I could see that.

“ ‘What do I want with that? What do I care about the true miracle of the Festival?’ I said.

“My father motioned for me to be quiet.

“She put the clay envelope with its secret tablet hidden inside it into my father’s hands. ‘Hide it here with the bones of the Assyrians,’ she said. She laughed. ‘And remember what I said, they will give you Jerusalem for it! Do as I say! They’ve already sent for me. They don’t know clearly even how to mix the gold without me. I will help them, but when they demand the tablet of me, it will be safe with you.’

“ ‘Who gave you this all-precious tablet, Asenath?’ I asked sarcastically, becoming ever more anxious and impatient at this whole thing. I’d never seen my father so serious! I didn’t like it.

“ ‘Look at it, scribe, scholar, smart one!’ she said. ‘How old do you think this is?’

“ ‘A thousand kings have reigned since then,’ I said. ‘It’s as old as Uruk.’ And really this was the same as saying to you in English, this thing is two thousand years old.

“She nodded. ‘Given me by the priest they put to death, just to spite them,’ she said.

“ ‘I want to read the outside,’ I said.

“ ‘No!’ she said. ‘No!’ Then she stood up and leaned on her snake staff or whatever the hell she called it, and she said to my father, ‘Remember, there are two ways to do this. Two ways. I give you my counsel. Were he my son, I would give them this tablet. I would give it into the hands of the most ambitious. I would give it into the hands of the most dissatisfied and eager to be gone from here, and that is the young priest, Remath. Be clever. You hold your people in your hands.’

“Then she turned and threw out her staff, and lo, the doors opened of themselves and she turned to me and she said, ‘You are most privileged for I give you my one chance at immortality. Were I to keep it, were I to abide by it, I might rise above this world and the stumbling dead, with the strength of a great spirit.’

“ ‘And why don’t you?’ said I.

“ ‘Because you can save your people. You can save us all. You can take us back to Jerusalem and then, for that you deserve something, yes, you deserve something for that…to be an angel or a god.’

“I was on my feet, trying to stop her and demand more of her, but she went out directly, scattering the family with wild threats, and strode through the anterooms, and the gate opened for her staff, and on she walked, a blaze of red silk into the street and away.

“I looked at my father. He sat still holding this enveloped tablet and looking at me with large tear-filled eyes. I had never seen his face so frozen. It was as if the muscles of his face didn’t know grief or pain or fear well enough to form a face for it. He was at a loss.

“ ‘What the hell is she talking about, Father?’ I asked him.

“ ‘Sit down here close to me,’ he said, the tears spilling now as freely as they might from a woman, and he held my hand.

“ ‘Will you let me read that damned thing?’ I asked.

“He didn’t respond. He held it close to his chest. And he was thinking. The door lay open and I saw my brothers out there, all peering in and then my sister came and said, ‘Father, brother, do you want some wine?’

“ ‘There isn’t wine in the world enough to get me drunk now,’ said my father. ‘Shut the door.’ My sister did.

“He turned to me suddenly, his lips pursed and then he swallowed and he said, ‘It was Marduk with you, wasn’t it? Or a spirit who claimed that he was Marduk. It was true.’

“ ‘Yes, I would say that is precisely the truth, Father. I’ve talked to him since I was a child. Am I to be punished now for this? What’s to happen? What’s this about Remath, the priest? You know him? I don’t know that I do.’

“ ‘You know him,’ he said. ‘You just don’t remember him. The day that Marduk smiled at you, when you were a boy, Remath was standing in the comer of the banquet chamber. He’s young, ambitious, full of hatred of Nabonidus and enough hate of Babylon to want to go away.’

“ ‘What’s this to me?’

“ ‘I don’t know, my son, my beautiful and beloved son. I don’t know. All I know is that all Israel is begging for you to do what the priests of Marduk want you to do. As for this enveloped tablet here? I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

“He cried for a long time. I was tempted to snatch the enveloped tablet from him and suddenly I did. I read the Sumerian.

“ ‘To make the Servant of the Bones.’

“ ‘What is that, Father?’ I said. He turned, his tears disfiguring his face somewhat, and he wiped at his wet beard and lips and he took the tablet back. ‘Leave that to my judgment,’ he said in a low voice, and then he stood up and he went along the wall, looking for loose stones, for bricks that might come out, and he found what he wanted, a hiding place, and he put the tablet inside.

“ ‘To make the Servant of the Bones,’ I repeated. ‘What can it mean?’

“ ‘We have to go up to the temple, my son, to the Palace. Kings are waiting on us. Deals have been struck. Promises have been exchanged.’ Then he embraced me and he kissed me slowly all over my face, he kissed my mouth, my forehead, my eyes.

“ ‘When Yahweh told Abraham that he was to bring Isaac and sacrifice him,’ he said, ‘you know our great Father Abraham did as he was told.’

“ ‘So the tablet and the scrolls tell us, Father, but have you been told by Yahweh that I must be sacrificed? Yahweh has come to you now, along with Enoch and Asenath and all the others? Is that what you expect me to believe? Father, you are grieving for me. I am dead already in your mind. What is this? What, why am I to die? For what? What’s wanted, that I personally renounce the god, that I tell the King the god has wished him well, what! If it’s a performance I’ll do it! But, Father, don’t cry for me as if I were dead!’

“ ‘It’s a performance,’ he said, ‘but it takes a very very strong one to perform it, one with endurance and conviction, and one with a great heart filled with love. Love of his people, love of his tribe, love of our lost Jerusalem and love of the Temple to be built there to honor the Lord. If I thought I could do it, that I could see the performance through to the finish, I would do it. And you can turn on us, you can say no, you can flee.

“ ‘But the priests of Marduk want you, my son, they want you. And so do others even more powerful than they. They want you. And they know you are stronger than your brothers.’ His voice broke.

“ ‘I see,’ I said.

“ ‘And you are the only one who could ever forgive me for condemning him to such a fate.’

“I was thunderstruck. I just looked at him, at his tearful eyes, and I said, ‘You know, Father, you are perhaps right, at least insofar as this. I could forgive you anything. Because I know you, and you wouldn’t do evil to me, you wouldn’t do that.’

“ ‘No, I wouldn’t. Azriel, do you know what it means to me that you are to be taken from me, you and your future wife and future sons and daughters? Oh, it doesn’t matter. Forgive me, son, for what I do. Forgive me. I beg you. Before it begins, before we go to the palace, and hear the lies and look at the map, forgive me.’

“He was my father. He was sweet and kind and overcome with grief, terrible grief and pain. It was an easy thing for me to put my arms around him as if he were my little brother and say, ‘Father, I forgive you.’

“ ‘Never forget that, Azriel,’ he said. ‘When you are suffering, when the hours are dragging by, when you are in pain, forgive me…not just for my sake, son, but for yours!’

“A knock came. Priests were here from the Palace.

“We got up at once, wiped our faces, and then we went into the courtyard.

“Remath was standing there, and as soon as I saw him, I did remember him as my father had said. I had never spoken much with him as he was a real malcontent; I mean he hated Nabonidus beyond belief for not giving Marduk’s temple what it should have, but he also hated everybody else. He usually stood around the palace and the temple, doing nothing. But he was clever. I knew that. And he was very restless. He was young and smart.

“He studied us now, his eyes very deep set and seemingly better sculpted in his white skin, and his long thin nose gave him a disdainful look. All the rest was the usual mass of curly black hair…and priestly robes very fine, down to his jeweled sandals, and then he drew near my father and he said, ‘Did Asenath give it to you?’

“ ‘Yes,’ said my father. ‘But that does not mean that I will give it to you.’

“ ‘You’re stupid not to. Your son goes into the earth otherwise. What good is that?’

“ ‘Don’t call me names, you heathen, my father said. ‘Let’s get on with it. Let’s go.’

“In the anteroom stood other priests waiting for us, and as we went outside, we found that there were brightly adorned litters for us and we were taken to the palace, each alone in his own litter, and I lay back trying to figure this out.

“ ‘Marduk, are you going to help me?’ I whispered.

“Marduk answered, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Azriel. I don’t. I can see what is bound to happen. I don’t know! I know this, that when it is over, one way or another, I will still be here. I will be walking the streets of Babylon in search of eyes that can see me, and prayers and incense that can arouse me. But where will you be, Azriel?’

“ ‘They’re going to kill me. Why?’

“ ‘They’ll tell you. You’ll see it all. But I can assure you of this much. If you refuse to do what they want, they’ll kill you anyway. And they’ll probably kill your father, because he knows the plot.’

“ ‘I see. I should have realized that. They need my cooperation and if I don’t give it, well, then it would have been better for me had I never been asked.’

“There came only silence from him but I could feel his breath and I knew he was close. He wasn’t material, but it didn’t matter; we were even closer in the darkness of this litter, being carried with the curtains drawn through Babylon’s hollow paved streets.

“ ‘Marduk, can you help me get out of this?’ I asked.

“ ‘I have been thinking of that for hours and hours, hours since your prophet spewed out all his filth at me. I have been asking myself, “Marduk, what can you do?” But you see, Azriel, without your strength, I cannot do what I want to do. I can’t. I can be the gold god on his throne and that is all. I can be the standing statue carried in procession. Those objects or encasements they already have. And if I were to run with you…if we were to escape, where would we go?’

“A strange sound filled the little curtained compartment. He was weeping. Then suddenly, ‘Azriel, tell them no! Refuse their filthy designs. Refuse them. Don’t do it, not for Israel, not for Abraham, not for Yahweh. Refuse.’

“ ‘And die.’

“He didn’t answer.

“ ‘Well, either way I shall die, no?’

“ ‘There’s a third way,’ he said.

“ ‘You’re speaking of Asenath and the tablet.’

“ ‘Yes, but it is terrible, Azriel. It’s terrible. And I don’t know if there’s truth in it. It is older than I am. It is older than Marduk and older than Babylon, that tablet; it came from the city of Uruk. Maybe from before. It is very old. What can I tell you? Know your own mind. Take your chance!’

“ ‘Marduk, don’t leave me,’ I said. ‘Please.’

“ ‘I won’t, Azriel, you are the dearest friend of my heart that I have ever had. I won’t leave you. Make me appear if you need me to frighten them or stop them. Make me appear and I will try. But I won’t leave you, I am your god, your own god, your god, and I’ll be with you.’

“We had come to the palace. We were being brought in by a private gate, and now we were welcomed out of our little compartments so that we might walk on the grand stairway of gold and glazed brick, through the magnificent veils that separated one giant room from another, and we did, we walked, in silence, my father and I, we walked, following the priest, and they took us into the royal chamber where Belshazzar, listening to cases, made a farce of justice every day, and where his wise men told him hour after hour what the stars were saying to them, and we went beyond that into small and fine apartments that I had never seen.

“I saw that a seal had been broken, an ancient seal, as the doors had been opened. But the servants had come. For everywhere was luxury, fine carpets, pillows, the usual veils, and everywhere the lamps hung from the beams of the ceiling and the oil was sweet and the light was bright.

“A table stood in the middle of the room. Men were seated at it. And behind them stood my uncles, two of them, including the one who was deaf, may he have no name, and the Elders of Israel in Captivity, and Asenath and Enoch the prophet as well.

“Only gradually did I let myself look down at those seated at the table, though we were being placed opposite, the servants hustling to draw back the golden chairs.

“I saw our miserable regent, Belshazzar, and he looked stupid with drink and terrified, and was mumbling to himself something about Marduk, and then I realized I was looking at Nabonidus, old Nabonidus, our true King who had been gone almost half my life. Our true King sat there in his full raiment, though not on a throne, merely at a table, and his big watery eyes were dead and empty already, and he merely smiled at me, and he said, ‘Pretty, pretty…you have chosen one that is so pretty…pretty as the god.’

“ ‘Pretty enough to be a god!’ said a voice, and I looked directly opposite at this fine handsome man, taller than anyone there, thinner in build than any of us, with black curling hair but hair that was cut shorter than ours, and a trimmed mustache and a shorter trimmed beard.

“This was a Persian! The men beside him were Persians. They were in Persian robes, very like our own, but in royal blue, and they were crusted with jewels and gold embroidery, and their fingers were covered with rings, and the goblets before them were our temple goblets!

“These were men from the Persian empire which was conquering us, which was killing us. All the strange predictions of Enoch came back to me and I saw him glaring down at me, with a near impish smile, and Asenath seemed filled with wonder.

“ ‘Sit down, young one,’ said the tall robust man with the big laughing eyes, the handsomest man, the man who gleamed with power. ‘I’m Cyrus, and I want you at your ease.’

“ ‘Cyrus!’ I said. Cyrus was the conqueror.

“The full details of the man’s accomplishments were sharpened in my mind. This was Cyrus the Achaemenid King who already ruled half the world. He had united the Medians with the Persians, the man who meant to take Babylon. The man who had scared all the cities around us. This was no longer tavern talk of war. This was Cyrus himself sitting here before us.

“I should have prostrated myself before him but no one was doing anything like that before anyone, and he had said in a clear voice with an excellent command of Aramaic that I was to be at ease.

“Very well. I looked at him directly. After all, I thought, I’m going to die. So what. Why not?

“My father took the empty chair beside me.

“ ‘Azriel, my boy, my beautiful boy,’ said Cyrus. The voice was crisp, full of good humor. ‘I have been in Babylon for days. There are thousands of my soldiers throughout Babylon. They have come in by many gates over a long time. The priests know. Here, your beloved King—and may the gods keep him well always—Nabonidus himself knows.’ He gave a generous nod to the suspicious and dying old King. ‘All your King’s regents and his officials know that I am here. Your Elders, you see. Don’t feel fear. Feel joy. Your tribe will be rich and they will live forever, and they will go home.’

“ ‘Ah, and this depends then on what I do?’ I asked.

“I wasn’t sure then and am still not today sure why I was so cold and disdainful of him. He was compelling but he was human, and young. And also, no matter what he’d done so far, he was a heathen to me, and he wasn’t even Babylonian. So, I was cold to him.

“He gave a silent measuring smile.

“ ‘So it depends then on what I do?’ I repeated the question. ‘Or your will, Lord, has your will already been decided?’

“Cyrus laughed, with crinkling cheerful eyes. He had the vigor of kings all right, and not yet the total madness. He was too young and he’d been drinking up the blood of Asia. He was full of strength. Full of victory. ‘You speak boldly,’ he said to me generously. ‘You look with a bold eye. You are your father’s eldest, aren’t you?’

“ ‘For the three days required,’ said one of the priests, ‘he must be very strong. To be bold is part of it.’

“ ‘Put another chair at this table,’ I said, ‘with your permission, My Lord King Cyrus, and My Lords, King Nabonidus and Lord Belshazzar. Put it here at the end.’

“ ‘Why, for whom?’ asked Cyrus politely.

“ ‘For Marduk,’ I said. ‘For my god who is with me.’

“ ‘Our god is not at the beck and call of you!’ roared the High Priest. ‘He won’t come down off the altar for you! You have never seen our god, not really, you are a lying Jew, you are—’

“ ‘Close your mouth, Master,’ said Remath in a small voice. ‘He has seen the god and he has spoken with him and the god has smiled at him, and if he invites the god to this chair, the god is most likely to come.’

“Cyrus smiled and shook his head. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this is truly a marvelous city. I am going to love Babylon. I wouldn’t hurt a stone of such a place. Ah, Babylon.’

“I might have laughed at that, at his wiliness, his disrespect for the elders and the old priests, his ruthlessness and his wit. But I was past laughing. I looked at the light of the lamps and I thought, ‘I am going to die.’

“A hand touched mine. It was vaporous. No one could see it. But it was Marduk. He had taken this chair to my left; invisible, transparent, golden, and vital. My father sat to my right and my father just put his hands up to his face and cried and cried.

“He cried like a child. He cried.

“Cyrus looked with patience and compassion at my father.

“ ‘Let’s get on with it,’ said the High Priest.

“ ‘Yes,’ said Enoch, ‘let’s get on with it now!’

“ ‘For these men, these elders, these priests, this prophetess, get stools for them to be comfortable,’ said Cyrus amiably and cheerfully. He smiled at me. ‘We are all in this together.’

“I turned to look at Marduk. ‘Are we?’

“They all watched me in silence speaking to my invisible god.

“ ‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ said Marduk. ‘I love you too much to make a mistake, and I have no right answers.’

“ ‘Stay then.’

“ ‘Throughout,’ he said.

“The stools and chairs were quickly brought in and the Elders allowed in very casual fashion to sit all about us and this conquering Persian King, this monarch who had driven the Greeks crazy all over the world and now wanted our city and had everything we had but the city.

“Only the priest Remath remained standing, at a distance against a gilded column. The High Priest had told him to leave, but he had ignored this command and apparently been forgotten. He was watching me and my father, and then I realized that he could see Marduk. Not so clearly. But he could see him. Remath moved his position slightly so that he could see all three of us, going to a farther column behind Cyrus where Cyrus’s soldiers, by the way, stood poised to become butchers. And there Remath stared at the seemingly empty chair with cold and conniving eyes, and he looked at me.”