Servant of the Bones

16

This was a nearby city, in view of the other. The car moving through the rain was the car that had carried Esther to the place where the Evals surrounded her with their picks. Other cars traveled with it, filled with guards whose eyes roved dark and deserted buildings.

The procession was furtive yet full of authority.

Through the rain, I could actually see the shining towers of the street on which she had died. Grand as Alexandria, or Constantinople, this rock-hard capital of the Western world, New York—in its greedy nuclear splendor. Yet its soaring buildings reminded me of the weapons carried by the Evals. Hard and very sharp.

The man in the car was very proud of the car, proud of the guards who traveled with him, proud of his fine wool coat and the neat trim of his thick curly hair.

I drew in close to see him through the darkened glass: Gregory Belkin, her stepfather, founder of the Temple of the Mind of God, rich man. Rich beyond the dreams of kings in earlier times, because they couldn’t fly on magic carpets.

The car? Mercedes-Benz, and the most unusual of its kind, made from a small sedan and elongated by three perfectly welded and padded parts so that it was twice the length of the engines all around it, shiny and black, deliberately glamorous, as if carved of obsidian and polished by hand.

It prowled for blocks before stopping, the driver quick to obey the rise of Belkin’s hand.

Then this proud high priest or prophet or whatever he deemed himself stepped unaided out into the light of the street lamp as if he wanted it to shine on his youthful clean-shaven face, hair clipped short on the back of his neck like a Roman soldier, yet softly curly despite its length.

The full length of the dingy dirty block he walked, alone, past dismal boarded-up shops, past signs in Hebrew and in English, to the place he meant to visit, his guards sweeping the night before him and behind him with their glances, the raindrops standing like jewels on the shoulders of his long coat.

All right. Was he the Master? If so, how could I not know it? I didn’t like him. In my half sleep, I had seen him weep for Esther and talk of plots, and had not liked him.

Why was I so close I could touch his face? Handsome he was, no one would argue with this, and in the prime of life, square-shouldered, tall as a Norseman, though darker with jet-black eyes.

Are you the Master?

Mastermind of the Minders, that was what the flippant and cynical reporters called him, this billionaire Gregory Belkin. Now he reviewed in his head recent speeches he’d made before the bronze doors of his Manhattan Temple, “My worse fear is that they weren’t thieves at all and the necklace meant nothing to them. It’s our church they want to hurt. They are evil.”

Necklace, I thought, I had seen no necklace.

The guards who watched Gregory from their nearby cars were his “followers.” This was some church of peace and good. They wore guns, and they carried knives, and he himself the prophet carried a small gun, very shiny, like his car, deep in the left pocket of his coat.

He was like a King who is used to performing every gesture before a grand audience, but he didn’t see me watching him. He had no sense of a ghost at his shoulder like a personal god.

Well, I was not this man’s god. I was not this man’s servant. But I was his observer, and I had to know why.

He stopped before a brick house. It was filled with glass windows, all of them covered. It had high-pitched roofs for snow. It was like thousands, possibly even millions, of other houses in this same arm of the city. The proportions of this time and place were truly beyond my easy measure.

I was fascinated. His perfect black leather shoes were speckled prettily with rain. Why was he bringing us here?

He went down a step and back the alleyway. A light shone ahead of him. He had a key for a little gate. Then a key for a door between lighted windows in the deep bottom floor of the house.

We came in, he and I. I felt the warmth swoosh around me!

Ceiling overhead. The night locked out. An old man was seated at a wooden desk.

Smell of human beings, sweet and good. And so many other precious fragrances, too many to savor, or name.

All ghosts and gods and spirits feast on fragrance, as I have told you.

I had been starved, and nearly grew drunk on the smells of this place.

I knew I was here.

I was slowly taking form. But by whose direction? Whose decision? I loved it.

No old words issued from my lips; I was becoming solid. It was happening, as it had in New York when I chased her killers. I felt it. I felt myself enclosed in the good body, the body I liked, though what that meant I wasn’t sure.

Now I know: I came visible and solid in my own body, or the body you see here now, the form I had when I was alive.

No one else here knew. Behind the bookcase I stood, watching.

Gregory Belkin had chosen for himself the very middle of the room, beneath a lightbulb with a frayed cord. And the old man at the desk, the old man could not possibly see me.

The old man’s head was bowed. He wore the small black silk skullcap of observant Jews. There was a green shaded lamp on his desk that was gentle and golden in its illumination.

His beard and hair were snow white and very pure and beautiful, and two long curled locks deliberately framed his face. The flesh of his scalp was pink beneath the thinnest part of his hair, but the beard was rich and flowing.

The books on the walls were in Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, German. I could smell the parchment and the leather. I drew in these fragrances and it seemed for a moment memory would spring to life, or out of memory would come alive everything I’d tried to murder.

But this old man wasn’t the Master either! I knew it immediately.

This old man had no sense that I had come, none at all, but was merely staring at the younger one who had just entered, the strong straight one who stood rather formally before the elder, and removed from his hands a pair of smooth gray gloves which he was careful to put in the right pocket of his coat. He patted the left pocket. The gun was in the left pocket. Little lethal gun. I had a desire to hear it go off. But he wasn’t here to shoot it.

The room was so cluttered. Rows and rows of shelves divided me from the old man, but I could see over the tops of books. I smelled incense, and felt a flush of pleasure. I smelled iron, gold, ink. Could the bones be in this place?

The old man took off his glasses, which were of the simplest kind, rounded in silver wire, flexible, and fragile, and peered most directly at his visitor, without rising from his chair.

The old man’s eyes were very pale, which struck me as it always does, as very pretty to look at—eyes that are more like water than stone. But they were small, and weak with age, and they didn’t gleam so much as they accused from the heavy wrinkles of his face.

Stronger, you are getting stronger by the moment. You are almost completely visible.

I couldn’t see the entire face of the younger man. I slipped even more to the far left side of him to conceal myself, and became whole and entire as I stood behind the bookcase, calculating my height at approximately his own.

The rain was all over his black coat, and the coat had a seam straight down the back, and next to his neck, pushing up at the black curls of his hair, was a white silk scarf as fine as the scarf she’d clutched in death, a scarf that was probably still in the emporium of her killing. I tried to remember it, the scarf for which she had reached in death not dreaming of the significance of that last gesture, if indeed there was any significance to it at all. The scarf she had wanted was black but glittering, covered with beads. I think I told you this. But now I’m with them again, with them. Bear with me.

The old man spoke in Yiddish:

“You killed your daughter.”

I was astonished. So we come immediately to the point?

The love I felt for her tormented me, as if she herself had come up to me and dug her nails in my skin and said, Do not forget me, Azriel, only she would never, never have done such a thing. She had died in characteristic humility; when she had spoken my name it was with wonder.

That was too dreadful to see again, her dying.

Go, fly, spirit. Turn your back on them all—on her death and on the old man’s accusation, on this fascinating room with its enticing colors and aromas. Let go, spirit. Let them struggle towards the Ladder of Heaven without your intervention. After all, do souls really need the Servant of the Bones to drag them into Sheol?

I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to know what the old man meant.

The younger man merely laughed.

No disrespect, it was an uneasy, angry laugh of one who would not be forced to immediate response by these words. The dismissive wave of his hand was not surprise. He shook his head.

I wanted to move around him, look at him, but it was too late for that, I knew I had the full parts, that I stood, that my hands touched the books on the shelf in front of me, and I shifted very slowly to my left, so that the wall of books would hide me, lest the old man see me, though the old man showed no sign even now of realizing I was here with him.

The younger man sighed.

“Rebbe, why would I kill Rachel’s daughter?” asked the younger man in Yiddish. “Why would I kill the only child I had?” The language wasn’t easy for him. “Esther, my beautiful Esther,” he said, sounding heartfelt and strong. He didn’t like to speak Yiddish. He wanted his English.

“But you did,” said the old man in return. It came from his dry lips with hatred. He spoke now in Hebrew: “You are an idolator; you are a killer; you killed your child. You had her murdered. You walk with evil. You reek of it!”

I was slightly shaken. I could feel it physically, the jarring surprise at the old man’s wrath.

The young man again played the game of patience, shuffling slightly, shaking his head as if humoring a half-naked prophet who won’t stop raving on your doorstep.

“My teacher,” Gregory Belkin whispered in English, “my model. My grandfather. And you blame me for her death?”

This put the old man in a fury.

He too spoke in English:

“What do you want of me, Gregory? You’ve never come to this house without a reason.” His fury was calm. This old man himself would do nothing about the death of this girl. He sat at his desk with his hands clasped on an open book. Tiny Hebrew letters.

I felt the loss of her again, as if I’d been kicked and I wanted to say out loud, “Old man, I avenged her, I slew the three assassins with the leader’s pick. I slew them all. They died on the pavements.”

I felt her as if I alone in this room held the candle in memory of her. Neither of these mourned her, accusations be damned.

Why are you allowing this to happen, Azriel? Grief for those you don’t know is easy. Maybe it is even exciting. But to be alone? That is to be alive. And you are most certainly secret and alone here.

“You break my heart, Rebbe,” said Gregory in English. Obviously the current American language was much easier for him. His whole body sagged with his soft whisper of despair. His hands were deep in his pockets. His flesh was a little chilled from the cold outside, and the room itself was stifling. I thought he was lying, and telling the truth.

I fed upon the smell of them, never mind the wax, the parchment, the old reliable scents, I smelled the men—the old man’s warm living skin that was so clear and fine, so free of disease that it had become silken in old age, pure like the bones of his living body inside it, which were no doubt so brittle now they could break at the slightest blow.

The young man was immaculate and anointed with fine and subtle perfumes. The perfume rose from the pores of his skin, from the curls of his hair, from the clothing he wore, a subtle mingling of calculated scents. The fragrance of a modern monarch.

I drew closer to the younger one. I might have been now two feet from him, to his left, and slightly behind him. I saw his profile. Thick eyebrows, smooth and neatly groomed and well formed, fine features, molded in good proportion; we would have called him blessed. He had no scar or blemish. Something indefinable to me enriched him and enlarged his power. When he smiled, which he did now sadly and imploringly, his teeth were perfectly white.

His eyes were large, like her eyes had been, but not quite so beautiful. He lifted his hands, another form of plea, small, quiet. His fingers were fine, and the smoothness of his cheeks was fine; he had been nourished as she had, lovingly, as if the whole world all of his life had been his mother’s breast. What did he lack? I couldn’t find in him a fracture or sore, or break anywhere, only the indefinable enhancement.

Then I realized what it was. He had the prettiness of the young, but he was past fifty years! How dazzling it was. How wondrous the way age sharpened his physical virtues, and made the glare of his eyes so much the more strong.

“Speak to me, Gregory Belkin,” said the old man with contempt, “and tell me why you’ve come, or leave my house now.”

I was again startled by the old man’s wrath.

“All right, Rebbe,” the younger man answered, as if the tone and the manner were nothing new to him.

The old man waited.

“I have a check in my pocket, Rebbe,” said Gregory. “I come to give it to you for the good of the whole Court.”

By this I knew he meant the Hebrews of the old man for whom the old man was the Rabbi, the zaddik, the leader.

Flashes of memory came at me, rather like jagged pieces of glass—glimpses of my long dead Master Samuel. But it didn’t mean anything and I pushed it aside. At this point, keep in mind, I could not recall anything of my past. Nothing. But I knew what this man was—venerable, powerful in holy ways, perhaps a magician, but if he was a magician, why hadn’t he sensed that I was there?

“You always have a check for us, Gregory,” said the old one. “Your checks come to the bank without you. We take your money in honor of your dead mother, and your dead father, who was my beloved son. We take your money for what it can do for those whom they once loved, your mother and father. Go back to your Temple. Go back to your computers. Go back to your worldwide church. Go home, Gregory! Hold your wife’s hand. Her daughter has been murdered. Mourn with Rachel Belkin. Is she not entitled to that much?”

The younger man gave a little nod, as if to say, ah, things aren’t going to improve here, and then he tilted his head to the right and shrugged respectfully and spoke again:

“I need something from you, Rebbe,” he said. Direct as it was, it was smooth.

The old man lifted his hands and shrugged. He shifted in the light of the electric lamp, and sighed. His lips were full for the lips of an old man. A faint sheen of sweat appeared on the top of his head.

Behind him stood more shelves of books. The room was so crowded with books it might as well have been made of books. The chairs were big, with their frames hidden inside their leather, and all were surrounded by books. There were scrolls, and scrolls in sacks, and scrolls of leather.

One cannot after all burn or discard old scrolls of the Torah. These must be buried, and properly, or kept in someplace like this.

Who knew what this old man had brought through the world with him? His English was not pure and sharp like that of Gregory, but carried with it the speaking habits of other tongues. Poland. I saw Poland and I saw snow.

Gregory slipped his left hand into his pocket. There was the check, the piece of paper, the banknote, the gift that he wanted to give so badly. I heard it crackle as his fingers touched it. It was folded right beside the gun.

The old man said nothing.

“Rebbe, when I was very little,” said Gregory, “I heard you tell a particular tale. Only once did I hear this story. But I remember it. I remember the words.”

The old man made no reply. The loose folds of his skin were shiny in the light, but when he lifted his white eyebrows he lifted the folds of his forehead too.

“Rebbe,” said Gregory, “you spoke once to my aunt of a legend, a secret…a family treasure. I’ve come here to ask you about what I heard.”

The old man was surprised. No. It wasn’t that. The old man was surprised only that the younger man’s words had some interest for him. The old man gave the silence a moment, then spoke in Yiddish as before:

“A treasure? You and your brother—you were the treasures of your mother and father. What would bring you to Brooklyn to ask me about tales of treasure? Treasure you have beyond any man’s dreams.”

“Yes, Rebbe,” said Gregory patiently.

“I hear your church swims in money, that your missions in foreign lands are lavish resorts for the rich who would visit and give to the poor. Indeed. I heard that your own fortune far outstrips that of your wife, or her daughter. I hear that no man can hold in his mind the exact amount of the money you possess and the money you control.”

“Yes, Rebbe,” said Gregory again, patiently in English. “I’m as rich as you can imagine, and I know you don’t choose to imagine it, nor to dwell on it, nor profit from it—”

“Well, then, come to the point,” said the old man in Yiddish. “You waste my time. You waste the precious moments I have left to me, which I would rather spend in charity than in condemnation. What do you want?”

“You spoke of a family secret,” Gregory said. “Rebbe, speak to me in English, please.” The old man sneered.

“And what did I speak then, when you were a little boy?” the old man asked in Yiddish. “Did I speak Yiddish or Polish, or was it English then too?”

“I don’t remember,” said the young man. “But I wish you’d speak English now.” He shrugged again, and then he said very quickly, “Rebbe, I am grieving for Esther! It wasn’t my wealth that bought her the diamonds. I wasn’t the cause of her wearing them carelessly. I wasn’t to blame that the thieves caught her unawares.”

Diamonds? There was a lie in this. Esther had worn no diamonds. The Evals had taken from her no diamonds. But Gregory was as smooth-tongued at this as anything else.

How he played the part. How the old man studied him.

The old man moved back just a little, as if the strength of the words had pushed him, perhaps even annoyed him. He scrutinized the young man.

“You mistake my meaning, Gregory,” he said in English. “I don’t speak of your wealth or what she wore around her neck when they killed her. I mean you killed your daughter, Esther. You had her murdered.”

Silence.

In the dimness I saw my hands visible against the books; I saw the tiny creases in the skin of my knuckles, and in the place where a man would have a heart I felt pain.

The smooth-tongued one gave no sign of guilt or shame or even shock. Either infinite innocence or infinite evil suffused him and upheld him in quiet.

“Grandfather, that’s madness. Why would I do such a thing? I am a man of God as you are, Grandfather!”

“Stop!” said the Rebbe. He lifted his hand.

“My followers would never hurt Esther, they—”

“Stop!” said the Rebbe again. “Get on with it, what do you really want.”

Rattled and smiling uneasily, Gregory shook his head. He collected himself to begin again. His lip trembled, but I don’t think the old man could see it as I could.

Gregory still held the check, an offering, poised, in his left hand.

“It’s something I remember you saying once,” said Gregory, the English rapid and natural now. “Nathan and I were in the room. I don’t think Nathan heard it. He was with…someone else. I don’t even remember who else was there, except my mother’s sister Rivka, and it seemed there were old women. But it was here in Brooklyn, and we’d only just come. I could ask Nathan—”

“Leave your brother alone!” said the old man, and this time it was English, confident, low, as natural to his tongue as Yiddish. Anger can do that, strip a voice down to the best way that it knows to speak. “Don’t approach your brother Nathan. Leave your brother Nathan in peace! You just said yourself your brother didn’t hear it.”

“Yes, I knew you would want it that way, Rebbe. I knew you wouldn’t want me to contaminate Nathan.”

“Get on with this.”

“That’s why I came to ask you. Explain it and I won’t bother my beloved brother, but I must know.” He went on. “That day, when I was a child, you spoke about a secret thing. A thing you called the Servant of the Bones.”

I was stricken. The words caught me utterly off guard. The shock only strengthened my form. I could not have been more stunned if he had turned and seen me. I called clothes to cover me, I called the clothes to cover me as he, the zaddik, was covered. And I felt myself immediately sheathed in black silk similar to his, warm and well fitted, and the air felt warm and the tiny lightbulb rocked on its frayed cord.

The Rebbe looked at the bulb for a long moment, then back at his grandson.

“Ah, be still, Azriel,” I commanded myself. “And listen. The answers are coming now.”

“Do you remember?” asked the younger one. “A family secret? A treasure called the Servant of the Bones?”

The old man remembered, but didn’t speak.

“You said,” Gregory continued, “that once a man had brought this thing to your father in Prague. The man was a Moslem, from the mountains. You said that this man had given this thing to your father in payment of a debt.”

Ah, this zaddik possessed the bones! But he wasn’t the master, no, never would he be, either.

He looked hard and secretively at his grandson.

“You were talking to old Rivka,” Gregory pressed, “and you told her the things the Moslem had said. You said that your father should not have accepted such a thing, but your father had been confused because the words on the wooden casket had been in Hebrew. You called it an abomination; you said it should be destroyed.”

I smiled. Did I feel relief or anger? An abomination. I am an abomination. And this abomination can destroy both of you and your room of books; it can tear your house to pieces to the rafters! But who called me!

I put my hand over my mouth in restraint. In the presence of a zaddik, I could not afford the most incidental sigh or sound. I couldn’t afford to weep.

The zaddik was still holding his peace, letting the young man reveal himself more and more.

“Rivka asked you why you didn’t destroy it,” said Gregory patiently, slowly, “and you said that that was not an easy thing to do. You said it was like the old scrolls, this thing. It could not be destroyed irreverently. You spoke again of something written, a document. Do you remember this, Grandfather? Or do I dream?”

The old man’s eyes were cold. “You heard this at my knee?” he muttered. “Why do you ask me of this now?”

Suddenly the old man raised his hand and made a fist and brought the fist down on the desk. Nothing moved, save the dust.

Gregory didn’t blink.

“Why do you come here on the day of your daughter’s funeral,” the old man raged, “and ask me about this old tale! This tale, this secret or treasure, as you call it, that you heard when you were my eloi, my shining one, my chosen pupil, my pride! Why do you come speaking of this thing now!”

The old man was trembling dangerously.

Gregory calculated silently, then took a deep breath.

“Rebbe, the check will buy so many things,” said Gregory.

“Answer my question! Money we have. We are rich here. We were rich when we left Poland. We were rich when we left Israel. Answer my question. Why do you ask about this thing now?”

I could see no wealth in this room but I believed him.

I knew his kind. He lived only to study Torah and to keep the law, and to pray, and to advise those who came to him daily, those who believed he could see into souls and make miracles, those for whom he was the instrument of God. Wealth would make no change in the life of such a man whatsoever, except that he might study day and night as he chose.

I felt my pulse, very strong. I felt the air in me. My strength had been steadily increasing since the words had been spoken. The bones had to be here. Yes, he had them, and somehow he had called me up. He had laid hands on them, or read the words, or spoken the prayer…it had to be this old man, but how was such a thing accomplished and why had I not simply destroyed him out of hand?

Out of memory, like a comet came a face I knew and loved. Hundreds of years were bridged in a moment.

This was the face of Samuel, of whom I’ve told you. Samuel of Strasbourg. This was the Master who had sold me for his children as I had once sold myself perhaps for the children of God. In my memory I saw the casket.

Where was it now?

The memory was bitter, a fragment; I wouldn’t have it. Accusations would distract me and nothing about this past, even with Samuel, could ever, ever be changed.

I stood in this warm room in Brooklyn, with another old scholar surrounded by dusty books, spells, charms, incantations, and I hated him. I despised him. He was far more virtuous, however, than Samuel had ever been, especially in the last moments when Samuel had told me to go my way to hell.

I hated this Rebbe almost as much as his grandson hated him.

And the grandson?

What was he to me, this smooth-tongued Gregory Belkin with his worldwide church? But if he had killed Esther—

I held fast. I let the temper and the pain melt in me; I asked of myself, be alive only, and be quiet.

This young one, groomed as well as a prince, waited in patience in the same manner for the temper of the zaddik to cool.

“Why ask me these things now?” the old man demanded.

I thought of the girl, the tender girl, her head turned on the stretcher. How kind and awestruck had been her little whisper. Servant of the Bones.

The old man suddenly lost control of his anger. He gave Gregory no time to answer. He went on with his raving questions.

“What drives you, Gregory?” he asked in English. His tone was intimate suddenly, as if he really wanted to know. He rose from his chair and stood facing his grandson.

“You put a question to me,” he said. “Let me put a question to you. What is it in the wide world that you would have? You are rich beyond imagining, so rich that you make our wealth a drop in the sea, yet you make a church to deceive thousands, you fashion laws which are no laws at all. You sell books and television programs that say nothing. You would be Mohammed or Christ! And then you kill your daughter. Yes, you did it. I see into you. I know you killed her. You sent those men. Her blood was on the very same weapon which killed them. Did you do away with them as well? Was it your followers who used those assassins and then dispatched them? What is your dream, Gregory, to bring down on all of us such evil and shame that the Messiah cannot stay away a moment longer! You would take away his choice!”

I smiled. It was a beautiful speech. Remembering nothing of Zurvan then, or anyone wise or eloquent, I nevertheless warmed to this speech, and to the conviction with which it had been made. I liked the old man just a little better.

Gregory adopted the softened attitude of sadness but remained silent. Let the old man rave.

“You think I don’t know you did this?” said the Rebbe. He let himself slip back down into the chair. He had to. He was tired in his rage. “I know. I know you and have known you as no one else from the day you were born. Nathan, your own twin, doesn’t know you. Nathan prays for you, Gregory!”

“But you don’t, do you, Grandfather? You said your prayers already for me, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I said Kaddish when you left this house, and if I had only a sign from Heaven, I would bring an end to your life and your Temple of the Mind and your lies and your schemes with my own hands.”

Would you, now?

“That’s an easy claim to make, Grandfather,” said Gregory unperturbed. “Anyone can do things when he has a sign from Heaven! I teach my followers to love in a world where there are no signs from Heaven!”

“You teach your followers to give you money. You teach your followers to sell your books. You raise your voice again to me and you’ll leave my house without your answers. Your brother knows nothing of what you speak—this old childhood memory of yours. He wasn’t there. My memory of that day is very clear. There is no one alive now who knows.”

Gregory raised his hand. Peace, forbearance.

I was enthralled and tormented. I waited for the next word.

“Grandfather, only tell me then what it means, ‘the Servant of the Bones.’ Am I such filth that to answer me is to desecrate yourself?”

The old man trembled. His shoulders narrowed and drew up under his black collarless coat. He shuddered and in the light his knuckles were pink and sore to look at. The light spilled down on his white beard and on the mustache which covered his upper lip, and on the translucent lids of his eyes as he shook his head and rocked back and forth as if he were praying.

Very smoothly came the voice of Gregory.

“Grandfather, my only child is dead, and I come to you with a simple question. Why would I kill my daughter, Esther? You yourself know there is no reason under God for me to have hurt Esther. What can I give you for the answer to my question? Do you remember this story, this thing, this Servant of the Bones? Did it have a name, was its name Azriel?”

The old man was stunned.

So was I.

“I never spoke that name,” said the old man.

“No, you didn’t,” said Gregory, “but someone else did.”

“Who has told you about this thing?” the old man demanded. “Who could have done such a thing?”

Gregory was confused.

I leant my weight against the shelf of books, watching, my fingers catching the loose flaking leather of the bindings. Don’t hurt them. Not the books.

The old man sounded hard and contemptuous.

“Has someone come to you with the legend?” asked the old man. “Has someone told you a pretty tale of magic and power? Was this man Moslem? Was he a Gentile? Was he a Jew? Was he one of your New Age fanatic followers who has read your abracadabra about the Kabbalah?”

Gregory shook his head.

“Rebbe, you have it wrong,” he said with solemn sincerity. “It was only your talk of this that I heard when I was a child. Then two days ago, someone else spoke the words before witnesses: Azriel, Servant of the Bones!”

I was afraid to guess.

“Who was this?” asked the old man.

“She said it, Rebbe,” Gregory told him. “Esther said it as she was dying. The man in the ambulance heard it from her lips as she died. Esther said it, Rebbe. Esther said, ‘The Servant of the Bones.’ And the name ‘Azriel.’ Esther said it twice aloud, and two men heard her. Those men told me.”

I smiled. This was more of a mystery than I had ever imagined.

I watched them intently. My face teemed with heat. And I knew that I trembled as the old man trembled, as if my body were real.

The old man drew back. He was not willing to believe. His anger vanished. He peered into the younger man’s face.

Then came the voice of Gregory, purposefully and cleverly tender.

“Who is he, Rebbe? Who is the Servant of the Bones? What is it, this thing, that Esther spoke of? That you spoke of? When I was a child playing on the floor at your feet? Esther said this name, ‘Azriel.’ Is that the name of the Servant of the Bones?”

My pulse throbbed so loud I could hear it with my own ears. I felt the fingers of my left hand bear down slightly on the tops of the books. I felt the shelf against my chest. I felt the cement floor under my shoes, and I didn’t dare to look away from either of them.

My god, I thought, make the old man tell, make him tell so I will know, my god, if you are still there, make him tell Who and What is the Servant of the Bones? Make him tell me!

The old man was too stunned to reply.

“The police have this information,” said Gregory. “They guard it jealously. They think she spoke of her killer.”

I almost cried aloud in denial.

The old man scowled, and his eyes moistened.

“Rebbe, don’t you understand? They want to find who killed her—not that trash with the ice picks who stole her necklace, but those who put them up to it, those who knew the value of the jewels!”

Once again, the necklace. I saw no necklace then and I saw none in my memory now. There had been no necklace around her throat. They had taken nothing from her. What was this diversion of the necklace?

If only I knew these men better. I couldn’t tell for sure when Gregory lied.

The voice of Gregory grew lower, colder, less conciliatory. He straightened his shoulders.

“Now let me speak plainly, Rebbe,” he said. “I have always, at your behest kept our secret, my secret, our secret—that the founder of the Temple of the Mind was the grandson of the Rebbe of this Court of the Hasidim!” His voice rose now as if he couldn’t quiet it. “For your sake,” he said, “I’ve kept this secret! For Nathan’s sake. For the sake of the Court. For the sake of those who loved my mother and father and remembered them. I have kept this secret for you and for them!”

He paused, the tone of accusation hanging there sharply, the old man waiting, too wise to break the silence.

“Because you begged me,” said Gregory, “I kept the secret. Because my brother begged me. And because I love my brother. And in my own way, Rebbe, I love you. I kept the secret so that you might not have the disgrace in your own eyes, and so that the cameras would not come poking in your windows, the reporters would not come crowding your stoop to demand of you how was it possible that out of your Torah and your Talmud and your Kabbalah came Gregory Belkin, the Messiah of the Temple of the Mind, whose voice is heard from the city of Lima to the towns of Nova Scotia, from Edinburgh to Zaire. How did your ritual, your prayer, your quaint black clothing, your black hats, your crazy dancing, your bowing and hollering—how did all of that loose upon the world the famous and immensely successful Gregory Belkin and the Temple of the Mind? For your sake, I kept quiet.”

Silence. The old man was sunk in silence, unforgiving, and filled with contempt.

I was as confused as ever. Nothing drew me to either man, not hate or love, nothing drew me to anything but the remembered eyes and voice of the dead girl.

Again, it was the younger man who spoke.

“Once in your entire life, you came to me of your own will,” Gregory said. “You crossed the great bridge that divides my world from yours, as you call it. You came to me in my offices to beg me not to disclose my background! To keep it a secret, no matter how many reporters questioned me, no matter how they pried.”

The old man didn’t answer.

“It would have benefited me to let the world know, Rebbe. How could it not have benefited me to say that I had come from such strong and observant roots! But long before you ever made your request of me, I buried my past with you. I covered it over with lies and fabrications so as to protect you! So that you would not be disgraced. You and my beloved Nathan, for whom I pray every night of my life. I did that, and I continue to do it…for you.”

He paused as if his anger had the better of him. I was mesmerized by both of them and the tale that unfolded.

“But as God is my witness, Rebbe,” Gregory said, “and I do dare to speak of him in my Temple as you do in your yeshiva, let me tell you this. She said those words when she died! Now you know it was none of your black-clad saints clapping their hands and singing on Shabbes who killed Esther! It wasn’t my doe-eyed brother who killed Esther. It was not a Hasid who killed Esther. When the Nazis shot my mother and my father, neither raised a hand to stop the arm or the gun, is that not so?”

The old man, perplexed and torn, actually nodded in agreement, as if they had moved far beyond then own mutual hatred now.

“But,” said Gregory, and he held up the check in his left hand, “if you don’t tell me the meaning of those words, Rebbe, and I do remember them, then I shall tell the police where I once heard them. That it was here in this house, among the Hasidim whom Gregory Belkin, the man of mystery, the Founder of the Temple of the Mind, was actually born!”

I was dumbfounded. I waited. I didn’t dare to take my eyes off the old man. Still he held out.

Gregory sighed. He shrugged. He walked a pace and turned and looked to Heaven and then dropped his hand. “I will tell them, ‘Yes, sir, I’ve heard those words. Yes, once I heard them. At my grandfather’s knee, and yes, he is living, and you must go to him to find out what they mean.’ I’ll tell them—I’ll send them to you and you can explain the meaning of those words to them.”

“Enough,” said the old man. “You’re a fool, you always were!” He sighed heavily, and then more in contemplation than consciously, he said, “Esther said those words? Men heard her?”

“Her attendants thought she was looking at a man outside the window, a man with long black hair! That’s a secret the police keep in their files, but the others saw him and they saw her look at him, and this man, Rebbe, he wept for her! He wept!”

It was I who trembled!

“Shut up. Stop. Don’t…”

Gregory gave a soft laugh of nudging mockery. He stepped back, turning this way and that again, without ever lifting his eyes to see me, though his eyes might, in a better light, have passed over my shoes. He turned back to the Rebbe.

“I never thought to accuse you, any of you, of killing her!” said Gregory. “Such a thought never came to me, though where have I ever heard such words before except from your tongue! And I walk in your door and you accuse me of killing my stepdaughter! Why would I do such a thing? I come here out of respect for her dying words!”

The old man said very calmly, “I believe you. The poor child spoke those words. The papers told of strange words. I believe you. But I also know you killed your daughter. You had it done.”

Gregory’s arms tensed as do the arms of men who are about to strike others, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t strike the Rebbe. That would never happen with these two men, I knew. But Gregory was at the end of his tether, and the zaddik was certain of Gregory’s guilt.

So was I. But what reason did I have for it? No more than the zaddik, perhaps.

I tried to peer into their souls, for surely they could boast of souls, the two of them, they were flesh and blood. I tried to look, as any human might look, as any ghost might plumb the depths of the soul of the living. I bent my head forward just a little as if the rhythm of their breathing would tell me, as if the beat of the heart would give away the secret. Gregory, did you kill her?

Did the old man ask the younger man the same thing? He leant forward in the light of his dusty bulb; his eyes were crinkled and bright.

He looked at Gregory again, and as he did so, quite by accident, and quite for certain, he saw me.

His eyes shifted very slowly and naturally from his grandson, to me.

He saw a man standing where I stood. He saw a young man with long curling dark hair and dark eyes. He saw a man of good height and good strength, very young, in fact, so young that some might have thought him still a boy. He saw me. He saw Azriel.

I smiled but only a little, like a man about to speak, not to mock. I let him see the white of my teeth. I confided to his secret gaze that I had no fear of him. Like him, I stood, with a full beard and in black silk, a kaftan or long coat. Like him and one of his own.

And though I didn’t know why or how I knew, I did know that I was one of his own, more surely than I was kin to the Huckster Prophet before him.

A surge of strength passed through me, as if the old man had laid his hands on the bones and howled for me! So it often happens, when seen, I grow strong. I was almost as strong in those moments as I am now.

The old man gave no signal to Gregory of what he had seen. He gave no signal to me. He sat still. The drift of his eyes over the room seemed natural and to settle on nothing, in particular, and to have no emotion, except the dim veil of sorrow.

He stared at me again, in the veiled way that Gregory would never notice. He held fast to me in perfect quiet.

Louder came the rush of pulse inside me, tighter the perfect shell of my body closed its pores. I could feel that he saw me and he found me beautiful! Young and beautiful! I felt the silk I wore, the weight of my hair.

Ah, you see me, Rebbe, you hear me. I spoke without moving my tongue.

He didn’t answer me. He stared at me as a man stares in thought. But he had heard. He was no fake preacher, but a true zaddik and he had heard my little prayer.

But the younger man, thoroughly deceived and with his back to me, talked again in English:

“Rebbe, did you tell anyone else the old story? Did Esther by chance ever come here seeking to know who you were, and maybe you—”

“Don’t be such a fool, Gregory,” the old man said. He looked away from me for the moment. Then back at me as he went on. “I did not know your stepdaughter,” he said. “She never came here. Neither has your wife. You know this.” He sighed, staring at me as if he feared to take his eyes away.

“Is it a tale of the Hasidim or the Lubavitch?” asked Gregory. “Something one of the Misnagdim might have told Esther—”

“No.”

We stared at one another. The old man, alive, and the young spirit, robust, growing ever more vivid, and strong.

“Rebbe, who else…?”

“No one,” said the old man, fixing me steadily as I fixed him. “What you remember is true and your brother was far from hearing, and your aunt Rivka is dead. No one could have told Esther.”

Only now he looked away from me, and up at Gregory.

“It’s a cursed thing you speak of,” he said. “It’s a demon, a thing that can be summoned by powerful magic and do evil things.”

And his eyes returned to me, though the young man remained intent on him.

“Then other Jews know these stories. Nathan knows…”

“No, no one. Look, don’t take me for an idiot. Don’t you think I know you asked far and wide among the other Jews? You called this court and that, and you called the professors of the universities. I know your ways. You’re too clever. You have telephones in every room of your life. You came here as the last resort.”

The younger man nodded. “You’re right. I thought it would be common knowledge. I made my inquiries. So have the authorities. But it isn’t common knowledge. And so I am here.”

Gregory bent his head to the side, and thrust the folded bank draft at the Rebbe.

This gave the old man one second to gesture to me, one second, merely to make the little gesture with his right index finger of Hide or Stay Quiet. It came with a swift negation with the eyes and the smallest move of his head. Yet it was no command, and no threat. It was something closer to a prayer.

Then I heard him. Don’t reveal yourself, spirit.

Very well, old man, for the time being, as you request.

Gregory—his back to me still—opened the check. “Explain the thing to me, Rebbe. Tell me what it is and if you still have it. What you told Rivka, you said it wasn’t an easy thing to destroy.”

The old man looked up at Gregory again, trusting me apparently to keep my place.

“Maybe I’ll tell you all you want to know,” said the old man. “Maybe I will deliver it into your hands, what you speak of. But not for that sum. We have more than plenty. You have to give us what matters to us.”

Gregory was much excited. “How much, Rebbe!” he said. “You speak as if you still have this thing.”

“I do,” said the old man. “I have it.”

I was astonished, but not surprised.

“I want it!” said Gregory fiercely, so fiercely that I feared he had overplayed his hand. “Name your price!”

The old man considered. His eyes fixed me again and then drifted past me, and I could see the color brighten in his withered face, and I could see his hands move restlessly. Slowly he let his eyes fasten on me and me alone.

For one precious second, as we gazed at one another, all the past threatened to become visible. I saw centuries beyond Samuel. I think I saw a glimmer of Zurvan. I think I saw the procession itself. I glimpsed the figure of a golden god smiling at me, and I felt terror, terror to know and to be as men are, with memory and in pain.

If this did not stop in me, I would know such agony that I would howl, like a dog, howl as the driver had howled when he saw the fallen body of Esther, I would howl forever. The wind would come. The wind would take me with all its other lost and howling souls. When I’d struck down the evil Mameluk master in Cairo, the wind had come for me, and I had fought through it to oblivion.

Stay alive, Azriel. The past will wait. The pain can wait. The wind will wait. The wind can wait forever. Stay alive in this place. Know this.

I am here, old man.

Calmly, he regarded me, unmarked by his grandson. He spoke now without taking his eyes off me, though Gregory bent to listen to his words:

“Go there, behind me and in the back of these books,” he said in English, “and open the cabinet you see there. Inside you’ll see a cloth. Lift it. And bring the thing that is beneath it. It is heavy, but you can carry it. You are strong enough.”

I gasped. I heard it myself, and I felt my heart crying. The bones were here! Right here.

Gregory hesitated for one moment, perhaps not accustomed to taking orders, or even doing the smallest things for himself. I don’t know. But then he sped into action. He hurried behind the bookcase at the old man’s back.

I heard the creak of wood, and I smelled the cedar and the incense again. I heard the snap of metal latches. I felt myself rise on the balls of my feet, and then sink down again to a firm stance.

The old man and I stared at one another without pause. I stepped free of the bookcase completely so that he might see me in my long coat that was like his, and he showed only the tiniest fear for an instant, then urged me, with a polite nod of his head, to please return to my hiding place.

I did.

Behind him, out of sight, Gregory fumbled and cursed.

“Move the books,” said the Rebbe. “Move them out of the way, all of them,” said the old man as he looked at me, as if he held me in check with his eyes. “Do you see it now?”

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.”

“He has no traffic with you and your kind!”

“And I don’t tell you this, Rebbe, to bring your anger down on him, no, not for that reason, but just so that you know that my brother Nathan loved me enough to call me and to tell me he was sorry that the girl was dead.”

Gregory opened the door. The cold of the night waited uneasily.

“Stay away from your brother!” The old man rose, his fists on the desk.

“Save your words!” said Gregory. “Save them for your flock. My church preaches love.”

“Your brother walks with God,” said the old man, but his voice was frail now. He was weary. He was spent.

He chanced a glance at me. I caught and held his eye.

“Don’t try to cheat me, Rebbe,” said Gregory as the cold air moved into the room past him. “If I don’t find this thing here tomorrow night as promised, I’ll stand on your doorstep with the cameras. I’ll print the stories of my childhood among the Hasidim in my next book.”

“Mock me if it pleases you, Gregory,” said the old man, drawing himself up. “But the bargain’s done, and the Servant of the Bones will be here for you tomorrow. And you will take this thing from me. You who are evil. You who do evil. You who walk with the Devil. Your church walks with the Devil. The Minders are of the Devil. Welcome to this demon and its ilk. Get out of my house.”

“All right, my teacher,” said Gregory, “my Abraham.” He opened the door wide and stepped through it, leaning back into the room so that the light clearly revealed his smiling face.

“My Patriarch, my Moses! You give my love to my brother.

Shall I give your condolences to my grieving wife?” He stepped back, slamming the door after him.

There was faint vibration of glass and metal things quivering.

I stayed where I was.

We looked at one another, I and the old man, across the dusty little room, I stepped partway from behind the bookcase and the old man remained fixed behind his desk.

The old man trembled.

Go back into the bones, Spirit. I never called you. I don’t speak to you, except to send you away from me.

“Why?” I pleaded. I spoke the old Hebrew knowing he would know it. “Why do you so despise me, old one? What have I done? I don’t speak now of the spirit that destroys the magicians, I speak of myself, me, Azriel! What did I do?”

He was astonished and shaken. I stood before his desk; I wore clothes like his clothes, and I looked down and I saw that my foot had almost touched the casket, and how small it looked, and the smell of boiling water rose in my nostrils.

“Marduk, my god,” I cried out in the old Chaldean. He knew the words, the zaddik! Let him glare at me in horror.

“Oh, my god, they will not help me!” I sang out the words in Chaldean. “I am here again and there is no righteous path!”

The old man stood rapt, and repelled. He was full of shock and loathing. He threw out his hands:

“Be gone, spirit, out of here, out of the air, and back into the bones whence you came!”

I felt a silken thrill through my limbs. I held firm.

“Rebbe, you said he killed her. Tell me if he did. I slew the men who stabbed her!”

“Be gone, spirit.” He threw up his hands over his face, and turned his head. His voice grew stronger. He stepped from behind his desk and walked about me in a circle, shouting the words again, louder, more clearly, his hands flashing in front of me. I felt myself weaken. I felt the tears on my face.

“Why did you say, Rebbe, that he had killed Esther? Tell me and I shall avenge her! I killed the hirelings! Oh, Lord God of Hosts, when Yahweh spoke to Saul and David, he said slay them all to the last man, woman, and child! And Saul and David obeyed him. Was it not right to slay those three filthy men who murdered an innocent girl?”

“Be gone, Spirit!” he cried. “Be gone! Be gone. I will have no traffic with you. Go back into the bones!”

“I curse you, I hate you!” I said to him, but it had no sound.

I was dissolving. All that I had gathered to myself was dispersed, as if the wind had found its way beneath the door and caught hold of me.

“Be gone, Spirit, be gone from here, be gone from my house and from me!”

Blackness.

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking.

I couldn’t stop being.

I will see you again, old man.

Dreams came to me as if I were human and I slept, and my mind had opened its doors to living teachers. No, Azriel, no, perish, but don’t dream.

Yet there came the face of Samuel; Strasbourg; another sanctuary of scrolls and books and it was in flames. I heard my voice. “Take my hand, Master, take me with you into death.” Damn you, Samuel! Damn you, old man.

Damn you, all you Masters!

From the top of a hill I looked down on the small city of Strasbourg. Oh, it was nothing so clear then as it was when I described it to you.

But it was there, I saw it. I knew that all the Jews were suffering. I knew I was one of them. And yet I couldn’t be one of them. And the bells pealed. The arrogant bells of murderers came from their churches. And the sky was the silent heavy sky of olden days—six hundred years ago—perhaps when the air didn’t talk and so clearly I heard the bells.

“Azriel.” Chatter. Wind. The invisible were coming, they were coming to me in smoky mist, surrounding me, closing in, smelling the weakness, the fear, and the suffering. “Azriel!” The rumblings of the jealous earthbound surrounded me. The greedy desperate earthbound dead.

Get away from me. Let me remember.

I wanted to know, I wanted to push past all of them as I had the people on the sidewalk when Esther had looked at me. I wanted to remember, I wanted to…

For one instant, I stood bright, staring at the Rebbe, but the Rebbe was huge, and his voice was louder than the wind.

Be gone, Spirit! I command you! The old man’s face was blood red with his fury.

Be gone, Spirit!

His words struck me. They hurt me. They lashed me. Give me silence for now. If there can be no peace, there can be silence and there can be the darkness. It could be worse, Azriel.

It could be worse.

To be wounded is bad, but not so bad as to kill the innocent and to smile with hate.