Servant of the Bones

17

There are several things I should have attempted. I should have tried to leave the room, intact, and follow Gregory. I had a visible body! I had clothed it perfectly. I should have hung on. I should have tried to wander freely in the streets of Brooklyn and discover more about the world, simply by asking more specific questions of it.

I should have discovered specifics about Gregory Belkin and the Temple of the Mind. People in the streets would have talked to me about these things. I looked like a man. I could have watched the television broadcasts in taverns. I could have spent a night of fruitful, focused learning instead of letting the old Rebbe drive me away from my own self, and into nothingness once more.

Whatever, when the Rebbe sought to destroy me, I should not have wasted time calling out to “my god.”

That had been an unthinkable thing for the Servant of the Bones—to call upon my god—for my god had never been with me in my years of evil spectral service. I don’t think the Servant of the Bones who cursed Samuel even remembered my god, because he did not remember being human, as I remembered now. My god had been mine when I was a man, a young man living in the city of Babylon where I had died.

Indeed, though I hate to admit it, if I bring to mind Samuel, I remember only how proud I was to be his genii, a ghost of remarkable powers such as simple dead souls almost never acquire. I was the mighty culmination of ancient magic and men who knew how to use it.

Of human life, I had recalled nothing. I could not even recall a Master before Samuel, though surely there had been such men. Back to Babylon there must have been a lineage of such magicians, all of whom I’d served and outlived.

It had to be so. It was so. The Servant of the Bones was passed hand to hand.

And at some point, as the Rebbe had so graciously explained for Gregory’s benefit, the Servant of the Bones had rebelled against his solemn purpose. He had turned around in the very midst of his magic and lashed out at the one who had called him into being, and the Servant of the Bones had done this more than once.

But what had preceded all this? Had I not once been human?

What did my memories want of me? What did Esther want of me? Why was it seductive to have eyes and ears, to feel pain, and to hate again, and to want to kill? Yes, I very much wanted to kill.

I wanted to kill the Rebbe, but then again I could not. I held him to be a good man, a man perhaps without blemish, except for want of kindness, and I couldn’t do it. There is only so much evil for which you can blame others. I couldn’t kill him. I was glad I had not.

But you can imagine what a mystery I was to myself, caught between Heaven and Hell and not knowing why I had come.

But I was not of God, no, I was not of God and I had no god, and when the Rebbe banished me, when he used his considerable power to dissolve my form and addle my wits so that I could not oppose him, he had done so in the name of God and I had not dared to call upon that same God, the God of my father, the Lord God of Hosts, the God above and before all Gods.

No, in that moment of weakness, Azriel, man and ghost, had called upon his pagan god of old, from a human time, a god whom he had loved.

As the Rebbe cursed me, I deliberately called on Marduk in Chaldean. I wanted the Rebbe to hear the pagan tongue. Anger burnt me up as it has so often done. I knew my god wouldn’t help me.

Some parting of the ways had occurred with me and my god.

Must I now recall everything? Must I know the story from the start?

Well, if I sought to put it together, to understand it, to know who I had been and how I’d been made the Servant of the Bones, there should be but one reason: so that I might die.

Really, really die.

Not just retreat into blackness again, to be called forth into another lurid drama, and surely not to be trapped, earthbound, with the lost souls who murmured and stammered and screeched as they clung to mortality. But to die. To be given at last what had somehow been denied me years ago by a trick I couldn’t recall.

“Azriel, I warn you.” Who had spoken those words then, thousands of years ago? A phantom? Who was the man I saw dimly at the richly carved table who cried and cried? Who was the King? There had been a great king.…But my anger and my rage had weakened me so that I was shocked and dispersed by the Rebbe. My mind was blown apart as surely as my form. My capacity to reason was shattered, and I rose into the night formless, aimless, drifting once more among the electric voices, tumbling as it were above the magnet that holds us all—the spinning world.

But I never let go. I never really let go.

As I came to myself, as I gathered strength again, as I set my eyes upon a destination, I thought of all these various aspects of my situation—that I very well might be utterly Masterless, that I wouldn’t fail Esther, that I was stronger than I’d ever been—and I was determined to fight harder this time to be free of either of these two men—the Rebbe or his grandson Gregory—I was determined that if I could not die, I would gain life apart from them.

Who knows what nourishes a spirit, in the flesh or out of it?

Men and women in this time, who would have laughed at our old customs, believed in absolutely preposterous explanations of things—take, for example, how a hailstone comes to form, from a speck of dust in the upper atmosphere, falling, then rising, gathering ice to itself, falling again, then rising again, and becoming larger and larger, till some perfect moment is reached at which the hailstone breaks the circuit and falls to earth and then, after all of that, all of that wondrous process, melts to nothing. Dust to dust.

Someday these people—these clever minds of today—will know all about spirits. They will know as they knew about genes and neutrinos and other things they cannot see. Doctors at the bedside will see the spirit rise, the tzelem, as I saw it rise from Esther. It will not take a sorcerer to drive a spirit heavenward. There will be men clever enough to exterminate or extinguish even something like me.

Note this, Jonathan.

Scientists of your time have isolated the gene for a fruit fly that is eyeless. And when they take his genes and inject them into other fruit flies—God have mercy on his tiny creatures—do you know that these fruit flies produce eyes all over their bodies? Eyes on their elbows? And on their wings?

Doesn’t that make you love scientists? Don’t you feel tenderness towards them and respect for them?

Believe you me, coming back to myself the following night, taking form again, diaphanous but optimistic and hatefully calm, I did not think to seek the help of scientists any more than sorcerers to effect my final death. No. I was done with all practitioners of the unseen; I was done with everything except justice for a girl I’d never known. And I would find a way to die, even if it meant I had to remember everything, every painful moment of what I’d suffered when death should have come to me, when death should have been granted, when the Ladder to Heaven might have fallen down, or at least the Gates of Hell swung wide.

Stay alive long enough to understand!

It was exciting! It was perhaps the only truly exciting thing that I could at that moment imagine or recall.

On the sidewalk, the next night, in Brooklyn, I took form whole and swift as if some modern man had flicked a light switch. Invisible to mortal eyes, but in the very shape that would soon enough become solid.

I wanted it this way. But still, to come forth on my own? I couldn’t quite trust it. But tonight I would make strides in my search for the truth.

Brooklyn again, the house of the Rebbe and his family, and Gregory’s car sliding to the curb.

Invisible, I drifted close to Gregory, fairly wrapping myself around him, though never touching him really, escorting him back the alleyway, almost touching his fingers as he unlocked the gate.

When the door opened, I entered with him, beside him, buoyant and fearless, breathing in the smell of his skin, inspecting him as never before.

I think I was luxuriating for a moment in the invisibility, which in general I hate, and came close to see how very well groomed and strong this man was, and that he had the glow of a king. His black eyes were uncommonly bright in his face, unencumbered by fleshly wrinkles that suggest weariness or an attitude, and his mouth in particular was very beautiful, more beautiful than I had realized. He wore fine clothes as before, the simple garments of this era, a long coat of soft fleecy wool, fine linen beneath it, and around his neck, the same scarf.

I went to the far left corner of the room, a much better place than I had occupied the night before, this time quite far to the left of both men and the dingy lamps beside and above them, and the small circle of intimacy which they so unwillingly shared.

Indeed I could see the old man’s profile as I saw Gregory’s, the two facing each other, and the casket gleaming on the desk, the desk this time which had been stripped of all its sacred books and would no doubt be purified after by a thousand words and gestures and candles, but what was that to me?

I was making the air move. The old man would know it within seconds. I had to be still and resist the lure of my growing strength. Remain diaphanous, quick to move, rather than to be scattered, willing to pass through the wall intact, rather than frightened once more or hurt into disintegration as I had been the night before.

I was near the wall that was closest to the street outside, against a wooden door that appeared unused, its brass handle covered with dust, and I could see my own shape, my folded arms, my shoes. I called the duplicates of Gregory’s clothes to form themselves easily around me, in so far as I knew the details.

The Rebbe rested on his elbows, staring at the casket before him, and the black chains looked ugly against the plated gold.

I felt nothing in me that he was so near to the bones. I felt nothing that either man spoke of them, or moved about them, or stared at the casket which held them, and this I noted.

Behave now as if you are living, and as if it matters to go on living. Be careful as the living. Take your time.

My own advice to myself amused me a little. But then I settled in, deep into the corner, beyond where the light fell, beyond where it might even touch my half-visible shoe or inevitably gleaming eye.

Old man, just try it! I was ready for him. I was ready for anyone or anything.

Gregory stepped anxiously into the light. He looked directly at the casket. The old man behaved as though Gregory were not there. Gregory might have been the spirit. The old man stated at the gold plating; he stated at the iron chains.

Gregory reached out, and without asking permission he put his hands on the casket. Then I did feel a shimmer, much as I loathed it, and I was stronger, instantly stronger.

The old man stared right at Gregory’s hands. Then he sat back, sighing heavily as if for effect or punctuation, and he reached for a sheaf of papers—rather cheap and light paper, nothing as good as parchment—and he thrust this group of papers at Gregory, holding them up above the casket.

Gregory took the papers.

“What’s this?”

“Everything written on the casket,” said the old man in English. “Don’t you see the letters?” His voice was full of despair. “The words are written in three tongues. Call the first Sumerian, the second Aramaic, and the last Hebrew, though they are ancient tongues.”

“Ah! This was more than kind of you. I never expected such cooperation from you.”

I thought so too. What had moved the old man to be so helpful?

Gregory could barely hold the papers steady. He shuffled them, put them back in order, and started to speak.

“No!” said the old man. “Not here. It’s yours now and you take it. And you say the words when and where you will, but not under my roof, and from you I exact one last promise, in exchange for these documents which I have prepared for you. You know what they are, don’t you? They let you call the spirit. They tell you how.”

Gregory made a soft laugh. “Once again, your kindness overwhelms me,” he said. “I know your disinclination to touch even trifles which are not clean.”

“This is no trifle,” said the old man.

“Ah, then, when I say these words the Servant of the Bones will rise?”

“If you don’t believe it, why do you want it?” asked the old man.

The shock went through me. I was fully visible.

I cleaved to the wall, not daring even to try to see my own limbs. The cloth wound itself around me without a whisper. “Make the shoes to shine even brighter, give me the gold for my wrist, and make my face as clean of hair, yet give me the hair of my youth,” I asked silently.

I felt my full weight, denser perhaps than it had even been the night before. I wanted to look down at myself but I dared not make myself known.

“You don’t seriously think I believe in it,” Gregory replied politely. He folded the sheaf of papers and put them carefully into the breast of his coat.

The old man made no reply.

“I want to know about it, I want to know what she was talking about, I want it. I covet it. I covet it because it’s precious and it’s unique and she spoke of it with her dying words.”

“Yes, that does convey upon it an added value,” said the old man, his voice harder and clearer than I had ever heard it before.

I could feel my hair against my shoulders. I could feel the dampness from the concrete wall as it chilled my neck. I made the scarf at my neck thicker. I made it fit higher. The lightbulb stirred. Things creaked in the room, but neither man appeared to notice, so intent were they on the casket and on each other.

“The chains are rusted, aren’t they?” Gregory said, raising his right finger. “May I take them off?”

“Not here.”

“All right, then I presume we have concluded our bargain. But you want something else, don’t you? A final promise. I know. I can see it in you. Speak. I want to take home my treasure and open it. Speak. What more do you want?”

“Promise me, you will not come back to this house. You’ll never seek my company again. You’ll never seek the company of your brother. You will never tell anyone of how you were born one of us. You will keep your world away as you have always done. If your brother calls you, you will not receive his call. If your brother visits you, you will not receive him. Promise all of this to me.”

“You ask that of me every time I see you,” said Gregory. He laughed. “It’s always the final thing you ask, and I always promise.”

He cocked his head and smiled affectionately at the old man, patronizingly, with maddening impudence.

“You won’t see me again, Grandfather. Never, never again. When you die, I won’t cross the bridge to come to your graveside. Is that what you want to hear? I won’t come to Nathan to mourn with him. I won’t risk exposing him, or any of you. Very well?”

The old man nodded.

“But I have one last demand of you,” said Gregory, “if I am never to speak to or see Nathan again.”

The old man made a little questing gesture with both hands. “Tell my brother I love him. I insist you tell him.”

“I’ll tell him,” said the old man.

Then Gregory moved swiftly, gathering up the casket, letting the chains scrape on the desk as he stood upright with it in his arms.

I felt again the tremors, the strengthening, moving down my arms and my legs. I felt my fingers moving, I felt a tingling as if tiny needles were being touched to me all over. I didn’t like it, that it came from his touch. But maybe it came from all of us here, our sense of purpose, our concentration.

“Goodbye, Grandfather,” said Gregory. “Someday, you know, they will come to write about you—my biographers, those who tell the story of the Temple of the Mind.” He tightened his grip on the casket. The rusted chains left red dust on his lapels but he didn’t care. “They’ll write your epitaph because you are my grandfather. And you’ll deserve that recognition.”

“Get out of my house.”

“Of course, you needn’t worry for the moment. No record exists of the boy you mourned thirty years ago. On my deathbed I’ll tell them.”

The old man shook his head slowly, but resisted a reply.

“But tell me, aren’t you the least bit curious about this casket, about what’s in it, about what may happen when I read the incantations?”

“No.”

Gregory’s smile faded. He studied the old man, and then he said:

“All right, Grandfather. Then we have nothing to talk about, do we? Nothing at all.”

The old man nodded.

The anger beat in Gregory’s cheeks, wet and red. But he had no time for this. He looked at the thing in his arms and he turned and hurried out the door, kicking it open with his knee and letting it slam behind him.

The old man sat exactly as before. I think he looked at the dust on his desk. I think he stared at the flakes of rust from the iron which had been left on his polished wood. But I couldn’t tell.

I felt nothing. I neither moved nor was strengthened, as Gregory with his casket of bones moved away from me. No, he was not Master, never, never, by any means. But this old man? I had to know.

Gregory’s steps died away in the alley.

I came forward, and walked to the old man’s desk and stood in front of it.

The old man was aghast.

The moment for an outcry passed in rigid silence, his eyes contracting, and when he spoke it was a whisper.

“Go back to the bones, Spirit,” he said.

I drew on all my strength to hold out against him, I thought nothing of his hatred, and I thought of no moment in my long miserable existence when I had been either wronged or loved. I looked at him and I stood firm. I barely heard him.

“Why did you pass the bones to him?” I asked. “What is your purpose! If you called me up to destroy him, tell me!”

He turned his face away, so as not to see me.

“Be gone, Spirit!” he declared in Hebrew.

I watched him stand up and move the chair back out of his way, and I saw his hands fly up, and I knew that he was speaking Hebrew, and then the Chaldean, yes, he knew that too, and he spoke it with perfect cadence, but I didn’t hear the words. The words didn’t touch me.

“Why did you say he killed Esther? Why, Rebbe, tell me!”

Silence. He had ceased to speak. He didn’t even pray in his mind or his heart. He stood transfixed, his mouth closed tight beneath his white mustache, the locks of his hair shivering slightly, the light showing the yellowed hairs of his beard as well as the snow white.

His eyes were closed. He began to whisper his prayers in Hebrew, davening, or bowing, that is, very quickly over and over again.

His fear and fury were equal; his hatred outstripped them both.

“Do you want justice for her?” I shouted at him. But nothing would break his prayers and his closed eyes and his bowing.

Now I spoke, softly in Chaldean,

“Fly from me,” I said in a whisper, “all you tiny parts of land and air and mountain and sea, and of the living and of the dead, which have come to give me this form, fly from me but not so far that I cannot summon you at will, and leave me my shape that this mortal man may see me and be afraid.”

The light above shivered again on its raw cord. I saw the air move the old man’s beard. I saw it make him blink.

I looked down through my own translucent hands and saw the floor beyond them.

“Fly from me,” I whispered, “and stay close to me to return at my summons, that God Himself would not know me from a man that He had made!”

I vanished.

I threw out my disappearing hands to frighten him. I wanted so to hurt him, just a little. I wanted so to defy him. On and on he prayed with eyes closed.

But there was no time for idle play with him. I didn’t know if there was energy enough for what I meant to do.

Passing through the walls I went upwards, rising over the rooftops, passing through tingling wires, and into the cool air of the night.

“Gregory,” I said, as surely as if my old master Samuel had sent me to say it. “Gregory!”

And there below in the stream of traffic on the bridge I saw the car, moving amongst its guardians, for there were many. I saw it, sleek and long, keeping perfect pace with the cars before it and behind it and beside it, as if they were birds together in a flock and flew straight, without having to play the wind.

“Down there, beside him and so that he cannot see.”

No Master could have said it with more determination, pointing his finger at the victim that I was to rob, or murder, or put to flight.

“Come now, Azriel, as I command you,” I said.

And gently I descended, into the soft warm interior of the car, a world of dark synthetic velvet and tinted glass that made the night outside die a little, as if a deep mist had covered all things.

Opposite him, I took my place, my back to the leather wall which divided us from the driver, folding my arms again as I watched him, crouched as it were, with the casket in his arms. He had broken off the useless rusted iron chains, and they lay dirty and fragmented on the carpeted floor.

I could have wept with happiness. I had been so afraid! I had been so sure I could not do it! All of my will had been so fixed on the effort, that I scarce had breath in me to realize it had been done.

We rode together, the ghost watching him, and he, the man clutching his treasure, balancing it carefully on his knees, and reaching in his coat for the papers, and then shoving them back in his excitement and steadying the casket again and rubbing his hands on it, as if the very gold excited him as it had the ancients. As gold had once excited me.

Gold.

A blast of heat came to me, but this was memory.

Hold firm. Begin. From land and sea, from the living and the dead, from all that God has made, come to me, what I require to make of me an apparition, thin as air, to make of me a barely visible yet strong being.

I looked down and saw the shape of my legs, I had hands again, I made clothes like Gregory’s clothes. I could almost feel the padded seat of the car. Almost feel it, and I longed to touch it, longed for garments to wrap me round.

I saw buttons, the shining semblance of buttons, and fingernails. And I lifted my invisible hand to my face to make sure that it was clean shaven as his. But give me my hair, my long hair, like Samson’s hair, thick hair. I caught my fingers in the ringlets. I wanted so to finish it but not yet—

I had to say when Azriel would come, didn’t I? I had to say it. I was the Master.

Suddenly Gregory lowered the casket. He fell down on his knees on the very floor of the car and laid the casket before him, rocking with the motion of the car, steadying himself against the seat, his right hand so close to me he almost touched me, and then he ripped off the lid of the casket.

He pulled it up and off, and it flew off, rotted, dried, a shell of gold almost, and there—there on their bed of rotted cloth lay the bones.

I felt a shock as though blood had been infused into me. My heart had only to beat. No, not yet.

I looked down at the remnants of my body. I looked down at the bones that held my tzelem locked within them, coated with gold, chained together, and formed like a child asleep in the womb.

A dimness threatened me, a dissolution. What was the reason? Pain. We were in a great room. I knew this room. I felt the heat of the boiling cauldron. No. Don’t let this come now. Don’t let this weaken you.

Look at the man on his knees right in front of you, and the bones that he all but worships, which are your bones.

“Body be my own,” I whispered. “Be solid and strong enough to make angels burn with envy. Mold me into the man I would be in my happiest hour, if I held the looking glass before my own face.”

He paused. He had heard the whisper. But in the dark he saw nothing but the casket. What were creaks and bumps and whispers to him? The car sped along. The city hissed and throbbed.

His eyes were locked to the bones.

“My Lord God,” said Gregory, and leaning back on his heels so that he wouldn’t tumble, he reached out for the skull.

I felt it. I felt his hands on my head. But it was only a stroking of the thick black hair that was already there, hair I had called to me.

“Lord God!” he said again. “Servant of the Bones? You have a new Master. It is Gregory Belkin and his entire flock. It is Gregory Belkin of the Temple of the Mind of God who calls you. Come to me, Spirit! Come to me!”

I said:

“Perhaps yes, perhaps no to all those words. I am already here.”

He looked up, saw me sitting composed and opposite to him and he let out a loud cry and tumbled over against the door of the car. He let go of the casket altogether.

Nothing changed in me except that I grew stronger and brighter.

I reached over towards him and down carefully and put the fragile lid over the curling skeleton of the bones. I covered them up with my hands, and I drew back and up and folded my arms, and I sighed.

He sat slumped still on the floor of the car, the seat behind him, the door beside him, his knees up, staring at me, merely staring, and then as filled with wonder as any human I could ever remember, fearless and mad with glee.

“Servant of the Bones!” he said, flashing his teeth to me.

“Yes, Gregory,” I answered with the tongue in my mouth, my voice speaking his English. “I am here, as you see.”

I studied him carefully. I had outdone his garments, my coat was soft and flawless silk, and my buttons were jasper, and my hair was long on my shoulders. Heavy! And I was composed and he sat in disarray.

Slowly, very slowly he rose, grasping the handle of the door to aid himself, as he sat back down on the velvet seat and looked first at the casket on the floor and then at me.

I turned sharply for one instant. I had to. I was afraid. But I had to. I had to see if I could see myself in the dark tinted glass.

Beyond, the night moved in a splendid dreamy flight, the city of towers clustering near us, bright orange electric lights blazing as fiercely as torches.

But there was Azriel, looking at himself with sharp black eyes, smooth shaven, his hair a regular mantle on his head, and his thick eyebrows dipping as they always did when he smiled.

Without haste, I let my eyes return to him. I let him see my smile.

My heart beat and I could move my tongue easily on my lips. I sat back and felt the comfort of this cushioned seat, and I felt the engine of the car vibrating through me, vibrating through the soft, exquisite velvet beneath me.

I heard his breath rise and fall. I saw his chest heave. I looked into his eyes again.

He was rapt. His arms had not even tensed; his fingers lay open on his knees. He did not even bend his back as if to brace himself from a shock or a blow. His eyes were fully opened and he too was almost smiling.

“You’re a brave man, Gregory,” I said. “I have reduced other men to stuttering lunatics with such tricks as this.”

“Oh, I bet you have,” he answered.

“But don’t call me the Servant of the Bones again. I don’t like it. Call me Azriel. That’s my name.”

“Why did she say it?” he asked at once. “Why did she say it in the ambulance? She said ‘Azriel,’ just as you said it.”

“Because she saw me,” I said. “I watched her die. She saw me and she spoke to say my name twice, and then that was all she said and she was dead.”

He tumbled gently back against the seat. He stared upwards now, past me, resisting the inevitable rocking of the car, and its sudden jerks as it slowed, perhaps blocked by the traffic. He stared and only slowly lowered his eyes to me in the most fearless and casual manner I have ever seen in a man.

Then, lifting his hand, he began to tremble. But it wasn’t cowardice. It wasn’t even shock. It was glee, the pure mad glee he’d felt when he looked at the skull.

He wanted to touch me. He rubbed his hands together, and he reached out and then he drew back.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t care. Do it. I would like you to do it.”

I reached forward and grabbed his right hand before he could stop me and I lifted it as he stared amazed. His mouth opened. I lifted his hand and pushed it against my thick hair, and laid it on my cheek, and then against my chest.

“You feel a heartbeat?” I asked. “There is none. Only a living pulse as if I were whole and entire a heart, made of a heart, when the very opposite is surely the truth. I feel your pulse, true enough, and it races. I feel your strength and you have much.”

He tried to free his hand, but only politely, and I wouldn’t let him do it; I held his hand now so that I could see the palm of it in the flashing light coming through the windows.

The car went very slowly.

I saw the lines in his palm, and then I opened my right hand which was free, and I saw the lines in my palm too. I had done well. No Master had ever done better. But I didn’t know how to read these lines, only that they had come to me in glorious detail.

Then I made a decision to do something which I could not explain to myself. I kissed the palm of his hand. I kissed this tender flesh of his hand; I pressed my lips right against it and when I felt the shiver pass through him, I gloried in it, almost the way he was glorying in my presence.

I looked into his eyes and saw something of my own eyes in them, in their largeness, their darkness, even in the thick fringe of lashes of which I, once alive, had been so very proud.

I wanted to kiss his lips, to lock hold of them, and to kiss as enemies kiss before one tries to kill the other.

Indeed, if there had ever been a moment for the Servant of the Bones like this with any mortal, I didn’t remember it. Not a wisp of such a memory remained; indeed, I felt nothing now except a fascination with him, and all that came to trouble it was her face, Esther’s, and her lips and her dying words.

“And what makes you think that I am not Master!” he whispered. A shining smile spread on his lips, almost rapturous.

I released his hand and he slipped it away, and brought his own two hands together as if to protect them against me, but this was done with graceful composure.

“I’m the Master and you know it,” he said it gently. But his voice was eager and loving. “Azriel! You’re mine.”

There wasn’t even a sensible particle of fear in him. Indeed the wonder he knew now seemed the kernel of his person, the part of him which had always defied the Rebbe and had defied a legion of others, and would defy me. The wonder in him was…what? The monstrous arrogance of an Emperor?

“I am not the Master?” he asked me.

I looked at him calmly. I was thinking about him in wholly new ways, not ways of rage, but ways of wanting to know: who and what was he? Had he killed her? What if he had not?

“I say not, Gregory,” I answered his question. “You’re not the Master. But then I don’t know everything. Ghosts must be forgiven that they know so much and so little at the same time.”

“Rather like mortal men,” he said with a delicate touch of sadness. “And were you ever one of them?”

A chill caught me off guard, rippling over new skin. Dimness. The cries of people echoing up glazed brick walls. I shook myself all over.

Certainly I had once been a mortal man! And so what.

I was here now in the car with him. The process of incarnation continued in me, with the thickening of the sinews and the deepening of the minerals within the new bones which were now in my fleshly body, and the hair that formed on the backs of my arms and on my fingers, and the soft remnant of beard on my cheek.

And this process had to be of my doing. He sang no songs to make it happen; he recited no chants. He didn’t even know it was happening. If there was an alchemy coming from him, it was the alchemy of his expression, his wonder, his obvious love.

Again came the dimness. It came swift and titanic—a procession, a great street with high blue-glazed walls, and the scent of flowers everywhere, and people waving, and a dreadful sadness, so bitter, so total, that for one moment I felt myself begin to dissolve.

The car around me seemed insubstantial, which meant that I was leaving it.

In the memory I raised my arm and voices cried in praise.

My god wouldn’t look at me. My god turned his back on me and on the procession, and he wept.

I shook my head. Gregory Belkin was watching all this, keenly sensing it.

“Something troubles you, Spirit,” he said gently. “Or is it merely so hard to become flesh again?”

I took hold of the door handle. I looked at the glass and at my face.

I was the one who made myself stay.

The car shuddered and rumbled as it moved over the roughened street. He took no notice. But new light had come in from both sides, penetrating even the black glaze of the windows, and it showed how jubilant he was, and how easy, and how young he looked in his wonder and joy.

“Very well,” he said with charm, eyebrows lifted, “so I am not the Master. Then tell me, beautiful one, and you are quite the handsome Spirit, why have you come to me?”

Once again, his teeth flashed white and there seemed a moment near magical when the various ornaments he wore—small and made of gold, at his wrists, on his tie—flickered as if struck by a note of music, and he looked very good, as good perhaps as he thought I looked.

Masters.…Who were masters to me? Old men?

I spoke before I thought.

“There was never a Master as brave as you, Gregory,” I said, “not that I can remember, though so much lies beyond my reach. No, your bravery is different, and fresh. And you are not the Master. It seems, like it or not, that I have come to you on my own and for my reasons.”

This pleased him immensely.

I grew warmer and I felt the fibers of my clothes against me, I felt the snug certainty of being there. My foot flexed in my shoe.

“I like that you’re not afraid of me,” I said. “I like that you know what I am from the start as any Master might, but you’re not the Master. I’ve been watching you. I’ve been learning things from you.”

“Have you?” he said. He did not so much as flinch. He was in near ecstasy. “Tell me what you’ve seen.” At the moment it seemed there was only one thing he found more fascinating than me, and that was himself.

I smiled at him.

He wasn’t a man unused to happiness. He knew well how to enjoy things, both minute and momentous. And though nothing like this had ever happened to him, his life had educated him to enjoy this too.

“Yes,” he said, smiling broadly. “Yes!”

I hadn’t spoken. We both knew it. Yet he had read my thoughts? What else is in there to read, I wonder?

The big car slid to a stop.

I was glad. I was frightened by his charm, frightened by the fact that I warmed to him, frightened that somehow in talking to him I gained strength. He didn’t have to want it or wish it, only perhaps to witness it. But this I couldn’t tolerate. I had been there when Esther died and he had not. He had not been there to see me, yet I had been strong enough to take the lives of her killers each in turn.

He stared out the windows, to the right and left. An immense crowd surrounded us, roaring, shouting, pushing up against the car so that it rocked suddenly on its wheels as a boat in water.

He was not concerned. He turned and looked at me. I felt that dimness come again, because this crowd reminded me of that old crowd, the crowd attending the procession, and the petals falling in the light, the incense rising, and people on the flat rooftops, standing at the very edge, with their arms outstretched.

Jonathan, you know now what I remembered, but I didn’t remember then, you see. It was confusion. It was as if something were trying to force me to see my existence as a continuum. But I didn’t trust it. I must have been very close to Zurvan’s teachings a thousand times over the years and never knew it, never remembering Zurvan. Why else did I want to avenge this girl? Why else did I despise the Rebbe for his lack of mercy on me? Why else was this man’s evil fascinating me so much that I hadn’t already killed him?

He broke in with his gentle, beguiling voice.

“And so we’re here, at my home, Azriel,” he said.

He pulled me back fast.

“We are at my very door.” He made a dreamy, weary gesture towards the people on either side of us. “Don’t let them frighten you. I must invite you, please, to come in.”

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.