Servant of the Bones

18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was more than magnificent.

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

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

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

I turned around.

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

But I cleared this for the present.

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

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

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

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

I turned around and around, absorbing everything, drawing out of each item every inference that I could, and no doubt drawing as always upon sources of knowledge inexplicable to me. I was startled by each new object. Then I knew what it was. Statues from China, a Grecian urn very familiar to me and comforting, and lavish glass vases of flowers—these things stood on pedestals.

Strewn about us were couches and chairs of peach and gold velvet, tables with lustrous tops, more vases of magnificent lilies and great golden daisies, or so they seemed to me, and beneath all was a sprawling square carpet, reaching almost from the windows over the park to the edge of the circle in the rear.

The carpet was sewn in magnificent detail with the tree of life, full of the birds of Heaven, and the fruit of Heaven, and figures walking beneath the tree limbs, figures in Asian dress.

So it was always; the world changed; the world became more complex; the world increased in invention and sometimes in ugliness, yet the forms of my time were always embedded in the surfaces around me. Every object in the room was connected in some way to the oldest aesthetic principles ever known to me.

I imagined suddenly that the lost tribes of Israel lived in the carpet, those sold when Nebuchadnezzar came down upon the northern kingdom, but that had been before Jerusalem had been taken. Images of battle, of fire.

Azriel, master thyself.

“Tell me,” I said, disguising my delight in all this, my weakness and hunger for it. “What is the Temple of the Mind that its High Priest lives in this splendor? These are private rooms. Are you the thief and the charlatan, as your grandfather said?”

He didn’t answer me, but he was most delighted. He walked about me, watching me, waiting eagerly for me to speak again.

“There lies a newspaper from the streets opened where you left it,” I said. “Ah, there is Esther’s face. Esther smiles for the historians. For the public. And beside the paper, what is this pitcher? Bitter coffee. Your taste is on the cup. I smell it. This is all private, your place of recollection. Yours is a rich God, Mind or no Mind.” I took the time to smile. “And you a rich priest.”

“I’m not a priest,” he said.

Two men appeared suddenly, gawky youths in white stiff shirts and dark trousers. They entered out of the wall of doors, and Gregory was flustered.

He made some quick gestures to them that they must go away. The mirrored doors closed again.

We were alone. I felt my breath and my eyes moving in my skull, and I felt such desire for all things material and sensuous that I could have wept. If I had been alone I would have wept.

I regarded him suspiciously. The night, both real and in reflection, pulsed with twinkling lights. Indeed lights were as plentiful and vital in this time as water had been perhaps in earlier times. Even in this room the lamps were powerful, sculpted pieces of bronze work with heavily adorned glass shades the color of parchment. Light, light, light.

His excitement was palpable to me. He could scarce hold his tongue. He wanted to inundate me with questions, drink all the knowledge he could from me. I stood obdurate, as if I were really human and had every right as any man to be quiet and myself.

Air moved in the room, full of the smell of trees and horses and of the fumes rising from the engines; the engines filled the night with discord. If he were to shut the window, it would go away, this noise, but then so would the fragrance of green grass.

Finally he could contain himself no longer.

“Who called you?” he said. He was not unpleasant. Indeed, he seemed now to slip into a childlike candor but with too much ease for it not to be a style. “Who brought you out of the bones?” he asked. “Tell me, you have to. I am the Master now.”

“Don’t take such a foolish tack,” I answered. “It will be nothing for me to kill you. It would be too simple.” I felt no weakening in myself as I resisted him.

What if the world was my Master now? What if each and every human were my master? I saw a blazing fire suddenly, a fire not of the world, but of the gods.

The bones which I still held all this time were heavy in my arms. Did they want me to see them? I looked down at the old battered casket. It had soiled my garments. I didn’t care.

“May I set down the bones?” I asked. “Here, on your table, beside your newspaper and your pitcher of bitter coffee and your dead daughter’s face, so pretty to look at, with no veil?”

He nodded, lips parted, straining to keep quiet, to think, and yet too exultant really to do either in any organized way.

I laid down the casket. I felt a ripple of sensation pass through me, just from the proximity of the bones, and the thought suddenly that they were mine own, and I was dead and a ghost, and that I was walking the earth again.

My god, don’t let me be taken before I understand this!

He approached. I didn’t wait for him. I boldly took off the frail cover of the casket, just as he had before. I laid down the cover on the big table, crushing the newspaper a little, and I stared at the bones.

They were as golden and brilliant as they had been the day I died. But when had that been?

“The day I died!” I whispered. “Am I to find out everything now? Is that part of the plan?”

I thought again of Esther’s mother, the woman in red silk. I could sense her presence under this roof. She had most definitely seen me and I tried to imagine how I looked to her. I wanted her to come in here, or to find some way to go to her.

“What are you saying?” He questioned me eagerly. “The day you died, when was it? Tell me. Who made you a ghost? What plan do you speak of?”

“I don’t know those answers,” I said. “I wouldn’t bother with you if I did. The Rebbe told you more than I knew when he translated those inscriptions.”

“Not bother with me!” he said. “Not bother with me! Don’t you see that if there is a plan, a plan even greater than that which I have designed, you are part of it?”

It gave me pleasure to see his mounting excitement. It was invigorating, beyond doubt. His fine eyebrows rose a little, and I saw that the charm of his eyes was not merely their depth, but their length. I was a person of rounded features; the lines of his face came to beautiful trajectories and points.

“When did you first come? How could Esther have seen you?”

“If I was sent to save her I failed. But why did you call her the lamb? Why did you use those words? Who are these enemies you speak of?”

“You’ll learn soon enough. We’re all surrounded by enemies. All we have to do to rouse them is show a little power, resist the interjecting plans which they have laid with all the solemnity of a god, plans which are only the routine, the ritual, the tradition, the law, the normal, the regular, the sane…You know what I mean, you understand me.”

I did understand him.

“Well, I have gone against them and they would come against me, only I’m too powerful for them, and I have dreams that dwarf their petty evil!”

“My, but you speak with a silken tongue,” I said, “and you give so much in your words. Why to me?”

“To you? Because you’re a spirit, a god, an angel sent to me. You witnessed her death because she was a lamb. Don’t you see? You came when she died, as if a god to receive a sacrifice!”

“I hated her death,” I said. “I slew the three men who killed her.”

This astonished him. “You did that?”

“Yes, Billy Joel, Hayden, and Doby Eval. I killed them. The papers know. The news talks of her blood on their weapons and their blood mingled with it now. I did that! Because I had failed to stop them from their evil plan. What sacrifice do you speak of? Why call her the lamb? Where was the altar and if you think I’m a god, you’re a fool! I hate God and all gods. I hate them.”

He was enthralled. He drew close to me, and then stepped back, and then walked around, too excited to be still.

If he was guilty of killing his daughter, he gave no clue. He looked at me with pure delight in our exchange.

Something struck me suddenly. The skin of his face had been moved! A surgeon had tightened it over all his bones. I laughed at the ingenuity of it and the implications, that things in this age could be done so simply. And with a sudden sinking terror, I thought, What if I have been brought to this age for a reason that has to do with his horrors and the world’s wonders, and this is the chance to stay whole and alive from now on?

I winced, and he started to question me again. I put my hands up for him to be quiet.

I backed away from my own thought. I turned and stared at the gleaming bones, and I bent down and laid my own fingers, my material fingers, upon my own bones.

At once I felt as if someone were touching me as I touched them. I felt someone’s touch on my own legs. I felt my own hands on my own face as I touched the skull. I sank my thumbs into the empty sockets defiantly, where my eyes had been, my eyes…something boiling, something too ghastly to think of—I uttered a small sound that made me ashamed.

The room quivered, brightened, then contracted as though it were receding. No, stay here. Stay in this room. Stay here with him! But I was imagining things, as humans say. My body had not weakened at all. I was standing tall.

I opened my eyes slowly and closed them and looked down at the golden bones. Iron fastened them to the rotted cloth beneath them, iron fastened them to the old wood of the casket, but it was the same casket, permeated with all the oils that would make it last unto the end of time, like the bones. An image of Zurvan flashed through me, and with it came a flood of words…to love, to learn, to know, to love…

Once again came the huge city walls of blue-glazed bricks, the golden lions and the cries of voices, and one of them pointing his finger and screaming at me in the old Hebrew—the prophet—and the chants rose and fell.

Something had happened! I had done something, something unspeakable to be made this ghost, this old ghost who had served Masters beyond recollection.

But if I dwelt on this, I might vanish. Or I might not.

I stood very still, but no more memories came. I withdrew my hands. I stood looking down at the bones.

Gregory brought me out of it.

He moved closer and he put his hands on me. He wanted so much to do this. How his pulse raced. It felt wondrously erotic, these fleshly hands touching my newly formed arms. If I was still gaining in strength, I didn’t feel it anymore.

I felt the world. Safe inside it for now.

His fingers clenched the sleeves of this coat. He was staring at it, the precision of it, the dazzle of the buttons, the fine stitches. And all of this I’d drawn to me in haste with the old commands that rolled off my tongue like nothing. I could have made myself a woman suddenly to frighten him. But I didn’t want to do that. I was too happy to be Azriel, and Azriel was too afraid.

Yet again…what was the limit of this masterless power? I contrived a joke, an evil joke. I smiled, and then whispering all the words I knew, fashioning the most mellifluous incantations I could, I changed myself into Esther.

The image of Esther. I felt her small body, and peered through her big eyes and smiled, and even felt the tightness of her garments on that last day, the flash of the painted animal coat in my eye.

Thank God, I didn’t have to see this myself! I felt sorry for him.

“Stop it!” he roared. He fell back onto the floor, scrambling away from me, and then leaning back on his elbows.

I returned to my own shape. I had done this and he had no control of it! I had control of it. I felt proud and wicked suddenly.

“Why did you call her the lamb? Why did the Rebbe say you killed her?”

“Azriel,” he said. “Listen carefully to what I say.” He climbed to his feet as effortlessly as a dancer. He walked towards me. “Whatever happens after, whatever happens, remember this. The world is ours. The world, Azriel.”

I was startled.

“The world, Gregory?” I asked. I tried to sound hard and clever. “What do you mean, the world?”

“I mean all of it, I mean the world as Alexander meant the world when he went out to conquer it.” He appealed to me, patiently. “What do you know, Spirit Friend? Do you know the names Bonaparte or Peter the Great or Alexander? Do you know the name Akhenaton? Constantine? What are the names you know?”

“All of those and more, Gregory,” I answered. “Those were emperors, conquerors. Add to them Tamerlane and Scanderbeg, and after him Hitler, Hitler, who slew our people by the millions.”

“Our people,” he said with a smile. “Yes, we are of the same people, aren’t we? I knew we were. I knew it.”

“What do you mean, you knew it? The Rebbe told you. He read the scroll. What are these conquerors to you? Who rules in this electric paradise called New York? You are a churchman, so says the Rebbe. You are a merchant. You have billions in every currency recognized on earth. You think Scanderbeg in his castle in the Balkans ever had the wealth you have here? You think Peter the Great ever brought back to Russia with him the luxuries you possess? They didn’t have your power! They couldn’t. Their world wasn’t an electrical web of voices and lights.”

He laughed with delight, his eyes sparkling, and beautiful.

“Ah, that’s just it,” he said. “And now in this world so filled with wonders, no one has their power! No one has the force of Alexander when he brought the philosophy of the Greeks to Asia. No one dares to kill as Peter the Great killed, chopping off the heads of his bad soldiers until the blood covered his arms.”

“Your times are not the worst of times,” I said. “You have leaders; you have talk; you have the rich being kind to the poor; you have men the world wide who fear evil and want goodness.”

“We have madness,” he said. “Look again. Madness!”

“What does this mean to you? Is this the mission of your church to gain control of the whole world? Is that what drives you, as the old man asked? You want the power to chop off the heads of men? You want that?”

“I want to change everything,” he said. “Look back over those conquerors. Look back over their accomplishments. Use the finest reach of your spirit mind.”

“I will. Go on.”

“Who really changed the world forever? Who changed it more than any single man?” I didn’t answer.

“Alexander,” he said. “Alexander the Great did it! He dared to kill empires that blocked his path. He dared to force Asian to marry Greek. He dared to break the Gordian knot with a sword.”

I considered. I thought. I saw the Greek cities along the Asian coast, long after Alexander had died in Babylon; I saw the world as if I were standing back from it. I saw it in patches of light and dark.

“Alexander changed your world,” I said. “The world of the West. I see what you see. Alexander is the cornerstone of the rise of the West. But the West isn’t the world, Gregory.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” he answered. “Because the West that Alexander built has changed Asia. No part of the globe has not been changed by the West that Alexander built. And no mind today stands ready to change the world as he would, and I…as I would.”

He drew in close to me, then suddenly with a darting motion, pushed me with both hands. I didn’t move. It was like a child pushing a man. He was pleased and sobered. He took a step back.

I pushed him with one hand. I pushed him into a stumble and then a fall, from which he rose slowly, unshaken, refusing to be shaken.

He didn’t become angry. He was knocked back a step, but he planted his feet squarely and he waited.

“Why are you testing me?” he asked. “I didn’t say I was a god or an angel. But you’ve been sent to me, don’t you see? You’ve been sent on the eve of the transformation of the world, you are sent as a sign! As was King Cyrus of old, that the people would go home to Jerusalem!”

Cyrus, the Persian. My whole frame ached; my mind ached. I struggled to be still.

“Don’t speak of that!” I whispered. My mind went blank with rage. You can well imagine. I was beside myself. “Speak of Alexander if you will. But don’t speak of Cyrus. You know nothing of those times!”

“Do you?”

“I want to know why I am here now,” I went on, holding firm. “I don’t accept your fervent prophecies and proclamations. Did you kill Esther? Did you send those men to kill her?”

Gregory seemed torn. He reflected. I could read nothing from him. “I didn’t want for her to die,” he said. “I loved her. The greater good called for her death.”

Now this was a lie, a brittle, technical lie.

“What would you do if I told you, yes, I did kill Esther?” he said. “For the world, I killed her, for the new world that will rise from the ashes of the dying world, the world that is killing itself with small men and small dreams and small empires?”

“I swore I’d avenge her death,” I said. “And now I know you’re guilty. I’ll kill you. But not now. When I want to.”

He laughed. “You kill me? You think you can?”

“Of course,” I said. “Remember what the Rebbe told you. I have killed those who have called me.”

“But I didn’t call you, don’t you see, it was the plan, it was the world! It was the design! You were sent to me because I need you, and can use you, and you will do what I will that you do.”

It was the world. Those were the very words I’d said to myself in desperate hope. But was it to be Gregory’s world?

“Surely you must help me,” he said. “I don’t need to be your Master. I need you! I need you to witness and understand. Oh, but this is too remarkable that you came alive to see Esther murdered, and to kill those three, you did say that to me, that you killed those three.”

“You loved Esther, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, very much,” he said. “But Esther had no vision. Neither does Rachel. That’s why you’ve come. That’s why you were given to our people, to my grandfather’s father, don’t you see? You were meant to appear before me in all your glory. You are the witness. You are ‘He who will understand everything.’ ”

I was puzzled by his words. Plan, scheme, design. “But what is it I am to witness?” I asked. “You have your church. And what does Esther have to do with it?”

He thought a long moment, and then he said with innocent candor:

“Of course, you were meant for me. No wonder you struck down others.” He laughed. “Azriel, you’re worthy of me, don’t you see? This is what’s so supremely beautiful, you’re worthy of me, of my time, my brilliance, my effort. We are on a par. You are a prince of ghosts, I suspect. I know it.”

He reached to touch my hair.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Hmmm, a prince, I’m sure, and you’ve been sent to me. All those old men; they kept you, passed you down through the generations. It was for me.”

He seemed almost moved to tears by his own sentiment. His face was soft and radiant and confident.

“You have the pride and decisiveness of a king, Gregory.”

“Of course I do. What does the Master usually say to you, Spirit?” he asked. “What do you remember?”

“Nothing,” I said adamantly. A lie of my own. “I wouldn’t be with you if I could,” I said. “I stay with you now because I’m trying to remember and to know. I should kill you now. That would probably be like your precious Alexander when he cut the Gordian knot.”

“No, that won’t happen,” he said calmly. “That cannot possibly be meant. If God wanted for me to die, anyone could do it. You don’t realize the scale of my dreams. Alexander would have understood.”

“I am not yours,” I said. “I know that much. Yes, I want to know the scale of your dreams, yes. I don’t want to kill you without understanding why you had Esther murdered. But I am not yours. Not meant for you. Not necessarily meant…for anything.”

Somewhere the mother was crying again. That I’m sure I could hear. I turned my head.

“Do as I say,” he said, touching me again, clamping his hand on my arm.

I pulled away. I hurt him a little.

My strength had gone past exhilaration. I was restless. I wanted to walk, to touch things. I wanted to touch these couches of velvet, and run my hand on the marble. I wanted simply to look at my hands. I was holding utterly fast. I wasn’t sure that I could dissolve now if I wanted to.

It was a strange feeling, to be so strong, and not to know if the old tricks would work. But then I had only lately made myself Esther. I was tempted…

…But no, this was not the time.

I glared at the bones. I reached down and covered up the bones with the fragile lid. There lay the Sumerian letters for me to read.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded.

“I don’t like the sight of the bones,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because they’re mine.” I looked at him. “Somebody killed me. Someone did it against my will. I don’t like you either, necessarily. Why should I believe you that I am something worthy of you? What is your scheme? Where is your Alexandrian sword?”

I was sweating. My heart was pounding. (I didn’t really have a heart but it felt like it was pounding.) I peeled off this coat, admiring my own handiwork as I did it. I could see how different it was from his clothing, though modeled completely upon it.

Perhaps he noticed the difference too.

“Who sewed these clothes for you, Azriel?” he ordered. “Were they done by invisible angels on invisible looms?” He laughed as if this was the most preposterous idea.

“You’d better think of clever things to say. I may not kill you, but I very well may leave you.”

“You can’t! You know you can’t!”

I turned my back on him. Let me see what else I could do.

I looked at the walls, the ceiling, the peach silk of the drapes, and the great tree of life blazing in the carpet. I drew near the window and the air moved my hair. The coolness came down on my skin and on my hair.

Slowly, I closed my eyes, though I could still take small steps, for I knew where everything was, and I clothed myself, envisioning a robe of red silk, with a sash of silk, and jeweled slippers. I took her shade of red, wrapped myself in it, and brought the gold to me for the sleeves and for the hem and for the slippers. I was now clothed in her violent red. Perhaps the mothers here mourned in red.

It was conceivable.

I heard him sigh. I heard his shock. I saw myself reflected in the mirrored panes of the ornate doors, a tall, black-haired youth in a long, red Chaldean robe. No beard, no, no hair on the face. I liked the smooth face. But this would not do, these garments, too antique; I needed freedom and power.

I turned around.

Again, I closed my eyes. I imagined a coat of his cut in this brilliant red but of the finest wool, tailored as his coat was tailored, with buttons of simple and perfect gold, almost pure gold. I imagined the trousers looser and smooth, as a Persian would want them to be, and the slippers I stripped of their embroidery.

Beneath the coat, I drew to myself, against my skin, a shirt like his, only of far whiter silk even than his, its buttons made of gold as well, and round my neck on my chest, beneath the wings of this coat, against the shirt, I brought two full strands of beads which I took from all the opaque stones of the world I loved—jasper and lapis lazuli, beryl, garnet, jade, and ivory. I put amber with this, on these two strings, until I felt the weight against my chest, and then I raised my hand and touched the beads, and when I let my shoulders fall easy, the coat almost closed over this secret bit of vanity, these ancient beads. My shoes I made identical to his shoes, only of the softest cloth, and lined with silk.

He was shocked by these simple magic acts. I had found them easier than ever.

“A silken man,” he said. He said it in Yiddish. “Zadener yinger mantchik.”

“Shall I cap it off?” I asked. “By walking out of here?”

He drew himself up. His voice was shaky now. If it was not humility, it was some form of respect.

“There’s time for you to show me every trick you know, but for now, you must listen to me.”

“More interested in your schemes than seeing me vanish?” I asked.

“Alexander would be more interested in his own schemes, wouldn’t he? Everything is ready. Everything in place, and now you come, the right hand of God.”

“Don’t be so hasty. What God!”

“Ah, so you despise your origins and all the evil you’ve done, do you?”

“I do.”

“Well, then, you should welcome the world that I place in your hands. Oh, I see more by the moment. You are here to teach us after the Last Days, I see it.”

“What Last Days! When the hell are mortal men going to shut up about the Last Days! Do you know how many centuries ago men yammered on about the Last Days?”

“Ah, but I know the very dates of the Last Days,” he said calmly. “I’ve chosen them. I see no reason to delay in telling you the whole scheme. I see no reason not to make it all known. You recoil from me, deride me, but you’ll learn. You are a learning spirit, aren’t you?”

A learning spirit.

“Yes,” I said. I liked this concept.

I listened to the sound of steps in the passage. I thought I heard the mother’s voice, low and urgent, and I didn’t like it that she was still crying.

Coldly, I observed that his proximity to me did not matter. He could be one foot away or ten. I was just as strong. I was quite independent of him, which was perfect. As he watched, I covered my fingers with gold rings, and those fine stones I liked for rings, emeralds, diamonds, Eye of the Sea, or pearl, and ruby.

The mirrors were full of us. I would have bound my hair with a leather thong, and should have done it, but I didn’t care just now, and again, I felt my face, to be sure it was smooth as was his face, because for all my love of a long beard, I liked this naked skin better.

He walked around me. He took his steps silently and made a circle as if he could close me in this way, with my power. But he knew nothing of magic, circles, pentagrams.

I asked my memory: Had ever I seen a Master more excited than he was, more proud, and more hot for glory? I saw crowds of faces. I heard songs. I saw ecstasy; but those had been masses and masses, and it had been a lie. And my god had been weeping. That was no answer.

The answer was this: I couldn’t kill him, not yet. I couldn’t. I wanted to know what he had to teach. But I had to be certain of the limits of his power. What if he were to command me now as the Rebbe had done?

I moved away from him.

“You fear me suddenly?” he asked. “Why.”

“I don’t fear you. I’ve never served a King, not as a spirit on any account. I’ve seen them. I saw Alexander when he was dying…”

“You saw this?”

“I was there in Babylon and I walked past him with his men, guised as one of them. He lifted his left hand again and again. His eyes were completely ready for death. I don’t think he had any more great dreams in his head. Maybe that’s why he died. But you are full of dreams. And you do burn bright like Alexander, that is true, and I fight you yet I…I think I could love you.”

I sat down and remained still on a hassock of velvet, and I thought.

I sat there, elbows on my knees. He took his stand in front of me, allowing plenty of room, perhaps ten paces, and then he folded his arms. Take charge.

“You already love me,” he said. “Almost everyone who sees me loves me. Even my grandfather loves me.”

“You think so?” I said. “You know he knew I was there when he sold you the bones, he saw me.”

This stunned him into utter silence. He shook his head, then went to speak, then was silent again.

“I was in the room and visible, and when he saw me with his mean little blue eyes, that was when he agreed to tell you what you wanted to know of the Servant of the Bones and to sell me to you.”

The full hurt of it hit him. The full hurt. I thought he would weep. He turned and walked this way and that. “He saw you…” he whispered. “He knew the spirit could be brought forth from the bones and he gave the bones to me.”

“He knew the spirit was there in his room, and he sold you the bones in the hope that I would go with them. Yes, he did that to you. I know, it’s pain, unendurable pain to realize that such a trick could be done. For a mortal man to hurt a mortal man, that’s one thing. But for a zaddik to see a demon and know that demon can destroy you, and to pass on that demon to you—”

“All right, you’ve made your point!” he said bitterly. “So he despises me, so he did as soon as I questioned him. By twelve I was hurling my questions at him, and by thirteen gone from his house, and dead and buried in his Court.” He shivered all over. “He saw you and he passed the bones to me. He saw you!”

“That’s right,” I said.

He grew calm with amazing speed. His face took on renewed confidence and he pondered, easily shoving aside hate and hurt, as I knew that I had to do.

“Will you give me some simple facts?” he asked. His voice went lower. He was radiant with his pleasure. “When did you first see me or anyone connected with me? Tell me.”

“I told you. I came alive with Billy Joel Eval, and Hayden and Doby Eval on their way to kill the rich girl. They stuck their picks in her before I knew it. I went after them. I killed them. She saw me as she died, she said my name. Her soul went right up into the light, as I told you. Next I saw you was in the room of the Rebbe, no, as you approached, as you came towards it out of your car, with your guards all around you. I followed you into the room. The next night I did the same. And here we are. The rest I’ve explained. I became visible to the old Rebbe. I became flesh as I am now, and he struck his bargain.”

“You exchanged words with him?” he asked, looking away as if this hurt was something he couldn’t quite fight.

“He cursed me, he said he would have no traffic with demons. He wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t have mercy on me or answer my questions. He wouldn’t recognize me!”

I left out the part that the old man had made me disappear the first time, and that on the second occasion I had left on my own.

His face truly actually changed for the first time.

That is, his next expression seemed a great leap from where he’d been in his feelings and intentions. Something was stripped away from him. It was not the humor, it was not the jubilation, it was not the strength. It certainly wasn’t the courage. But something was uncovered in him that was ruthless, and it made me think of my own fingers when they had tightened around the wooden handle of the pick and when I had shoved it into the soft swishy stomach of Billy Joel, right beneath his ribs.

He turned and walked a few steps away from me, and again I felt nothing. I watched; I felt my blood run through my veins.

I felt the flesh of my face tighten as I myself smiled a tiny secret smile that aided my thoughts.

All of this is illusion, Jonathan, but the details meant it was very good illusion! As good as now, as I sit before you. Now, it takes strength, great strength, to do it, as you know. And though by the time I came to you, Jonathan, I was used to that strength; I was not so used to it then.

Yes, I’m independent of him, I thought with a great surge of courage, but what about the bones? How does it all figure? Could it be true, that I had been destined for him? In a moment Gregory would realize that the zaddik’s seeing me and passing me on did not really contradict Gregory’s own theory that I was intended for him.

“Right,” he said suddenly, answering my thought. “He was merely the instrument. He had no idea. No idea at all that it was for me that he kept the bones. And Esther’s words, that’s what made the link. Esther gave me the link as she died; she sent me to him to get the bones, and to get you from him, you see. You are destined for me, and worthy of me.”

He paced and stroked the flesh beneath his lower lip with his finger. “Esther’s death was inevitable, necessary. I didn’t realize it myself. She was the lamb. And she brought you to me. It is I who must make plain to you your full destiny.”

“You know, maybe you do have something,” I said, “with this talk of my being worthy of you. I mean, perhaps you are worthy of me. You are so surprising. I wonder.”

I paused, then went on:

“Those masters, maybe they weren’t worthy of me.”

“They couldn’t have been,” he said with chilling smoothness. “But I am. And now you’re beginning to understand, and you’re helping me to understand. I am the Master, but only in so far as I’m your destination, I’m your…your.…”

“Responsibility?” I said.

“Ah, yes, perhaps that’s exactly the word.”

“That’s why I don’t kill you now, even though you sanctify the murder of that poor girl with some fancy babbling?”

“It’s facts. She brought you to me, through my grandfather. She sent me to you, and you to me! She did it! That means the plan will work, the plan will be realized. She was a martyr, a sacrifice, and an oracle.”

“God guides in all this?” I asked derisively.

“I will guide things as I think God wants me to,” he answered. “Who can do better?”

“You would seduce me to love you, wouldn’t you? You are so used to love, love from people who open your doors and pour your drink and drive your car…”

“I have to have it,” he whispered. “I have to have the love and recognition of millions. I love it. I love it when the camera shines on me. I love when I see my grand scheme ever expanding.”

“Well, maybe you won’t get it from me for very long. Before I ever saw Esther die, I was damned tired of being a ghost! I’m tired of serving masters. I don’t see any reason for me to do what it says on the casket!”

Anger again. Heat. But it was no more than might come from the body of a man.

I stared at the casket. I ran back my own words through my head. Had I said such a bold thing? Yes, I had, and it had been true, and it had been no curse or supplication to anyone.

Silence. If he said anything I didn’t hear him. I heard something, but it was a cry of pain, or worse. What’s worse than pain? Panic? I heard a cry that was right between the ultimate agony one can feel and the madness which is about to obliterate all sense of it. I heard a fine scream, you might say, right there between the light and the dark, like a vein of ore on a horizon.

“You saw your own murder?” He was talking to me. “Azriel, perhaps now you will come to see the reason for it.”

I could hear the fire beneath the cauldron. I could smell the potions thrown into the boiling gold!

I couldn’t answer. I knew that I had, but to speak it, to think on it, was to realize and remember too much. I couldn’t. I had tried before. I had memory upon memory of trying to remember and not being able to remember at all.

“Listen, you miserable creature,” I said to him in a fury. “I’ve been here forever. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I don’t remember. Maybe I was murdered. Maybe I was never born. But I am forever and I’m tired. I’m sick to death of this half death! I’m sick of all things that stop short of the full measure!”

I was flushed. My eyes were wet. The clothes felt rich and embracing, and it was good to fold my arms, to clutch at my shoulders with my crossed hands, and to look up suddenly and see the faintest shadow of the tangle of my own hair, to be alive, even flooded with this pain.

“Oh, Esther. Who were you, my darling?” I asked aloud. “What did you want of me?”

He was enrapt and silent.

“You ask the wrong person,” he said, “and you know you do. She doesn’t want vengeance. What can I do to convince you, you were destined for me?”

“Tell me what you want of me. I am to witness something? What? Another murder?”

“Yes, let’s proceed. You have to come with me into my secret office. You have to see the maps for yourself. All the plans.”

“And I’ll forget about her death, forget about avenging her?”

“No, you’ll see why she died. For great empires somebody must die.”

This sent a rivet of pain through my chest. I bent forward.

“What is it?” he asked. “What good would it do to avenge the death of one girl? If you’re an avenging angel, why don’t you walk out there in the streets? There are deaths happening now. You can avenge them. Come out of the pages of a comic book! Kill bad guys. Go ahead. Do it till you’re tired of it, the way you’re tired of being a ghost. Go on.”

“Oh, you are one fearless man.”

“And you’re one tenacious spirit,” he said.

We stood glaring at one another.

He spoke first:

“Yes, you are strong, but you’re also stupid.”

“Say this to me again?”

“Stupid. You know and you don’t know. And you know I’m right. You gather your knowledge from the air, the way you do the matter that creates your clothing, even your flesh perhaps, and the knowledge rains on you too fast. You are confused. Is that the better word? I can hear it in your questions and your answers. You long for the clarity you feel when you talk to me. But you’re afraid that you need me. Gregory is necessary for you. You wouldn’t kill me or do what I don’t want.”

He drew in closer, eyes growing wide.

“Know this thing first before you learn any more,” he said. “I have everything in the world a man could want. I am rich. I have money beyond counting. You were right. I have money the Pharaohs never had, nor the Emperors of Rome, or even the most powerful wizard who ever bombarded you with his Sumerian poetry! The Temple of the Mind of God I invented, whole and entire and worldwide. I have millions of followers. Do you know what the word means? Millions? What does this mean? It means this, Spirit. What I want is what I want! Not some fancy, or longing, or need! It’s what I want, a man who has everything.”

He looked me up and down.

“Are you worthy of me?” he demanded. “Are you? Are you part of what I want and what I’ll have? Or should I destroy you? You don’t think I can. Let me try. Others have gotten rid of you. I could get rid of you. What are you to me when I want the world, the whole world! You’re nothing!”

“I will not serve you,” I said. “I won’t even stay here with you.”

He had been all too right. I was beginning to love him and there was something deeply horrible in him, something fiercely destructive which I’d never encountered in any human.

I turned my back on him. I didn’t have to understand the loathing I felt or the rage. He was abhorrent to me and that was enough. I had no reason now, only pain, only anger.

I went to the casket, opened the lid, and looked down at the grinning skull of gold that had been me and still had me somehow, like a flask has its liquid. I took the casket up into my arms.

He came after me, but before he could stop me I carried the casket and its loose cover to the marble hearth. I shoved it noisily on the pyre of wood, and watched the sticks tumble as the heap shifted to receive it. The lid fell to one side.

He stood right beside me, studying me, and then looking down at it. We were looking to the side at each other, each of us, to the side of the hearth.

“You wouldn’t dare to burn it,” he said.

“I would if I had a bit of flame,” I said. “I would bring flame, only if I bring flame I may hurt that woman, and those others who don’t deserve it—”

“Never mind, my bumbling one.”

My heart pounded. Candles. There were no burning candles in this room.

There came a snap. I saw the light in my eye. He held a tiny burning stick, a match.

“Here, take it,” he said. “If you’re so sure.”

I took the stick from him. I cradled the flame in my fingers. “Oh, this is so pretty,” I said, “and so warm. Oh, I feel it…”

“It’s going to go out if you don’t hurry. Light the fire. Light the crumpled paper there. The fire’s built up. The boys do it. It’s made to roar up the chimney. Go ahead. Burn the bones. Do it.”

“You know, Gregory,” I said, “I can’t stop myself from doing it.” I bent down and touched the dying flame to the edge of the paper, and at once the paper was laced with flame and rising and collapsing. Little burning bits flew up the chimney. The thin wood caught with a loud crackling sound and the blast of heat came at me. The flames curled up around the casket. They blackened the gold, oh, God! What a sight, the cloth inside caught fire. The lid began to curl.

I couldn’t see my own bones for the flames!

“No!” He screamed. “No.” He reached over, chest heaving, and dragged the casket and the lid out onto the floor, dragging some of the fire with them, but this was only paper fire, and he stamped it out angrily. His fingers were burnt.

He stood astride the casket and he licked at his fingers. The skeleton had spilt out, into a weak and gangling figure. The bones lay unburnt, smoking, glowing. The lid was charred.

He dropped to his knees, and drawing a white napkin from his pocket, he beat out all tiny bits of smoldering fire. He was muttering in his annoyance and rage. The lid was blackened but the Sumerian I could still read.

My bones lay amid ashes.

“Damn you,” he said.

I had never seen him really angry at all, and he was more angry now than most angry people I’d ever seen. He was raging inside, worse than the Rebbe had raged. He glared at me. He glanced down at the casket to make sure it wasn’t burning. It wasn’t. It was only very slightly scorched.

“The smell is bitumen,” I said.

“I know what it is,” he said. “And I know where it comes from, and I know how it was used.” His voice trembled. “So you’ve proved yourself. You don’t care if the bones are burned.”

He climbed to his feet. He brushed off his pants. Ashes fell to the floor. The floor was filthy with ashes. The fire in the fireplace burned on, consuming itself, purposeless, wasted.

“Let me throw them in the fire,” I said. I reached for the skull, and picked up the gangling dead thing.

“Enough, Azriel. You do me wrong! Don’t be so quick! Don’t do it!”

I stopped. That was all it took, and I too was afraid, or the moment had passed. Five minutes after the battle, can you still slice a man in half with a sword? The wind blows. You stand there. He is lying among the dead, but not dead, and he opens his eyes, and murmurs to you thinking you’re his friend. Can you kill him?

“Oh, but if we do it then we will both know,” I said. “And I would like to know. Yes, I’m afraid, but I want to know. You know what I suspect?”

“Yes. That this time it doesn’t matter about the bones!”

“Not even,” he said, “if they are crushed to powder with a mortar and pestle.” I didn’t reply.

“The bones have completed their journey, my friend,” he said. “The bones have come down to me! This is my time, and your time. This is what is meant. If we burnt the bones, and you were still here, solid, and beautiful and strong—impertinent and sarcastic, yes, but still here as you are now, able to breathe and see and wind yourself with shrouds of velvet—would that deliver you into my hands? Would you acknowledge the destiny?”

We glared at one another. I didn’t want to take the chance. I didn’t even want to think of the whirlwind of the restless dead. The words came back to me, the words engraved on the casket. I shivered, in terror of being formless, impotent, wandering, knocking against spirits I knew were everywhere. I did nothing.

He went down on his knees, and he gathered up the casket and the lid, then rose, one knee at a time, walked over to the table, gently laid down the casket, put the burnt shriveled lid on top of it, carefully, and then he sat down on the floor, leaning against his table, legs sprawled, but looking remarkably formal still in his seamed and buttoned clothes.

He looked up. I saw his teeth flash, and bite. I think he bit down on his lip to his own blood.

He stood up and ran at me.

He came so fast, it was like a dancer leaping to catch another, and though he stumbled, he caught me with both his hands, around my neck, and I felt his thumbs press against me, and I hated it and ripped his arms away. He smacked my face hard this way and that and drove his knee into my abdomen. He knew how to fight. With all his polish and money, he knew the dancing way to fight, like the Orientals.

I backed away from these blows, barely hurt, only amazed at his grace, and how he reared back now and kicked me full in the face, sending me many paces back.

Then came his worst blow, elbow rising, hand straight, the arm swinging around to knock me backwards.

I caught his arm, and twisted it so that he went down on his knees with a snarl of rage. I pushed him flat to the carpet and held him pinned with my foot.

“You’re no match for me in that realm,” I said. I stepped back and offered him my hand.

He climbed to his feet. His eyes never moved from me. Not for one second had he really forgotten himself. I mean, even in these failed attempts he held a dignity and lust for the struggle and for winning it, too.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve proven yourself. You aren’t a man, you’re better than a man, stronger. Your soul’s as complex as my soul. You want to do right, you have some fixed and foolish notion of right.”

“Everybody has a fixed and foolish notion of right,” I answered softly. I was humbled. And I did at that moment feel doubt, doubt of anything except that I was enjoying this, and the enjoyment seemed a sin. It seemed a sin that I should breathe. But why, what had I done? I determined not to look anymore into memory. I pushed the images away, the same ones I’ve described to you, Samuel’s face, the boiling cauldron, all of it. I just said, Be done with it Azriel!

I stood in the room vowing from then on to solve this mystery there and then with no looking back.

“You’re flattered that I said you had a soul, aren’t you?” he asked. “Or is it merely that you’re relieved that I recognize such a thing? That I don’t consider you a demon like my grandfather did. That’s what he did, right? He banished you from his sight, as if you had no soul.”

I was speechless with wondering, and with longing. To have a soul, to be good, to mount the Stairs to Heaven. The purpose of life is to love and better know the beauty and intricacy of all things.

He sat down on the velvet hassock, He was out of breath. I had been slow to realize this. I wasn’t out of breath at all.

I was hot all over again, with a thin sweat, but I was not soiled yet. And of course some of what I had been saying to him was bluff and lies.

I didn’t want to go into darkness or nothingness. I couldn’t even bear the thought of it. A soul, to think I might truly have a soul, a soul that could be saved…

But I wasn’t serving him! This plan, I had to know what it was; the world, how did he mean to get it when armies fought each other all over it? Did he mean the spiritual world?

There were voices in the hall. I could pick out the mother’s voice easily, but he ignored it, just as if this were nothing. He only looked at me, and marveled at me, and pondered what I had said.

He was radiant in his curiosity and in what he had allowed to happen here without fear.

“You see how it lures me,” I said. “The marble, the carpet, the breeze through the windows. Being alive, the great lure.”

“Yes, and there’s me to know and love, too, and I lure you.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “And something tells me that life has lured me in the past, lured me to serve evil men and men I can’t recall. I am lured each time by life itself and flesh itself and when there comes a moment and the door opens to Heaven, and I cannot go through. I’m not allowed to go through. My Masters may go through. Their beautiful daughters may go through. Esther may go through. But I don’t go through.”

He drew in his breath. “You’ve seen the Door to Heaven?” he asked calmly.

“As surely as you’ve seen a ghost appear to you,” I said.

“So have I,” he said. “I’ve seen the Door to Heaven. And I’ve seen Heaven here on earth. Stay with me, stay with me, and I swear to you when the door opens, I’ll take you with me. You’ll be deserving of it.”

The voices came loudly from the hall. But I looked at him, trying to answer what he said. He seemed as resolute, as without conflict, as determined and courageous as he had been before our fight.

The voices were too loud to be ignored. The woman was angry. Others talked to her as if she were a fool. It was all far away. Beyond the windows lay the black night with the lights of New York so bright that the sky itself was reddened like the dawn coming when there was no dawn. The breeze sang.

I looked down at the box. I could have wept. He had me and the world had me. At least for now, for as long as I would allow it.

He drew close to me. And I turned, letting him come close, and between us there was a tenderness and a sudden quiet. I looked into his eyes, and I saw the round black circle within his eyes, and I wondered if he saw in my eyes only blackness.

“You want the body you have now,” he said. “You want the body and the power. You were meant to have it. You were meant to be mine, but as of this moment and forever, I respect you. You’re no servant to me. You are Azriel.”

He clasped my arm. He raised his hand and clasped the side of my face. I felt his kiss, hot and sweet on my skin. I turned and locked my mouth on his for one instant, and then let him go and his face blazed with love for me. Did I feel the same heat for him?

There was a loud noise from beyond the doors.

He made a gesture to me, as if to say, be patient, and then I suppose he would have gone to the door, but it opened, and the woman appeared there, the mother with the black-and-silver hair who before had been wrapped in red silk.

She was sick, but she had groomed and clothed herself in a proper stiff way, and she marched forward. Wet and pale, and trembling, she carried a bundle, a purse, a portmanteau that was too heavy for her.

“Help me!” she cried. She said this to me! And she looked directly at me. She came up to me, turning her back on him. “You, you help me!”

She was dressed in gray wool, and the only silk on her was wrapped high around her neck, and her shoes were fancy with raised heels and beautiful straps across her arched feet, so thin, so full of blue veins beneath the skin. She gave off a deep and rich perfume, and the smell of chemicals unknown to me, and of decay and death, very advanced, death all through her, struggling to wrap its tendrils around her heart and brain and make them go to sleep forever.

“Help me now get out of here!” She grabbed my hand, wet and warm and as seductive as he was.

“Rachel,” said Gregory, biting his tongue. “This is the medicine talking.” His voice grew hard. “Go back to your bed.”

Female attendants in white had come into the room, also gawky boys, in stiff servile little coats, but this entire assemblage stood about idle and frightened of her, nurses and lackeys, and waiting upon his every gesture.

She wrapped her arm around me. She implored me.

“You help me, please, just to get out of here, help me to the elevator, to the street.” She tried to make her words careful and persuasive, and they sounded soft, drunken, and full of misery. “Help me, and I’ll pay you, you know that! I want to leave my own house! I am not a prisoner. I don’t want to die here! Don’t I have the right to die in a place of my own choosing?”

“Take her back,” said Gregory furiously to the others. “Go on, get her out of here and don’t hurt her.”

“Mrs. Belkin,” cried one of the women. The gawky youths closed in on her like a flock that had to move as one or be scattered.

“No!” she cried out. Her voice took on youthful strength.

As the four of them set upon her, all with anxious and tentative hands, she cried out to me:

“You have to help me. I don’t care who you are. He is killing me. He’s poisoning me. He’s hastening my death by his clock! Stop him! Help me!”

The women’s murmuring, lying voices rose to drown her out.

“She’s sick,” said one woman in full and true distress. And other voices came like tiresome echoes of every word. “She’s so drugged, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Doing. Doing.”

There came a babble as the boys and Gregory spoke, and then Rachel Belkin shouted over all, and the nurse tried to make her own voice even louder.

I rushed forward and pulled one of the women loose from her, and accidentally pushed this woman to the floor. The others were all paralyzed, except for Rachel herself who reached out to me, and grabbed my very head with her right hand, as if she would make me look at her.

She was sickly and raging with fever. She was no older than Gregory—fifty-five at most. A powerful and elegant woman, in spite of it all.

Gregory cursed at her. “Damn it, Rachel. Azriel, back away.” He waved his arms at the others. “Get Mrs. Belkin back to her bed.”

“No,” I said.

I pushed two of the others away from her effortlessly and they stumbled and drew back, clinging to one another. “No,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

“Azriel,” she said. “Azriel!” She recognized the name but couldn’t place it.

“Goodbye, Gregory,” I said. “We shall see if I have to come back to you and your bones,” I said. “She wants to die under a different roof. That’s her right. I agree with her. And for Esther, I must, you see. Farewell until I come back to you.”

Gregory was aghast.

The servants were helpless.

Rachel Belkin threw her arm around me and I held her firmly in the circle of my right arm.

She seemed about to collapse and one of her ankles turned on the shiny floor. She cried out in pain. I held her. Her hair was loosed and hanging all around her, brushed, lustrous, the silver as beautiful as the black. She was thin and delicate in her years, and had the stubborn beauty of a willow tree, or torn and shining leaves left on a beach by the waves, ruined yet gleaming.

We moved swiftly towards the door together.

“You can’t do this,” said Gregory. He was purple with rage. I turned to see him sputtering and staring and making his hands into fists, all grace lost. “Stop him,” he said to the others.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Gregory,” I said. “It would be too much of a pleasure.”

He ran at me. I swung around so that I could hold her and strike him with my left hand.

And I dealt him one fine blow with my left fist that knocked him on his back, so that his head struck the hearth.

For one breathless second I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t, only dazed, but so badly hurt that all of the little cowards present ran to attend him.

This was our moment, and the woman knew it and so did I, and we left the room together.

We hurried down to the corridor. I saw the distant bronze doors but this time they had no angels, only the tree of life once more with all its limbs, which was now rent down the middle as they opened.

I felt nothing but strength coursing through me. I could have carried her in one arm, but she walked fast and straight, as if she had to do it, clutching the leather purse or bundle to her.

We went into the elevator. The doors closed. She fell against me. And I took the bundle and held her. We were alone in this chamber as it traveled down and down, through the palace.

“He is killing me,” she said. She was up close to my face. Her eyes were swimmingly beautiful. Her flesh was smooth and youthful. “He is poisoning me. I promise you, you’ll be glad you did this for me. I promise you, you will be glad.”

I looked at her, seeing the eyes of her daughter, just so big, so extraordinary, even with the thinner paler skin now around them. How could she be so strong at forty years? Obviously she’d fought her age and her disease.

“Who are you, Azriel?” she asked. “Who are you? I heard this name. I know it.” There was trust in the way she said my name. “Tell me, who are you! Quick. Talk to me.”

I held her up. She would have fallen if not for me.

“When your daughter died,” I said, “she spoke something, did they tell you?”

“Ah, Lord God. Azriel, the Servant of the Bones,” she said, bitterly, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. “That’s what she said.”

“I am he,” I said. “I’m Azriel, the one she saw as she lay dying. I cried as you cry now. I saw her and wept for her, and couldn’t help her. But I can help you.”