Servant of the Bones

21

She pulled weakly at the buttons of her blouse. “Undress me, please, help me,” she said. I quickly removed all her clothes as she wished. She guided me and assisted me. She sank deep in the pillows, pale, but with a body as firm to touch as a young woman’s body.

I kissed the calves of her legs, her thighs. The garden rustled and sighed behind me. For the first time I heard a waterfall, its gentle trickle, and then I listened to the sound of water touching leaves, but my body was an engine of desire, and what drove me was her naked breasts, rather small, with the pink nipples of a girl, and the smell of death, rising sweet like a crushing lily. It was not that the death attracted me; it was that it made her all the more precious, something to be lost in a moment.

She lay back, heaving a deep sigh. The angles of her face were tight and delicate and precise in the dimness.

“Let me see you without your clothes,” she said. She reached for buttons, but I gestured there was no need. I stood up and back from her.

Not an electric light burned in the place. It was the dreamiest darkness.

I stretched out my arms and looked up at the sky. Though suddenly aware of a fatigue from all the night’s tricks, I nevertheless told my clothes to assemble themselves nearby and await my command. I would be naked.

It worked even more swiftly and completely than last time. I looked down for the first time on my own chest, pubic hair, erect organ. I was too happy for humility, and to feel the sinews in my arms tighten was to be among living things, and surely some of those things must be good things.

She sat up on the bed, her breasts amazingly firm, and the pink nipples turned up. Her silver-and-black hair made a rumpled mass down her back and displayed a long neck.

“Splendid,” she whispered.

A rain of doubts descended on me.

But I had to do it. What was the point of warning her that I might dissolve in the process? I was going to do it.

I sat down beside her, embracing her. I felt the moist thin silkiness of her skin, not healthy in a woman too thin, yet delicious. Even the bones of her wrists were beautiful.

She tugged at my hair, and kissed me with her eyes closed, all over my face, and quite suddenly I realized with a shock that my beard and mustache were on my face.

She drew back, staring at it. I told this hair to go away.

“No,” she said. “Bring it back! It makes your mouth sweeter and damper.” I felt the hair return as if it wanted to! I couldn’t quite figure this out, why the hair had come of its own, but that was the whole story so far, my body came on its own, and in its own form. One lapse in my will, one drifting into pride in my physical self, and the hair had come.

Well, she loved it. I took a long breath, feeling the toll of all this changing and magic, but I was as hard as a statue for her. I wanted to pounce on her. Instead I let her bury her face in the hair of my chest, and kiss my nipples, and the pleasure went right to my loins.

I took her breasts in my hands, enchanted by their smallness, their delicacy. So pink, girlish pink.

“It’s all drugs, my love,” she said, as though feeling my wonder. She kissed my beard, kissing it along the bone of my jaw. “It’s hormones and modern science; I have a woman’s chemicals inside me, that’s all. They can make me look young, but they can’t save my life.”

I kissed her and held her, my hands free and rough over her thighs and stealing into the secret crevice, to feel there the firmness of a young woman’s secret body. Chemicals, was it? Modern science?

“Those things preserve,” I said, “but you make the beauty.”

“Sweet God,” she whispered, kissing me all over my face. I had my hands beneath her small backside, and cuddled it.

“Yes,” I said, “God, capricious as He is; he lavished his blessings on you and on your daughter, Esther.”

“And you were the last thing,” she breathed into my ear, her hands clawing gently at my back. “You were the last thing she saw. How good that was for her.”

A savage strength rose in me, the realization that I had her completely at my mercy, this precious creature, and that no words from anyone could command me away from her. Only her words would hold sway with me now, and only because I would defer to her.

It was like fruit between her legs, like peaches or plums, it was just wet enough. I brought my fingers to my nostrils.

“I can’t hold back, my love,” I said.

She parted her legs, and lifted her hips, and this was paradise suddenly, to be inside her, inside this hot throbbing fruit, and to have her mouth at the same time, to have both her mouths, to cover her, with hair and strength. I began the manly rhythm. Alive, alive, alive. I was blinded. Pleasure drenched all my senses.

“Yes, now, yes, do it,” she said. She lifted her hips against me. I rose up on my elbows so as not to hurt her with my weight, and looking down at her, I felt the seed explode inside her. My jerking motions surely hurt her. But then I saw the blush I wanted in her face, I felt the throbbing in her throat, and knew she was as happy as I was. The tight little core of fruit squeezed the last drop out of me, and I fell over on my back, whole and alive, staring at the ceiling of this room, or staling into airy dark.

Whatever had been my life, spirit or man, I could not recall a pleasure as delicious as this one, as totally humiliating in the way it took over, in the way that it made me feel the slave and the master simultaneously. I didn’t ask myself what men felt.

Her head turned from side to side; she was blood red. “Come to me again, please, now,” she said.

Overjoyed, I rolled back on top of her and entered her. I didn’t need a rest. The fruity secret part was more luscious, tighter than before, throbbing more fully. Again I came and her face flooded with blood, and then finally she scratched my back hard with both her hands, she beat on me with fists, and when I lifted up to thrust, she came with me just far enough, and then lay back, to make it ecstasy.

“Harder,” she said. “Harder. Make this a battlefield, make me a boy you’ve found, a girl, I don’t care.”

It was too inviting. I slammed against her, harshly, over and over, feeling the seed spill again, the sight of her red face filling me with an all-too-human sense of power. Yes, to have her, to make her come, to make her come, yes, again, and again.

I filled her up. I was so tight inside her, I dragged her hips up off the bed with me, and then in her wetness she let me slide back and forth, and like a brute soldier, I came down, driving her into the silken pillows, and I saw through my half-closed eyes that she smiled.

“Surrender, that’s what I want,” I said through my teeth. She could not stop the pleasure coming in her; it came and came as if her heart would break. She was red and tossing, and I wouldn’t let her go, slamming again and again against her sweet fruitlike lips, and then she lifted both her arms to cover her face, as if she would hide from me.

This sublime gesture, this maidenly gesture, this sweet gesture stripped me of the very last control I ever possessed in this or any other body, and I shot forth my seed for the third time, groaning aloud.

Now I was spent. I was tired. And she grew pale in the light of the moon and the white billowing clouds, and we lay there together. My cock was dripping.

She turned over and in the tenderest way, like a little girl almost, she kissed my shoulder. She ran her fingers through the hair on my chest.

“My darling,” I said. I spoke to her in old languages, natural to me, Chaldean, Aramaic, I spoke words of love and testaments of fidelity and devotion, and cooed against her ear, and she rippled with delight against me, and tore at my hair again.

Pillows had tumbled to the side. The air swirled around her, full of the scents of the garden. It stirred beneath the low, white ceiling, and suddenly, as if the wind had changed its direction, there came the song of the sea, the full great sea, relentless, the deceptive song of water, water gurgling in the waterfall that seems to be talking to you when it is saying nothing, has no syllables, and water pounding the beach as if to say I am coming, I am coming. But there was no I.

“If I could die now, I would do it,” she said. “But there are things you have to know.”

I drifted, I dreamed. I felt my fatigue. I shook myself awake. Did I have my body still? I feared sleep. Yet I felt the need of it, the assembled body needed it, as it needed water. I sat up.

“Don’t talk of dying,” I said. “It’s going to happen soon enough.” I turned and looked down at her.

She looked composed, intelligent, all mind with angular collected limbs, quite incapable of the passion we’d just shared. I blurted out:

“I have no power to cure, not a disease this far advanced.”

“Have I asked you?”

“You must want to know, you must wonder.”

“I’ll tell you why I didn’t ask,” she said, reaching up and playfully tugging at the hair on my chest. “I knew if you had the power, you would have helped me the moment you had the chance.”

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right.”

She closed her eyes, and tightened her lids. It was pain.

“What can I do?” I said.

“Nothing. I want these drugs to wear off. I want to die on my own.”

“I’m ready to bring you anything I can,” I said. I was shaken to the bone by the sight of her suffering, but it seemed to melt, and her face was waxen again and perfect.

“You talked about Esther, you said that you wanted to know—”

“Yes, why do you think your husband killed her?”

“I don’t know! That’s just it. They quarreled but I don’t know. I can’t believe it was on account of the family. Esther and Gregory fought all the time. It was normal. I don’t know.”

“Tell me everything you remember about Esther and Gregory and this diamond necklace. You said she discovered his brother Nathan when she bought the necklace.”

“She met Nathan in the diamond district. She could see his resemblance to Gregory and when she mentioned it, he confessed he was Gregory’s identical twin.”

“Ah, identical.”

“But what could it all mean? He told her he was Gregory’s twin. He told her to give Gregory his love. She was amazed. She liked him. She met the other Hasidim who work in the store with him. She liked Nathan very much. She said it was like looking at the man Gregory could have been, all filled up with gentleness and kindness.

“The day she died, I’m sure she took the necklace back to Nathan. I think I remember her saying that she had to drop it off, because some small thing was wrong and Nathan would fix it, and she said, ‘Don’t tell the Messiah that I’m going to visit his brother,’ and she laughed. I think she dropped it off before those killers got her. Gregory knew she was shopping that day at Henri Bendel. He knew that. But I don’t think he knew about the necklace. It wasn’t till yesterday that the whole issue of the necklace came up. I didn’t even know the necklace was gone. Nobody did. Then Gregory brought it up, that the terrorists had seized her necklace and killed her. Sure enough, the necklace was gone, but I couldn’t reach Nathan to find out if he had it. Besides, he would have called. I know Nathan only by voice, but I know him now, through one phone call.”

“Go back now to the earlier part. Esther quarreled with Gregory about his brother, and the brother was an identical twin.”

“She had wanted him to meet with his brother. He had been frantic that she tell no one about the Hasidim, no one. He told her it was a matter of life or death. He tried to frighten her. I know Gregory. I know him when he’s weak and not thinking too clearly, when he’s caught off guard, and is furious and desperate.”

“I’ve seen this too,” I said, “a glimpse of it.”

“Well, that’s how he was with her. ‘No, no, no, you didn’t meet any brother, I have no brother!’ Then he came storming into me and desperately appealed to me in Yiddish to explain to her how the Hasidim would not want to be connected with him. But he was furious about the whole affair. She didn’t speak Yiddish, Esther. She came into the room, and I remember he turned and he said, ‘You ever tell anyone about Nathan and I’ll never forgive you!’

“She was so confused. I drew her aside, tried to explain how the Observant Jews would not like Jews like us, who didn’t pray each day, or observe the laws of the Talmud. She listened but I could see she didn’t grasp this. She said, ‘But Nathan said he loved Gregory. He said he would love to see his brother. He said that from time to time he tries to call Gregory but he can’t get through.’

“I thought Gregory would go out of his mind. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this,’ he said. ‘If you gave him my private number tell me now! These people hurt me. I left when I was a boy. They hurt me! I made my own church, my own tribe, my own way. I am my Messiah!’

“I tried to calm him down, I said, ‘Gregory, please, we’re not in a television pulpit. Sit down. Rest.’

“Then Esther demanded to know why Gregory had been so kind to Nathan in taking him to the hospital. She said Nathan had told her all about that, this time in the hospital—how Gregory had checked Nathan into the hospital under his own name, and had paid all his expenses, and kept Nathan in a private suite, and didn’t want to worry the Rebbe or his wife about it, took care of all of it. She said, ‘Nathan said you were so generous.’

“I swear to you, I thought he would go crazy.

“I started to see how complex this was. Gregory had something at stake other than mere publicity. In fact, it was perfectly obvious to me that the Hasid connection would be a help to Gregory with his church, a form of…occult status…do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do exactly. Exotic and pure roots had grown this great leader.”

“Yes. So I sat up and tried to ask a few questions, ‘Why had Nathan been in the hospital?’ And Esther said that Gregory had suggested it, Gregory had told Nathan that they were both at risk for something inherited in their family, and knowing the Rebbe would never agree, he had spirited Nathan away and had all the tests done under Gregory’s name. For Nathan it had been a dream, the beautiful hospital suite, kosher food, all the proprieties observed, and the people thinking he was Gregory. He found it amusing. Of course he didn’t have the hereditary disease, whatever that was. God, what on earth—”

“Ah, I see,” I said.

“What does all this amount to?”

“Keep telling me everything about Nathan and Esther,” I said. “What else do you know?”

“Oh, that first night, we fought for hours about it. Finally she agreed she wouldn’t tell anyone, or try to bring the families together, but she would see Nathan from time to time and give him Gregory’s good wishes. Gregory began to cry with relief. Gregory can cry on cue, and on camera. He went into how his people had cast him out. The Temple was everything to him, his meaning, his life.

“Whenever he went into that speech, Esther and I would just roll our eyes. We knew that he had compiled the teachings of the Temple of the Mind with a computer program. He had programmed in all the information he could about other cults, and which commandments had given the members the most comfort, and then he had chosen a list of the most acceptable and likable commandments. Other aspects of the Temple were created the same way, through secret surveys and computer compilation of the most appealing aspects of other religions. It was a joke to Esther and me. But that night he wept and wept. It was his whole life. God had guided him and his computer.

“I went to sleep. Two days Esther and Gregory didn’t speak to each other. But that was nothing unusual. They could have fought over some little political question and scream. It was the way they acted together.”

“What else?”

“Two nights later, Gregory woke me at four o’clock. He was in one of his rages. He said, ‘Take the phone, talk to him, listen to him yourself.’ I didn’t know what the hell he meant.

“The voice coming through the phone sounded exactly like Gregory! I mean exactly. I could scarcely believe it was another person, but it was, and he introduced himself as Nathan, Gregory’s brother. He asked me kindly to explain to Esther that the families couldn’t get together. This breaks my heart, that I must say this to my brother’s wife,’ he said, ‘but our grandfather doesn’t have long to live and the Court depends on him. He is the Rebbe. Tell Esther that it can’t be, and give her my love, and in time I will see her when she comes to visit me.’

“I told him I understood perfectly. ‘You have my love too, brother-in-law. I too lost my parents in the camps. I wish you only well.’

“Then in Yiddish he said we were in his prayers and in his thoughts, and if we ever needed him, if Gregory was ever ill or afraid, we must call him.

“I told him how good it was to hear a Yiddish voice, and to talk with him. He laughed and said something like ‘Gregory thinks he has everything, and thank God he has a good wife, but you never know when a brother will need a brother. Gregory has never been sick a day in his life, never been inside a hospital, except to visit me of course and take care of me, but I will come if he ever calls.’

“I remember thinking about this hospital stay, these tests. Had Gregory himself had such tests? What was this hereditary disease? I knew it was true that Gregory had never been in a hospital. Gregory had a private doctor, hardly what I would call a licensed practitioner of medicine, but he had never to my knowledge been in a hospital. I said to Nathan how kind he was, and I asked how I might reach him, and then Gregory grabbed the phone back.

“He carried it out of the room with him but I could hear him talking Yiddish in a simple natural way, and intimately, in a way Gregory never spoke to anyone. I was really for the first time hearing him speak to a brother. I had never heard that. I had always been told that all Gregory’s people were dead. All of them.”

“How long ago was all this?” I asked.

“About a month ago. But I didn’t even think of it before now, all this. I mean, I knew in my heart that he had been responsible for Esther’s death, I knew when I heard him make his speech about terrorism and enemies that he’d been lying. He was too prepared for Esther’s death! But honestly, frankly, do you think he would kill his own daughter because of all this?”

“Yes, I do, but I see a large design here,” I said. “And the Rebbe. You never met or spoke to the Rebbe?”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t go over there to be rejected. I have great reverence for those people, my parents were Hasidim from Poland. But no, I know that kind of old man.”

“Well, let me tell you this. That old man also accused Gregory of killing Esther. And he wanted to know the same thing you wanted to know, why.”

“Do you realize what this means?” she said. “If he would kill Esther to protect the family secret, then he might kill Nathan!”

“Has there been no call from Nathan concerning this necklace?” I asked. “I know how the Hasidim live, but this is news, diamonds, you know, talk of valuable diamonds snatched by terrorists.”

“No, no call that I know of, but you see, I’m cut off, I was surrounded by the Minders. And Gregory himself didn’t even come up with the necklace part till the day after the murder. In his first speech, all he did was talk about enemies. Then the next day he…my god, maybe that’s when Nathan called him, but then he wouldn’t have told such a lie or…Why in the hell did he bring up the necklace?”

I was quietly absorbing all these words.

“I think I can figure it out,” I said. “One thing is true, I foiled his plan. His plan is big. His design is big. I foiled it by killing those tramps that murdered her. So that blurred his attempt at calling it all terrorism. Those men cannot be traced to terrorists, can they?”

“No, not at all. Half the world is crying with him, and others are laughing at him. The men were bums out of some town in south Texas, bums. Now Gregory claims his enemies will use any means to hurt him and these bums were part of it and the theft was to give them badly needed wealth to fight his church.”

“Let’s leave the necklace for a moment. He still played up the terrorist part, and for some strange reason included the necklace. Now listen, I have to ask you. Why are there laboratories in the Temple of the Mind? Why?”

“Laboratories?” she asked. “I have no idea. I didn’t even know there were. Of course there’s Gregory’s own doctor, who pumps him up with Human Growth Hormone and special protein drinks and anything else he can to keep his youth and strength, and they do have some kind of hospital room so that if Gregory runs a temperature one degree above normal, his doctor can examine him in it, but there are no laboratories as such, not as far as I know.”

“No, no, I mean big laboratories where people are working with chemicals and computers. Huge laboratories with sterile storage and people even dressed in funny clothes to protect themselves. I saw this tonight. I saw this in the Temple of the Mind. I saw some people wearing orange clothes that covered their whole bodies. I didn’t think of it at the time. I was just looking for Gregory…”

“Orange suits, you’re talking about suits that protect people from viruses. Good Lord, is there disease at the heart of this? Gregory has some disease? What the hell did he do to Nathan in the hospital!”

“I think I know. He didn’t hurt his brother. And there is no disease in Gregory, I can tell you that for sure, or in the Rebbe. I would have known the moment I saw them. I sense these things.”

She winced, the mere thought of her own sickness suddenly confusing her and muddling her mind.

“What does the Temple do that would require a team of doctors, a big team of brilliant men ever ready at Gregory’s command? Research geniuses with microscopes and all kinds of equipment?”

“I don’t know,” she said again. “Of course one time they did contemplate a line of products, you know, trash like spiritually cleansing shampoo and ‘wash away evil vibrations soap’—”

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. She smiled.

“But we talked him out of that. He struck some incredibly lucrative deal with a New York designer for all the stock at his resorts and on his boats, and in his jungles…”

“There we are again, boats, planes, jungles, doctors, a necklace, a twin brother.”

“What are you saying?”

“Look, Rachel, an identical twin is not just a brother, he is a duplicate of the man, and here we have a twin unknown to the world, and not recognized every day of the week perhaps because he wears the beard and the locks of the Hasidim. There are things one can do with an identical twin.”

She stared at me. She was silent. Then a wince of pain came again.

“Look, I have to have water,” I said. “I’ll bring you some water.”

“That would be good. Cold water. My throat is sore, I can’t…”

She sank back down.

I hurried through the beautiful garden, and entered what seemed a grand storage place for fine foods, and sure enough, there were plastic bottles of water galore in the refrigerator. I brought two of these bottles and a lovely crystal glass which I picked off a shelf.

I sat down by her and gave her water first. She had covered herself now. She drank. I drank.

I really was exhausted. This was not the time to be exhausted, not the time to risk sleeping and letting this body disappear. I drank more of the water, and I wondered what had come out of my body into her, had it been real seed, or just a semblance?

I remembered something about Samuel. Samuel laughing at the Catholic nuns who claimed to be made pregnant by spirits. I remembered that from Strasbourg and then another lovely memory came, it was all sensory, it had to do with Zurvan, and I remember him saying, ‘You can do it, yes, but it will take away your energy and you are never to seek a woman without my permission.’ ”

I couldn’t remember the speaker, only the love, and the garden, and the words, and how much it was like this. It will take away your energy. I had to stay awake.

“What if we’re wrong?” she said. “And he had nothing to do with Esther’s death. He’s a man who uses everything. He used her death but that doesn’t mean—”

“The Rebbe said he killed her. I think he killed her. But there’s more at stake. This temple of his, does it preach anything unique or of unique value?”

“Not really; as I explained, he invented the creed with a computer program. It’s the nearest thing to a creedless creed you can imagine.”

She sighed. She told me there was a dressing gown in the closet. Would I bring it to her? She was feeling a little cold. She said there were robes, too, if I wanted them. I did, but not because I was cold. It was a Persian or Babylonian disinclination to be naked.

I found a thick blue robe that fell to the floor, with a tie for the waist, and wrapped myself in this, feeling a little trapped, but it was fine for now, and I needed all my power.

I brought the negligee to her. It was gold like so much in the room, and pure silk and full of beaded work rather like that of the dark scarf. She sat up and I helped her put it on, and I buttoned the pearl buttons for her, and then tied the sash. I buttoned the pearls at her wrists.

She stared at me.

“I have something else,” she said, “that I want you to know.”

“Tell me,” I said, sitting beside her and taking her hand. “Gregory called me tonight right before the plane landed in Miami. He told me you killed Esther. He said you were seen at the scene of the crime. I’d seen your picture in the magazine, but I knew it was a stupid lie. I was about to hang up on him. It’s useless, you know, asking him to be reasonable, but then he really went off the deep end. He said you were a ghost, and you needed to take Esther’s place in the world, that’s how you got in.”

“That is trash!” I whispered. “He is a smooth-tongued man.”

“That’s what I thought. I just didn’t believe it. But something seemed very certain to me then. You are here because of Esther’s death. You are, and you’re here to kill Gregory. I wish you would promise me, whatever happens, you’ll kill him. I know it’s a terrible thing I’m saying.”

“Not to me,” I said. “I would like to kill him but not before this mystery is solved.”

“Can you possibly see to Nathan? See that he’s safe?”

“I can do that,” I said, “but I have grave suspicions on that. Never mind. Be assured, whatever happens, I will get to the bottom of it, and Gregory will pay with his life.”

“Laboratories,” she said. “You know he’s crazy, Gregory. He believes he is here to save the world. He goes to other countries, he asks for reception by dictators and establishes temples in countries that…and then all this about terrorism. You know,” she said as she lay back down on the pillows. “You can’t go wrong killing him. This Temple is a racket. It’s garbage, and it bleeds people, takes their savings, their fortunes…”

She closed her eyes, and suddenly went still, so still that her eyes half-opened and I could see only the whites.

“Rachel!” I said. “Rachel!” I shook her shoulder.

“I’m alive, Azriel,” she said softly without moving anything but her lips. Her dark brows moved just a little. She didn’t open her eyes. “I’m here,” she said. “Will you cover me, Azriel? Even now I’m cold. It’s warm, isn’t it?”

“The breeze is wondrously warm,” I said.

“Open all the windows then. But cover me. What is it? What’s the matter with you?”

All the windows were open, even the big window doors to my left that looked out on a terrace above the ocean. But I didn’t disturb her by saying so.

I was suddenly startled. I noticed her arms for the first time. Really beheld them beneath the sheer silk.

“Your arms, I’ve covered them with bruises! Look what I’ve done to you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “That’s nothing. It’s only one of the drugs thinning the blood, makes me bruise without feeling it. I loved it, your being in my arms. Come here, will you stay with me? You know, I suspect I’m going to die right away. I left behind all the drugs that were keeping me going.”

I didn’t answer her but I knew she was going to die. Her heartbeat was too slow. Her fingers had a bluish tinge to them.

I lay down beside her, and covered her with the tapestried draperies that lay all over the bed, what are called “throws” and “lap blankets,” though I had not realized it or thought of it.

She was nice and warm and she lay against me.

“I laughed so hard when he said you were a ghost and you killed Esther to get into the world. And yet I knew you weren’t a human being. I knew it. You’d vanished from the plane. I knew it. And yet I thought Gregory was so hysterically funny telling me all this black magic, that Esther had to be sacrificed like a lamb so that you could come into the world and evil beings had done it. He said you’d kill me. He said if I didn’t come back, he’d alert the police. I don’t want him coming in here, disturbing me. I don’t want him to.”

“I won’t let him,” I said. “Rest now. I want to think. I want to remember the laboratories and the men in the orange suits. I want to see the great scheme.”

It was a horrid thing to look at, her purplish bruises, and I felt shame that I hadn’t been more delicate, hadn’t even watched for such a thing, hadn’t looked for anything but the age-old juiciness, and for all the rest, what did I care.

I held her arms. I kissed these places, and I could see where needles had made holes in her, and I could see where bandages had been ripped from her, and all the fleece was gone.

“Rachel, you are suffering, and I’ve made this worse for you,” I said. “Let me get for you what you need. Send me. Tell me. I can get anything in the world for you, Rachel. That’s my nature. Do you have doctors of great skill? Only tell me who they are. I’ll be lost in the winds if I roam searching for doctors and magicians. Guide me. Send me. Send me now for whatever it is…”

“No.”

I studied her silent face; her smile had not changed. She seemed half-asleep; I realized she was singing, or humming with her lips closed. Her hands were too cold.

I sighed; this was the agony that comes with loving; this was just as fresh as if it had never happened to me before. This was just as hurtful and cruel as if I were breathing and young.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “All the best doctors in the world have done their damnedest to cure Gregory Belkin’s wife. Besides…I want to…”

“…be with Esther.”

“Yes, do you think I will be?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I saw her go up in a pure light.” I wanted to add, “One way or another, you’ll be with her.” But I didn’t add it. I didn’t know whether she believed we were all tiny flames that went back into God, or that we had a Paradise where we could kiss and hold each other. As for me, I believed we had a Paradise, and I had a dim memory of flying high once, to the very heights, and of gentle spirits up there concealing something from me.

I lay back. I had been so sure I wanted to die. And now the flame of life that blazed still in her, melting her like a candle, seemed utterly precious to me.

I wanted to try to cure her. I looked at her and tried to see all the workings of her, each thing connected to the next thing, and all bound with veins like woven gold thread.

I did lay my hands on her, and I did pray. I let my hair rest on her face. I prayed in my heart to all the gods.

She stirred. “What did you say, Azriel?” she said. She uttered some words. At first I didn’t understand them. Then I realized it was Yiddish she was speaking. “Were you speaking Hebrew?” she asked me.

“Just praying, my darling,” I said. “Think nothing of it.” She took a deep breath and laid her hand on my chest, as if the very act of lifting her hand and setting it down exhausted her. I put my hand over hers. Too cold, her little hands. I made a heat for us both.

“You’re really staying with me, aren’t you?”

“Why does that surprise you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Because people try to get away from you when they know you’re really dying. Those bad nights, when I was at my worst, the doctors didn’t come, the nurses stayed away. Even Gregory wouldn’t come. The crisis would pass, and then they would all come. And you, you are staying with me. Doesn’t the air smell good? And the light. Just the light of the night sky.”

“It’s beautiful, a foreshadowing of Paradise.”

She laughed a little laugh. “I’m ready to be nothing,” she said.

What could I say?

Somewhere a bell rang. It throbbed. I sat up. I didn’t like it. I was staring into the garden, at the big red flowers, like trumpets, and realized for the first time that there were dim electric lights there on these flowers. Everything was perfect. There came the bell again.

“Don’t answer it,” she said. She was damp all over.

“Look,” she said. “Stop him, you stop the church. He’s what we call a charismatic leader. He’s evil. Laboratories. I don’t like it. And these cults, these cults have killed people, have killed their own members.”

“I know,” I said. “It was always that way. Always.”

“But Nathan, Nathan is so innocent,” she said. “I can remember his voice, it was beautiful, and I thought of what Esther had said, that it was like seeing the man Gregory could have been. That’s what the voice was like…”

“I’ll find him and make sure he is safe,” I said. “I’ll find out what he knows, what he saw.”

“The old man, is he so terrible?”

“Holy and old,” I said. I shrugged.

She laughed a sweet delighted laugh. It was wondrous to hear it. I bent down and kissed her lips. They were dry. I gave her some more water, holding her head up so she could drink.

She lay back. She looked at me and only gradually did I realize that her expression meant nothing. It was only a mask for her pain. The pain was in her lungs and in her heart and in her bones. The pain was all through her. The soothing drugs she’d taken before she left New York were gone out of her body. Her heart was faint.

I cradled her hands in mine.

There came that noise again, the bell ringing, the alarm buzzing, and this time there was more than one. I heard the noise of a motor. It came from the elevator shaft.

“Ignore it,” she said. “They can’t get in.” She pushed at the covers with her hands.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Help me, help me get up. Get my heavier robe for me, the heavy silk. Please…”

I got the robe, the one to which she pointed, and she put it on. She stood trembling beneath the weight of the ornate robe.

There was huge noise outside the main door.

“Are you sure they can’t get in?”

“You don’t have to fear, do you?” she asked.

“No, not at all, but I don’t want them…”

“I know…ruining my death,” she said.

“Yes.”

She was completely white. “You’re going to fall down.”

“I know,” she said. “But I intend to fall where I want to fall. Help me out there, I want to look at the ocean.”

I picked her up and carried her out the doors to the balcony. This was due east. The doors faced not the bay but the true sea. I realized it was the same sea that washed the banks of Europe, the shores of ruined Greek cities, the sands of Alexandria.

A pounding noise came from behind us. I turned around. It was coming from within the elevator. There were people in the car of the elevator. But the doors were locked.

The breeze ripped across the broad terrace. Under my feet the tiles felt cool. She seemed to love it, putting her head against my shoulder, looking out over the dark sea. A great ship, hung with lights, glided by, just short of the horizon, and above, the clouds made their spectacle.

I cuddled her and held her, and started to pick her up.

“No, let me stand,” she said. She tugged herself gently free of me and put her hands on the high stone railing. She looked down. I saw a garden far down there, immaculate and full of trees and bright lights. Egyptian lilies galore, and large fanlike plants, all waving just a little in the breeze.

“It’s empty down there, isn’t it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The garden. It’s so private. Only the flowers beneath us, and beyond, the sea.”

“Yes,” I said.

The elevator door was being forced open.

“Remember what I said,” she said. “You can’t go wrong killing him. I mean it. He’ll try to seduce you, or destroy you, or use you in some way. You can bet he is already thinking in those terms, how best to use you.”

“I understand him perfectly,” I said. “Don’t worry. I will do what is right. Who knows? Maybe I will teach him right and wrong. Maybe I know what they are. Maybe I’ll save his soul.” I laughed. “That would be lovely.”

“Yes, it would,” she said. “But you’re craving life, craving it. Which means you can be lured by him with all his fiery life, the same way you were lured by mine.”

“Never, I told you. I’ll put it right.”

“All of it, put it all to right.”

Several men had just broken through the front door, with a clumsy pounding noise. I heard the wood splinter.

She sighed. “Maybe Esther did call you down. Maybe she did,” she said. “My angel.”

I kissed her.

The men were blundering into the room behind us. I didn’t have to look at them to know they were there. They stopped short; there was a rumble of urgent voices. Then Gregory’s voice carried.

“Rachel, thank God you’re all right.”

I turned and I saw him and he saw me, and he looked hard and determined, and cold. “Let my wife go,” he said. Liar.

He was blazing with anger, and anger made him evil; anger took away his charm. I suppose it had done that to mine before. And I realized slowly as I stood there that I loved again, and didn’t hate. I loved Esther and I loved Rachel. I didn’t hate even him.

“Go to the door and stand between us,” Rachel said. “Do that for me, please.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Do that, my angel.”

I obeyed. I put my hand up on the steel frame. “You can’t pass,” I said.

Gregory roared. He let out a terrible roar, a roar from the soul, and the whole company of men rushed towards me. I turned around as they buffeted my shoulders, passing me. But I knew already what had made them cry out.

She had jumped.

I went to the railing, pushing them aside, and I looked down into the garden and I saw her tiny empty shell of a body. The light hovered around her.

“Oh, God, take her, please,” I prayed in my ancient tongue.

Then the light blazed and went straight up and for a moment it seemed that lightning lashed the southern sky, exploded behind the clouds, but it was only her passing. She’d gone up, and for one second perhaps I’d seen the Door of Heaven.

The garden held nothing but its bed of Egyptian flowers and her empty flesh, her face unhurt, intact, staring blindly upward.

Go up, Rachel, please, Esther, take her up the ladder. I deliberately envisioned the Ladder, the Stairway, replete with all the hanging remnants of memory.

Gregory cried in agony. Men took hold of me by the arms. Gregory screamed and cried and sobbed and there was no artifice to it. The man stared down at her and roared in pain and hit the railing with his fists.

“Rachel, Rachel, Rachel!”

I shook off the hands of the men. They fell backwards, stunned by the strength of it, and not knowing what to do, seemingly embarrassed by the figure of Gregory roaring in grief.

Suddenly there was havoc all around me. More men had come, poor Ritchie had come, and Gregory wailed and wailed and leaned over the railing. He was davening, bowing like a Hebrew and crying out in Yiddish.

I shoved off the men again, hurling some of them to the end of the terrace, I pushed and I pushed at them till they simply backed off.

I said to Gregory:

“You really loved her, didn’t you?”

He turned and looked at me, and tried to speak but he was choked with grief. “She was…my queen of Sheba,” he said. “She was my queen…” And then he wailed again, and said the same prayers.

“I’m leaving you now,” I said, “with all your armed men.”

A crowd was climbing up the slope of the garden below. Men with flashlights shone them on her dead face.

Then I went up and up.

Where would I go? What would I do?

It was time to walk on my own.

I looked back once at the tiny men down on the terrace, confounded now by my disappearance. Gregory had actually collapsed and sat down rocking, holding his head.

Then I went high, so high that the joyous spirits were there, and it seemed as I flew north that they stared at me with great interest.

I knew what I had to do first of all. Find Nathan.