Servant of the Bones

24

Nathan lay in a pool of blood, eyes blinking at the bright summer sky, as the crowd panicked around him. The assassins had been snared by the mob. Sirens screamed. The Minders wailed.

I stared down at the body of Nathan. I saw the confusion in his bright dark eyes. Memory swam over me, threatening to pull me from the moment.

Then I realized that everything around me had changed. The building had faded. The crowd was gone.

Up before me into the beautiful sky rose the gleaming and unmistakable Stairway to Heaven.

With my own eyes, I tell you, I saw a light that others have told you over and over is indescribable. I saw a light so full of warmth and love and understanding that it filled me in my invisibility, reached me at my core. And I saw Nathan slowly walking up the Ladder.

At the top Rachel and Esther appeared. There were others I didn’t know, and suddenly I realized in this blinding and beautiful brightness that they were telling Nathan he had to go back, he couldn’t die, he had to return.

Nathan turned around obedient and began to cry; he cried and cried with his hands to his eyes. His image now was Hasid; he had the beard and locks they’d shaved from him. He had his black hat. But he was a spirit returning to the ravaged body that lay on the ground, in which the heart had just ceased to beat.

Suddenly Rachel called to me. I found myself running up the Staircase. Nothing stopped me. I was on it, I tell you, Jonathan, I was on the golden stairs and there above they stood, I saw them all, not only Rachel and Esther, but my father, my own father, and Zurvan, my first teacher, and Samuel and others. I saw them; in a flickering my whole memory was restored to me.

My life passed through youth and innocence into the horror of my murder in which I knew each personage and his or her role, and then all Zurvan’s teachings returned to me. Everything I had ever done I saw, good and evil.

I was almost to the top, and Nathan was staring at me in astonishment. Rachel stepped forward.

“Azriel,” she said, “you go back, into Nathan’s body. Azriel, he’s not strong enough to fight Gregory, but you are. You can keep the body alive! Azriel, I beg you.”

Nathan turned to me; he was so like Gregory and yet so pure and clean and full of love, utter love. He looked searchingly at all those gathered at the top of the stairs, only a few feet away, where the garden began and the light rose with limitless brilliance.

“You mean I could stay with you?” he asked the others. He looked at Rachel and Esther, and other Hasidim I did not know, Elders, and my elders too!

I wanted to throw myself into my father’s arms. “Can’t we both come now?” I cried. “Please, Father!”

Suddenly Zurvan spoke, “Azriel, you have to go back in that body and make it get off the ground. Even if it means you never get out of it. You must do it.”

“Azriel, please,” said my beautiful Esther, “please, you know how evil Gregory is. Only an angel of God can stop him.”

My father was crying as he had thousands of years ago. “My son, I love you, but they need you so badly. They need you, Azriel! Only if that slain body rises now can the plot be undone!”

I saw the rationale of it in an instant. I saw what they meant. To foil the assassination now and seize the cameras, that was the only way to warn the world.

I turned, nodding, “Go with God, Nathan!” I cried, and I heard their lovely voices behind me thanking me and praying for me.

Then suddenly from both sides I saw the malcontent spirits tearing at me, faces twisted in hate, my former Masters by the dozen whom I’d forgotten, men for whom I had done evil.

“Why do this?”

“Why should you?”

“Let the madman destroy the world.”

“What do you care!” demanded the magician from Paris.

“They’re using you again. They’re using you!” declared my Mameluk master, whom I’d slain on sight.

“You’ll lose your spirit strength, don’t you see?”

“You’ll be mortal in that body, trapped; you’ll die in it of the wounds it sustained.”

“Why suffer mortality like that when you are a free spirit!”

And behind these faces and voices were legions of swarming angry, envious, and hateful spirits.

I glanced back up the Stairway. I saw them all gathered, and Nathan had his arms around the others, and they around him. Rachel raised her hand and sent to me a kiss. And in a childlike manner Esther waved. They were fading into utter brilliance. My father had become pure illumination.

I looked at the light and I let it fill me. I treasured just one fraction of a second of understanding, at peace with all things, at peace with all that had been done to me, and that I had done, and all that had ever happened; the world had meaning then. It had a full and magnificent meaning. And the millions of the poor, the hungry, the angry, the warriors—they were not parasites as Gregory had said; they were souls!

“No,” I said to the angry spirits. “I have to do it.”

“Go into his body, resurrect it,” said Zurvan, “even if it means you lose everything.”

“Azriel, my love goes with you!” cried Nathan. He had begun to glow like the others.

Blackness. I felt myself sucked down as if by the most powerful mechanical force, and suddenly I was filled with pain, pain in my lungs, pain in my heart, pain in every limb, and I was blinking at the sky as men put me on a stretcher, just as they had done with Esther.

I lurched, rolled over, even though they were astonished, and saw no more stairway and no more light, only the Temple itself, and the mob screaming.

I sat up on the stretcher and then I climbed off it. The medical men backed away in pure astonishment. I knew why. The wounds were fatal. More than one was fatal.

I saw the cameras and I beckoned to the reporters. I reached out for their hands.

“Your government, your agencies. Surround this building and search it at once. An impostor has taken my place. An impostor has tried to kill me. This building is loaded with fatal viruses; and there are Temples of the Mind throughout the world ready to discharge them. Stop them. You must reach the thirty-ninth floor. You must reach the room with the map, and the impostor nailed to the wall. Hurry now! I give you permission to enter the Temple of the Mind. Take guns with you.”

I turned around. Everywhere I looked, people had whipped out those little phones that open up and they were screaming into them. The police rushed at the building. Sirens screamed.

“It is an impostor,” I said, “it is a twin, and he plans destruction you cannot imagine.”

I could see the television cameras coming down on me. “The Temple of the Mind in every country must be stopped. Every building contains poison gas, and deadly viruses. You must stop the Temple of the Mind wherever it is, and beware their lies, beware their lies. Look what they have done to me, and I am living to tell you this.”

I felt myself growing weak. The blood was pumping right out of my heart. I realized I was undone. I reached out and grabbed for a microphone. I heard my own voice, tinged with Nathan’s tone, rise in volume.

“Minders, your leader has been shot and tricked. Minders, you have been infiltrated. Go inside, destroy the people who have deceived you!”

I was about to collapse. I grabbed hold of a young woman, a reporter who stood beside me with her cameraman catching every breath I took or lost.

“The Armed Services, the people who deal in deadly disease. Worldwide. Alert them. There is enough in any one Temple building to destroy a city, even this one!”

In a blur I saw them all distracted, turning away from me.

A riot of screams broke out. I turned, almost falling, supported in fact by the doctors around me. There in front of the glass doors, held back by confused and frightened followers, stood Gregory, bleeding from the wounds in his hands, screaming:

“I’m Gregory Belkin!” he cried. “That man is an impostor! Look, I bleed like Christ from my hands! Stop the Devil. Stop the Liar.”

I faltered. I was almost going down. I looked around me, and then I remembered there was the gun in the left pocket of my coat. He had outfitted the drugged Nathan to perfection, as he himself would have been outfitted, even to his personal gun. It was his little gun, the one he carried the first night I ever saw him, the one he always carried.

I took the gun out, and people screamed and fell back. I staggered towards Gregory and before the bodyguards could think what to do, before anyone could, I began to shoot Gregory. I shot him over and over again. Astonished, he stared as the first bullet struck his chest, then with the second he went up in the air as if calling for help; the third hit his head. I shot another one, before anyone could stop me. He fell dead on the pavement.

There was noise all around me. Someone had taken the gun, very carefully, from me. I heard the endless babble of voices into the phones. I saw armed men running towards the doors of the Temple and the dead body. I saw men putting down their guns and throwing up their hands. I heard shots. I turned and found myself falling into the arms of a young doctor, horrified and staring at me with awe.

I tried to search his soul. “Act fast,” I said. “Act fast! The Temple will annihilate the peoples of whole countries. It is poised and ready! That man I killed is a madman. It was all his evil plan. Hurry.”

Then I felt myself sinking, not down into the numb indistinct darkness of spirit sleep, but into mortal agony, into a pain that made it impossible for me to talk. I tasted mortal blood in my mouth.

“Call the Rebbe Avram,” I said. “Call for Nathan’s wife.” I begged for the words to come, the names of the community and Court in Brooklyn. Someone said a name for the Rebbe Avram and that was correct, and I said, “Yes, call him to bear witness that I killed the impostor.”

I was on the stretcher again blinking at the sky. Is it enough? Will it stop? I closed my eyes. I felt the ambulance rolling, and I felt oxygen pouring into my lungs. I saw above me an innocent face.

I pushed aside the plastic mask. “Connect me now to the people who can stop the Temple.”

A phone was thrust at me. I didn’t know the person to whom I poured out my last appeal:

“It’s the Ebola virus,” I said, “a mixture of old and new strains, developed to kill in five minutes. It’s in canisters. Hurry. The gas and the virus are in Temples in cities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa. On the ships. The planes are ready to go out. The helicopters. Tell all the good Minders they must cooperate with you. Ninety-nine percent of the cult is innocent! Tell them to turn on their local leaders! Everywhere. You’ve got to surround and reach them all before it begins. These people mean to kill.”

I lost consciousness. I went on speaking, struggling, feeling pain, but I was really unconscious. The human body had broken down, and I was on the brink of death. I was so glad. But had I done enough?

I woke in the emergency room. Again people surrounded me. The Rebbe stood over me. I saw his white beard, the tears in his eyes, I saw Sarah, Nathan’s wife. I spoke in Yiddish. “Tell them I speak the truth,” I said, “that I am your grandson Gregory, and declare the dead body that of an impostor. You have to. He has arranged for this body, of Nathan, to be verified as his own. Say only that I am your good grandson if you will. It’s dark. It’s tangled. And I think I’m dying.”

Then Sarah’s face flickered before me: “Nathan?” she whispered.

I turned close and beckoned for her to come down near my lips.

“Nathan walks with God, and Nathan is no more,” I said. “I saw him go into the arms of those he loved. Don’t fear. Don’t fear at all. I’ll keep this body alive as long as I can. Help me.”

She sobbed and sobbed and her hands stroked my forehead.

I heard a voice, “We’re losing him! Everyone out! Out!”

The world went dim. All things were known to me yet dim, and I felt only the peace I’d known in the light, the memory as fresh as a fragrance. The dimness thickened and then loosened. I knew I was being moved.

I knew we were going up in an elevator. And then all went very dim, and a shadowy figure appeared near me. I wasn’t certain whether it was good or bad, and then I recognized its voice and the Greek it spoke.

“The purpose is to love and to understand, to value…” it whispered.

All was blackness. I think I was thinking, Will the Stairway come now? Will it? Can it do that for me after all I’ve done? Then nothing.

I awoke in a room in what they call Intensive Care. I was hooked to machines. Nurses surrounded me. Great men were waiting to speak to me, heads of armies and heads of state.

I realized that my pain was dulled, and my tongue thick. I was mortal, utterly helplessly mortal! And I had to stay in this body. It was the only body they would continue to listen to.

The Rebbe appeared. I saw the black clothes and white hair and beard before I recognized the face. Then I felt the nearness of his lips. This time he spoke in the ancient Aramaic for me alone:

“They’ve been stopped. DNA on file in the hospital confirms that you are Gregory. I have declared the dead man a demon who took the place of my grandson. This is, in its own way, the perfect truth. The Temples all over are being seized.

The scientists and masterminds are surrendering. Arrests are being made. In all lands the evil work is at a halt.” He gave a great sigh. “You have accomplished it.”

I tried to squeeze his hand, but I couldn’t feel my own hands, and only gradually did I realize they were taped to the sides of the bed. I sighed and closed my eyes.

“I want to die here, if I may,” I said to the Rebbe. I spoke Aramaic again. “I want to die in this, your grandson’s flesh. If God will have me. Will you bury me?”

He nodded. And then I slept—troubled, thin, mortal sleep, living sleep.

It was very late in the night when I awoke. All the nurses were beyond the glass. Only the monitors and the machines sustained and befriended me. In a nearby chair, the Rebbe slept.

With absolute shock I realized I was in my own body. I was Azriel. With all my will, I transformed myself back into Nathan. But the flesh of Nathan was dead. This was only an illusion. I could surround the flesh and make it move, but possession as such had ended.

I turned my head, I began to cry. “Where is the Stairway, My Lord? I haven’t suffered enough, have I?”

Then I was Azriel again, as easy as taking a breath, and the needles and other medical connections were not connected to me. I stood up, strong, solid, healed in my own sound body, and in my favorite Babylonian robes of blue with gold. My beard, mustache, all there. I was Azriel.

I looked at the sleeping Rebbe. I saw the figure of Sarah, asleep, her hand on a pillow, on the cold floor.

I walked out of the room. Two nurses noticed and came to me gently and told me I couldn’t be here without permission, the man in the room behind me was very sick.

I looked back. There lay his body. He was dead, as he had been since the bullets had struck him. Suddenly they heard the alarms go off. They heard the signals.

The Rebbe woke. Sarah climbed to her feet. They stared at the dead body of Nathan.

“He died at peace,” I said, and I kissed the nurse on the forehead. “You did everything you could.”

I walked out of the hospital.