Servant of the Bones

3

What was it like, roaming in the temple? The palace?” I asked. “The beautiful house, I can envision. But the palace, was the palace plated in gold? Was the temple?”

He didn’t respond.

“Give me pictures, Azriel. Take your time by means of images. The temple, will you tell me what that was like?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was a house of gems and gold. It was a world of the deep vibrant gleam of the precious, of lovely scents and the sounds of harps, and pipes playing; it was a world for the bare feet to walk on smooth tiles that were themselves cut in the shapes of flowers.” He smiled.

“And,” he said, “it was a hell of a lot more fun than you might think. Not all that solemn. The two buildings were huge, of course, you know Nebuchadnezzar built the palace to the full glory of the past, or so he thought, and greatly expanded the private gardens; and the temple was the great building known as Esagila, and behind the building itself stood the big ziggurat, Etemenanki, with its stairway to heaven, and then its ramps going up to the very topmost temple of my great and favorite smiling god.

“The temple and the palace were full of locked and sealed doors. Some of these seals had not been broken in a hundred years. And of course, as you probably know, we had contracts made in this way too…in that a contract would be written out on a clay tablet, dried, and then enclosed in a clay envelope with the same words on it, which was then dried, so that one could not get to the original tablet inside without breaking the envelope. So if some corrupt individual had made a change on the outer envelope, the sealed inside tablet would tell the truth.

“There was a lot of that at court, people bringing in contracts, breaking open the envelopes, discovering some wily bastard had made a change in the contract, and the King and his advisors and wise men passing judgment. I never followed out any condemned man to see him executed. As you said, I grew up on beauty.

“In the streets of Babylon I never saw the hungry. I never saw a wretched slave. Babylon was the city people dreamed of living in; everyone was happy in Babylon and under the protection of the King.

“But to return to your question. One could roam in the temple. One could just roam. I could creep in my fine jeweled slippers into the chapels where the other gods were—Nabu and Ishtar and any god or goddess who had been brought from another city for sanctuary.

“You know, that was happening. Cyrus the Persian was on the march most definitely, taking the Greek cities along the coast one after another. And so from all over Babylonia, frightened priests were sending their gods to us for protection, to the great gateway, and we had set up these visiting deities in chapels and these chapels were full of twinkling light.

“This fear for the god, that the enemy would get him, it was very real. Marduk himself had for two hundred years been a prisoner in another city, stolen and taken there, and it had been a great day for Babylon, long before my birth, when Marduk had been recovered and had been brought home.”

“Did he ever tell you about it?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But I didn’t ask him. We’ll come to such things…

“As I was saying, I liked roaming about the temple. I took messages to the priests; I waited at table when Belshazzar dined, and I made friends of all the palace crowd, you might say, the eunuchs, the temple slaves, the other pages, and some of the temple prostitutes who were, of course, beautiful women.

“Now all of this work I did in the temple and the palace, there was a Babylonian point to it. The government had a sensible policy. When rich hostages like us, rich deportees, were brought in not only to enhance the culture, young men like me were always, picked out to be trained in Babylonian ways. That was so that if or when we were sent back to our own city or some distant province we would be good Babylonians, that is, skilled members of the King’s loyal service.

“There were scores of Hebrews at court.

“Nevertheless, I had uncles who went into a fury that my father and I worked at the temple, but my father and I, we would shrug our shoulders and say, ‘We don’t worship Marduk! We don’t eat with the Babylonians. We don’t eat the food that the gods have eaten.’ And a good deal of the community felt the same way as we did.

“Let me note here, this eating of food. It’s still important for the Hebrews. No? You don’t eat with heathens. You didn’t then. And you didn’t eat anything ever that had once been put before an idol. It was a big thing.

“As good Hebrews, we broke bread only with one another, and our hands were always washed carefully with ritual prayer before we took the food, and afterwards there was not one thing in our lives that was not permeated by our desire to praise Yahweh, our Lord God of Hosts.

“But we had to survive in Babylon. We had every intention of returning rich to our homeland. We had to be strong. And that meant what it has always meant to the Hebrews. You must be powerful enough to disperse without being destroyed.”

Again came one of the inevitable pauses. He leant forward and stirred the fire, as people do when they want to think, and want to have the feeling of doing something. Stirring fires can give you that feeling, especially if you aren’t drinking anything, clutching your coffee as if that were a full-time job, the way I was doing.

“You looked then exactly as you look now, didn’t you?” I said, though this was a repeat question. It was one of those soft verbal signals: God gave you all the right gifts, young man.

“Yes,” he said. “I wanted now to be smooth-faced. I think I told you. But it doesn’t seem to be in my luck.

“I came as myself this time, and I don’t know even to this moment who called me. Why now? Why has my body come back around me? Why? I don’t know.

“In the past when I was called forth by sorcerers, they made me look the way they wanted, and that could be quite horrible. Seldom if ever did they wait, or take a deep breath, to see what I might look like on my own. I would be summoned in a specific form: ‘Azriel, Servant of the Golden Bones which I hold in my hand, come forth in a blaze of fire and consume my enemies. Make of them cinders.’ That sort of chant.

“Whatever the case, in answer to your question I looked exactly the same when I died as I do now except for one salient characteristic which had been added to me before my murder, which I will recount later. I am as I died.”

“Your father, why was it a mistake to tell him about Marduk? Why? What did all that mean? What did he do to you, Azriel?”

He shook his head. “This is the hardest part for me to tell you, Jonathan Ben Isaac, but I have never told anyone, you know. I never told any master. Does God never forget? Will God deny me forever the Stairway to Heaven?”

“Azriel, let me caution you, simply as an older human being, though my soul may be newborn. Don’t be so sure of Heaven. Don’t be any more sure of the face of our god than Marduk was sure.”

“This means you believe in one and not the other?”

“This means I want to blunt your pain in the telling of what happened. I want to blunt your sense of fatality, and that you are destined for something terrible because of what others have done.”

“Wise of you,” he said. “And generous in spirit. I am a fool still in so many ways.”

“I see. I understand. Let’s go back to Babylon, shall we? Can you explain the plot? What did your father have to do with it in the end?”

“Oh, my father and I, what friends we were! He didn’t have a better friend than me, and my best friend was Marduk.

“I was the leader on our drinking jaunts, and it was he…it was only he who could have ever made me do what I did…the thing which made me the Servant of the Bones.

“Strange how it all comes together.” He fell to murmuring. He was distracted. “They choose ingredients and they blend them, because the potion won’t work unless you have everything. The priests alone, they could never have gotten him to do it. Cyrus the Persian? I trusted him as much as any tyrant. And old Nabonidus, what was his advice? He was only there out of some sort of kindness on the part of Cyrus, and cleverness. Everything with the Persian empire was cleverness. Perhaps it’s so with all empires.”

“Take your time,” I said. “Catch your breath.”

“Yes…let me give you pictures of my family. My mother died when I was young. She was very sick, and she cried that she wouldn’t live to see Yahweh lift His Face to us again and take us back to Zion. Her people had all been scribes. She herself was a scribe and at one time, I heard, had been something of a prophetess, but this had ceased when she had sons.

“My father missed her unbearably until the last day I ever knew him. He had two Gentile women and so did I; in fact, we shared the same two women most of the time, but this was not for having children or marriage, this was just for fun.

“And at home in the family my father was a hard worker at writing down the psalms and trying to get exact the words we remembered from Jeremiah over which we all argued night and day. My father seldom if ever led the prayers. But he had a beautiful voice, and I can still remember him singing the Lord’s praises.

“When we worked in the temple, it was secret between him and me that we thought all idolaters were completely crazy, and why not work for them and humor them?

“As I was explaining, we set the meal out for the god Marduk himself from time to time with the priests. I had many, many friends among the priests, and you know, it was like any group of priests; some believed it all, and some believed nothing. But we drew the veils around the god’s table, and then afterwards we took away the food, which of course the god Marduk in his own way had actually savored and fed upon—through fragrance and through the moisture that he could feel—and we helped set up that meal for the members of the royal family, the royal hostages, and the priests and the eunuchs who would eat the god’s food, or eat at the King’s table.

“But again, as good Hebrews we didn’t eat that food ourselves. No, we would never have done that.

“We kept to the laws of Moses in every way that we could. And days ago, when I found myself pitched down into New York, and I began my journey to find the killers of Esther Belkin, when I happened upon the grandfather of Gregory Belkin, the Rebbe in Brooklyn, I saw that many of those Jews, strict as they were, had made a living in the big city of New York in handel as we would call it, just as we did in Babylon.

“And I saw also that there were Jews at all levels of devotion, as you yourself said.”

He stopped again. He was not anxious for the pain to come.

“But let me get back to Babylon. Look, I’m dancing in the tavern with my father. All men are dancing there together, you know. No harlots there that night. Just a man’s place. And I tell him, ‘I saw my god with my own eyes. I saw him and I held him to my heart. Father, I am an idolater, but I swear to you, I saw Marduk and Marduk walks with me.’

“And there in the far corner, look, Marduk turns his back on me deliberately and he shakes his head.

“And hours later my father and I were still arguing. ‘You are a wise man, you are a seer, and you have misused your powers,’ he said. ‘You should have used them for us.’

“ ‘I will, Father, I will use them for us, but tell me, what do you want me to do? Marduk asks nothing of me. What do you want me to do?’

“The following day Marduk appeared just a few blocks from the house, vaporous, gold, visible however. He cautioned me: ‘Don’t touch me or we will have a religious spectacle on our hands.’

“ ‘Look, are you angry with me for telling my father?’ I asked him straight away. We were walking just like friends, and to have him visible was such a comfort to me.

“ ‘No, I’m not angry with you, Azriel, it’s just I don’t trust the priests of the temple. There are many, many old and conniving priests, and you never know what they will want of you. Now listen to me. I have some things to tell you before we get deeper into this, before you do, that is, for I am as deep as I can get. Let’s go to the public gardens. I like to see you eat and drink.’

“We went to his favorite place, a huge public garden right on the Euphrates, down away from all the docks and the shipwrights and the commotion. In fact it was where one of the many canals came in, and it was more on the canal than the river itself which was always busy. This garden was filled with big drooping willow trees, just like in the psalm, you know, and there were a few musicians out there playing their pipes and dancing for trinkets.

“Marduk sat down opposite me and folded his arms. We really did look so much alike that we could have been brothers. It occurred to me that I knew him better than I knew any of my brothers. And by the way, I didn’t hate my brothers the way Hebrews are always hating their brothers in the stories. Forget that. I loved my brothers. They were a little tame, when it came to drinking and dancing. I had more fun with my father. But I loved them.”

He stopped. It seemed out of respect for the dead brothers. He was now beyond beautiful in the red velvet, and these pauses brought me back visually to him in a way that was seductive. But then he began to talk again:

“Marduk started in on me right away. ‘Look, I am going to tell you the truth and you pay attention. I have no memory of my beginnings. I have no memory of slaying Tiamat the great dragon and making the world out of her belly and the sky out of the rest of her. But this does not mean that it didn’t happen. I walk most of the time in a fog. I see the spirits of the gods and the roaming spirits of the dead and I listen for prayers and I try to answer them. But this is a dreary place where I live. When I retreat to the temple for the banquet it’s a great pleasure because the fog clears. You know what clears it?’

“ ‘No, but I can guess…that the priests see you, that powerful seers see you.’

“ ‘That is it, Azriel, I can become solid and visible for witches, for sorcerers, for those who have eyes to see, and then I drink up the libations of water, I inhale them and inhale the fragrances of food and this puts me in the mood of life. Then I go into the statue, and I rest in darkness and time means nothing to me, and I listen to Babylon. I listen. I listen. But the myths of the beginning, I don’t remember, you see what I’m saying?’

“ ‘Not entirely,’ I confessed. ‘Are you telling me that you aren’t a god?’

“ ‘No, I am a god and a powerful one. Were I to draw on my will, I could clear this marketplace, this garden now, with a great forceful wind. Easy to do. But what I am saying is that gods don’t know everything, and this story of how Marduk became the leader of the gods, how he slew Tiamat, how he built the tower to heaven…well, I’ve either forgotten it, or I am growing weak, and I can’t remember. Gods can die. They can fade. Just like Kings. They can sleep and it takes much to wake them up. And when I awake and am fully alert, I love Babylon and Babylon loves me back.’

“ ‘Look, my Lord,’ I said, ‘you’re weary because the New Year’s Festival hasn’t been held in ten years, because our King Nabonidus has neglected you and your priests. That’s all. If we could get the addlebrained old idiot to come home and hold the Festival, you would revive; you would be filled with the life of all of those in Babylon who would see you on the Processional Way.’

“ ‘That’s a nice idea, Azriel, and there’s some truth in it, but I have no love for the New Year’s Festival, for residing in the statue and holding hands with the King. I get tempted in the very middle of it, to knock the King down and away from me and right to the gutters of the Processional Way. Don’t you see? It’s not what they tell you! It’s not!’

“He then went silent with a gesture to me to ponder these words and then he said he wanted to try something. These next few moments were to have a crucial influence over my own destiny as a spirit, but I couldn’t have known it then.

“ ‘Azriel,’ he said. ‘I want you to do this. Look at me, and strip me in your mind of this gold, and see me pink and alive as you are, with my beard black and my eyes brown, and then reach out and touch me with both your hands. Let the god out of the gold. Let’s try it.’

“I was trembling.

“ ‘Why are you so scared! Nobody will see anyone across from you but a noble in fine dress, that’s all.’

“ ‘I’m scared because it might work, my Lord,’ I told him, ‘and the most troubling thought has come to me. You want to escape, Marduk. You want to get away. And if this works, if my eyes and my touch can render you a visible body, you can escape, can’t you?’

“ ‘And why the hell does that frighten a Son of Yahweh!’ He took in his breath. ‘I’m sorry I was angry with you. I love you over all my worshipers and all my subjects. I’m not going to abandon Babylon. I will be here as long as Babylon needs me. I will be here when the sands come to bury us all. And then maybe I will escape. But yes, this would give me freedom. It would teach me that as a god I could slip into a visible human body and walk about. It would teach me something about what I can do, you see? I can make storms, I can heal sometimes though this is very very tricky, and I can make wishes come true because I know things, and I know the demons the people fear are just the restless dead.’

“ ‘This is true?’ I asked him. But let me say here that in Babylon getting rid of demons was a big business. I mean men made fortunes getting rid of demons from houses and sick people and so forth. There were rituals and charms for it, and you went to the exorcist and you did what he said. So I wanted to know if there were no demons. But he didn’t answer me right away.

“Then he spoke up, ‘Azriel, most of the demons are the restless dead. But there are strong spirits, spirits as strong as gods and some of them are full of hate, and like to hurt. But most of the time they don’t bother with making a milkmaid sick or cursing a little house. That’s the mischief of the restless dead! And the restless dead need to make mischief so that the fog and the smoke in which they wander will lift.’

“I didn’t wait any further. I was impressed with his generosity and patience with me—and you must realize how splendid he looked sitting there, covered and permeated with gold, this beautiful noble creature—that I loved him with a beating heart. I loved him with tears. I loved him with laughter.

“I reached out, and as I touched him, I asked that all the gold covering him be stripped and that he have the freedom of a man to walk amongst us. Can you guess what happened?”

“He became visible as real,” I said.

“He did, and I learnt something then about spirits that I was later to use to my advantage and used up till not very long ago. He did. He became visible, a great noble gentleman in festival dress sitting opposite me at the marble table with the wine cup in front of him, and he smiled. There was a stir all around as people saw him, and took notice. I don’t think they had seen him materialize as we would say in this day and age. They just noticed him. For he was beautiful.”

“Was it clear that he was Marduk?” I asked.

“No. Without the gold he could have been a King, an ambassador. You know. The statue, you see, it was more stylized, remember. But everybody saw him. Even the musicians stopped their piping until he turned his head and gave a gesture for them to go on. And they saw him! And they went on.

“I was frozen with anxiety. ‘Come on, friend,’ he said. ‘I see more clearly than ever, and though this body is light, I like the form of it, and it draws eyes to me which give me power such as the New Year’s Procession itself gives. They see me! They don’t know who I am but they see. Come on, friend, let’s walk, I want to walk up on the walls and through the temple with you, I want to see things clearly now with you. You don’t have to take me into your home. Your uncles will all go crazy. Unfortunately, I can hear with this god’s ears that they are already gathering the wise men of Judea to talk about you, and that you can see and hear the pagan gods. Come on, let’s go, I want to walk.’

“He stood up and put his arm around me and we strolled out of the garden. We walked all afternoon. I asked him, ‘What happens if you don’t go back to the temple for the morning feast?’

“ ‘Idiot!’ he said laughing. ‘You know perfectly well what happens. I just smell the food. I don’t eat it. They’ll lay it down before the statue and take it away and bring it to all the temple personnel who are to eat from the table of God. Nothing is going to happen!’

“We walked all over the quarters of Babylon, along the canals, the river, over the bridges, through different districts and through the marketplace and through the many open gardens and parks. He was staring wildly at things, and now, of course, spirit that I am, I know what it was like for him to see these vivid colors. I understand better what he had endured.

“Suddenly, near the Ishtar Gate, he stopped in his tracks. ‘Can you see that?’ And I did see it; it was the goddess herself. She was glowering at both of us. She was caked with gold and jewels and invisible. In fact I could see through her angry face.

“ ‘Ha, she doesn’t like it, what I’m doing, that I escaped!’ He stopped and began to worry. He then took on for the first time the look of fear. No, not fear. Apprehension. He became guarded. And I saw why. Many spirits were now around us, looking at him, and envying him and challenging him with their furrowed brows, and gods were there. The god Nabu was there! I saw him. And suddenly I saw the god Shamash. Now all of these were Babylonian gods and they had their own temples and priests. But I could see they were angry at us.

“ ‘Why aren’t you afraid of them, Azriel?’ Marduk asked me in a confidential breath.

“ ‘Should I be, my Lord? First of all I am with you, and second of all I am Hebrew. They are not my gods.’

“This struck him as hilarious and he began to laugh and laugh. I hadn’t heard him laugh since he had become visible. ‘That’s a perfect Hebrew answer,’ he said.

“ ‘Yes, I think so too,’ I said. ‘My Lord, would I offend them if I tried not to see them. Would you offend them if you banished them!’

“ ‘No, I am the great god here.’ And he did make a decisive and angry and bold gesture, and the spirits turned pale and like smoke, even the angry angry Shamash, and they vanished. But what lingered was the dead, everywhere the restless dead. He opened his arms and he conveyed blessings on them. He began to talk in Sumerian, and he gave blessing after blessing, ‘Return to your slumber, return to your rest in the Mother Earth, return to the peace of your graves, and to the safety of the memories of you in the hearts and minds of your children.’

“And thank God these dead people all went away. Of course he and I were standing there, plainly visible, and attracting much attention, this noble Lord who made extravagant gestures to people nobody could see, and this rich Hebrew overladen with jewelry, standing there like his page, or companion or whatever.

“But the dead did fade. My heart sank. I remembered the ghost of Samuel when he had been called forth by the Witch of Endor for King Saul. He had said, ‘Why do you disturb my rest?’ Oh, but the woe of this rest. I didn’t want to be dead. I didn’t. I didn’t want to be dead. I reached out and clutched his hand. Marduk was of course stronger now, from having been seen for so long by so many. I don’t have to tell you the cosmology, it’s simple, he would grow stronger and stronger the more he appeared.

“I was confused, however, on every other score. For example. Why did he not let the priests bring him to life in gold and walk in gold, the god himself, about the city? Of course I’d never heard of any god doing that, but then I’d never met a god before Marduk. He read these thoughts for me. He still looked apprehensive.

“ ‘Azriel, first off the priests are not strong enough to make me solid and visible in gold. They cannot move the statue! They cannot make an image of me in gold as you can and then make it walk. They don’t have the power. They don’t have your gift. And even if they did, what would be my life? An endless New Year’s Festival, surrounded by worshipers? I’ve seen gods fall for this! And in the end they have nothing, they belong to everyone who can touch their garments or their skin or their hair, and they flee into the fog, finally, screaming like the confused dead. No, such a thing I would only do if Babylon needed it of me, and Babylon does not. But Babylon needs something and soon, and you know why.’

“ ‘Cyrus the Persian,’ I said. ‘He draws closer every day. He’ll sack Babylon. And…and…’ I said. ‘He will either slaughter my people with all the inhabitants or he will maybe let us stay.’

“Marduk put his arm around me and we walked bravely through the enormous crowd that had gathered to stare at us and our strange activities, and we went on into another great garden, one of my favorites where the musicians were always playing the harps. In fact, here the Hebrews played their music and the Hebrew men often gathered to dance. I hadn’t meant to come to my people directly, but as it turned out it didn’t matter. He said quite quickly,

“ ‘Azriel, I think we took the wrong turn.’

“ ‘Why, they won’t notice us any more than anyone else. They see me with a rich man. I’m a merchant. I’ll say I sold you your beautiful girdle of gold and these jewels.’

“He laughed at that, but he made us sit down together and we were once again whispering. ‘What do you know about the Persians!’ he asked me. ‘What do you know about the cities that Cyrus conquers! What do you know?’

“ ‘Well, I know the lies the Persians spread, that Cyrus brings peace and prosperity and leaves people alone, but I don’t believe it. He is a murdering King like any other. He is on the march like Assurbanipal. I don’t believe the Persians will peacefully accept the surrender of this city. Who would believe them? Do you?’

“I realized that he was no longer listening to me. He pointed ahead. ‘This is what I meant,’ he said, ‘when I said we took the wrong turn. But they would have found us anyway. Be calm. Say nothing. Give away nothing.’

“I saw what he saw, a great mass of the Hebrew elders storming towards us, clearing back the crowd and thickening it on all sides. And at the head of this crowd was the prophet Enoch in a fury with his white hair streaming in all directions, and he gazed on Marduk, and I knew he saw Marduk, whereas all those around him, uneasy and unsure, and not wanting to provoke a riot, only saw a Noble Man and their slightly crazy Azriel, whom they already knew to be a troublemaker of a mild, powerful, and obedient sort.

“Marduk looked the prophet in the eye! So did I. He came to a halt not far from us. He was half-naked, as prophets often are. He was covered with ashes and dirt and he carried a staff, and I knew for the first time since I had ever heard of him—he wasn’t a favorite of mine—that he was a real prophet because of the way he beheld Marduk with flaming indignation and violent faith.

“ ‘You!’ he declared, lifting his staff and pushing it at Marduk. The crowd fell back in fear. I mean, this figure did look like a rich man! But then the most terrible of all things happened. The prophet opened wide his eyes, and said, ‘Bring to yourself your loot, the gold that your soldiers took from our temple in Jerusalem, clothe yourself with it, you stupid, useless idol, go on, you were made to be metal!’

“And before I could think to act, the gold did come down upon Marduk and enclose him, but he resisted it, and I tried to banish it, and between us we made it a light covering only, and it did not have the deep vitality of the visions I had so long had. But the gold was all over Marduk, and the streets were filled with the sounds of running feet. I looked up at the distant houses that enclosed the garden, and the rooftops were thronged with onlookers.

“My father suddenly pushed his way to the fore, and threw his arm in front of Enoch. ‘You hurt us with this, don’t you see!’ he declared, and then he too saw Marduk standing there now dusted with gold, and Enoch hit my father with his staff.

“I was enraged, but my brothers surrounded the prophet, and Marduk took my arm. ‘Stay with me,’ he said imploringly in a soft whisper. ‘Am I all gold?’ I explained he was covered over with it, and it was getting thicker but he was not the moving idol that he had seemed to me at first. He merely smiled and he looked up at the people on the rooftops and turned round and round, and people began to scream.

“ ‘Silence,’ shouted Enoch, stamping the bricks with his staff, his beard shuddering. You should have seen him. He was in his glory. I tell you, prophets are murderous, a murderous breed. ‘You, Marduk, God of Babylon, are nothing but an impostor sent out from the temple!’ he roared.

“Marduk laughed under his breath. ‘Well, he’s giving us a way out, Azriel, what a relief!’

“ ‘Do you want them to believe in you, my Lord? All you need to do is vanish and reappear. I’ll help you.’

“He gave me a devastating look.

“ ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I disappoint you. You don’t want to be the god.’

“ ‘Who in the hell would want it, Azriel? No, I shouldn’t say that. Let me say, who would give up life for it? But there’s no time. Your prophet here before us is about to bellow like a bull.’

“And Enoch did just that. He raised his powerful voice, though how such a thunder could come from such a scrawny rib cage, it’s hard to imagine, and he declared:

“ ‘Babylon, your time is come. You will be humbled. Even as we speak, the anointed one comes, Cyrus the Persian, the scourge whom the Lord God Yahweh has sent to punish you for what you have done to his Chosen people and to lead us back to our own land!’

“Roars came from the Hebrews, roars and prayers and chants and bowing and bowing to the Lord God of Hosts, and the Babylonians looked on in amazement, some of them even laughing, and then Enoch made his prophecy again:

“ ‘Yahweh sends a saviour in the person of Cyrus to save this city…aye, even you Babylon, you yourself will be delivered out of the hands of mad Nabonidus into the hands of a liberator.’

“There was a beat of silence. Only a beat. And then the roar rose from all—Hebrew, Babylonian, Greek, Persian. The whole crowd cried up for joy. ‘Yes, yes, the anointed one, Cyrus the Persian, may he liberate us from a mad king who has left the city.’

“Hordes began to bow to Marduk, bow at his feet and stretch out their arms and then back away…

“ ‘All right, impostor, savor your moment!’ cried Enoch. ‘It is the will of Yahweh that your city be surrendered without bloodshed. But you are no true God. You are an impostor and in the temples there are nought but statues. Statues, I tell you. You and your priests will see us leave in triumph and you will thank us that we have saved Babylon for you!’

“I was truly speechless, no joke. I couldn’t figure this out! But Marduk only nodded his head and took the insults of the prophet, and then he turned and threw up his arms. ‘I’m leaving you now, Azriel, but take care and do nothing until you have my advice! Be on guard against those you love, Azriel. I feel dread, not for Babylon, Babylon shall conquer, but for you. Now comes my moment of pride.’

“He then began to blaze with gold light, and I could see by his maddened eyes that it was coming from him, and as the Babylonians and the Jews saw it, he had the strength from them to grow brighter and then he said in a huge voice, more huge than a man’s, and rattling the lattices and echoing off the buildings:

“ ‘Get away from me—Enoch and all your tribe. I forgive you your rash words. Your God is faceless and merciless. But I call down the wind now to scatter you all!’

“And the wind came. The wind came with huge ferocity over the rooftops, lifted off the desert and filled with sand. The gold figure of Marduk suddenly grew immense before me, but I knew now this was illusion, for it was paling, and as I stood looking up at him, he exploded into a shower of gold, and the people went completely wild.

“Everyone ran. Panic drove them. What they had seen drove them. What they had heard and, if nothing else, the wind salted with sand drove them.

“Only I stood there, my brothers now rushing to my side, and the prophet, Enoch, laughing, just laughing and throwing out his arms! Then he bore down on me, shoving my father to one side with his staff. He gave me the evil eye! He looked at me and he said, ‘You will pay for eating the food of the false gods. You will pay! You will pay.’ And he spat at me, and reached down for the sand that was gathered and threw it at me. My brothers begged him to stop, but he laughed, and he said, ‘You will pay.’

“I got furious, truly furious. My happy nature left me. I felt the first anger that would soon become common to me after my death. I leant forward and I said,

“ ‘Call on Yahweh to stop this sandstorm, you fool!’ and then my brothers literally dragged me away.

“A host of devoted elders rushed out to shelter Enoch and they picked him up and carried him away like a madman thrashing and screaming and gradually, gradually…as we ran to the shelter of our own house, the wind died away.”