Servant of the Bones Read online

  He put his hands up round his neck, and slowly drew them down the embroidered front of his coat, revealing as he did a necklace of engraved gold disks, like ancient coins. The entire house rattled. The fire flared for an instant, and then became smaller.

  He picked up the necklace, to demonstrate the solidity and the weight of it, and then he let it drop.

  "You have a fear of animals?" he asked me. "A distaste for wearing their skins? I see no skins here, warm skins, like bearskins."

  "No fear at all," I said. "No distaste."

  The temperature of the room rose dramatically, and once again the fire exploded as if someone had fanned it, and I felt myself surrounded by a large dark bearskin blanket, lined in silk. I put my hand up and felt the fur. It was deep and luxurious and made me think of Russian woods, and men in Russian novels who are always dressed in fur. I thought of Jews who used to wear fur hats in Russia, and maybe still do.

  I sat up, adjusting the blanket more comfortably around me.

  "That's quite wonderful," I said. I was trembling. So many thoughts were racing in me that I couldn't think what to say first.

  He gave a deep sigh and rather dramatically collapsed in his chair.

  "This has exhausted you," I said. "The changes, the tricks."

  "Yes, somewhat. But I'm not exhausted for talking, Jonathan. It's that I can only do so much and no more...but then...who knows? What is God doing to me?

  "I just thought that this time, after this ordeal was completed, you know, that the stairway would come...or there would be deep sleep. I thought...so many things.

  "And wanted a finish."

  He paused. "I've learnt something," he said. "I've learnt in these last two days that to tell a story is not what I thought."

  "Explain to me."

  "I thought to talk about the boiling cauldron would send the pain out of me. It didn't. Unable to hate, to muster anger, I feel despair."

  He paused.

  "I want you to tell me the whole story. You do believe in it. That's why you came, to tell it all."

  "Well, let's say that I will finish, because...someone should know. Someone should record. And out of courtesy for you because you are gracious and you listen and I think you want to know."

  "I do. But I must tell you how difficult it was to imagine such cruelty, to imagine that your own father gave you up to it. And to imagine a death so contrived. Do you still forgive your father?"

  "Not at the moment," he said. "That's what I was talking about, that telling it did not produce forgiveness. It drew me close to him, to tell it, to see him."

  "He wasn't as strong as you, on that he was right."

  A silence fell between us. I thought of Rachel Belkin, the murder of Rachel Belkin, but I said nothing.

  "Did you like walking in the snow?" I asked.

  He turned to me in surprise and smiled. It was very bright, and kind.

  "Yes, I did, but you haven't eaten your supper which I warmed for you. No, sit there, I'll get it, and one of your silver spoons."

  He was as good as his word. I ate a bowl of the stew, as he watched with his arms folded.

  I put aside the empty plate and at once he took it and then the spoon. I heard the sound of water running as he washed them. He brought back to me a small clean bowl of water and a towel, as someone might have done in another country. I didn't need it. But I dipped my fingers, and I used the cloth to wipe my mouth clean, which felt rather comforting, and he took these things away.

  It was now that he saw the little boat television set with its built-in handle and tiny screen. I'd probably left it too near the fire. I felt a surge of embarrassment, as though I had spied upon his world while he was gone, as if to verify things he said.

  He looked at the thing for a long moment and then away.

  "It works? It talked to you?" he asked without enthusiasm.

  "News from some local town, network I think, coming through the local channel. The Belkin Temples have been raided, people arrested, the public is being reassured."

  He waited a long time before he answered. Then he said,

  "Yes, well, there are some others, perhaps, that they haven't found yet, but the people in them are dead. When you come upon these men with their gun belts, and their vow to kill themselves along with the entire population of a country, it's best just to...kill them on the spot."

  "They showed your face," I said, "smooth shaven."

  He laughed. "Which means they'll never find me under all this hair."

  "Especially not if you cut the long part but that would be rather a shame."

  "I don't need to," he said. "I can still do the most important thing of all."

  "Which is what?"

  "Disappear."

  "Ah! I'm glad to hear it. Do you know they are looking for you? They said something about the murder of Rachel Belkin. I hardly know the name."

  He seemed neither surprised nor insulted nor upset in any way.

  "She was Esther's mother. She didn't want to die in Gregory's house. But I'll tell you the strange part. When he looked at her dead body, I think he was grief-stricken. I think he actually loved her. We forget that such men can love."

  "Do you want to tell me...whether or not you killed her? Or is that something I shouldn't ask?"

  "I didn't kill her," he said simply. "They know that. They were there. That was early. Why would they bother to look for me anymore?"

  "It's all to do with conspiracy, and banks, and plots, and the long tentacles of the Temple. You're a man of mystery."

  "Ah, yes. And as I said, I am one who can, if necessary, disappear."

  "Go to the bones?" I asked.

  "Ah, the bones, the golden bones."

  "You ready to tell me?"

  "I'm thinking how to do it. There's a little more that I should tell before I come to the moment of Esther Belkin's death. There were masters I did love. I should explain a little more."

  "You won't tell me about all of them?"

  "Too many," he said, "and some are not worth remembering, and some I can't remember at all. There are two I want to describe to you. The first and the last master whom I ever obeyed. I stopped obedience to any master. I slew when called--not only the man who had called me or the woman, but everyone who had witnessed the calling. I did that for years and years. And then the bones were encased with warnings in Hebrew and German and Polish and no one took the risk to call the Servant of the Bones.

  "But I want to tell you about the two--the first and the last masters I obeyed. The others which I do recall we can dismiss with a few words."

  "You look more cheerful now, more rested," I said.

  "I do?" He laughed. "How is that? Ah, well, I did sleep and I am strong, very strong, there's no doubt of it. And the story has a way of calling me back."

  He sighed.

  "I don't know much life in death without pain," he said. "But that I deserve, I imagine, being a demon of might. The last Master I obeyed was a Jew in the city of Strasbourg and they burned all the Jews there because they blamed them for the Black Death."

  "Ah," I said. "That must have been the fourteenth century."

  "The year 1349 of the current era," he said with a smile. "I looked it up. They killed the Jews then all over Europe, blaming them for the Black Death."

  "I know. Yes, and there have been many holocausts since."

  "Do you know what Gregory told me? Our beloved Gregory Belkin? When he thought he was my master and that I would help him?"

  "I can't guess."

  "He told me that if the Black Death had not come to Europe, Europe would be a desert today. He said that the population had grown rampant; that the trees were being cut down so fast that the entire forests of old Europe were gone by that time. And the forests of Europe we know now date back to the fourteenth century."

  "That's true," I said. "I think. Is that how he justified the murder of people?"

  "Oh, that was one of just many ways. Gregory was an extraordinary man,
really, because he was an honest man."

  "Not mad, to found this worldwide temple and fill it with terrorists?"

  "No," he shook his head. "Just ruthless and honest. He said to me at one point that there was one man who had utterly changed the history of the world. I thought he would say that that man was Christ or Cyrus the Persian. Or perhaps Mohammed. But he said no. The man who changed the entire world was Alexander the Great. That was his model. Gregory was perfectly sane. He intended to break a giant Gordian knot. He almost succeeded. Almost--"

  "How did you stop him? How did it all come about?"

  "A fatal flaw in him stopped him," he said. "Do you know in the old Persian religion, one legend is that evil came into the world not through sin, or through God, but through a mistake. A ritual mistake?"

  "I've heard of it. You're talking of very old myths, fragments of Zoroastrianism."

  "Yes," he said, "myths the Medians gave to the Persians and the Persians passed on to the Jews. Not disobedience. Bad judgment. It's almost that way in Genesis, wouldn't you say? Eve makes a mistake in judgment. A ritual rule is broken. That must be different from sin, don't you think?"

  "I don't know. If I knew that, I would be a happier man."

  He laughed.

  "What undid Gregory was a flaw in judgment," he said. "How?"

  "He counted on my vanity being as great as his. Or maybe he just misjudged my power, my willingness to intervene...No, he thought I would be swept up with his notions; he thought they were irresistible. It was an error in judgment. Had he not told me things, key things right at the appropriate moment, even I could not have stopped his plan. But he had to tell, to boast, to be recognized by me, and to be loved...I think, even be loved by me."

  "Did he know what you were? The Servant of the Bones? A spirit?"

  "Oh, yes, we came together without any question of credibility, as you would say today. But I'll get to that."

  He sat back. I checked the tape recorders. I removed the small cassettes and replaced them with fresh cassettes, and then made markings on the labels so that I wouldn't confuse myself. I laid both machines back on the hearth.

  He was watching me with keen interest and an agreeable look.

  Yet he seemed reluctant to begin, or to be finding it difficult, yet yearning to do it.

  "Did Cyrus the Persian keep his word to you?" I asked. I had been thinking of this on and off since we'd broken off.

  "Did he actually send you to Miletus? I find it hard to believe that Cyrus the Persian would keep his word--"

  "You do?" He looked at me and smiled. "But he kept his word to Israel, as you know. The Jews were allowed to leave Babylon and they went home and they made the Kingdom once again of Judea and they built the Temple of Solomon. You know all this from history. Cyrus kept his word to his conquered peoples and particularly the Jews. Remember, the religion of Cyrus was not so terribly different from our religion. At heart, it was a religion of...ethics, wouldn't you say?"

  "Yes, and I know that under Persian rule Jerusalem prospered."

  "Oh, indeed, always, for hundreds of years, up until the time of the Romans, actually, when the rebellions started, and then the final defeat of Masada. We speak of these things to remind ourselves. At the time, I knew nothing of what was to come. But even I knew that Cyrus would keep his word, that he would send me on to Miletus. I trusted him from the first moment I ever laid eyes on him. He wasn't a liar. Well, not as much as most men."

  "But if he had his own wise men," I said, "why would he let something so powerful...I mean, someone so powerful...as you slip from his grasp?"

  "He was eager to get rid of me!" Azriel said. "And frankly, so were his wise men! He didn't let me slip from his grasp. Rather he sent me to Zurvan, the most powerful Magus whom he knew. And Zurvan was loyal to Cyrus. Zurvan was rich and lived in Miletus which had fallen to Cyrus and the Persians without even a skirmish as Babylon had. Later on, of course, the Greeks of those Ionian cities, they would rise against the Persians. But at this time, when I stood there, glaring at the great King and begging that he send me to a powerful magician, Miletus was a thriving Greek city under Persian rule."

  He studied me. I started to ask another question but he stopped me.

  "You went into the cold, you shouldn't have. You're warm now, and the fever has risen just a little. You need cold water. I'll get it for you. You drink it and then we'll go on."

  He rose from the chair and went to the door. He brought a bottle from near the door. It was very cold, indeed, I could see that, and I was thirsty.

  I looked down and saw that he was pouring the water into a silver cup. It wasn't an ancient silver cup. It seemed rather new even, machine-worked perhaps, but it was beautiful, and of course it got cold all over with the water. It was like the Grail, or a chalice or something a Babylonian would drink from. Or perhaps Solomon.

  There was another cup just like it in front of the chair.

  "How did you make the cups?" I asked.

  "Same as I make my garments. I call together all the particles that are required, to come unobtrusively and without disturbance. I am not such a good designer of cups. If my father had designed these cups, they would be gorgeous. I merely told the particles that they were to make ornate cups of the style of this time...There are many, many more words to it than that, much more energy, but that is the gist."

  I nodded. I was grateful for the explanation.

  I drank all the water. He filled it again. I drank. The cup was solid enough. Sterling. I studied it. It had a common Bacchanalian design to it, clustered grapes carved around the rim, and a simple pedestal foot. But it was very fine indeed.

  I was holding it in both my hands, lovingly, I suppose, admiring the fluted shape of it, and the deep carving of the grapes, when I heard a faint sound emerge from it, and felt a tiny movement of air beneath my nostrils. I realized that my name was being written on the cup. It was in Hebrew. Jonathan Ben Isaac. The writing went all around and was small and perfect.

  I looked at him. He lay back in his chair with his eyes closed. He took a deep breath.

  "Memory is everything," he said softly under his breath. "Don't you think we can live with the idea that God is not perfect, as long as we are assured that God remembers...remembers everything..."

  "Knows everything, that's what you mean. We want him to forget our transgressions."

  "Yes, I suppose."

  He poured another cup of water for himself into his goblet, nameless but identical to mine, and he drank it. Again he rested, drifting, staring at the fire, his chest heaving.

  I wondered what it would be like to live in a world of figures such as his.

  Was that what Esagila had been like? Robed and bearded men dripping with gold ornament, and shining with purpose.

  "Do you know," he asked me, smiling, "that the old Persians, they thought that...during the last millennia before the final Resurrection men would gradually turn away from the eating of meat and milk, and even plants, and that they would be sustained only on water? Pure water."

  "And then would come the Resurrection."

  "Yes, the bony world would rise...the valley of bones would come to life." He smiled. "So I think sometimes, when I want to comfort myself that angels of might, demons of might, things such as me...that we are simply the last stage of humans...when humans can live on only water. So...we're not unholy. We are simply very far advanced."

  I smiled. "There are those who believe our earthly bodies are only one biological stage, that spirits constitute another, that it's all a matter of atoms and particles, as you've said."

  "You pay attention to those people?"

  "Of course. I have no fear of death. I hope that my light will rejoin the light of God, but perhaps it won't. But I pay attention, lots of attention to what others believe. This isn't an age of indifference, though it may seem so."

  "Yes, I agree with you," he said. "It's a practical, pragmatic time, when decency is the prime virtue--you know, decen
t clothes, decent shelter, decent food--"

  "Yes," I said.

  "But it's also a time of great luxurious spiritual thinking, maybe the only time when such thinking carries no penalty, for after all, one can preach anything and not be dragged away in chains. There is no Inquisition in the heart of anyone."

  "No, there's an Inquisition, alive in the hearts of all fundamentalists of all sects, but they don't in most parts of the world have the power to drag away the prophet or the blasphemer. That's what you've observed."

  "Yes," he said.

  There was a pause.

  He sat up, obviously refreshed and willing to talk again. He turned slightly towards me, his left elbow back a bit, his arm outstretched on the arm of the chair. The gold on the blue velvet ran in loops and circles, which no doubt had a venerable history as a pattern, perhaps even a name. It was thick gold thread. It was twinkling in the light of the fire.

  He glanced at the tapes. I made the gesture that we were all ears, all of us, the tapes and me.

  "Cyrus kept his word," he said, with a shrug. "To everyone. He kept his word to my father's family, to the Hebrews of Babylon. Those Hebrews that wanted to, and not all did, by the way, but those that wanted to, went back to Zion and rebuilt the temple and the Persians were never cruel to Palestine. Trouble came only centuries later with the Romans, as we've said. And you know too that many, many Jews stayed in Babylon and they studied there and wrote the Talmud there, and Babylon was a place of great learning until some horrible day in later centuries when it was burnt and then destroyed. But that came much later. I wanted to tell you first of the two masters who taught me everything that would be of use."

  I nodded. He let a silence fall and I didn't disturb it.

  I looked into the fire, and for a moment I felt a dizziness, as if the pace of life, my heart, my breath, the world itself, had gradually slowed. The fire was made of wood I hadn't brought here. The fire was full of cedar as well as oak and other wood. It was perfumed and crackling, and for a moment I thought again that perhaps I was dead, that this was some kind of mental stage. I could smell incense, and a feeling of ineffable happiness came over me. I knew I was sick. I had a pain in my chest and my throat, but these things were of no importance at all. I merely felt happy. What if I am dead, I thought.