Servant of the Bones Read online

  "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 Fe
stival 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?'