Servant of the Bones

What seemed real was not the television set and its cryptic reports.

What seemed real was this room, and the way the fire danced, and that he had been here. And what seemed real was the image of the cauldron filled with boiling liquid and the unspeakable, unimaginable idea of being cast into such a thing. Cast into boiling liquid. I closed my eyes.

Then I heard him singing again:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."

I heard myself singing it.

"Come back, Azriel, come back! Tell me what else happened!" I said, and then I slept.

The sound of the door opening woke me. It was completely dark outside now, and it was deliciously warm in the room. All the chill was gone out of my bones.

I saw a figure standing by the hearth looking down at the flames. I let out a little cry before I could catch myself. Not exactly manly or courageous.

But a steam rose from the figure, or a mist, and the figure appeared to be Gregory Belkin, to have that man's head at least and hair, and then to be shifting back into the massive curls of Azriel, and Azriel's scowl. Another attempt was made. A putrid smell filled the room, as foul as the smell in a morgue. Then it grew faint.

Azriel, restored to himself, was there, with his back to me. He spread out his arms and he said something that was probably Sumerian but I don't know. He called for something, and the something was a sweet fragrance.

I blinked. I could see rose petals in the air. I felt them fall on my face. The morgue smell was gone.

Before the fire, he stretched out his arms again and he changed; it was a pale image of Gregory Belkin; it flickered, and at once his own form swallowed it. And he let down his arms with a sigh.

I climbed out of bed and went to the tape recorder.

"May I turn it on?" I said.

I looked up and saw him in the full light of the fire now, and I realized he was wearing a suit of blue velvet trimmed in an old gold motif around the collar, the ends of the sleeves, and the pant legs. He wore a thick belt of the same color embroidered in gold and his face looked slightly older than it had before.

I stood up and came close to him as politely as I could. What had changed, precisely? Well, his skin was slightly darker, like that of a man who lived in the sun, and his eyes definitely bore more detail, the lids having softened and become less than perfect and perhaps more beautiful. I could see the pores of his skin and the small random hairs, dark, fine, at the edges of his hair.

"What do you see?" he asked.

I sat down, near to the tape recorder. "Everything is a little bit darker and more detailed," I said.

He nodded. "I can no longer summon the shape of Gregory Belkin at will. As for the semblance of anyone else, I cannot hold it very long. I am not a scientist enough to understand it. Someday it will be understood. It will have to do with particles and vibration. It will have to do with things mundane."

I was in a fury of curiosity.

"Have you tried to take any other form, the form of someone you like perhaps a little more than Gregory Belkin?"

He shook his head. "I can make myself ugly if I want to frighten but I don't want to be ugly. I don't want to frighten anyone. Hate has abandoned me, and it's taken some power with it, I imagine. I can work tricks. Watch this."

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 graved 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. Than 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.