Servant of the Bones

"Once a Mameluk in beautiful silk called me forth. It was Cairo, and I chopped him to pieces with his own sword. It took all the wise men of the palace to drive me back into the bones. I remember their beautiful turbans and their frantic cries. They were such a flashy lot, those Moslem soldiers, those strange men who lived all their lives without women, and only to fight and to kill. Why didn't they destroy me? Because of the inscriptions that warned them against a masterless spirit who could seek revenge.

"I recall in Paris a clever satanic magician in a room full of gaslight. The wallpaper was most intriguing to me. A strange black coat hung on a hook. Life almost tempted me. Gaslight and machines; carriages rolling on cobbled streets. But I killed the mysterious man and retreated once more into the bones.

"It was always that way. I slept. I think I remember a winter in Poland. I think I remember an argument between two learned men. But all this is misty and imperfect. They spoke a Hebrew dialect and they had called me, but neither seemed to know I was there. They were good and gentle men. We were in a plain synagogue, and they argued. And then they decided that my bones must be hidden within the wall. Good men. I slept."

"When I came to life again, it was in the bright winter sunlight only weeks ago, as a trio of assassins made their way through the press on Fifth Avenue to kill Esther Belkin as she came out of her black limousine and entered the store before her-innocent, beautiful, without the slightest sense of death circling her.

"And why was I there? Who had called me? I knew only these assassins meant to kill her, these hideous rustic evil men, drugged and stupid and enchanted with the pleasure of killing her, in all her innocence. I had to stop it. I had to.

"But I was too late. You know what the papers told you.

"Who was this innocent child? She saw me, spoke my name. How had she known me? She had never called me. She had only seen me in the thin realm between life and death where truths are visible which are otherwise veiled.

"Let us linger on this killing. A death such as Esther's deserves a few more words. Or maybe I need to recount my coming into awareness. Maybe I need to describe what it was like to see and breathe again in this mighty city, with towers higher than the mystical mountain of Meru, among thousands of people, good and bad, and without luster, as Esther was being marked for the kill."

Part III

HOW KEEP DARK AND PATTERN OFF

How keep dark and pattern that any man suffers off-at the wall, at where the hat comes out of the marrow & yawns- how keep head up the scream & up the burial where the pattern is born- how the leagues washing their hearts & wrung dry only to sponge back up-men smooching mirrors-blades honing- tongue & eyelash of Sweet Thing staggering the shape by the door in the baggy shadow- how keep dark back?

Or should one bullet-forth, sleek-clothed or naked-pierce each entity-each clock-sharpened by art or wine-how enter the needle, the cloth- how take the pattern any man suffers and lose nothing when you rip it off.

Stan Rice, Some Lamb 1975

15

Follow me now, if you will, into consciousness. Evals in the bright winter light of day. See how they shine. That's how I first knew them. This was a joke to them because evil was their word for bad, and their names were Eval. Three brothers out of Texas hired to kill the rich girl.

Down the crowded avenue, in a bath of noonday sun they walked, jostling each other, laughing, passing the cigarette, bold and hot for the kill. How they loved to look at themselves in the mirrors of shops, and this was New York, the biggest city in the world, the only city these Evals cared about, except for Las Vegas, where they will go with their earnings after they've "taken her out," which in their vernacular meant kill her.

They weren't never going back to Texas. Who knew what jobs "the man" might have for them? But first they had to kill her dead.

I could feel their easy malice, even as purely as they felt it-Billy Joel Eval in the lead, with the gun in his pocket and also the long sharp pick, such a cruel pick with a rounded blade of steel. And Doby Eval right behind with Hayden Eval "sucking hind teat," they taunted him, and all of them had those sharp weapons, long picks made of steel, oh, so ready to kill her but who was she?

There had to be a reason for my seeing this, there had to be a reason that I stood in the city of New York, breathing in the smells of New York as if I were alive, and visible, when I was neither, only knowing what a genii always knows . . . that he has been called again to duty, that once again his eyes and his mind have opened on a blazing and vital world.

You know how rebellious I was, I've told you, how indifferent, how perfectly willing to cut to pieces a despicable master. But what was happening here?

Loathing these rustic monsters was easy enough. I walked right by them! I saw them up close in their city-drab disguise, in quilted jackets of nylon and ragged cotton pants, machine-made shoes full of nails and hooks for the strings. Billy Joel couldn't wait to see her, couldn't wait to get close to her, and only Hayden held back, scared to tell his brother he didn't like it so much, killing this girl. If only they had known who paid them.

Who had paid them? "A man through a man through a man," said Doby Eval, "as if you can't figure that out?"

Suddenly I felt my feet hit the pavement. But I was too transparent for anyone else to see, gathering slowly, trailing them, coming up so close on them now that they might have looked back and seen me, if anyone could, and I wasn't sure anyone could.

"Who is commanding me?" I whispered. I felt my lips move. The crowd was as thick on this city street as any I'd ever beheld, and the wealth was closing in around me as if this were the marketplace of Babylon on the New Year, or the bazaars of Baghdad or Istanbul.

Through plate glass I saw the faceless white plastic goddesses of fashion in their magnificent fringe and fur, shine of true rubies, magical slippers made of thin steel straps to bind the foot fetchingly. And all this with no explanation.

Well, you know me well enough by now, the sensualist I am. Hand me the world in a cup and I'll drink it. But this killing of the girl, this had to be stopped. I closed in on them, walked among them, but still they couldn't see me, though I was feeling the shape of my body, the heat of it, the growing density. Yes, I was here all right, this was no garbled hideous phantasm in the wind.

There came the heat of the sidewalk beneath me, and something like the thud of my own feet in leather shoes, just make them plain like theirs. I knew the stench came from the engines in the street, and when I looked up, I saw the towers reaching the noonday clouds, yet lights blazing everywhere, in windows, behind written signs, all fueled by electricity.