Servant of the Bones

The old man said nothing.

"Rebbe, when I was very little," said Gregory, "I heard you tell a particular tale. Only once did I hear this story. But I remember it. I remember the words."

The old man made no reply. The loose folds of his skin were shiny in the light, but when he lifted his white eyebrows he lifted the folds of his forehead too.

"Rebbe," said Gregory, "you spoke once to my aunt of a legend, a secret ... a family treasure. I've come here to ask you about what I heard."

The old man was surprised. No. It wasn't that. The old man was surprised only that the younger man's words had some interest for him. The old man gave the silence a moment, then spoke in Yiddish as before:

"A treasure? You and your brother-you were the treasures of your mother and father. What would bring you to Brooklyn to ask me about tales of treasure? Treasure you have beyond any man's dreams."

"Yes, Rebbe," said Gregory patiently.

"I hear your church swims in money, that your missions in foreign lands are lavish resorts for the rich who would visit and give to the poor. Indeed. I heard that your own fortune far outstrips that of your wife, or her daughter. I hear that no man can hold in his mind the exact amount of the money you possess and the money you control."

"Yes, Rebbe," said Gregory again, patiently in English. "I'm as rich as you can imagine, and I know you don't choose to imagine it, nor to dwell on it, nor profit from it-"

"Well, then, come to the point," said the old man in Yiddish. "You waste my time. You waste the precious moments I have left to me, which I would rather spend in charity than in condemnation. What do you want?"

"You spoke of a family secret," Gregory said. "Rebbe, speak to me in English, please."

The old man sneered.

"And what did I speak then, when you were a little boy?" the old man asked in Yiddish. "Did I speak Yiddish or Polish, or was it English then too?"

"I don't remember," said the young man. "But I wish you'd speak English now." He shrugged again, and then he said very quickly, "Rebbe, I am grieving for Esther! It wasn't my wealth that bought her the diamonds. I wasn't the cause of her wearing them carelessly. I wasn't to blame that the thieves caught her unawares."

Diamonds? There was a lie in this. Esther had worn no diamonds. The Evals had taken from her no diamonds. But Gregory was as smooth-tongued at this as anything else.

How he played the part. How the old man studied him.

The old man moved back just a little, as if the strength of the words had pushed him, perhaps even annoyed him. He scrutinized the young man.

"You mistake my meaning, Gregory," he said in English. "I don't speak of your wealth or what she wore around her neck when they killed her. I mean you killed your daughter, Esther. You had her murdered."

Silence. In the dimness I saw my hands visible against the books; I saw the tiny creases in the skin of my knuckles, and in the place where a man would have a heart I felt pain.

The smooth-tongued one gave no sign of guilt or shame or even shock. Either infinite innocence or infinite evil suffused him and upheld him in quiet.

"Grandfather, that's madness. Why would I do such a thing? I am a man of God as you are, Grandfather!"

"Stop!" said the Rebbe. He lifted his hand.

"My followers would never hurt Esther, they-"

"Stop!" said the Rebbe again. "Get on with it, what do you really want."

Rattled and smiling uneasily, Gregory shook his head. He collected himself to begin again. His lip trembled, but I don't think the old man could see it as I could.

Gregory still held the check, an offering, poised, in his left hand.

"It's something I remember you saying once," said Gregory, the English rapid and natural now. "Nathan and I were in the room. I don't think Nathan heard it. He was with . . . someone else. I don't even remember who else was there, except my mother's sister Rivka, and it seemed there were old women. But it was here in Brooklyn, and we'd only just come. I could ask Nathan-"

"Leave your brother alone!" said the old man, and this time it was English, confident, low, as natural to his tongue as Yiddish. Anger can do that, strip a voice down to the best way that it knows to speak. "Don't approach your brother Nathan. Leave your brother Nathan in peace! You just said yourself your brother didn't hear it."

"Yes, I knew you would want it that way, Rebbe. I knew you wouldn't want me to contaminate Nathan."

"Get on with this." "That's why I came to ask you. Explain it and I won't bother my beloved brother, but I must know." He went on. "That day, when I was a child, you spoke about a secret thing. A thing you called the Servant of the Bones."

I was stricken. The words caught me utterly off guard. The shock only strengthened my form. I could not have been more stunned if he had turned and seen me. I called clothes to cover me, I called the clothes to cover me as he, the zaddik, was covered. And I felt myself immediately sheathed in black silk similar to his, warm and well fitted, and the air felt warm and the tiny lightbulb rocked on its frayed cord.

The Rebbe looked at the bulb for a long moment, then back at his grandson.

"Ah, be still, Azriel," I commanded myself. "And listen. The answers are coming now."

"Do you remember?" asked the younger one. "A family secret? A treasure called the Servant of the Bones?"

The old man remembered, but didn't speak.

"You said," Gregory continued, "that once a man had brought this thing to your father in Prague. The man was a Moslem, from the mountains. You said that this man had given this thing to your father in payment of a debt."

Ah, this zaddik possessed the bones! But he wasn't the master, no, never would he be, either.

He looked hard and secretively at his grandson.

"You were talking to old Rivka," Gregory pressed, "and you told her the things the Moslem had said. You said that your father should not have accepted such a thing, but your father had been confused because the words on the wooden casket had been in Hebrew. You called it an abomination; you said it should be destroyed."

I smiled. Did I feel relief or anger? An abomination. I am an abomination. And this abomination can destroy both of you and your room of books; it can tear your house to pieces to the rafters! But TV ho called me!

I put my hand over my mouth in restraint. In the presence of a zaddik, I could not afford the most incidental sigh or sound. I couldn't afford to weep.