Servant of the Bones

The old man, perplexed and torn, actually nodded in agreement, as if they had moved far beyond their own mutual hatred now.

"But," said Gregory, and he held up the check in his left hand, "if you don't tell me the meaning of those words, Rebbe, and I do remember them, then I shall tell the police where I once heard them. That it was here in this house, among the Hasidim whom Gregory Belkin, the man of mystery, the Founder of the Temple of the Mind, was actually born!"

I was dumbfounded. I waited. I didn't dare to take my eyes off the old man.

Still he held out.

Gregory sighed. He shrugged. He walked a pace and turned and looked to Heaven and then dropped his hand. "I will tell them, 'Yes, sir, I've heard those words. Yes, once I heard them. At my grandfather's knee, and yes, he is living, and you must go to him to find out what they mean.' I'll tell them- I'll send them to you and you can explain the meaning of those words to them."

"Enough," said the old man. "You're a fool, you always were!" He sighed heavily, and then more in contemplation than consciously, he said, "Esther said those words? Men heard her?"

"Her attendants thought she was looking at a man outside the window, a man with long black hair! That's a secret the police keep in their files, but the others saw him and they saw her look at him, and this man, Rebbe, he wept for her! He wept!"

It was I who trembled!

"Shut up. Stop. Don't . . ."

Gregory gave a soft laugh of nudging mockery. He stepped back, turning this way and that again, without ever lifting his eyes to see me, though his eyes might, in a better light, have passed over my shoes. He turned back to the Rebbe.

"I never thought to accuse you, any of you, of killing her!" said Gregory. "Such a thought never came to me, though where have I ever heard such words before except from your tongue! And I walk in your door and you accuse me of killing my stepdaughter! Why would I do such a thing? I come here out of respect for her dying words!"

The old man said very calmly, "I believe you. The poor child spoke those words. The papers told of strange words. I believe you. But I also know you killed your daughter. You had it done."

Gregory's arms tensed as do the arms of men who are about to strike others, but he couldn't and wouldn't strike the Rebbe. That would never happen with these two men, I knew. But Gregory was at the end of his tether, and the zaddik was certain of Gregory's guilt.

So was I. But what reason did I have for it? No more than the zaddik, perhaps.

I tried to peer into their souls, for surely they could boast of souls, the two of them, they were flesh and blood. I tried to look, as any human might look, as any ghost might plumb the depths of the soul of the living. I bent my head forward just a little as if the rhythm of their breathing would tell me, as if the beat of the heart would give away the secret. Gregory, did you kill her?

Did the old man ask the younger man the same thing? He leant forward in the light of his dusty bulb; his eyes were crinkled and bright.

He looked at Gregory again, and as he did so, quite by accident, and quite for certain, he saw me.

His eyes shifted very slowly and naturally from his grandson, to me.

He saw a man standing where I stood. He saw a young man with long curling dark hair and dark eyes. He saw a man of good height and good strength, very young, in fact, so young that some might have thought him still a boy. He saw me. He saw Azriel.

I smiled but only a little, like a man about to speak, not to mock.

I let him see the white of my teeth. I confided to his secret gaze that I had no fear of him. Like him, I stood, with a full beard and in black silk, a kaftan or long coat. Like him and one of his own.

And though I didn't know why or how I knew, I did know that I was one of his own, more surely than I was kin to the Huckster Prophet before him.

A surge of strength passed through me, as if the old man had laid his hands on the bones and howled for me! So it often happens, when seen, I grow strong. I was almost as strong in those moments as I am now.

The old man gave no signal to Gregory of what he had seen. He gave no signal to me. He sat still. The drift of his eyes over the room seemed natural and to settle on nothing, in particular, and to have no emotion, except the dim veil of sorrow.

He stared at me again, in the veiled way that Gregory would never notice. He held fast to me in perfect quiet.

Louder came the rush of pulse inside me, tighter the perfect shell of my body closed its pores. I could feel that he saw me and he found me beautiful! Young and beautiful! I felt the silk I wore, the weight of my hair.

Ah, you see me, Rebbe, you hear me. I spoke without moving my tongue.

He didn't answer me. He stared at me as a man stares in thought. But he had heard. He was no fake preacher, but a true zaddik and he had heard my little prayer.

But the younger man, thoroughly deceived and with his back to me, talked again in English:

"Rebbe, did you tell anyone else the old story? Did Esther by chance ever come here seeking to know who you were, and maybe you-"

"Don't be such a fool, Gregory," the old man said. He looked away from me for the moment. Then back at me as he went on. "I did not know your stepdaughter," he said. "She never came here. Neither has your wife. You know this." He sighed, staring at me as if he feared to take his eyes away.

"Is it a tale of the Hasidim or the Lubavitch?" asked Gregory. "Something one of the Misnagdim might have told Esther-"

"No."

We stared at one another. The old man, alive, and the spirit, robust, growing young ever more vivid, and strong. "Rebbe, who else . . . ?"

"No one," said the old man, fixing me steadily as I fixed him "What you remember is true and your brother was far from hearing and your aunt Rivka is dead. No one could have told Esther." Only now he looked away from me, and up at Gregory. "It's a cursed thing you speak of," he said. "It's a demon, a thing that can be summoned by powerful magic and do evil things."

And his eyes returned to me, though the young man remained intent on him.

"Then other Jews know these stories. Nathan knows . . ." "No, no one. Look, don't take me for an idiot. Don't you think I know you asked far and wide among the other Jews? You called this court and that, and you called the professors of the universities. I know your ways. You're too clever. You have telephones in every room of your life. You came here as the last resort."

The younger man nodded. "You're right. I thought it would be common knowledge. I made my inquiries. So have the authorities. But it isn't common knowledge. And so I am here."