Servant of the Bones

My head swam suddenly.

I smelled the bones.

Oh, my own god, who has called me? If only I could see his cheer full face for a minute, my god, my own god. My own god who used t

This wasn't really memory, you understand, it was a sudden longing without explanation that left me cold and confused.

But I kept thinking of this person, "my god." Would he laugh? Would he say, "So your god has failed you, Azriel, and even amongst the Chosen, you call to me again? Didn't I warn you? Didn't I caution you to escape while you could, Azriel?"

But he wasn't there, my god, whoever that had ever been, and he wasn't smiling. He wasn't at my side, like a friend who'd been walking with me in the cool of the evening along the banks of the river. And he didn't say those things. But he had been with me once, and I knew it. The past was like a deluge that wanted me to fall into it, and be drowned.

A wild hope grew in me, a hope that made my breath come quickly, and the scents of the room suffocated me in my passion.

Maybe nobody has called you, Azriel! Maybe you have come on your own, and you are your own master! And you may hate and disregard these two men to your heart's content!

It was so sweet, this strength, this smile, this seeming joke that I should at last have that power myself. I almost heard my own little laugh. I closed my right fingers over the curls of my beard and tugged ever so gently.

"This scroll is intact, Rebbe," said Gregory eagerly. "Look, I can slip it out of these chains. Can you read it?"

The old man looked up at me as if I'd spoken.

Do you find me beautiful, old man? I know what you see. I don't have to see it. It's Azriel, not made to measure by a Master, not shifted into this or that shape for a Master, but Azriel as God made me once, when Azriel was soul and spirit and body in one.

The old man glared. I command you! Don't show yourself, spirit. Do you, indeed, old man, and I hate your cold heart! Some link binds us one to the other, but you are so full of hate and so am I, how are we ever to know if God had his hand in this, for her, for Esther! Spellbound, he stared at me unable to answer.

Gregory crouched over his trophy, and touched the scroll gingerly and fearfully.

"Rebbe, this alone is worth a fortune," he said. "Name your price. Let me open the scroll." He laid his hand suddenly right on the wood, and opened his fingers, in love with this thing.

"No!" said the old man. "Not under my roof." I looked into his pale filmy eyes. I hate you. Do you think I asked to be this thing that I am? Were you ever young? Was your hair ever this black and your lips this ruddy?

He didn't answer, but he had heard.

"Sit down there," he said to his grandson, pointing to the nearby leather chair. "Sit there and write the checks I tell you to write. And then this thing-and all I know of it-is yours."

I almost laughed out loud. So that was it! That was it! He knew I was here and he would sell me to this grandson whom he despised. That would be his awful price for every wrong done him and his God by the grandson. He would put me in the grandson's unsuspecting hands. I think I did laugh, but soundlessly, only so that he could see it, see a twinkling in my eye perhaps and a curl to my lip as I sneered at him, and shook my head in reverence for his cleverness, his coldness, his loveless heart.

Gregory backed up, found the chair, and sat down slowly, the old leather peeling and flaking. He was overcome with excitement.

"Name your price." My smile must have been bitter, knowing. But I was calm. My old god would have been proud. Well done, my brave one, fight them! What have you to lose? You think your God is merciful? Listen to what they have in mind for you! But who spoke those words down the long length of the years? Who spoke them? What was it near me and filled with love that tried to warn me? I stared at Gregory. I would not be distracted, drawn away into the mesh of hurt, I would get to the bottom of this mystery first. My own mystery could wait.

I let the nails of my right fingers dig just a little into the hardened flesh of my palm. Yes, here. You are here, Azriel, whether the old man despises you or not, whether the young man is a murderer and a fool, and whether you are being sold once more as if you had no soul of your own and never had and never would. You are here. Not in the bones which lie in the casket!

I pretended my god was there. We stood together. Hadn't I done that with other Masters, without ever telling them, just brought my god close up to be near me, but had he ever really come?

In a cloud of smoke, I saw my god turning, weeping for me. It was in a chamber, and the heat rose from a boiling cauldron! My god, help me! But this was an image without a frame. That was something unspeakable that must never be relived! I had to see things here now.

Gregory drew a long leather wallet from his pocket. He opened it on his knee, and with his right hand held a golden pen.

The old man spoke the sums in American dollars. Huge sums. He gave the parties to whom these checks were to be written. Hospitals, institutions of learning, a company which would then pass the money on to the yeshiva in which the young men of the Court studied Torah. Money would be sent to the Court in Israel. Money would be sent to the new community of the Hasidim who tried to make their own village in the hills not far from this city. The Rebbe spoke all the words with the briefest of explanations.

Without a single question, Gregory began to write, carving the letters into the bank drafts with his sharp, gold pen, then flipping one check up so that he might write another, and another, scrawling his name as mighty men are wont to do.

Gregory finally laid the checks on the desk before the Rebbe. The Rebbe stared at them carefully. He moved them wide apart in a long row, and he studied them and seemed ever so slightly surprised.

"You would give me this much," the Rebbe asked, "for something about which you know and understand nothing?"

"His name was the last word my daughter spoke."

"No, you want this thing! You want its power."

"Why should I believe in its power? Yes, yes, I want it, to see it, to try to figure how she knew about it, and yes, yes, I give those sums."

"Take the scroll out of the chains, and give it to me." Like a boy, Gregory obeyed, so eager. The scroll was not old, not old like the casket of the bones. Gregory put the scroll into the old man's hand.

Will you wash your hands afterwards?

The Rebbe didn't acknowledge me. He carefully unrolled the vellum, moving his hands to the left and to the right, so that he had the full writing before him, and then he began to speak, translating the words in English carefully for his grandson to hear: