Servant of the Bones

"You talk," I said, "about Esther and Nathan-" Esther came home and had this fight with Gregory, screaming at him that if he had kindred across the bridge he should acknowledge them, that the love of his brother was a real thing. I heard this. I didn't pay any attention. She came in and talked to me about it. I said if they were Hasidim they'd recited Kaddish for him long ago. I was so sick. I was drugged. Gregory was furious with her. But they had their fights, you know. But he ... he has something to do with her dying, I know it! That necklace. She would never have worn the necklace in midday."

"Why?"

"Very simple reason. Esther was brought up in the best schools, and made her debut as a girl. Diamonds are for after six o'clock. Esther would have never worn a diamond necklace on Fifth Avenue at high noon. It wouldn't have been proper. But why did he hurt her? Why? Could it have been over this family? No, I don't understand it. And he weaves in the diamonds, why? Why bring up the necklace in the middle of all this!"

"Keep telling me these things. I'm seeing the pattern. Ships, planes, a past that is a secret as much for Gregory as for the innocent Hasidim. I see something . . . but it's not clear."

She stared at me.

"Talk," I said. "You talk. You trust in me. You know I'm your guardian, I'm for your good. I love you and I love your daughter because you're good and you're just and people have done cruelty to you. I don't like cruelty. It makes me edgy and wanting to hurt ..."

This stunned her. But she believed it. Then she tried to speak and couldn't. Her mind was flooded, and she began to tremble. I touched her face with comforting hands. I hoped they were warm and sweet to her.

"Let me alone now," she begged kindly. But she put her hand on my arm, patting me, comforting me, and she let her body lean on my shoulder. She made a fist of her right hand.

She curled up against me, and crossed her legs so that I could see her naked knee against mine, firm and fair beneath her hem. She gave a low moan and a terrible outcry of grief.

The car was slowing to a crawl.

We had come to a strange sprawling field full of evil fumes and planes, yes, planes. Planes now explained themselves to me in all their shuddering, keening glory, giant metal birds on tiny preposterous wheels, with wings laden with oil enough to burn the entire world in its fire. Planes flew. Planes crept. Planes lay about empty with gaping doors and ugly stairways leading into the night. Planes slept.

"Come on," she said. She Clenched my hand. "Whatever you are you and I are together in this. I believe you."

"Well you should," I whispered.

But I was dazed.

As we got out of the car, I knew only my thoughts, following her, hearing voices, paying no attention, looking up at the stars. The air was so full of smoke, it was like the smoke in war when everything is burning.

Amid deafening noise we approached the plane. She gave orders but I couldn't hear her words; the wind just snatched them up. The stairs spilled down in one firm piece like the Ladder to Heaven, only it was merely the metal ladder into this plane.

Suddenly, as we began to climb together, she closed her eyes and stopped. She groped, sightless, for my neck with her hands and held me tight, as if feeling for the arteries in my neck. She was sick and in pain.

"I have you," I whispered.

Ritchie, the driver, waited behind me, eager to help.

She caught her breath.

She rushed up the steps.

I had to hurry to catch up with her.

We entered a low doorway together, into a sanctum of intolerable sound. A young woman with brave, cold eyes said:

"Mrs. Belkin, your husband wants you to come home."

"No, we're going to my home now," she said.

Two uniformed men stepped out of the front of the plane. I glimpsed a tiny chamber there, in the plane's nose, full of buttons and lights.

The cold pale-eyed woman led me towards the back of the plane, but I took my time, listening so that I could be there if needed.

"Do what I tell you," Rachel said. I heard the rapid capitulation of the men. "Get off the ground as soon as possible."

The pale woman had left me standing beneath the roof and doubled back to stop Rachel. Ritchie, the loyal driver, hovered over Rachel.

"Leave the magazines and the papers there!" Rachel said. "What do you think, she'll come back to life if I read about her? Get off the ground as fast as you can!"

There was a little chorus of weakening rebellion-men, women, even the elderly gray-haired Ritchie.

"You just come with me, that's all!" she said, and once again the silence fell around her as if she were the Queen.

She took my hand, and I was led by her into a small chamber padded in glistening leather. Everything here was smooth. The leather was tender, and the place glowed with refinements: thick glass goblets on a small table, hassocks for our feet, deep chairs that would hold us as dearly as couches.

The voices died away, or sank low and conspiratorial, behind curtains.

The little windows were the only ugliness, so thick and scratched and dirty that they revealed nothing of the night outside. The noise was the night. The stars weren't visible.

She told me to sit down.

I obeyed, sinking into an awkward couch of odoriferous dyed leather that caught me up as if it wanted to render me helpless and awkward, as a father might pick up his son by the ankle into the air.

We faced each other now in these scooped and oddly comfortable couches. I became used to it, the seeming indignity. I grasped that for the severity of the materials, this was a form of opulence. We were lounging here, like potentates. Brilliantly colored magazines lay on the table before us, one neatly overlapping the other. Folded newspapers that had been arranged in a carefully designed circle. Stale air blew upon us as if it were some sort of deliberate blessing.

"You really have never seen a plane before, have you?" she asked. "No," I said. "I don't need them. This is all so very luxurious," I said. "I can't sit up straight if I wanted to."

The woman with the pale cold eyes had come, and she was reaching down beside me for tethers, a strap with a buckle. I was fascinated by her skin and her hands. All of these people were so very nearly perfect. How?

"Safety belt," said Rachel. She snapped the buckle of her own, and now she did a thing which seduced me.

She kicked off her shoes, her beautiful ornate shoes with their high thin heels. She pushed at them, one foot at the other, till they fell loose, and on her narrow white feet I saw the imprint of the straps that had covered her feet, and I wanted to touch them. I wanted to kiss them.