Servant of the Bones

" 'Who gave you this all-precious tablet, Asenath?' I asked sarcastically, becoming ever more anxious and impatient at this whole thing. I'd never seen my father so serious! I didn't like it.

" 'Look at it, scribe, scholar, smart one!' she said. 'How old do you think this is?'

" 'A thousand kings have reigned since then,' I said. 'It's as old as Uruk.' And really this was the same as saying to you in English, this thing is two thousand years old.

"She nodded. 'Given me by the priest they put to death, just to spite them,' she said.

" 'I want to read the outside,' I said.

" 'No!' she said. 'No!' Then she stood up and leaned on her snake staff or whatever the hell she called it, and she said to my father, 'Remember, there are two ways to do this. Two ways. I give you my counsel. Were he my son, I would give them this tablet. I would give it into the hands of the most ambitious. I would give it into the hands of the most dissatisfied and eager to be gone from here, and that is the young priest, Remath. Be clever. You hold your people in your hands.'

"Then she turned and threw out her staff, and lo, the doors opened of themselves and she turned to me and she said, 'You are most privileged for I give you my one chance at immortality. Were I to keep it, were I to abide by it, I might rise above this world and the stumbling dead, with the strength of a great spirit.'

" 'And why don't you?' said I.

" 'Because you can save your people. You can save us all. You can take us back to Jerusalem and then, for that you deserve something, yes, you deserve something for that ... to be an angel or a god.'

"I was on my feet, trying to stop her and demand more of her, but she went out directly, scattering the family with wild threats, and strode through the anterooms, and the gate opened for her staff, and on she walked, a blaze of red silk into the street and away.

"I looked at my father. He sat still holding this enveloped tablet and looking at me with large tear-filled eyes. I had never seen his face so frozen. It was as if the muscles of his face didn't know grief or pain or fear well enough to form a face for it. He was at a loss.

" 'What the hell is she talking about, Father?' I asked him.

" 'Sit down here close to me,' he said, the tears spilling now as freely as they might from a woman, and he held my hand.

" 'Will you let me read that damned thing?' I asked.

"He didn't respond. He held it close to his chest. And he was thinking. The door lay open and I saw my brothers out there, all peering in and then my sister came and said, 'Father, brother, do you want some wine?'

" 'There isn't wine in the world enough to get me drunk now,' said my father. 'Shut the door.' My sister did.

"He turned to me suddenly, his lips pursed and then he swallowed and he said, 'It was Marduk with you, wasn't it? Or a spirit who claimed that he was Marduk. It was true.'

" 'Yes, I would say that is precisely the truth, Father. I've talked to him since I was a child. Am I to be punished now for this? What's to happen? What's this about Remath, the priest? You know him? I don't know that I do.'

" 'You know him,' he said. 'You just don't remember him. The day that Marduk smiled at you, when you were a boy, Remath was standing in the corner of the banquet chamber. He's young, ambitious, full of hatred of Nabonidus and enough hate of Babylon to want to go away.'

" 'What's this to me?'

" 'I don't know, my son, my beautiful and beloved son. I don't know. All I know is that all Israel is begging for you to do what the priests of Marduk want you to do. As for this enveloped tablet here? I don't know. I just don't know.'

"He cried for a long time. I was tempted to snatch the enveloped tablet from him and suddenly I did. I read the Sumerian.

" 'To make the Servant of the Bones.'

" 'What is that, Father?' I said. He turned, his tears disfiguring his face somewhat, and he wiped at his wet beard and lips and he took the tablet back. 'Leave that to my judgment,' he said in a low voice, and then he stood up and he went along the wall, looking for loose stones, for bricks that might come out, and he found what he wanted, a hiding place, and he put the tablet inside.

" 'To make the Servant of the Bones,' I repeated. 'What can it mean?'

" 'We have to go up to the temple, my son, to the Palace. Kings are waiting on us. Deals have been struck. Promises have been exchanged.' Then he embraced me and he kissed me slowly all over my face, he kissed my mouth, my forehead, my eyes.

" 'When Yahweh told Abraham that he was to bring Isaac and sacrifice him,' he said, 'you know our great Father Abraham did as he was told.'

" 'So the tablet and the scrolls tell us, Father, but have you been told by Yahweh that I must be sacrificed? Yahweh has come to you now, along with Enoch and Asenath and all the others? Is that what you expect me to believe? Father, you are grieving for me. I am dead already in your mind. What is this? What, why am I to die? For what? What's wanted, that I personally renounce the god, that I tell the King the god has wished him well, what! If it's a performance I'll do it! But, Father, don't cry for me as if I were dead!'

" 'It's a performance,' he said, 'but it takes a very very strong one to perform it, one with endurance and conviction, and one with a great heart filled with love. Love of his people, love of his tribe, love of our lost Jerusalem and love of the Temple to be built there to honor the Lord. If I thought I could do it, that I could see the performance through to the finish, I would do it. And you can turn on us, you can say no, you can flee.

" 'But the priests of Marduk want you, my son, they want you. And so do others even more powerful than they. They want you. And they know you are stronger than your brothers.' His voice broke.

" 'I see,' I said.

" 'And you are the only one who could ever forgive me for condemning him to such a fate.'

"I was thunderstruck. I just looked at him, at his tearful eyes, and I said, 'You know, Father, you are perhaps right, at least insofar as this. I could forgive you anything. Because I know you, and you wouldn't do evil to me, you wouldn't do that.'

" 'No, I wouldn't. Azriel, do you know what it means to me that you are to be taken from me, you and your future wife and future sons and daughters? Oh, it doesn't matter. Forgive me, son, for what I do. Forgive me. I beg you. Before it begins, before we go to the palace, and hear the lies and look at the map, forgive me.'

"He was my father. He was sweet and kind and overcome with grief, terrible grief and pain. It was an easy thing for me to put my arms around him as if he were my little brother and say, 'Father, I forgive you.'

" 'Never forget that, Azriel,' he said. 'When you are suffering, when the hours are dragging by, when you are in pain, forgive me . . . not just for my sake, son, but for yours!'