Servant of the Bones

"Yes," Azriel answered. I marveled that his eyebrows could be so thick, beautiful and brooding, and yet his mouth so gentle as he smiled. There was no double to die in her place. He killed his own stepdaughter.

"That's when I came, you see," he went on. "That's when I came out of the darkness as if called by the master sorcerer, only there was none. I appeared fully formed and hurrying down the New York street, only to witness her death, her cruel death, and to kill those who killed her."

"The three men? The men who stabbed Esther Belkin?" He didn't answer. I remembered. The men had been stabbed with their own ice picks only a block and a half away from the crime. So thick was the crowd on Fifth Avenue that day that no one even connected the deaths of three street toughs with the slaughter of the beautiful girl inside the fashionable store of Henri Bendel. Only the next day had the ice picks told the story of blood, her blood on three, their blood on the one chosen by someone to do away with them.

"I suppose I thought it was part of his plot, then," I said. "She was killed by terrorists, he said, and he had disposed of those henchmen so that he might make the lie bigger and bigger."

"No, those henchmen were to get away, so that he could make the lie of the terrorists bigger and bigger. But I came there, and I killed them." He looked at me. "She saw me through the window before she died, the window of the ambulance that came to take her away, and she said my name: 'Azriel.' "

"Then she called you."

"No, she was no sorceress; she didn't know the words. She didn't have the Bones. I was the Servant of the Bones." He fell back in the chair. Quiet, looking at the fire, his eyes fierce and thick with dark curling eyelashes, the bones of his forehead strong as the line of his jaw.

After a long time he cast on me the most bright and innocent boyish smile. "You're well now, Jonathan. You're cured of your fever." He laughed.

"Yes," I said. I lay back enjoying the dry warmth of the room, the smell of burning oak. I drank the coffee until I tasted the grounds in my teeth, then I put the cup on the circular stone hearth. "Will you let me record what you tell me?" I asked.

The light shone bright in his face again. With a boy's enthusiasm, he leant forward in the chair, his massive hands on his knees. "Would you do it? Would you write down what I tell you?"

"I have a machine," I said, "that will remember every word for us."

"Oh, yes, I know," he said. He smiled contentedly and put his head back. "You mustn't think me an addlebrained spirit, Jonathan. The Servant of the Bones was never that.

"I was made a strong spirit, I was made what the Chaldeans would have called a genii. When brought forth, I knew all that I should know-of the times, of the language, of the ways of the world near and far-all I need to know to serve my Master."

I begged him to wait. "Let me turn on our little recorder," I said.

It felt good to stand up, for my head not to swim, for my chest not to ache, and for most of the blur of the fever to have been banished.

I put down two small machines, as all of us do who have lost a tale through one. I checked their batteries and that the stones were not too warm for them, and I put the tape cassettes inside and then I said, "Tell me." I pressed the buttons so that both little ears would be on full alert. "And let me say first," I said, speaking for microphones now, "that you seem a young man to me, no more than twenty. You've a hairy chest and hair on your arms, and it's dark and healthy, and your skin is an olive tone, and the hair of your head is lustrous and I would think the envy of women."

"They like to touch it," he said with a sweet and kindly smile.

"And I trust you," I said for my record. "I trust you. You saved my life, and I trust you. And I don't know why I should. I myself have seen you change into another man. Later I will think I dreamt it. I've seen you vanish and come back. Later I won't believe it. I want this recorded too, by the scribe. Jonathan. Now we can begin your story, Azriel.

"Forget this room, forget this time. Go to the beginning for me, will you? Tell me what a ghost knows, how a ghost begins, what a ghost remembers of the living but no ..." I stopped, letting the cassettes turn. "I've made my worst mistake already."

"And what is that, Jonathan?" he asked.

"You have a tale you want to tell and you should tell it."

He nodded. "Kindly teacher," he said, "let's draw a little closer. Let's bring our chairs near. Let's bring our little machines closer so that we can talk softly. But I don't mind beginning as you wish. I want to begin that way. I want for it all to be known, at least, to both of us."

We made the adjustments as he asked, the arms of our chairs touching. I made a movement to clasp his hand and he didn't draw back; his handshake was firm and warm. And when he smiled again, the little dip of his brows made him look almost playful. But it was only the way his face was made-brows that curve down in the middle to make a frown, and then curve gently up and out from the nose. They give a face a look of peering from a secret vantage point, and they make its smile all the more radiant.

He took a drink of the water, a long deep drink.

"Does the fire feel good to you, too?" I asked.

He nodded. "But it looks ever so much better."

Then he looked at me. "There will be times when I'll forget myself. I'll speak to you in Aramaic, or in Hebrew. Sometimes in Persian. I may speak Greek or Latin. You bring me back to English, bring me back to your tongue quickly."

"I will," I said, "but never have I so deeply regretted my own lack of education in languages. The Hebrew I would understand, the Latin too, the Persian never."

"Don't regret," he said. "Perhaps you spent that time looking at the stars or the fall of the snow, or making love. My language should be that of a ghost-the language of you and your people. A genii speaks the language of the Master he must serve and of those among whom he must move to do his Master's bidding. I am Master here. I know that now. I have chosen your language for us. That is sufficient."

We were ready. If this house had ever been warmer and sweeter, if I had ever enjoyed the company of someone else more than I did then, I didn't recall it. I wanted only to be with him and talk to him, and I had a small, painful feeling in my heart, that when he finished his tale, when somehow or other this closeness between us had come to an end, nothing would ever be the same for me.

Nothing was ever the same afterwards.