Servant of the Bones

All right. Was he the Master? If so, how could I not know it? I didn't like him. In my half sleep, I had seen him weep for Esther and talk of plots, and had not liked him. Why was I so close I could touch his face? Handsome he was, no one would argue with this, and in the prime of life, square-shouldered, tall as a Norseman, though darker with jet-black eyes.

Are you the Master?

Mastermind of the Minders, that was what the flippant and cynical reporters called him, this billionaire Gregory Belkin. Now he reviewed in his head recent speeches he'd made before the bronze doors of his Manhattan Temple, "My worse fear is that they weren't thieves at all and the necklace meant nothing to them. It's our church they want to hurt. They are evil."

Necklace, I thought, I had seen no necklace.

The guards who watched Gregory from their nearby cars were his "followers." This was some church of peace and good. They wore guns, and they carried knives, and he himself the prophet carried a small gun, very shiny, like his car, deep in the left pocket of his coat.

He was like a King who is used to performing every gesture before a grand audience, but he didn't see me watching him. He had no sense of a ghost at his shoulder like a personal god.

Well, I was not this man's god. I was not this man's servant. But I was his observer, and I had to know why.

He stopped before a brick house. It was filled with glass windows, all of them covered. It had high-pitched roofs for snow. It was like thousands, possibly even millions, of other houses in this same arm of the city. The proportions of this time and place were truly beyond my easy measure.

I was fascinated. His perfect black leather shoes were speckled prettily with rain. Why was he bringing us here?

He went down a step and back the alleyway. A light shone ahead of him. He had a key for a little gate. Then a key for a door between lighted windows in the deep bottom floor of the house.

We came in, he and I. I felt the warmth swoosh around me!

Ceiling overhead. The night locked out. An old man was seated at a wooden desk.

Smell of human beings, sweet and good. And so many other precious fragrances, too many to savor, or name.

All ghosts and gods and spirits feast on fragrance, as I have told you.

I had been starved, and nearly grew drunk on the smells of this place.

I knew I was here.

I was slowly taking form. But by whose direction? Who's decision? I loved it.

No old words issued from my lips; I was becoming solid. It was happening, as it had in New York when I chased her killers. I felt it. I felt myself enclosed in the good body, the body I liked, though what that meant I wasn't sure.

Now I know: I came visible and solid in my own body, or the body you see here now, the form I had when I was alive.

No one else here knew. Behind the bookcase I stood, watching.

Gregory Belkin had chosen for himself the very middle of the room, beneath a lightbulb with a frayed cord. And the old man at the desk, the old man could not possibly see me.

The old man's head was bowed. He wore the small black silk skullcap of observant Jews. There was a green shaded lamp on his desk that was gentle and golden in its illumination.

His beard and hair were snow white and very pure and beautiful, and two long curled locks deliberately framed his face. The flesh of his scalp was pink beneath the thinnest part of his hair, but the beard was rich and flowing.

The books on the walls were in Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, German. I could smell the parchment and the leather. I drew in these fragrances and it seemed for a moment memory would spring to life, or out of memory would come alive everything I'd tried to murder.

But this old man wasn't the Master either! I knew it immediately.

This old man had no sense that I had come, none at all, but was merely staring at the younger one who had just entered, the strong straight one who stood rather formally before the elder, and removed from his hands a pair of smooth gray gloves which he was careful to put in the right pocket of his coat. He patted the left pocket. The gun was in the left pocket. Little lethal gun. I had a desire to hear it go off. But he wasn't here to shoot it.

The room was so cluttered. Rows and rows of shelves divided me from the old man, but I could see over the tops of books. I smelled incense, and felt a flush of pleasure. I smelled iron, gold, ink. Could the bones be in this place?

The old man took off his glasses, which were of the simplest kind, rounded in silver wire, flexible, and fragile, and peered most directly at his visitor, without rising from his chair.

The old man's eyes were very pale, which struck me as it always does, as very pretty to look at-eyes that are more like water than stone. But they were small, and weak with age, and they didn't gleam so much as they accused from the heavy wrinkles of his face.

Stronger, you are getting stronger by the moment. You are almost completely visible.

I couldn't see the entire face of the younger man. I slipped even more to the far left side of him to conceal myself, and became whole and entire as I stood behind the bookcase, calculating my height at approximately his own. The rain was all over his black coat, and the coat had a seam straight down the back, and next to his neck, pushing up at the black curls of his hair, was a white silk scarf as fine as the scarf she'd clutched in death, a scarf that was probably still in the emporium of her killing. I tried to remember it, the scarf for which she had reached in death not dreaming of the significance of that last gesture, if indeed there was any significance to it at all. The scarf she had wanted was black but glittering, covered with beads. I think I told you this. But now I'm with them again, with them. Bear with me.

The old man spoke in Yiddish:

"You killed your daughter."

I was astonished. So we come immediately to the point? The love I felt for her tormented me, as if she herself had come up to me and dug her nails in my skin and said, Do not forget me, Azriel, only she would never, never have done such a thing. She had died in characteristic humility; when she had spoken my name it was with wonder.

That was too dreadful to see again, her dying.

Go, fly, spirit. Turn your back on them all-on her death and on the old man's accusation, on this fascinating room with its enticing colors and aromas. Let go, spirit. Let them struggle towards the Ladder of Heaven without your intervention. After all, do souls really need the Servant of the Bones to drag them into Sheol?

I wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to know what the old man meant.

The younger man merely laughed.

No disrespect, it was an uneasy, angry laugh of one who would not be forced to immediate response by these words. The dismissive wave of his hand was not surprise. He shook his head.