Servant of the Bones

He stood astride the casket and he licked at his fingers. The skeleton had spilt out, into a weak and gangling figure. The bones lay unburnt, smoking, glowing. The lid was charred.

He dropped to his knees, and drawing a white napkin from his pocket, he beat out all tiny bits of smoldering fire. He was muttering in his annoyance and rage. The lid was blackened but the Sumerian I could still read.

My bones lay amid ashes.

"Damn you," he said.

I had never seen him really angry at all, and he was more angry now than most angry people I'd ever seen. He was raging inside, worse than the Rebbe had raged. He glared at me. He glanced down at the casket to make sure it wasn't burning. It wasn't. It was only very slightly scorched.

"The smell is bitumen," I said.

"I know what it is," he said. "And I know where it comes from, and I know how it was used." His voice trembled. "So you've proved yourself. You don't care if the bones are burned."

He climbed to his feet. His brushed off his pants. Ashes fell to the floor. The floor was filthy with ashes. The fire in the fireplace burned on, consuming itself, purposeless, wasted.

"Let me throw them in the fire," I said. I reached for the skull, and picked up the gangling dead thing.

"Enough, Azriel. You do me wrong! Don't be so quick! Don't do it!"

I stopped. That was all it took, and I too was afraid, or the moment had passed. Five minutes after the battle, can you still slice a man in half with a sword? The wind blows. You stand there. He is lying among the dead, but not dead, and he opens his eyes, and murmurs to you thinking you're his friend. Can you kill him?

"Oh, but if we do it then we will both know," I said. "And I would like to know. Yes, I'm afraid, but I want to know. You know what I suspect?"

"Yes. That this time it doesn't matter about the bones!"

I didn't respond.

"Not even," he said, "if they are crushed to powder with a mortar and pestle."

I didn't reply.

"The bones have completed their journey, my friend," he said. "The bones have come down to me! This is my time, and your time. This is what is meant. If we burnt the bones, and you were still here, solid, and beautiful and strong-impertinent and sarcastic, yes, but still here as you are now, able to breathe and see and wind yourself with shrouds of velvet-would that deliver you into my hands? Would you acknowledge the destiny?"

We glared at one another. I didn't want to take the chance. I didn't even want to think of the whirlwind of the restless dead. The words came back to me, the words engraved on the casket. I shivered, in terror of being formless, impotent, wandering, knocking against spirits I knew were everywhere. I did nothing.

He went down on his knees, and he gathered up the casket and the lid, then rose, one knee at a time, walked over to the table, gently laid down the casket, put the burnt shriveled lid on top of it, carefully, and then he sat down on the floor, leaning against his table, legs sprawled, but looking remarkably formal still in his seamed and buttoned clothes.

He looked up. I saw his teeth flash, and bite. I think he bit down on his lip to his own blood.

He stood up and ran at me.

He came so fast, it was like a dancer leaping to catch another, and though he stumbled, he caught me with both his hands, around my neck, and I felt his thumbs press against me, and I hated it and ripped his arms away. He smacked my face hard this way and that and drove his knee into my abdomen. He knew how to fight. With all his polish and money, he knew the dancing way to fight, like the Orientals.

I backed away from these blows, barely hurt, only amazed at his grace, and how he reared back now and kicked me full in the face, sending me many paces back.

Then came his worst blow, elbow rising, hand straight, the arm swinging around to knock me backwards.

I caught his arm, and twisted it so that he went down on his knees with a snarl of rage. I pushed him flat to the carpet and held him pinned with my foot.

"You're no match for me in that realm," I said. I stepped back and offered him my hand.

He climbed to his feet. His eyes never moved from me. Not for one second had he really forgotten himself. I mean, even in these failed attempts he held a dignity and lust for the struggle and for winning it, too.

"All right," he said. "You've proven yourself. You aren't a man, you're better than a man, stronger. Your soul's as complex as my soul. You want to do right, you have some fixed and foolish notion of right."

"Everybody has a fixed and foolish notion of right," I answered softly. I was humbled. And I did at that moment feel doubt, doubt of anything except that I was enjoying this, and the enjoyment seemed a sin. It seemed a sin that I should breathe. But why, what had I done? I determined not to look anymore into memory. I pushed the images away, the same ones I've described to you, Samuel's face, the boiling cauldron, all of it. I just said, Be done with it, Azriel!

I stood in the room vowing from then on to solve this mystery there and then with no looking back.

"You're flattered that I said you had a soul, aren't you?" he asked. "Or is it merely that you're relieved that I recognize such a thing? That I don't consider you a demon like my grandfather did. That's what he did, right? He banished you from his sight, as if you had no soul."

I was speechless with wondering, and with longing. To have a soul, to be good, to mount the Stairs to Heaven. The purpose of life is to love and better know the beauty and intricacy of all things.

He sat down on the velvet hassock. He was out of breath. I had been slow to realize this. I wasn't out of breath at all.

I was hot all over again, with a thin sweat, but I was not soiled yet. And of course some of what I had been saying to him was bluff and lies.

I didn't want to go into darkness or nothingness. I couldn't even bear the thought of it. A soul, to think I might truly have a soul, a soul that could be saved . . .

But I wasn't serving him! This plan, I had to know what it was; the world, how did he mean to get it when armies fought each other all over it? Did he mean the spiritual world?

There were voices in the hall. I could pick out the mother's voice easily, but he ignored it, just as if this were nothing. He only looked at me, and marveled at me, and pondered what I had said.

He was radiant in his curiosity and in what he had allowed to happen here without fear.

"You see how it lures me," I said. "The marble, the carpet, the breeze through the windows. Being alive, the great lure."

"Yes, and there's me to know and love, too, and I lure you." "Yes, you do." I said. "And something tells me that life has lured me in the past, lured me to serve evil men and men I can't recall. I am lured each time by life itself and flesh itself and when there comes a moment and the door opens to Heaven, and I cannot go through. I'm not allowed to go through. My Masters may go through. Their beautiful daughters may go through. Esther may go through. But I don't go through."