by Anne Rice
So was I. But what reason did I have for it? No more than the zaddik, perhaps.
I tried to peer into their souls, for surely they could boast of souls, the two of them, they were flesh and blood. I tried to look, as any human might look, as any ghost might plumb the depths of the soul of the living. I bent my head forward just a little as if the rhythm of their breathing would tell me, as if the beat of the heart would give away the secret. Gregory, did you kill her?
Did the old man ask the younger man the same thing? He leant forward in the light of his dusty bulb; his eyes were crinkled and bright.
He looked at Gregory again, and as he did so, quite by accident, and quite for certain, he saw me.
His eyes shifted very slowly and naturally from his grandson, to me.
He saw a man standing where I stood. He saw a young man with long curling dark hair and dark eyes. He saw a man of good height and good strength, very young, in fact, so young that some might have thought him still a boy. He saw me. He saw Azriel.
I smiled but only a little, like a man about to speak, not to mock. I let him see the white of my teeth. I confided to his secret gaze that I had no fear of him. Like him, I stood, with a full beard and in black silk, a kaftan or long coat. Like him and one of his own.
And though I didn't know why or how I knew, I did know that I was one of his own, more surely than I was kin to the Huckster Prophet before him.
A surge of strength passed through me, as if the old man had laid his hands on the bones and howled for me! So it often happens, when seen, I grow strong. I was almost as strong in those moments as I am now.
The old man gave no signal to Gregory of what he had seen. He gave no signal to me. He sat still. The drift of his eyes over the room seemed natural and to settle on nothing, in particular, and to have no emotion, except the dim veil of sorrow.
He stared at me again, in the veiled way that Gregory would never notice. He held fast to me in perfect quiet.
Louder came the rush of pulse inside me, tighter the perfect shell of my body closed its pores. I could feel that he saw me and he found me beautiful! Young and beautiful! I felt the silk I wore, the weight of my hair.
Ah, you see me, Rebbe, you hear me. I spoke without moving my tongue.
He didn't answer me. He stared at me as a man stares in thought. But he had heard. He was no fake preacher, but a true zaddik and he had heard my little prayer.
But the younger man, thoroughly deceived and with his back to me, talked again in English:
"Rebbe, did you tell anyone else the old story? Did Esther by chance ever come here seeking to know who you were, and maybe you--"
"Don't be such a fool, Gregory," the old man said. He looked away from me for the moment. Then back at me as he went on. "I did not know your stepdaughter," he said. "She never came here. Neither has your wife. You know this." He sighed, staring at me as if he feared to take his eyes away.
"Is it a tale of the Hasidim or the Lubavitch?" asked Gregory. "Something one of the Misnagdim might have told Esther--"
"No."
We stared at one another. The old man, alive, and the young spirit, robust, growing ever more vivid, and strong.
"Rebbe, who else...?"
"No one," said the old man, fixing me steadily as I fixed him. "What you remember is true and your brother was far from hearing, and your aunt Rivka is dead. No one could have told Esther."
Only now he looked away from me, and up at Gregory.
"It's a cursed thing you speak of," he said. "It's a demon, a thing that can be summoned by powerful magic and do evil things."
And his eyes returned to me, though the young man remained intent on him.
"Then other Jews know these stories. Nathan knows..."
"No, no one. Look, don't take me for an idiot. Don't you think I know you asked far and wide among the other Jews? You called this court and that, and you called the professors of the universities. I know your ways. You're too clever. You have telephones in every room of your life. You came here as the last resort."
The younger man nodded. "You're right. I thought it would be common knowledge. I made my inquiries. So have the authorities. But it isn't common knowledge. And so I am here."
Gregory bent his head to the side, and thrust the folded bank draft at the Rebbe.
This gave the old man one second to gesture to me, one second, merely to make the little gesture with his right index finger of Hide or Stay Quiet. It came with a swift negation with the eyes and the smallest move of his head. Yet it was no command, and no threat. It was something closer to a prayer.
Then I heard him. Don't reveal yourself, spirit.
Very well, old man, for the time being, as you request.
Gregory--his back to me still--opened the check. "Explain the thing to me, Rebbe. Tell me what it is and if you still have it. What you told Rivka, you said it wasn't an easy thing to destroy."
The old man looked up at Gregory again, trusting me apparently to keep my place.
"Maybe I'll tell you all you want to know," said the old man. "Maybe I will deliver it into your hands, what you speak of. But not for that sum. We have more than plenty. You have to give us what matters to us."
Gregory was much excited. "How much, Rebbe!" he said. "You speak as if you still have this thing."
"I do," said the old man. "I have it."
I was astonished, but not surprised.
"I want it!" said Gregory fiercely, so fiercely that I feared he had overplayed his hand. "Name your price!"
The old man considered. His eyes fixed me again and then drifted past me, and I could see the color brighten in his withered face, and I could see his hands move restlessly. Slowly he let his eyes fasten on me and me alone.
For one precious second, as we gazed at one another, all the past threatened to become visible. I saw centuries beyond Samuel. I think I saw a glimmer of Zurvan. I think I saw the procession itself. I glimpsed the figure of a golden god smiling at me, and I felt terror, terror to know and to be as men are, with memory and in pain.
If this did not stop in me, I would know such agony that I would howl, like a dog, howl as the driver had howled when he saw the fallen body of Esther, I would howl forever. The wind would come. The wind would take me with all its other lost and howling souls. When I'd struck down the evil Mameluk master in Cairo, the wind had come for me, and I had fought through it to oblivion.
Stay alive, Azriel. The past will wait. The pain can wait. The wind will wait. The wind can wait forever. Stay alive in this place. Know this.
I am here, old man.
Calmly, he regarded me, unmarked by his grandson. He spoke now without taking his eyes off me, though Gregory bent to listen to his words:
"Go there, behind me and in the back of these books," he said in English, "and open the cabinet you see there. Inside you'll see a cloth. Lift it. And bring the thing that is beneath it. It is heavy, but you can carry it. You are strong enough."
I gasped. I heard it myself, and I felt my heart crying. The bones were here! Right here.
Gregory hesitated for one moment, perhaps not accustomed to taking orders, or even doing the smallest things for himself. I don't know. But then he sped into action. He hurried behind the bookcase at the old man's back.
I heard the creak of wood, and I smelled the cedar and the incense again. I heard the snap of metal latches. I felt myself rise on the balls of my feet, and then sink down again to a firm stance.
The old man and I stared at one another without pause. I stepped free of the bookcase completely so that he might see me in my long coat that was like his, and he showed only the tiniest fear for an instant, then urged me, with a polite nod of his head, to please return to my hiding place.
I did.
Behind him, out of sight, Gregory fumbled and cursed.
"Move the books," said the Rebbe. "Move them out of the way, all of them," said the old man as he looked at me, as if he held me in check with his eyes. "Do you see it
now?"
The smell of dust rose in my nostrils. I could see the dust rising beneath the light. I heard the books tumble. Oh, it was sweet to hear with ears and to see with eyes. Don't weep, Azriel, not in the presence of this man who despises you.
I lifted my fingers to my lips without willing it. I just did it, natural, as if I were ready to pray in the face of disaster. I felt the hair' above my mouth, and the thick mass of my beard. I liked it. Like yours, Rebbe, when you were young?
The old man was rigid, indestructible, superior, and wary.
Gregory stepped out from behind the bookcase, and back into the light.
In his arms he held the casket!
I saw the gold still thick on the cedar. I saw it, and I saw it bound carelessly in chains of iron.
Iron! So they thought that could hold me? Azriel! Iron could hold such a thing as me? I wanted to laugh. But I looked at it, the casket in Gregory's arms, which he held like an infant, the casket still covered with gold.
A faint memory of its making came back to me, but I did not see anyone clearly in this memory. I only remembered the sunlight on marble and kind words. Love, a world of love, and love made me think again of Esther.
How proud and fascinated Gregory was. He cared nothing that his wool coat was full of dust. That dust was in his hair. He stared down at this thing, this treasure, and he turned to lay it before the old man like an infant.
"No!" The old man raised both hands. "Set it there on the floor and back away from it."
Bitterly, I smiled. Don't defile yourself with it.
He paid no heed to me, but looked down at the casket as Gregory put it on the floor.
"Good God, do you think it will burst into flame?" asked Gregory. Carefully he positioned the casket directly under the light, directly before the old man's desk. "This is ancient, this writing, this writing isn't Hebrew, this is Sumerian!" He drew back his hands and rubbed them together.
He was passionate and overcome.
"Rebbe, this is priceless."
"I know what it is," said the old man, his eyes moving freely from me to the casket. I did not change. I did not even smile.
Gregory stared rapt at this thing as though it were the Christ child in the Manger and he were one of those shepherds come to see the Son of God made flesh.
"What is it, Grandfather? What's written on it?" He touched the iron chains, slowly, as if ready to be commanded by the old man to stop. He touched the links, which were thick and ugly, and he touched a scroll that was tucked beneath the iron chains, where links crossed links.
This I hadn't seen till now, this scroll, until Gregory's fingers gently tested the edges of it. The gold of the casket itself blinded me and made the water come up in my eyes. I smelled the cedar and the spices and the smoke that saturated the wood beneath its plating. I smelled the flesh of other humans, and I smelled the perfume of offerings.
My head swam suddenly.
I smelled the bones.
Oh, my own god, who has called me? If only I could see his cheerful face for a minute, my god, my own god. My own god who used to walk with me, the god that each man has unto himself, his own god, as I had seen mine, and if only he would come now!
This wasn't really memory, you understand, it was a sudden longing without explanation that left me cold and confused.
But I kept thinking of this person, "my god." Would he laugh? Would he say, "So your god has failed you, Azriel, and even amongst the Chosen, you call to me again? Didn't I warn you? Didn't I caution you to escape while you could, Azriel?"
But he wasn't there, my god, whoever that had ever been, and he wasn't smiling. He wasn't at my side, like a friend who'd been walking with me in the cool of the evening along the banks of the river. And he didn't say those things. But he had been with me once, and I knew it. The past was like a deluge that wanted me to fall into it, and be drowned.
A wild hope grew in me, a hope that made my breath come quickly, and the scents of the room suffocated me in my passion.
Maybe nobody has called you, Azriel! Maybe you have come on your own, and you are your own master! And you may hate and disregard these two men to your heart's content!
It was so sweet, this strength, this smile, this seeming joke that I should at last have that power myself. I almost heard my own little laugh. I closed my right fingers over the curls of my beard and tugged ever so gently.
"This scroll is intact, Rebbe," said Gregory eagerly. "Look, I can slip it out of these chains. Can you read it?"
The old man looked up at me as if I'd spoken.
Do you find me beautiful, old man? I know what you see. I don't have to see it. It's Azriel, not made to measure by a Master, not shifted into this or that shape for a Master, but Azriel as God made me once, when Azriel was soul and spirit and body in one.
The old man glared. I command you! Don't show yourself, spirit.
Do you, indeed, old man, and I hate your cold heart! Some link binds us one to the other, but you are so full of hate and so am I, how are we ever to know if God had his hand in this, for her, for Esther!
Spellbound, he stared at me unable to answer.
Gregory crouched over his trophy, and touched the scroll gingerly and fearfully.
"Rebbe, this alone is worth a fortune," he said. "Name your price. Let me open the scroll." He laid his hand suddenly right on the wood, and opened his fingers, in love with this thing.
"No!" said the old man. "Not under my roof."
I looked into his pale filmy eyes. I hate you. Do you think I asked to be this thing that I am? Were you ever young? Was your hair ever this black and your lips this ruddy?
He didn't answer, but he had heard.
"Sit down there," he said to his grandson, pointing to the nearby leather chair. "Sit there and write the checks I tell you to write. And then this thing--and all I know of it--is yours."
I almost laughed out loud. So that was it! That was it! He knew I was here and he would sell me to this grandson whom he despised. That would be his awful price for every wrong done him and his God by the grandson. He would put me in the grandson's unsuspecting hands. I think I did laugh, but soundlessly, only so that he could see it, see a twinkling in my eye perhaps and a curl to my lip as I sneered at him, and shook my head in reverence for his cleverness, his coldness, his loveless heart.
Gregory backed up, found the chair, and sat down slowly, the old leather peeling and flaking. He was overcome with excitement.
"Name your price."
My smile must have been bitter, knowing. But I was calm. My old god would have been proud. Well done, my brave one, fight them! What have you to lose? You think your God is merciful? Listen to what they have in mind for you! But who spoke those words down the long length of the years? Who spoke them? What was it near me and filled with love that tried to warn me? I stared at Gregory. I would not be distracted, drawn away into the mesh of hurt, I would get to the bottom of this mystery first. My own mystery could wait.
I let the nails of my right fingers dig just a little into the hardened flesh of my palm. Yes, here. You are here, Azriel, whether the old man despises you or not, whether the young man is a murderer and a fool, and whether you are being sold once more as if you had no soul of your own and never had and never would. You are here. Not in the bones which lie in the casket!
I pretended my god was there. We stood together. Hadn't I done that with other Masters, without ever telling them, just brought my god close up to be near me, but had he ever really come?
In a cloud of smoke, I saw my god turning, weeping for me. It was in a chamber, and the heat rose from a boiling cauldron! My god, help me! But this was an image without a frame. That was something unspeakable that must never be relived! I had to see things here now.
Gregory drew a long leather wallet from his pocket. He opened it on his knee, and with his right hand held a golden pen.
The old man spoke the sums in American dollars. Huge sums. He gave the parties to whom these checks
were to be written. Hospitals, institutions of learning, a company which would then pass the money on to the yeshiva in which the young men of the Court studied Torah. Money would be sent to the Court in Israel. Money would be sent to the new community of the Hasidim who tried to make their own village in the hills not far from this city. The Rebbe spoke all the words with the briefest of explanations.
Without a single question, Gregory began to write, carving the letters into the bank drafts with his sharp, gold pen, then flipping one check up so that he might write another, and another, scrawling his name as mighty men are wont to do.
Gregory finally laid the checks on the desk before the Rebbe. The Rebbe stared at them carefully. He moved them wide apart in a long row, and he studied them and seemed ever so slightly surprised.
"You would give me this much," the Rebbe asked, "for something about which you know and understand nothing?"
"His name was the last word my daughter spoke."
"No, you want this thing! You want its power."
"Why should I believe in its power? Yes, yes, I want it, to see it, to try to figure how she knew about it, and yes, yes, I give those sums."
"Take the scroll out of the chains, and give it to me."
Like a boy, Gregory obeyed, so eager. The scroll was not old, not old like the casket of the bones. Gregory put the scroll into the old man's hand.
Will you wash your hands afterwards?
The Rebbe didn't acknowledge me. He carefully unrolled the vellum, moving his hands to the left and to the right, so that he had the full writing before him, and then he began to speak, translating the words in English carefully for his grandson to hear:
" 'Return this thing to the Hebrews for it is their magic and only they can put it deep into Hell where it belongs. The Servant of the Bones no longer heeds his Master. Old vows no longer bind him. Old charms no longer banish him. Once summoned, he destroys all that he sees. Only the Hebrews know the meaning of this thing. Only the Hebrews can harness its fury. Give it freely to them.' "
Again I smiled. I couldn't help it. I think I closed my eyes with relief, and then opened them, looking at the old man who looked only at the vellum.
But have I truly come on my own? I didn't dare believe it yet. No. There could be some secret to snare me, some trap in which Esther's death was merely the bait.