Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

“Wise of you,” he said. “And generous in spirit. I am a fool still in so many ways.”

“I see. I understand. Let’s go back to Babylon, shall we? Can you explain the plot? What did your father have to do with it in the end?”

“Oh, my father and I, what friends we were! He didn’t have a better friend than me, and my best friend was Marduk.

“I was the leader on our drinking jaunts, and it was he…it was only he who could have ever made me do what I did…the thing which made me the Servant of the Bones.

“Strange how it all comes together.” He fell to murmuring. He was distracted. “They choose ingredients and they blend them, because the potion won’t work unless you have everything. The priests alone, they could never have gotten him to do it. Cyrus the Persian? I trusted him as much as any tyrant. And old Nabonidus, what was his advice? He was only there out of some sort of kindness on the part of Cyrus, and cleverness. Everything with the Persian empire was cleverness. Perhaps it’s so with all empires.”

“Take your time,” I said. “Catch your breath.”

“Yes…let me give you pictures of my family. My mother died when I was young. She was very sick, and she cried that she wouldn’t live to see Yahweh lift His Face to us again and take us back to Zion. Her people had all been scribes. She herself was a scribe and at one time, I heard, had been something of a prophetess, but this had ceased when she had sons.

“My father missed her unbearably until the last day I ever knew him. He had two Gentile women and so did I; in fact, we shared the same two women most of the time, but this was not for having children or marriage, this was just for fun.

“And at home in the family my father was a hard worker at writing down the psalms and trying to get exact the words we remembered from Jeremiah over which we all argued night and day. My father seldom if ever led the prayers. But he had a beautiful voice, and I can still remember him singing the Lord’s praises.

“When we worked in the temple, it was secret between him and me that we thought all idolaters were completely crazy, and why not work for them and humor them?

“As I was explaining, we set the meal out for the god Marduk himself from time to time with the priests. I had many, many friends among the priests, and you know, it was like any group of priests; some believed it all, and some believed nothing. But we drew the veils around the god’s table, and then afterwards we took away the food, which of course the god Marduk in his own way had actually savored and fed upon—through fragrance and through the moisture that he could feel—and we helped set up that meal for the members of the royal family, the royal hostages, and the priests and the eunuchs who would eat the god’s food, or eat at the King’s table.

“But again, as good Hebrews we didn’t eat that food ourselves. No, we would never have done that.

“We kept to the laws of Moses in every way that we could. And days ago, when I found myself pitched down into New York, and I began my journey to find the killers of Esther Belkin, when I happened upon the grandfather of Gregory Belkin, the Rebbe in Brooklyn, I saw that many of those Jews, strict as they were, had made a living in the big city of New York in handel as we would call it, just as we did in Babylon.

“And I saw also that there were Jews at all levels of devotion, as you yourself said.”

He stopped again. He was not anxious for the pain to come.

“But let me get back to Babylon. Look, I’m dancing in the tavern with my father. All men are dancing there together, you know. No harlots there that night. Just a man’s place. And I tell him, ‘I saw my god with my own eyes. I saw him and I held him to my heart. Father, I am an idolater, but I swear to you, I saw Marduk and Marduk walks with me.’

“And there in the far corner, look, Marduk turns his back on me deliberately and he shakes his head.

“And hours later my father and I were still arguing. ‘You are a wise man, you are a seer, and you have misused your powers,’ he said. ‘You should have used them for us.’

“ ‘I will, Father, I will use them for us, but tell me, what do you want me to do? Marduk asks nothing of me. What do you want me to do?’

“The following day Marduk appeared just a few blocks from the house, vaporous, gold, visible however. He cautioned me: ‘Don’t touch me or we will have a religious spectacle on our hands.’

“ ‘Look, are you angry with me for telling my father?’ I asked him straight away. We were walking just like friends, and to have him visible was such a comfort to me.

“ ‘No, I’m not angry with you, Azriel, it’s just I don’t trust the priests of the temple. There are many, many old and conniving priests, and you never know what they will want of you. Now listen to me. I have some things to tell you before we get deeper into this, before you do, that is, for I am as deep as I can get. Let’s go to the public gardens. I like to see you eat and drink.’

“We went to his favorite place, a huge public garden right on the Euphrates, down away from all the docks and the shipwrights and the commotion. In fact it was where one of the many canals came in, and it was more on the canal than the river itself which was always busy. This garden was filled with big drooping willow trees, just like in the psalm, you know, and there were a few musicians out there playing their pipes and dancing for trinkets.

“Marduk sat down opposite me and folded his arms. We really did look so much alike that we could have been brothers. It occurred to me that I knew him better than I knew any of my brothers. And by the way, I didn’t hate my brothers the way Hebrews are always hating their brothers in the stories. Forget that. I loved my brothers. They were a little tame, when it came to drinking and dancing. I had more fun with my father. But I loved them.”

He stopped. It seemed out of respect for the dead brothers. He was now beyond beautiful in the red velvet, and these pauses brought me back visually to him in a way that was seductive. But then he began to talk again:

“Marduk started in on me right away. ‘Look, I am going to tell you the truth and you pay attention. I have no memory of my beginnings. I have no memory of slaying Tiamat the great dragon and making the world out of her belly and the sky out of the rest of her. But this does not mean that it didn’t happen. I walk most of the time in a fog. I see the spirits of the gods and the roaming spirits of the dead and I listen for prayers and I try to answer them. But this is a dreary place where I live. When I retreat to the temple for the banquet it’s a great pleasure because the fog clears. You know what clears it?’

“ ‘No, but I can guess…that the priests see you, that powerful seers see you.’

“ ‘That is it, Azriel, I can become solid and visible for witches, for sorcerers, for those who have eyes to see, and then I drink up the libations of water, I inhale them and inhale the fragrances of food and this puts me in the mood of life. Then I go into the statue, and I rest in darkness and time means nothing to me, and I listen to Babylon. I listen. I listen. But the myths of the beginning, I don’t remember, you see what I’m saying?’

“ ‘Not entirely,’ I confessed. ‘Are you telling me that you aren’t a god?’

“ ‘No, I am a god and a powerful one. Were I to draw on my will, I could clear this marketplace, this garden now, with a great forceful wind. Easy to do. But what I am saying is that gods don’t know everything, and this story of how Marduk became the leader of the gods, how he slew Tiamat, how he built the tower to heaven…well, I’ve either forgotten it, or I am growing weak, and I can’t remember. Gods can die. They can fade. Just like Kings. They can sleep and it takes much to wake them up. And when I awake and am fully alert, I love Babylon and Babylon loves me back.’