Anne Rice: Servant of the Bones

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.

He began.

2

I didn’t remember Jerusalem,” he said. “I wasn’t born there. My mother was carried off as a child by Nebuchadnezzar along with our whole family, and our tribe, and I was born a Hebrew in Babylon, in a rich house—full of aunts and uncles and cousins—rich merchants, scribes, sometime prophets, and occasional dancers and singers and pages at court.

“Of course,” he smiled. “Every day of my life, I wept for Jerusalem.” He smiled. “I sang the song: ‘If I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.’ And at night prayers we begged the Lord to return us to our land, and at morning prayers as well.

“But what I’m trying to say is that Babylon was my whole life. At twenty, when my life came to its first—shall we say—great tragedy, I knew the songs and gods of Babylon as well as I knew my Hebrew and the Psalms of David that I copied daily, or the book of Samuel, or whatever other texts we were constantly studying as a family.

“It was a grand life. But before I describe myself further, my circumstances, so to speak, let me just talk of Babylon.

“Let me sing the song of Babylon in a strange land. I am not pleasing in the eyes of the Lord or I wouldn’t be here, so I think now I can sing the songs I want, what do you think?”

“I want to hear it,” I said gravely. “Shape it the way you would. Let the words spill. You don’t want to be careful with your language, do you? Are you talking to the Lord God now, or are you simply telling your tale?”

“Good question. I’m talking to you so that you will tell the story for me in my words. Yes. I’ll rave and cry and blaspheme when I want. I’ll let my words come in a torrent. They always did, you know. Keeping Azriel quiet was a family obsession.”

This was the first time I’d seen him really laugh, and it was a light heartfelt laugh that came up as easily as breath, nothing strangled or self-conscious in it.

He studied me.

“My laugh surprises you, Jonathan?” he asked. “I believe laughter is one of the common traits of ghosts, spirits, and even powerful spirits like me. Have you been through the scholarly accounts? Ghosts are famous for laughing. Saints laugh. Angels laugh. Laughter is the sound of Heaven, I think. I believe. I don’t know.”

“Maybe you feel close to Heaven when you laugh,” I said.

“Maybe so,” he said. His large cherubic mouth was really beautiful. Had it been small it would have given him a baby face. But it wasn’t small, and with his thick black eyebrows and the large quick eyes, he looked pretty remarkable.

He seemed to be taking my measure again too, as if he had some capacity to read my thoughts. “My scholar,” he said to me, “I’ve read all your books. Your students love you, don’t they? But the old Hasidim are shocked by your biblical studies, I suppose.”

“They ignore me. I don’t exist for the Hasidim,” I said, “but for what it’s worth my mother was a Hasid, and so maybe I’ll have a little understanding of things that will help us.”

I knew now that I liked him, whatever he had done, liked him for himself in a way—young man of twenty, as he said, and though I was still fairly stunned from the fever, from his appearance, from his tricks, I was actually getting used to him.

He waited a few minutes, obviously ruminating, then began to talk:

“Babylon,” he said. “Babylon! Give the name of any city which echoes as loud and as long as Babylon. Not even Rome, I tell you. And in those days there was no Rome. The center of the world was Babylon. Babylon had been built by the Gods as their gate. Babylon had been the great city of Hammurabi. The ships of Egypt, the Peoples of the Sea, the people of Dilmun, came to the docks of Babylon. I was a happy child of Babylon.

“I’ve seen what stands today, in Iraq, going there myself to see the walls restored by the tyrant Saddam Hussein. I’ve seen the mounds of sand that dot the desert, all of this covering old cities and towns that were Assyrian, Babylonian, Judean.

“And I’ve walked into the museum in Berlin to weep at the sight of what your archaeologist, Koldewey, has re-created of the mighty Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way.