Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

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.