Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

This greatly intrigued me. I wanted to question her.

But she was distracted again by physical desire. She examined me, my hair, and my skin. Her grief for Esther was heavy inside her but it warred with a simple human need for levity.

I loved her looking at me.

When I’ve reached this stage, when I’m this apparently alive, humans notice the same things about me that they would have when I was a true man and walking the earth in an ordinary life that God had given me. They notice the prominent bones of my forehead, that my eyebrows are black and tend to dip in a frown even as I smile but to rise as they move towards the ends of my eyes, that I have a baby’s mouth, though it’s large, with a square jaw. It’s a touch of the baby face with strong bones, and eyes that laugh easily.

She was powerfully drawn to these attributes, and there came again that rush of memory, of ancient people talking and saying things of the utmost importance, and someone saying, “If one has to do it, where could we find a man more beautiful! One who more resembles the god?”

The car moved faster and faster through empty streets. Other engines were quiet, and the pavements of New York were lined with thin, spindly little trees that fluttered with little leaves, almost like offerings before their lordly buildings. Stone and iron were the makings of this place. How fragile the leaves looked when the wind caught them—forlorn, tiny, and colorless.

We took on greater speed. We had come to a wide road, and I could smell more strongly the stench of the river. The sweet smell of water was barely detectable, but it made me powerfully thirsty. I’d passed over this river with Gregory but had not known thirst then. I knew it now. Thirst meant the body was really strong.

“Whoever you are,” she said, “I’ll tell you this. If we make it to that plane, and I think we’re going to, you’ll never want for anything again in your life.”

“Explain about the necklace,” I said gently.

“Gregory has a past, a big secret past, a past I knew nothing about and Esther stumbled on it when she bought the necklace. She bought the necklace from a Hasidic Jew who looked exactly like Gregory. And the man told her he was actually Gregory’s twin.”

“Yes, Nathan, of course,” I said, “among the diamond merchants, a Hasid, of course.”

“Nathan! You know this man?”

“Well, I don’t know him, but I know the grandfather, the Rebbe, because Gregory went to him to find out what the words meant, the words Esther had said.”

“What Rebbe!”

“His grandfather, Gregory’s grandfather. The Rebbe’s name is Avram, but they have some title for him. Look, you said she stumbled on his past, that he had this big family in Brooklyn.”

“It’s a big family?” she asked.

“Yes, very big, a whole Court of Hasidim, a clan, a tribe. You don’t know anything of this at all.”

“Ah,” she sat back. “Well, I knew it was a family. I understood that from their quarrels. But I didn’t know much else about it. He and Esther quarreled. She had found out about this family. It wasn’t just the brother Nathan who sold her the necklace. My God, there was this whole secret. Could he have killed her because she knew about his brother? His family?”

“One problem with it,” I said.

“Which is what?”

“Why would Gregory want to keep his past secret? When I was there with him and the Rebbe, his grandfather, it was the Rebbe who begged for secrecy. Now surely the Hasidim didn’t kill Esther. That’s too stupid to consider.”

She was overwhelmed.

The car had crossed the river and was plunging down into the hellish place of multistoried brick buildings, full of the cheap and mournful light.

She pondered, shook her head.

“Look, why were you with Gregory and this Rebbe?”

“Gregory went to him to find out the meaning of the words Esther spoke. The Rebbe knew. The Rebbe had the bones. Gregory has the bones now. I am called the Servant of the Bones. The Rebbe sold the bones to Gregory on the promise that he would never speak to his brother Nathan again, or come near the court, or expose them as connected to Gregory’s childhood or his church.”

“Good God!” she said. She was scrutinizing me harshly.

“Look, the Rebbe never called me to come forth. The Rebbe wanted no part of me. But he had had custody of the bones all his life from his father, from years in Poland at the end of the last century. I gathered this from listening to them. I had been asleep in the bones!”

She was speechless. “You obviously believe what you’re saying,” she said. “You believe it.”

“You talk,” I said, “about Esther and Nathan—”

“Esther came home and had this fight with Gregory, screaming at him that if he had kindred across the bridge he should acknowledge them, that the love of his brother was a real thing. I heard this. I didn’t pay any attention. She came in and talked to me about it. I said if they were Hasidim they’d recited Kaddish for him long ago. I was so sick. I was drugged. Gregory was furious with her. But they had their fights, you know. But he…he has something to do with her dying, I know it! That necklace. She would never have worn the necklace in midday.”

“Why?”

“Very simple reason. Esther was brought up in the best schools, and made her debut as a girl. Diamonds are for after six o’clock. Esther would have never worn a diamond necklace on Fifth Avenue at high noon. It wouldn’t have been proper. But why did he hurt her? Why? Could it have been over this family? No, I don’t understand it. And he weaves in the diamonds, why? Why bring up the necklace in the middle of all this!”

“Keep telling me these things. I’m seeing the pattern. Ships, planes, a past that is a secret as much for Gregory as for the innocent Hasidim. I see something…but it’s not clear.” She stared at me.

“Talk,” I said. “You talk. You trust in me. You know I’m your guardian, I’m for your good. I love you and I love your daughter because you’re good and you’re just and people have done cruelty to you. I don’t like cruelty. It makes me edgy and wanting to hurt…”

This stunned her. But she believed it. Then she tried to speak and couldn’t. Her mind was flooded, and she began to tremble. I touched her face with comforting hands. I hoped they were warm and sweet to her.

“Let me alone now,” she begged kindly. But she put her hand on my arm, patting me, comforting me, and she let her body lean on my shoulder. She made a fist of her right hand.

She curled up against me, and crossed her legs so that I could see her naked knee against mine, firm and fair beneath her hem. She gave a low moan and a terrible outcry of grief.

The car was slowing to a crawl.

We had come to a strange sprawling field full of evil fumes and planes, yes, planes. Planes now explained themselves to me in all their shuddering, keening glory, giant metal birds on tiny preposterous wheels, with wings laden with oil enough to bum the entire world in its fire. Planes flew. Planes crept. Planes lay about empty with gaping doors and ugly stairways leading into the night. Planes slept.

“Come on,” she said. She clenched my hand. “Whatever you are, you and I are together in this. I believe you.”

“Well you should,” I whispered.

But I was dazed.

As we got out of the car, I knew only my thoughts, following her, hearing voices, paying no attention, looking up at the stars. The air was so full of smoke, it was like the smoke in war when everything is burning.

Amid deafening noise we approached the plane. She gave orders but I couldn’t hear her words; the wind just snatched them up. The stairs spilled down in one firm piece like the Ladder to Heaven, only it was merely the metal ladder into this plane.