Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

“Surrender, that’s what I want,” I said through my teeth. She could not stop the pleasure coming in her; it came and came as if her heart would break. She was red and tossing, and I wouldn’t let her go, slamming again and again against her sweet fruitlike lips, and then she lifted both her arms to cover her face, as if she would hide from me.

This sublime gesture, this maidenly gesture, this sweet gesture stripped me of the very last control I ever possessed in this or any other body, and I shot forth my seed for the third time, groaning aloud.

Now I was spent. I was tired. And she grew pale in the light of the moon and the white billowing clouds, and we lay there together. My cock was dripping.

She turned over and in the tenderest way, like a little girl almost, she kissed my shoulder. She ran her fingers through the hair on my chest.

“My darling,” I said. I spoke to her in old languages, natural to me, Chaldean, Aramaic, I spoke words of love and testaments of fidelity and devotion, and cooed against her ear, and she rippled with delight against me, and tore at my hair again.

Pillows had tumbled to the side. The air swirled around her, full of the scents of the garden. It stirred beneath the low, white ceiling, and suddenly, as if the wind had changed its direction, there came the song of the sea, the full great sea, relentless, the deceptive song of water, water gurgling in the waterfall that seems to be talking to you when it is saying nothing, has no syllables, and water pounding the beach as if to say I am coming, I am coming. But there was no I.

“If I could die now, I would do it,” she said. “But there are things you have to know.”

I drifted, I dreamed. I felt my fatigue. I shook myself awake. Did I have my body still? I feared sleep. Yet I felt the need of it, the assembled body needed it, as it needed water. I sat up.

“Don’t talk of dying,” I said. “It’s going to happen soon enough.” I turned and looked down at her.

She looked composed, intelligent, all mind with angular collected limbs, quite incapable of the passion we’d just shared. I blurted out:

“I have no power to cure, not a disease this far advanced.”

“Have I asked you?”

“You must want to know, you must wonder.”

“I’ll tell you why I didn’t ask,” she said, reaching up and playfully tugging at the hair on my chest. “I knew if you had the power, you would have helped me the moment you had the chance.”

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right.”

She closed her eyes, and tightened her lids. It was pain.

“What can I do?” I said.

“Nothing. I want these drugs to wear off. I want to die on my own.”

“I’m ready to bring you anything I can,” I said. I was shaken to the bone by the sight of her suffering, but it seemed to melt, and her face was waxen again and perfect.

“You talked about Esther, you said that you wanted to know—”

“Yes, why do you think your husband killed her?”

“I don’t know! That’s just it. They quarreled but I don’t know. I can’t believe it was on account of the family. Esther and Gregory fought all the time. It was normal. I don’t know.”

“Tell me everything you remember about Esther and Gregory and this diamond necklace. You said she discovered his brother Nathan when she bought the necklace.”

“She met Nathan in the diamond district. She could see his resemblance to Gregory and when she mentioned it, he confessed he was Gregory’s identical twin.”

“Ah, identical.”

“But what could it all mean? He told her he was Gregory’s twin. He told her to give Gregory his love. She was amazed. She liked him. She met the other Hasidim who work in the store with him. She liked Nathan very much. She said it was like looking at the man Gregory could have been, all filled up with gentleness and kindness.

“The day she died, I’m sure she took the necklace back to Nathan. I think I remember her saying that she had to drop it off, because some small thing was wrong and Nathan would fix it, and she said, ‘Don’t tell the Messiah that I’m going to visit his brother,’ and she laughed. I think she dropped it off before those killers got her. Gregory knew she was shopping that day at Henri Bendel. He knew that. But I don’t think he knew about the necklace. It wasn’t till yesterday that the whole issue of the necklace came up. I didn’t even know the necklace was gone. Nobody did. Then Gregory brought it up, that the terrorists had seized her necklace and killed her. Sure enough, the necklace was gone, but I couldn’t reach Nathan to find out if he had it. Besides, he would have called. I know Nathan only by voice, but I know him now, through one phone call.”

“Go back now to the earlier part. Esther quarreled with Gregory about his brother, and the brother was an identical twin.”

“She had wanted him to meet with his brother. He had been frantic that she tell no one about the Hasidim, no one. He told her it was a matter of life or death. He tried to frighten her. I know Gregory. I know him when he’s weak and not thinking too clearly, when he’s caught off guard, and is furious and desperate.”

“I’ve seen this too,” I said, “a glimpse of it.”

“Well, that’s how he was with her. ‘No, no, no, you didn’t meet any brother, I have no brother!’ Then he came storming into me and desperately appealed to me in Yiddish to explain to her how the Hasidim would not want to be connected with him. But he was furious about the whole affair. She didn’t speak Yiddish, Esther. She came into the room, and I remember he turned and he said, ‘You ever tell anyone about Nathan and I’ll never forgive you!’

“She was so confused. I drew her aside, tried to explain how the Observant Jews would not like Jews like us, who didn’t pray each day, or observe the laws of the Talmud. She listened but I could see she didn’t grasp this. She said, ‘But Nathan said he loved Gregory. He said he would love to see his brother. He said that from time to time he tries to call Gregory but he can’t get through.’

“I thought Gregory would go out of his mind. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this,’ he said. ‘If you gave him my private number tell me now! These people hurt me. I left when I was a boy. They hurt me! I made my own church, my own tribe, my own way. I am my Messiah!’

“I tried to calm him down, I said, ‘Gregory, please, we’re not in a television pulpit. Sit down. Rest.’

“Then Esther demanded to know why Gregory had been so kind to Nathan in taking him to the hospital. She said Nathan had told her all about that, this time in the hospital—how Gregory had checked Nathan into the hospital under his own name, and had paid all his expenses, and kept Nathan in a private suite, and didn’t want to worry the Rebbe or his wife about it, took care of all of it. She said, ‘Nathan said you were so generous.’

“I swear to you, I thought he would go crazy.

“I started to see how complex this was. Gregory had something at stake other than mere publicity. In fact, it was perfectly obvious to me that the Hasid connection would be a help to Gregory with his church, a form of…occult status…do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do exactly. Exotic and pure roots had grown this great leader.”

“Yes. So I sat up and tried to ask a few questions, ‘Why had Nathan been in the hospital?’ And Esther said that Gregory had suggested it, Gregory had told Nathan that they were both at risk for something inherited in their family, and knowing the Rebbe would never agree, he had spirited Nathan away and had all the tests done under Gregory’s name. For Nathan it had been a dream, the beautiful hospital suite, kosher food, all the proprieties observed, and the people thinking he was Gregory. He found it amusing. Of course he didn’t have the hereditary disease, whatever that was. God, what on earth—”