Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

“Rachel, you are suffering, and I’ve made this worse for you,” I said. “Let me get for you what you need. Send me. Tell me. I can get anything in the world for you, Rachel. That’s my nature. Do you have doctors of great skill? Only tell me who they are. I’ll be lost in the winds if I roam searching for doctors and magicians. Guide me. Send me. Send me now for whatever it is…”

“No.”

I studied her silent face; her smile had not changed. She seemed half-asleep; I realized she was singing, or humming with her lips closed. Her hands were too cold.

I sighed; this was the agony that comes with loving; this was just as fresh as if it had never happened to me before. This was just as hurtful and cruel as if I were breathing and young.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “All the best doctors in the world have done their damnedest to cure Gregory Belkin’s wife. Besides…I want to…”

“…be with Esther.”

“Yes, do you think I will be?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I saw her go up in a pure light.” I wanted to add, “One way or another, you’ll be with her.” But I didn’t add it. I didn’t know whether she believed we were all tiny flames that went back into God, or that we had a Paradise where we could kiss and hold each other. As for me, I believed we had a Paradise, and I had a dim memory of flying high once, to the very heights, and of gentle spirits up there concealing something from me.

I lay back. I had been so sure I wanted to die. And now the flame of life that blazed still in her, melting her like a candle, seemed utterly precious to me.

I wanted to try to cure her. I looked at her and tried to see all the workings of her, each thing connected to the next thing, and all bound with veins like woven gold thread.

I did lay my hands on her, and I did pray. I let my hair rest on her face. I prayed in my heart to all the gods.

She stirred. “What did you say, Azriel?” she said. She uttered some words. At first I didn’t understand them. Then I realized it was Yiddish she was speaking. “Were you speaking Hebrew?” she asked me.

“Just praying, my darling,” I said. “Think nothing of it.” She took a deep breath and laid her hand on my chest, as if the very act of lifting her hand and setting it down exhausted her. I put my hand over hers. Too cold, her little hands. I made a heat for us both.

“You’re really staying with me, aren’t you?”

“Why does that surprise you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Because people try to get away from you when they know you’re really dying. Those bad nights, when I was at my worst, the doctors didn’t come, the nurses stayed away. Even Gregory wouldn’t come. The crisis would pass, and then they would all come. And you, you are staying with me. Doesn’t the air smell good? And the light. Just the light of the night sky.”

“It’s beautiful, a foreshadowing of Paradise.”

She laughed a little laugh. “I’m ready to be nothing,” she said.

What could I say?

Somewhere a bell rang. It throbbed. I sat up. I didn’t like it. I was staring into the garden, at the big red flowers, like trumpets, and realized for the first time that there were dim electric lights there on these flowers. Everything was perfect. There came the bell again.

“Don’t answer it,” she said. She was damp all over.

“Look,” she said. “Stop him, you stop the church. He’s what we call a charismatic leader. He’s evil. Laboratories. I don’t like it. And these cults, these cults have killed people, have killed their own members.”

“I know,” I said. “It was always that way. Always.”

“But Nathan, Nathan is so innocent,” she said. “I can remember his voice, it was beautiful, and I thought of what Esther had said, that it was like seeing the man Gregory could have been. That’s what the voice was like…”

“I’ll find him and make sure he is safe,” I said. “I’ll find out what he knows, what he saw.”

“The old man, is he so terrible?”

“Holy and old,” I said. I shrugged.

She laughed a sweet delighted laugh. It was wondrous to hear it. I bent down and kissed her lips. They were dry. I gave her some more water, holding her head up so she could drink.

She lay back. She looked at me and only gradually did I realize that her expression meant nothing. It was only a mask for her pain. The pain was in her lungs and in her heart and in her bones. The pain was all through her. The soothing drugs she’d taken before she left New York were gone out of her body. Her heart was faint.

I cradled her hands in mine.

There came that noise again, the bell ringing, the alarm buzzing, and this time there was more than one. I heard the noise of a motor. It came from the elevator shaft.

“Ignore it,” she said. “They can’t get in.” She pushed at the covers with her hands.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Help me, help me get up. Get my heavier robe for me, the heavy silk. Please…”

I got the robe, the one to which she pointed, and she put it on. She stood trembling beneath the weight of the ornate robe.

There was huge noise outside the main door.

“Are you sure they can’t get in?”

“You don’t have to fear, do you?” she asked.

“No, not at all, but I don’t want them…”

“I know…ruining my death,” she said.

“Yes.”

She was completely white. “You’re going to fall down.”

“I know,” she said. “But I intend to fall where I want to fall. Help me out there, I want to look at the ocean.”

I picked her up and carried her out the doors to the balcony. This was due east. The doors faced not the bay but the true sea. I realized it was the same sea that washed the banks of Europe, the shores of ruined Greek cities, the sands of Alexandria.

A pounding noise came from behind us. I turned around. It was coming from within the elevator. There were people in the car of the elevator. But the doors were locked.

The breeze ripped across the broad terrace. Under my feet the tiles felt cool. She seemed to love it, putting her head against my shoulder, looking out over the dark sea. A great ship, hung with lights, glided by, just short of the horizon, and above, the clouds made their spectacle.

I cuddled her and held her, and started to pick her up.

“No, let me stand,” she said. She tugged herself gently free of me and put her hands on the high stone railing. She looked down. I saw a garden far down there, immaculate and full of trees and bright lights. Egyptian lilies galore, and large fanlike plants, all waving just a little in the breeze.

“It’s empty down there, isn’t it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The garden. It’s so private. Only the flowers beneath us, and beyond, the sea.”

“Yes,” I said.

The elevator door was being forced open.

“Remember what I said,” she said. “You can’t go wrong killing him. I mean it. He’ll try to seduce you, or destroy you, or use you in some way. You can bet he is already thinking in those terms, how best to use you.”

“I understand him perfectly,” I said. “Don’t worry. I will do what is right. Who knows? Maybe I will teach him right and wrong. Maybe I know what they are. Maybe I’ll save his soul.” I laughed. “That would be lovely.”

“Yes, it would,” she said. “But you’re craving life, craving it. Which means you can be lured by him with all his fiery life, the same way you were lured by mine.”

“Never, I told you. I’ll put it right.”

“All of it, put it all to right.”

Several men had just broken through the front door, with a clumsy pounding noise. I heard the wood splinter.

She sighed. “Maybe Esther did call you down. Maybe she did,” she said. “My angel.”