Servant of the Bones (41 page)

Through the glass to the street, I saw the tall gray-haired one who had driven the car earlier, the tall thin one who had mourned for Esther. But he could not see us. The car was there.

The men came flying at us with solicitous words for a new assault—“Come now, Mrs. Belkin, you’re sick”—“Rachel, this isn’t going to help you.”

I pointed out a mourner.

“Look, he’s there, the one who was with Esther,” I said. “That one, who cried for her. He’ll do what we say.”

“Ritchie!” she sang out, standing on her tiptoes, pushing the others away still. “Ritchie, I want to leave now.”

It was indeed the same man with the deeply wrinkled face, and I hadn’t been wrong in my judgment. He opened the door at once as we moved towards him.

Outside the building, the crowd pressed in close to the ropes with their candles and their singing; lights flashed on; giant one-eyed cameras appeared, like so many insects, closing in. They produced no confusion in Rachel any more than they had in Gregory.

Great clusters of these people bowed from the waist to her; others were giving cries of mourning.

“Come on, Rachel, come on,” the driver said, addressing her as if she were kindred. “Let her pass,” he told the straggling troops, who couldn’t make up their minds what to do. He shouted a command to an elderly man at the edge of the pavement.

“Open the door of the car now for Mrs. Belkin!”

On both sides the crowd became frenzied. It seemed they would break through the ropes. Loud greetings to Rachel were called out, but this was in profound respect.

She disappeared into the car ahead of me, and I followed her, coming down beside her, close to her on the seat of black velvet, the two of us suddenly locking our hands together, her left and my right. The door was slammed shut. I squeezed tight her hand.

It was indeed the same long Mercedes-Benz, the same in which Esther had ridden to the palace of death, and in which I had appeared to Gregory. No surprises here. The motor was running. The crowd could not stop such a vehicle even in its devotion. Candles flickered around the windows.

The elderly driver was already behind the wheel in front of us, the little wall that once divided this compartment from his having gone away.

“Take me to my plane, Ritchie,” she said. Her voice had deepened and taken on courage. “I’ve already called! And
don’t listen to anyone else. The plane’s waiting and I’m going.”

Plane. I knew this word of course.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a hint of enjoyment, or mere exhilaration in his expression. Her word was obviously law.

The car edged forward, crushing back the singing crowd, and then lurched for the center of the street, and moved ahead, throwing us against each other.

The wall went up, shutting us off from the driver, giving us a private carriage in which to ride. The intimacy made me flush.

I felt her hand, and saw how loose the skin was, how white. Hands tell age. Her knuckles were swollen but her fingernails were beautifully painted with red paint, and perfectly tapered. I hadn’t noticed this before, and it sent a pleasant chill through me. Her face was five times younger than her hands. Her face had been stretched like Gregory’s face, tightened and made youthful, and it was a face that had profited by all these enhancements because her bones had such a symmetry, and her eyes, her eyes were for all time.

I cocked my ear, so to speak, for any call from Gregory, for any changes in my physical self as the result of what he might be saying or thundering or doing to the bones.

Nothing. I was completely independent of him as I had supposed. Nothing restraining me.

Indeed, I put my right arm around her and held her tight to me and felt love for her and a tremendous need to help her.

She gave in to all this with childlike abandon, her body far more frail than I’d expected. Or was it simply that mine was becoming ever more solid?

“I’m here,” I said, as if I’d been called to attention by my god, or by my master.

She had an ivory beauty in her illness. But it was bad, this illness. I could smell the sickness—not a repulsive smell but the smell of the body dying. Only her massive black-and-silver hair seemed immune; even the glistening whites of her eyes were dimming.

“He’s poisoning me,” she said, as if she’d read my mind,
and her eyes looked up searchingly. “He controls what I eat, what I drink!” she said. “I’m dying, of course. He has that on his side, but he wants me dead now. I don’t want to be with him and his minions when I die, his Minders.”

“You won’t be. I’ll see to it. I’ll stay with you for as long as you want.” I realized suddenly that this was the first time in this incarnation that I had touched a woman, and her softness was enticing me. Indeed, I could feel changes in my body like those a normal man might experience with a frail full-breasted creature pressed against him. I felt myself grow hard for her.

Could such a thing happen, I thought, not wondering about her virtue, but my limitations. All I got for my pains was a gang of confused memories, that I had indeed had women in this spirit form, and that my masters had railed against it because of its weakening effect. Again the memories were faceless and frameless.

I didn’t loosen my grip on her, but my senses were flooded with the sight of her white thighs, her throat, and her breasts.

She was impatient with the drugs that still hobbled her.

“Why did my daughter say your name?” she asked. “She saw you? You saw her die?”

“Her spirit went straight into the light,” I said. “Don’t grieve for her. And she did speak to me before she died, but I don’t know why. Avenging her death, that’s clearly only part of what I am here to do.”

This baffled her but another point concerned her as much. “She wasn’t wearing any diamond necklace, was she?”

“No,” I said. “What is this talk of diamonds? There was no necklace. Those three men killed her painlessly, if it is possible. There was no robbery. She suffered such loss of blood that her mind drifted. I think she died without ever realizing that anyone had done her evil.”

She looked hard at me, as though she didn’t entirely believe me, and she didn’t welcome this intimacy I offered her.

“I killed the three men,” I said. “Surely you read about it in the papers. I killed them with the ice pick they used to kill her. There were no diamonds. I saw her go into the store. I saw her before I knew just how quickly they would act.”

“Who are you? Why would you have been there? What were you doing with Gregory?”

“I’m a spirit,” I said. “A very strong spirit with a will and some form of conscience. This is not human, this body,” I explained. “It’s a collection of elements, drawn together by power. Don’t get frightened, whatever I say. I’m with you and not against you. I came out of a long sleep as the three murderers made their way towards Esther. I did not catch on quickly enough to how they meant to do the deed.”

She didn’t react in fear and she didn’t scoff. “How did my daughter know you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. There are numerous mysteries surrounding my presence here. I’ve come, seemingly on my own, but obviously with a purpose.”

“Then you don’t belong to Gregory in any way?”

“Of course not, no. You saw me defy him. Why do you ask?”

“And this body here,” she said with a slight smile, “you’re telling me this body is not real?”

Indeed, she stared fixedly at me as if she could learn the truth with her eyes. I could feel the heat building between us.

Then she did a most intimate thing that astonished me. She came forward, surprising me, and she kissed me on the mouth. She kissed me as I had kissed Gregory only seconds before she had come into his room. Her lips were damp and hot and small.

I think my mouth was lax and gave back nothing, but then I cupped my hand behind her head, loving the large rustling nest of her hair, and I kissed her, pressing her mouth as hard and sweet as I could. I drew back.

I felt a deep pang of desire for her. The body seemed in perfect condition. Once again, a few echoes of admonition and advice came to me…“lest you vanish in her arms,” or some other antique rot. But I was now through with trying to remember, as I’ve explained.

What was her pleasure?

As for her, she had the passion of a young woman, whether she was dying or not, or perhaps more truly the passion of a
woman in full flower. Her lips were still firm and open, as if she were kissing me still or ready to do it. She was shrewd and not afraid of men or of passion. She was like a queen who has had many lovers. Exactly that way.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her. “Why the kiss?” The kiss had strengthened me, enlivened parts of me for specific human function. I call that strength.

“You’re human,” she said, dismissively, her voice deep and a little hard.

“You flatter me but I am a spirit. I want to avenge Esther, but there’s something more involved.”

“How did you get to an upper floor with Gregory?” she asked. “You know his power, his influence. The Lord’s Right Hand, the Founder of the Temple of the Mind of God,” she said contemptuously. “The Savior of the World, the anointed one. The liar, the cheat, the owner of the largest fleet of pleasure cruise ships in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, the Messiah of merchandising and gourmet food. You’re really telling me you’re not one of his men?”

“Ships,” I said. “Why would a church have ships?”

“They’re pleasure boats but they also carry cargo. I don’t understand what he’s doing, and I’ll die before I understand. But what were you doing with him?” She went on. “His ships dock at every major port in the world. Don’t you know all about it? It’s not that I don’t believe you, that you’re not a Minder. I saw you defy him, yes, and you got me out of there.

“But everyone in that building is a Minder. Everyone in my life, Everybody’s one of his church,” she went on, her words becoming rushed and full of distress. “The nurses are from his church. The doormen, the messengers, the entire staff of the building. Those people chanting, did you see them, they’re part of his church. His church covers the world. His planes drop leaflets over jungles and nameless islands.” She sighed, then continued:

“What I’m saying is, if you’re not one of his, and haven’t lured me off to some other place to be locked up, how did you ever get to the upper floor?”

The car was moving away from the crowded streets. I smelled the river.

She didn’t believe me. But she was telling me many things. Many intriguing things. I could see something beyond her words that she didn’t see.

She distracted me slightly from my thoughts. She found me an attractive male. I could feel this, and I could feel in her a despair that comes with the knowledge of approaching death. There was a careless passion in her, a dream it seemed, to possess me.

I was remarkably excited by it.

“Your accent?” she asked. “What is it? You’re not an Israeli?”

“Look, this is trivial,” I said. “I’m speaking the best English I can. I told you, I’m a spirit. I want to avenge your daughter. Do you want me to do that? This necklace, why does he say there was a necklace? Why did you ask me about the necklace?”

“Probably one of his cruel jokes,” she said. “The necklace started the big fight between him and Esther a long time before. Esther had a weakness for diamonds—that was certainly true. She was always shopping in the diamond district. She loved to go there more than to the fancy jewelers.

“The day she was killed, she must have taken the necklace with her. The maid said she did. He latched on to that little detail. He almost sacrificed his big theories of the terrorists killing Esther with all his talk about the necklace. But then the three men, when they were found, they didn’t have the diamonds. You really killed those three men?”

“They took nothing from her,” I said. “I went right after them and killed them. Your papers tell you they were stabbed in rapid succession by one of their own weapons. Look, don’t believe me if that’s your wish, but keep explaining to me. About Esther and Gregory. Did he have her killed? Do you think he did?”

“I know he did,” she said. Her entire demeanor changed. Her face darkened. “But I think he tripped up on the necklace. I have a suspicion that she took the necklace somewhere
before she stopped at the store. And if she did that, then the necklace is in the hands of someone who knows that part of the story is a lie. But I can’t get to that person.”

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.