"You have to help me. I don't care who you are. He is killing me. He's poisoning me. He's hastening my death by his clock! Stop him! Help me!"
The women's murmuring, lying voices rose to drown her out.
"She's sick," said one woman in full and true distress. And other voices came like tiresome echoes of every word. "She's so drugged, she doesn't know what she's doing. Doing. Doing."
There came a babble as the boys and Gregory spoke, and then Rachel Belkin shouted over all, and the nurse tried to make her own voice even louder.
I rushed forward and pulled one of the women loose from her, and accidentally pushed this woman to the floor. The others were all paralyzed, except for Rachel herself who reached out to me, and grabbed my very head with her right hand, as if she would make me look at her.
She was sickly and raging with fever. She was no older than Gregory--fifty-five at most. A powerful and elegant woman, in spite of it all.
Gregory cursed at her. "Damn it, Rachel. Azriel, back away." He waved his arms at the others. "Get Mrs. Belkin back to her bed."
"No," I said.
I pushed two of the others away from her effortlessly and they stumbled and drew back, clinging to one another. "No," I said. "I'll help you."
"Azriel," she said. "Azriel!" She recognized the name but couldn't place it.
"Goodbye, Gregory," I said. "We shall see if I have to come back to you and your bones," I said. "She wants to die under a different roof. That's her right. I agree with her. And for Esther, I must, you see. Farewell until I come back to you."
Gregory was aghast.
The servants were helpless.
Rachel Belkin threw her arm around me and I held her firmly in the circle of my right arm.
She seemed about to collapse and one of her ankles turned on the shiny floor. She cried out in pain. I held her. Her hair was loosed and hanging all around her, brushed, lustrous, the silver as beautiful as the black. She was thin and delicate in her years, and had the stubborn beauty of a willow tree, or torn and shining leaves left on a beach by the waves, ruined yet gleaming.
We moved swiftly towards the door together.
"You can't do this," said Gregory. He was purple with rage. I turned to see him sputtering and staring and making his hands into fists, all grace lost. "Stop him," he said to the others.
"Don't make me hurt you, Gregory," I said. "It would be too much of a pleasure."
He ran at me. I swung around so that I could hold her and strike him with my left hand.
And I dealt him one fine blow with my left fist that knocked him on his back, so that his head struck the hearth.
For one breathless second I thought he was dead, but he wasn't, only dazed, but so badly hurt that all of the little cowards present ran to attend him.
This was our moment, and the woman knew it and so did I, and we left the room together.
We hurried down to the corridor. I saw the distant bronze doors but this time they had no angels, only the tree of life once more with all its limbs, which was now rent down the middle as they opened.
I felt nothing but strength coursing through me. I could have carried her in one arm, but she walked fast and straight, as if she had to do it, clutching the leather purse or bundle to her.
We went into the elevator. The doors closed. She fell against me. And I took the bundle and held her. We were alone in this chamber as it traveled down and down, through the palace.
"He is killing me," she said. She was up close to my face. Her eyes were swimmingly beautiful. Her flesh was smooth and youthful. "He is poisoning me. I promise you, you'll be glad you did this for me. I promise you, you will be glad."
I looked at her, seeing the eyes of her daughter, just so big, so extraordinary, even with the thinner paler skin now around them. How could she be so strong at forty years? Obviously she'd fought her age and her disease.
"Who are you, Azriel?" she asked. "Who are you? I heard this name. I know it." There was trust in the way she said my name. "Tell me, who are you! Quick. Talk to me."
I held her up. She would have fallen if not for me.
"When your daughter died," I said, "she spoke something, did they tell you?"
"Ah, Lord God. Azriel, the Servant of the Bones," she said, bitterly, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. "That's what she said."
"I am he," I said. "I'm Azriel, the one she saw as she lay dying. I cried as you cry now. I saw her and wept for her, and couldn't help her. But I can help you."
19
This stopped her grief, but I couldn't tell what she made of this revelation or of me. Sick as she was, she definitely contained the full flower of the seeds of beauty in Esther.
As the doors opened again, we saw an army brought out against her--heavily uniformed men, most of them old, all apparently concerned, and most rather noisy. It was an easy matter for me to push the diffident bunch aside sharply--indeed to scatter them far and wide. But this did make them hysterical with fear. She alarmed them further with her voice.
"Get me my car now," she said. "Do you hear? And get out of our way." They didn't dare to reassemble. She fired orders. "Henry, I want you out of here. George, go upstairs. My husband needs you. You, there, what are you doing--"
As they argued with one another, she marched ahead of me, towards the open doors. A man to our right picked up a gilded telephone from a marble-top table. She turned and shot him the Evil Eye and he dropped the phone. I laughed. I loved her strength. But she didn't notice these things.
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 en
joyment, 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.