know this." He sighed, staring at me as if he feared to take his eyes away.
"Is it a tale of the Hasidim or the Lubavitch?" asked Gregory. "Something one of the Misnagdim might have told Esther-"
"No."
We stared at one another. The old man, alive, and the spirit, robust, growing young ever more vivid, and strong. "Rebbe, who else . . . ?"
"No one," said the old man, fixing me steadily as I fixed him "What you remember is true and your brother was far from hearing and your aunt Rivka is dead. No one could have told Esther." Only now he looked away from me, and up at Gregory. "It's a cursed thing you speak of," he said. "It's a demon, a thing that can be summoned by powerful magic and do evil things."
And his eyes returned to me, though the young man remained intent on him.
"Then other Jews know these stories. Nathan knows . . ." "No, no one. Look, don't take me for an idiot. Don't you think I know you asked far and wide among the other Jews? You called this court and that, and you called the professors of the universities. I know your ways. You're too clever. You have telephones in every room of your life. You came here as the last resort."
The younger man nodded. "You're right. I thought it would be common knowledge. I made my inquiries. So have the authorities. But it isn't common knowledge. And so I am here."
Gregory bent his head to the side, and thrust the folded bank draft at the Rebbe.
This gave the old man one second to gesture to me, one second, merely to make the little gesture with his right index finger of Hide or Stay Quiet. It came with a swift negation with the eyes and the smallest move of his head. Yet it was no command, and no threat. It was something closer to a prayer.
Then I heard him. Don't reveal yourself, spirit. Very well, old man, for the time being, as you request. Gregory-his back to me still-opened the check. "Explain the thing to me, Rebbe. Tell me what it is and if you still have it. What you told Rivka, you said it wasn't an easy thing to destroy."
The old man looked up at Gregory again, trusting me apparently to keep my place.
"Maybe I'll tell you all you want to know," said the old man. "Maybe I will deliver it into your hands, what you speak of. But not for that sum. We have more than plenty. You have to give us what matters to us."
Gregory was much excited. "How much, Rebbe!" he said. "You speak as if you still have this thing."
"I do," said the old man. "I have it."
I was astonished, but not surprised.
"I want it!" said Gregory fiercely, so fiercely that I feared he had overplayed his hand. "Name your price!"
The old man considered. His eyes fixed me again and then drifted past me, and I could see the color brighten in his withered face, and I could see his hands move restlessly. Slowly he let his eyes fasten on me and me alone.
For one precious second, as we gazed at one another, all the past threatened to become visible. I saw centuries beyond Samuel. I think I saw a glimmer of Zurvan. I think I saw the procession itself. I glimpsed the figure of a golden god smiling at me, and I felt terror, terror to know and to be as men are, with memory and in pain.
If this did not stop in me, I would know such agony that I would howl, like a dog, howl as the driver had howled when he saw the fallen body of Esther, I would howl forever. The wind would come. The wind would take me with all its other lost and howling souls. When I'd struck down the evil Mameluk master in Cairo, the wind had come for me, and I had fought through it to oblivion.
Stay alive, Azriel. The past will wait. The pain can wait. The wind will wait. The wind can wait forever. Stay alive in this place. Know this.
I am here, old man.
Calmly, he regarded me, unmarked by his grandson. He spoke now without taking his eyes off me, though Gregory bent to listen to his words:
"Go there, behind me and in the back of these books," he said in English, "and open the cabinet you see there. Inside you'll see a cloth. Lift it. And