the Bones, as the bitter, angry o-host for the powerful sorcerer, I killed the innocent because it was my Master's will and I thought I had to do it, I thought that the man who had called me up could control me, and I did his bidding, until me moment came when I suddenly realized that I did not have to be a slave forever, that maybe though my soul had been taken from my spirit, and my spirit and soul from my flesh, that perhaps I could still be pleasing to God. That somehow all could come and be united once more in one figure! Ah!"
He shook his head.
"But Azriel, maybe it's happened!"
"Oh, Lord God, Jonathan, don't give me consolation. I cannot bear it. Just hear me out. Make sure your tapes record my words. Remember me. Remember what I say ..."
His confidence broke suddenly. He looked at the fire again.
"My family, my father," he said. "My father! How it hurt him what he finally did, and how he looked at me. Do you know what he said about hurting me? He said, 'Azriel, who of all my sons loves me as you do? No one else could ever forgive me for this but you!' And he meant it. He meant it, my father, my little brother, looking at me full of tears and sincerity and absolute conviction!
"I'm sorry. I jump ahead. I'll die soon enough. It won't take too many more pages, I don't think." He shuddered all over. And again the tears stood in his eyes. "Forgive me, and recall again that for those thousands of years, I didn't remember these things. I was the bitter ghost without memory. And now it has all come back to me and I pour it out to you. I pour it out to you in tears."
"Continue. Give me your tears, your trust, and your hurt. I won't fail you."
"Ah, you are the rare thing, Jonathan Ben Isaac," he said.
"Not really, I'm a teacher and a happy man myself. I have a wife and children who love me. I'm not very special."
"Ah, but you are a good man who will talk to someone who is evil! That is what is rare. The Rebbe of the Hasidim, he turned his back on me!" He laughed suddenly, a deep bitter laugh. "He was too good to talk to the Servant of the Bones."
I smiled. "We are all Jews, and there are Jews, and there are Jews."
"Yes, and now Israelis, who would be Maccabees! And there are Hasidim."
"And other Orthodox, and some 'reformed,' and so on it goes. Let's go back to your time. You were a big and happy family."
"Yes, true, and it was regular-I was explaining-it was regular for the rich Hebrews to work at the palace as I said, my father worked there too, and many of my cousins. We were scribes, but also merchants, merchants of jewels, silks, silver, and books. My father's gift in trade was choosing the very finest vessels for the King's table and for the Table of the Gods in Marduk's temple and for Marduk himself.
"Now at the time, the temple was full of chapels, and every day a meal was set out for each deity, including Marduk, so the temple had a huge stock of gold and silver vessels for this. And my father was the one who put aside those vessels not fit.
"I went down with him to the docks all the time to meet the ships coming in from the sea, with the finest new work from Greece or Egypt, and I learned from him how to judge the carving on a goblet, and how to know the heaviest and finest mixture of gold. I learned to know a true ruby or diamond and pearls-pearls, I loved the pearls, we dealt in pearls of all kinds, we didn't call them pearls, you know, we called them eyes of the sea.
"This is how we made our living-in the marketplace and in the temple and in the palace.
"My family had stalls all through the marketplace where they dealt in gems of all kinds, in honey, and in cloth dyed purple and blue, the finest of all silk and linen, and they sold the incense too, though they sold it to idolaters who would burn this incense for Nabu and Ishtar, and for Marduk, of course.
"But it was our living, it was our source of power, it was our way of staying together, of being strong