" 'You know him,' he said. 'You just don't remember him. The day that Marduk smiled at you, when you were a boy, Remath was standing in the corner of the banquet chamber. He's young, ambitious, full of hatred of Nabonidus and enough hate of Babylon to want to go away.'
" 'What's this to me?'
" 'I don't know, my son, my beautiful and beloved son. I don't know. All I know is that all Israel is begging for you to do what the priests of Marduk want you to do. As for this enveloped tablet here? I don't know. I just don't know.'
"He cried for a long time. I was tempted to snatch the enveloped tablet from him and suddenly I did. I read the Sumerian.
" 'To make the Servant of the Bones.'
" 'What is that, Father?' I said. He turned, his tears disfiguring his face somewhat, and he wiped at his wet beard and lips and he took the tablet back. 'Leave that to my judgment,' he said in a low voice, and then he stood up and he went along the wall, looking for loose stones, for bricks that might come out, and he found what he wanted, a hiding place, and he put the tablet inside.
" 'To make the Servant of the Bones,' I repeated. 'What can it mean?'
" 'We have to go up to the temple, my son, to the Palace. Kings are waiting on us. Deals have been struck. Promises have been exchanged.' Then he embraced me and he kissed me slowly all over my face, he kissed my mouth, my forehead, my eyes.
" 'When Yahweh told Abraham that he was to bring Isaac and sacrifice him,' he said, 'you know our great Father Abraham did as he was told.'
" 'So the tablet and the scrolls tell us, Father, but have you been told by Yahweh that I must be sacrificed? Yahweh has come to you now, along with Enoch and Asenath and all the others? Is that what you expect me to believe? Father, you are grieving for me. I am dead already in your mind. What is this? What, why am I to die? For what? What's wanted, that I personally renounce the god, that I tell the King the god has wished him well, what! If it's a performance I'll do it! But, Father, don't cry for me as if I were dead!'
" 'It's a performance,' he said, 'but it takes a very very strong one to perform it, one with endurance and conviction, and one with a great heart filled with love. Love of his people, love of his tribe, love of our lost Jerusalem and love of the Temple to be built there to honor the Lord. If I thought I could do it, that I could see the performance through to the finish, I would do it. And you can turn on us, you can say no, you can flee.
" 'But the priests of Marduk want you, my son, they want you. And so do others even more powerful than they. They want you. And they know you are stronger than your brothers.' His voice broke.
" 'I see,' I said.
" 'And you are the only one who could ever forgive me for condemning him to such a fate.'
"I was thunderstruck. I just looked at him, at his tearful eyes, and I said, 'You know, Father, you are perhaps right, at least insofar as this. I could forgive you anything. Because I know you, and you wouldn't do evil to me, you wouldn't do that.'
" 'No, I wouldn't. Azriel, do you know what it means to me that you are to be taken from me, you and your future wife and future sons and daughters? Oh, it doesn't matter. Forgive me, son, for what I do. Forgive me. I beg you. Before it begins, before we go to the palace, and hear the lies and look at the map, forgive me.'
"He was my father. He was sweet and kind and overcome with grief, terrible grief and pain. It was an easy thing for me to put my arms around him as if he were my little brother and say, 'Father, I forgive you.'
" 'Never forget that, Azriel,' he said. 'When you are suffering, when the hours are dragging by, when you are in pain, forgive me . . . not just for my sake, son, but for yours!'