Spirit!' he declared. 'Obey me, go to the bones. Obey as you always have. Leave me to my martyrdom.'
"There came the call again. I couldn't hold my form. I was too angry. My body was dissolving. I had in my anger forfeited too much. The voices that called me were strong. They were farther and farther away but nonetheless strong.
"I lunged at Samuel and I threw him out the open door. The street was full of flames. 'There's your martyrdom, Rabbi!' I shouted. 'I curse you to walk among the undead for all your existence, until God forgives you for what you did to me, leaving me, bartering with me, leading me to love you, and selling me like gold!'
"From both directions terrified people ran to him, people who were suffering their final anguish. 'Samuel, Samuel,' they called out his name.
"My bitterness broke for an instant when I saw him embrace them. 'Samuel,' I cried. I came towards him. I was growing weak but I was still visible to him. 'Take my hand. Hold the hand of my spirit, please, Samuel, take me with you into death.'
"He didn't speak. The crowd surrounded him, sobbing and clinging to him, but I heard his last thought as he rebuffed me as he turned his eyes away. He said as clearly as if aloud,
" 'No, Spirit, because if I die with my hand in yours you may take me down into Hell.'
"I cursed him. "Wot enough grace and goodness for both of us. Master. Master! Leader!
Teacher! Rabbi!'
"The flames engulfed the crowd. I rose upwards through the flame and smoke, and felt the cold night pass through me and I sped towards the sanctuary of the bones. I sped away from smoke and horror and injustice and the screams of the innocent. I went through the dark woods, as a witch to a Sabbath, flying with my arms out, and then I saw the two Gentiles at the door of a small church at a great remove from the city, the casket on the ground between them, and wanting only death and silence; I relaxed into the bones.
"All I learnt of them was that they were weeping for Strasbourg, for the Jews, for Samuel, for the whole tragedy. And that they planned to sell me in Egypt. They were not magicians. I was a marketable prize.
"It didn't seem that mine was a long uninterrupted sleep. I was called, I was taken places, I slew those who called me, and some I can picture, some not. The history of the world was written on the blank and endless tablets of my mind in column after column. I did not think, however; I slept.
"Once a Mameluk in beautiful silk called me forth. It was Cairo, and I chopped him to pieces with his own sword. It took all the wise men of the palace to drive me back into the bones. I remember their beautiful turbans and their frantic cries. They were such a flashy lot, those Moslem soldiers, those strange men who lived all their lives without women, and only to fight and to kill. Why didn't they destroy me? Because of the inscriptions that warned them against a masterless spirit who could seek revenge.
"I recall in Paris a clever satanic magician in a room full of gaslight. The wallpaper was most intriguing to me. A strange black coat hung on a hook. Life almost tempted me. Gaslight and machines; carriages rolling on cobbled streets. But I killed the mysterious man and retreated once more into the bones.
"It was always that way. I slept. I think I remember a winter in Poland. I think I remember an argument between two learned men. But all this is misty and imperfect. They spoke a Hebrew dialect and they had called me, but neither seemed to know I was there. They were good and gentle men. We were in a plain synagogue, and they argued. And then they decided that my bones must be hidden within the wall. Good men. I slept."
"When I came to life again, it was in the bright winter sunlight only weeks ago, as a trio of assassins made their way through the press on Fifth Avenue to kill Esther Belkin as she came out of her black limousine and entered the store before her-innocent, beautiful, without the slightest sense of death circling her.
"And why was I there? Who had called me? I knew only these assassins meant to kill her, these hideous rustic