I lay down on the grass under a tree to rest, in the open, telling my body to hold firm and to wake if there was any natural or supernatural assault on it. I told it it must answer no one’s call but my own.
When I woke it was eight o’clock in the morning by the city’s clocks, and I was whole, intact, with my clothes, and I was rested. Just as I supposed, I had appeared far too strange for prowling mortal men to attack, and far too puzzling to be disturbed by beggars. Whatever the case, I was strong and unharmed in my velvet suit and shining black shoes.
I had survived the hours of sleep in material form, outside the bones, and this was another triumph.
I danced for joy on the grass for a few minutes, then brushed off the clothes, dissolved with the requisite enchantments, and re-formed, velvet clad, bearded, and free of bits of grass and dirt in the living room of the Rebbe’s house. I did not want the beard, but the beard and mustache came as they had before. And maybe they’d even been there when I woke. In fact, I’m sure they had. They had been there all along. They wanted to be there. Very well.
The house was modern, cramped, made of many smallish rooms.
It struck me as most remarkable how conventional this house was. It was filled with rather ordinary furniture, none of it ugly or beautiful. Comfortable and well lighted. Immediately people waiting in the parlor stared at me and began to whisper. A man approached, and in Yiddish I said I had to see Nathan immediately.
I realized I didn’t know Nathan’s real last name. Or even if they called him Nathan here. Obviously his last name wasn’t Belkin. Belkin was a made-up name of Gregory. I said in Yiddish that it was a matter of life and death that I see Nathan.
The Rebbe flung open the doors of his study. He was in a fury. Two elderly women stood with him, and two young men, all of these people Hasidim, the women wigged to cover their natural hair, the young men with locks and silk suits. There was no one about who was not Hasidim.
The Rebbe’s face was trembling with outrage. He began to try to exorcise me from the house, and I stood firm and put up my hand.
“I have to speak to Nathan,” I said in Yiddish. “Nathan could be in danger. Gregory is a dangerous man. I have to speak to Nathan. I won’t leave here until I find him. Perhaps his is a compassionate and fearless heart and he will hear me. Whatever the case, I will speak to him in love. Perhaps Nathan walks with God, and if I save him, so shall I.”
Everyone fell silent. Then the men bid the women to go, which they did, and they called several old men from the parlor, and they pointed for me to go into the Rebbe’s study.
I was now among an assemblage of elders.
One of these men took a piece of white chalk and drew a circle on the carpet and told me to stand in it.
I said:
“No. I am here to love, to avert harm, I am here having loved two people who are now dead. I learned love from them. I will not be the Servant of the Bones. I will do no evil. I will not be driven any longer by anger, hatred, or bitterness. And I will not be confined by you and your magic to that circle. I am too strong for that circle. It means nothing to me. The love of Nathan is what calls me now.”
The Rebbe sank down at his desk, a rather large formal one compared to his desk in the basement, where I had first seen him. He seemed in despair.
“Rachel Belkin is dead,” I told him in Yiddish. “She took her own life.”
“The news says you took her life!” said the Rebbe in Yiddish. The other men murmured, nodding.
A very very old man, balding and thin with a head like a skull covered in black silk, came forward and looked into my eyes. “We don’t watch television; we don’t do it. But the news spread fast. That you killed her and you killed her daughter.”
“That is a he,” I said. “Esther Belkin met Nathan, Gregory’s brother, in the diamond district. She bought a necklace from him. I believe Gregory Belkin had her murdered because she knew of his family and in particular of his twin brother. Nathan is in danger.”
They all stood motionless. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen. I knew I made a strange sight in the dark red velvet with so much gold ornament on the cuffs and with my dark hair and long beard, but so did they make a strange sight, all of them bearded and wearing hats, either small-or large-brimmed, and in long black silk suits all their own style.
They gradually formed a circle around me.
They began to hurl questions at me. At first I didn’t realize what this was. Then it became clear that it was a test. The first question was, Could I quote from this or that book of the Torah. They used letters and names I understood completely. I answered all their questions, throwing out the quotations first in Hebrew and then in Greek, and then sometimes, to really startle them, in older Aramaic.
“Name the prophets,” they said.
I did, including Enoch, who had been a prophet in my time in Babylon, whom they didn’t know. They were shocked at this.
“Babylon?”
“I can’t remember!” I said. “I have to stop Gregory Belkin from hurting his brother, Nathan. I’m convinced he killed Esther because she met Nathan and knew of Nathan, and there are other suspicious things.”
Now they began to question me on the Talmud: What were the Mitzvot? I told them there were 613, and they were laws or rules in general concerned with attitude, what one does, good behavior, and what one says.
The questions went on and on. They had to do with ritual and cleanliness, and what is forbidden, and with the heretic rabbis, and with the Kabbalah. I answered everything rapidly, lapsing into Aramaic over and over, then coming back to Yiddish. When I quoted from the Septuagint, I used the Greek.
I referred sometimes to the Babylonian Talmud and sometimes to the old Jerusalem Talmud. I answered all questions about sacred numbers, and the points of discussion became finer and finer. It seemed each man was trying to outdo the other with the delicacy of his question.
Finally I became impatient.
“Do you realize while we carry on like this, as if we were in the yeshiva, that Nathan may be in danger? What is Nathan’s name among you? Help me save Nathan, in the name of God.”
“Nathan is gone,” said the Rebbe. “He is far far away, where Gregory cannot find him. He is safe in the Lord’s city.”
“How do you know he’s safe?”
“The day after the death of Esther he left here for Israel. Gregory cannot find him there. Gregory could never track him down.”
“The day after…you mean then the day before you first saw me?”
“Yes, if you aren’t a dybbuk, what are you?”
“I don’t know. What I want to be is an angel and that is what I intend to be. And God will judge whether I have done His Will, What made Nathan go to Israel?”
The old men looked at the Rebbe, obviously confused. The Rebbe said that he wasn’t sure why Nathan wanted to take the trip just then, but it seemed in his grief for Esther, Nathan was eager to go and said something about doing his yearly work early in Israel. His work had to do with copies of the Torah which he would bring back. Routine.
“Can you reach him?” I said.
“Why should we tell you more?” said the Rebbe. “He’s safe from Gregory.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Now that you are all here, I want you to answer. Did any of you call upon the Servant of the Bones? Did Nathan?”
They all shook their heads and looked at the Rebbe.
“Nathan would never do such an unholy thing.”
“Am I unholy?” I lifted my hands. “Come,” I said, “I invite you. Try to exorcise me, try in the name of the Lord God of Hosts. I’ll stand here firm in my love for Nathan and for Esther and Rachel Belkin. I want to avert harm. I will stand firm. Go on, give me your abracadabra Kabbalah magic!”
This roused them all to whispering and murmuring, and the Rebbe, who was still furious, did begin a loud chant to exorcise me, and then all the men joined in and I watched them, feeling nothing, not letting any anger come to the fore, only feeling love for them, and thinking with love of my Master Samuel, and how I had hated him for something perhaps that was only human. I couldn’t remember it. I remembered Babylon. I remembered the
