Very smoothly came the voice of Gregory.
"Grandfather, my only child is dead, and I come to you with a simple question. Why would I kill my daughter, Esther? You yourself know there is no reason under God for me to have hurt Esther. What can I give you for the answer to my question? Do you remember this story, this thing, this Servant of the Bones? Did it have a name, was its name Azriel?"
The old man was stunned.
So was I.
"I never spoke that name," said the old man.
"No, you didn't," said Gregory, "but someone else did."
"Who has told you about this thing?" the old man demanded. "Who could have done such a thing?"
Gregory was confused.
I leant my weight against the shelf of books, watching, my fingers catching the loose flaking leather of the bindings. Don't hurt them. Not the books.
The old man sounded hard and contemptuous.
"Has someone come to you with the legend?" asked the old man. "Has someone told you a pretty tale of magic and power? Was this man Moslem? Was he a Gentile? Was he a Jew? Was he one of your New Age fanatic followers who has read your abracadabra about the Kabbalah?"
Gregory shook his head.
"Rebbe, you have it wrong," he said with solemn sincerity. "It was only your talk of this that I heard when I was a child. Then two days ago, someone else spoke the words before witnesses: Azriel, Servant of the Bones!"
I was afraid to guess.
"Who was this?" asked the old man.
"She said it, Rebbe," Gregory told him. "Esther said it as she was dying. The man in the ambulance heard it from her lips as she died. Esther said it, Rebbe. Esther said, 'The Servant of the Bones.' And the name 'Azriel.' Esther said it twice aloud, and two men heard her. Those men told me."
I smiled. This was more of a mystery than I had ever imagined. I watched them intently. My face teemed with heat. And I knew that I trembled as the old man trembled, as if my body were real.
The old man drew back. He was not willing to believe. His anger vanished. He peered into the younger man's face.
Then came the voice of Gregory, purposefully and cleverly tender. "Who is he, Rebbe? Who is the Servant of the Bones? What is it, this thing, that Esther spoke of? That you spoke of? When I was a child playing on the floor at your feet? Esther said this name, 'Azriel.' Is that the name of the Servant of the Bones?"
My pulse throbbed so loud I could hear it with my own ears. I felt the fingers of my left hand bear down slightly on the tops of the books. I felt the shelf against my chest. I felt the cement floor under my shoes, and I didn't dare to look away from either of them.
My god, I thought, make the old man tell, make him tell so I will know, my god, if you are still there., make him tell Who and What is the Servant of the Bones? Make him tell me!
The old man was too stunned to reply.
"The police have this information," said Gregory. "They guard it jealously. They think she spoke of her killer." I almost cried aloud in denial. The old man scowled, and his eyes moistened. "Rebbe, don't you understand? They want to find who killed her- not that trash with the ice picks who stole her necklace, but those who put them up to it, those who knew the value of the jewels!"
Once again, the necklace. I saw no necklace then and I saw none in my memory now. There had been no necklace around her throat. They had taken nothing from her. What was this diversion of the necklace?
If only I knew these men better. I couldn't tell for sure when Gregory lied.
The voice of Gregory grew lower, colder, less conciliatory. He straightened his shoulders.
"Now let me speak plainly, Rebbe," he said. "I have always, at your behest kept our secret, my secret, our secret-that the founder of the Temple of the Mind was the grandson of the Rebbe of this Court of the Hasidim!" His voice rose now as if he couldn't quiet it.
"For your sake," he said, "I've kept this secret! For Nathan's sake. For the sake of the Court. For the sake of those who loved my mother and father and remembered them. I have kept this secret for you and for them!"
He paused, the tone of accusation hanging there sharply, the old man waiting, too wise to break the silence.
"Because you begged me," said Gregory, "I kept the secret. Because my brother begged me. And because I love my brother. And in my own way, Rebbe, I love you. I kept the secret so that you might not have the disgrace in your own eyes, and so that the cameras would not come poking in your windows, the reporters would not come crowding your stoop to demand of you how was it possible that out of your Torah and your Talmud and your Kabbalah came Gregory Belkin, the Messiah of the Temple of the Mind, whose voice is heard from the city of Lima to the towns of Nova Scoda, from Edinburgh to Zaire. How did your ritual, your prayer, your quaint black clothing, your black hats, your crazy dancing, your bowing and hollering-how did all of that loose upon the world the famous and immensely successful Gregory Belkin and the Temple of the Mind? For your sake, I kept quiet."
Silence. The old man was sunk in silence, unforgiving, and filled with contempt.
I was as confused as ever. Nothing drew me to either man, not hate or love, nothing drew me to anything but the remembered eyes and voice of the dead girl.
Again, it was the younger man who spoke.
"Once in your entire life, you came to me of your own will," Gregory said. "You crossed the great bridge that divides my world from yours, as you call it. You came to me in my offices to beg me not to disclose my background! To keep it a secret, no matter how many reporters questioned me, no matter how they pried."
The old man didn't answer.
"It would have benefited me to let the world know, Rebbe. How could it not have benefited me to say that I had come from such strong and observant roots! But long before you ever made your request of me, I buried my past with you. I covered it over with lies and fabrications so as to protect you! So that you would not be disgraced.
You and my beloved Nathan, for whom I pray every night of my life. I did that, and I continue to do it ... for you."
He paused as if his anger had the better of him. I was mesmerized by both of them and the tale that unfolded.
"But as God is my witness, Rebbe," Gregory said, "and I do dare to speak of him in my Temple as you do in your yeshiva, let me tell you this. She said those words when she died! Now you know it was none of your black-clad saints clapping their hands and singing on Shabbes who killed Esther! It wasn't my doe-eyed brother who killed Esther. It was not a Hasid who killed Esther. When the Nazis shot my mother and my father, neither raised a hand to stop the arm or the gun, is that not so?"