Chapter 1
This is Azriel's tale as he told it to me, as he begged me
to bear witness and to record his words. Call me Jonathan
as he did. That was the name he chose on the night he
appeared in my open door and saved my life.
Surely if he hadn't come to seek a scribe, I would have
died before morning.
Let me explain that I am well known in the fields of
history, archaeology, Sumerian scholarship. And Jonathan
is indeed one of the names given me at birth, but you
won't find it on the jackets of my books, which the
students study because they must, or because they love the
mysteries of ancient lore as much as I do.
Azriel knew this--the scholar, the teacher I was--when he
came to me.
Jonathan was a private name for me that we agreed upon
together. He had plucked it from the string of three names
on the copyright pages of my books. And I had answered to
it. It became my name for him during all those hours as he
told his tale--a tale I would never publish under my
regular professorial name, knowing full well, as he did,
that this story would never be accepted alongside my
histories.
So I am Jonathan; I am the scribe; I tell the tale as
Azriel told it. It doesn't really matter to him what name
I use with you. It only mattered that one person wrote
down what he had to say. The Book of Azriel was dictated
to Jonathan.
He did know who I was; he knew all my works, and had
painstakingly read them before ever coming. He knew my
academic reputation, and something in my style and outlook
had caught his fancy. Perhaps he approved that I had
reached the venerable age of sixty-five, and still wrote
and worked night and day like a young man, with no
intentions of retiring ever from the school where I
taught, though I had now and then to get completely away
from it.
So it was no haphazard choice that made him climb the
steep forested mountains, in the snow, on foot, carrying
only a curled newsmagazine in his hand, his tall form
protected by a thick mass of curly black hair that grew
long below his shoulders--a true protective mantle for a
man's head and neck--and one of those double-tiered and
flaring winter coats that only the tall of stature and the
romantic of heart can wear with aplomb or the requisite
charming indifference.
By the light of the fire, he appeared at once a kind young
man, with huge black eyes and thick prominent brows, a
small thick nose, and a large cherub's mouth, his hair
dappled with snow, the wind blowing his coat wildly about
him as it tore through the house, sending my precious
papers swirling in all directions.
Now and then this coat became too large for him. His
appearance completely changed to match that of the man on
the cover of the magazine he'd brought with him.
It was that miracle I saw early on, before I knew who he
was, or that I was going to live, that the fever had
broken.
Understand I am not insane or even eccentric by nature,
and have never been self-destructive. I didn't go to the
mountains to die. It had seemed a fine idea to seek out
the absolute solitude of my northern house, unconnected to
the world by phone, fax, television, or electricity. I had
a book to complete which had taken me some ten years, and
it was in this self-imposed exile that I meant to finish
it.
So it was no haphazard choice that made him climb the
steep forested mountains, in the snow, on foot, carrying
only a curled newsmagazine in his hand, his tall form
protected by a thick mass of curly black hair that grew
long below his shoulders--a true protective mantle for a
man's head and neck--and one of those double-tiered and
flaring winter coats that only the tall of stature and the
romantic of heart can wear with aplomb or the requisite
charming indifference.
By the light of the fire, he appeared at once a kind young
man, with huge black eyes and thick prominent brows, a
small thick nose, and a large cherub's mouth, his hair
dappled with snow, the wind blowing his coat wildly about
him as it tore through the house, sending my precious
papers swirling in all directions.
Now and then this coat became too large for him. His
appearance completely changed to match that of the man on
the cover of the magazine he'd brought with him.
It was that miracle I saw early on, before I knew who he
was, or that I was going to live, that the fever had
broken.
Understand I am not insane or even eccentric by nature,
and have never been self-destructive. I didn't go to the
mountains to die. It had seemed a fine idea to seek out
the absolute solitude of my northern house, unconnected to
the world by phone, fax, television, or electricity. I had
a book to complete which had taken me some ten years, and
it was in this self-imposed exile that I meant to finish
it.
The house is mine, and was then, as always, well stocked,
with plenty of bottled water for drinking, and oil and
kerosene for its lamps, candles by the crate, and electric
batteries of every conceivable size for the small tape
recorder I use and the laptop computers on which I work,
and an enormous shed of dried oak for the fires I would
need throughout my stay there.
I had the few medical necessaries a man can carry in a
metal box. I had the simple food I eat and can cook by
fire: rice, hominy, cans upon cans of saltless chicken
broth, and also a few barrels of apples which should have
lasted me the winter. A sack or two of yams I'd also
brought, discovering I could wrap these in foil and roast
them in my coal-and-oak fire.
I liked the bright orange color of yams. And please be
assured, I was not proud of this diet, or seeking to write
a magazine article on it. I'm simply tired of rich food;
tired of crowded fashionable New York restaurants and
glittering party buffets, and even the often wonderful
meals offered me weekly by colleagues at their own tables.
I am merely trying to explain. I wanted fuel for the body
and the mind.
I brought what I needed so that I might write in peace.
There was nothing that peculiar about all this.
The place was already lined in books, its old barn wood
walls fully insulated and then shelved to the ceiling.
There was a duplicate here of every important text I ever
consulted at home, and the few books of poetry I read over
and over for ecstasy.
My spare computers, all small and very powerful beyond any
understanding I ever hope to acquire of hard drives,
bytes, megabytes of memory, or 486 chips, had been
delivered earlier, along with a ludicrous supply of
diskettes on which to "back up" or copy my work.
Truth is, I worked mostly by hand, on yellow legal pads. I
had cartons of pens, the very fine-point kind, with black
ink.
Everything was perfect.
And I should add here that the world I had left behind
seemed just a little more mad than usual.
The news was full of a lurid murder trial on the West
Coast having to do with a famous athlete accused of
slitting his wife's throat, an entertainment par
excellence that had galvanized the talk shows, the news
shows, and even that vapid, naive, and childlike
connection to the world that calls itself E! Entertainment.
In Oklahoma City, a Federal office building had been blown
sky high--and not by alien terrorists, it was believed,
but by our own Americans, members of the militia movement
they were called, who had decided in much the same manner
of the hippies of years before that our government was a
dangerous enemy. Whereas the hippies and the protesters of
the Vietnam War had merely lain on railroad tracks and
sung in ranks, these new crewcut militants--filled with
fantasies of impending doom--killed our own people. By the
hundreds.
Then there were the battles abroad, which had become
regular circuses. Not a day went by when one was not
reminded of atrocities committed among the Bosnians and
the Serbs in the Balkans--a region that had been at war
for one reason or another for centuries. I had lost track
of who was Moslem, Christian, Russian ally, or friend. The
city of Sarajevo had been a familiar word to television-
watching Americans for years now. In the streets of
Sarajevo people died daily, including men they called
United Nations peace keepers.
In African countries, people starved as the result of
civil strife and famine. It was a nightly sight as common
as a beer commercial to see on television fresh footage of
starving African babies, bellies swollen, faces covered
with flies.
Jews and Arabs fought in the streets of Jerusalem. Bombs
went off; protesters were shot at by armies; and
terrorists destroyed innocent people to strengthen their
demands.
In the Ukraine, remnants of a fallen Soviet Union made war
on mountain folk who had never given in to any foreign
power. People died in the snow and cold for reasons that
were nearly impossible to explain.
In sum there were dozens of places raging with suffering
in which to fight, to die, to film, as the parliaments of
the world tried in vain to find answers without bullets.
The decade was a feast of wars.
Then there was the death of Esther Belkin, followed by the
scandal of the Temple of the Mind. Caches of assault
weapons had been found in the Temple's outposts from New
Jersey to Libya. Explosives and poisonous gases had been
stockpiled in its hospitals. The great mentor of this
popular international church--Gregory Belkin--was insane.
Before Gregory Belkin, there had been other madmen with
great dreams perhaps but smaller resources. Jim Jones and
his People's Temple committing mass suicide in the jungles
of Guyana; David Koresh, who believed himself the Christ,
perishing by gun and fire in a Waco, Texas, compound.
A Japanese religious leader had just recently been accused
of killing innocent people on the country's public subways.
A church with the lovely name of the Temple Solaire had
not so long ago staged a mass suicide coordinated at three
different locations in Switzerland and Canada.
A popular talk show host gave directions to his listeners
as to how they might assassinate the President of the
United States.
A fatal virus had only recently broken out with stunning
fury in an African country, then died away, leaving all
thinking individuals with a renewed interest in the age-
old obsession: that the end of the world might be at hand.
Apparently there were more than three kinds of this virus,
and numerous others equally as deadly lurking in the rain
forests of the world.
A hundred other surreal stories made up each day's news,
and each day's inevitable civilized conversation.
So I ran from this, as much as anything else. I ran for
the solitude, the whiteness of snow, the brutal
indifference of towering trees and tiny winter stars.
It was my own jeep which had brought me up through "the
leather stocking woods," as it is sometimes still called,
in honor of James Fenimore Cooper, to barricade myself for
the winter. There was a phone in the jeep by which one
could, with perseverance if possible, reach the outside
world. I was for tearing it out, but the truth is I'm not
very handy and I couldn't get the thing loose without
damaging my car.
So you see, I am not a fool, just a scholar. I had a plan.
I was prepared for the heavy snow to come, and the winds
to whistle in the single metal chimney above the round
central hearth. The smell of my books, the oak fire, the
snow itself whirling down at times in tiny specks into the
flames, these things I love and need now and then. And
many a winter before this house had given me exactly what
I asked of it.
The night began like any other. The fever took me
completely by surprise, and I remember building up the
fire in the round pit of a fireplace very high because I
did not want to have to tend it. When I drank all the
water nearest the bed, I don't know. I couldn't have been
fully conscious then. I know that I went to the door, that
I myself unbolted it, and then could not get it closed;
this much I do recall. I must have been trying to reach
the jeep.
Bolting the door was simply impossible. I lay for a long
time in the snow itself before I crawled back inside, and
away from the mouth of the winter, or so it seemed.
I remember these things because I remember knowing then
that I was very much in danger. The long journey back to
the bed, the long journey back to the warmth of the fire,
utterly exhausted me. Beneath the heap of wool blankets
and quilts, I hid from the whirlwind that entered my
house. And I knew that if I didn't clear my head, if I
didn't recover somehow, the winter would just come inside
soon and put to sleep forever the fire, and take me too.
Lying on my back, the quilts up to my chin, I sweated and
shivered. I watched the flakes of snow fly beneath the
sloping beams of the roof. I watched the raging pyramid of
logs as it blazed. I smelled the burnt pot when the soup
boiled dry. I saw the snow covering my desk.
I made a plan to rise, then fell asleep. I dreamed those
fretful stupid dreams that fever makes, then woke with a
start, sat up, fell back, dreamed again. The candles were
gone out, but the fire still burned, and snow now filled
the room, blanketing my desk, my chair, perhaps the bed
itself. I licked snow from my lips once, that I do recall,
and it tasted good, and now and then I licked the melted
snow I could gather with my hand. My thirst was hellish.
Better to dream than to feel it.
It must have been midnight when Azriel came.
Did he choose his hour with a sense of drama? Quite to the
contrary. A long way off, walking through snow and wind,
he had seen the fire high on the mountain above, sparks
flying from the chimney and a light that blinkered through
the open door. He had hurried towards these beacons.
Mine was the only house on the land and he knew it. He had
learnt that from the casual tactful remarks of those who
had told him officially and gently that I could not be
reached in the months to come, that I had gone into hiding.
I saw him the very moment he stood in the door. I saw the
sheen of his mass of black curling hair and fire in both
his eyes. I saw the strength and swiftness with which he
closed and locked the door and came directly towards me.
I believe I said, "I'm going to die."
"No, you won't, Jonathan," he answered. He brought the
bottle of water at once and lifted my head. I drank and I
drank and my fever drank, and I blessed him.
"It's only kindness, Jonathan," he said with simplicity.
I dozed as he built up the fire again, wiped away the
snow, and I have a very distinct and wondrous memory of
him gathering my papers from everywhere, with great care,
and kneeling by the fire to lay them out so that they
might dry and some of the writing might be saved after all.
"This is your work, your precious work," he said to me
when he saw that I was watching him.
He had taken off the big double-mantled coat. He was in
shirt sleeves which meant we were safe. I smelled the soup
cooking again, the bubbling chicken broth. He brought the
soup to me in an earthen bowl--the sort of rustic things I
chose for this place--and he said drink the soup, and I
did.
Indeed, it was by water and broth that he brought me
slowly back. Never once did I have the presence of mind to
mention the few medications in the white box of first-aid
supplies. He bathed my face with cold water.
He bathed all of me slowly and patiently, turning me
gently, and rolling under me the new fresh clean
sheets. "The broth," he said, "the broth, no, you must."
And the water. The water he gave me perpetually.
Was there enough for him, he had asked. I had almost
laughed.
"Of course, my friend, dear God, take anything you want."
And he drank the water down in greedy gulps, saying it was
all he needed now, that once again the Stairway to Heaven
had disappeared and left him stranded.
"My name is Azriel," he said, sitting by the bed. "They
called me the Servant of the Bones."