Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice Page B

there are Hasidim.”
    “And other Orthodox, and some ‘reformed,’ and so on it goes. Let’s go back to your time. You were a big and happy family.”
    “Yes, true, and it was regular—I was explaining—it was regular for the rich Hebrews to work at the palace as I said, my father worked there too, and many of my cousins. We were scribes, but also merchants, merchants of jewels, silks, silver, and books. My father’s gift in trade was choosing the very finest vessels for the King’s table and for the Table of the Gods in Marduk’s temple and for Marduk himself.
    “Now at the time, the temple was full of chapels, and every day a meal was set out for each deity, including Marduk, so the temple had a huge stock of gold and silver vessels for this. And my father was the one who put aside those vessels not fit.
    “I went down with him to the docks all the time to meet the ships coming in from the sea, with the finest new work from Greece or Egypt, and I learned from him how to judge the carving on a goblet, and how to know the heaviest and finest mixture of gold. I learned to know a true ruby or diamond and pearls—pearls, I loved the pearls, we dealt in pearls of all kinds, we didn’t call them pearls, you know, we called them eyes of the sea.
    “This is how we made our living—in the marketplace and in the temple and in the palace.
    “My family had stalls all through the marketplace where they dealt in gems of all kinds, in honey, and in cloth dyed purple and blue, the finest of all silk and linen, and they sold the incense too, though they sold it to idolaters who would burn this incense for Nabu and Ishtar, and for Marduk, of course.
    “But it was our living, it was our source of power, it was our way of staying together, of being strong so that one day we could go home. It was as important as the copying of the Sacred Books.”
    “It’s an old tale,” I said.
    “This whole trade, by the way, gave to my own house a sumptuous quality that it might not have had, had we beencamel breeders. And that you must understand because the richness around us colored my father’s values as much as mine.
    “What I mean is, not only did we make money, but the house was always full of merchandise passing through. You know. Here would be a magnificent cedar statue of the goddess Ishtar just come from Dilmun, and my uncle would keep it at home for a week or two, gracing the living room, before the sale was made. The place was full of beautiful footstools, delicate furniture from Egypt, the fine black and red urns and pots of the Greeks, and just about anything portable and ornamental and lovely to behold.”
    “You grew up on beauty, didn’t you?”
    “Yes,” Azriel said. “I did. I really did. And I grew up, for all my smart talking and carrying on and flirting with Marduk, I grew up with love. My father’s love. The love of my brothers. My sisters. The love of my uncles even. Even my deaf uncle. Even once the prophet Azarel said to me, ‘Yahweh looks at you with love.’ So did the old witch Asenath. Ah, such love.”
    He had come to a natural pause. He sat there, resplendent in the red velvet, hair glossy and natural, and the pure skin of his young man’s cheeks as soft as a girl’s I suppose. I must be getting old. Because young men look to me now as beautiful as girls. Not that I desire them. It’s only that life itself is lush.
    He was confused. In pain. I hesitated to press him. Then he parted his lips, only to be quiet.

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    W hat was it like, roaming in the temple? The palace?” I asked. “The beautiful house, I can envision. But the palace, was the palace plated in gold? Was the temple?”
    He didn’t respond.
    “Give me pictures, Azriel. Take your time by means of images. The temple, will you tell me what that was like?”
    “Yes,” he said. “It was a house of gems and gold. It was a world of the deep vibrant gleam of the precious, of lovely scents and the sounds of harps, and pipes