For one breathless second I thought he was dead, but he wasn't, only dazed, but so badly hurt that all of the little cowards present ran to attend him.
This was our moment, and the woman knew it and so did I, and we left the room together.
We hurried down to the corridor. I saw the distant bronze doors but this time they had no angels, only the tree of life once more with all its limbs, which was now rent down the middle as they opened.
I felt nothing but strength coursing through me. I could have carried her in one arm, but she walked fast and straight, as if she had to do it, clutching the leather purse or bundle to her.
We went into the elevator. The doors closed. She fell against me. And I took the bundle and held her. We were alone in this chamber as it traveled down and down, through the palace.
"He is killing me," she said. She was up close to my face. Her eyes were swimmingly beautiful. Her flesh was smooth and youthful. "He is poisoning me. I promise you, you'll be glad you did this for me. I promise you, you will be glad."
I looked at her, seeing the eyes of her daughter, just so big, so extraordinary, even with the thinner paler skin now around them. How could she be so strong at forty years? Obviously she'd fought her age and her disease.
"Who are you, Azriel?" she asked. "Who are you? I heard this name. I know it." There was trust in the way she said my name. "Tell me, who are you! Quick. Talk to me."
I held her up. She would have fallen if not for me.
"When your daughter died," I said, "she spoke something, did they tell you?"
"Ah, Lord God. Azriel, the Servant of the Bones," she said, bitterly, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. "That's what she said."
"I am he," I said. "I'm Azriel, the one she saw as she lay dying. I cried as you cry now. I saw her and wept for her, and couldn't help her. But I can help you."
20
This stopped her grief, but I couldn't tell what she made of this revelation or of me. Sick as she was, she definitely contained the full flower of the seeds of beauty in Esther.
As the doors opened again, we saw an army brought out against her-heavily uniformed men, most of them old, all apparently concerned, and most rather noisy. It was an easy matter for me to push - the diffident bunch aside sharply-indeed to scatter them far and wide. But this did make them hysterical with fear. She alarmed them further with her voice.
"Get me my car now," she said. "Do you hear? And get out of our way." They didn't dare to reassemble. She fired orders. "Henry, I want you out of here. George, go upstairs. My husband needs you. You, there, what are you doing-"
As they argued with one another, she marched ahead of me, towards the open doors. A man to our right picked up a gilded telephone from a marble-top table. She turned and shot him the Evil Eye and he dropped the phone. I laughed. I loved her strength. But she didn't notice these things.
Through the glass to the street, I saw the tall gray-haired one who had driven the car earlier, the tall thin one who had mourned for Esther. But he could not see us. The car was there.
The men came flying at us with solicitous words for a new assault-"Come now, Mrs. Belkin, you're sick"-"Rachel, this isn't going to help you."
I pointed out a mourner.
"Look, he's there, the one who was with Esther," I said. "That one, who cried for her. He'll do what we say."
"Ritchie!" she sang out, standing on her tiptoes, pushing the others away still. "Ritchie, I want to leave now."
It was indeed the same man with the deeply wrinkled face, and I hadn't been wrong in my judgment. He opened the door at once as we moved towards him.
Outside the building, the crowd pressed in close to the ropes with their candles and their singing; lights flashed on; giant one-eyed cameras appeared, like so many insects, closing in. They produced no confusion in Rachel any more than they had in Gregory.
Great clusters of these people bowed from the waist to her; others were giving cries of mourning.
"Come on, Rachel, come on," the driver said, addressing her as if she were kindred. "Let her pass," he told the straggling troops, who couldn't make up their minds what to do. He shouted a command to an elderly man at the edge of the pavement.
"Open the door of the car now for Mrs. Belkin!" On both sides the crowd became frenzied. It seemed they would break through the ropes. Loud greetings to Rachel were called out, but this was in profound respect.
She disappeared into the car ahead of me, and I followed her, coming down beside her, close to her on the seat of black velvet, the two of us suddenly locking our hands together, her left and my right. The door was slammed shut. I squeezed tight her hand.
It was indeed the same long Mercedes-Benz, the same in which Esther had ridden to the palace of death, and in which I had appeared to Gregory. No surprises here. The motor was running. The crowd could not stop such a vehicle even in its devotion. Candles flickered around the windows.
The elderly driver was already behind the wheel in front of us, the little wall that once divided this compartment from his having gone away.
"Take me to my plane, Ritchie," she said. Her voice had deepened and taken on courage. "I've already called! And don't listen to anyone else. The plane's waiting and I'm going."
Plane. I knew this word of course.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, with a hint of enjoyment, or mere exhilaration in his expression. Her word was obviously law.
The car edged forward, crushing back the singing crowd, and then lurched for the center of the street, and moved ahead, throwing us against each other.
The wall went up, shutting us off from the driver, giving us a private carriage in which to ride. The intimacy made me flush.
I felt her hand, and saw how loose the skin was, how white. Hands tell age. Her knuckles were swollen but her fingernails were beautifully painted with red paint, and perfectly tapered. I hadn't noticed this before, and it sent a pleasant chill through me. Her face was five times younger than her hands. Her face had been stretched like Gregory's face, tightened and made youthful, and it was a face that had profited by all these enhancements because her bones had such a symmetry, and her eyes, her eyes were for all time.
I cocked my ear, so to speak, for any call from Gregory, for any changes in my physical self as the result of what he might be saying or thundering or doing to the bones.
Nothing. I was completely independent of him as I had supposed. Nothing restraining me.
' Indeed, I put my right arm around her and held her tight to me and felt love for her and a tremendous need to help her.