"You don't have to fear, do you?" she asked.
"No, not at all, but I don't want them . . ."
"I know . . . ruining my death," she said.
"Yes."
She was completely white.
"You're going to fall down."
"I know," she said. "But I intend to fall where I want to fall. Help me out there, I want to look at the ocean."
I picked her up and carried her out the doors to the balcony. This was due east. The doors faced not the bay but the true sea. I realized it was the same sea that washed the banks of Europe, the shores of ruined Greek cities, the sands of Alexandria.
A pounding noise came from behind us. I turned around. It was coming from within the elevator. There were people in the car of the elevator. But the doors were locked.
The breeze ripped across the broad terrace. Under my feet the tiles felt cool. She seemed to love it, putting her head against my shoulder, looking out over the dark sea. A great ship, hung with lights, glided by, just short of the horizon, and above, the clouds made their spectacle.
I cuddled her and held her, and started to pick her up.
"No, let me stand," she said. She tugged herself gently free of me and put her hands on the high stone railing. She looked down. I saw a garden far down there, immaculate and mil of trees and bright lights. Egyptian lilies galore, and large fanlike plants, all waving just a little in the breeze.
"It's empty down there, isn't it?" she asked.
"What?"
"The garden. It's so private. Only the flowers beneath us, and beyond, the sea."
"Yes," I said.
The elevator door was being forced open.
"Remember what I said," she said. "You can't go wrong killing him. I mean it. He'll try to seduce you, or destroy you, or use you in some way. You can bet he is already thinking in those terms, how best to use you."
"I understand him perfectly," I said. "Don't worry. I will do what is right. Who knows? Maybe I will teach him right and wrong. Maybe I know what they are. Maybe I'll save his soul." I laughed. "That would be lovely."
"Yes, it would," she said. "But you're craving life, craving it. Which means you can be lured by him with all his fiery life, the same way you were lured by mine."
"Never, I told you. I'll put it right."
"All of it, put it all to right."
Several men had just broken through the front door, with a clumsy pounding noise. I heard the wood splinter.
She sighed. "Maybe Esther did call you down. Maybe she did," she said. "My angel."
I kissed her.
The men were blundering into the room behind us. I didn't have to look at them to know they were there. They stopped short; there was a rumble of urgent voices. Then Gregory's voice carried.
"Rachel, thank God you're all right."
I turned and I saw him and he saw me, and he looked hard and determined, and cold. "Let my wife go," he said. Liar.
He was blazing with anger, and anger made him evil; anger took away his charm. I suppose it had done that to mine before. And I realized slowly as I stood there that I loved again, and didn't hate. I loved Esther and I loved Rachel. I didn't hate even him.
"Go to the door and stand between us," Rachel said. "Do that for me, please." She kissed me on the cheek. "Do that, my angel."
I obeyed. I put my hand up on the steel frame. "You can't pass," I said.
Gregory roared. He let out a terrible roar, a roar from the soul, and the whole company of men rushed towards me. I turned around as they buffeted my shoulders, passing me. But I knew already what had made them cry out.
She had jumped.
I went to the railing, pushing them aside, and I looked down into the garden and I saw her tiny empty shell of a body. The light hovered around her.
"Oh, God, take her, please," I prayed in my ancient tongue.
Then the light blazed and went straight up and for a moment it seemed that lightning lashed the southern sky, exploded behind the clouds, but it was only her passing. She'd gone up, and for one second perhaps I'd seen the Door of Heaven.
The garden held nothing but its bed of Egyptian flowers and her empty flesh, her face unhurt, intact, staring blindly upward.
Go up, Rachel, please, Esther, take her up the ladder. I deliberately envisioned the Ladder, the Stairway, replete with all the hanging remnants of memory.
Gregory cried in agony. Men took hold of me by the arms. Gregory screamed and cried and sobbed and there was no artifice to it. The man stared down at her and roared in pain and hit the railing with his fists.
"Rachel, Rachel, Rachel!"
I shook off the hands of the men. They fell backwards, stunned by the strength of it, and not knowing what to do, seemingly embarrassed by the figure of Gregory roaring in grief.
Suddenly there was havoc all around me. More men had come, poor Ritchie had come, and Gregory wailed and wailed and leaned over the railing. He was davening, bowing like a Hebrew and crying out in Yiddish.
I shoved off the men again, hurling some of them to the end of the terrace, I pushed and I pushed at them till they simply backed off.
I said to Gregory:
"You really loved her, didn't you?"
He turned and looked at me, and tried to speak but he was choked with grief. "She was . . . my queen of Sheba," he said. "She was my queen . . ." And then he wailed again, and said the same prayers.
"I'm leaving you now," I said, "with all your armed men."
A crowd was climbing up the slope of the garden below. Men with flashlights shone them on her dead face.
Then I went up and up.
Where would I go? What would I do?
It was time to walk on my own.
I looked back once at the tiny men down on the terrace, confounded now by my disappearance. Gregory had actually collapsed and sat down rocking, holding his head.
Then I went high, so high that the joyous spirits were there, and it seemed as I flew north that they stared at me with great interest. I knew what I had to do first of all. Find Nathan.
23
By the time I reached New York the need for sleep was weighing me down. I would have to give in to it before further explorations.
But I was fiercely worried about Nathan. Before taking on a body, I prowled invisibly all through the Temple of the Mind.
Just as I expected, there was much chemical research being done there, and there were numerous restricted areas, and there were people working in the night in the strange rubbery orange plastic suits I had seen, and these suits seemed to be filled with air. These suited beings peered through their helmets as they worked with chemicals which they obviously did not mean to breathe or touch. They were loading these into what seemed very lightweight plastic cartridges.