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.
  
  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 crew cut 
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