IGMS Issue 8

The golem was a thief. Nothing in the village, nothing in the whole vale for that matter, was safe. It was forever stealing and bringing its thefts to Braslava's door, laying them on her step like a cat lays down dead birds and mice.

One day it was the butcher's blue and white Turkish stockings, the next it was cranky Petar's new pitchfork.

And then the golem would stand there, looking down upon her, and all she could say was, "You think you're doing me favors? Take your inscrutable face and go sit." And the golem would go and sit in the shade of her spruce, the sap sometimes falling to speckle the red clay of its bald head and shoulders.

Braslava did not know, was this God's curse? Was it his blessing?

The golem was anatomically correct in every way, except for the missing belly button. But if God was going to go to all that trouble, why not just send a man instead?

Sometimes the thefts were not such a bad thing. For instance, the golem once brought her a shoe that months ago Zvonka the carpenter's wife had lost. It is a terrible thing to lose a favorite shoe, but the golem found it.

The golem once brought Braslava a quiver of quality hunting arrows. Each had a black shaft with three yellow grooves running from the fine steel head. The grooves, the blood lines to speed the bleeding of the animal, had been painted to look like tiny, spotted snakes. Nobody in the vale had even heard of anyone -- Croat or Hungarian -- who used such markings, so Braslava was able to claim and sell them for a good price.

These were the good things. But most of the time the golem brought things that it should not.

And it did not matter how strongly the inhabitants of the vale locked their possessions up. It didn't not matter if they hid their treasures with great cunning. The golem would find them, and it would take them. It was an excellent thief. Quiet as stone. Quiet as the red mud and clay from which it was formed. The only way a victim might know he'd been burgled was by looking for the tell-tale crumbs of red dust that it sometimes left behind.

This is how holy things steal.

Of course, in the first weeks some had questioned the golem's holiness. They'd come one afternoon with a thick-toothed tree saw and a mighty axe. They'd commanded the golem to put its neck on the chopping block. It had done so willingly.

Braslava scolded them. "A man, holy enough that God trusts him, creates this thing, and you're so wise to kill it?"

"You don't know who made it," said Eben, who was always one for dredging up the facts.

It was true, of course, that she didn't know
exactly
who'd made it. She'd found the golem down at the river in the late summer. She'd gone to gather an apron-full of the spotted mint that flourished on the exposed sand and gravel bars there. Truly, anyone could have found it, but it was Braslava who had been standing in just the right spot as the orange light from the setting sun brightened the shorn bank, illuminating the undressed tree roots, the rocks, and the upper side of the golem.

At first she'd thought the river had dug into the stained bones of an ancient graveyard. But a person could not get close to the golem, a person could not liberate its shoulder and face from the dirt, and think it was mere bones. It had looked like someone caught far too long in the womb, struggling for birth.

Who fashioned it and buried it under a forgotten twelve feet of dirt, Braslava did not know. But did she need to know such things when God was involved?

She folded her arms and looked at the array of bearded men before her.

"You forget," said Boric, "wizards in Pharaoh's courts had power to turn staves into snakes."

"And even if it was made by a holy man," added Eben, "what does that mean? Men always spoil God's gifts. Just look at Adam."

"You all think like rutabagas," she said. "A golem is an angel of sorts. And you do not kill angels. It's just not done, even if they do make off with your prized cooking pot."

The men did not listen. Braslava stood back. If they wanted to call down fire from heaven, she was not going to stand so close the flames would engulf her.

They put the two-man saw to its neck and pulled. The teeth bit in, but when they'd sawn only part of the way through, the saw stuck fast.

Radovan, the massive woodcarver, attempted to free the saw. He spit on his hands, heaved his mighty axe above his head, and brought the blade down. The axe sunk into the golem's neck, but if Radovan hadn't immediately wrenched his blade out, the neck would have also claimed the axe.

The men stood there, looking down. The golem knelt at the chopping block with the saw stuck in its red neck.

"All things created by God are good," said Braslava. "This one is to show: nothing that is ours cannot be taken in a moment's notice."

And so it was. But this did not mean that sometimes, the Lord be blessed, the divine message was not annoying.

Now and again the golem disappeared. The first time this happened was after All Saints Day. Braslava expressed her gratitude for the Lord's favor in both the sending and the taking. But it was apparently not enough, for the golem returned one week later carrying a long-haired goat.

The nanny desperately needed milking, but Braslava knew the brand in its hide. If she milked it, the goat's mingy Magyar owner would probably claim she'd stolen a sip and demand payment. So she took the nanny from the golem, tied the animal up on her cart, hooked old Ephraim, her bull, to the yoke, and then proceeded down the trail to the river to deliver the goat, un-milked, to its owner.

She admired the sun and the red and orange leaves blazing in the trees and littering the path. She savored great quantities of air thick with the smell of leaf mold. At all this beauty she heaved many sighs. But when she approached Mislav's farm, the sighing stopped.

She decided she would wave to Mislav as she passed by. Even now she always had to decide. Mislav wasn't a rich priest, wasn't one of those Romans, but an Orthodox, a Byzantine who believed in marriage and in the propriety of full beards. He was diligent and laughed too loud and was the only man who'd ever even thought of her as someone worthy of being a wife.

Mislav stood in front of his house, chopping wood. He saw her and put his axe down. He wiped the sweat from his brow and motioned at the goat with his chin. "So, God is not though with you then?"

"He's never through with any of us, is he?"

"Perhaps help is on the way. I have heard that our Croatian Ban knows of your little problem. He is sending men to collect the blessing."

"What does he want with a golem?"

"Think," said Mislav. "It will not be long before the Bosnian dukes fall. And then the Turks will be here at our very doors. What if the Ban can direct its stealing? The Turks will wake up one morning and stand in shock: where are their mountains of arrows, where the multitude of horse? And what if the golem is sly enough to obtain a sultan or two? It could become a mighty weapon."

Braslava shook her head. "This golem is not so reliable. I know this thing because I have tried to direct its stealing myself."

Mislav cocked an eyebrow.

"Bah," she said and dismissed him. "Even you would not be able to resist. Think about it -- can you say you would not be sorely tempted to kife the Roman's silly hat?"

"I would resist temptation," he said.

"Not for long," she said. "But the Lord would save you because it seems all requests and commands are answered with the same thing. I'm telling you, the Ban will be disappointed. He will get nothing but tiny speckled eggs." Eggs, even when all she'd asked for was one purple Turkman's tulip.