The Golem and the Jinni (20 page)

Anna, on the other hand, could barely remember what was on offer, let alone which items were running low. Her talents lay in a completely different direction. She’d discovered that standing behind a counter was, in its own way, as satisfying as being onstage. She had a smile for everyone, and complimented the women and admired the men, and made funny faces at the children. The Golem noticed how the customers’ moods improved when Anna was at the till, and felt her own burst of envy. How did the girl do it? Was it a learned skill, or did it come to her naturally? She tried to imagine herself chatting and laughing with a roomful of strangers, completely at her ease. It seemed an impossible fantasy, like a child wishing for wings.

Thea Radzin had decreed that before the Golem could work at the counter she must learn the baking itself, and so for the first few weeks she was spared a turn at the register. But inevitably the afternoon came when Mrs. Radzin was out on an unexpected errand, and Anna had to visit the water closet; and Mr. Radzin turned from the ovens, gesturing at her with his chin.
Go on
.

She approached the register gingerly. She knew, in theory, what to do. The prices were all clearly posted, and there was no question of whether she could handle the numbers: she’d discovered she could tell at a glance how many cookies were on a baking sheet, or the value of a random handful of coins. It was the talking that frightened her. She imagined making some terrible, unforgivable mistake, and running away to hide under the Rabbi’s bed.

At the front of the line was a stout woman in a knitted shawl, who stood scanning the rows of loaves. Over a dozen people were clustered behind her, their faces all turned toward the Golem. For a moment she quailed; but then, with an effort, she pulled her attention away to focus on the woman in the shawl. Immediately she knew the order as if the woman had said it out loud:
a rye bread, and a slice of strudel
.

“What would you like?” she asked the woman, feeling faintly ridiculous, since the answer was so plain.

“A loaf of rye,” the woman said.

The Golem hesitated, waiting for the second half of the order. But the woman said nothing. “And perhaps some strudel?” she asked finally.

The woman laughed. “You caught me looking, did you? No, I have to watch my figure. I’m not the slip of a thing I used to be.”

A few of the other customers were smiling now. Embarrassed, the Golem fetched the rye. Apparently she could assume nothing—even a desire as simple as a bakery order.

She gave the woman the rye, and made change for her nickel. The woman said, “You’re new here, aren’t you? I’ve seen you working in the back. What’s your name?”

“Chava,” said the Golem.

“Green as grass, aren’t you? Don’t worry, you’ll be an American soon enough. Don’t work this one too hard, Moe,” she called to Mr. Radzin. “She doesn’t look it, but she’s delicate. I can tell these things.”

Radzin snorted. “Delicate my foot. She can braid a dozen challahs in five minutes.”

“Really?” The woman’s eyebrows raised. “Then you’d better treat her well, hadn’t you?”

He snorted again but made no other reply.

The woman smiled kindly. “Take care, Chavaleh.” And she left, carrying her rye.

A heavy satchel slung across his back, Rabbi Meyer walked slowly up Hester Street toward his home, ignoring the dirty puddles that threatened to drown his shoes. It was late afternoon, and the cold and damp had taken on a wintry edge. He’d developed a cough when the weather turned, and now it nagged at him as he climbed his staircase. More troubling, he’d begun to experience strange moments of vertigo, when it seemed as though the ground had disappeared beneath him and he was spinning through the air. It would last only a few seconds, but it left him trembling and exhausted. His strength was ebbing away exactly when he needed it most.

His rooms were empty and chill, the sink stacked with dishes. Now that the Golem was living at a boardinghouse a few blocks away, all had returned to its former neglect. How quickly he’d grown used to a woman’s presence. He felt oddly bereft now, going to bed each night without seeing her at her solitary post on the couch, gazing out the window at the passersby.

And yet. Time and again he wondered if he’d made a terrible error in judgment. Lately he’d spent nights lying awake and imagining what might happen, if through his carelessness the Golem harmed someone or was discovered. He pictured a mob descending on the Lower East Side and turning Jewish families out onto the street, looting synagogues and pulling old men about by their beards. It would be the very sort of pogrom they’d thought they’d left behind.

In these moments, submerged in his terrible thoughts, he was tempted to go to her boardinghouse and destroy her.

It would be easy to do: a single phrase, spoken aloud. Few still had the knowledge, and it was only by sheerest chance that he’d learned it. His yeshiva had been home to an ancient Kabbalist, half-mad and steeped in lore. The old man had taken a liking to sixteen-year-old Avram and adopted him as a sort of secret pupil, showing him mysteries that the other rabbis would occasionally hint at but dared not touch. Young Avram had been too excited by his special status to consider whether the knowledge might come to be a burden, instead of a gift.

In one of his final lessons, the old man gave Avram a lump of brownish red clay and bade him construct a golem. Avram shaped the clay into an approximation of a man six inches tall, with sausage-shaped arms and legs, and a round dull head with pinprick eyes and a shallow slash for a mouth. The old rabbi gave Avram a scrap of paper on which was written a brief phrase. Avram said the words, his heart pounding. Instantly the dark little thing sat up, looked around, and then stood and began to walk briskly about the tabletop. Its limbs bent oddly, without benefit of joints. Avram had made one leg too long, and the little golem moved with a lurching swagger, like a sailor newly ashore. It gave off a not-unpleasant whiff of freshly turned earth.

“Command it,” the old rabbi said.

“Golem!” said Avram, and the doll-like thing pulled instantly to attention. “Jump up and down three times,” Avram said. The golem executed three small hops, reaching about an inch off the table. Avram grinned with excitement. “Touch your head with your left hand,” he said, and the golem did so, a toy soldier saluting its commander.

Avram cast about for something else for the golem to do. In a corner near the desk, a brown spider sat lazily spinning a web between two discarded bottles. “Kill that spider,” he said, pointing.

The golem leapt off the desk and fell to the floor. It picked itself up and scampered to the corner. Avram followed it, holding a candle aloft. The spider, sensing the golem’s approach, tried to scramble away; but the golem was on top of it in a dark blur, scattering the bottles and smashing the spider with its crude fist. Avram watched his creation attack the spider again and again until it was little more than a damp mark on the yeshiva floor. And still the golem went on attacking.

“Golem, stop,” Avram said in a thin voice. The golem glanced up briefly, but then resumed smearing the spider’s remains into the ground. “
Stop
,” he repeated in a louder voice, but now the golem didn’t even look at him. Avram felt a rising panic.

Silently the old rabbi passed him another slip of paper, with another phrase. Gratefully he took it and read it aloud.

The little golem burst apart in midswing. A small shower of dirt rained down among the bottles and the dead spider. Then, blessed silence.

“Once a golem develops a taste for destruction,” the old rabbi said, “little can stop it save the words that destroy it. Not all golems are as crude or stupid as this one, but all share the same essential nature. They are tools of man, and they are dangerous. Once they have disposed of their enemies they will turn on their masters. They are creatures of last resort. Remember that.”

He’d thought about his crude golem for a long time afterward, haunted by the image of the small creature in its frenzy of violence. Had he done wrong to animate it in the first place? How much did a spider’s life count for in the eyes of God? He’d trod on spiders all his life; why did this death feel so different? He had atoned for both golem and spider at Yom Kippur that year, and for years afterward. Gradually, his everyday slights toward kin and colleagues had crowded the incident from his prayers, but he’d never been able to dismiss it entirely. In that room, he had commanded life and death, and later he’d wondered why the Almighty had allowed him to do so. But the purpose of the lesson became clear on the day when the Rabbi spied, walking through Orchard Street’s riotous crowd, a tall woman in a wool coat and a dirty dress, who carried in her wake the scent of freshly turned earth.

No matter how much he was tempted, he knew that he couldn’t destroy her. She was an innocent, and not to blame for her own existence. He still believed this, no matter how much his fear tried to convince him otherwise. It was the real reason why he had named her Chava: from
chai
, meaning life. To remind himself.

No, he could not destroy her. But perhaps there was another way.

He sat at the parlor table, opened the leather satchel, and withdrew a stack of books and loose papers. The books were old and time-eaten, their spines and bindings cracking. The loose papers were covered with notes in the Rabbi’s own hand, copied from those books that had been too fragile to move. He’d spent the morning—had spent weeks of mornings, now—walking from synagogue to synagogue, making excuses to drop in on old friends, fellow rabbis he hadn’t seen in years. He took tea, inquired after their families, listened to stories of fading health and congregational scandals. And then, he asked for a small favor. Would he be able to spend a few minutes in his friend’s private library? No, there was no particular book he was looking for—just a question of interpretation, a particularly thorny issue that he meant to solve for a former congregant. A matter of some delicacy.

It raised their suspicions, of course. As rabbis they’d all seen every sort of conundrum that a congregation could throw at them, and there were few problems that couldn’t be discussed in confidence, as a hypothetical if nothing else. Rabbi Meyer’s request suggested something else, something disturbing.

But they acquiesced and left their offices to give their friend some time alone; and when they returned, he was gone. A note left folded on a desk or chair would inform them that he’d remembered an appointment, and must apologize for leaving so suddenly. Also, he’d found an interesting book that shed some light on his situation, and had been so bold as to borrow it. He would return it, the note assured them, within a few weeks. And when the rabbis searched their bookcases for the missing book, invariably—and to little surprise—they found that he’d taken the most dangerous volume they owned, the one they’d always meant to destroy but never quite could. Often the book had been hidden, but the Rabbi had managed to find it anyway.

It made them all deeply uneasy. What could Meyer possibly want with that knowledge? But they said nothing, to a man. There was desperation in Meyer’s evasions and near-thefts, and they began to feel a guilty relief that he hadn’t brought them into his confidence. If the book could help, so be it. They could only pray that whatever problem Meyer was facing would be taken care of as soon as possible.

The Rabbi put water on to boil for his tea, and prepared a meager supper: challah and schmaltz, a bit of herring, a few half-sour pickles, a drop of schnapps for later. He was not particularly hungry, but he would need the strength. He ate slowly, clearing his mind, preparing himself. And then he set the dishes aside, opened the first book, and began to work.

At six o’clock Thea Radzin turned the sign in the bakery window from
OPEN
to
CLOSED.
The dough for the next morning’s loaves was set out to rise, the tables wiped down, the floor swept clean. The leftover goods were put aside, to be sold at cut rate the next day. At last the Radzins, Anna, and the Golem all filed out the back door and went their separate ways.