The Golem and the Jinni (27 page)

Tears sprang to his eyes and clotted his throat, making him cough.

He went to the bedroom to look for clean clothes. In the bottom drawer of his dresser, something else caught his eye: a leather drawstring pouch. With shaking hands—he
must
get something to eat—he opened the pouch and removed the small oilskin envelope, labeled
COMMANDS FOR THE GOLEM
. It belonged with the other papers, he decided. He would give the watch and the billfold to the Golem and apologize for keeping them so long. But this, he would pass on, or else burn. Once he decided what to do.

He was carrying the envelope to the table in the parlor when the attack hit him. He doubled over, coughing; and then his breath left him entirely. It was as though someone had wrapped a steel girder around his chest, and was twisting it tighter and tighter. He gasped for air; a thin wheezing reached his ears. His arm went numb.

The parlor elongated, turned gray at the edges, tilted and spun. He felt the old wool rug under his cheek. He tried to stand, but only rolled onto his back. A distant crackling sensation: the oilskin envelope, still in his hand.

In the last moments left to him, Rabbi Meyer realized he never could have done it. The smaller murder of his new formula, or the utter destruction of the spell in the envelope: either would have been beyond his power while she was still his Chava, still innocent, still the newborn woman he’d first spied holding a sparrow in the palm of her hand.

He tried to hurl the envelope away from himself, below the table. Had he done so? He couldn’t tell. She would need to make her way alone, he had done all he could. The feeling was leaving his body, draining away from his limbs toward his center. It occurred to him to say the
viddui
, the prayer before death. He struggled to remember it.
Blessed are You, who has bestowed me with many blessings. May my death atone for all I have done . . . and may I shelter in the shadow of Your wings in the World to Come.

He stared up into the sky beyond the parlor window. The vivid blueness stretched so high that it seemed to draw him up inside it, pure and wide and all-encompassing.

The Golem went to the Rabbi’s that night carrying an apple strudel, carefully wrapped. She walked with long strides, stretching her legs, feeling the cold night air settle into her body. Lamps glowed in the windows as she passed.

There was no answer to her knock at the Rabbi’s door.

She knocked again, waited. Likely he had fallen asleep. She imagined him on the other side of the door, dozing in a parlor chair. She smiled. He’d chide himself for falling asleep, and making her wait.

She knocked again, louder. Still nothing. She stood there for a few uneasy minutes, unsure of what to do. She wondered what the Rabbi himself would advise, and the answer came as clearly as if he’d spoken in her ear:
You know I don’t lock my door during the day. This is your home as well as mine. Come in!

She opened the door.

The Rabbi’s rooms were dark, the lamps unlit. She peered into the bedroom. The twilight sky threw shadows onto a neatly made bed. She went to the kitchen, set down the strudel, and lit a lamp, her anxiety growing. The fire in the grate had gone out. The air was cold and had a stale smell, like dirty clothes.

She went into the parlor, and there she found him. His legs were twisted to one side. His eyes stared blindly up at the windows behind him.

At first there was no horror, no shock, only a pure, clear disbelief. This was not real. This was a painted picture, an illusion. She would reach out and sweep it away with her fingers.

Trembling, she crouched down and touched his face. It was cold and hard.

Distantly—almost disinterestedly—she sensed something building inside her, and knew that when it reached the surface and broke free it would have the strength to tear down buildings.

His hair had mussed from his fall, and his skullcap had gone askew. He wouldn’t like that. She smoothed it all back into place, taking care to use the lightest of touches. One of his arms was bent at an odd angle from his body. An envelope had slipped from his hand, one edge still balanced on his fingertips. She saw there was something written on it. She bent closer, and read:

Commands for the golem

She reached down and lifted the envelope away. The slick material crackled in her grip; in the silence of the room it was as loud as a firework. She tucked it into the pocket of her cloak.

Still he didn’t move. But now she could hear something, a ragged high keening sound, thin but growing louder. And then louder. There was a knocking at the door, and she realized the sound was coming from herself, and that she was rocking back and forth, hands over her mouth, crying out, and now there were words.
Rabbi, Rabbi!

Someone’s hands were on her shoulders, someone’s voice was in her ear. Other cries, now, not her own.

Footsteps ran out into the hallway and down the stairs. She allowed herself to be pulled from his side and led to a chair. Someone had put a glass of water in her hand. And now neighbor women were walking in and out with quiet purpose, wiping away their tears and talking quietly, nodding and parting again. A man hurried in with a doctor’s leather bag; his dinner napkin was still tucked into his belt. He bent over the Rabbi, peeled back one eyelid, put his ear to the Rabbi’s chest. Then he shook his head. He sat back on his heels, all sense of urgency gone.

A woman placed a sheet over the Rabbi. It billowed, catching the air, and then settled over his body. With another, she draped the mirror in the parlor.

More murmuring. And now the women were casting glances at the Golem, their curiosity plain. Who was she? What had she been doing in the home of a widowed old rabbi? The Golem knew that soon they would work up the nerve to ask who she was. And she wouldn’t be able to lie to them. Not with the Rabbi lying there, underneath the sheet. She had to go. She felt their stares as she passed, imagined the whispers that would follow her. But she didn’t care. The dark thing was still rising inside her; she had to get home.

Outside it was pitch-black, and the wind had picked up. It fought at her clothing and threatened to pull the hat from her head. She took it off, and carried it in one hand. Others paused to stare as she went by, a tall, pale woman in a dark dress and cloak who moved as if driven by some terrible force. One inebriated man saw a lone woman out for a nighttime stroll, and decided to ask after her company. The Golem saw him coming, noted the intent in his eyes and his mind, and thought about how easy it would be to knock him to the ground. She wouldn’t even have to break stride. But as she came closer, the man got a good look at her face, and stepped back, crossing himself. Later he’d tell his friends he’d seen the Angel of Death on Orchard Street, out collecting souls.

Her room at the boardinghouse seemed even smaller than usual. She sat on the edge of her bed. She looked down, and saw her hands were full of dark shreds of felt and ribbon. What were they? Then she realized: it was her hat. She’d pulled it to pieces without noticing.

She tossed the shreds of her hat on the floor, and took off her cloak. If she went through the motions of a usual night, perhaps it would calm her.

She took her dress from the armoire, pulled her chair next to the window, and began to pick apart the stitches. But the passersby kept distracting her. They were the usual motley assortment of drunkards and giggling girls and workingmen, young couples out for secret strolls, the same fears and desires as ever; but now it struck her as obscene. They walked about as though nothing had happened! Didn’t they know that the Rabbi was dead? Had no one told them?

Her hands were moving too quickly, and the scissors slipped. One blade tore the fabric, making a gash as long as her finger.

The Golem cried out, and threw the dress to the floor. Her hands flew to her face. Moaning, she began to rock herself back and forth. The walls seemed to be drawing closer. She couldn’t stay there any longer. She needed to get out. She needed to move. Or else she’d lose control.

Without hat or cloak or destination, the Golem fled from the boardinghouse. She walked without aim, paying little attention to her surroundings. The evening was chill now, with frost in the air. A near-full moon shone high above the gas lamps, turning their light yellow and sickly.

She walked from street to street. The neighborhoods dissolved into each other, the languages changing on the storefronts. Oblivious she walked through Chinatown, barely noticing the red banners that flapped in the wind above her. The signs changed again, to yet another language, and still she kept on, walking her grief into submission.

It was a long while before she began to feel calmer, before her thoughts became smoother, less fractured. She slowed, and then stopped, and looked around. A tenement street stretched out before her, with its walls of buildings to either side. The brick facades were dilapidated and filthy, and the air stank. She turned about: there was no familiar landmark, no river or bridge she could use to orient herself. She was, she realized, utterly lost.

Cautiously she walked on. The following street seemed even less promising and ended in a small park, little more than a stretch of dead grass. She walked to its middle, trying to get her bearings. No fewer than six different streets intersected at the park’s edge. Should she go back the way she came? How would she ever get home?

And then, down one of the streets, a strange light appeared, seeming to float in midair. She paused, alarmed. The light was coming her way. It grew closer, and she saw that it was not a light, but a face; and the face belonged to a man. He was tall, taller than she, and bareheaded. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull. His face—and his hands as well, she saw now—shone with that warm light, like a lamp shaded with gauze.

She watched him come nearer, unable to take her eyes away. She saw him glance at her, and then look again. Then he too stopped. At that distance she could not feel his curiosity, but his expression made it plain. What, he was thinking, is
she
?

The shock of it rooted her to the spot. Only the Rabbi had ever been able to see her as something different.

She knew she should turn and run. Get away from this man, who by seeing her, truly
seeing
her, already knew too much. But she couldn’t. The rest of the world had fallen away. She had to know who he was.
What
he was.

And so, as the man started his cautious approach, the Golem stood her ground, and waited.

Until now, the Jinni’s evening had been rather disappointing.

He’d taken advantage of the clear skies and gone out, but without much enthusiasm. Feeling uninspired, he’d planned to visit the aquarium again but found himself instead at City Hall Park, an unremarkable patchwork of lawn, broken to pieces by wide, intersecting concrete paths. From there, he’d made his way to the Park Row terminal shed, a long low building that stood on thick girders. He walked beneath it and looked up at the trains sleeping on their tracks, waiting to ferry the morning’s passengers across the Brooklyn Bridge.

He hadn’t been to Brooklyn, and he didn’t want to go, not yet. He felt he needed to parcel out these new experiences carefully, to keep from running out. He had a fleeting image of himself, ten, twenty, thirty years hence, wandering in ever-widening circles, exhausting every source of distraction. He rubbed at the iron at his wrist, then noticed what he was doing and stopped. He would not, would
not
, succumb to self-pity.

He wandered northeast along Park Row and realized he was nearing the Bowery. He had no wish to go back again so soon, so he took a random turning, and landed on a street lined with squalid-looking tenements. This, he thought, was no better.

The buildings on either side narrowed to wedges ahead of a large intersection, a cracked wasteland of pavement. Beyond lay a narrow, hemmed-in park. There was a woman standing alone at its center.

At first he only saw that she was a respectable-looking woman, out by herself in the dead of the night. Such a thing was odd, if explainable. But she wore no hat or cloak, merely a shirtwaist and skirt. And why was she staring at him, tracking his every move? Was she deranged, or merely lost?