Damp winds blew through the forest outside the city of Konin. In his dilapidated shack, Yehudah Schaalman sat in a half-rotted armchair, an old blanket about his shoulders. Dead leaves and scraps of paper skittered across the dirt floor. The fire in the hearth guttered and spat, and Schaalman found himself wondering: what was the weather like in New York? Were Otto Rotfeld and his golem sitting by their own fire, blissfully whiling away the hours? Or had the furniture maker already tired of his clay wife and destroyed her?
He caught himself, and scowled. Why this unending preoccupation with Rotfeld? Usually he spared no second thought for his customers and their illicit acts. He took their money, gave them what they wanted, and slammed the door in their faces. What made this one so different?
Perhaps it was the golem. He’d worked hard on that creature, much harder than he usually did for someone else’s benefit. It had been a pleasing puzzle, to bring Rotfeld’s disparate requests together in one creation, and he’d regretted that he wouldn’t see it brought to life. Though likely that was for the best, given the unpredictable nature of golems in general. Far safer to be on the other side of the ocean, and not with Rotfeld when he reached New York and woke his bride.
Scowling again, he resisted the urge to shake his head like a dog. He had no time for this. Rotfeld’s money was nearly gone, and even with all his studies he was still no closer to his quarry, the secret of unending life.
Beneath the straw-stuffed bed in one corner of the shack was a locked chest, and inside that chest was the sheaf of papers he’d taken from a burnt synagogue, long ago. The brittle fragments were now interleaved with fresh pages on which Schaalman had written formulas, diagrams, observations, trying to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. It was both a chronicle of his studies and a diary of his travels. After that day in the synagogue, he’d wandered from town to town, shtetl to shtetl, through the Kingdom of Prussia to the Austrian Empire to Russia and back, searching for the missing pieces. In Kraków he had sought out a woman rumored to be a witch, stolen her knowledge, and turned her mute to keep her from cursing him. One spring he’d been chased from a Russian village after every pregnant ewe within three leagues gave birth to a two-headed lamb. Someone had thought to accuse the strange Jew of witchcraft—rightly, as it happened, though in their zeal they’d also chased out a harmless old midwife and the village idiot. In Lvov he’d visited an old rabbi on his deathbed, and taken on the guise of one of the shedim, the demon-children of Lilith, escaped from Gehenna to torture him. In this way he forced the terrified rabbi to reveal that he’d once seen a formula for something called the Water of Life. But when Schaalman pressed him for more, the old rabbi’s heart had burst. Schaalman watched the rabbi’s soul pass beyond his reach, and he’d howled with anger and frustration, looking even more like a demon from Gehenna than before.
After that he’d mostly ceased his wanderings, and settled close to Konin. He was growing too old; the roads were full of dangers, and he couldn’t dodge them all. But always, always, every day, he drew closer to the death he was desperate to avoid.
Staring into the fire, he made his decision. He couldn’t afford to spend the winter brooding over an ill-mannered furniture maker. Best to scratch the itch, and be done with it.
He stood and put on an ancient overcoat, wincing as his bones creaked. From his workbench he fetched a wide basin and went outside. An unseasonable snow had fallen in the night. Kneeling, he scraped heaping handfuls of snow into the basin. Returning to his shack, Schaalman placed the basin near the hearth and watched as the snow slumped and melted. He wished it hadn’t come to this. When the last crystals disappeared, Schaalman pulled the water-filled basin from the hearth. He fetched the broken book from its chest and leafed through the relevant pages, checking that he had remembered the formula correctly. From a leather purse he took one of the coins with which Rotfeld had paid him. Then he sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, in front of the basin of water. Gripping the coin tightly in his left hand, he muttered a long incantation. With his right hand he carefully picked up the basin. Another incantation, a deep breath—and then he leaned back and tipped the basin over his head.
The shock of frigid water on his face—
And then he was gone, he was elsewhere.
There was an immense weight on his chest. An eternity of water lay above him, pushing down, breaking his body and grinding his bones. He had never been so cold. He felt the nibblings of a thousand tiny teeth. A sucking blackness stretched in every direction.
The corner of his mind that was still Schaalman realized that Rotfeld had never even made it to America. All that toil, and for nothing. Unwoken, the Golem would have fallen apart by now, an unclaimed wooden crate filled with moldering earth and a soiled dress. A pity.
And then, unexpectedly, the scene changed.
The weight above him was gone. He was no longer buried beneath the ocean but flying above it, moving low and fast, faster than any bird. Shifting water disappeared behind him, mile after mile. The wind roared in his ears.
In the distance a city grew.
He rose higher as he approached until he was floating far above it. The city was spread across a hemmed-in island. Towers and church spires pointed up at him like lances.
He stared down at the narrow streets and saw that this city was also a labyrinth. And like all labyrinths, it hid something precious at its heart. What did it hide?
A voiceless voice whispered the answer.
Life unending.
Schaalman surfaced, coughing. The basin lay upside down on the floor. Freezing water dripped from his face and clothes. His left fist burned: the coin had turned colder than ice.
For the rest of the day he lay huddled and shivering on his bed, wrapped in every blanket and rug he owned. His joints ached and his frostbitten palm sent jolts of fire up his arm. But he was calm, and his mind was clear.
The next morning he rose from his bed, ran his fingers through his beard, and went into town to buy a steamship ticket for New York.
On a cold and wet autumn morning, Michael Levy arrived at the Sheltering House to find the stoop plastered with flyers printed in Yiddish from a group calling itself the “Jewish Members of the Republican State Committee.” The fliers urged all self-respecting Jews to cast their lot with Colonel Roosevelt for governor. After all, Roosevelt had recently trounced the Spanish at San Juan Hill—and had not the Jews once been robbed and cast out by Spain, and hounded by its Inquisitors? Vote to express your approval of Spain’s defeat! the flyer cried. Michael peeled them from the rough stone as he passed, and squeezed out the water before tossing them in his office wastebasket. Synagogue advertisements he could abide, but not shameless vote-mongering from Republican elites.
It had been a difficult autumn for Michael. He’d stretched the Sheltering House budget to its breaking point and still did not know how they would make it through the year. The price of coal climbed ever higher; the roof was leaking, and the top-floor ceiling was damp with mold. Worst of all, a young Russian man named Gribov had recently gone to sleep in a second-floor bed and failed to wake up. Michael had called in the Health Department, and the Sheltering House was threatened with two weeks of quarantine. In the end, the inspector, who’d glanced over the immigrant’s body with clinical distaste, decided against it—there were no signs of typhus or cholera, and no one could recall the man complaining of anything. But for the next week the House’s mood was tense and somber, and Michael barely slept for worry. It seemed to him that the entire enterprise was hanging by a thread.
His friends took in the new hollows under his eyes and told him he was working himself into an early grave. His uncle might have counseled him similarly, but Michael hadn’t seen him in some time, not since he’d visited with the woman named Chava. He wondered vaguely if he should be worried. Was his uncle ill? Or was it something else? Michael’s thoughts trailed back to the tall woman and her box of pastries, and the fond and protective way his uncle had looked at her. Could she . . . ? And he . . . ? But no, it seemed too ridiculous. He shook his head and resolved to check in on his uncle soon.
But one thing led to another, and the top-floor ceiling threatened to crumble, and Michael’s attention was pulled elsewhere. And then, one morning, the Sheltering House cook came into Michael’s office and placed a box of almond macaroons on his desk.
“The new girl at the bakery said to give these to you,” she said, plainly amused. “For free, if you can believe. She found out I was from the Sheltering House and insisted.”
The new girl? After a moment he realized, and smiled. The cook’s eyebrow went up.
“A tall woman?” he asked, and the cook nodded. “She’s a friend of my uncle’s. I was the one who suggested she go to Radzin for a job. Most likely she meant these as a thank-you.”
“Oh, most likely,” she replied airily.
“Dora, I only met her once. And she’s a widow. A recent one.”
The cook shook her head at his naïveté, and plucked a cookie from the box as she left.
He lifted a macaroon in his palm. It was thick and slightly domed, but felt light as air. The top was decorated with almond slivers, arranged in a circle like flower petals. He popped it in his mouth, and felt happy for the first time in weeks.
Slowly the Golem grew more accustomed to the bakery and its rhythms. Her turns at the register were no longer so frightening. She was beginning to learn which customers bought the same thing every day, and which of them appreciated it when she made up their order in advance. She smiled at all of them, even when she didn’t feel like it. Led by a hundred little prompts, she very carefully tried to give each of them exactly what they wanted from her. And when she was successful, they would step away from the register with a lighter heart, glad that at least one thing, this one simple errand, had gone right that day.
There were still problems to solve. She tended to work too quickly, and the customers would grow anxious or irritated, thinking that she was rushing them: and so she trained herself to slow down, and ask after their health and their families, even when the line was long. She even learned to deal with those customers who were perpetually indecisive, who stood at the counter debating the merits of this or that. The breakthrough came when one day, a woman told her to simply choose for her, from what she herself liked best. But the Golem had no particular favorites: she had tried all the pastries, and could distinguish one from another, but for her there was no like or dislike. Each was merely a different experience. She thought of choosing at random—but then, in a moment of inspiration, she did what she rarely allowed herself to do. She focused on the woman, and sifted through the tangle of her conflicting desires. Something economical would be best, but she also wanted something sweet . . . she had been feeling so low this week, what with the landlord raising the rent and then that awful argument with her Sammy, so didn’t she deserve something nice for herself? But then it would be gone, and she would feel no better, only poorer . . .
“I like the raisin challah on days like this,” the Golem said. “It’s sweet, but it’s filling. And one challah lasts a long time.”
At once the woman beamed. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s exactly what I wanted.” And she paid for the challah and left, her spirits lifted.
Happy with her success, the Golem tried this technique on other indecisive customers. She was right more often than not, and tried not to take her failures personally. She was coming to realize that some people, for whatever reason, would never be satisfied.
She still made mistakes on occasion, especially at the end of the day when a mental fatigue would set in, and her thoughts would drift. She’d reach for the wrong thing, or call someone by the wrong name, or make some other silly little error. Once in a while a customer would walk out with the wrong order, and then come back to complain. She would apologize profusely, horrified by her poor performance—but it was just as well, for otherwise her employers might have thought her too good to be true. Mr. Radzin was a meticulous accountant, and he had been over the figures repeatedly. There was no question: sales were up, and for no good reason, while on the other side of the ledger his costs were shrinking. Intuition told him it had to do with the new girl. She might make a mistake or two at the register, but she never misread a recipe, or added the salt twice by accident, or left a sheet of cookies too long in the oven. She was never sick, never slow, never late. She was a miracle of productivity.
Though there were also times when she acted as though she was from another world. One morning Mrs. Radzin caught her peering oddly at an egg. “What’s wrong with it, Chavaleh? Is it bad?”
Still staring at the egg, the girl had absentmindedly replied, “Nothing—it’s only, how do they make them the exact same size and shape, every time?”
Mrs. Radzin frowned. “How do who, dear? The chickens?”
At her table, Anna gave a snort of laughter.
The girl carefully put down the egg and said, “Excuse me,” and disappeared into the back.
“Don’t tease, Anna,” scolded Mrs. Radzin.
“But what an odd question!”
“Have some compassion, she’s a widow in mourning. It does strange things to the mind.”
Ignoring the women, Radzin went into the back for more flour. The door to the water closet was closed. He listened for the sounds of crying—but what he heard instead was her voice, in a whisper: “You must be more careful. You must be more careful.” He fetched the flour and left. A few minutes later she emerged from the back as though nothing had happened, and went to her silent work, ignoring Anna’s periodic giggles.
“What do you suppose is wrong with her?” Radzin asked his wife that night.
“There’s nothing the matter with Chava,” she snapped.
“I have eyes, Thea, and so do you. She’s different, somehow.”
They were in bed together. Next to the wall, Abie and Selma lay curled on their pallets, sunk in the bone-deep sleep of the young.
“I knew a boy, growing up,” Thea said. “He couldn’t stop counting things. Blades of grass, bricks on a wall. The other boys would gather round and yell numbers at him, because if he lost his place he had to start all over again. He would just stand there counting, with tears rolling down his face. It made me so angry. I asked my father why he couldn’t stop, and he told me there was a demon in the boy’s mind. He said I should stay away, in case he did something dangerous.”
“Did he? Do anything dangerous?”
“Of course not. But he died, the year before we left. A mule kicked him in the head.” She paused, and then said, “I always wondered if he provoked it. Deliberately.”
Radzin snorted. “Suicide by mule?”
“Everyone knew that animal had a temper.”
“There would be a dozen better ways to do it.”
His wife rolled away from him. “Oh, I don’t know why I talk to you. If I say it’s black, it must be white.”
“If I see Chava standing behind any mules, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Awful man. Go boil your head like a turnip.” They were quiet a moment, and then she said, “I’d like to see a mule try to kick her. She’d braid its legs like a challah.”
Radzin laughed once, loud in the small room. Below them, the boy mumbled something. His sister shifted on her pallet. Their parents waited, tensed—but the children grew silent again.
“Go to sleep,” Thea whispered. “And leave me some covers, for once.”
Radzin lay awake for a long time, listening to the breathing of his children and his wife. The next morning, he took his newest employee aside and told her he was raising her pay by ten cents a day. “You deserve it,” he said, gruffly. “But one word to Anna, and you’ll be splitting it with her. I don’t want her clamoring for money she doesn’t deserve.” He’d expected her to thank him but instead she only stood, looking chagrined. “Well? I just gave you a raise, girl. Aren’t you happy?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Yes, of course. Thank you. And I won’t tell Anna.” But she seemed more thoughtful than usual that day; and once or twice he saw her glance at Anna, her face full of a poorly disguised guilt.
“But it isn’t fair that they should pay Anna less money than me,” the Golem protested to Rabbi Meyer. “She can’t work as hard as I can! It’s not her fault!”
The Golem was pacing the Rabbi’s living room. It was a Friday night and the dishes from the small supper were still on the table. The Golem looked forward to her Sabbath evenings with the Rabbi—it was the only time all week when she could ask questions and talk freely. But on this night, her dilemma eclipsed the rest of her thoughts. The Rabbi, concerned, sat watching her pace.
“It’s not as though I need the money,” she muttered. “I have nothing to spend it on.”
“Why not buy something nice for yourself, as a reward for your work? Perhaps a new hat?”
She frowned. “I already have a hat. Is there something wrong with it?”
“Not at all,” he said, reflecting that her creator had certainly not given her a young woman’s sense of frivolity. “Chava, I understand why you’re upset, and it speaks well of you. But from Radzin’s perspective, you’re worth more than Anna. To pay you both the same would be dishonest. Say I needed to buy a new kettle, and could choose between a large one and a small one. You’d expect the larger kettle to cost more, wouldn’t you?”
The Golem said, “But what if the man who made the smaller kettle was poorer, and had a larger family to look after? Wouldn’t that figure into your decision?”
The Rabbi sighed. “Yes, I suppose it would. But if these facts were hidden from me, as they so often are, then all I would know is that there are two kettles in front of me, one large and one small. That’s all Radzin knows, as well. And please, Chava, stop pacing. You’re making me dizzy.”
Instantly she stopped, and sat in one of the parlor chairs, watching her hands twist together in her lap. “Perhaps I should give away what I don’t need,” she said. “Or”—the Golem’s face lit with the thought—“I could give it to you!”
Instantly she saw the Rabbi recoil from the idea. “No, Chava. That’s your money, not mine.”
“But I don’t need it!”
“Perhaps not now. But one must always plan for the future. I’ve lived long enough to know that there will come a time when you’ll need it, and probably when you least expect. Money is a tool, and you can do great good with it, for others as well as yourself.”
It sounded like good advice, but the Golem was not completely mollified. All the Rabbi’s answers had been like this lately, pertaining to the matter at hand but also addressing something larger that was yet to come. It made her uneasy. She felt as though he were trying to teach her as much as he could in as little time as possible. His cough hadn’t worsened, but it was no better either, and she’d noticed that his clothing had begun to hang on him, as though he’d shrunk. The Rabbi insisted that all was as it should be. “I’m an old man, Chava,” he’d said. “The human body is like a piece of fabric. No matter how well one cares for it, it frays as it ages.”
And what about a golem’s body? she wanted to ask. You say I won’t age—but will I fray? But she held her tongue. She’d begun to worry that questions such as these were too large a burden for both of them.
“Besides,” the Rabbi went on, “from what you tell me about this Anna, she sounds like a less than serious-minded woman. Perhaps she can learn from your example, even if it doesn’t come naturally to her.”
“Perhaps,” the Golem agreed. “She doesn’t seem to wish me ill as much as before. But then, she’s been preoccupied with her new suitor. She thinks about him quite a lot, and hopes he will walk her home from the bakery, so they can—” Caught up in her description, she bit back the words just in time.
“Yes, well.” The Rabbi had colored slightly. “She’s a foolish girl, if she’s given herself to him before marriage. Or at the very least, before a promise of one.”
“Why so?” the Golem asked.
“Because she has everything to lose. Marriage has many benefits, and one of them is the protection of a child, the likely result of their . . . current behavior. An unmarried man is free to leave a woman, whatever condition she may be in, without consequence to himself. And what of the woman? She’s now burdened, and may not be able to support the child, or even herself. Women in these situations have turned to the ugliest of crimes out of desperation, and then lose whatever virtue they have left. From there, it’s a short journey to disease, poverty, and death. It’s no exaggeration to say that a night of pleasure can cost a young woman her life. I saw it far too often as a rabbi, even among the best families.”
But she seems so happy, the Golem thought.
The Rabbi stood and began to clear the dishes from the table, coughing once or twice. Quickly the Golem went to help him, and they did the dishes together in silence. “Rabbi, may I ask you something?” she said after a while. “It might embarrass you.”
The Rabbi smiled. “I’ll do my best, but don’t expect miracles.”
“If the act of love is so dangerous, why do people risk so much for it?”
The Rabbi was quiet for a while. Then he said, “If you had to guess, what would you say?”
The Golem recalled what she knew of such longings, the nocturnal lusts of passersby on the street. “It excites them to be dangerous, and to have a secret from the rest of the world.”
“That’s one aspect of it, but not the whole,” said the Rabbi. “What you’re missing is loneliness. All of us are lonely at some point or another, no matter how many people surround us. And then, we meet someone who seems to understand. She smiles, and for a moment the loneliness disappears. Add to that the effects of physical desire—and the excitement you spoke of—and all good sense and judgment fall away.” The Rabbi paused, then said, “But love founded only on loneliness and desire will die out before long. A shared history, tradition, and values will link two people more thoroughly than any physical act.”
They were silent for a while, and the Golem thought about this. “Then this is what is meant by true love?” she asked. “Tradition, and values?”
The Rabbi chuckled. “Perhaps that’s too simplistic. I’m an old man, Chava, and a widower. I left this all behind years ago. But I do remember what it was to be young, and to feel that there was no one else in the world but the beloved. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I can see what truly lasts between a man and a woman.”
He trailed away, lost in memory, staring at the dish towel in his hand. In the light of the kitchen lamp, his skin looked sallow and spotted, and as thin as eggshell. Had he always seemed so fragile? Rotfeld had looked like this, she thought, pale and sweating in the kerosene light. She’d always known that she would outlive the Rabbi, but now the cold truth hit her as if for the first time. A pulse of grief ran through her—and the drinking glass that she’d been drying shattered in her hand.
Both jumped at the noise. Clear shards fell glittering to the floor.
“Oh, no,” the Golem said.
“It’s all right,” said the Rabbi. He bent to gather up the pieces with the dishrag, but the Golem took it from him, saying, “I’m the one who broke it. And you might cut yourself.”
The Rabbi watched as she swept up the glass and rinsed the nearby dishes. “Did something upset you?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head. “I was only careless. It was a long day.”
He sighed. “It is late. Let’s finish the dishes, and then I’ll take you home.”
It was nearing eleven o’clock by the time they reached her boardinghouse. The air had turned crisp, with a cutting wind. The Golem walked headfirst into it as though it were little more than a breeze. The Rabbi walked hunched at her side, coughing occasionally into his muffler.
“Come inside the parlor and get warm, at least,” she said at the boardinghouse steps.
He shook his head, smiling. “I must be getting back. Good night, Chava.”
“Good night, Rabbi.” And she watched him walk away, a small old man on a windy street.
The Rabbi’s walk home from the Golem’s boardinghouse was torturous. The wind battered his face and cut through his overcoat and thin trousers. He shook like a half-frozen animal. But at least he had succeeded. Not once during the evening had he thought of the satchel of books and papers hidden under his bed. What would have happened, had she caught the edge of a fear, a desire? I hope she will leave soon, so that I can go back to my texts, and find a way to control her! Might she have attacked him, out of an instinct toward self-preservation? Or would she have agreed willingly, even encouraged his research? He’d never asked her whether she would prefer to have a master again, and now the thought of such a conversation made his throat tighten. In a sense it would be like asking someone whether they’d like to escape their present difficulties by killing themselves.
Constantly he had to remind himself that she wasn’t human. She was a golem, and masterless. He forced himself to remember his own little golem at yeshiva, its indifferent destruction of the spider. They were not the same creature; but at heart they had the same nature. That cold remorselessness existed somewhere in her as well.
But did she also have a soul?
On its surface, the answer was a simple no. Only the Almighty could bestow a soul, as He had ensouled Adam with His divine breath. And the Golem was a creature of man, not God. Any soul she could have would be at most partial, a fragment. If he turned her to dust, it might be an unwarranted act of destruction; it would not, however, count as murder.
But these scriptural reassurances paled when faced with the Golem herself: her disappointments and triumphs, her clear concern for his ill health. She would talk in energetic tones about her work at the bakery, and her growing confidence with the customers; and he saw not an animated lump of clay but a young woman, learning to live in the world. If he succeeded, and bound her to a new master, he would be robbing her of all she’d accomplished. Her free will would disappear, to be replaced by her master’s commands. Was that not murder, of a sort? And if it came to it, would he have the strength to do it?
By the time he reached his tenement, his footsteps had been reduced to a shuffle. Inside, the staircase stretched up into the dark. He took the steps one at a time, his hand clammy on the wood banister. He began coughing halfway up. By the time he reached his door, he couldn’t stop.
The key fumbled in the lock; shaking hands lit the lamp. He went to the kitchen for water, but the cough deepened, gripping his entire body. He bent double, nearly knocking his head on the washbasin. Finally the spasms slowed, then stopped. He lowered himself to the floor and breathed shallowly, the taste of blood in his mouth.
He’d asked his doctor to come see him, not a week ago. A bit of a cough, the Rabbi said. I only wanted to check. The doctor had spent long minutes with his cold stethoscope on the Rabbi’s chest and back, his expression growing more and more unreadable. At last he’d packed the equipment away in a battered leather case, saying nothing. How long, the Rabbi asked. Six months at most, the doctor said, and then turned away, tears on his cheeks. Yet another fear to keep from the Golem.
He drank a finger of schnapps to steady himself, and put the kettle on for tea. His hands were not shaking so badly now. Good. There was work to be done.