Early on the morning after Rabbi Meyer died, one of Michael Levy’s roommates woke him, gently shaking his shoulder. There was a rabbinical-looking man at the door, asking for him. Michael went to the door and recognized one of his uncle’s old associates. He saw the sorrow in the man’s face, and the discomfort at his task, and began to cry, without needing to be told.
We aren’t sure when it happened, the rabbi said. A woman found him. We don’t know who she was. The neighbors didn’t recognize her. A pause, and a message in the man’s silence: his uncle should not have been alone with a strange woman, but this would be kept between them. Michael thought of his uncle’s friend Chava but said nothing.
He spent the morning weeping, awash in guilt. He should have visited, like he’d told himself he would. Made an effort, apologized, patched up their differences. Helped him. Hadn’t he sensed that there was something wrong?
That afternoon he went to his uncle’s tenement. Someone had already hung black crepe about the hallway door. In the bedroom, a young man with sidelocks, wearing a dark hat, sat in a chair next to the bed, where his uncle lay. Michael glanced at the unmoving figure, and then away again. His uncle looked stiff, shrunken. Not as Michael wanted to remember him.
The young man nodded distantly at Michael, and then went back to his silent watching: the shmira, the vigil over the body. Were it any other day of the week, there would be a flurry of activity, of men praying together, washing his uncle’s body, sewing it into the shroud. But it was the Sabbath, the day of rest. Funeral arrangements were forbidden.
He wanted to ask how he could help, but it was out of the question. He was an apostate. He wouldn’t be allowed. Perhaps if he were a son, not merely a nephew, his uncle’s colleagues would’ve taken pity on him, allowed him to play some role. As it was, he was surprised he was even allowed inside.
A soft knock at the door. The young man went to answer it. A woman’s voice in the hallway: the young man stepped back, shaking his head quickly. Here, at least, was something Michael could do. “Let me,” he said, and went out into the hallway. His uncle’s friend stood there, a picture of misery.
“Michael,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here. I should’ve known I wouldn’t be let in, I should have realized . . .”
“It’s all right,” he said.
But she was shaking her head, her arms wrapped around herself. “I wish I could see him,” she said.
“I know,” he said. Beneath Michael’s grief, he felt the familiar ire building against the religious restrictions. How well did the man in the bedroom know his uncle, anyhow? What made him more worthy than Michael to sit the vigil? “You’re the one who found him,” he said, and she nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, hating himself but needing to know, “it’s none of my business, but were you and he—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” she said quickly. “Only . . . good friends. He was very kind to me. We had dinner together, on Fridays.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “Everyone else thinks it too.”
They stood there together in the doorway beneath the crepe, a pair of outcasts.
“I never thanked you,” he said. “For the macaroons.”
A hint of a smile. “I’m glad you liked them.”
“Then you’re doing well at the bakery?”
“Yes. Very well.”
A silence.
“When is the funeral?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“I won’t be allowed,” she said, as if to confirm it.
“No.” He sighed. “No women. I wish it were otherwise.”
“Then please say good-bye for me,” she murmured, and turned to leave.
“Chava,” he said. She paused, one foot on the stair, and Michael realized he was about to ask her if she would have coffee with him. A hot wave of shame washed over him: his uncle lay dead, only a few feet away. They were both in mourning. It would be indecent by any reckoning.
“May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” he said, the old formula rising unbidden to his lips.
“And you as well,” she said; and then she left him alone with his thoughts in the dark of the hallway.
“I met an interesting woman last night,” the Jinni told Arbeely.
“I don’t want to know,” Arbeely said. Together they were forging a batch of skillets. Arbeely shaped each one, and then the Jinni smoothed it and applied the finishing touches. It was repetitive, bland work, but they were developing a rhythm.
“It wasn’t like that,” the Jinni said. He paused, and then asked, “What’s a golem?”
“A what?”
“A golem. That’s what she called herself. She said, ‘I am a golem.’ ”
“I have no idea,” Arbeely said. “You’re certain she didn’t say German?”
“No, golem.”
“I can’t help you there.”
They worked in silence for a minute. Then the Jinni said, “She was made of clay.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I said, she was made of clay.”
“Then I did hear correctly.”
“This is strange? You haven’t heard of this before?”
Arbeely snorted. “Strange? It’s impossible!”
Raising an eyebrow, the Jinni picked up the wrong end of Arbeely’s burning-hot iron with his bare hand.
Arbeely sighed, conceding the point. “But you’re certain? What did she look like?”
“Light-skinned. Dark hair. About your height, dressed plainly.”
“Then she didn’t look like a clay woman?”
“No. You wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
Arbeely drew breath to challenge this, but the Jinni said, “Enough, Arbeely, she was made of clay. I know it as surely as I know I am fire and you are flesh and bone.”
“All right, but such a thing isn’t easy to believe. What else did she tell you, this clay woman?”
“She said her name was Chava.”
Arbeely frowned. “Well, it’s not a Syrian name. Where did you meet her?”
“A slum near the Bowery. Our paths crossed.”
“What were you doing—never mind, I don’t want to know. She was alone?”
“Yes.”
“Then she isn’t a very careful woman. Or perhaps she has no reason to be.”
“She wasn’t a prostitute, if that’s your meaning.”
“Perhaps you should tell me the whole story.”
And so the Jinni related the entirety of his encounter with the strange woman made of clay. Arbeely listened with a rising feeling of unease. “And she recognized you as—well, different?”
“Yes, but she didn’t know what a jinni was.”
“And you told her? Why?”
“To keep her from running away. But she did anyway.”
“And when you followed her home, where did she live?”
“East of the Bowery.”
“Yes, but what neighborhood? What nationality was she?”
“I have no idea. The language on most of the signs looked like this.” The Jinni took up a pencil and found a scrap of paper, and drew out a few of the characters he remembered from the awnings and windows.
“Those are Hebrew letters,” Arbeely said. “You were in a Jewish neighborhood.”
“I suppose.”
“I don’t like this,” muttered Arbeely. He was not a politically minded man, and what prejudices he harbored were mostly mild and abstract; but the thought of the Jinni causing trouble in a Jewish neighborhood made him fearful. Mount Lebanon’s Turkish overlords had long made a game of pitting its Christian and Jewish populations against each other, forcing them to compete for Muslim favor. The disagreements had at times turned bloody and edged into riot, fanned by accusations of Christian blood in Jewish bread—a claim that always struck Arbeely as ridiculous on its face, though he knew many were willing to believe it. Of course the Jews of the Lower East Side were European, not Syrian; but here they were by far the larger community, and it seemed more than plausible that they’d bear a grudge on their brethren’s behalf.
“You told her too much,” Arbeely said.
“And if she repeats it, no one will believe her.”
“That doesn’t mean that she can’t cause trouble. What if she comes here, and starts spreading rumors? Or worse, what if she tells the Jews of the Lower East Side that she’s discovered a dangerous and terrible creature that’s living with the Syrians on Washington Street?”
“Then we’ll laugh at her and say she’s mad.”
“Will you laugh at an entire mob? Will you laugh when they loot Sam’s store, or set fire to the Faddouls’ coffeehouse?”
“But why would they—”
“They’d need no reason!” shouted Arbeely. “Why can’t you understand? Men need no reason to cause mischief, only an excuse! You live among good, hardworking people, and your carelessness puts them in danger. For God’s sake, don’t destroy their lives to suit your whims!”
The Jinni was startled by the man’s vehemence. He’d never seen Arbeely so angry. “All right,” he said. “I apologize. I won’t go back there again.”
“Good,” said Arbeely, in surprise—he’d been expecting a fight. “That’s good. Thank you.” And together they resumed their work.
A few nights later, the city was hit with the first real snowfall of the season. The Jinni stood at his window and watched the city silently disappear. He’d seen snow before, drifting dry and white across the desert floor, and shining from the high peaks. But this snow softened all it touched, rounding the sharp edges of buildings and rooftops. He watched until it stopped falling, and then he went down to the street.
He walked to the docks through the unbroken white, feeling the flakes crumple beneath his feet. Tethered boats bobbed in the black water, their decks and rigging lined with snow. Somewhere nearby there was a saloon; the men’s voices and laughter carried in the still air.
It was a tranquility unlike any he’d experienced in this city, but it felt fragile, a moment he’d managed to steal. In the morning he’d be back to making skillets, playing the Bedouin apprentice. Living in secret. He remembered the rush of gladness he’d felt when he told the woman what he was. As though, for a moment, he’d been freed.
Occasionally a small voice spoke up inside him, saying, you’re a fool for not going home. But he could barely consider the thought before crushing it beneath a thousand fears and objections. Even if he survived the ocean crossing, he could not return to his glass palace, his earlier life, bound as he was. He’d be forced to seek refuge in the jinn habitations, among his kind but utterly apart, pitied and feared, pointed out as a cautionary example to the wayward young. Avoid humankind, little one, or this will be your end.
No, if he must live estranged from his own kind, then let it be in New York. He would find a way to free himself. And if he couldn’t? Well, then, he supposed he would die here.
The Golem sat in her window, and watched the snow fall. The cold seeped in around the window frame, and she pulled her cloak tighter against it. She’d discovered that although the chill itself did not bother her, it stiffened the clay of her body, turning her restless and irritated. She’d taken to wearing her cloak even in her room, but it didn’t help much. Already her legs ached, and it was only two in the morning.
The snow was beautiful, though. She wished she could go out in it, and feel what it was like while it was still pristine and fresh. She imagined the Rabbi’s new grave across the river in Brooklyn, lying beneath a growing white blanket. She would visit him soon, she thought, but first she’d have to figure out how. She had never been to Brooklyn; she’d barely been out of the Lower East Side. And were women permitted in a cemetery? How could she ask anyone, and not reveal her ignorance?
The Rabbi’s death had revealed how little she knew of the culture in which she lived. Within moments of her terrible discovery, the neighbors had begun to play their roles, following the script they all knew by heart: the fetching of the doctor, the covering of the mirror. When she’d encountered the young man sitting the vigil the next day, she’d been appalled by the force of his distaste, the wrongness of her presence. She’d appreciated Michael’s anger on her behalf; but he at least understood what he trespassed against, while she merely blundered in the dark.
Michael. She suspected that even without her ability, she would have known what it was he wanted to ask her in the hallway. She was thankful that he hadn’t. Judge a man by his actions, not his thoughts. The Rabbi was right: Michael was a good person, and she was glad to have met him again. Perhaps they would encounter each other occasionally, on the street or in the bakery. They might be acquaintances, friends. She hoped he would accept that.
Meanwhile her life, it seemed, went on. At work, Mrs. Radzin offered her condolences, and mentioned that Mr. Radzin would be paying their respects at shivah at the Rabbi’s tenement. (The Golem wondered, did Mrs. Radzin stay home because women weren’t allowed, or simply to take care of the children? How was she to know these things?) Anna and Mrs. Radzin both offered to take the Golem’s shifts at the register, so that she could work quietly in the back. It was a kindness, and she accepted thankfully.
The solitude allowed her to think hard about the events of the previous days, and register that they’d truly happened. The encounter with the glowing man, in particular, seemed like something she might have imagined. He’d left no real mark or trace of his existence, save in her memory.
She winced, thinking of how she’d revealed her secret to him. But it had been almost beyond her control. He’d told her his own so easily that for a moment her caution had seemed excessive, even silly. And then, he’d asked What are you?; and the frank, eager curiosity of the question had broken her open.
At least she’d run from him before she could do any more damage. It had been a chance encounter, an aberration. It wouldn’t be repeated.
But in unguarded moments, mixing dough or counting stitches, her thoughts came back to him, pondering what he’d said. He was a jinni—but what was that? Why did his face glow the way it did? How had he come here by accident?
Sometimes she even imagined searching him out, going to Washington Street and asking him her questions. Then she would catch hold of her thoughts, and turn them to something else. It was too dangerous a fantasy to entertain.
There was one more loose end from that night that still needed her attention. She’d thought long and hard about the envelope she’d taken from the Rabbi’s hand, with its small square of folded paper. She hadn’t opened it again, hadn’t trusted herself not to unfold the paper all the way. She wondered now if the Rabbi had even meant to give it to her. Wouldn’t he at least have put her name on the envelope, or disguised its contents somehow? But all this speculation was useless; she would never know for certain. Briefly she considered burning it, but the thought only made her clutch at it more tightly. Whatever the Rabbi’s intentions, the envelope had come to her, and she couldn’t destroy it.
The question then became where to put it. She couldn’t keep it at the boardinghouse: her landlady might find it, or the house might burn down. The bakery was even riskier. It seemed best to keep it with her. And so, taking some of the money from the cookie tin beneath her bed, she went to a jeweler’s and bought a large brass locket that hung from a sturdy chain. The locket was plain and oblong, with rounded corners. There was just enough room inside for the square of paper, folded tightly. She closed the clasp, hung the chain about her neck, and tucked the locket inside her shirtwaist. The collar was high enough to hide most of the chain; one would have to look hard to see its glint at the nape of her neck. Now, as she stared out at the snow, the locket rested against her skin, cool and secret. It was an odd sensation, but already she was growing used to it. Soon, she supposed, she would hardly notice.
On the last night of shivah, Michael Levy stood in the corner of his uncle’s parlor and listened to the Mourner’s Kaddish as it was read yet again. Its sad, swaying rhythm had pulled at him ever since the funeral service. He felt ill. He passed a hand over his forehead; he was sweating, even in the cold air of the room. The men in the parlor were a wall of black coats, their yarmulkes bobbing up and down as they chanted in deep, froggy voices.
At the cemetery in Brooklyn he’d stood next to the open grave and gathered a handful of frozen dirt, then extended his arm and opened his hand. The frozen clumps had struck the plain pine coffin with a flat and hollow sound. The coffin had seemed too small, too far away, like something at the bottom of a well.
May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. The prescribed words of mourning, the words that had come to his lips in the hallway with his uncle’s friend: he’d heard them dozens of times in those few short days, and they were starting to grate on his nerves. Why “among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem?” Why not “among the mourners of the world”? So parochial, so small-minded. As though the only loss that mattered was the ancient loss of the Temple, and all other losses merely reflected it. He knew that it was meant to remind the mourner that he was still part of a community, and among the living. But Michael had his community: his friends from school, his colleagues at the Sheltering House, his brothers and sisters in the Socialist Labor Party. He didn’t need these pious strangers. He’d seen their sidewise glances at him, taking in the apostate nephew. Let them judge, he thought. It was the last night. They’d all be rid of each other soon enough.
The black-hatted men came and went. They stood by the parlor table eating hard-boiled eggs and slices of bread, talking quietly. A few times Michael saw older rabbis, men he vaguely remembered as friends of his uncle’s, scanning the bookshelves, looking for something. Each one would come to the end of the shelves and frown, disappointed, and then glance about guiltily and move on. Were they browsing for valuable volumes they might appropriate? Professional covetousness, even at a shivah? He smirked without mirth. So much for the purity of mourning.
Well, they could have it all. He was the designated heir to what little there was, but he planned to donate most of it. He had nowhere to put the furniture, no use for the religious items. After everyone was gone he roamed about the rooms with a box, setting aside the few things he would keep. The silver-plated tea set, of which his aunt had been so proud. Her shawls and jewelry, which he’d discovered in a wardrobe drawer. In the same drawer, a pouch containing a water-stained billfold and a broken watch. The watch had once been fine; he’d never seen his uncle carry it. In the billfold was both American and what looked like German currency. He added both to the box, wondering if they were relics of his uncle’s crossing. Personal correspondence, the few family daguerreotypes in frames, including—hidden in a drawer—his own parents’ wedding portrait. His mother a round-cheeked girl, peeking out from beneath a lace veil spangled with flowers. His father, tall and thin in a silk hat, staring not at the camera or his new wife but off to one side, as if already planning his escape. The old anger at his father rose briefly before dissolving back into sorrow. Under the bed he found a satchel half-full of dilapidated old books. These he added to their brethren on the bookshelves. He knew of a charity that sent books to new Jewish congregations in the Middle West—no doubt they would be interested.
Under the cloth on the parlor table he found a slim sheaf of papers covered with his uncle’s handwriting. In their haste to right the parlor and make it ready for mourners, his uncle’s associates hadn’t noticed it. One paper was set to the side, as if more important than the others. On it was written two lines in strange, indecipherable Hebrew. It all looked very arcane, and he considered handing the whole stack over to the first rabbi he saw; but his uncle’s handwriting exerted a visceral pull on him. He couldn’t, not yet. It was all too fresh. Wearily he tossed the papers into the empty leather satchel. He would sort through them later, once he had regained his sense of perspective.
He lugged the box and the satchel back to his own tenement rooms, and shoved them beneath a table. He was still sweating, and nauseated, though he’d eaten barely anything for days. He vomited in the water closet and then collapsed onto his pallet.
In the morning, one of his roommates found him soaked and shaking. A doctor was brought in. Perhaps a mild influenza, the doctor said; and within hours the entire building was quarantined, its doors impassable.
They took Michael to the Swinburne Island hospital, where he lay among the terrified and heartbroken immigrants turned away at Ellis Island, the dying and the misdiagnosed. His fever swelled. He hallucinated a fire on the ceiling, and then a writhing, dripping nest of snakes. He struggled to get away from them, and realized he was tied into his bed. He cried out, and a cool impartial hand came to rest on his forehead. Someone brought a glass of water to his lips. He drank what he could, then descended back into his terrible visions.
Michael’s were not the only cries of delirium in the ward. In a nearby bed lay a Prussian man in his forties, who’d been hale and sound when he boarded the Baltika at its stop in Hamburg. He’d made it to Ellis Island without incident, and had been at the front of the line for the doctor’s examination when he’d felt a tap on his shoulder. The man turned around, and saw behind him a small, wizened old man in a too-large overcoat. The old man beckoned to him, obviously wishing to speak. He bent down closer to hear in the crowded hall, whereupon the old man whispered a string of meaningless, harshly babbling words in his ear.
The man shook his head, trying to get across that he hadn’t understood—but then he was shaking his head more violently, because the muttered syllables had taken up residence inside his head. They grew louder, ricocheting from one side of his skull to the other, buzzing like wasps. He put his fingers in his ears. Please help me, he tried to say, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the din. The old man’s face was all innocent puzzlement. Others in the line were beginning to stare. He clutched his head—the noise was impossible, he was drowning in it—and then he was falling to his knees, shouting incoherently. A froth began to form on his lips. Doctors and men in uniform were grabbing at him now, prying back his eyelids, shoving a leather belt in his mouth. The last thing he saw, before they wrapped him in a straitjacket and took him to Swinburne, was the old man pausing at the unattended desk to stamp his own papers before disappearing into the crowd on the other side.
The Bureau of Immigration officer looked over the papers in his hand, and then scrutinized the man in front of him. He looked older than sixty-four, to be sure, but he had that weathered peasant’s look that meant he could be anywhere under a hundred.
“What year were you born?” On the other side of the desk, the Yiddish translator bent and murmured in the old man’s ear. Eighteen hundred and thirty-five, the answer came back. Well, if he said so. The man’s back was straight and his eyes were clear, and the health stamp was still drying on his papers. He’d already shown his wallet, which held twenty American dollars and a few coins. Enough to keep from being a nuisance. There was no reason not to let him in.
That name, though. “Let’s call you something more American,” he said. “It’s for the best.” And as the old man watched, confusion gathering in his eyes, the officer struck out Yehudah Schaalman and above it wrote Joseph Schall in a dark, square hand.