The Golem stood on a hillside in a Brooklyn cemetery, next to a plot of recently turned earth. Above the plot sat a headstone with Elsa Meyer’s name and dates engraved on one side. The other was still blank, as though it hadn’t yet heard the awful news.
Michael Levy had brought her to the cemetery, and he stood behind her now, lost in sadness and guilt. He’d come to see her at the bakery a few days earlier, at closing time, and apologized for not visiting before. “I was at Swinburne,” he said. “A case of the flu.”
She knew it was the truth, but to the Golem’s eye, Michael was healthier than she’d ever seen him. There was a pink tinge to his cheeks, and the dark circles under his eyes had faded. The eyes themselves, though, were still heavy and sad, and too old for his face. His uncle’s eyes.
He said, “I just wanted to see if there was anything you needed. I don’t know if my uncle was helping you with money, but I know a few people at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society . . .”
“Thank you, Michael, but that’s quite all right,” she said. “I have all I need.”
“I suppose your needs are the same as mine,” he said with an awkward smile. “A little food, a little sleep, and then back to work.”
Her own smile faltered a bit, but he didn’t notice and pressed on. “I’m going to visit my uncle’s grave tomorrow. I don’t know if you keep the Sabbath, but I thought, if you wanted to come . . .”
His nervous hopefulness was making her uncomfortable, but this was something she dearly wanted. “Yes,” she said. “I’d be grateful.”
They arranged to meet at her boardinghouse at ten in the morning. The bell over the door rattled as he left, jarring in the now-quiet shop.
She found she was relieved that he was gone. If only things could be different between them! It would be good to have a friend to talk to, someone who’d known the Rabbi. But his attraction to her complicated matters, not the least because she saw—perhaps better than he did—how it had grown tangled with guilt and remorse. Instead of a fleeting infatuation, she was becoming a dark fascination. She would have to say something to him. Kindly, if possible.
Anna had been lingering in the back, pretending to fuss with her bootlaces. Now she smiled slyly as the Golem retrieved her cloak.
“Don’t look at me like that,” the Golem muttered. “He’s a friend, nothing more.”
“Do you want him to be more?”
“No, I don’t!” She paused, forcing her hands to relax; she’d been in danger of ripping the clasp from her cloak. “I don’t feel that way. But he does, for me.” She turned to Anna, plaintive. “Why can’t we just be friendly? Why do there have to be complications?”
“It’s the way of the world,” Anna said, shrugging.
“It’s a nuisance,” said the Golem.
“Don’t I know it. The boys I’ve had to turn away! But, Chava, you can’t spend the rest of your life alone, either. It just isn’t natural!”
“Would it be better to lie to Michael, and say things I don’t feel?”
“Of course not. But feelings need time to grow. And I hate to think of you in that boardinghouse with all those dusty bachelors, mending the holes in their drawers.”
“I don’t mend their drawers, Anna!”
The girl burst into giggles. After a moment the Golem smiled as well. She was still uncertain what to make of Anna, with her tempestuous romances and flights of fancy; but the young woman was becoming a surprising source of comfort.
The next morning Michael Levy arrived at the boardinghouse exactly on time. They took a streetcar to Park Row, and then boarded the train to Brooklyn. Nervous among the crush of passengers, she said, “I’ve never been across the bridge before.”
“Don’t worry.” He smiled. “It’s not quite as dangerous as crossing the ocean.”
With a series of jolts, the train pulled out of its shed and up the ramp. She watched as they rose, passing delivery wagons and men plodding along on foot. Rooftop chimneys belched soot and steam to either side, and then fell away as they reached the bridge. She’d hoped to see the water, but the train was caged on the inner track behind a stuttering fence of poles and girders. Seen through the fence, the horses and carts on the outer roadway seemed to move with a broken, palsied gait.
The train shuddered to a halt in the Brooklyn shed. With little conversation, Michael led them off the train and onto a succession of streetcars. And then, finally, they were walking up a long drive toward a pair of large, ornate gates.
The world seemed to go quiet as they passed through. The drive narrowed to a curving path, and then opened to a calm vista of snow-topped hills covered with rows of stones.
“It’s lovely here,” she said, surprised.
They passed tall monuments and ivy-hung mausoleums, and pillared busts of solemn men. At last Michael led her down a row, and there it was: the rectangular mound of white-dusted earth, and the stone with its half-blank face.
She stood at the foot of the grave, wondering what to do. Was Michael expecting her to show her grief? To cry?
Michael cleared his throat. “I’ll give you a moment.”
“Thank you,” she said, grateful. He wandered down the path, out of sight; and she was alone with the Rabbi.
“I miss you,” she murmured. She crouched down next to the grave and tried to imagine him there beneath the ground. It seemed impossible, when all her senses told her he had disappeared from the world.
She cast about for what to tell him. “Everyone at the bakery is well,” she said. “Anna has a new suitor, and seems happy, though I know you wouldn’t approve. I’ve started taking in mending, to have something to do at night. The nights are still the hardest. But—I went walking this week, at night, with a man. He has to hide himself, like me. I’m seeing him again next week. I’m sorry, Rabbi. I know I shouldn’t. But I think it will help, to walk with him.”
She trailed a hand along the snow, half-expecting some sort of sign: a trembling in the ground, a sense of recrimination. But none came. All lay silent.
After a few minutes Michael reappeared on the path and came to stand by her side. “I should give you time,” she said, and turned to leave; but he put a hand on her arm. “Please stay,” he said. “I don’t like being alone in cemeteries.” And it was true: a low, formless dread and unease was growing in him.
“Of course,” she said, and stood close by his side.
“He was a wonderful man,” Michael said; and then he began to cry. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his face. “I should have done something to prevent this.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” she protested.
“But if I hadn’t been so stubborn—if he hadn’t—”
“Then you would have been different people,” the Golem said, hoping that it was the right thing to say. “And he thought very highly of you. He called you a good man.”
“He did?”
“Why does that surprise you, when you help so many?”
“I turned my back on religion. How could he not feel I’d turned my back on him?”
“I think he understood, in his way,” she said hesitantly. She wasn’t certain if it was the truth—but Michael seemed comforted, and that, she was sure, was what the Rabbi would have wanted.
Michael sighed, and wiped his face. Together they stared at the headstone. “I’ll have to have the engraving done,” he said. “Later this year.” He glanced at her. “I don’t usually pray, but if you’d like—”
“It’s all right,” the Golem said. “I prayed already, on my own.”
Streetcars and trains and more streetcars again, and they were back in the Lower East Side. The sun was low in the sky; a thin snow blew down the alleyways.
“Let me take you to a café,” Michael said, and then added, “if you have the time, of course. I don’t mean to monopolize your day.”
She’d been looking forward to going home; the streetcars had been far too crowded with bodies and their stray desires. But she could come up with no ready excuse, and his hopefulness was tugging at her. “All right,” she said. “If you like.”
They went to a place he knew, a dark café filled with young men who all seemed to be arguing with each other. He ordered coffee and almond-speckled biscuits, and they sat together, listening to the debates that raged around them.
“I’d forgotten how loud it is here,” he said, apologetic.
The voices were in her mind as well, asking for abstract things: peace, rights, freedom. “They all sound very angry,” she said.
“Oh, absolutely. Each of them has a different theory about what’s wrong with the world.”
She smiled. “Do you have a theory too?”
“I used to,” he said. He sat thinking for a moment, and then said, “I see hundreds of men every week at the Sheltering House. They all need the same things—a place to stay, a job, English lessons. But some will be happy with whatever comes their way, and others won’t be satisfied with anything. And there’s always a few who are only looking to take advantage. So when my friends talk about how best to fix the world, it all sounds so naive. As though there could be one solution that would solve every man’s problem, turn us into innocents in the Garden of Eden. When in truth we will always have our lesser natures.” He looked up at her. “What do you think?”
“Me?” she said, startled.
“Do you think we’re all good at heart? Or can we only be both good and bad?”
“I don’t know,” she said, trying not to fidget under his scrutiny. “But I think, sometimes men want what they don’t have because they don’t have it. Even if everyone offered to share, they would only want the share that wasn’t theirs.”
He nodded. “Exactly. And I can’t see that changing. Human nature is the same, no matter the system.” Then he chuckled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t bring you here to argue politics. Let’s talk about something else.”
“What should we talk about?”
“Tell me about yourself. I really know very little about you.”
Her spirits sank. She’d have to choose her words very carefully. She’d have to lie, and remember the lies for later. “I was married,” she said uncertainly.
“Oh, yes.” Michael’s face fell. “That I did know. You must miss him.”
She could say Yes, I loved him very much, and avoid all further inquiry. But didn’t Michael deserve some measure of the truth? “I do, sometimes,” she said. “But . . . to be honest, we didn’t know each other very well.”
“Was it an arranged marriage?”
“I suppose, in a sense.”
“And your parents gave you no choice?”
“I had no parents,” she said flatly. “And he was a wealthy man. He bought what he wanted.” That much, at least, was true: she remembered Rotfeld’s pride at what his money had paid for, his perfect wife in her wooden box.
“No wonder my uncle wanted to help you,” Michael said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how lonely that must have been.”
“It’s all right.” Already she felt guilty. What stories was he creating in his mind, to fill in the details? Time to turn the conversation back to him, if she could. “And any life must seem lonely compared to yours. You’re surrounded by hundreds of men every day.”
He laughed. “True enough. Though I don’t get to know them very well, since they’re only at the House for five days. Although—there’s one man who’s been with us for a few weeks now, ever since I got sick. He’s helping to keep the place together.” He smiled. “I couldn’t believe my luck. I came back expecting to find the place in ruins and here was this kind old man, running things and keeping order. He’s got my staff practically eating out of his hand! I’ve insisted on paying him a little, though it’s nothing close to what he deserves.”
“It sounds like you’re lucky to have found him,” said the Golem.
He nodded. “You should meet him sometime. He reminds me of my uncle, in a way. I think he used to be a rabbi—he just has that air about him. Like he knows more than he’s saying.”
It was growing late. Men were slowly drifting from the café, leaving each argument in its usual stalemate. Outside, a lamplighter boy walked by, pole slung over his thin shoulder like a bayonet. “I should be going home,” the Golem said. She had a sudden dread of the walk back with him.
“Of course,” he said. “Let me take you.”
“I don’t want you to go out of your way.”
“No, I insist.”
As they approached her boardinghouse, the Golem grew conscious of how much they looked like a couple out strolling in the twilight. Michael, she saw, was beginning to gather courage to ask her if she would see him again, if they could perhaps have dinner sometime—
“I can’t,” she said and stopped walking, her hand pulling away from his arm. Surprised, he stopped too. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
The words tumbled from her mouth. “I’m sorry, Michael. I know you’re interested in me.”
He paled, then attempted a wry smile. “Was it that obvious?”
“You’re a very good person,” she said, miserable. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Of course,” he said. “Too soon. Of course. I’m sorry. If I gave you any distress—”
“No, no, please don’t apologize!” Frustration rose up in her chest. “I want us to be friends, Michael. Can’t we simply be friends? Isn’t that all right?”
Instantly she was certain it had been the wrong thing to say.
“Of course!” he said. “Yes, of course. That’s the important thing, after all. Friendship.”
No longer trusting herself to speak, she could do nothing but nod.
“Good!” His voice was hollow. “That’s settled, then.” He replaced her hand on his arm, as if to show that nothing had changed; and they walked the last block to her home as the most perfectly matched couple on the street, as with each step they both desperately wished to be elsewhere.
It was long past midnight and the full moon was sinking toward the East River, threading between bridge cables and water tanks to shine into the windows of the Sheltering House. It crept across the drab wool of the cot blankets, and into the open eyes of Yehudah Schaalman, who’d been waiting for exactly this. He needed the moonlight to write by.
So far, things were progressing better than Schaalman had dared hope. He’d thought the director’s return would be a hurdle, that he’d have to charm the man or addle his mind; but it seemed Levy was even more of a pushover than his staff. Schaalman had protested the offered stipend at first, but then accepted, as he must. No one was that altruistic, not even the man he was pretending to be.
He’d solidified his position and gained their trust. It was time to put the next part of his plan into action. His dream had promised him that New York held the secret to life eternal, but he needed a way to narrow his search, a dowsing rod to point him in the right direction. And what better way than to turn himself into that very dowsing rod?
He reached under his cot and found the tattered sheaf of burned papers. He sorted through them in the moonlight, setting aside the ones that held some bearing on his purpose. Taking up a fresh sheet of paper and pencil, he began to scribble notes. If he combined this incantation with this name of God . . . He wrote formulas and scratched them out, drew diagrams of branching trees whose leaves were the letters of the alphabet. He worked for hours until finally, near dawn, he experienced a rush of clarity as the diagrams and formulas and incantations all melted into one. His pencil danced ecstatic across the page. Finally his hand stilled, and he looked at what he had written, feeling in his bones that he’d succeeded. The old familiar pang passed through him—what he could have been, given the chance! Oh, what he might have accomplished!
He glanced around once more, but his neighbors all were asleep. Taking a deep breath, he began to quietly read aloud what he had written.
A long, unbroken string of syllables issued from Schaalman’s mouth. Some were soft and languid as a lazy stream. Others were harsh and jagged, and Schaalman spat these from between his teeth. If one of the old sages had been listening, one schooled not only in Hebrew and Aramaic but also in centuries of mystical lore, even he would have been hard-pressed to make sense of it. He might have recognized snatches here and there: portions of various prayers, names of God that had been woven together letter by letter. But the rest would have been a terrifying mystery.
He gathered momentum as he reached the apex of the formula, the letter in the very middle: an aleph, the silent sound that was the beginning of all Creation. And then, as if that aleph were a mirror, the formula reversed itself, and letter by letter Schaalman tumbled down the other side.
He was nearing the end, he was almost upon it. Bracing himself, he spoke the final sound and then—
—suddenly all of Creation was pouring through him. He was infinite, he was the universe, there was nothing that he did not encompass.
But then he looked upward and beheld that he was nothing, a mite, an insignificant speck cowering beneath the unblinking gaze of the One.
It lasted forever; it was only a moment. Waking to himself, Schaalman blinked back tears and drew a clammy hand across his brow. It was always this way, when he tried something new and powerful.
The moon sank below the window, leaving only the yellow glow of the gaslights. Schaalman had hoped to test the efficacy of his formula immediately—to see if, indeed, he had turned himself into that dowsing rod—but exhaustion overcame him, and he fell into a dreamless sleep until morning, waking only when the noise of the dormitory grew too loud to ignore. Men were dressing themselves for the day, straightening their mussed blankets with the nervous courtesy of houseguests. Some prayed next to their beds, phylacteries strapped to their foreheads and wound about their arms. A line for the water closet stretched down the hallway, each man blearily clutching his soap and towel. Schaalman dressed and donned his coat. He was ravenously hungry. Downstairs he discovered the cook had left him a few slices of bread and marmalade for breakfast; he devoured them without pause. Resisting the urge to lick the marmalade from his fingers—the habits of a life spent alone were still with him—he walked past the parlor and out the front door of the Sheltering House. It was time to see what he’d accomplished.
Five hours later, he returned to the Sheltering House, dejected and angry. He’d walked the length and breadth of the Lower East Side, past all the rabbis, scholars, synagogues, and storefront yeshivas he could find—and yet there had been no sign from the dowsing spell. No pull down a particular street, no sense that perhaps he should go into this doorway, or talk to that man over there. But his formula had worked, he was certain of it!
Once again, he counseled himself to be patient. There were still private libraries, the giant yeshiva he’d learned about on the Upper West Side, not to mention the conclave of urbane German Jews to the north—not as schooled in esoteric wonders as their Russian and Polish cousins, but still, he might uncover something. He would not give up.
But he was nervous. He’d passed a funeral procession on Delancey: some distinguished personage, judging by the crowd of mourners and their weighty silence. Most likely a respected and prominent rabbi, dead after a long and peaceful dotage, certain of his place in the World to Come. Schaalman had stood to one side and looked away, repressing a childish urge to hide lest the Angel of Death spy him there, hidden away among the Jews of New York.
Back at the Sheltering House, he paused at the director’s door. Levy was sitting at his desk, pen uncharacteristically still. His eyes were vacant. Schaalman frowned. Had someone charmed or altered him? Was there another force at work here? He tapped once on the door. “Michael?”
The man gave a guilty start. “Joseph, hello. Sorry, have you been there long?”
“Not long, no,” Schaalman said. “Are you all right? Not sick again, I hope.”
“No, no. Well, not exactly.” He smiled faintly. “Matters of the heart.”
“Ah,” said Schaalman, his interest evaporating.
But now the director was looking at him speculatively. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Schaalman sighed inwardly. “Certainly.”
“Were you ever married?”
“No, I never had that blessing.”
“Ever been in love?”
“Of course,” Schaalman lied. “What man hasn’t, by my age?”
“But it didn’t work out.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“It was a long time ago. I was a different man then.”
“What happened?”
“She left. She was there, and then she was gone. I never knew why.” The words had simply come to him; he’d said them without thinking.
Levy was nodding, in unwanted sympathy. “Did you wonder, afterward, what you might have done differently?”
Every day. Every day of my life since, I wonder.
He shrugged. “Perhaps I was too difficult a man to love.”
“Oh, I have a hard time believing that.”
Enough, he thought. “Is there anything else you need? Otherwise I’ll see how the cook is getting on with dinner.”
Levy blinked. “Oh, of course. Thanks, Joseph. For letting me bend your ear.”
Schaalman smiled in reply, and removed himself from the doorway.