The Golem and the Jinni (75 page)

Into the desert the Jinni walked.

He walked for a full day, carrying the valise. Occasionally some creature would spy him at a distance, a
ghul
or an imp, and come to investigate, gleeful at the prospect of a man gone so far astray—but then they’d see what he was, and draw back in fear and confusion, and let him pass. He’d expected no better. Even so, it pained him.

Taken as a whole, the desert had changed little since he’d been gone. He passed the same jagged peaks and valleys he had once roamed, the same caves and cliffs and hiding places. But in its particulars the landscape was entirely transformed. It was as though a millennium of wind and sun and seasons had unfolded all at once, filling in streambeds and eroding hillsides, cracking great boulders into fields of pebbles. He thought of the tin ceiling in New York, and how it was no longer a map but an artifact, the portrait of an ancient memory.

Evening was falling when he neared the outskirts of the jinn habitations, the land of his kin. He slowed his walk, hoping to be spotted. At the border he stopped, waiting. Soon enough he saw them: a contingent of nearly a dozen jinn, flying insubstantial toward him.

A rush of relief: they still lived. That, at least, had not changed.

They came to rest before him, and he saw they were the elders, though none he recognized. The oldest—a female, a jinniyeh—spoke, addressing him in the language he’d thought never to hear again.

What are you?

“A jinni,” he told her. “And your kin. I would tell you my name, if I could.”

You are kin to us? How is that possible?

“I was trapped in this form a thousand years ago, by a wizard named ibn Malik.” He lifted his arm, pulled his dusty shirtsleeve away from the iron cuff—and they recoiled, the nearest ones scattering.

Unnatural! How can you wear that, without pain?

“It is part of the binding,” he said. “Please, tell me—can you undo it? Have we gained that knowledge, in a thousand years?”

They regrouped, conferred, their voices a windstorm. He closed his eyes, drank in the sound.

No
.
We do not have that knowledge.

He nodded, feeling he’d already known the answer.

But can you tell us—need we fear this wizard? Does he still live, to trap and bind us?

“He lives, but you need not fear him.” He opened the valise, removed the flask. “He is here, captured as he once captured me. But we are still bound. If the seal is broken in my lifetime, he’ll return, to be born again and again.”

And after your death?

“Then he may be released, and his soul will go on to whatever awaits him.”

A mutter among them. The jinniyeh said,
It is suggested that we kill you, to destroy the wizard. You are already crippled—would it not be a mercy?

He had half-expected this. “If you are offering me a choice,” he said, “then I respectfully decline. I made a promise that I would return, and I would not break that promise.”

Once more they conferred, a more heated discussion this time. He looked among them and wondered which were his closest relations. But to ask would be futile, with no way to even tell them his own lineage. And what would the answer signify, when they must remain strangers?

We have decided
, the jinniyeh said at last.
Your life will be spared. We will guard the wizard’s soul, and ensure its safe protection. It shall be our task, and that of our offspring, until you pass from this earth.

“Thank you,” he said, relieved.

They led him to a clearing within the habitations, and there he buried the flask, the elders watching as he dug into the gritty, hard-packed soil with his hands. He added the sheaf of papers and replaced the soil, and then built a mound of stones, fitting them as tightly as he could. By the time he was finished the entire habitation had gathered to watch. He was painfully aware that he was trusting the care of ibn Malik’s soul to the capricious attentions of his own kind. But better this than New York, where sooner or later the flask and the spells would be unearthed, no matter how deeply they were buried, to make way for a new building or bridge or monument. Whereas it seemed that humanity still hadn’t conquered the desert.

But how will you live, bound and chained as you are?
the eldest jinniyeh asked him as he stood, wiping his hands.
What will you do, where will you go?

“I’ll go home,” he told her. And he left the habitation, a thousand eyes watching as he passed.

His palace was still there, shining in the valley.

There was damage, to be sure. The outer walls were deeply weathered, etched by the sand to a milky opacity. The taller towers had crumbled, littering the valley floor with smooth blue-white shards. In some places the glass was thin as paper. In others it had worn away entirely, leaving curved windows like portholes, open to the elements. He went inside, stepping over rubble. Sand lay in drifts in the corners; the roof was a honeycomb. He saw bird nests, the bones of animal meals.

In the great hall, he found the remains of Fadwa and Abu Yusuf.

The walls of the hall were thick, and the man and his daughter had lain there in peace until the desert air had dried them past the interest of the animals. He sat before them, cross-legged on the dusty floor. He thought of Saleh’s funeral, a few weeks earlier. Maryam had reached out to Little Syria’s small Muslim population and found a man willing to serve as imam. Arbeely and Sayeed Faddoul and the Jinni had all helped to wash Saleh and wrap him in white sheets; and then the Jinni had stood inside the grave to receive the shrouded body. Afterward they had all gone back to the Faddouls’ coffeehouse, and he’d listened as they talked about Saleh, sharing what little they knew.
He was a healer
, Maryam had said, and the others had looked at her quizzically; but the Jinni had said,
it’s true, he was
. He wished there was someone with him now, so he could tell them about this young woman and her father, the lives they’d led, the loved ones they’d left behind. He thought of Sophia Winston, who was soon to arrive in Istanbul, a relatively short distance away. But he’d only be intruding, and burdening her with sorrows, at the start of her own long-awaited journey.

He wanted to bury Fadwa and her father, as Saleh had been buried, but their remains were too delicate to move. So instead he gathered the shards that had fallen from his palace, and built a tomb around them. He melted the pieces and smoothed them together, shaping first the walls and then a domed cover. It was hard, draining work. More than once he had to go out into the sun, to regain his strength.

At last it was done. He debated whether to carve their names into the glass, but in the end he left the tomb quiet and unmarked. He knew who they were, and why they were there. That, he decided, would suffice.

The sun was setting by the time the Golem returned home, to her new boardinghouse on Eldridge Street. Her room there was no larger than the one the Rabbi had found for her, but the house itself was double the size, and catered to a much more sociable clientele. The landlady was a former actress, and most of her lodgers were drawn from that world: traveling thespians who would stop in New York for a season or two before departing for stints elsewhere. The Golem found she liked her fellow tenants. Their thoughts could be trying, even exhausting; but their enthusiasms were genuine, and they grew to like her as well. She was a spot of stillness in their midst, and a fresh audience for their stories. At some point her skill in sewing had come out, and soon they were all asking her to mend their costumes, even make them new ones:
the troupe’s seamstress is just awful, she can’t hold a candle to your work
. They paid her if they could, and brought her flowers and petits fours and front-row tickets, and distracted her with cheerful noise. And unlike at her old boardinghouse, they gave no thought at all to lights burning at all hours, or a late-night step upon the stair.

She went up to her room and paused, dismayed. A wedding dress of cheap satin was hanging from her door handle, a gash across its train. Attached was a note from one of her neighbors, thanking her in advance for mending her costume, and promising a bag of chocolate drops or whatever else she might fancy.

She carried the dress inside, lit the lamp, and drew the sewing basket nearer to her chair. Her own wedding dress was folded away in the room’s small wardrobe, below her workaday clothes. She hadn’t yet been able to part with it.

The mend was an easy one, and soon it was finished. Absently she straightened the sleeves and smoothed the bodice, looking for any small rips she might repair, and thinking all the while of Anna’s exhortation that she
do something
about the Jinni. For Anna, that would likely mean a torrid love affair, full of melodrama and broken promises. Perhaps the Jinni could do such a thing—whatever had passed between him and Sophia seemed to be in this vein—but herself? Ridiculous, to picture herself so drunk on passion, so absurdly self-involved, that she could set aside all reason and hang the consequences.

But then, what other option was there? A quiet courtship, then marriage and the domestic life? Almost as hard to imagine. He would go mad with the constraint: the burdens of faithfulness and constancy, of returning home to a tiny room day after day. He would come to blame her, and she would lose him. And even if by some miracle he were willing, would she want to marry again, after Michael? Perhaps it would be better to spend a few years sewing alone in her room.
You should try to be happy, if you can
, Anna had said—but the Golem could not see a way toward it.

A knock came at the door: her landlady was holding a telegram. “Chava? This just came for you.” The woman handed it over and closed the door, her curiosity held painfully at bay.

BEIRUT SYRIA 29 SEP

CHAVA LEVY

67 ELDRIDGE ST NY

ALL ACCOMPLISHED EXCEPT STILL BOUND—

She stopped reading and closed her eyes. He’d held out little hope, she knew. And undoubtedly she would have lost him, as wanderlust rose to overtake affection. Even so, she felt a surge of sorrow on his behalf.

She began again:

ALL ACCOMPLISHED EXCEPT STILL BOUND TELL ARBEELY WOULD LIKE JOB BACK—

At this she smiled.

—WILL RETURN VIA MARSEILLE EXPECT ME 19 OCT BENEATH YOUR WINDOW.

AHMAD AL-HADID

Maybe, she thought as she fastened her cloak, there was some middle ground to be had, a resting place between passion and practicality. She had no idea how they would find it: in all likelihood they’d have to carve it for themselves out of thin air. And any path they chose would not be an easy one. But perhaps she could allow herself to hope.

She stepped out into the clear, windy night, walked to the telegram office on Broadway, and let him know that he needn’t come to her window—she would meet him at the dock.

Acknowledgments

E
very book is a group effort, but there are a few people without whom this one would not exist. My indomitable agent, Sam Stoloff, encouraged me to write this novel almost from its conception. My fantastic editor, Terry Karten, has my heartfelt gratitude for her insight and her patience. Thank you also to the many fine people at HarperCollins who helped shepherd this book to publication.

The research process was like a job in itself, and I returned repeatedly to a couple of sources. The books of Professors Alixa Naff and Gregory Orfalea were instrumental for their descriptions of New York’s Little Syria. And it would’ve been much harder to write about 1890s Manhattan from a couch in twenty-first-century California without the help of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. (Any inaccuracies in this book are, of course, my own.)

My thanks as well to everyone who read portions of this book in earlier forms, including Binnie Kirshenbaum, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Marcus, Nicholas Christopher, Clare Beams, Michelle Adelman, Amanda Pennelly, Jeff Bender, Reif Larsen, Sharon Pacuk, Rebecca Schiff, Anna Selver-Kassell, Dave Englander, Andrea Libin, Keri Bertino, Judy Sternlight, Rana Kazkaz, Dave Diehl, and Rebecca Murray. And a second helping of thanks goes to Amanda Pennelly, for sparking the idea in the first place.

The necessary friendships of Kara Levy, Ruth Galm, Michael McAllister, Zoë Ferraris, Brian Eule, and Dan White kept me sane and motivated, even when common sense told me to stick it in a drawer and call it a day.

Lastly and most importantly, thanks to my beloved family, all my Weckers and Kazkazes and Khalafs—but most especially my mother, father, and husband for their love and support in all its forms. And a final thank-you to my wonderful Maya, who arrived in time for the ending.

About the Author