The Golem (19 page)

I heard a shower of hail rattle against the window outside, and a peal of thunder rent the air. A winter storm in all its blind fury was raging over the town. The howling of the storm was interrupted at regular intervals by the sound of dull detonations from the direction of the river, announcing the break-up of the ice which covered the Moldau. My room blazed with the flashes of lightning following one another in uninterrupted procession. I suddenly felt so weak that my knees trembled and I had to sit down again.

“Do not fear”, said a clear voice beside me, “do not fear, it is
Lelshimurim
, the Night of Protection.”

Gradually the storm died down and the deafening noise turned into the monotonous drumming of the hailstones on the roofs. The lassitude I felt in every limb had reached such proportions that I was only dully aware of the things going on around me, which took on a kind of dreamlike quality.

One of the figures in the circle spoke. “The one ye seek, he is not here.”

The others replied, but their words were in a foreign tongue.

At that, the first spoke a sentence in which the name ‘Enoch’ occurred, but I could not understand the rest, too loud were the groans of the ice-floes breaking up in the river.

Then one left the circle and stood before me, pointed to the hieroglyphs on his breast – they were the same characters as those the others bore – and asked me whether I could read them. And when, almost incoherent in my exhaustion, I replied that I could not, he stretched out the palm of his hand towards me, and the shining characters appeared on
my
breast, at first in Latin script:

before gradually changing back into the ones I could not read.

And I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep such as I had not known since the night when Hillel loosened my tongue.

The last few days had flown by. I scarcely even seemed to have time for meals. From dawn to dusk an irresistible urge towards physical activity shackled me to my workbench.

I finished the cameo; Miriam received it with a childlike delight.

I have also repaired the letter
I
in the
Book of Ibbur
.

I leant back in my chair, relaxing by reviewing all the little events of these days in my mind.

On the morning after the great storm, the old woman who looks after me came rushing into the room with the news that during the night the stone bridge had collapsed. Collapsed … strange! Perhaps at the very moment when I had knocked the seeds … no, no, I must not entertain the thought. It might give the events of that night a veneer of rationality, and I had decided to bury them deep in my breast until they awoke of their own accord. Leave well alone!

How long ago was it that I had crossed the bridge and looked at the stone statues? And now, after standing for centuries, it was in ruins. I felt almost sad at the idea that I would never set foot on it again. Even if they rebuilt it, it would still not be the old mysterious stone bridge. For hours while I worked on the cameo I had found my thoughts turning to it, and it had all come back into my mind, as naturally as if I had never forgotten: how often I had crossed it as a child, looking up at the statues of Saint Luitgard and all the others who were now buried beneath the raging waters.

In my mind I had once more seen all those tiny little things which, as a child, I had called my own. I remembered, too, my father and mother and all my schoolfriends. Only the house where I had lived was lost to memory. But I knew that one day, when I was least expecting it, it would suddenly reappear in my mind, and I looked forward to that day.

It was so comfortable to feel that, all at once, my life was running on a simple, natural course. When I took
The Book of Ibbur
out of the iron box the day before yesterday, I found that there was nothing remarkable about it at all; it looked like any old parchment book with decorative initials, it looked quite ordinary to me. I could not understand how it could ever have affected me as supernatural. It was written in Hebrew and therefore completely incomprehensible to me.

When would the unknown man come to collect it?

The joy of living, which had quietly returned while I was working on the cameo, awoke again in all its invigorating freshness, repelling the night thoughts which were still trying to ambush me.

Quickly I picked up the photograph of Angelina – I had cut off the dedication at the bottom – and kissed it. It was all so foolish and unreasonable, but why for once not think of happiness, why not grasp the present and enjoy it, as one might enjoy the sight of a glistening soap-bubble.

Was it not perhaps just possible that these images which the yearning in my heart conjured up for me could turn into reality? Was it so absolutely beyond the bounds of possibility that I might become famous over night? Her equal, through reputation if not by birth? At least the equal of Dr. Savioli? I thought of Miriam’s cameo. If I should manage to create others as fine? There was no doubt that even the foremost artists of the past had not produced anything better.

And then, assuming one chance event: supposing Angelina’s husband should suddenly die?

I felt hot and cold all over. One tiny chance event and my desire, my most audacious desire, could turn into reality. Happiness hung by a thin thread which could break at any moment, letting it fall into my lap like a ripe fruit. Had not things happened to me which were a thousand times more miraculous? Things whose very existence humanity did not even suspect?

Was it not a miracle that, in a few short weeks, creative powers had awoken within me which lifted my work to a far higher level, far above the commonplace?

And this was only the beginning!

Had I no right to happiness?

Must mysticism mean a complete lack of personal desire?

I drowned the ‘Yes’ within me. Could I not dream for a minute, for a second, for the brief span of human existence?

And I was dreaming with my eyes open. The gemstones on the table grew and grew, surrounding me on all sides with multicoloured cascades. There were trees of opal standing together in groves, scattering the light-waves from the sky, which was an iridescent blue, like the wing of some gigantic tropical butterfly, in a sparkling shower over boundless meadows redolent with summer heat. I was thirsty, and cooled my limbs in the icy spray of the streams dashing down over rocks of shimmering mother-of-pearl. The air hung heavy over blossom-strewn banks, intoxicating me with the odour of jasmine, hyacinth, narcissus, daphne …

It was too much! Too much! I erased the vision.

I was thirsty.

Such were the torments of paradise.

I flung open the window and let the warm breeze play on my brow. There was a scent of the coming spring.

Miriam!

The image of Miriam forced its way into my mind. The way she had had to lean against the wall so as not to fall over with excitement when she came to tell me that a miracle had happened, a real miracle: she had found a coin in the loaf of bread that the baker had put through the bars onto the kitchen window-ledge.

I grabbed my purse. With any luck it would not be too late and I would still have time today to magic another ducat into her hand.

She had visited me daily, ‘to keep me company’, as she called it, though she had been so full of the ‘miracle’ that she had hardly spoken a word. The experience had stirred her to the very depths of her soul, and when I recalled how sometimes – without any obvious cause, purely from the memory – she would go deathly pale, even to her lips, then my head swam at the mere thought that in my blindness I might have done something with incalculable consequences.

And when I reminded myself of Hillel’s last, dark words and related them to what I was doing, an ice-cold shiver ran down my spine. The fact that my motives were pure was no excuse. The end does not justify the means, of that I was well aware.

And what if my desire to help was merely an
ostensible
motive? Could there not be an insidious lie hidden behind it? Perhaps the unconscious wish to preen myself in the role of benefactor?

I was beginning to doubt my own self.

What was clear was that I had been much too superficial in my assessment of Miriam. The simple fact that she was Hillel’s daughter must mean that she was different from other girls. How could I have been so foolish as to interfere with the workings of a soul that was perhaps infinitely superior to my own?

Her very profile, which was much closer to the sixth Egyptian dynasty – though much too spiritual, even for that – than to our own age with its rationalistic types, should have been a warning to me. ‘Only fools distrust outward appearances.’ I had read that somewhere. How true it was! How true!

By now Miriam and I were close friends. Should I confess to her that it was I who had been slipping the ducats into the loaves every day? The blow would be too sudden. It would only bewilder her. I dare not risk it, I would have to proceed more cautiously.

Perhaps I should try to tone down the ‘miracle’? Instead of putting the coins into the bread, leave them on the stairs where she would find them when she opened the door, and then, and then? I comforted myself with the thought that I would surely be able to think of something new, of some less abrupt way of gradually leading her from the realm of miracles back into the everyday world?

Yes! That was the way to do it!

Or should I cut through the knot with one blow by telling her father and asking his advice? I blushed at the very thought. Time enough for that if all else failed.

But there was no time to lose, I must set about it right away.

I had a sudden inspiration. I had to persuade Miriam to do something unfamiliar, to drag her for a few hours out of her normal surroundings, to open her mind to other thoughts.

We could hire a carriage and go for a ride! Who would recognise us if we avoided the Jewish quarter? Perhaps it would interest her to see the bridge that had collapsed?

Or she could go with old Zwakh or one of her friends from school if the idea of going with me was too outrageous.

I was determined not to take no for an answer.

As I left my room I almost knocked a man over.

Wassertrum!

He must have been spying through the keyhole, as he was bending down when I collided with him.

“Were you looking for me?” I asked brusquely.

He stammered a few words of excuse in his impossible dialect, then agreed that he had been.

I asked him to come in and sit down, but he stood by the table, convulsively twisting the brim of his hat. However much he tried to conceal it from me, his face and his every movement betrayed a profound hostility. Until now I had never seen the man this close to. It wasn’t his dreadful ugliness which was so repulsive (that, rather, aroused my compassion; he looked like a creature whom nature herself had given a furious, disgusted kick in the face at birth), but something else, some indefinable aura he gave off. The influence of his ‘blood’ as Charousek had so aptly formulated it.

Involuntarily, I wiped the hand that had shaken his when he came in. I tried to do it unobtrusively, but he must have noticed; he had to force himself to suppress the flash of hatred which threatened to suffuse his features.

“Nice place you’ve got ’ere”, he said hesitantly, when he realised I was not going to do him the favour of opening the conversation. He rather contradicted what he was saying by closing his eyes, perhaps to avoid having to meet mine. Or did he think it would give his face a harmless expression? You could hear the conscious effort he was making to speak standard German.

I did not feel obliged to reply to this, and waited to see what he would say next.

In his embarrassment he put his hand out towards the file which, God knows why, had been left lying on the table since Charousek’s visit, but immediately drew back involuntarily, as if he had been bitten by a snake. I felt a rush of astonishment at such subconscious psychical sensitivity.

He finally roused himself to speech. “Of course, it’s part of the business, to ’ave an elegant establishment like this when you get such … fine visitors.” He opened his eyes, to see what impression his words had had on me, but evidently decided it was premature and quickly closed them again.

I tried to force him into a corner, “You mean the lady who came here in her carriage recently? Why don’t you say what you mean?”

He hesitated for a moment, then grasped me fiercely by the wrist and dragged me to the window. The strange, abrupt way he did it reminded me of the way he had pulled the deaf-mute, Jaromir, into his den a few days ago. He held out a glittering object to me in his crooked fingers. “What do you think, Herr Pernath, can anything be done with it?”

It was a gold watch, the covers of which were so bent that it almost looked as if someone had damaged them deliberately. I took my magnifying glass. The hinges were half torn off and inside … wasn’t there something engraved on it? It was scarcely legible anyway, but for good measure someone had covered it with a lot of fresh scratches. Slowly I deciphered it:

Ka…rl Zott…mann

Zottmann? Zottmann? Now where had I seen that name? I couldn’t remember.
Zottmann
?

Wassertrum almost knocked the magnifying glass out of my hand. “The mechanism’s all right, I’ve ’ad a look meself. But the cases’s buggered.”

“Just needs hammering out again, perhaps a couple of welds. Any goldsmith could do that for you, Herr Wassertrum.”

“But I’d like it done proper, artistic as you might say”, he put in hastily, almost anxiously.

“Very well then, if it’s that important to you …”

“Important!” His voice cracked with eagerness. “Important? I’m goin’ to wear it meself, that watch. And whenever I show it to anyone I want to be able to say, ‘Look, that’s Herr Pernath’s workmanship, that is.’ ”

The fellow was nauseating, smearing me with his slimy flattery.

“If you come back in an hour it’ll be ready for you.”