Quickly she shook her head. “Nothing as certain as that. Fears, desires. Needs. If I’m not careful, they can overwhelm me. But—you’re different.”
“Different how?”
“Harder to see clearly.” She was searching his face now; he repressed the urge to back away. “I see your face as lit from within, and shaded without. Your mind is the same. It’s as though part of you is constantly struggling to be free. It shadows everything else.”
This, he thought, was much more than he had bargained for. He now understood her uncanny presence, her sense of listening to something unheard; but the explanation was even more unsettling.
“I only wanted you to know,” she said. “I’ll understand if you withdraw your offer.”
He considered. Well, it was only one night. If she proved too eerie, they would part company.
“My offer still stands,” he said. “One night. One week from today.” And she smiled.
They left the aquarium and made their way back to her neighborhood. The streets were uncommonly quiet, the dark broken by a lamp-lit window here and there. As they walked, he found himself examining his own thoughts; he found no desires that he was ashamed of her sensing. And his fears? Captivity, boredom, discovery. Each of which she knew as well as he.
Perhaps, he thought, it will not be so terrible. They would walk about, they would talk. It would be a novelty, if nothing else.
At her request they stopped in the alley next to the boardinghouse, away from her neighbors’ eyes. He asked, “Have I at least convinced you that I mean you no harm?”
She smiled slightly. “For the most part.”
“I suppose that will have to do. Until next week.” He turned to go.
“Wait.” She touched his arm. “Please, remember your promise. I must stay hidden. If not from you, then from everyone else.”
“I keep my promises,” he said. “As I trust you keep yours.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Then I will see you in seven nights.”
“Good-bye,” she said, and with no more ceremony disappeared around the corner.
He walked home unsure of what he had just let into his life. It was early yet, perhaps four in the morning. He thought he’d work on one of his figurines—there was an ibis only half completed. He couldn’t work the proportions correctly, the bill was all wrong and the legs too thick.
As he climbed the front steps of his building, a figure interposed itself between him and the door. It was a man, old and gaunt, in what looked like layers of rags and a smirched overcoat. A grubby scarf was wound about his head. The man’s stance, his dark accusatory stare, made the Jinni think he’d been lying in wait.
“What are you?” croaked the man.
The Jinni frowned. “I beg your pardon.”
“I can look at you,” the man said. “There’s no death in your face.” His tone was hysterical, his eyes so wide the whites shone. He grabbed at the front of the Jinni’s coat and shouted up at him. “I can see you! You’re made of fire! Tell me what you are!”
The Jinni froze, horrified. A pair of boys, up early and drawn by the shouts, crept around the doorframe to watch the commotion. The old man cried out and turned away from them, letting go of the Jinni. His throat worked for a moment; and then he backed down the stairs, one hand shielding his eyes, and trudged unsteadily down the street.
“You all right, mister?” one of the boys asked.
“Yes, of course.” It was a lie. He’d been terrified enough to consider pushing the man down the steps.
“That’s Ice Cream Saleh,” the other boy said. “He’s funny in the head.”
“I see,” the Jinni said. “A madman. And why is he allowed to live here?”
“He don’t break no laws, I guess. And he makes the best ice cream around. But he can’t look no one in the face. He gets sick.”
“Interesting,” said the Jinni. “Thank you.” He found a couple of pennies in his coat pocket, and gave one to each of them. Satisfied, they ran off down the stairs.
The Jinni was profoundly disturbed. If this man—whoever he was—could truly see him, should he be worried about his safety? He couldn’t tell Arbeely; the man would only panic and demand that the Jinni stay locked in his room with the window covered. Besides, he thought, growing calmer, if the man was considered a lunatic—and he certainly looked the part—then whatever he might say could be dismissed as meaningless. For now, the Jinni decided, he would merely be watchful.
Arbeely was in a good mood that morning—another large order had come through, of soup pots this time—and he greeted the Jinni cheerfully. “Good morning! Did you have an exciting night? Meet with any more clay women? Or women made of anything else?”
For a moment the Jinni considered telling him about the Golem. Arbeely already knew about her, after all; he’d only promised to tell no one else. But he liked the idea of having a secret from Arbeely, something that the man could not scold him about.
“No,” the Jinni said. “I saw no one special.” And he set out his tools and tied on his apron while Arbeely bustled about the shop, none the wiser.
14.
After three days in the ward at Swinburne Island, Michael Levy’s fever finally broke. The doctors kept him there for another two weeks, feeding him broth and mashed vegetables, helping him walk up and down the drafty halls. He was malnourished, they told him, and dangerously anemic. Get yourself married, they said. You need a wife to fatten you up.
He ate, and slept, and his body healed. A letter came from the Sheltering House board wishing him a quick return, which he took to mean that the House was coming unglued without him. One night the nurses caught him walking around the ward, talking with the patients, encouraging them to petition the Ellis Island officials for reentry. They shooed him back to bed and threatened to tie him down again.
It was almost New Year’s when Michael was discharged. He stood at the ferry’s rail bundled against an icy wind that turned the water dark and choppy. He’d put on five pounds and felt better than he had in months. He’d begun to think of his illness as a strange parting gift from his uncle, an opportunity to rest and be cared for. Not quite taking the waters at Saratoga, but as close as he’d ever get.
The ferry pushed away from the thin pilings, chugging against the current. Night had fallen. Staten Island and Brooklyn slumbered to either side, their clapboard villages battened down for the winter. The tip of Manhattan appeared at the north end of the bay, and Michael’s equanimity wavered. What chaos would be waiting for him at the House? The wind picked up, but he stayed on deck and watched the Statue of Liberty go by, and tried to draw strength from her calm and compassionate gaze.
In the Sheltering House, it was just past lights-out. A hundred and fifty men lay on their cots, covered with thin blankets. Some were awake with fears for their new life; others soon gave in to the exhaustion of the voyage, or a day spent looking for work.
On a cot near the window on the third floor, the man now known as Joseph Schall slept as deeply and peacefully as a child.
It was chance pure and simple that had brought Schaalman to the Sheltering House. After that bureaucrat at Ellis Island had changed his name—any number of revenges had risen to his lips, but he’d pushed them all down again—he’d descended the wide staircase and come face-to-face with the Manhattan skyline, framed in tall windows at the end of the hall. It was a forbidding and majestic view, and it stopped him in his tracks. Ever since his dream of the city he’d known the task before him to be difficult; but now, facing the real thing across the bay, it struck him as flat-out impossible. He spoke no English, was unused to people and crowds, didn’t even have a place to sleep. Were there inns in New York? Or stables? Surely at least there were stables?
A hand touched his arm, and he turned, startled. It was a young woman with a round-cheeked face. She asked, “Sir, do you speak Yiddish?”
“Yes,” he said warily.
She explained that she was a vol
unteer with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Was there anything he needed? Could they offer him any assistance?
Were it any other time or place, he would have searched her for weaknesses to exploit, or simply fuddled her mind and then robbed her. But now, tired, depressed, and defeated, he resorted to his most hated gambit: the truth. “I have nowhere to stay,” he muttered.
She told him of a place called the Hebrew Sheltering House and said there was a boat that could take him there. Meekly he followed her out to the dock, clutching his suitcase like a frightened child.
But within a day of arriving at the Sheltering House, he was returned to his old self-confidence. In a way, life at the House was like being incarcerated again. The cots, the dormitories, the foul water closets and the communal meals, the ever-changing roster of faces: here was a place he understood, with overseers to manipulate, and rules to be bent or broken. All in all, the perfect bolt-hole.
There were only two hard and fast rules at the Hebrew Sheltering House: meals had to be eaten in the dining hall at the appointed times, and no man could stay more than five days. Breaking the second rule proved even easier than the first. By luck, the director of the Sheltering House had fallen ill. The cook and the housekeeper had divided his duties between them and spent all day running frantically this way and that, trying to maintain order. On Schaalman’s third day, forty newcomers stepped off the ferry and came through the door, to find only eighteen unoccupied cots. The new arrivals milled uneasily on the landing, while the cook and housekeeper searched for the misplaced roster that would have set everything to rights. Failing to find it and both near tears, they went to each dormitory and asked if the men who’d overstayed would please own up to it. They were met with nothing but blank stares. With so many men coming and going, and so much time spent searching for work or a place to live, even the ones who might have reported the rule breakers had little idea where to point.
But Schaalman had been observing them all for days. He looked about, and found a number of men who’d been there when he arrived. He watched their faces as the women pleaded, and saw the telltale signs of guilt and defiance. He took the women aside for a brief conversation. With his help, they recruited two large men from among the new arrivals. Then they went from dormitory to dormitory and tossed out the wrongdoers while Schaalman looked on, a stern yet mild judge.
The cook and the housekeeper couldn’t thank him enough. He replied that he was glad to help—of course order had to be kept, everyone must follow the rules—and if they needed him for anything else, he was at their disposal. They kissed his cheek like grateful daughters. Later that night Schaalman retrieved the missing roster from under his cot and replaced it in the office, between the pages of a newspaper.
The next day, he volunteered to help with the new arrivals. While the women checked off names and bustled about, he directed men to their bunks and explained the rules of the house. Afterward, with all settled, the women invited him into the office and gave him a glass of schnapps.
“What Mr. Levy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” the housekeeper whispered, and struck Joseph Schall from the next day’s departure list.
Over the next week Schaalman solidified his position. He took to straightening up the parlor, folding the newspapers, and refilling the teapot. At mealtimes he monitored the queue and told the cook how many mouths were left to feed. He seemed to be everywhere at once, helping with one thing or another, even adjudicating the men’s paltry quibbles.
When he wasn’t insinuating himself into the fabric of the Sheltering House, he was out learning the neighborhood. At first the streets had been overwhelming, a churning porridge of people and wagons and animals; but after a week he could step off the curb and melt seamlessly into the crowd, just another old Jew in a dark overcoat. He’d walk for hours, taking note of the streets and shops, marking in his mind the edges of the neighborhood where the Yiddish faded from the shop windows. As he went he’d make a mental list of the largest Orthodox synagogues, the ones most likely to have decent libraries. And then he’d reverse his steps and go back to the Sheltering House, in time to help settle the newest group of men.
The cook began to set aside a stash of the best food for him, fat pickles and chunks of pastrami. The housekeeper called him an angel sent from heaven, and piled him with extra blankets. And meanwhile, in his battered suitcase beneath his cot, his piecemeal book lay sleeping. If one of his housemates had happened to come across it, the man would have seen nothing special—only a worn and unremarkable prayer book.
The Jinni appeared beneath the Golem’s window a few minutes past midnight. She’d been pacing for nearly an hour—she knew the neighbors would hear, but she couldn’t help it, her entire body ached with cold and apprehension. With each turn she stopped to peer out the window. Would he come as he’d said? Would it be better if he didn’t? And what had possessed her to agree to this in the first place?
When finally she saw him she felt both a burst of relief and a fresh wave of misgiving. She was in such a state that she made it halfway down the stairs before realizing she’d forgotten her cloak and gloves, and had to go back for them.
“You came,” she said to him when she reached the street.
He raised an eyebrow. “You doubted it?”
“You might have thought better of it.”
“And you might not have come down. But since we’re both here, I thought we might go to Madison Square Park. Is that agreeable?”
The name meant nothing to her, and in a sense all possible destinations were the same: unknown places, unknown risks. She had two choices. She could say yes, or turn back.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”
And with no more discussion, they set off along Broome Street. Suddenly she wanted to burst out laughing. She was outside, she was walking! Her legs were so stiff the joints almost creaked, but the movement felt delicious, like the scratching of a long-denied itch. He went quickly, but she easily matched his pace, keeping to his side. He didn’t offer to take her arm, as she’d seen other men do, and she was glad: it would have meant walking slowly, and too close together.
At Chrystie he turned north, and she followed. They were at the edge of her neighborhood now, the border of her knowledge. The cacophony of the Bowery echoed from the next block. A few men crossed their path, and she pulled the hood of her cloak lower.
“Don’t do that,” the Jinni said.
“Why not?”
“You look like you have something to hide.”
But didn’t she? The euphoria of movement was subsiding; she was growing scared all over again, frightened of the liberties she’d allowed herself to take. They reached Houston Street, and she glanced sidelong at her companion. Was it strange that they weren’t talking? The people she saw walking at night usually talked to each other. But then, he usually traveled on his own. And the silence was not uncomfortable.
They came to Great Jones, and then the electric-lit expanse of Broadway. The buildings here stretched higher, wider, and she pushed her hood back, the better to see it all. Brick and limestone gave way to marble and glass. Shop-front windows beckoned with dresses and fabrics, feathered hats, jewels and necklaces and earrings. Mesmerized, she left the Jinni’s side to peer at a dress-form bedecked with a sweeping, intricate gown in sapphire silk. How long it must have taken to sew something so beautiful, so complicated! She traced the seams with her eyes, trying to learn its construction; and the Jinni, growing impatient on the sidewalk, came to retrieve her.
At Fourteenth Street they came upon a large park, with an enormous statue of a man sitting on a horse, and the Golem wondered if this was their destination. But the Jinni continued on, skirting the west side of the park until it rejoined Broadway. The streets were now eerily quiet and stretched empty in all directions save for the occasional slow-trotting brougham. They passed a thin triangle of empty land at Twenty-third Street, strewn with snow-rimed newspapers that rattled in the wind. The triangle lay at a wide
confluence of avenues; in one street stood a magnificent white arch and colonnade. The arch shone with electric lights that turned the colonnade into tall bars of light and shadow, and cast a faint glow along the lowering sky.
Madison Square Park sat before them, a dark grove of leafless trees. They crossed into it, and meandered along the empty paths. Even the homeless had left to search out warm doorways and stairwells. Only the Golem and the Jinni were there to take in the quiet. The Golem left the Jinni’s side to study whatever caught her eye: dark metal monuments of solemn-faced men, the iron curl of a park bench. She stepped across the snow to lay a hand on a tree trunk’s rough bark, then looked up to see the naked branches spreading themselves across the sky.
“This is better than sitting in your room all night, is it not?” asked the Jinni as they walked.
“It is,” she admitted. “Are all the parks this large?”
He laughed. “They come much larger than this.” He glanced at her sidelong. “How is it that you’ve never been to a park?”
“I suppose it’s because I haven’t been alive for very long,” she said.
He frowned, confused. “How old are you?”
She thought. “Six months. And a few days.”
The Jinni stopped short. “Six months?”
“Yes.”
“But—” He gestured at her, the sweep of his hand taking in her adult form and appearance.
“I was created as you see me,” she said, feeling uneasy; she wasn’t used to talking about herself. “Golems don’t age, we simply continue as we are, unless we’re destroyed.”
“And all golems are like this?”
“I think so. I can’t be certain. I’ve never met another golem.”
“What, none?”
“I might be the only one,” she said.
Clearly astonished, the Jinni said nothing. They continued on together, walking the perimeter of the park.
“And how old are you?” the Golem said, to break the silence.