The Golem and the Jinni

  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.

  16.

  “You wore a hat,” the Golem said. “Thank you.”

  They were walking north, away from her boardinghouse, in a thin sleet fine as frozen mist. It was the third trip they’d taken together since the night in Madison Square Park. Two weeks before, they’d visited the grounds at Battery Park—skipping the aquarium, as she’d insisted he not melt the lock again—and then curved north along West Street to the Barrow Street pier. In summer the pier was a bustling recreation center and promenade, but now it was barren, its guardrails dressed with icicles. Wary of the slick wood, the Jinni had stayed near the boarded-over refreshment windows at the landing and watched as the Golem went out to the end of the pier, her cloak fluttering in the harbor wind. “It’s quiet out there,” she’d said when she came back. They’d walked a bit farther along West Street, but the views of water and distant lights turned quickly to cargo warehouses and steamship offices. They were about to turn around when he saw a glow in the sky a few piers away and dragged her over to investigate. The crew of a freighter, desperate to make the morning tides, had rigged the deck with electric lights and was working through the night. Stevedores raced about, hauling cargo, their breath blowing in white gusts. The Jinni and the Golem watched until the crew boss yelled at them in Norwegian to clear out, they had no time for rubberneckers. The Golem, not thinking, apologized in the same language, and they hastily retreated before the boss could corner his presumed countrymen and ask what town they hailed from.

  The week after that, they’d walked north through the Lower East Side into a melange of Jewish and Bohemian shops, interspersed here and there with faded German signs: the remnants of Kleindeutschland adrift in an Eastern European sea. The Golem had been in a poor mood that week, distracted and unhappy. She’d said little of why, only that she’d gone to a cemetery in Brooklyn with an acquaintance, a man named Michael. The Jinni got the impression that this Michael desired more from their relationship than she did.

  “I pity whoever tries to court you,” he’d said. “You have them at a serious disadvantage.”

  “I don’t want to be courted,” she’d muttered.

  “By anyone? Or just him?”

  She’d shaken her head, as if to dismiss the question itself.

  She was hard to comprehend, this woman. She had a prudish streak that seemed of a piece with her caution and serious-mindedness. She was as curious as he, but hesitated to explore. She smiled occasionally, but rarely laughed. In all, her character was completely opposed to what he usually looked for in a woman of his company. She would make a terrible jinniyeh.

  They’d cut north and west, heading deeper into the sleeping neighborhoods. “What’s it like?” he’d asked her. “To feel all those desires and fears.”

  “Like many small hands, grabbing at me.”

  He’d almost squirmed, imagining it. Perhaps he himself would make a terrible golem.

  “I’m getting better at not responding to them,” she’d said. “But it’s still difficult. Especially when I’m the object of the fear. Or desire.”

  “Like your friend Michael’s?”

  She’d said nothing, her face a studied blank. Perhaps she worried that he would develop desires for her. But he hadn’t, not even mildly, which was surprising. He’d rarely been so long in a woman’s company for any other reason.

  He liked her well enough, he supposed. It amused him to show her around, to see now-familiar places through her new eyes. She noticed different details than he did: he took in a landscape all at once before devoting his attention to its elements, while she examined each thing in its turn, building to the whole picture. She could walk faster than he, but she was usually the one lagging behind, enthralled by something in a shop window or a gaily painted sign
.

  And at least she no longer seemed frightened of him. When he’d arrived at her boardinghouse for their fourth journey, he’d had only seconds to wait before she joined him. And she’d stopped trying to hide conspicuously at his side, though she wore her hood up until they were a ways from her home.

  They continued on a zigzagging northwest path, in their now customary near-silence. Already he regretted his promise about the hat. The sleet was no danger, barely an irritation; in fact the hat itself was worse than the sleet. He’d bought it from a pushcart without trying it on, a mistake he wouldn’t make again. The fabric was cheap and rough, and the brim made him feel like a horse with blinders on.

  “Stop fidgeting,” muttered the Golem.

  “I can’t stand this thing,” he said. “It feels like I’ve got something on my head.”

  She snorted, almost a laugh. “Well, you do.”

  “You’re the one who made me wear it. And it itches.”

  Finally she pulled the hat from his head. From her sleeve she took a handkerchief, unfolded it, and placed it inside the hat. She put the hat back on top of his head and tucked the corners of the kerchief beneath the brim. “There,” she said. “Is that better?”

  “Yes,” he said, startled.

  “Good,” she said grimly. “Now perhaps I can concentrate on where I’m going.”

  “I thought you couldn’t hear my mind.”

  “I didn’t need to. You were fussing enough for the whole street to know it.”

  They walked on. The temperature had dropped, turning the sleet to snow. The long-choked gutters made each street corner a dark pool. They were forced to step around these, until at one corner the Jinni, after checking that there was no one else on the street, took a running leap, bounding to the other side of the black water. It was a fair distance; few human men could have done it. He grinned, pleased with himself.

  The Golem stood on the corner behind him, frowning. He waited, impatient, while she picked her way across.

  “What if someone had seen?” she said.

  “The risk was worth it.”

  “To gain what? A few moments’ time?”

  “A reminder that I’m still alive.”

  To this she did not reply, only shook her head.

  In silence he took them to Washington Square Park. He’d looked forward to showing her the glowing arch, but the weather had forced the city to shut off the lights or risk them shorting. The arch loomed in shadow above them, its lines stark and precise against the clouds.

  “It should be lit,” he said, disappointed.

  “No, I like it this way.”

  They walked beneath, and he marveled anew at its height, its sheer size. So many larger buildings in this city, and yet it was the arch that fascinated him. In the dark, the enormous marble carvings seemed to change and ripple like waves.

  “It serves no purpose,” he said, trying to explain his fascination, to himself as much as her. “Buildings and bridges are useful. But why this? A gigantic arch from nowhere to nowhere.”

  “What does it say, up there?” She was on the other side, peering up at the shadowed inscription.

  He quoted from memory: “ ‘Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.’ Said by someone named Washington.”

  “I thought Washington was a place,” she said, dubious.

  “Never mind that, what does it mean?”

  She didn’t answer, only continued gazing at the letters she couldn’t see. Then she asked, “Do you believe in God?”

  “No,” he said, unhesitating. “God is a human invention. My kind have no such belief. And nothing I’ve experienced suggests that there’s an all-powerful ghost in the sky, answering wishes.” He smiled, warming to the subject. “Long ago, during the reign of Sulayman, the most powerful of the jinn could grant wishes. There are stories from that time, of jinn captured by human wizards. A jinni would offer his captor three wishes, in exchange for his release. The wizard would spend his wishes on more wishes, and force the jinni into perpetual slavery. Until finally the wizard would wish for something poorly worded, which would allow his captive to trap him. And then the jinni would be freed.” She was still studying the arch; but she was listening. “So perhaps this God of the humans is just a jinni like myself, stuck in the heavens, forced to answer wishes. Or maybe he freed himself long ago, only no one told them.”

  Silence. “What do you think?” he pressed. “Do you believe in their God?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The Rabbi did. And he was the wisest person I’ve ever met. So yes, maybe I do.”

  “A man tells you to believe, and you believe?”

  “It depends on the man. Besides, you believe the stories that you were told. Have you met a jinni who could grant wishes?”

  “No, but that ability has all but disappeared.”

  “So, it’s just stories now. And perhaps the humans did create their God. But does that make him less real? Take this arch. They created it. Now it exists.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t grant wishes,” he said. “It doesn’t do anything.”

  “True,” she said. “But I look at it, and I feel a certain way. Maybe that’s its purpose.”

  He wanted to ask, what good was a God that only existed to make you feel a certain way? But he left off. Already they were treading the edge of an argument.

  They left the arch and walked farther into the park. Sleigh tracks carved long arcs along the ground, around the islands of snow-covered lawn. The oval fountain, shut off for the season, was a shallow bowl of ice. Sleeping men dotted the benches here and there, barely visible under their layers of blankets. The Golem glanced at them and then quickly away, a sorrowful look on her face.

  “They need so much,” she murmured. “And I just walk by.”

  “Yes, but what would you do? Feed them all, take them home with you? You aren’t responsible for them.”

  “Easy to say, when you can’t hear them.”

  “It’s still true. You’re generous to a fault, Chava. I think you’d give your own self away, if only someone wished for it.”

  She hugged herself, clearly unhappy. The wind had pushed the hood back from her face. Snowflakes clung unmelting to her cheeks and the sides of her nose. She looked like a living statue, her features white and glittering.

  He reached out and brushed away the snow from her cheek. The crystals disappeared at once under his hand. She startled, surprised, then realized the problem. Ruefully she wiped a gloved hand across her face.

  He said, “If you were to lie down on one of those benches, you’d be buried under snow and pigeons by morning.” She laughed at the image. It was gratifying, to hear that rare laugh. He felt as though he’d earned it.

  As they neared the far end of the park, they heard a distant jingling behind them. A sleigh carriage was entering from beneath the arch, the hitched pair trotting handsomely. The reins were held not by a coachman but by one of the passengers, a man in evening dress and silk hat. A blond woman in a fashionable cloak sat next to him, laughing as he took the sleigh in a tight figure eight beside the fountain. The sleigh leaned threateningly to the side, and the woman buried her face in her muffler and shrieked, obviously enjoying herself.

  The Golem smiled, watching them. The Jinni stepped back onto the grass as the sleigh neared, mindful of the horses. The couple in the sleigh saw them, and the man raised his hand in a jaunty salute. It was clear they were glad for the audience, glad that someone would see them as they wanted to be seen: young and daring, thrilled to be alive and playing at love.

  The team, obviously well trained, joggled only once as they passed the Jinni. For a moment the two couples were gazing at each other as though in a mirror; and then the Jinni saw the beginning of something startled, even frightened, in the woman’s eyes. The same budding uncertainty rose in the man’s face—his hand tightened on the reins—and then they flew by, the horses drawing them away from thei
r own eldritch reflection, the too-handsome man and the strangely glittering woman.

  The Golem’s smile was gone.

  The new century was proving to be a prosperous one for Boutros Arbeely. Since the Jinni’s arrival, business had more than doubled. Word of Arbeely’s fine and speedy work had spread beyond the Syrian community, and in recent weeks the tinsmith had entertained a number of unusual visitors. The first was an Irish saloon-owner looking to replace his old growlers, which had the tendency to split from their handles—not helped by his patrons’ habit of using them as cudgels. An Italian owner of a stable had come as well, looking for horseshoes. Arbeely’s limited English would have made communication difficult—and the Jinni could not help, not without the neighbors wondering at his fluency—but all the customers had to do was find the nearest Syrian boy, drop a few pennies in his hand, and ask him to translate.

  The strangest visit came late in February from a fellow Syrian, a landlord named Thomas Maloof. The son of wealthy Eastern Orthodox landowners, Maloof had come to America not in steerage but in a furnished cabin, and had brought along a sizeable bankroll and a line of credit. After landing in New York and watching wave after wave of immigrants spill onto the ferry, he’d decided that any man with an ounce of sense would do well to purchase property in Manhattan as soon as possible. Accordingly he had snatched up the deed for a tenement on Park Street. He himself rarely set foot in the building, preferring to live in a suite of rooms at a genteel boardinghouse to the north. When he did speak to his fellow countrymen, it was with a hearty condescension, which he directed at Orthodox as well as Maronite. Relations between the two communities were cool at best, but egalitarian Maloof held himself above both.

  Maloof considered himself a connoisseur and a patron of the arts, and after a brief survey of his new building, he decided its most urgent defect was not the poor plumbing nor the dark closeness of the rooms, but the deplorable quality of the pressed-tin ceiling in the entryway. He decided to have a new ceiling installed, to commemorate the change in ownership. He’d traveled to the pressed-tin factories in Brooklyn and the Bronx, but to his disappointment they could only show him workaday flowers and medallions and fleurs-de-lis, all missing that spark of true artistic value. His tenants were good, hardworking people, he told Arbeely, and they deserved a true Work of Art in their downstairs hallway, one that a factory could not provide.