The Golem and the Jinni

  I will destroy you someday, he thought at the Golem, as loudly as he could—but she merely stood there, listening to the sweating justice as he droned on in English. Occasionally Levy gave his bride a nervous smile; she, on the other hand, looked solemn as an undertaker. Schaalman tried to imagine what people said of her. A sober woman, he supposed. Quiet. Not one for jokes or frivolousness. As though these were traits of her character, like anyone else’s, and not the outward signs of her nature, her limitations. It was remarkable that she’d made it this far without being discovered. More fool Levy, for falling in love with her.

  The justice raised his voice in a pronouncement—Schaalman recognized the words man and wife—and there was a burst of applause and laughter as Levy took the white-clad creature in his arms and kissed her. The justice gave a tight smile and turned away, his job done.

  Schaalman laughed along with everyone else, happy in his secret knowledge. It would take another day or so to regain his strength. And then, the next phase of his search would begin. Whatever it was that linked the Golem and the Bowery, whatever Levy’s uncle had conspired to hide from him, he would uncover it. He could feel the secret out there in the city, waiting patiently to be found.

  21.

  “Maryam,” said Arbeely, “do you know Nadia Mounsef? Matthew’s mother?”

  He was sitting at the Faddouls’ coffeehouse, drinking cups of scalding coffee despite the heat. Knowing that Arbeely only came when he wished to talk about something, Maryam had kept close to him, polishing the already pristine tables while Sayeed attended to the other customers. Now she paused, cloth in hand. “Nadia? We’ve spoken a few times, but not lately. Why do you ask?”

  Arbeely hesitated. He didn’t want to say the truth, which was that the woman’s face had been haunting him. “I went to see her a few weeks ago, about Matthew,” he said. “She was ill. I mean, she looked ill before, but . . . this was different.” He went on to describe the woman who’d answered the door: even thinner than he remembered, her eyes dull and sunken. A strange dark blush, almost a rash, was spread across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. The crucifix at her throat—three barred, the sigil of the Eastern Orthodox—had fluttered visibly in time with her too-quick heartbeat. She’d blinked at the feeble light in the hallway as Arbeely haltingly explained his concerns. It wasn’t that Matthew was a nuisance, far from it: he was a helpful boy, and they enjoyed having him at the shop. But the child was spending mornings there, when he should certainly be in a classroom. And if a truancy officer happened to come by . . . “I don’t mean to get Matthew in trouble with anyone,” he said. “Including his mother.”

  She’d given him the barest hint of a polite smile. “Of course, Mr. Arbeely. I’ll speak with Matthew. Thank you, for being patient with him.” And before Arbeely could protest that patience had nothing to do with it—the boy had real talent, and would make a promising apprentice—she went back inside and closed the door, leaving Arbeely to wonder how he could’ve handled it better.

  “You did what you needed to,” Maryam told him. “You can’t be responsible for her son’s welfare.” She sighed. “Poor Nadia. She’s all alone, you know.”

  “I was wondering,” Arbeely admitted. “What happened?”

  “Her husband was peddling in Ohio. For a while there were letters, and then, nothing.”

  “He disappeared?”

  “Dead, ill, or run away—no one knows.”

  Arbeely shook his head. It was a common story, but still hard for him to credit. “And she has no one here?”

  “No family, at least. And she refuses all attempts to help her. I’ve invited her to dinner, but she never comes.” Maryam looked troubled, and no wonder: it wasn’t often that someone succeeded in refusing her generosity. “I think most of her neighbors have given up trying. Her illness is so strange, it comes and goes—it’s terrible to say, but many decided she was making it up, to avoid them.”

  “Or perhaps she just doesn’t want to be stared at, and gossiped about.”

  Maryam nodded sadly. “You’re right, of course. And who can blame her? I’ll visit her soon, and try again. Perhaps there’s some way I can help.”

  “Thank you, Maryam.” He sighed. “At least Matthew stopped coming in the mornings. Although, mind you, some days I’d rather he did.” At Maryam’s quizzical look he said, “It’s Ahmad. At this point I think he likes the boy more than me. He’s been . . . moody, lately. A failed love affair, I suspect. He tells me little.”

  Maryam nodded with her usual sympathy, but at the Jinni’s name the warmth had faded from her eyes. How was it that Maryam, with her gift for seeing the good in everyone, had taken such a dislike to him? Arbeely would have liked to ask her; but that, of course, would mean venturing into dangerous territory. Instead he thanked her and left, feeling more morose than ever.

  Back at the shop, the Jinni and Matthew were at the Jinni’s workbench, their heads bent together like conspirators. The Jinni insisted that Matthew’s discovery of his secret had been a complete accident, but still Arbeely felt the Jinni had been far too cavalier about the whole thing. It had sparked their worst argument since the tin ceiling.

  How didn’t you hear him come in?

  Half the time you don’t hear him either. Besides, I told you, he knew already.

  And you didn’t even try to convince him otherwise?

  Arbeely, he saw me soldering chain links with my bare hands. What could I have said?

  You could’ve tried, at least. Made up some lie or other.

  The Jinni’s face had darkened. I’m sick of lying. And when Arbeely tried to press the matter, the Jinni had left the shop.

  Since then, they’d spent most of their mornings in tense silence. But whenever Matthew arrived and took his silent spot on the bench, the Jinni would treat him with uncharacteristic patience. Sometimes they even laughed together, at a joke or a mistake, and Arbeely would tamp down his jealousy, feeling like a stranger in his own shop.

  He tried to keep things in perspective. Business was more profitable than ever, and the necklaces they were making for Sam Hosseini were beautiful—no doubt Sam would fetch a small fortune for each one. He thought back to the morning the Jinni had come in looking like he’d been dealt a mortal blow. It had been only a month, after all. Hopefully soon his partner would be distracted by something—or, God help them all, someone—new and intriguing.

  The sun dipped behind the broad backs of the tenements, and the light in the shop’s high window faded. Women’s voices drifted down from the upper stories, calling their children in for supper. Matthew slipped off the bench and was gone, the shop door barely whispering as he passed. Yet again the Jinni wondered if the spirit world had meddled in the boy’s bloodline—it seemed impossible for a human to be that uncanny without help.

  Matthew’s visits had become the sole bright spot in the Jinni’s days. Whenever the boy left and the door slipped shut, something would close in himself as well, something barely acknowledged. Arbeely would turn up the lamp, and they would work in their separate silences until Arbeely, succumbing to hunger or fatigue, would heave a sigh and begin to heap sand on the fire. At that, the Jinni would put down his tools and leave, as wordlessly as Matthew.

  His life was no different than before: the shop during the day, the city at night. But the hours now felt interminable, ruled by a numbing sameness. At night he walked quickly, as though driven to it, barely seeing his surroundings. He tried returning to his old favorites—Madison Square Park, Washington Square, the Battery Park aquarium—but these places were haunted now, pinned to memories of particular evenings and conversations, things said and unsaid. He could hardly walk within sight of Central Park before a weary anger turned him elsewhere.

  So he went farther north instead, tracing aimless paths into unexplored territory. He walked up Riverside to Harlem’s southern border, then cut through the university’s new grounds, past the columned library with its gigantic granite dome. He forged up Amsterdam, c
rossing streets numbered well into the hundreds. Gradually the well-kept brownstones gave way to Dutch clapboard houses, their trellises heavy with roses.

  One night he discovered the Harlem River Speedway and walked its length, the river glittering to his right. It was well past midnight, but a few of society’s more reckless specimens were still out in their racing carriages, chasing each other up and down the course. Their horses strained white-eyed at their bits, kicking up dust from the macadam. At dawn he found himself at the amusement park at Fort George, its shuttered fairway eerie and silent. The wooden rides seemed skeletal, like the remains of huge abandoned beasts. The Third Avenue Trolley had its terminus at the park’s entrance, and he watched as the day’s first car disgorged its passengers: carnival barkers and ride operators, yawning beer-garden girls in faded skirts, an organ-grinder whose monkey slept curled around his neck. No one seemed happy to be there. He boarded the car and rode south, watching as the trolley filled and emptied, delivering workers to the factories and printing presses, the sweatshops and the docklands. The more he rode the trolleys and trains of New York, the more they seemed to form a giant, malevolent bellows, inhaling defenseless passengers from platforms and street corners and blowing them out again elsewhere.

  Back on Washington Street, he trudged to Arbeely’s shop, feeling as though he were caught inside a single day that stretched like molten glass. There was nothing to anticipate, except Matthew. He enjoyed the boy’s wide-eyed attention, enjoyed giving him tasks and watching him perform them with silent absorption. He supposed that eventually Matthew would grow older and lose interest, and take his place with the feral young men who slouched on the neighborhood stoops. Or—even worse—he’d become just another streetcar rider, dull-eyed and unprotesting.

  He sat down at his bench without a word of greeting. Behind him, Arbeely puttered around the shop, making irritating humming noises. The man was deep into a large order of kitchen graters and had spent an entire week punching diamond-shaped holes into sheets of tin. Just watching him made the Jinni want to go mad. But Arbeely gave no sign that he minded the repetition, and the Jinni was beginning to detest him for that.

  You judge him far too harshly, he could hear the Golem say.

  He scowled. It was clear they would never speak again, and yet he was hearing her voice more and more often. He rubbed at his cuff, felt the square of paper shift beneath it. Enough: the necklaces were due to Sam Hosseini. He took up his tools and tried to lose himself in the creation of something beautiful.

  Michael Levy slowly woke to the thin glow of morning. The other half of the bed was an empty sea of sheets and counterpane. He closed his eyes, listened for his wife. There: in the kitchen, bustling about. It was a comforting sound, a childhood sound. The air even smelled of fresh-baked bread.

  He padded out into the tiny kitchen. She was standing next to the stove in her new housedress, leafing through her American cookbook. He snuck his arms around her waist and kissed her. “Couldn’t sleep again?”

  “Yes, but it’s all right.”

  Apparently it was an insomnia she’d had all her life. She said she was used to it; and indeed, she looked more awake than he felt. If it were him, he’d be dead on his feet. An amazing woman.

  He still couldn’t believe they were married. At night he’d lie next to her, tracing his fingers around her stomach, up to her breasts, her arms, amazed at how thoroughly his life had changed. He loved the feel of her skin—always cool somehow, though the days had been sweltering. “I suppose it’s because of the ovens at the bakery,” he’d said once. “Your body’s used to the heat.” She’d smiled as though embarrassed, and said, “I think you must be right.”

  She was often shy, his wife. Many of their meals together were silent, or nearly so: they were still tentative with each other, unsure of how to act. He’d look across the table and wonder, had they married too quickly? Would they always be strangers to each other? But then, even before the thought had passed from his mind, she would ask about his day, or tell him a story from hers, or else simply reach across and squeeze his hand. He would realize it was exactly what he’d needed, and wonder how she’d known.

  Then there was the matter of the bedroom. Their wedding night had begun tentatively. He was well aware that as a previously married woman, she would be much more experienced than he. But what did she like? What pleased her? He had no idea how to ask, and not nearly enough nerve. What if she suggested something outlandish, even terrifying? His friends, when they’d had a few drinks, boasted of their exotic nights with “emancipated” girls, but his own fantasies had never ventured far from the prosaic. Perhaps it was a failing; perhaps she’d be disappointed.

  If she was, she didn’t say so. Seeming to understand his distress—and there, again, was that knowing—she had led him into the act with her usual calm and steady demeanor. If their lovemaking was a little too workmanlike—if, afterward, he’d been unsure of her own pleasure—still he was relieved that it had been accomplished at all.

  And then there’d been the night a week or so later, when she’d started as though surprised, and placed a hand between their bodies, pressing at a particular spot. To Michael’s utter regret he’d frozen, chagrined, as his Orthodox upbringing rushed clamoring to the fore, insisting that this was immodest, unbecoming in a wife—and slowly she’d removed her hand, and replaced it on his back, and resumed their rhythm.

  He couldn’t talk to her about it, later. He just couldn’t. He tried, once, to repeat what she herself had done; but she took his hand and moved it away, and that had been that.

  Already there were things unsaid between them. But he loved her; he was certain of it. And he liked to think she loved him in return. He imagined them in thirty years, with children grown, holding hands in bed and laughing at how unsure they’d been, how delicately they’d tiptoed around each other. But you always knew just what to say, he’d tell her; and she would smile, and nestle her head in his shoulder, both of them completely at home.

  He’d ask her about these things someday. He’d find out what had prompted her to propose to him, just when he’d given up hope. Or what she’d been thinking as she stood next to him before the justice of the peace, looking so composed and serene. He only hoped it wouldn’t take him thirty years to ask.

  The Golem placed a glass of tea and a plate of bread before her husband, and watched as he ate quickly, in big bites. She smiled in real fondness. He was so earnest, in everything he did.

  She turned back to the sink to clean the few remaining dishes. They lived now in three tiny rooms crammed at the end of a first-floor hallway. The thin light that filtered down the air shaft illuminated a pile of garbage that climbed halfway up the bedroom window. Sometimes she’d watch as a cigarette butt fluttered down from above. The kitchen was more like a closet, with a stove barely big enough to roast a chicken. At night she did her sewing in the parlor, which hardly merited the name; it was perhaps a third the size of her old room at the boardinghouse. The rooms’ main advantage was that they sat at the back of the tenement, which had been dug into a slight rise, so that the earth kept them cool while the rest of the building sweltered. “It’ll be warmer in winter too,” Michael had said. She hoped this meant she wouldn’t feel so stiff and creaky, so driven to walk in the evenings. But deep down she knew that her proximity to Michael’s restless mind would hound her to distraction as surely as the weather once had.

  Within days of their marriage she’d realized how much she’d underestimated the difficulty ahead. Unlike the Rabbi, who’d been so circumspect, so careful in his thoughts, Michael’s mind was a constant churn of wants and fears and second-guesses, most of them directed at herself. The noise wore down her composure and tested her self-control. She found herself serving him second helpings when he was hungry, talking when he wanted conversation, taking his hand when he needed reassurance. She’d begun to wonder whether she still had a will of her own.

  Also there were the endless practical dilemmas
. The long stretches of lying next to him in bed, remembering to breathe in and out. The excuses for her sleeplessness, her cool skin. Would he notice that her hair never grew? Or, God forbid, that she had no heartbeat? And what would happen when she failed to bear children? She’d hoped to keep marital relations to a minimum, to put some protective distance between them—she was afraid, above all, of hurting him accidentally—but then his desire would grow too strong to ignore, and she would feel driven to respond, or else lie there frustrated by reflected lust. There’d been that one night, when she’d felt her own warm tingle of desire, and tried eagerly to encourage it; but it had been doused by Michael’s awkward, guilty horror. It wasn’t his fault: she could feel his chagrin at his reaction, and he’d later tried to remedy the situation, but with such tortured ambivalence that she’d put an end to the attempt. Was it the pleasure itself, she wondered, that was somehow shameful? Or only what she’d done to increase it?

  Unbidden she heard the Jinni say: It should be easy. They’re the ones who complicate it beyond reason.

  No. She couldn’t afford to listen to that voice. It was wrong, ludicrous even, to resent Michael for her decision. She’d bound herself to him; she would see through what she’d begun. And perhaps, one day, she would tell him the truth.

  At last the necklaces for Sam Hosseini were finished. Arbeely delivered them to Sam’s shop himself, not trusting the Jinni to strike a good bargain. But he needn’t have worried, for Sam was so pleased with them that he barely remembered to haggle. Besides the Jinni’s original necklace, with its disks of blue-green glass, there were versions with garnet-colored teardrops, brilliant white crystals, and lozenges of a deep emerald green. The Jinni had flattened the links and added the faintest edge of tarnish to the metal, which gave them a timeless beauty, while also looking like nothing Sam had ever seen.