The Golem and the Jinni

  “It is yours,” Maryam said, “if you want it.”

  “You believe them?” Arbeely blurted in surprise.

  “Must I believe, to part with it? To me it’s merely my mother’s old copper flask. It’s clear that Ahmad values it much more highly.” She picked it up and handed it to the Jinni, who took it as though it were a powder keg. “I wish you luck, Ahmad.”

  “Thank you,” said the Jinni. And then, looking around: “Is Matthew . . . ?”

  “He’s at school,” said Maryam.

  The Jinni nodded, his disappointment plain. Maryam hesitated; at last she said, “I’ll tell him you said good-bye.”

  They went down to the street, the flask tightly held in the Jinni’s hand. Maryam took her leave and returned to her customers, squeezing her husband’s shoulder in passing. The rest of them stood uncomfortably in the noonday light, the sense of urgency straining against a sorrowful reluctance. The Jinni had explained that there was little time; their only defense now was speed and distance, fleeing across the ocean before Schaalman knew to follow. The ship to Marseille would leave in a few hours—Sophia was arranging a single steerage ticket—and before that, the Golem must retrieve Schaalman’s spells from Anna so that they, too, could be buried in the desert.

  “And you, Saleh?” the Jinni asked. “What will you do now?”

  The question had been lurking in Saleh’s mind ever since he’d woken clear-eyed on the Jinni’s bare floor. Should he go on as Ice Cream Saleh, measuring his life in pennies and turns of the churn handle? Or become Doctor Mahmoud once again? In truth neither name seemed to fit anymore; he suspected he was now something else, something new, but he had no idea what. He’d lived so long in anticipation of his own death that to contemplate his future was like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring into a vertiginous rush of open sky. “I’ll have to consider,” he said. “For now, I’ll content myself with finding my churn.” And he too said good-bye, his gaze lingering on the Jinni’s face before he turned away.

  “Well,” Arbeely said, growing awkward. “I’ll miss you, Ahmad.”

  The Jinni raised an eyebrow. “Really? Yesterday you implied otherwise.”

  Arbeely waved a hand. “Forget all that. Besides,” he said, attempting humor, “who will I argue with now? Matthew?”

  I’ll miss you as well, the Jinni wanted to say; but it was not the truth. The flask would not allow him to miss any of them. Grief squeezed him again, and the beginnings of panic. He clasped Arbeely’s hand, then broke away, half-turning his back. “We must do this soon,” he muttered to the Golem, “or I’ll lose my nerve.”

  “Chava,” Arbeely said, “I’m glad we met. Please, take good care of him.” She nodded—and then Arbeely too was gone. They stood alone on the busy sidewalk.

  “Then this is it?” the Golem murmured. “It must happen now?”

  The Jinni nodded; but then he paused. Something strange was happening. A creeping dimness crossed his vision, and his hearing began to fade. With no warning, the sidewalk vanished and he was wrenched away—

  Anna stood before him, holding a stack of crumbling pages. Her face was empty, her features slack. His own hands, veined and spotted, reached out to her shoulders. Slowly he turned her around, stepped behind her, and considered the image they made in the mirrored column, as though posed for a family portrait. Behind them the dance hall was flooded with light. He reached up his hands, and placed them around the girl’s throat.

  “Bring the creature here,” he told his reflection. “And the flask as well. Or I will make you a murderer again.”

  He felt the Golem’s cool skin beneath his fingers. His hands had moved on their own, had grabbed her wrists as though to drag her to Schaalman’s side. The binding, the Jinni realized. It had never been broken—and now Schaalman could control him, just as ibn Malik had.

  Aghast, she said, “Ahmad? What is it, what’s wrong?”

  What a fool Schaalman was, the Jinni thought bitterly; how little he knew his own creation. Why bother to threaten him, when the Golem would never knowingly abandon Anna, not even to secure a greater good? She would go to him of her own free will—and he would not let her go alone.

  His hands were his to move again. He dropped them to his sides and turned away.

  “It’s too late,” he said, toneless. “We’ve lost.”

  Saleh’s churn was right where he’d left it, in the corner of his basement hovel. He grimaced to see the place clearly for the first time. He nudged his sewn-together blanket with a toe, shuddering to think of the vermin it might be harboring. The churn was the only thing worth salvaging, and even that only barely—the wood was badly splintered, the handle hanging on by a single screw. He had the notion that if he tried to use it now it would come apart in his hands.

  Still, he could not abandon it when it had served him so well, and so he lugged it up the stairwell to the street. He was about to take it to the Jinni’s room, where he would contemplate his options, when on the other side of the street he spied the Golem and the Jinni hurrying past. The Golem was nearly running, her face set in anguished determination. The Jinni followed behind, looking as though he would give the world to stop her if he could. And Saleh thought, something has gone very wrong.

  He reminded himself that this was not his fight. For a time he’d been caught up in their troubles, but now that was over. Hadn’t he followed them into enough calamity? It was time to decide where he belonged.

  Gritting his teeth, Saleh left the churn behind.

  29.

  The dance hall on Broome Street was as beautiful by day as by evening, but it was a different sort of beauty: not a sparkling, gaslit fantasia, but a warm and golden room. The high, many-paned windows cast squares of light on the dance floor and made the dust glow in the air.

  Neither had said a word as they walked to the dance hall, united in their fear, in their knowledge of just how powerless they were. Schaalman could control the Jinni however he wished, and the Golem was his own creature to destroy. He held their lives in his hands; he might use them each against the other, or seal the Jinni in the flask and turn the Golem into dust. Servitude, or else death.

  The door to the dance hall stood open a hand’s width. They exchanged a grim glance, then went inside.

  The tables had been pushed back to the edge of the hall, leaving an empty parquet expanse. In its middle stood Anna, absent and staring.

  “Anna,” the Golem said, urgently. There was no response; she could feel nothing from the girl. She took a few steps, looked around. The Jinni stood tensed. “I’m here,” the Golem called out.

  A patch of shadow detached itself from a far corner and resolved itself into a thin old man. “Hello, my golem,” said Schaalman. “I’m glad to see you.” His gaze turned to the Jinni. “And you as well. You even came willingly. You did bring the flask, didn’t you?”—and the Jinni bit back a startled cry as his body moved of its own accord. His arms held out the flask; his feet stepped him forward, covering half the distance between them. He bent and placed the flask upright on the floor, then stepped back again while the Golem watched, horrified.

  “Stop it,” she said. “We’re here, we did what you asked. Let Anna go.”

  “Golem, you surprise me,” Schaalman said. “I thought you would envy this girl. Look at her, just days from the agony of childbirth—but with no cares, no fears, only peace. Is that not a better way to be?” He regarded her from across the dance floor. “You were mastered for so brief a time, but surely you haven’t forgotten what it was like. Tell me,” he said, his voice sharp. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did it make you feel?”

  She could not lie, he knew the answer. “I was happy.”

  “But you would take that happiness from Anna, and give her back her pain.” And then, as though he’d reached some limit of endurance, the posturing fell away; in a tone much more conversational, he said, “As it happens, I understand why. I’m merely surpri
sed you feel the same way.” He sighed. “I’ve underestimated you, Golem. I built you with my own hands, and yet you are a mystery.”

  She said nothing, waiting, tensed. Beside her the Jinni was so still she wondered if Schaalman had frozen him in place.

  “And you,” he said, to the Jinni. “Look at you. If I said the words that would unbind you, and told you to fly away, I think you would refuse, and stay by her side. I remember a time when you were less considerate to your women. I wonder, is the change ibn Malik’s fault, for what he forced you to do? Or can it be laid at my golem’s feet?”

  “Stop your talking,” the Jinni said, his voice cold. “Do what you mean to.”

  “You’re so eager to go into the flask?” He shook his head. “First I want you to understand me. I am not ibn Malik. I want no glory, no kingdoms to rule. I only want my remaining lives to gain some measure of peace.”

  He turned to the Golem. “To that end, I propose a trade.” From his sleeve he withdrew a piece of paper. “This formula binds a golem to a new master. It was written by your Rabbi Meyer. I believe he died before he could use it. Or perhaps he merely didn’t have the strength.”

  The Rabbi? She wanted to deny it, to call him a liar—but then, how often had she felt the Rabbi’s nightmares, his fears for her?

  “Meyer worked a clever provision into this formula,” Schaalman continued. “You must choose to be mastered, of your own free will, for it to take effect. So here is my offer. Anna’s life, and that of her child, for your freedom. I would have you truly be my golem,” Schaalman said. “My bound servant, as well as my creation.”

  She looked at Anna, who stood slack as a rag doll, oblivious to the threat. “And what would I do, as your bound servant?”

  “Travel the world,” he said. “Find each of my future incarnations, each time I die and am reborn. Teach them who they are, and that they have no need to fear death. Shepherd them toward peace, if you can manage it. They will fight you. I would have done the same.”

  She glanced at the Jinni, saw his growing horror as he realized what she would choose, what she must choose. “Very well,” she said. “I accept your offer.”

  “Chava,” the Jinni said, aghast.

  The Golem turned on him. “What would you have me do, Ahmad? Tell me!”

  But he had no answer.

  She turned back to Schaalman. “First, let her go.”

  Schaalman seemed to consider: and then, between them, Anna collapsed to the floor. The Golem ran to her and hauled her to her feet. Anna’s muddled gaze landed on the Golem, and then Schaalman. “You,” she said. “You’re the one who frightened me, in the hallway.”

  “Get out of here, girl,” Schaalman said.

  Anna frowned, not understanding. “Go, Anna,” the Golem urged. The young woman gave her a confused look, but then hurried to the hallway exit. They heard the door shudder as it slammed.

  The Golem had shut her eyes. “Do it,” she said.

  “As you wish,” Schaalman said—and with no more ceremony he uttered the Rabbi’s spell.

  Hidden in the darkness of the hallway, Saleh held still as the girl ran straight past him and out the door.

  It had been slow work, to open the door without it making a sound. And now that he was inside he had little idea of what he was seeing. He’d thought to walk in on some terrible battle—but they merely stood a little ways apart, trading terse sentences in what must have been Yiddish. Until the pregnant woman collapsed, it might have been a business negotiation.

  He waited until the door had swung shut, and then crept closer to the end of the hallway. The gigantic room was flooded with light to its farthest corners; once he left the hallway he’d be easily spotted. What could he possibly do, besides run in and be killed? They would not thank him for throwing away his life. Perhaps, he thought, whatever the outcome, it was enough to be there—to witness their end, if it came to that.

  Schaalman spoke again; and even at this distance he could hear the power in the words. It prickled his skin, made his hair rise. He watched the Golem stagger, as though struck a blow. The Jinni had turned his back. Whatever was happening, the creature could not bear to watch.

  Holding his breath, Saleh took a step closer.

  “Hello, Ahmad,” said the Golem.

  Don’t call me that, the Jinni thought. Not with her voice.

  He made himself turn around. Could he see the difference, or did he merely imagine it? Her eyes were wider, clearer. Some indefinable wrinkle had been smoothed from her forehead. She was smiling, untroubled.

  “You could have waited until I was in the flask,” he said to Schaalman. “You could have spared me this.”

  “I wanted you to see, so you might understand,” Schaalman said. “This is her nature. Not the broken creature you knew.”

  “It’s true,” the Golem said. She stretched her arms out before her, as though noticing them for the first time. “I am as I was meant to be. Don’t worry,” she said to the Jinni’s horrified face, “I still remember everything. The bakery and the Radzins, and Anna, and the Rabbi. And Michael.” For a moment she seemed focused elsewhere; then she said, “My master ended his life. I’m a widow again.” She might have been discussing the weather.

  The Jinni stared. “You killed her husband? What possible reason—”

  “He said the wrong thing,” Schaalman snapped.

  “You failed to tell her this before she agreed to your trade.”

  Schaalman laughed. “You think it would have affected her decision?”

  “And I remember you,” the Golem said, coming nearer. Her self-conscious hunch had disappeared; without it, she stood taller, more confident. “I never told you how I felt.”

  “Don’t,” the Jinni said, desperate.

  “It’s all right,” she said, as though reassuring a child. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

  “End this,” he said to Schaalman. “Put me in the flask.”

  The man shrugged. “If you wish it.”

  But it was the Golem, not her master, who bent to pick it up. Of course: Schaalman would not risk draining his own strength, as ibn Malik had. She examined it, then turned to Schaalman. “What must I say?”

  Schaalman hesitated, searching back through the years of memories, and then said a phrase in twisted Arabic. The Jinni shuddered to hear it: it echoed in his own memory as well, the words he’d heard at the start of the flask’s endless moment.

  The Golem lifted the flask and opened her mouth to say the words.

  “Wait,” said Schaalman quickly. “Not like that. Face him, not me.”

  She nodded, and turned to the Jinni.

  “One moment,” the Jinni said.

  Schaalman raised an eyebrow. “Is that cowardice?”

  He ignored the man and stepped toward the Golem. She stood patient, head tilted, watching with cool curiosity as he brought up a hand to touch her cheek. At the base of her neck, the golden chain peeked from the edge of her buttoned collar.

  “Good-bye,” he told her.

  He would have to be quick.

  Saleh had crept to the end of the hallway, not two steps from the shadow’s edge, and tried to make sense of the tableau. Was Schaalman manipulating the Golem? Or had she turned traitor?

  The Golem picked up the flask and asked the old man a question. His answer, when it came, was in Arabic, or at least Arabic of a sort. The words were nonsense, like a child’s singsong chant, but spoken with a painful, rasping inflection that grated against the wound in his mind. For an instant his vision went gray and flat—he felt as though he were trapped and shrinking, his body reduced to a single point—

  The moment passed, and Saleh came back to himself, gulping at air. He knew, without a doubt, that the words were the command that powered the flask. He repeated them to himself in his mind, felt again that strange diminishing—and then heard the note of fear in Schaalman’s voice as he admonished the Golem, as though, in that moment, she had placed him in danger.

>   The Jinni reached out to the Golem and touched her cheek, a gesture of deep regret. Then in a sudden motion he yanked something from her throat. It glinted in his hand, and he turned away, taking one running step, two, moving quickly, his hands unfolding something—

  The Golem caught him, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him into the floor.

  Schaalman was shouting now. Saleh watched, terrified, as the Golem lifted the Jinni again and threw him into one of the mirrored columns. She’d dropped the flask, and it lay on the floor to one side, forgotten.

  He was no fighter; he had no weapon. Against Schaalman and the Golem he would be nothing but a momentary irritation. The instant he entered the sunlight he’d be a dead man.

  He thought, I’ve been a dead man these many years. Let this death be the one I choose.

  Saleh ran out from the shadows.

  The Golem stood over her enemy, the one who’d angered her master. He lay motionless, not from injury or pain, but because her master held him with his mind. Above him the column stood cracked, its base askew, its mirror a webbed explosion. She grabbed and lifted him again, reveling in the feel of her body moving, the bunch and release of clay muscles. This was why she’d been built: for this purpose, this moment.

  Her master was yelling again, at her now, not the Jinni. His displeasure called to her, telling her to stop toying with her enemy. Her body was speaking as well, saying keep on, keep on—but her master’s voice spoke louder. Disappointed, she dropped the Jinni to the floor.

  “Enough!” her master shouted. “Someone will hear, you’ll have the whole city on top of us.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, eyes lowered. Then she frowned, listening across their binding. “Something is wrong,” she said.