The Golem and the Djinni

That, at least, got through: she shook her head vehemently and began to expostulate in Yiddish. “Look here,” the surgeon began, and took her elbow to steer her out. But it was as though he’d grabbed hold of a lamppost. The woman would not move, only loomed over him, solid and suddenly gigantic, a Valkyrie come to life.

He dropped her arm as though it had scalded him. “Have it your way,” he muttered, disconcerted. He busied himself with the ether jar, and tried to ignore the bizarre presence behind his shoulder.

The hatch opened again, and a young man fell in, looking roughly wakened. “Doctor, I’m—good lord!”

“Never mind her,” the surgeon said. “She refuses to leave. If she faints, so much the better. Quick now, or he’ll die before we can open him up.” And with that, they etherized their patient and set to work.

If the two men had known the powerful struggle taking place inside the woman behind them, they would’ve deserted the surgery and run for their lives. Any lesser creation would have throttled them both the moment their knives touched Rotfeld’s skin. But the Golem recalled the doctor in the hold, and her master’s assurance that he was there to help; and it had been that doctor who’d brought him here. Still, as they peeled back Rotfeld’s skin and hunted through his innards, her hands twisted and clenched uncontrollably at her sides. She reached for her master in her mind, and found no awareness, no needs or desires. She was losing him, bit by bit.

The surgeon removed something from Rotfeld’s body and dropped it in a tray. “Well, the damned thing’s out,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder. “Still on your feet? Good girl.”

“Maybe she’s simple,” muttered the assistant.

“Not necessarily. These peasants have iron stomachs. Simon, keep that clamped!”

“Sorry, sir.”

But the figure on the table was struggling for life. He inhaled once, and again; and then, with a long, rattling sigh, Otto Rotfeld’s final breath left his body.

The Golem staggered as the last remnants of their connection snapped and faded away.

The surgeon bent his head to Rotfeld’s chest. He took up the man’s wrist for a moment, then gently placed it back. “Time of death, please,” he said.

The assistant swallowed, and glanced at the chronometer. “Oh two hundred hours, forty-eight minutes.”

The surgeon made a note, true regret on his face. “Couldn’t be helped,” he said, his voice bitter. “He waited too long. He must have been in agony for days.”

The Golem could not look away from the unmoving shape on the table. A moment ago he’d been her master, her reason for being; now he seemed nothing at all. She felt dizzy, unmoored. She stepped forward and touched a hand to his face, his slack jaw, his drooping eyelids. Already the heat was fading from his skin.

Please stop that.

The Golem withdrew her hand and looked at the two men, who were watching in horrified distaste. Neither of them had spoken.

“I’m sorry,” said the surgeon finally, hoping she would understand his tone. “We tried our best.”

“I know,” said the Golem—and only then did she realize that she’d understood the man’s words, and replied in the same language.

The surgeon frowned, and shared a glance with his assistant. “Mrs. … I’m sorry, what was his name?”

“Rotfeld,” said the Golem. “Otto Rotfeld.”

“Mrs. Rotfeld, our condolences. Perhaps—”

“You want me to leave,” she said. It wasn’t a guess, nor was it a sudden understanding of the indelicacy of her presence. She simply knew it, as surely as she could see her master’s body on the table, and smell the ether’s sickly fumes. The surgeon’s desire, his wish for her to be elsewhere, had spoken inside her mind.

“Well, yes, perhaps it would be better,” he said. “Simon, please escort Mrs. Rotfeld back to steerage.”

She let the young man put his arm about her and guide her out of the surgery. She was shaking. Some part of her was still casting about, searching for Rotfeld. And meanwhile the young assistant’s embarrassed discomfort, his desire to be rid of his charge, was clouding her thoughts. What was happening to her?

At the door to the steerage deck, the young man squeezed her hand guiltily, and then was gone. What should she do? Go in there, and face all those people? She put her hand on the door latch, hesitated, opened it.

The wishes and fears of five hundred passengers hit her like a maelstrom.

I wish I could fall asleep. If only she would stop throwing up. Will that man ever quit snoring? I need a glass of water. How long until we reach New York? What if the ship goes down? If we were alone, we could make love. Oh God, I want to go back home.

The Golem let go of the latch, turned, and ran.

Up on the deserted main deck, she found a bench and sat there until morning. A chill rain began to fall, soaking her dress, but she ignored it, unable to focus on anything except the clamor in her head. It was as though, without Rotfeld’s commands to guide her, her mind was reaching out for a substitute and encountering the ship’s worth of passengers that lay below. Without the benefit of the bond between master and golem, their wishes and fears did not have the driving force of commands—but nonetheless she heard them, and felt their varying urgencies, and her limbs twitched with the compulsion to respond. Each one was like a small hand plucking at her sleeve: please, do something.

The next morning, she stood at the railing as Rotfeld’s body was lowered into the sea. It was a blustery day, the waves white-tipped and choppy. Rotfeld’s body hit the water with barely a splash; in an instant the ship had left it behind. Perhaps, the Golem thought, it might be best to hurl herself overboard and follow Rotfeld into the water. She leaned forward and peered over the edge, trying to gauge the water’s depth; but two men hurriedly stepped forward, and she allowed herself to be drawn back.

The small crowd of onlookers began to disperse. A man in ship’s livery handed her a small leather pouch, explaining that it held everything that had been on Rotfeld’s person when he died. At some point a compassionate deckhand had placed a wool coat about her shoulders, and she tucked the pouch into a pocket.

A small knot of passengers from steerage hovered nearby, wondering what to do about her. Should they escort her below decks, or simply leave her be? Rumors had circled the bunks all night. One man insisted that she’d carried the dead man into steerage in her own two arms. Then there was the woman who muttered that she’d seen Rotfeld at Danzig—he’d made himself conspicuous by berating the deckhands for not taking care with a heavy crate—and that he’d boarded the ship alone. They remembered how she’d grabbed at the doctor’s hands, like a wild animal. And she was simply odd, in a way they couldn’t explain even to themselves. She stood far too still, as if rooted to the deck, while those around her shivered in the cold and leaned with the ship. She hardly blinked, even when the ocean mist struck her face. And as far as they could tell, she hadn’t yet shed a single tear.

They decided to approach her. But the Golem had felt their fears and suspicions and she turned from the rail and walked past them, her stiff back a clear request for solitude. They felt her passing as a slap of cold, grave-smelling air. Their resolve faltered; they left her alone.

The Golem made her way to the aft staircase. She passed steerage and continued down to the depths of the hold: the one place in her short existence where she hadn’t felt herself in peril. She found the open crate and climbed into it, then drew the lid into place above her. Muffled in darkness, she lay there, reviewing the few facts of which she was certain. She was a golem, and her master was dead. She was on a ship in the middle of the ocean. If the others knew what she was, they would be afraid of her. And she had to stay hidden.

As she lay there, the strongest of the desires drifted down to her from the decks above. A little girl in steerage had misplaced her toy horse, and now wailed for it, inconsolable. A man traveling second class had been three days without a drink, trying to make a fresh start; he paced his tiny cabin, shaking, fingers knotted in his hair, unable to think about anything except a glass of brandy. Each of these, and many others, pulled at her in turn, rising and falling. They urged her to climb out of the hold, to help in some way. But she remembered the suspicions of the passengers on the foredeck, and stayed in the crate.

She lay there the rest of the day and into the night, listening to the boxes around her shift and groan. She felt useless, purposeless. She had no idea what to do. And her only clue to where they were going was a word that Rotfeld had spoken. America. It might mean anything.

The next morning, the ship awoke to warmer weather and a welcome sight: a thin line of gray between ocean and sky. Passengers drifted to the deck, watching westward as the line thickened and stretched. It meant all their wishes granted, their fears forgotten, if only for the moment; and down in the hold the Golem felt an unexpected and blissful relief.

The constant thrum of the ship’s propellers quieted to a purr. The ship slowed. And then came the distant sound of voices, yelling and cheering. Curiosity made the Golem rise at last from her crate, and she emerged onto the foredeck, into the noonday sun.

The deck was crowded with people, and at first the Golem didn’t see what they were waving at. But then, there she was: a gray-green woman standing in the middle of the water, holding a tablet and bearing aloft a torch. Her gaze was unblinking, and she stood so still: was it another golem? Then the distance became clear, and she realized how far away the woman was, and how gigantic. Not alive, then; but the blank, smooth eyes nevertheless held a hint of understanding. And those on deck were waving and shouting at her with jubilation, crying even as they smiled. This, too, the Golem thought, was a constructed woman. Whatever she meant to the others, she was loved and respected for it. For the first time since Rotfeld’s death, the Golem felt something like hope.

The ship’s horn sounded, making the air vibrate. The Golem turned to go back down to the hold, and only then did she glimpse the city. It rose, enormous, at the edge of an island. The tall, square buildings seemed to move between each other, dancing in rows as the ship drew closer. She glimpsed trees, piers, a harbor alive with smaller craft, tugs and sailboats that skimmed the water like insects. There was a long gray bridge that hung in a net of lines, stretching east to another shore. She wondered if they would go under it; but instead the great ship turned westward and pulled in closer to the docks. The sea became a narrow river.

Men in uniform walked up and down the foredeck, shouting. Go collect your belongings, they said. We’ll dock soon at New York, and you’ll be taken to Ellis Island by ferry. Your luggage in the hold will be delivered to you there. Not until she’d heard these messages repeated half a dozen times did the Golem realize that the men were speaking in different languages, and that she understood every single one of them.

Within minutes the deck had been cleared of passengers. She moved into the shadow of the wheelhouse, and tried to think. She had no possessions save the coat she’d been given; its dark wool was growing warm in the sunlight. She felt inside the pocket and found the little leather satchel. There was that, at least.

A trickle of passengers reemerged from the stairway, and then a general flood, all dressed for travel and carrying their bags and suitcases. The uniformed men began to shout again: Form an orderly line. Be ready to give us your name and nationality. No pushing. No crowding. Mind your children. The Golem stood apart, unsure. Should she join them? Find somewhere to hide? Their minds clamored at her, all wanting only a speedy trip through Ellis Island and a clean bill of health from the inspectors.

One of the uniformed men saw the Golem standing alone and hesitant, and walked toward her. A passenger intercepted him, put a hand to his shoulder, and began to talk in his ear. It was the doctor from steerage. The ship’s man was carrying a sheaf of papers, and he flipped through them, searching. He frowned and stepped away from the doctor, who melted back into line.

“Ma’am,” the officer called, looking straight at the Golem. “Come here, please.” All around them went quiet as the Golem approached. “You’re the one whose husband died, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“My condolences, ma’am. It’s probably just an oversight, but you don’t seem to be on the manifest. May I see your ticket?”

Her ticket? She had none, of course. She could lie, and say she’d lost it, but she’d never lied before and didn’t trust herself to do it well. She realized that her only options were to remain silent, or to tell the truth.

“I don’t have a ticket,” she said, and smiled, hoping that would help.

The officer sighed wearily and placed a hand around the Golem’s arm, as though to prevent her from running away. “You’ll have to come with me, ma’am.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’re going to sit in the brig until we get the passengers sorted, and then we’ll ask you a few questions.”

What should she do? There was no way to answer their questions without exposing herself. Already everyone was staring. Alarmed, she turned in the man’s insistent grip, looking for some sort of escape. They were still under way, fording the middle of the river, smaller ships gliding to either side. Beyond the busy piers, the city gleamed invitingly.

The officer gripped her arm harder. “Ma’am. Don’t make me force you.”

But he didn’t want to force her, she saw. He didn’t want to deal with her at all. More than anything, the officer wished she would just disappear.

The edge of a smile lifted the Golem’s mouth. Here, finally, was a desire she could gratify.

With a flick of her elbow, she broke from the startled officer and ran to the railing. Before anyone could even shout out, she vaulted the edge, arced out into the shimmering Hudson, and sank like a stone.

A few hours later, a stevedore smoking a cigarette on the corner of West and Gansevoort saw a woman walk past from the direction of the river. She was soaking wet. She wore a man’s woolen jacket and a brown dress that clung immodestly to her body. Her hair was plastered to her neck. Most astonishing was the thick, brackish mud that covered her skirt and shoes.

“Hey, miss,” he called out to her, “you go for a swim?”

The woman gave him a strange smile as she went by. “No,” she said. “I walked.”

2.

In the neighborhood of Lower Manhattan called Little Syria, not far from where the Golem came ashore, there lived a tinsmith by the name of Boutros Arbeely. Arbeely was a Maronite Catholic who’d grown up in the bustling village of Zahleh, which lay in the valley below Mount Lebanon. He had come to adulthood at a time when it seemed every man under the age of thirty was leaving Greater Syria to seek his fortune in America. Some were spurred on by missionaries’ tales, or by relatives who’d made the journey and whose letters home now arrived thick with banknotes. Others saw a chance to elude the army conscription and punishing taxes demanded by their Turkish rulers. In all, so many left that in some villages the markets fell silent, and the grapes on the hillsides were left to burst on the vines.

Arbeely’s late father had come from a family of five brothers, and over the generations their land had been divided and redivided until each brother’s parcel was so small it was hardly worth the effort of planting. Arbeely himself made barely a pittance as a tinsmith’s apprentice. His mother and sisters kept silkworms to bring in extra money, but still it wasn’t enough. In the general rush to America, Arbeely saw his chance. He bid his family farewell and boarded a steamship bound for New York, and soon had rented a small smithing shop on Washington Street, at the heart of the growing Syrian neighborhood.

Arbeely was a good and conscientious worker, and even in New York’s crowded marketplace his goods stood out as quality for the price. He made cups and plates, pots and pans, household tools, thimbles, candlesticks. Occasionally a neighbor would bring him something to repair, a damaged pot or a twisted door hinge, and he would return it in better shape than when it was new.

That summer Arbeely received an interesting request. A woman named Maryam Faddoul came to the shop with an old, battered, yet rather lovely copper flask. The flask had been in Maryam’s family as long as she could remember; her mother, who’d used it for olive oil, had given it to Maryam when she’d sailed to America. “So you’ll always have a piece of home with you,” her mother had said.

With her husband Sayeed, Maryam had opened a coffeehouse on Washington Street, which quickly became a thriving hub of the neighborhood. One afternoon, while surveying her bustling kitchen, Maryam decided that the flask, while still beloved, had grown a bit too pockmarked and worn. Would it be possible, she asked Arbeely, to repair a few of the dents? And perhaps restore the polish?

Alone in his shop, Arbeely examined the flask. It was about nine inches high, with a round, bulbous body that tapered to a thin neck. Its maker had decorated it with a very precise and detailed band of scrollwork. Instead of the usual repeating pattern, the loops and whorls threaded through their neighbors seemingly at random, before joining up with themselves again.

Arbeely turned the flask around in his hands, fascinated. Clearly it was old, older perhaps than Maryam or her mother knew. Copper was rarely used on its own anymore, owing to its softness; brass and tin were much more durable and easier to work. In fact, given its likely age, the flask didn’t seem as battered as perhaps it should have been. There was no way to determine its provenance, for it had no forger’s stamp on its bottom, no identifying mark of any kind.

He examined the deep dents in the scrollwork, and realized that correcting them would lead to visible seams between the new work and the old. Better, he decided, to smooth out the copper, repair the flask, and then rework the entire design.

He wrapped a sheet of thin vellum around the base, found a stick of charcoal, and took a rubbing of the scrollwork, careful to catch every mark of the maker’s awl. Then he secured the flask in a vise, and fetched his smallest soldering iron from the fire.

As he stood there, his iron poised above the flask, a strange feeling of foreboding stole over him. His arms and back turned to gooseflesh. Shivering, he put down the iron, and took a deep breath. What could possibly be bothering him? It was a warm day, and he’d eaten a hearty breakfast. He was healthy, and business was good. He shook his head, took up the iron again, and touched it to the scrollwork, erasing one of the loops.

A powerful jolt blasted him off his feet, as though he’d been struck by lightning. He flew through the air and landed in a heap beside a worktable. Stunned, ears ringing, he turned over and looked around.

There was a naked man lying on the floor of his shop.

As Arbeely stared in amazement, the man drew himself to sitting and pressed his hands to his face. Then he dropped his hands and gazed around, eyes wide and burning. He looked as though he’d been chained for years in the world’s deepest, darkest dungeon, and then hauled roughly into the light.

The man staggered to his feet. He was tall and well built, with handsome features. Too handsome, in fact—his face had an eerie flawlessness, like a painting come to life. His dark hair was cropped short. He seemed unconscious of his nakedness.

On the man’s right wrist was a wide metal cuff. The man appeared to notice it at the same time as Arbeely. He held up his arm and stared at it, horrified. “Iron,” he said. And then, “But that’s impossible.”

Finally the man’s glance caught Arbeely, who still crouched next to the table, not even daring to breathe.

With a sudden terrible grace, the man swooped down upon Arbeely, grabbed him around the neck, and lifted him clean off the floor. A dark red haze filled Arbeely’s sight. He felt his head brush the ceiling.

“Where is he?” the man shouted.

“Who?” wheezed Arbeely.

“The wizard!”

Arbeely tried to speak but could only gargle. Snarling, the naked man threw him back to the ground. Arbeely gasped for air. He looked around for a weapon, anything, and saw the soldering iron lying in a pile of rags, gently smoldering. He grabbed its handle, and lunged.

A blur of movement—and then Arbeely was stretched out on the floor again, this time with the iron’s curved handle pressed at the hollow of his throat. The man knelt over him, holding the iron by its red-hot tip. There was no smell of burning flesh. The man didn’t so much as flinch. And as Arbeely stared aghast into that too-perfect face, he could feel the cool handle at his throat turn warm, and then hot, and then hotter still—as though the man were heating it somehow.

This, Arbeely thought, is very, very impossible.

“Tell me where the wizard is,” the man said, “so I can kill him.”

Arbeely gaped at him.

“He trapped me in human form! Tell me where he is!”

The tinsmith’s mind began to race. He looked down at the soldering iron, and remembered that strange foreboding he’d felt before he touched it to the flask. He recalled his grandmother’s stories of flasks and oil lamps, all with creatures trapped inside.

No. It was ludicrous. Such things were only stories. But then, the only alternative was to conclude that he’d gone mad.

“Sir,” he whispered, “are you a djinni?”

The man’s mouth tightened, and his gaze turned wary. But he didn’t laugh at Arbeely, or call him insane.

“You are,” Arbeely said. “Dear God, you are.” He swallowed, wincing against the touch of the soldering iron. “Please. I don’t know this wizard, whoever he is. In fact, I’m not sure there are any wizards left at all.” He paused. “You may have been inside that flask for a very long time.”

The man seemed to take this in. Slowly the metal moved away from the tinsmith’s neck. The man stood and turned about, as though seeing the workshop for the first time. Through the high window came the noises of the street: of horse-drawn carts, and the shouts of the paperboys. On the Hudson, a steamship horn sounded long and low.

“Where am I?” the man asked.

“You’re in my shop,” Arbeely said. “In New York City.” He was trying to speak calmly. “In a place called America.”

The man walked over to Arbeely’s workbench and picked up one of the tinsmith’s long, thin irons. He gripped it with a look of horrified fascination.

“It’s real,” the man said. “This is all real.”

“Yes,” Arbeely said. “I’m afraid it is.”

The man put down the iron. Muscles in his jaw spasmed. He seemed to be readying himself for the worst.

“Show me,” he said finally.

Barefoot, clad only in an old work shirt of Arbeely’s and a pair of dungarees, the Djinni stood at the railing at Castle Gardens, at the southern tip of Manhattan, and stared out across the bay. Arbeely stood nearby, perhaps afraid to draw too close. The shirt and dungarees had come from a pile of old rags in the corner of Arbeely’s workshop. The dungarees were solder-stained, and there were holes burned into the shirtsleeves. Arbeely had had to show him how to do up the buttons.