Snow in August (39 page)

Now he was very hungry. He went downstairs to Rabbi Hirsch’s room and washed his hands in the sink and took apple juice from
the small refrigerator and drank straight from the bottle. The juice was cold and sweet, but the bottle shook in his hand
and the perspiration would not stop dripping from his body. He dried himself again with a towel, but the sweat returned. He
sat down at Rabbi Hirsch’s table, trying to be very still, struggling to control his fear. He was afraid of what he was about
to do. Afraid he would succeed. Afraid he would fail. No: he would not fail. He believed. He would make it all come true.
God would recognize him, his belief, his need. It would happen. Yes. It would happen, it would happen.

“Believe,” he whispered to the silence. “I believe.”

His gaze drifted to Leah’s photograph and he wished he could talk to her. He wished he could talk to Rabbi Hirsch too. But
he was alone here in this place, and there was nobody to talk to except God.

Whispering an Our Father, he climbed the dark stairs to the sanctuary. There could be no more delay. Shabbos was almost here.
He pulled on his clean white baseball pants and his white T-shirt. He stared down at the shaped mud. He opened the ceramic
box and saw the
shem:
a rolled yellow parchment an inch wide, so old that the paper was leathery to the touch. He
walked to the edge of the
bimah
and eased the
shem
into the hole he’d made for the mouth. Then he took the spoon in hand again and used the point of the handle to letter a
single word on the brow of the head.

’EMET.

It meant Truth.

Then, standing behind the head, he took a deep breath, raised the spoon over the shaped head, and began to chant. The prescribed
sounds were all letters.
A
, and
B
, and
C
, and
D
, right through the alphabet. First in English; then, to be sure, in Yiddish. The
aleph-bayz
. Seven times for each letter, followed by the letters that Rabbi Hirsch had told him stood for the secret name of God.

YHVH.

YHVH.

YHVH.

YHVH.

YHVH.

YHVH.

YHVH.

The secret name echoing mightily through the empty sanctuary.

Then he added vowels,
A-E-I-O-U
, seven times, again followed by the name of God. All the time moving, forming a wheel, doing a kind of dance around the sunken
bimah
, making a circle that traveled from right to left. Following the commands of Rabbi Hirsch. Feeling his own body charged with
power and mystery. Believe, he thought. Believe. Here is the Kabbalah. Believe.

For the mystery was all about letters, Rabbi Hirsch had told him. Numbers too, in Kabbalah, but above all, letters; for from
letters we make words, and words are the names of life. They name arms and legs and faces. They name men and women, insects
and animals, and the creatures of the sea. They name oceans and rivers and cities. They name the grass. They name the trees.
God gave letters to man and man made words from the letters and used them to name God’s nameless world. And Michael remembered
from catechism class,
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God
.…

So Michael danced and chanted, repeating the letters in pairs and in triplets, then singing them as if they were sacred music,
the room growing darker now as the sun faded, while Michael tried to will himself into the inert mud. He rose into a frenzy
of words and letters, hearing sounds from his mouth that he did not think, moving to music that nobody played, rising into
clouds, moving palaces across distant skies, speaking to birds, joining hands in a dance with Mary Cunningham and the Count
of Monte Cristo, soaring and swooping and breaking for third, up, rising up, full of rain and fire and salt and oceans, all
the way up, chanting the letters that named galleons and cowboys, pirates and Indians, borne by the letters, swept through
golden skies, above the crazy world, above Brooklyn, above Ireland, above Prague, above the fields of Belgium.

And then fell to his knees in utter emptiness. He had no more words in him. He had no more letters. He had no more music.
He wanted to vanish into a dreamless sleep. Here in the sweet dusty darkness. He could hear the cry of a bird like a sound
of morning. And then the barking of a dog. But he did not rise. He stretched out on the floor, facing the Ark.

And then the mud began to glow.

A deep red.

Then a brighter red. Like something in an oven. Michael rose to his feet, his heart beating in fear.

He stepped back, afraid to look into the sink, retreating into the shadows, but the glow grew more intense. Two minutes. Five
minutes. Ten. Like something deep in the coals of a sacred furnace.

And then a chilly breeze blew through the sanctuary. The burning wick flickered in the eternal light. Dust lifted from benches,
and cobwebs bent and snapped. Something clattered to the floor in the darkness. The windows rattled. Michael felt the floor
tremble and heard a wild sound of birds rising from the roof and then a high-pitched sound like a dog whistle, hurting his
ears, piercing his brain.

And then a sudden silence.

He could only hear the pounding of his heart.

The breeze abruptly died.

And then two dark hands gripped the sides of the tub and the Golem pulled himself up.

It was him.

The Golem.

Everything was true.

Sitting there, the Golem was as dark as Jackie Robinson, his hazel eyes full of sorrow. He looked from left to right, the
sorrowful eyes taking in the desolation of the sanctuary. He seemed to have expected this sight. He leaned forward and looked
at the palms of his immense black hands before turning them over to gaze at their blackness. Then he stared at Michael for
a long moment. Michael did not move. The Golem bent a knee, shifted his weight, and stood up.

Michael backed up as the Golem stood naked in the tub, his
muscles rippling like bags of stones. He must be eight feet tall, Michael thought; bigger than any man I’ve ever seen. Without
a sound, the Golem stepped over the wooden framework of the
bimah
to the floor.

Michael needed words. The words did not come. He fought the impulse to run. Talk to him, he thought. Speak to him.

The Golem stared at Michael and then reached forward, touching his face. His hand felt like the sole of a shoe.

“I’m Michael Devlin,” the boy said. “Can you understand me?”

The Golem nodded yes.

“Can you speak?”

He shook his head sadly. No.

Michael tried to control his trembling. When he first had heard the stories of the Golem from Rabbi Hirsch, he imagined a
figure from comic books. Made of pen lines and brush marks. Simple, sometimes even humorous, sent on missions of justice by
a good rabbi. He did not expect this naked creature, as large as a tree, as dark as night. Standing before him, waiting for
instructions. For a moment, he wanted to reverse the process, to send the creature back to where he came from. But then he
remembered his mother’s humiliation and the battered face of Rabbi Hirsch and his own lost summer. No: he could not turn back.
He had invoked the name of God. He must go on.

“We… we have to find you some clothes,” Michael said, pulling on his T-shirt. “You understand? Clothes. Because we have some
things to do out there tonight.” He pointed at a broken stained-glass window and the visible fragment of the August evening.
“Out there in the street.”

The Golem understood. He gazed around the dusty sanctuary, as if looking for clothing.

“Come on,” Michael said. “Let’s see what we can find.”

They opened closets and pantries, the Golem defeating locks and layers of cementlike paint as he effortlessly jerked them
open. They found banners, books, old Ark curtains; but no clothes. Until the Golem suddenly emerged from a tight, small subbasement
with what seemed to be a cape. There were golden cords or tassels on the ends, and he tied them at his neck to make the cape.
In Rabbi Hirsch’s kitchen, he bent his knees to fit under the ceiling, and whirled the cape. The frayed tassels crumbled and
the cape fell. He grunted sadly.

“Wait,” Michael said.

He removed the
I
’
M FOR JACKIE
button from his T-shirt and jumped up on a chair in front of the Golem. He held the two ends of the cape together and fastened
them with the button.

“Great!” he shouted. “It works.” The Golem laughed without sound. Michael said: “You look like you could fly.”

Michael went to the small bureau where Rabbi Hirsch kept his shirts and underwear and in the bottom drawer he found a sheet.
Perfect. The creature could tie it around his middle like a giant diaper. Or, what did they call it in those stories about
India by Rudyard Kipling? A breechclout. When he turned with the sheet in his hand, the Golem was holding the photograph of
Leah in his leathery hands, staring at her face.

“She’s part of the reason you’re here,” Michael said, as the Golem replaced the photograph on the shelf. “That’s the rabbi’s
wife. Killed by the Nazis.”

He showed the creature what to do with the sheet, and the Golem tried clumsily to wrap it between his legs and around his
massive hips, the sheet slipping until Michael tied the ends as tightly as he could. Michael stepped back, smiled, and said,
“You look like Gunga Din.” The Golem did not smile. He moved a huge hand toward the framed photograph, and then Michael told
him some of the story. About Rabbi Hirsch and
Leah and Hitler and the millions of deaths. About Frankie McCarthy and the Falcons, Mister G on the day of the snowstorm,
and what was done to Michael and to Rabbi Hirsch and to Michael’s mother. The Golem listened in a fierce way, his brow furrowing,
a gash deepening through the word for Truth, which was lighter against the black skin. His head moved slowly from side to
side. As his anger built, his eyes receded under his slablike brow. He did not smile. He did not laugh. His immense hands
kneaded each other. When Michael told him about Frankie McCarthy’s plans, a bright sheen appeared on his black skin.

“That’s about it,” Michael said. “That’s why we brought you here. We have to stop them. We have to make sure they don’t do
stuff like this ever again. We have to make sure they are punished.”

The Golem sat there for a long moment. Then he gazed again at the photograph of Leah, and Michael was reminded of the story
about the Golem in Prague and how he fell in love with the girl named Dvorele. That was a heartbreaking story, but it also
showed that the Golem didn’t simply follow orders. He had his own feelings, his own ideas. Michael began to worry that he
would not be able to completely control the creature. Then he saw that the Golem’s eyes had fallen on the shofar, which lay
on a lower shelf. The creature rose and gently picked up the shofar in his giant thumb and forefinger.

“Rabbi Hirsch tried to play tunes on it,” Michael said, and smiled. “But he couldn’t do it. Maybe you could.… Maybe you could
send them a message down at the poolroom. Let them know we’re coming.”

Exhaling softly, the Golem took Michael by the hand and led him upstairs to the sanctuary. Pausing, the Golem stood with the
shofar in both hands and bowed his head to the Ark. Then,
with Michael behind him, he moved to the rear of the sanctuary and up the stairs to the loft. He seemed to know the way. He
found another door and jerked it open. They stepped out to a small flat roof. For a dazzled moment, the Golem gazed at the
million lights that were scattered across the blackness all the way to distant Manhattan. This was not Prague. He grew very
still. Michael said nothing. The August heat was deadening, and there was no breeze. From this height, Michael could pick
out the glow of the Grandview’s neon sign, the tower of the Williamsburg Bank Building, the arc of the Brooklyn Bridge, and
off to the left in the black harbor, pale green and small, the Statue of Liberty. There were still some people waiting out
the hot night on blankets on rooftops and fire escapes.

The Golem brought the shofar to his mouth.

He blew one long, terrifying note. It seemed to rip a hole in the heat-stricken night.

He blew another.

And then a third.

Michael backed away, frightened by the power and savagery of the three notes blown on the ram’s horn. Notes as old as the
world.

But the Golem placed a hand on his shoulder. Reassuring him. Cautioning him. Telling him to wait. Telling him, without words,
that something was coming.

Something was.

It began to snow.

Millions of flakes, radiant and beautiful, drifting down through the August night. Black when Michael looked up, brilliantly
white as they passed the level of his eyes, melting as they touched the hot rooftops and the sweating foliage of trees and
the soft asphalt and the torrid steel of parked cars.

Snow.

Driven now by a sudden wind off the harbor. Coming now at a harder angle. As birds rose in great flocks to tell the news and
dogs barked and windows opened.

Snow in August.

The Golem smiled. He handed Michael the shofar and then the boy led the way back through the synagogue. Now we will do it,
he thought. Ready or not, Frankie, here we come. He left the shofar on the kitchen table and went out into Kelly Street with
the Golem behind him, bending his head and shoulders under the lintel. The August snow was falling hard. Kids ran through
it, shouting and yelping. An old woman came out on a stoop, looked up at the dense snow, made a steeple of her hands and mumbled
prayers. Michael heard the wolf wind, and wished for Arctic fury, and the storm grew more violent. In the churning, gyrating,
eddying frenzy of the sudden storm, nobody saw the white boy and his giant black companion.

Michael prayed. In English and Latin and Yiddish. Prayed to God, to Deus, to Yahveh. Prayed in thanks, prayed in awe. But
he did not turn back. He moved steadily onward, leading a procession of two, the Golem’s bare feet crunching a soup can, his
face grim, his cape unfurling in the wind. The snow was so thick now that nobody could possibly see them, and yet Michael
wasn’t cold. Screened by the blinding snow, they reached the alley behind the abandoned hulk of the Venus, where Frankie McCarthy
once had threatened Michael with a knife. Then they came to Ellison Avenue. Across the street was the Star Pool Room, with
a six-foot-long
WELCOME HOME FRANKIE BOY
banner draped above the front door. A stray dog came out of the snow and huddled in the doorway beside the poolroom.