The Golem (14 page)

I clambered back down the spiral stairs and continued on the way I had been following yesterday, over whole mounds of broken bricks, through subterranean cellars, then up a ruined staircase – to find myself suddenly in the hallway of the
black schoolhouse
I had seen in my dream.

Immediately I was engulfed in a tidal wave of memories: desks bespattered from top to bottom with ink, arithmetic jotters, songs bawled out at full voice, a boy setting a cockchafer loose in the class, readers with sandwiches squashed between the pages and smelling of orange peel. But I wasted no time in reflection and hurried home.

The first person I met – it was in Salnitergasse – was a misshapen old Jew with white side-locks. Scarcely had he caught sight of me than he covered his face with his hands and started to reel off Hebrew prayers in a loud howl. At the noise, many people must have rushed out of their hovels, for an incredible clamour broke out behind me. I turned round and saw a teeming throng of pale, terror-struck faces surging down the alley behind me. I stood dumbfounded until I looked down at myself: I was still wearing the strange, medieval clothes from the night before over my suit; the people must think they were seeing the Golem. Quickly I hurried round the corner and hid in an entrance, tearing off the mouldy clothes.

A second later the crowd was pouring past me, waving sticks in the air and shouting abuse.

Several times during the course of the day I had knocked at Hillel’s door. I felt I could not rest until I had asked him what all the strange events I had been through could mean, but each time I was told he was not at home. His daughter said she would let me know as soon as he came home from the Jewish Town Hall.

What a strange girl she is, that Miriam. A type of girl I have never come across before. A beautiful girl, but with a beauty so foreign that at first you can’t comprehend it, a beauty that strikes you dumb when you look at her and, in some inexplicable way, makes you feel disheartened. As I mused on this, the only explanation I could come up with was that her face must be formed according to laws of proportion that have been lost for thousands of years. I wondered what precious stone I would have to choose to capture it in a cameo while still engraving it according to the rules of my art. The attempt failed at the very first hurdle: the blue-black sheen of her hair and eyes were beyond any stone I could think of. How then could I even contemplate trying to capture the vision, the spirit of the unearthly slimness of that face in a cameo? All that would emerge would be the tedious similitude of an academic portrait. I came to see that only a mosaic would do, but what materials would I use? It would take a lifetime just to assemble a suitable supply of them.

Where on earth was Hillel? I found myself longing for him as for a dear, old friend. It was remarkable how attached to him I had grown in the last few days. After all, to be precise, I had only spoken to him once in my whole life.

Of course! The letters – her letters. I was going to find a better hiding place for them. For my own peace of mind, in case I should have to be away from home for any length of time again. I took them out of the chest; they would be safer kept in the iron box.

A photograph slipped out from among the letters. I tried not to look, but it was too late. ‘She’ was looking me straight in the eyes, a brocade gown round her shoulders, just as I had seen her the first time, when she had fled from Savioli’s studio and taken refuge in my room.

A stabbing pain almost drove me to distraction. I read the dedication underneath without taking in the words; then came the name:

Your Angelina.

Angelina!!

As I spoke the name, the veil that had shut off my youth from me was rent from top to bottom.

I felt I was going to collapse under the weight of misery. I clawed the air and bit my hand, I whimpered: O dear God, only let me be blind once more, let me continue that life-in-death I have lived until now!

The agony welled up inside me, rose to my lips and poured forth. It tasted strangely sweet, like blood …

Angelina!!

The name throbbed through my veins; it was an unbearable, ghostly caress.

With a violent shudder I pulled myself together and forced myself, my clenched teeth grinding together, to stare at the photograph until I slowly mastered it.

Mastered
it!

As I had mastered the playing card during the night.

Steps at last! A man’s tread.

He was here!

Joyfully I rushed to the door and threw it open.

Outside stood Shemaiah Hillel and behind him – I reproached myself for the feeling of disappointment it caused me – with his red cheeks and round, child’s eyes, was old Zwakh the puppeteer.

“It gives me great pleasure, Herr Pernath, to see you in such good health”, said Hillel.

Such a cold tone?

Ice. Suddenly the room was full of ice, searing, numbing ice.

In a daze, I only half listened to what Zwakh, breathless with excitement, was prattling on to me about.

“Have you heard? The Golem is haunting the Ghetto again! We were talking about it not that long ago. You remember, don’t you, Pernath? The whole of the Ghetto is in uproar. Vrieslander saw it with his own eyes. And this time again it started with a murder!” I looked up in astonishment: a murder?

Zwakh shook me. “Yes. Don’t you ever hear anything, Pernath? There’s a huge police notice appealing for witnesses at every corner: fat old Zottmann, the ‘Freemason’ – I mean Zottmann the managing director of the Life Assurance Company – has been murdered, so they say. Loisa – the one who lives in this house – has already been arrested. And Rosina has disappeared without trace. The Golem … the Golem … it’s enough to make your hair stand on end.”

I made no answer, but searched Hillel’s eyes. Why was he staring at me so fixedly? All at once the corners of his mouth twitched with a suppressed smile. I realised it was meant for me.

I was so beside myself with joy I could have flung my arms around his neck. In my ecstasy I rushed aimlessly round the room. What should I bring first? Glasses? A bottle of burgundy? (I only had the one.) Cigarettes? Finally I managed to speak. “But why don’t you sit down?” Quickly I pushed chairs across for my friends.

Zwakh was beginning to get irritated. “Why do you keep smiling like that, Hillel? Perhaps you don’t believe the Golem is haunting the Ghetto? It seems to me you don’t believe in the Golem at all.”

“I would not believe in it even if I were to see it standing before me in this very room”, Hillel calmly answered, with a glance at me. I understood the double meaning his words contained.

In astonishment, Zwakh took his glass from his lips without drinking. “And the evidence of hundreds of people counts for nothing to you, Hillel? But just you wait and mark my words: now there will be murder after murder in the Jewish quarter. I know about these things. The Golem brings some macabre things in its wake.”

“There is nothing miraculous about a proliferation of similar events”, replied Hillel. He stood up as he spoke, went over to the window and looked down at the junk shop. “When the thaw comes, the roots begin to stir, the poisonous ones as well as the wholesome ones.”

Zwakh gave me a merry wink, jerking his head in Hillel’s direction. “If the Rabbi wanted, he could tell us things that would make your hair stand on end”, he said in a half-whisper. Shemaiah turned round.

“I am not a Rabbi, even if I have the right to use that title. I am just a poor archivist at the Jewish Town Hall and keep the
register of the living and the dead
.”

I felt there was some hidden significance in his words. The old puppeteer seemed unconsciously aware of it as well. He fell quiet, and for a long time none of us spoke.

It was Zwakh who broke the silence, and his voice sounded unusually grave. “By the way, Rabbi – I’m sorry, I mean Herr Hillel, there’s something I have been meaning to ask you for a long time. You don’t have to answer if you’d rather not, or if you’re not allowed to …”

Shemaiah came over to the table and idly fingered the wine-glass. He did not drink, perhaps there were Jewish rituals forbidding it.

“Ask away, Herr Zwakh.”

“You know something of the Jewish esoteric doctrine called the Cabbala, Hillel?”

“Only a little.”

“I have heard there is supposed to be a collection of mystical writings from which one can learn the Cabbala: the
Sohar
…”

“Yes, the
Sohar
, the
Book of Splendour
.”

“There you are, you see!” Zwakh said angrily. “Isn’t it scandalous that a book that is supposed to contain the keys to the understanding of the Bible and to eternal bliss –”

Hillel interrupted him. “Only some keys.”

“All right! But some keys at least! And isn’t it scandalous that this work, because of its great value and extreme rarity, is only available to the rich? In fact I believe I’m right in saying there is only one copy, and that in the British Museum in London and written, what’s more, in Chaldaean, Aramaic, Hebrew or whatever. Have
I,
for example, in my whole life ever had the opportunity to learn those languages or to go to London?”

“Are all your desires set so passionately on that goal”, asked Hillel, gently mocking.

“Well, to be honest … no”, Zwakh admitted, somewhat deflated.

“Then you can have no cause for complaint”, Hillel said drily. “Unless you cry out for the spirit with every atom in your body, as a man who is suffocating gasps for air, you cannot see the mysteries of God.”

‘Despite that, there is said to be a book which contains all the keys to the puzzles of the other world, not just some.’ As the thought flashed through my mind, my hand automatically fingered the Juggler, which I still had in my pocket, but before I could formulate the question, Zwakh had spoken it out loud.

Once again Hillel smiled his sphinx-like smile. “Every question that can be asked by man is answered the moment it is asked in the spirit.”

Zwakh turned to me, “Have
you
any idea what he means by that?” But I gave no answer, I was holding my breath so as not to miss a single word of what Hillel was saying.

Shemaiah went on, “The whole of life consists of nothing but questions which have taken on physical form and which bear the seed of their answer within them, and of answers which are pregnant with questions. A man who sees anything else in it is a fool.”

Zwakh thumped the table. “Yes: questions that are different every time and answers that mean different things to different people.”

“That is the whole point”, said Hillel amicably. “It is, I believe, solely the doctor’s privilege to have ‘one pill for every ill’. Each questioner is given the answer best suited to his needs; otherwise humanity would not follow the path of their longings. Do you think there is no rhyme or reason why our Jewish books are written in consonants alone? Each reader has to find for himself the secret vowels that go with them and which reveal a meaning that is for him alone; the living word should not wither into dead dogma.”

The old puppeteer disagreed violently. “That’s nothing but words, Rabbi,
words
! Call me a fairground juggler if I can make head or tail of it!”

A fairground
juggler
! Like a bolt from the blue, Zwakh’s words immediately brought back to mind the Juggler I had found during the night. I almost fell off my chair in horrified surprise.

Hillel avoided my eye. I heard his voice as from a great distance. “A juggler? Perhaps that is what you are. One should never be too sure of oneself. By the way Herr Zwakh, talking of jugglers, do you play
Tarock
?”

“
Tarock
? Of course. Since I was a boy.”

“Then I’m astonished you can ask me about a book which contains the whole of the Cabbala when you must have held it in your hand thousands of times.”

“Me? In my hand? My own hand?” Zwakh scratched his head in bewilderment.

“Yes,
you
! Has it never struck you that the
Tarock
pack has twenty-two trumps – precisely the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet? And, what is more, do not our Bohemian cards have pictures which are obviously symbols? The Fool, Death, the Devil, the Last Judgment? How loud, my friend, do you want life to shout its answers to you? It’s not necessary, of course, for you to know that
Tarock
, or
Tarot
, is the same as the Jewish word
Tora
, ‘the Law’, or the old Egyptian
tarut
, which means ‘One who is asked’, and the ancient Zend word
tarisk
, which means ‘I demand the answer’. But scholars should know these facts before they assert that the
Tarock
pack originated during the time of Charles the Sixth. And just as the Juggler, the lowest trump, is the first card in the pack, so man is the first figure in his own picture book, his own double: the Hebrew character
Aleph
, which is formed after the shape of a man, with one hand pointing up at the sky and the other downwards, saying, therefore, ‘As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.’ That is why I said before, who knows whether you are really Zwakh the puppeteer and not the ‘Juggler’? Do not tempt fate.”

As he spoke, Hillel fixed his gaze on me, and I gradually felt greater and greater depths of new meaning open up at his words. “Do not tempt fate, Herr Zwakh. If you do, you can find yourself straying into dark passages from which no one has ever returned unless he
bore a talisman with him
. There is a legend that once three men descended into the realm of darkness; one went mad, the other blind, and only the third, Rabbi ben Akiba, returned safely home and said he had met himself. You may object that there are a number of people – Goethe, for example, – who have met themselves, usually on a bridge or some other footway leading from one bank of a river to the other, have looked themselves in the eye and
not
gone mad. But that was just a reflection of their own consciousness and not a true double, not what is called
Habal Garmin
, ‘the breath of the bones’, of which it is said, ‘As it went down into the grave, in bone incorruptible, so will it rise up on the day of the Last Judgment’.” Hillel’s gaze pierced deeper and deeper into mine. “Our grandmothers say of him, ‘He lives high above the ground in a room without a door, with only one window, from which it is impossible to communicate with mankind. Anyone who manages to bind him and to refine him, will be reconciled with himself’ … to get back to
Tarock
, however, you know as well as I do that each person is dealt a different hand, but it is the one who knows how to use the trumps aright who wins the game. But come along now, Herr Zwakh, it’s time to go, otherwise you’ll drink all of Herr Pernath’s wine and there’ll be none left for him.”