Anna Blumberg’s brush with death occurred while the entire Lower East Side was looking elsewhere.
It began at near to closing time at the Waverly Steam Laundry on Greene Street, where Anna had now worked for eight years. The laundry took its name from nearby Waverly Place, and was meant to evoke Washington Square’s stately brownstones—though in truth the laundry sat among a mishmash of lofts and tenements, and even an ancient wood-frame stable that leaned to one side like a rotting tooth. A man named Hopkins owned the laundry; he’d bought it with the aim of installing his son Morris as the manager, a ploy to keep him out of the betting parlors.
Anna was the most senior of Morris’s hires. She was listed on the books as a washerwoman, but in reality it was Anna, not Morris, who managed the daily choreography of washers, carters, sorters, and pressers. This left Morris free to spend his work hours as he preferred, thumbing through the racing papers and nursing his various grudges. He’d hired Anna in full knowledge of her fallen condition, and was smart enough to give her small raises here and there, just enough to keep her chained to his side. Anna despised Morris, and longed to quit—but what else was there? The laundry had stolen her youth away. At thirty she looked a decade older, her face lined and florid from the constant steam. No one would take her for a salesgirl or a secretary, or even a baker. Waverly, she knew, was as good a deal as she was likely to get.
Sunday was the laundry’s day of rest, its Jewish employees notwithstanding. Morris, however, liked to begin his own personal Sabbath on Saturday afternoons, so he might fetch a good seat at his boxing club; and so Anna had been left in charge of finishing the week’s orders, as usual. She was rushing to fold a hotel’s bedsheets when Daisy, one of the sorting-girls, paused at her table to peer outside the window. “Something’s going on,” she said. “There’s a crowd of people out on the street.”
“Go see what it is,” Anna said, and went back to moving the stacks of folded sheets from table to cart, table to cart. She’d have to buy something for Toby’s supper on the walk home, as they had nothing in the icebox. And tomorrow was her monthly walk with the Golem, which was a strange prospect these days, what with her classes on digestion and chemistry—
A scream pierced her thoughts.
She turned in surprise and stumbled into the cart, her leg colliding painfully with its sharp edge. Daisy had returned, and was speaking to another laundry girl, who stood horrified, her hand over her mouth. Without a word the girl ran out the door.
“What is it?” said Anna, walking over. “What’s wrong with Ellie?”
Daisy was white-faced. “There’s a fire at the factory where her sister works. Girls are jumping out the windows.”
“Oh, my God,” Anna murmured.
“Which factory?” another girl demanded.
“Triangle Shirtwaist, in the Asch Building.”
“My friend Ida works at Triangle,” someone said, a quaver in her voice.
The girls all began edging worriedly toward the door. Anna looked around at the work that still had to be done: the sheets rolled halfway through the mangle, the washers full of boiling water. “Go,” she told them. “I’ll finish up.” They threw her grateful looks, and in a moment the laundry had emptied.
Something warm and wet was trickling onto Anna’s foot. She looked down—and saw the gash. It was inches long, and carved deep into her calf. The edges of the skin were pressed inward, along with the torn stocking. Bloody footprints traced her path back to the cart.
She shuddered, suddenly dizzy. Don’t look, she thought. Just take care of it.
She found a towel, tied it tight around the now-aching wound, and mopped the blood from the floor. Then she gritted her teeth and dragged the steaming sheets from the washers. Slop-water drenched her leg; the cut burned as though she’d soaked it in vinegar. She ignored the pain, loaded and spun the extractors, fed the sheets into the mangle one by one.
At last the deliveries were all tagged and sorted. She peeled away the now-sodden towel. The skin around the wound was swollen and grayish, but the bleeding had stopped, at least. It would heal. Others were no doubt hurting worse tonight. She drew the ruined stocking over her calf, then switched off the lights, locked the front door, and limped toward home.
The streets seemed quieter than usual, though more than once she heard crying. Her head throbbed in time with her leg; she remembered the empty icebox, but couldn’t bear the idea of stopping at the butcher’s. She’d send Toby out for something.
She climbed the tenement stairs slowly, gripping the railing tight. By the time she reached their floor, the hallway lamps had turned gray and distant, as though receding down a tunnel. With shaking fingers she fished the key from her bag.
“Mama?” Toby stood in the doorway, dressed in his new Western Union uniform. He was so proud of it that he rarely took it off.
“Hello, boychik.” She smiled, hoping that it looked natural. “I’m sorry I’m late. Are you hungry?” She dropped her bag next to the couch, sat down heavily. Had he said something in reply? She wasn’t sure. He, too, was vanishing down that tunnel, watching her from far away. I’m all right, she told him, I just need a little sleep . . .
The tunnel dimmed entirely, and Toby disappeared into the dark.
* * *
The news arrived at the Asylum at supper-time, and sped through the dining hall.
A fire, at a factory.
Frum’s mother was there.
Who?
Max Frum, in Dormitory 1.
All craned their heads toward the table where the youngest boys ate in pale-faced silence, their eyes avoiding the empty chair in their midst.
Poor kid.
He’s a true orphan now, I guess.
At her own table, Kreindel Altschul heard the whispered words—fire, true orphan. She shivered, and put down her fork.
Yossele, she thought. Tonight. I’ll come to you tonight.
The storage room at the end of the basement’s southern wing was known as the large-item repository, and it was the most neglected and disorderly spot in the entire Asylum. Once, it had been used exclusively for surplus furniture and old pageant props—but that had been in the building’s early days, before the Asylum’s population had grown so large that a second boiler had been deemed necessary. With nowhere else to put it, the workmen had carved a boiler closet from the large-item repository itself: a room within a room, accessible only from the hallway, like a slice taken from the side of a cake. Now, as one traveled deeper into the storage room, it constricted to a narrow corridor and then expanded again at the very back, creating an alcove that was nearly impossible to see from the door.
In the years following the room’s alteration, its contents had become a hopeless jumble. Boxes of concert programs, dusty yearbooks, and other ancient ephemera stacked the walls, shading the feeble light from the window-wells. No one knew exactly when the lock on the door had broken—but no one wanted to replace it, either, in case the act should somehow make them responsible for the room and its contents. Few of the Asylum’s current staff even knew about the alcove in the back, and none of them had seen it for themselves.
In the darkest corner of this hidden lair, shaded by a dusty length of burlap painted with palm trees from a long-ago Biblical play, Yossele the golem sat waiting for his master.
It wasn’t a difficult life, there in the storage room. Instead of the dockyard tarpaulin, he wore an old theater curtain of moth-eaten velvet that Kreindel had unearthed from a box and draped around him. He might’ve grown stiff and uncomfortable in winter were it not for the gigantic boiler on the other side of the wall, sending out its heat day and night. He had no wish to be anywhere else, unless it was closer to Kreindel; and he had no need for visitors, for Kreindel’s mind was his constant companion.
He watched, now, as she lay awake and impatient, waiting for the Asylum to grow still. More children than usual were crying in their cots, their sniffles echoing in the silence. She’d have to be careful tonight.
At last the orphanage settled into a deeper quiet, and Kreindel slipped out of her bed and down the wide staircase to the basement, the route familiar in the dark. Then, the warmth of the boiler, and the doorknob beneath her hand.
Yossele felt her grow closer, and heard the doorknob turn.
To Kreindel, the storage room was like her father’s synagogue: the same smell of paper and wood and dust, the same welcome stillness of a holy place. She crept her way through the maze of stacks to the narrow corridor, knowing that he was there, that they were only a few steps apart.
He made no noise, moved not an inch. This was their ritual, and he cherished it just as she did.
Foot by foot she entered the alcove, and at last reached out, unseeing in the dark—
He reached out for her, in the dark—
—and felt his cool, solid hand grip hers, to guide her the rest of the way.
For near to an hour she sat in his arms, her tears soaking the velvet at his shoulder while his square-fingered hands stroked her hair. Hide, her father had said, and sometimes she wondered: Why was she still hiding? It would be easy to leave under cover of night, the iron gates being no match for a golem. But as much as she hated the Asylum, she couldn’t make herself run away. She was only fourteen. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to live on the streets, or work for pennies at a factory that might go up in flames. Here, at least, she was fed, and clothed, and sheltered. Here, she could keep Yossele safe.
She kissed his cheek—this, too, was part of the ritual—and whispered, Good night, Yossele, and retreated again through the maze and up to the dormitory, at last to sleep.
* * *
Toby Blumberg had no reason to think that anything was wrong with his mother.
After all, it wasn’t the first time that she’d dragged herself home past supper and fallen asleep on the couch. He made her comfortable, as usual, placing a pillow beneath her head and covering her with a blanket. She flinched, but didn’t wake. He wondered, did she know about the factory that had burned? It was close to her laundry, it seemed impossible she hadn’t heard—but it was the sort of thing she would’ve mentioned, even in her fatigue. A horrible thing, boychik, just horrible.
“Mama,” he called softly, “I’m going out for a chop suey. Do you want anything?” There was no answer, only the rise and fall of her chest. Well, if she woke up starving, it wouldn’t be on his head.
He carried his bicycle down to the street. He was still in his uniform, though he wasn’t supposed to wear it off duty. He was proud to be one of the youngest messengers in Midtown, and one of the fastest, too. He loved his job, loved imagining the Morse operators in faraway lands sending their signals down wires and across oceans and into his hands so he might speed them the final mile. His mother, of course, lived in terror of him ending up beneath a streetcar. He took a guilty satisfaction in that fear, as revenge for her ongoing silence. I’ll tell you when you’re older—but how old did he have to be before she’d tell him the first thing about his father? Even just his name?
He rode to his favorite chop suey restaurant on Pell Street. The proprietor seemed more subdued than usual, his wife red-eyed. Toby found a spot at a table and ate, and no one glanced his way. He’d noticed that the uniform gave him a sort of invisibility, as though it turned him into a part of the city’s workings, something you’d walk past without noticing, like a statue or a bench.
It was growing late by the time he finished, but he didn’t want to go home, not yet. He wasn’t tired enough; he’d only lie on his pallet and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the nightmare to come. So he got on his bike and rode up and down the avenues until his legs ached and his lungs burned, pretending all the while that he wasn’t avoiding the corner where the Asch Building stood. At last, surrendering to his curiosity, he turned onto Greene Street, and nearly rode straight into the silent crowd.
Immediately he dismounted. Hundreds of women and men stood together in a crescent-moon sweep, all facing the building on the northwest corner. He craned his neck upward and saw the lights creeping about in the topmost floors, beyond the broken windows. Below, the sidewalks shone with puddles of water, as though recently washed.
Movement, at the base of the building. Two firemen emerged, carrying a stretcher between them. Upon the stretcher, draped carefully with a blanket, was something not quite large enough to be a person. The crowd exhaled as one at the sight; a woman’s sob rose into the air like the call of a bird.
Toby wheeled his bicycle away.
His mother was still on the parlor couch, her breath whistling thinly as she slept. She looked sallow in the lamplight, her cheeks slack with exhaustion. He made certain she was covered, and then unrolled his pallet at last, hoping that he’d tired himself enough to sleep without dreaming.
* * *
The Golem sat in her room, desolate.
The walk to Eldridge Street from the subway had been an unspeakable battle, each step a fight against the grief and horror that pulled at her from every direction. Dreadful knowledge had poured into her from each mind that she passed: images of the fire, and the falling women; the sight of the bodies arriving at the Bellevue morgue, more and more of them, so many that the attendants had begun to lay them out along the nearby pier. Occasionally someone had gone past her at a run, someone who’d only just heard and was now frantic for news. My daughter was up there. My sister, my mother. Here and there she’d passed a building where a victim had lived, where anguish now bloomed behind the walls. It had taken every ounce of her concentration merely to climb the boardinghouse steps and unlock her bedroom door.
Sorrow weighted her like lead. More than anything, she wanted the Jinni. Perhaps he’d even come early. He’d take her to Central Park, where she could walk beneath the elms. They’d put their preoccupations aside, give each other their full attention.
Soon, she thought, her head in her hands. He’ll be here soon.
* * *
“Staying late again?” Arbeely said.
At his worktable, the Jinni tightened a vise around an iron bar. “Not very,” he said. “This shouldn’t take more than a few hours. And Chava’s expecting me.” He peered at his partner. Did the man always look this exhausted?
“What is it?” Arbeely said.
If he told the truth—You look terrible, or the like—Arbeely would scold him for his lack of tact. “Nothing,” he said. “I was only collecting wool.”
The man chuckled. “Woolgathering. I’ll see you Monday. Say hello to Chava for me.” And the man put on his hat and left, coughing into his hand.
Alone, the Jinni fitted a hook around the iron bar and twisted, careful to keep the motion smooth and even. It took one’s whole body to cold-twist a wrought iron bar, and he’d developed a rhythm: the waiting bars stacked to one side, the finished ones to the other, placing the hook, gripping it, bracing, twisting—
Movement, from a nearby window. A young woman, her arms burdened with groceries, had paused on the sidewalk to watch him. He met her eye, not even meaning to—and she blushed, and quickly walked on.
A wave of desire washed through him as he watched her go.
He took a deep breath and set the hook on the table. This had been happening more often lately. Not the desire itself—that had never left him—but the urge to act upon it. To follow a woman who’d caught his eye, and let the evening go where it might. To counter the impulse, he pictured a woman’s face: not the Golem’s, but Sophia Winston’s. Pale and unwell, trembling beneath her shawls. All because she, too, had caught his eye.
I will never again take a human lover, he told himself. Lately it had become a second vow laid beside the first, a way to remain true to the Golem without resenting her for it. He told himself that, from a certain perspective, the two vows could be seen as one and the same.
He released the bar from the vise and laid it aside. He felt unsettled, in need of distraction. He’d bank the forge and then go back to his hidden workroom for a while, before leaving for the Golem’s boardinghouse.
He approached the forge, its warmth soothing away some of his irritation. He switched off the electric fan, bent to pick up the coal-rake . . . and stopped. Stood straight again, at the forge’s edge, and inhaled the heated air. Better, even, than his cigarettes.
He turned around, peering out the windows for pedestrians. For the moment, there were none. Quickly, before he could tell himself not to, he unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, rolled them up, and placed his bare hands atop the burning coke.
Heat and strength roared through him. There was a noise like wind in his ears. His eyes sharpened, showing him infinitesimal colors and patterns in the glow of the flames. Within moments he felt more alive than he had in months.
He lifted his hands away before his clothing could ignite. Every detail of the shop’s dark corners stood out in relief: flakes of plaster, strands of cobweb. He picked up an iron bar from the pile and it softened immediately, pliable in his hands. He could see the grain now, the dark striations running lengthwise through the bar, with microscopic clarity.
He went back to his hidden room and settled in to work. Before long he was surrounded by spirals and peelings and curlicues of wrought iron, an explosion of metal excelsior. He’d gotten caught up in the work; he’d be late to the Golem’s apartment—she’d be annoyed, of course, but he’d weather it . . .
“Ahmad?”
The Jinni started at the sight of his partner’s head poking through the curtain. “Arbeely, what are you doing here? Couldn’t you sleep?”
“It’s seven in the morning,” the man said.
“What?” said the Jinni blankly. He went to the curtain and pulled it aside.
Sunlight assaulted his eyes.
Disoriented, he followed Arbeely out to his desk. He’d thought it only an hour past midnight, two at most—but here was morning, the tobacconist’s open across the street, pushcarts and wagons vying for the spaces beside the curbs. Arbeely wore his Sunday suit and hat, and held a folded newspaper. “I went out for a paper, and I saw that the forge was still burning,” the man was saying. “And—well, it worried me, given what’s happened. Chava didn’t know any of those poor girls, did she? Perhaps we ought to install sprinklers—”
“What poor girls?” the Jinni said. “What’s happened?”
The man eyed him. “You don’t know?”
“Just tell me, Arbeely.”
The man sighed, and handed him the paper.
The Jinni unfolded it, winced deeply at the headline, read on. Triangle Shirtwaist, where many worked from the Lower East Side . . . nearly at closing time . . .
Chava. Where had she been when this factory had gone up in flames? Uptown, or at home?
He thrust the paper into Arbeely’s hands and ran from the shop.
* * *
Toby woke at dawn in the grip of his nightmare.
He sat up gasping, ready to burst out of his skin. His eyes focused on his bicycle, leaning against the door. In the next instant he’d donned his coat and shoes and was carrying it down the stairwell.
Outside, the streets were shrouded in morning fog. Black wreaths had sprouted overnight from doorways; they blurred to smears as he rode, his tires hissing on the pavement. He passed a newsstand, read the Times placard: One Hundred and Forty-One Dead in Factory Fire. He pictured the lump on the stretcher, the rinsed sidewalks, and pedaled faster.
At last he felt calm enough to go home again. The building was quiet, for a Sunday morning. He carried the bicycle through a hallway that smelled of coffee and frying onions, past neighbors sunk in their own dismal thoughts.
His mother was still on the sofa.
“Mama,” he called. She never slept this late, not even on Sundays. He went to her and shook her shoulder—and the heat of her skin made him pull back his hand. He switched on the light and saw that she was drenched with sweat, her breaths shallow and quick. He pulled the blanket from her—and only then saw the rent in her stocking, and the swollen, livid wound beneath it.
“Mama!” He shook her, urgently, but she only moaned. He had to find a neighbor, get her to a hospital—they couldn’t afford it, but what if she was dying—
An old memory swam up through his fright. His mother, her face in shadow, her voice urgent: Find Missus Chava.
He grabbed his bicycle and ran down the stairs.
* * *
The boardinghouse was silent when the Jinni arrived, the windows drawn and black.
“Chava!” the Jinni shouted up at her window. She’d be furious at him for making a scene in front of the entire neighborhood, but he hardly cared, only let her be there—
The door opened.
It was the Golem, whole and uninjured. He nearly sagged with relief. But she didn’t rush down to shush and berate him, or march coldly past him in annoyance. She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at him. She seemed dazed, drained of life—
And it was his fault, he realized. He’d left her alone all night, with the grief of an entire neighborhood.
She sat down on the steps and put her face in her hands. For a terrible moment he thought she was about to start sobbing. He tried to think of something to say—but what excuse could he make? He’d lost track of time; he hadn’t heard the news. Both were true. Neither was enough.
He decided to try anyway. “Chava . . .”
But her head came up then, as though hearing something in the distance. She stood, peering down the street. A boy on a bicycle was pedaling furiously toward them, tears streaking his face.
“Toby?” she said—and then she was rushing down the steps and past the Jinni as the boy skidded to a stop on the sidewalk. “Toby, what’s wrong?”
“Mama’s hurt her leg,” the boy said, voice quavering. “She’s got a fever, she won’t wake up—”
“Toby, listen carefully. You must go back home, and keep her as cool as you can. I’ll telephone Mount Sinai and have them send an ambulance to your address.”
His eyes had gone round at the name. “But we don’t have—we can’t—”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be taken care of. Now go. I’ll meet you at the hospital.” And the boy pedaled off—though not without darting a glance at the Jinni first, as though, even in the midst of this crisis, he couldn’t help his curiosity.
The Jinni stood lost, defeated.
“I must go,” she muttered, not looking at him. “Anna needs me.”
He nodded. “May I see you tonight?”
“No,” she said, walking past him up the steps. “Come tomorrow, if you can remember.”
He went to Pennsylvania Station after that. Even the Sunday travelers seemed quieter than usual, hurrying to and fro with their heads lowered. He found his favorite bench in the Concourse, unoccupied save for a newspaper whose headlines seemed to shout at him, telling of the girls dead and burned. He picked up the paper and tossed it beneath the bench. Callous, he could hear her say; selfish. And perhaps he was callous, and selfish, and every other failing she might list. But what did that mean, in the end? That he valued himself above others—that he valued her above others? Was that truly such a fault?
He knew he had no hope of undoing the damage he’d caused. She couldn’t feel his remorse, so she would never quite forgive him. She couldn’t sense the truth of his words, which meant she’d never truly believe him. Some part of her would always think him unfeeling, uncaring—and he’d begun to wonder whether it was worth convincing her otherwise.
He sat there for a while, looking up at the glass-set arches that divided the Concourse from the heavens. I wish I could fly again, he thought, to his own mild surprise.
He walked back to the Amherst, where Arbeely had banked the forge and left a note for him at the workbench, awkward with concern. Off to church. Come by later if you need anything. He considered going to Arbeely’s apartment, possibly with a bottle of araq, to unburden himself—but what good would it do? The man was in no position to give him advice. He’d been a bachelor his whole life—and the Jinni hardly wanted to remind him of that fact, not when he himself was the cause of it.
He went to the forge and dug out the coals, adjusted the fan, watched the flames spread themselves the length of the bed. For a moment he stood with his hand inches from the fire, remembering that rush of warmth and strength, before he turned away and threw himself into his work.
* * *
“Toby,” said Missus Chava that evening, “do you know where your mother keeps the pepper-mill?”
It wasn’t Toby’s fault, what had happened to his mother. Everyone had said so: Missus Chava, the nurses, the doctor, the neighbors he’d begged the ice from, everybody. Yet he couldn’t tear himself free of the guilt. The pepper-mill was in the cabinet above the stove, it had been there all his life—but how could he say such a mundane, everyday thing while his mother lay in a bed at Mount Sinai? He could still smell the hospital on his clothes, still see her writhing in pain from the dressing they’d placed on her leg while the doctor marveled at the infection, saying, I’ve never seen a case of septicemia progress so rapidly. Do you ever feel a tingling in your extremities? Do you spend an excess of time on your feet? Ah, yes—it says here that you’re a laundress. That would account for it. What would happen if she lost the leg? Toby thought of beggars and wheeled carts, then pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He should’ve known something was wrong, he should’ve, and if he opened his mouth to say, It’s in the cabinet above the stove, he might start sobbing again. He struggled with himself, took a hitching breath.
“It’s all right, Toby,” Missus Chava said gently, from the doorway. “I’ve found it.”
He nodded, relieved. Missus Chava had been a bustle of activity ever since their return. The icebox, so recently bare, was now packed with eggs and vegetables. A fresh-baked challah cooled on the counter; the aroma of chicken soup floated through the apartment.
“Are you hungry at all? Would you like some soup?” Her tone was neither prodding nor expectant, as though any answer he gave would be the right one.
He shook his head, and then, conscious of his manners, forced himself to say, “No, thank you.”
“Will you try to eat something later, after I’ve gone?”
He nodded, eyeing his bicycle in the corner, wishing he could go out and ride. She must have followed his gaze, for she said, “Your mother told me that you’re a Western Union messenger now.” She smiled. “She also said that you’re very good at it.”
“She did?” That surprised him. Within his earshot, his mother only voiced worries and complaints. You ride too fast on that bicycle, it terrifies me. Why do you have to be gone so early in the morning, can’t you ask for better hours? If those gears and things aren’t off my table by supper-time . . .
“Does riding in traffic ever frighten you?” Missus Chava asked.
“Not really,” he said. “It’s easy, as long as you pay attention. And if I get lucky, and there’s a clear street for a block or two, maybe a bit of a slope, and I can get going really fast . . . there’s this point where everything just lifts off me. Like I’m flying.”
He brought a hand up in demonstration—and then realized that, for a moment, he’d forgotten about his mother. He reddened, dropped his hand.
She came to sit next to him on the sofa. “Toby, can I tell you something?”
He nodded, not looking up.
“I’ve been spending time uptown, lately,” she said. “Sometimes, if I don’t have anything else to do, I walk around and explore the neighborhoods. If I’m feeling unhappy, or unsettled, walking always makes me feel better. I suppose it’s like you and your bicycle.” She smiled, briefly. “Yesterday, I found an orphanage I’d never seen before. I stood there for a long time, watching the children on the playground. It felt like a lonely place, but it made me feel better to be there, because I felt lonely, too. Does that make sense?”
Yes, Toby thought: this made sense.
“That’s where I was,” she said, “when the fire started. When I came back, and heard what had happened, I was angry with myself. I told myself that I should’ve stayed home, that I could’ve helped, somehow. I know,” she said to his puzzled frown, “but it’s so tempting to imagine. Like punishing oneself, but with wishes.”
He saw now that she was talking about him, and his mother’s leg. He nodded.
“And besides,” she said with a smile, “it turned out that I was needed here after all. How did you know where to find me?”
“Mama told me,” he said, “that if I was ever in trouble, I should find Missus Chava at her boardinghouse on Eldridge.”
“Good,” she said firmly. “I’m glad. It makes me feel better to know that someone needed my help. But please, don’t tell your mother I said so. She’ll say I’m ‘going funny in the head.’”
This last she said with such an accurate imitation of his mother’s voice that he laughed once, breathily—and then the sobs were upon him, and he cried into her shoulder while she held him, her touch cool and soothing.
He calmed after a while, and fell asleep. When he woke, he was alone, still on the sofa. The counterpane from his mother’s bed had been placed over him. The clock told him it was nearly one in the morning. His head ached, and his stomach growled. He went to the kitchen, and found three slices of challah waiting on a plate, next to a bottle of seltzer. He ate, and drank, and felt better.
It felt strange, to be alone in the apartment. He thought of his mother in her bed uptown, wondered if she, too, was awake, and fretting about the cost. He wished he could tell her about Missus Chava at the front desk, telling them to send the bills to her Eldridge Street address, as cool as you please—
A puzzle-piece suddenly fell into place. My bicycle, he thought. That had been Missus Chava’s doing, too. He imagined them planning the gift together, on one of their walks around Seward Park. How many secrets had they discussed together, over the years? What else did Missus Chava know?
* * *
The wet weather returned a month later, on the morning of the memorial parade.
The entire city came to a halt, thousands huddling beneath awnings and umbrellas as the squadrons of women marched from Seward Park to Washington Square and then up Fifth Avenue, their fringed banners aloft and defiant in the rain. Ladies Waist & Dressmakers Union, Local 25. United Hebrew Trades of New York. We Mourn Our Loss.
The Golem, though, was not among the onlookers. For her, the past month had been excruciating. Uptown, her classmates had turned newly solicitous, approaching her in the courtyard to press her hand and ask how she was faring, if she’d known anyone who’d died. No, I didn’t, she told them truthfully—and yet, after so long among others’ grief, it felt like a falsehood. And there was a grasping undercurrent to their questions, a desire to attach themselves to tragedy, that she deeply mistrusted.
So she kept to herself even more than usual, finding hidden carrels in the library to occupy, arriving at class at the last minute to avoid conversations in the hallway. Afterward she escaped as quickly as possible, often walking to the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews, where she’d stand on the sidewalk and watch the children run about on the playground in their ever-changing cliques. She took care not to linger too long, though—more than once she’d overheard a child wondering if she was someone’s mother, come uptown to watch them at play.
Then, the subway south again, to walk quickly home past theaters and lecture-halls where women shouted their anger from the stage. They call us too weak and delicate for the vote, while our bodies burn to fuel their fortunes! Her boardinghouse had begun to feel like a prison where she waited each night for parole. To his credit, the Jinni had arrived punctually ever since the fire—but they’d never quite patched their rift, and his mood grew ever more poor and distant. She knew that his lapse in memory had been a case of terrible timing more than anything else, yet his morose silence irritated her more with each passing night.
Then, a ray of hopeful news. Anna, through good luck and better care, had been allowed to keep her leg. The hospital discharged her, the infection in retreat.
Anna arrived home to find her apartment swept and scrubbed, and the icebox crammed with food. On the kitchen table was a basket of the biggest oranges she’d ever seen, along with a sheaf of recipes for various nutritional broths and mashes. Anna hid the oranges at once, in case the neighbors should spot them and start rumors about a wealthy admirer. She’d assumed that she no longer had a job—but, to her considerable surprise, there was a letter from Morris that said she was expected at the laundry as soon as possible. Later she’d learn that, emboldened by the new talk of workers’ rights and general strikes, all the girls at Waverly had threatened to walk out if Morris so much as thought about replacing her. Within a week she was managing her charges from a rolling chair, her foot propped upon a stool. One night, the girls dragged Anna to a suffrage meeting on Canal Street, and begged her to tell the audience her story—and from then on she was a mainstay, distributing flyers and sewing banners, her limp transformed to a badge of honor. It’s something I can do, she told the Golem as they walked slowly together at Seward Park, Anna leaning on her crutch. I’m not good at much, but I can work.
“I wish I could do more to help them,” the Golem told the Jinni one morning near dawn, as they lay together on his bed.
“You always wish that, Chava.” As was often the case these days, the Jinni’s voice was tinged with impatience. “Why not be content with saving Anna’s life?”
“That’s different. I owed her a debt. I still do.”
“It seems to me that you’ve paid it.”
She shook her head. “You’re changing the subject. This isn’t about Anna, it’s about all of them. How can I add my voice to theirs when I’m afraid to go to a suffrage meeting?”
“I don’t understand why you’d want to go to one in the first place,” the Jinni said.
She turned to face him. “I beg your pardon—do you not think women should have the vote?”
He sighed, as though already weary of the conversation. “Of course they should, it’s ludicrous that they don’t. But we aren’t speaking of women, Chava. We’re speaking of you.”
The words hit her like a slap. She lay still a moment, and then said, “What, exactly, do you mean?”
“Only that you seem to forget, sometimes, that you are not one of them. There’s nothing for you to fear in a factory, or a laundry. You needn’t worry about the inheritance laws, as you’re no one’s parent and no one’s child. Yes, you must live by their rules, as I do. But to ‘add your voice to theirs,’ as you put it, would simply be meddling in their affairs.”
Her ire rose. “Are you saying I shouldn’t worry about protecting the women who work in factories and laundries because I’m not one myself? That’s more selfish than I would expect from you.”
He chuckled. He was lying on his back, one hand behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling. “Chava,” he said, “what do you think will happen when the suffragists win? Will all injustice be wiped from the land once women have the vote?”
“No, not all at once. But much of it, yes, over time.”
“And what of the wives of the businessmen who own the factories? Will they, too, vote to improve the lives of working-women?”
“They certainly ought to.”
“What they ought to do is neither here nor there. Let us concentrate on what they will do. The businessmen’s wives will vote to keep their money in their own pockets. The Temperance reformers will vote to keep their husbands sober, and the barmaids will vote to protect their jobs. The Christian women will vote to close businesses on Sundays, and the Jewish women will vote to keep them open. The Negro women, I assume, still will have no vote at all—but the rest will divide themselves, just as the men have. And you will do exactly the same. You will vote your own interests, which are the interests of those around you, and believe yourself to be a model of compassion, when in truth your motives are just as self-centered as their own.”
She lay there stunned. Had he ever talked to her like this before? Where had this tirade come from? “That’s not true!”
“Oh, it isn’t? What if, when you arrived in New York, you were rescued not by a penniless rabbi on the Lower East Side, but a Fifth Avenue millionaire? Do you think that you’d be half so anxious to gain the vote and save the Annas of the world?”
“Well,” she said, “perhaps I wouldn’t feel it quite as I do now. But I hope that I’d act rightly, all the same.”
“Here is what I think, Chava. It’s easy to consider yourself altruistic when you live among the poor and the downtrodden. But if you were removed from their side, it wouldn’t be long before they faded from your mind.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet tightly around herself. “Why are you saying these things? Why are you so angry at me?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Clearly you are.”
“I’m not. But if you wish to make me so, keep asking.”
She stood then, and dressed in fuming silence, and fastened her cloak around her neck. “Do not come to see me again,” she said, “until you can be more civil.” And she left, not waiting for a reply.
The Jinni arrived at the shop that morning in a foul mood, the Golem’s parting words still ringing in his ears. Until you can be more civil. Well, she’d placed the decision in his hands; she’d have no one to blame but herself if the result wasn’t to her liking. And yet every night he stayed away was a night she must spend inside and alone. He thought of the locket he’d forged, his resolution never to become her jailer—and yet she seemed to insist upon it at every turn; it was completely maddening . . .
Arbeely was already at his desk, opening the morning mail. “Good morning,” he said as the Jinni came through the door. “Here, this just arrived. You might find it amusing.” He held out a small cardboard box.
The Jinni took it. Inside, nestled in excelsior, was an ordinary-looking rock. It was squarish in shape, roughly the length of his palm and nearly black in color. “Someone sent us a rock?”
“There’s a brochure underneath it.”
The Jinni tipped out the rock and the excelsior, and found a folded brochure decorated with a sketch of an enormous steam shovel. The words Superior Iron from Hibbing Ironworks were written at the top. The Jinni opened it, and read:
This iron ore of the highest grade comes from the heart of the Mesabi Iron Range, the source of all of Hibbing Ironworks’ products. Our smelting process refines it to our exacting standards, using . . .
“Imagine paying to send a rock through the post,” Arbeely said. “It’s a clever bit of advertising, but no wonder Hibbing’s iron is so expensive—” He broke off, interrupted by a spell of coughing.
“Another cold?” the Jinni said, somewhat irritated. He’d been hoping Arbeely would let him smoke in the shop again.
“It comes and goes with the weather,” the man replied, once he could.
“Isn’t there medicine you can take?”
“I tried codeine drops, but the nausea was worse than the coughing.”
“At least this proves that my cigarettes aren’t to blame,” said the Jinni, and received a scornful look in reply. He held up the box. “Can I have this?”
The man shrugged. “Go ahead, it’s no use to me.”
In his secret room, the Jinni lit the lanterns, cleared the bits of wrought iron from the floor, sat on the cushion, and hefted the rock in one hand. It was heavy, and jagged-edged. In the lantern-light, the sheared surfaces held a dusting of red. He brought it to his nose, inhaled its warm, sharp scent—and felt, not fear, but the remembrance of fear: childhood dares and taunts, boasts and bravado, the excitement of hovering with one’s playmates outside an unknown cave, daring one another to go in first.
I ought to show this to Chava, he thought—and then remembered their fight. He tossed the rock aside, rubbed his face with his hands, then impatiently extinguished the lanterns again. He’d go to the roof, he decided, and clear his head.
“Arbeely,” he called as he left the supply room, “if you feel like distributing your biscuits—”
But Arbeely lay on the floor, unmoving.