It was a warm spring morning in the desert west of the Cursed City.
A group of young jinn flew together, stealing each other’s winds in teasing play. Among them, hanging slightly back from her fellows, was the jinniyeh who feared no iron. Ever since the incident with the farmer’s scythe, she’d been careful to cultivate the appearance of timidity, never exploring on her own or flying out ahead—for what would happen if she led them too close to iron without realizing it?
—Look, one of them called. Humans.
Three travelers had appeared on the road leading east: one man and two women, all on horseback, with a pack-laden donkey following behind. Two wore head-coverings meant to keep away the sun. The third, one of the women, went surprisingly bare-headed. She was younger than the others, and pale-skinned, with sparrow-brown hair that she wore woven about her head, fastened here and there with points of metal that glinted in the sunlight. The woman’s companions rode ahead of her, as though on guard—and indeed, even as the jinn watched, another group of humans rode into view from the north. These were black-robed Bedu, a scouting party come to decide whether the travelers were worth raiding.
—Let’s see what happens, one of the jinn said.
They flew toward the converging groups of humans, the jinniyeh maintaining her cautious distance as the trio on the road wheeled about to face the oncoming Bedu. The man placed a hand near the rifle at his side. The fair-haired woman pulled one of the dark scarves she wore from around her neck and draped it over her head. The jinniyeh saw that she was trembling, and thought it was out of fear—but then the woman called out, “Blessings upon you, O Sheikh!”
The leader of the Bedu party reined in his horse, and the others followed; he was smiling, an expression more amused than glad. “Miss Williams!” he called back. “I had wondered if we’d see your family this spring.”
“May we beg your hospitality for the night?” The woman spoke slowly, as though still learning the dialect. Her companions sat easier now; the man had moved his hand away from the rifle.
“You will be my honored guests,” the sheikh replied—and the trio turned north, and joined host.
The group of young jinn watched them go. There was no question of following them: a lone human might be tricked astray and sported with, but not a village’s worth. There’d be iron amulets in every doorway, and exorcists armed with herbs and chants. And so the jinn turned away, to search for entertainment elsewhere.
But the jinniyeh dawdled behind, lingering to watch the humans disappear northward. Something about the pale woman had piqued her interest: her odd appearance, her tremor, but also the amusement in the sheikh’s voice as he’d answered her hail. As though he, too, thought her strange and out of place.
She turned away from the humans and flew back to rejoin her fellows.
It was nearly evening when the Bedu and their guests arrived at their destination: a village of mud-brick huts, built in two long lines that faced each other across a central alley. Children playing in the alley quickly abandoned their games to cluster around the riders and call out to Sophia, who smiled and returned their greetings. She couldn’t help but notice that the crowd was smaller this year than before. For generations this village had served as a way-station for caravans on the road to Homs, men and animals bedding down between the twin lines of huts—not so elegant as the palatial caravanserai in Damascus and Aleppo, with their marble fountains and potted palms, but nonetheless safe from raiders and the elements. Now, though, the caravans were dwindling, their routes usurped by rail and sea. Families in the village had begun to drift toward Homs, where they might find work in the fields and markets.
The sheikh led the Williamses to his hut—beehive-shaped like all its neighbors, an ancient design that stayed cool in the summer heat—and they sat on the floor around the fire while the sheikh’s wife prepared tea and supper. Their host asked after their travels, and learned that they were on their way to Palmyra for a brief visit before heading north, to spend the summer months among the fairy-chimneys of Cappadocia. Sophia inquired about the local politics—traveling the tribal regions was not unlike wandering across a chessboard, and it paid to stay abreast of the latest maneuvers—and the sheikh told her which of the warlords were lately ascendant, and which had overreached. He also told her of a large, slow-moving group of Westerners who had passed on the road the day before, an exorbitant train of palanquins, pack animals, and armed guards. He’d taken them for British, and kept his own men well away; to demand payment for their passage would only rouse their ire, and perhaps that of Syria’s Ottoman governors. “They’ll be at Palmyra by the time you arrive,” he told Sophia, and watched as her expression soured. He enjoyed the novelty of this strange girl and her wardens—they professed themselves to be her parents, but nothing on earth could convince him of it—though at times he wondered who, exactly, he was entertaining.
He wouldn’t hear of them sleeping in the alley, and directed them instead to a pair of empty huts. The sun had dipped below the hills, and the air was cooling quickly. Lucy built a fire for Sophia, and made certain she had enough blankets, and then joined Patrick in the other hut, leaving the young woman to herself.
Sophia spent some time writing in her journal as the village quieted around them, detailing the day’s journey and the sheikh’s gossip. In her five years of adventuring with the Williamses, she’d seen no evidence to suggest that they read her journals; still, she wrote nothing in them that she wouldn’t want her parents to hear. At last, when she’d judged that the village was asleep, she donned a sheepskin-lined coat, lit her lantern, and left her hut, heading in the direction of the latrine.
A child’s face loomed into her path.
She nearly gasped, though she’d been expecting it. The child beckoned, and Sophia followed him to a hut set slightly apart from the rest. The woman who crouched inside by the fire was in her twenties, barely older than Sophia.
Sophia looked about, but the woman was alone. “Peace be upon you, Umm Firas,” she said, suddenly wary.
“Welcome, Miss Williams,” the woman said, her voice subdued. “I must tell you that Umm Salem is dead.”
Sophia’s heart sank. She bowed her head, swallowing back tears that felt entirely too selfish to show. “I grieve for you,” she said. “When did it happen?”
“In midwinter, from an infection in her lungs. At the end, she tried to teach me many things quickly. But your medicine . . . I apologize. There wasn’t enough time.”
Sophia nodded. She imagined the elderly healer on her sickbed, deciding which portions of her knowledge to pass to her apprentice. Of course she’d choose the most important cures, the ones that strengthened newborns or healed broken bones. Not the powder that she mixed once a year for a stranger.
“I can give you this.” Umm Firas handed Sophia a small packet of waxed parchment. “Take it in the same dose as the other. It won’t be as effective, but it will help.”
“Thank you, Umm Firas.” Sophia took the packet, hoping that her gratitude showed on her face, and not her disappointment.
“Did you sleep well, Sophia?” asked Lucy.
It was morning, and the village was behind them. They’d paid the sheikh in grain and coin for the night’s rest, and made their good-byes while the sun was still low. The elder Williamses had long since dropped the miss when addressing their supposed daughter, though in private they all still spoke with near-formal courtesy, as though to remind themselves of the truth.
“Well enough,” Sophia said lightly, not wishing to lie. She’d tried a dose of the new powder after returning to her tent; as Umm Firas had warned, it was far less effective, and she’d lain awake shivering half the night. How, she wondered, would she manage now? It had taken years of secret inquiries to find Umm Salem, and now she must begin over again. She still had a small store of the more potent medicine; she could stretch it out, take it only on the coldest nights, but that would gain her little more than a month or two. At last she resolved to put it out of mind for now, and enjoy her visit to Palmyra as much as possible.
The trio rode steadily, eating their meals in the saddle, pausing only to feed and water the horses. By midday the sun had soothed away Sophia’s tremor. Lucy and Patrick, meanwhile, sweated beneath their riding clothes, and drank often from their water-skins. Sophia knew they were looking forward to Cappadocia, where the sun wouldn’t broil them alive. Sophia had grown genuinely fond of the Williamses, who seemed eternally willing to ride horses and camels and vertiginous mountainside rail-cars, and to eat whatever unfamiliar foods were placed before them. And the Williamses, for their part, had grown to trust Sophia enough to loosen their vigilance here and there, bestowing her an hour to browse alone at a souk, or a solitary morning at a café. Sophia used these brief spells of freedom to make quick inquiries among the local healers, or to ask in the spice-stalls about rare ingredients and rumored cures. To her knowledge the Williamses had never caught on; still, she disliked risking their trust. Even now, they must send their regular reports to New York, describing Sophia’s general behavior and her continued eschewing of male company. Demeaning, for a woman of twenty-five to be written up like a girl at a finishing school—but the funding of her travels depended upon the Williamses’ good opinion, and Sophia never let herself forget it.
It was nearly evening when they passed over the ridge and down into the Valley of the Tombs, at the western outskirts of Palmyra. In the distance stood a lattice of columns and low walls, the stone ribs of a toppled city. They rode along the Great Colonnade, past towering groups of pillars and the half-crumbled amphitheater, and Sophia tried, as always, to imagine how it once had been: the wide, palm-lined avenues, the market-stalls where merchants traded in half a dozen languages.
At the end of the Colonnade stood the largest of Palmyra’s surviving buildings, and the city’s still-beating heart: the Temple of Bel, its high, fortresslike walls now home to a sizable Bedu village. And here were the British tourists, only just arrived: a dozen uniformed officers and their wives, all clustered before the temple gate. Nearby, their retinue of Punjabi servants was setting up camp, unpacking the provisions and raising silk-trimmed tents while a herd’s worth of camels grazed and napped. The officers stood with a dark-robed sheikh who’d come out to meet them, displaying for him the gifts they’d brought; Sophia spied a stag-handled carving set, and a china teapot painted with Scottish thistles. One of the officers had a camera, and was coaxing the sheikh to pose with the gifts when Sophia’s horse nickered. As one the group turned to gape at the approaching trio: the older pair with their holstered rifles and dust-stained leathers, and the pale young woman in her split skirt and dark shawls.
The sheikh, however, brightened at the sight of them. He abandoned the delegation and approached the riders, calling out greetings. The trio dismounted, Sophia smiling and answering in kind. The sheikh motioned to a boy loitering near the temple gate, and the boy hurried to take their horses’ reins and lead them toward grazing ground. The sheikh gestured toward the gate—and with barely a backward glance at the indignant officers, the three were ushered inside.
“So she told you nothing,” Patrick said to Lucy.
The two lay together in their tent, which they’d pitched in a corner of the temple courtyard. Sophia’s tent was some distance away, in a spot where the stones were still warm from the day’s heat. Lucy had checked on her before retiring, and found her deeply asleep.
“Only that she’d slept ‘well enough,’ whatever that means,” Lucy replied. “Nothing about wandering off alone in the dark, and then having herself a good cry afterward.”
“I asked about the old healer-woman,” Patrick said. “She died this winter.”
Lucy sighed. “Can’t say I’m surprised. She had to be eighty, at least.”
Silence, for a moment. Then Patrick said, “Whatever the old woman was giving her . . . do you think it truly helped?”
“You mean, or is it all in her mind?”
Patrick shrugged, uncomfortable.
“I think,” Lucy said, “it doesn’t much matter in the end. She suffers either way.”
He considered this. “True enough. And I suppose we’re making it worse for her, dragging her north to Cappadocia for the summer.”
“Just like Ankara last summer, and Armenia the summer before,” Lucy murmured. “She ought to stay here instead—but how would you and I do our jobs, half dead from the heat?”
“Well, maybe it’s time we stopped.”
A long pause, as each took careful stock of his words.
“You mean, quit?” A glimmer of hope had entered Lucy’s voice.
He smiled. “You’ve been thinking it, too?”
“Of course I have. She’s twenty-five, Patrick. You and I were married younger than that. It isn’t natural, what her parents are making her do, and I’m starting to hate myself for being a part of it.”
He nodded. “And here’s another thing. The two of us aren’t getting any younger, either. These are the best years we’ve got left, and we’re spending them eating in the saddle and sleeping on stones. We’ve enough money in the bank to retire for good, and I’d say we’ve earned it.”
“So what do we do? We can’t just leave her. She needs someone.”
He thought a minute. “Remember that guide in Homs, the one who showed us around the mosques and the citadel? Used to be a dragoman?”
“Abu Alim,” Lucy said. “I liked him.”
“So, someone like that, maybe.”
“And if we’re wrong?” Lucy said darkly. “Who’ll protect her then?”
“We’ll teach her what we know,” Patrick said. “And then, she can protect herself.”
A few months later, the Williamses sent word to their employers that they wished to be released from their contract. In their estimation, they said, Sophia had matured into a steady and intelligent young woman. She’d taught herself Arabic and Turkish, could get by in a number of dialects, and had accumulated a detailed knowledge of the local politics. In fact, at this point, they wouldn’t be surprised if she was one of the West’s foremost experts on the region. They had never seen her behave inappropriately with any man, nor had they spotted the gang-leader her mother had described. As for her personal safety, they’d taken the liberty of drilling her extensively in both rifle and pistol. Her aim was imperfect, owing to her tremor—but on a warm and windless day, she could shoot a tobacco tin off a fence-post at thirty paces.
Francis Winston read the report with his usual mix of jealousy and pride. The truth was that he missed his daughter terribly. He wanted to bring her home, to hear firsthand her tales of Cappadocian fairy-chimneys and Palmyrene temples—but there were other considerations. In Sophia’s absence, the mood of their household had improved considerably. Julia had, at long last, allowed him back into her bed. And there were several delicate matters of business approaching; he must go to Washington, and court the good opinions of dull and odious men. Sophia’s return, he decided, would have to wait for a more opportune moment. In the meantime, if the Williamses were to find a reputable native guide for her, then Francis would declare himself satisfied.
Julia, however, was horrified, both at the thought of Sophia traveling unchaperoned—a native guide hardly counted!—and at her daughter’s transfiguration into a Wild West showgirl. On the other hand, there was no good way to enforce the contract if the Williamses wished to be elsewhere. She might convince Francis to cut off Sophia’s funds and order her home for good—but then what would she do with the girl? Jail her in her room, and resume their battle of wills? The thought alone made her inexpressibly weary.
And so Julia, too, agreed to the severing of the contract—but with one condition. If Sophia wished to make a spectacle of herself among heathens and savages, then she must do so under her assumed identity, and leave her family’s reputation untouched. The Winston name—and all the duties and expectations that it encompassed—would wait for her at America’s shore.
* * *
This must be a sin, Kreindel Altschul thought.
It was the summer of 1906, and Kreindel lay stretched upon the bare stone floor of the women’s balcony at the Forsyth Street Synagogue, watching the dust motes that floated past in the light from the high windows. She’d had no trouble at all sneaking into the synagogue; the women’s door was in the alley off Hester, far from the main entrance, and from there it was a quick walk down a dim hallway to the balcony staircase. A small notebook and a sharpened pencil waited in her skirt pockets. Now she only had to stay out of sight, and wait for the boys to arrive.
Which sin in particular was it? she wondered. Could it really be called trespassing if she belonged to the synagogue, and her father was the rabbi? Then again, her father thought she was in their apartment, tending to her chores. If he were to ask at supper what she’d done during the day, she’d have to lie—and that would be a sin. Except he never asked her questions at supper anymore, only said the blessings and ate as quickly as possible, then shut himself in the bedroom, the key scraping as it turned in the lock. Left to herself, Kreindel would wash the dishes and put them away, then lie down on her pallet and watch the glow from beneath his door. Sometimes she could hear muttering in what sounded like Hebrew, but was nothing she recognized from the prayers she knew. She’d watch and listen, waiting for him to blow out the lamp, but she always drifted off to sleep before it happened.
On Saturday mornings she walked with him to the synagogue and chose a seat in the front of the women’s balcony, the better to hear him. His sermons had taken on a new ferocity, of late. Angrily he’d denounce the Tsar for his wickedness, the Reform movement for its faithlessness, the Bundists for their atheism, the Zionists for attempting to usurp the role of the Almighty. It is up to Him alone to send us the Messiah and restore Jerusalem, and gather all the exiles of Israel into the Holy Land, he’d thunder—and she’d listen, entranced by the voice he’d hidden from her all week, and the certainty in his words.
Then, back across the street to their apartment for the Sabbath afternoon—but now Kreindel could read the Tsene-rene on her own, and so they spent the hours apart, in silent study. At last the sun would set, and they’d light the braided Havdalah candle and extinguish it in the wine—and then he was gone again, into the bedroom. He always managed to open and close the door when her back was turned so that she never caught sight of the room itself.
What are you doing in there, another child might have asked, or even, Why don’t you talk to me anymore? But Kreindel was trained in her own ways, and she knew that one couldn’t solve a mystery by merely asking questions. Nor could she simply pick or break the bedroom lock, for that would be a betrayal. And besides, she didn’t merely want to see what her father kept beyond the door. She wanted to understand it. And so she had come to the women’s balcony, heart pounding, waiting to learn.
At last, from the sanctuary below there came the shuffle of unwilling footsteps as a dozen young boys took their places in the front pews. And then, her father’s voice, brisk and businesslike: Open your primers, please, to lesson four.
The boys hated their Hebrew lessons, each and every one. It felt like a punishment they hadn’t earned to sit in the uncomfortable pews, picking their way through the Hebrew, while their friends played games of alley stickball, or snuck into the construction pit beneath the unfinished bridge. For Kreindel, though, it was a new and secret pleasure to listen as her father conjugated verbs and corrected mistakes, all with a patience and calm that surprised her. Her pencil flew across the pages of her notebook, capturing his words. The particle lo preceding a verb negates its action. Lo qatsar Ya’acov etz—“Jacob did not cut down a tree.” The verb shamah, “to hear,” gains the suffix ti to indicate the first person singular. Vayomer et-kolecha shama’ti bagan va’ira—“And he said, ‘I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid.’”
For a solid hour he taught, until the light in the balcony grew so thin that Kreindel’s nose nearly touched the paper as she wrote—and then at last the boys were dismissed, and she was left alone, her head spinning with rules and particles and suffixes.
She went back the next day, and the next, learning bit by bit. On Saturdays she listened to the Sabbath prayers with new concentration, unraveling them as they flew by. At night, on her pallet, she’d pull her notebook from inside her pillow and review her lessons while her father muttered behind the locked door, seemingly a world away.
It wasn’t long before she noticed the toll that her father’s secret work was taking. Dark circles appeared around his eyes, and hollows in his cheeks. Their suppers had always been small, mainly knishes and pickles from the pushcarts, but now he barely ate anything at all. One morning Kreindel found a scrap of leather in the garbage and recognized it as the end of his belt, trimmed away to disguise his growing emaciation. Alarmed, she stole a handful of pennies from the jar he kept in the kitchen cabinet and bought eggs and noodles, herring and potatoes. She’d never cooked before, knew only what she’d seen from the tenement mothers—but through trial and error, she taught herself to make simple meals for them both. Her father was surprised, and a touch abashed; yet he still had no appetite, and could only manage a few bites before excusing himself to the bedroom and locking the door behind him.
By the beginning of 1907, Kreindel had learned enough Hebrew to translate every word of the Sabbath service, and yet her father’s nighttime mutterings still eluded her. Sometimes she recognized the various names of God, or exhortations to the angels, or the words for different body parts, arm and head and finger; but often it sounded as though he was saying the words back to front, or scrambling their letters about. And there were other, stranger happenings. A strong, earthy smell had begun to permeate the apartment, reminding her of something she couldn’t quite place. One night, she woke in the dark to see her father standing before the bedroom door, a heavy coal-sack over his back. His sleeves and trouser-cuffs were dark with what looked like mud. He whispered something, and her eyes went heavy with sleep. In the morning, the memory had the tenuous, half-faded quality of a dream.
Seasons passed. At the synagogue her father struggled to conceal his ill health. One Saturday in autumn he seemed particularly affected; he rallied himself for his usual sermon, but after the final benediction his vigor left him, and he stood pale and wavering on the dais. The synagogue men seemed not to notice, gathering around him as always—but Kreindel, afraid that he might collapse, ran down from the balcony, pushed through the men, and grabbed his hand, saying, Papa, you promised to tell me a story this afternoon.
He looked down at her, eyes clouded with confusion, and in that moment she thought he’d forgotten who she was. But then his brow cleared. Of course, child, he said, smiling. Excuse me, gentlemen.
They left the sanctuary and walked across the street, his thin, dry hand in hers. Together they climbed the tenement stairs, and by the second floor he was leaning on her shoulder, gripping it tightly. At last they reached their apartment, where he collapsed upon the parlor sofa and was asleep within moments.
His counterpane was locked behind his bedroom door, so Kreindel tucked her own blanket over him, though it was too short to cover him completely. She sat down at his writing-desk—it felt presumptuous, but there was no room on the sofa—and listlessly thumbed through the Tsene-rene, casting occasional glances at the bookcase lined with Talmudic volumes. Finally she put the Tsene-rene aside, gathered her courage, and plucked one of her father’s books from its shelf.
At first, reading it was like listening to a group of people all shouting at one another. There were words she didn’t know, but she could guess at their meanings; she fetched a sheet of butcher paper, and wrote them down. Before long she was outlining, in Hebrew, her understanding of the competing schools of thought. She continued onto a second piece of paper, and then a third. She felt as though she were peering through a keyhole into a different world, one whose story could only be told in its own language—a language her father had handed her, piece by piece.
She stopped only when the room grew too dark to read. The sun had set; the Sabbath was over. Exhausted, exultant, she put her head down on her father’s desk, and fell asleep.
When she woke, her father was watching her from the couch. In his hands were the notes she’d written. His eyes held a look of fondness that Kreindel had never seen there before.
“I fear I haven’t been a good father to you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I’ve allowed you to become something that you weren’t meant to be. But I also wonder if the Almighty has given me another gift, one I never expected.”
From around his neck he removed the key to the bedroom. “Come,” he said, and unlocked the door.
The bedroom was dark and close, the scent of earth overwhelming. At once, as though the key had unlocked the thought, Kreindel realized why it was so familiar: it was the smell of the construction pit beneath the unfinished bridge, where the tenement boys liked to play.
Her father put a match to the lamp, and at last the room was illuminated.
There was a man lying on her father’s bed.
She jumped back, and might have screamed, but her father’s hand clamped over her mouth. “Shhh,” he hissed. “No one must know.” She nodded, heart pounding, and he removed his hand.
The man was only partly there. One leg was missing, as well as the accompanying hip. He had two arms, but only one hand, and the arms themselves were like thick noodles, without joints or muscles. His face had depressions for eyes, a rough triangular nose, and a lipless line where a mouth ought to be. But he was, unquestionably, a man: tall and thick-chested, his solitary hand more than twice the span of Kreindel’s own. She crept to the bedside as though afraid of waking him, placed a hand on his chest, and felt the cool, firm clay beneath her fingers.
“Do you know what this is?” her father asked.
“A golem,” Kreindel breathed.
* * *
“Thea asked for my opinion on fur stoles this morning,” said the Golem.
It was a clear winter night, cold and crisp. They were walking west along Broome Street, with the aim of heading north into Chelsea so the Jinni could see the enormous construction site at Seventh Avenue, the one destined to become a new train station. Four blocks of the Tenderloin had been razed for the purpose, their residents, most of them Negroes, forced to find shelter elsewhere. The Golem had been angered at the unfairness of it; and while the Jinni agreed with the sentiment, he couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the scale and ambition of the project. He didn’t want to argue about it, so he’d decided to keep quiet while she went on about Thea’s quandary regarding mink versus ermine—were those colors or animals? Safer not to ask . . . Apparently the train station was to be entirely steel-framed, and the Jinni was intrigued by the possibilities—far more so than by the cast-iron facades here on Broome, which were poured and cooled in giant molds, a technique that bored him beyond measure. Why put all the artistry in the mold, and not in the iron itself? What was the point of working with iron if one did not truly work it?
Something the Golem had said managed to pierce through his musings. “Wait,” he said. “An award? What award?”
“The Man of the Year, from the Lower East Side Merchants’ Association,” the Golem said again. “‘For Enlarging Our Vision of Tomorrow’s Bakery.’ It’s why Thea wants a stole, for the award luncheon. She thinks her usual coat is too dowdy, even though Selma said, and I agreed, that the—”
“But do you mean that Moe won this ‘Man of the Year’?”
The Golem sighed. She’d tried to sneak Moe’s award into the conversation when his attention was elsewhere, knowing that otherwise it was bound to start an argument—because the truth was that the startling success of the bakery’s expansion was her own doing just as much as Moe’s. Yes, the new ovens turned out twice as many goods as before, and the gleaming new display case gave the customers a full and tempting view of the day’s selection—but it was the Golem’s new hires who’d pushed the endeavor into greatness. She’d trained them in record time, and along the way they’d absorbed something of her manner as well, rolling and mixing with a crisp precision that was mesmerizing to watch. Once the Golem had noticed this effect, she’d suggested placing their worktables in a row at the front of the shop, so that all the customers could admire their skills as they waited. Moe had agreed with little thought, not caring at all where the tables went—and then, like everyone else, had been shocked by the result. Simply to watch the women work was an entertainment in itself. Passersby who’d never set foot in Radzin’s would spy them through the plate-glass windows and be lured inside. A simple trip to the baker’s, once a dull and ordinary errand, now had the feel of an exhibition, an event—and the customers, their spirits brightened, often bought more than they’d planned.
“Chava, that should be your award, not Moe’s!” the Jinni said.
“Oh, that’s not true,” she replied at once. “The expansion was all Moe’s idea, I never would’ve dared. And the girls deserve credit, too, they’re such diligent workers—”
“Yes, because you trained them to be! You don’t want to go about bragging, I understand—but if there are more customers per hour, and each customer is spending more—”
“Yes, I’ve done the calculations,” she said, growing irritated.
But the Jinni wasn’t finished. “Maybe Moe could’ve succeeded without you, but not like this. He certainly wouldn’t have won that award. You’re the one who ‘enlarged their vision,’ Chava. Not him.”
“Oh, stop needling me. Why does it matter if he should win an award or not? It’s not as though they’d make me their Man of the Year.”
“But does he understand? Does he know that you’re the reason?”
“He’s begun to wonder,” she muttered, “whether he simply has a natural talent for these things.”
The Jinni snorted angrily. “Idiot.”
“That’s easy to say when you know something he doesn’t. But why do I feel it’s me you’re angry with?”
“Because you seem content to let him think he’s . . .” He waved his hands, searching.
“The ‘cock of the walk’?”
“Yes, that. And perhaps you can’t go to this association and say, Excuse me, you’re mistaken about Mr. Radzin. But don’t you wish that you could? Aren’t you the least bit angry?”
She shook her head. “What good would my anger do?”
“None whatsoever! But it would be true, and honest, and understandable!”
“But I can’t!” The words came out louder, sharper than she’d meant, echoing from the painted iron storefronts. She winced; then she said, “I can’t wish that they knew the truth, or that I could show them what I’m capable of. I don’t want to go to work every day resenting their ignorance. In the end, a man has given me less recognition than he ought—and that makes me no different from all the women who stand in line thinking about their own employers, how miserly they are with compliments and how quick to take the credit.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the same at all, Chava.”
She was growing annoyed. “You’re right. I’m far more fortunate. I won’t get ill, or starve to death. I don’t live in fear of a man’s fists. I’m spared all of that.”
“And in return, you only need to hide.” His voice was bitter.
“Many of them are hiding, too, Ahmad.”
“I am not talking about them!”
He’d shouted it loud enough that a nearby night-watchman, asleep on his stool behind a window, woke with a start and peered out at the street. Chagrined, the Golem put out a hand: Lower your voice.
“I’m talking about you.” He’d quieted, but he was still more angry than she’d seen him in some time. “You and me. We are different, Chava. We cannot be their drudges, or allow them to . . . to wipe their feet upon us, all in the name of ‘hiding.’ You let them rule you far too easily.”
She’d stiffened at the word drudges. “That’s all well and good, coming from you.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean?”
“Only that you have freedoms that I don’t. You can choose to lock yourself away in your shop, and take no note of others’ opinions, and speak as little to your neighbors as you wish, and all they will think is, There goes Ahmad al-Hadid, that unsociable fellow. What do you think would happen if I were to do the same?”
“They’d say, There goes Chava Levy, that unsociable woman.”
She snorted. “That is the least of what they’d call me. It’s different for women, Ahmad—no, don’t argue, just listen. If a man smiles at me, I must smile back, or else I am a shrew. If a woman mentions she’s having a terrible day, I’m obligated to ask what the matter is, otherwise I’m arrogant and uncaring. Then I become the target of their anger, and it affects me whether I deserve it or not. If I were to act as you do, and alienate half the people I meet—how long do you think it would be before the noise grew unbearable?”
He frowned and looked away, as though trying to imagine what it would be like to hear the unspoken opinions of his neighbors as he passed them on the street. Not for the first time, the Golem wondered if it would change him in the least.
“I can’t afford their anger,” she said quietly. “You know that better than anyone.”
He blew out an explosive breath, and scrubbed his face with his hands. Then he took a step toward her, reached out, and pulled her close. She put her arms around him; and for long and wordless minutes, they held each other.
* * *
“Have you seen the embossing hammer?” the Jinni asked the next morning.
Arbeely looked up from his workbench, already scowling. “No, I haven’t,” he said. “And our good rawhide mallet is missing, too. I assume they’re both in the back, inside that tangled mess of wrought iron you’re building.”
“It isn’t my fault if there isn’t enough space—”
“If you want to go on with these experiments,” the man spoke over him, “then please find another place to do it. It’s interfering with our paid work.”
The Jinni snorted. “Yes, our endlessly interesting paid work. Necklaces and earrings and reading-lamps, cover plates for electrical switches, the same old trinkets for Sam Hosseini to sell. I could make them in my—with my eyes shut,” he said, seeming to catch himself.
Arbeely sighed, and put down his tracing pencil. “So you’re bored,” he said dryly.
“Yes,” the Jinni said, crossing his arms. “I am bored.”
“And this isn’t to do with the weather, or a fight with Chava.”
The Jinni shot him a contemptuous look.
“I was merely asking,” Arbeely insisted, hurt. “It’s been the case before.”
“I know, I know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then dropped into Arbeely’s desk-chair—the man winced as its springs let out a squawk—and rolled a cigarette, touched it, inhaled. “We went to Chelsea last night, to the construction pit for the new station,” he said, through the smoke. “You should see it. They’ve built an entire narrow-gauge railroad just to haul the dirt up to the street. They’re starting to lay the foundation, there are piles of girders everywhere, I’ve never seen so much steel . . . The river tunnels will connect straight to the concourse, all of it beneath the subway. It’ll be a feat in itself.”
“And then you came back here,” Arbeely said, “to the reading-lamps and cover plates.”
His partner nodded, his eyes elsewhere.
“People need such things,” the man said gently. “Besides, we’re tinsmiths. Not an engineering firm.”
The Jinni was silent a moment. Then he got up from Arbeely’s chair and disappeared into the back room, and returned a moment later with a short length of wrought iron. He sat down across from Arbeely and gripped the rod in one hand. A long pause, the familiar smell of heated metal—and the iron began to glow. He shifted his grip, the length of iron now between his palms, fingers laced above, like a gambler shuffling his deck. A quick push: and now his hands were cupped together, the iron vanished inside. A twist and a pull, and the rod stretched between his hands like glowing taffy. He brought the ends together, folded the iron and spun it, stretched it again: and now there were many strands, far thinner and finer, and for a moment Arbeely was a child in his mother’s kitchen, watching her make the noodles for supper. Another dizzying series of folds, a spin—something flared inside his hands—
Swiftly the Jinni bent to the water-bucket at the end of the workbench. There was a startling clap of steam—and when he appeared again he was holding a hollow globe, perhaps six inches in diameter, made of dozens of thin and swirling filaments that all ran together seamlessly at its poles.
Arbeely took it and stared. There was a lightness to the globe, and a sense of motion, like a captured water-current. “What is it?” he said.
“A finial for a banister,” the Jinni said. “Or for a bedpost, or a set of fireplace andirons. It could be a child’s top. It might perch upon a gate. I could make all these things and more.”
Arbeely laughed, suddenly giddy.
“It’s time we enlarged our vision,” the Jinni told him; and then he fetched his jacket, and left.
The street outside darkened as Arbeely sat in the shop, examining the precious globe by lamplight. Part of him expected it to vanish, like a fading enchantment—but it persisted, cool and real in his hand.
Enlarge our vision . . . They’d need more space. A factory floor, if possible. New equipment, a better forge. And privacy, a hidden room of some sort, for the Jinni to work his magic. They could call it a trade secret, but a landlord would grow suspicious, wouldn’t he? Better to own the place outright, though of course that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
From a desk drawer he fetched his private ledger, opened it to numbers that would’ve made his neighbors gasp: the result of long hours, simple habits, and a shining spark of luck that had burst into his life from an old copper flask. He’d spied his partner’s ledger, knew that the numbers there were roughly the same as his own. But no, it still wouldn’t be enough, he was letting his enthusiasm run away with himself—but imagine it . . .
At some point he put his head down atop the ledger; and when he opened his eyes again, the sun was shining. He stood, wiped at his eyes. His stomach growled. What was he still doing in the shop?
The swirling globe caught his eye, and he remembered.
He put the globe carefully in a drawer and went out to the street, where the morning was already underway, the sidewalks bustling with neighbors. Perhaps he’d go to the Faddouls’, for a cup of coffee. And a word with Maryam, if she wasn’t too busy.
He opened the coffee-house door—and Maryam caught his arm as though she’d been waiting for him. “Boutros,” she said, “you play backgammon, don’t you?” And before he could utter a word, she’d steered him to a table where one of her regular customers sat alone before a backgammon board, his usual opponent having succumbed to a toothache. Arbeely, an indifferent player at best, proceeded to lose three consecutive games while the man complained at length about his brother-in-law, a lazy oaf who smoked his narghile all day long and sent his wife out to earn in his stead. And now it seemed that her job was in jeopardy, for she worked at the lace-maker’s in the Amherst—Arbeely knew the Amherst, didn’t he? Yes, the loft building at the corner of Washington and Carlisle. Well, it seemed the owner had been ruined in the “Panic” in October, and was faced with selling a number of his properties at a loss. No doubt the Amherst would be snapped up by some faceless financier who’d see fit to raise the rents. It was a shame, the man said as he moved a checker across the bar, that so few of the buildings in Little Syria were owned by actual Syrians; it would be such a boon for the neighborhood businesses . . .
Arbeely lifted his eyes from the board. Maryam was watching him from the far corner, smiling with excitement.
* * *
In the spring of 1908, the elders of the Forsyth Street Synagogue gathered for a secret meeting to discuss the problem of Rabbi Altschul.
None of them could say exactly when their rabbi’s odd behavior had begun. He was a holy man, of course, and a touch of dreaminess or self-absorption was to be expected—but lately he seemed to be coming entirely untethered. He’d developed the habit of wandering off the dais during the Saturday service, and more than once had to be guided back by a congregant. At a recent Hebrew lesson, he’d startled the boys by closing his eyes and chanting, trancelike, in what might have been Aramaic. And what no one wished to mention, but was foremost in their minds, was that their rabbi had begun to exude a terrible odor, a graveyard stench of soil and decay. No one could tell whether it was coming from his garments, or the man himself.
A delegation was sent to his apartment, to discuss matters. They knocked on the door, but no answer came. One of them bent to peer through the keyhole—and suddenly the door opened. In the threshold stood the rabbi’s daughter, young Kreindel, her blouse and skirt entirely caked with mud. It streaked her face, and daubed the ends of her braids, and coated her arms up to the elbows.
“Please come in,” Kreindel said. “My father wishes to speak with you.”
Stunned, unsure, they crept into the apartment. The door closed behind them.
A little while later, the delegation returned to the synagogue and reassured the others that all would be well. Rabbi Altschul, they said, had indeed taken ill, but was now recovering under his daughter’s care. In the meantime, he was not to be disturbed. All sighed in relief, glad that an end was in sight. Then the men of the delegation all went home and fell deeply asleep, and woke with no recollection at all of having gone to the Altschuls’ apartment, or of what had happened inside.
Now, Rabbi Altschul and Kreindel could devote themselves entirely to their task. Kreindel, it seemed, had a gift for artistry, and had taken it upon herself to resculpt the golem’s crude features and rag-doll limbs, giving them a more lifelike appearance. Her father recalled that Malke, too, had shown some talent for art, and had liked to sketch the view from their window, or a bowl of winter oranges. He’d often scolded his wife for wasting time in this manner, but now he silently thanked her for the gift she’d passed to their daughter.
There were limits, though, to Kreindel’s abilities. The ears she’d made for their golem were slightly mismatched, and his hair was sculpted all of one piece, like a cap atop his head. His eyes, too, gave them some trouble, until Kreindel went up to the roof and came back with two abandoned marbles, one a deep indigo, the other a softer blue with swirls of white. Rabbi Altschul installed them in the empty eye-sockets, where they fit as though made for the purpose.
It was a good deal of effort for what was only meant to be a trial, their first attempt at bringing a golem to life. Still, Rabbi Altschul wanted to make it as safe and thorough as possible. He had no wish to subject their neighbors to the same fate as their medieval forebears in Prague, whose golem had turned upon the very population it was meant to protect. He would bring their creation to life, test its abilities, and watch it carefully for any violent tendencies. Once he was satisfied of their success, he would destroy the golem and take the books across the Atlantic to Lithuania, so that he might deliver his formula to the Vilna Rav himself.
“And I will come with you,” Kreindel told him.
He tried to protest, saying that the voyage would be long and difficult. “I’m not afraid,” she told him. “The Almighty has chosen you for this path, and placed me at your side. I will be your support, as Miriam was for Moses.”
At last her father agreed. Neither of them wished to say the obvious: that Lev had grown so weak it was doubtful he could make the journey alone. The smallest exertions tired him; he could barely stomach any food at all, and slept only fitfully, consumed by dreams. His eyesight, too, had deteriorated so that he saw everything through a curtain of golden sparks. He’d forbidden Kreindel from reading the books, or even touching them—but now he copied out the command to bring the golem to life, and told her to memorize it, in case his eyesight should fail him completely. She did so, then burned the paper in the grate, and went to sit at the golem’s bedside, next to her father.
“What shall we name him?” she asked.
Her father smiled. “You never met your grandfather Yossele, of blessed memory,” he said. “He was a large man, like this one—but gentle, not brutish. Let us name him Yossele, and hope that he adopts my father’s better qualities as well.”