June 7, 1908
Star of America
AMHERST BUILDING CHANGES HANDS TO SYRIAN BUSINESSMEN.
Ironworks Opens on Ground Floor.
For evidence that the tradesmen of Little Syria are at last gaining a well-deserved foothold in this city, one may point to the “Grand Reopening” of Arbeely & Ahmad, All Metals, at its new home in the Amherst Building on Washington Street. The partners Boutros Arbeely and Ahmad al-Hadid are now the building’s joint owners, as well as the occupants of its first floor. Despite this increase in the shop’s size, the two remain its sole employees, and will continue to produce their goods through the work of their own hands.
Much of the neighborhood came out yesterday for the celebration. Visitors were invited inside the shop to view a selection of the duo’s creations, as well as the instruments of the trade. After a brief speech by Mr. Arbeely, in which he thanked his neighbors for their support, the shop’s new forge was lit by Mr. al-Hadid at noon precisely.
The Amherst sat upon the southwest corner of Washington and Carlisle, the lone loft building on a long, thin block of tenements. Five stories tall, it stood above its neighbors, square and stolid, built for utility rather than elegance. Its front door faced Washington Street between banks of plate-glass windows, the lone word AMHERST carved into the lintel.
Inside, a plaster-and-lathe partition split the ground floor roughly into halves. To the north was the showroom, where prospective clients might examine the wares and make their selection. And to the south, opposite the showroom, was the workshop: a vast, cavernous space of heat and shadows, the new forge glowing dimly at its end.
The forge was the Jinni’s pride and joy. It was roughly the size of a dinner-table, and sat snugly in a bed of asbestos-lined concrete, made to measure. In place of the cumbersome old bellows was an electric fan capable of the finest gradations of air-flow. The chimney-hood was stainless steel, and polished to a blinding sheen. When burning at full capacity, the forge made a luxuriant rumbling like distant thunder, a noise that was felt as much as heard.
Buying the Amherst had changed everything. At last, the Jinni had the space and the solitude to immerse himself properly in his work. No more misplaced tools; no Arbeely constantly griping at his elbow. Now the man sat beside the showroom entrance, half a floor’s length away, utterly absorbed in managing the business and the Amherst both. He’d even gotten over his hatred of the ’phone, and spent hours at a time shouting down the line to plumbers and glaziers and suppliers. In fact, there were days when the partners were kept so busy in their separate tasks that they barely exchanged words at all.
But on this warm August morning, Arbeely seemed encumbered only by a sheet of stationery that he sat frowning at, pen in hand. By the Jinni’s count, this was the man’s third attempt at writing the letter, the first two having been tossed in the wastebasket. As the Jinni approached Arbeely’s desk, the man crossed out a line, then put down the pen with a frustrated sigh, crumpled the paper into a ball, and sent it to join its brethren.
“What’s that you’re writing?” the Jinni asked.
“Nothing,” Arbeely said, too quickly. He ran his hand over the desk blotter, as though sweeping away the remnants of his thoughts. “Just a letter home.”
The Jinni eyed his partner. Arbeely had gone home to Zahleh after the purchase of the Amherst, to see to his mother’s health and his family’s property. He’d returned in oddly changeable spirits, ebullient one moment and downcast the next—but had said little of the trip itself, only that his mother and aunts had fed him fit to bursting. At the time the Jinni had attributed his strange moods to the Amherst’s purchase, and the general upheaval that had gone along with it. Now, though, he wondered.
I’m obligated to ask what the matter is, he heard the Golem say. Otherwise I’m arrogant and uncaring.
“I’m going up to the roof,” he said. “Care to join me?”
The man sighed, clearly daunted at the thought of the climb in the August heat, but then nodded. He opened a biscuit tin upon his desk, and pocketed a large handful of its contents. “Can’t disappoint the children,” he said, and gestured to the showroom door. “After you.”
They passed through the simple framed doorway, and into an iron fairyland. For weeks Arbeely had painstakingly organized the showroom into individual sections, grouping like with like: gates and folding screens, bed-frames and dressing mirrors, lamps and candelabra—only to come in the morning of the reopening and find that the Jinni had rearranged it all in the night. Now, the men walked a foot-path bordered by knee-high fleur-de-lys fencing that wound past cushioned chaises longues backed by pierced screens, all lit from above by elaborate strings of lights. An ornamented gate opened to a dining table laid with wrought cutlery; a curving bench encircled the trunk of an iron oak, its knotted branches hung with lanterns and wind-chimes. A bed-frame even sheltered beneath the oak’s branches, complete with sheets and pillows and a counterpane strewn with tin-plate leaves. This last was immodest enough that Arbeely had sputtered and gone red to the ears—yet even he had to admit that, its hints of hedonism aside, the Jinni’s arrangement was far more appealing than his own.
At the end of the showroom was the heavy door to the stairwell. They opened it and began their climb, passing each of their tenants in turn. The lace factory took up both the second and third floors; beyond the open doors were dozens of girls all bent over the clattering looms, their hands moving swiftly back and forth. On the fourth floor was the biscuit factory, smelling as always of sugar and vanilla. Here, white-aproned workers gathered on the landing to smoke cigarettes and fan themselves, their faces red with heat. Their foreman was among them, and he greeted Arbeely with enthusiasm. Arbeely had endeared himself to the man by personally rerouting a tricky gas line, and in his gratitude the foreman seemed determined to keep his landlords stocked with a lifetime’s worth of biscuits. They reassured the foreman that they had plenty, then bade him a good day and passed the fifth and final floor, a cigar factory that added the spiced tang of tobacco to the already warm and heavy air. Unlike the bakers, though, the cigar-men were a laconic lot, and only nodded as the pair went by.
At last the door at the top opened into the sunshine—and now the children who’d been playing marbles and jacks on the Amherst roof sprang up and converged upon Arbeely. The man grinned, his poor spirits forgotten, and began to pull biscuits from his pockets like a conjurer.
The Jinni took up his usual station by the rooftop’s edge, well out of the way, and rolled a cigarette. He liked to watch Arbeely in these moments. Odd moods aside, the man seemed more purposeful these days, more certain of himself. When Sam Hosseini or Thomas Maloof stopped in for a chat, there was a new measure of respect for him in their eyes. Maryam, too, had watched Arbeely with pride at the Grand Reopening; but when she’d looked to the Jinni, her smile had cooled, as always. At times he wondered what selfless deed or sacrifice it would take to earn Maryam’s regard. He suspected that whatever it was, it would be beyond him.
Soon the children returned to their games, the biscuits exhausted. Arbeely brushed the crumbs from his hands and came to stand beside the Jinni, looking out over the thin row of rooftops to the docklands beyond. Neither spoke for long minutes. The dark and faraway look had returned to Arbeely’s eyes. What was bothering the man? The Jinni stubbed out his cigarette, gathered his resolve—
“How are those finials coming?” Arbeely asked suddenly.
His resolve fled like a startled animal. “Halfway done,” he said. “The last few were too brittle—the mix was wrong, I think.”
The man nodded. “We’d better get to it, then.” And back down the stairwell they went, to find a well-dressed husband and wife standing nervously at Arbeely’s desk, as though afraid the denizens of Little Syria might eat them while they waited. Quickly Arbeely ushered them into the showroom, and the Jinni was left alone.
It was well enough, he decided. As the man had said, there was work to do. He turned from Arbeely’s desk, and went into the storeroom.
The storeroom ran the length of the workshop. It was perhaps twenty feet wide, though the high ceiling made it seem much narrower, a windowed canyon. He passed racks of graded iron bars, tubs of powders, half-finished commissions, the dumbwaiter that brought up coal from the cellar below. At the end of the storeroom, a thick black curtain hung behind the shelves of supplies. If one didn’t know it was there, it would be easy to mistake for the wall itself.
He slipped between the shelves, ducked behind the curtain, and entered his private dominion.
It was a small, square room set into the building’s corner, its windows blackened over to keep the children in the tenement yard from peering in. Already the black paint had flaked here and there, admitting crumbs of sunlight. The forge lay on the other side of the wall, only a few feet away, sending its heat through the plaster. The Jinni had brought over a number of rugs and cushions from his apartment, along with a few old pierced lanterns, more for decoration than to see by. A stack of wrought iron bars sat nearby, along with a tub of water to douse his creations and a net to fish them out again. Arbeely had taken to calling the space your treasure-cave; there’d been a joke involving the word sesame, but the Jinni had decided not to ask. The noise of the tenement yard intruded at times, especially on Mondays, when the women queued at the pump for wash-water—but in all it was as comfortable a space as he could wish.
He sat on a cushion, drew a bar of iron from the pile, and set to work.
At Radzin’s Bakery, the day was coming to a close. Moe Radzin raked the ashes in the ovens while Thea assured the line of customers that of course there were enough challahs left; her girls always made plenty for everybody. The Golem was wiping down a worktable when there came a knock at the locked front door. A young woman stood there, waving through the glass.
“Selma!” Thea cried, and rushed to unlatch the door.
The Golem smiled. She, too, was glad to see Selma Radzin; the girl’s presence relieved the anxiety that had become Thea’s constant companion ever since Selma’s contentious move to Astoria. She can’t stay at home, like other girls? Thea had wailed—knowing, if only dimly, that it was her own overbearing habits that had set the girl on her path. In the end, Selma had won the battle, but she still returned home for Sabbath supper every week, at her mother’s demand.
The girl took off her hat, and suffered Thea’s usual rain of kisses, Moe’s gruff peck on her cheek. She turned to greet the Golem—and paused, a puzzled line upon her forehead. Why, the girl thought, does Chava never seem to age?
A moment later, Selma had pushed the thought away and was telling her parents the news of the week, the doings of her friends and room-mates. But her brief and startled thought still echoed in the Golem’s mind, the tolling of a bell that signaled disaster.
She didn’t linger over good-byes, but hurried to her boardinghouse, where she fetched her small hand mirror, sat on the bed, and gazed for a long while at herself. The wide-set eyes, the nose that curved under at the tip. The waved hair, cut to brush her shoulders. All of it exactly the same as the day she was made. And now someone had glimpsed the truth, if only the barest corner of it.
At once she wondered how she could’ve been so foolish. Why hadn’t she planned for this? Had she expected to stay at the bakery forever, without anyone noticing? Perhaps she could use cosmetics to imitate wrinkles and gray hair, as actors did for the stage—but no, that would never pass scrutiny. And now others besides Selma would notice, they were bound to. A customer might remark to a friend, You know, that Chava never seems to get older; and their friend would reply, I was just thinking that myself. Curiosity would turn into suspicion—and the longer she stayed, the worse it would grow. Would she have to leave Radzin’s? But where else could she possibly go? The bakery and its rhythms were the underpinnings of her life; she’d have to uproot herself and begin again from nothing—
There was a crunch as the mirror’s wooden handle splintered in her grip.
Quickly she set the mirror down. She couldn’t stay in her tiny room a moment longer, she needed to be out and walking—but the Jinni wouldn’t come until midnight at the earliest. Outside, the evening light slanted across the rooftops. These were the last acceptable minutes for a woman to be out alone. If she was going to leave, it must be now.
She fastened her cloak around her shoulders and walked to Little Syria, trying to hurry as inconspicuously as possible. Even so, a few of his neighbors glanced at her curiously as she entered his building—That’s the Bedouin’s lady, isn’t it? Adding to her dismay, there was no reply to her knock, no light beneath his door. Most likely he was at the shop; he and Arbeely had spent the months since the Amherst’s purchase drowning in new work. But if she marched down the street to the Amherst she’d only draw more attention to herself. She’d simply have to wait.
She let herself in with her spare key, took off her cloak, and frowned. As usual, he’d left his apartment in a shambles. His wardrobe stood open, a pair of trousers dangling from the hamper inside. Unpaired cuff-links lay scattered across a small dresser; on the bed, the pillows were heaped together, the bedclothes mussed. Sometimes she thought he did it deliberately, to set himself against her own exactitude. She would not tidy up, she told herself; it was his apartment, and his mess. But the disorder grated at her agitated mind, and soon enough she was pairing the cuff-links and hanging away the trousers, lifting the heavy mattress one-handed to fold the sheets tightly around the corners. He’d be angry with her, but for now that seemed the lesser of two evils, if it allowed her to keep calm. Besides, what else was she to do with herself while she waited?
“Staying late tonight?”
The Jinni looked up from his work. Arbeely had stuck his head around the curtain, and now stood squinting into the darkness.
“I think I must,” the Jinni said. “But I’ve made good progress. I’ll have the rest by tomorrow.” He handed one of the finials to Arbeely: an elongated twist of filaments that rose to a single thin point, a stylized flame rendered in iron.
Arbeely admired it, nodding, but his thoughts clearly were elsewhere. Watching him in the glow of the lamps, the Jinni couldn’t help noticing the silver that had begun to pepper the man’s backswept hair, the fine new lines that had appeared on his face. It was disconcerting to watch humans age.
“This is excellent,” the man said, and handed back the finial. “Well, good night.”
“Good night.” And then, on impulse, “Arbeely . . .” But he’d waited too long, and the man was gone, the curtain rippling behind him. The Jinni sighed to himself, and went back to work.
It was perhaps ten o’clock when he finished the last finial. The building was silent, the street less so: it was a warm night, and the tenement yard was still half full of families, the women chatting and scolding their children while the men played backgammon by lantern-light, all waiting for their rooms to cool so they might sleep. He banked the forge and hung away his apron, then paused by the door. Arbeely’s desk was bathed in streetlight; the wastebasket sat beside it, unemptied. He regarded it for a moment, then withdrew the ball of crumpled paper nearest the top, smoothed it out, and read:
Rafkah,
I must apologize. I ought not to have raised both our hopes. Please believe me when I say that the failing is entirely mine. I must be honest with you now, as I was not in Zahleh, and tell you that I have decided I will never marry. There is a secret that I cannot divulge, not even to you, for it concerns another man’s life and I haven’t the right to tell it. You might insist that you would enter into this confidence as well, for the sake of a marriage—but it has been a difficult burden at times, one I hesitate to share with someone I
Here the sentence, and the letter, had been abandoned.
The Jinni crumpled the paper again and replaced it in the wastebasket, wishing fervently that his curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of him. What was he supposed to do with the knowledge that he’d spoiled Arbeely’s chances at love? No, he hadn’t failed to notice the man’s perpetual bachelorhood, or the way that he seemed to pile work upon himself, leaving room for little else. He’d merely decided that it was Arbeely’s life to live, and left it at that. Now he wanted to shout at the man: I didn’t ask you to free me from the flask! Tell the world if you like! Unfair, he knew, and uncharitable. He’d stop at his apartment, he decided, and change into a fresh shirt, and go for a long and solitary walk before he reached the Golem’s boardinghouse. It would give him time to calm himself, and consider what he might say to the man in the morning.
He reached his building, and was nearly at his door when he heard a flutter of eager footsteps from the apartment opposite. He cringed as the door opened—and yes, there was his neighbor Alma Hazboun, wearing a satin dressing-gown and what looked to be little else beneath it. Her hair was loose and mussed, her pupils enormous in the dim light.
“Oh,” she said, making a poor show of surprise. “It’s you.”
“Good evening, Mrs. Hazboun,” he replied warily. He’d complained about Alma to Arbeely, and learned that she was notorious in the neighborhood. Your bad luck to live across the hall from her, the man had said.
She stepped into the hall, blocking his path. “I’ve told you, call me Alma.” Her words were slurred. “Won’t you come in?”
“No, thank you.”
“My husband is away.” Her mouth curled into a smile. “I’ll cook you a hot meal.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“You always say no.” She attempted a coy pout. “But you like that other girl well enough, the one in your apartment.”
The Jinni frowned. “Beg pardon?”
“She’s in your apartment,” Alma said, more loudly. “Your Jewess, the tall girl who dresses like a schoolteacher. I saw her go by earlier.”
She’d come alone, at night? What crisis had driven her to such lengths? He shouldered past Alma—she made a noise of protest—and put a hand on his doorknob. It was unlocked. The Golem was mere feet away. She had, of course, heard everything.
He braced himself and opened the door.
She was at the far window, staring down into the street as though she’d been standing there for hours. It was her skirts that betrayed her: they still swayed at her ankles, as though she’d rushed to the spot only a moment before.
He closed the door, took a few careful steps toward her. “Chava?”
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “Something happened at the bakery, and I wanted to see you. I didn’t mean to . . . I oughtn’t have come.” She still hadn’t turned around.
“She’s an opium fiend, Chava,” he said. “And she has a considerable reputation.”
“I know.” There was a touch of impatience in her voice. Of course she’d sensed the opium, along with the woman’s lust. Likely she’d also realized that this was only the latest installment in their frequent encounters. He stood braced for accusations.
She turned at last to face him. “Do you also know that her husband refuses to divorce her?”
He blinked, confused.
“She’s desperate to get away from him. She hopes that if she can lower herself enough, he won’t want anything to do with her. And you’re an unmarried man, without a family to tear apart.”
He recalled, now, the hints of old bruises he’d seen on Alma’s arms. He’d assumed it had to do with her habit. Puzzled, he said, “Are you defending the woman who just tried to bed me?”
“Of course not, she shouldn’t have done that. But she’s trapped, and she’s in pain.”
He felt blindsided, off balance. “Then what exactly are you accusing me of?”
“You refuse to see the people around you,” she said, anger in her eyes. “This woman is your neighbor, yet you consider her nothing but a nuisance with a reputation. You, who don’t even believe in monogamy!”
Now he, too, was growing angry. “And what would you have me do, Chava? I’m supposed to be a member of this society, am I not? Everyone else considers her a nuisance, and therefore so do I!”
She folded her arms. “Who lives on this floor, other than the Hazbouns?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your other neighbors, this ‘everyone else’ who sets the example for you. Name five of them, please. No, three.”
This was growing ludicrous. “Elias Shama, next door,” he said. “Marcus—” No, he realized, Marcus Mina had been the prior tenant. The young man who lived there now was . . . who? The Jinni could picture him, but had never learned his name. He thought harder. The man next to the Hazbouns had married and moved to Brooklyn and been replaced by an elderly couple who only called each other habibi and habibti in his hearing. The family two doors down was the Naders, but they must’ve left; he hadn’t heard their piano in quite some time. Finally he remembered the boy at the end of the hall whose mother was constantly yelling, Rami, come back this instant! “Rami,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Rami?”
Exasperated, he said, “I am barely ever here! And can I help it if they move so often? I learn a name, and they vanish!” It was the truth, he realized: at some point he’d grown inured to the ever-changing faces, and had simply stopped asking. And yet they all seemed to know who he was. The Bedouin. Arbeely’s strange partner. The one who walks the rooftops, with his lady-friend. “You wish impossible things of me, Chava,” he told her. “I don’t have your talents. I have no doubt that Alma leads a troubled life, but when she offers herself to me in a hallway, all I see is a woman who wants something I’m not allowed to give her.”
The Golem’s eyes widened. “‘Not allowed’?”
He closed his eyes, fighting back a curse. He knew he ought to reverse track, to correct his poor choice of words—and yet he couldn’t. He’d had enough of being shamed for one night. “Is that not so?” he said. “If I’ve mistaken our promise, please tell me, and I’ll seduce every woman on this street.”
“That’s not amusing, Ahmad.”
“When I came in,” he said, “I had the distinct impression that you’d been standing at the door, listening.”
Her chin lifted. “I came to the door because I’d heard your voice in the hallway.”
“So you were coming to greet me? Unaccompanied, in my apartment, in full view of a neighbor who stood only feet away?”
“Of course not. I only wanted to confirm that it was you.”
He smirked. “These are thin walls, and you have exceptional hearing. There isn’t a spot in this room where you couldn’t recognize my voice. But what you could not do at a distance was look into Alma Hazboun’s mind, deeply enough to be certain I’d never accepted her advances. For that, you’d need to get as close as possible.”
Guilt and defiance warred on her face. “Can you blame me? Her thoughts were rather explicit. I couldn’t tell if they were fantasies or memories, because of the opium.”
“And if instead you’d merely waited and asked me for the truth—would you have believed my answer? Believed it absolutely, without her thoughts to confirm it?”
She started to speak, hesitated for only a moment—but it was enough.
He made a harsh noise and turned away from her. “I’ll never prove myself to you. You’d pry my mind open like an oyster if you could. You are responsible for your fears and your distrust, Chava, not I. If you were a jinniyeh—” He caught himself, stopped.
Her eyes had gone wide. “Ahmad, what? If I were a jinniyeh, what?”
But he only stood there, radiating frustration.
She gave an angry laugh. “There, you see? You insist that I trust you, and then you refuse to speak! You dangle riddles for me to lunge at, but you tell me nothing!” And she strode past him and into the hall, slamming the door behind her.
This is not my fault, he thought. I’ve done everything she’s asked of me, but still she insists on doubting, when I am blameless!
He looked around at the empty apartment, which now chided him with its neatness. She hadn’t even told him what had brought her to Little Syria. His gaze fell on the precisely made bed—and her cloak, lying on top of the coverlet. Left behind, in her urge to get away.
Cursing, he grabbed it and went after her.
* * *
At last the Altschuls’ golem was complete.
Father and daughter made their final preparations in an air of tense excitement. Kreindel packed a small carpet-bag, light enough for her to carry. The precious books sat ready in their suitcase. There was a steamship leaving for Hamburg the next afternoon, and enough money put aside for a pair of third-class tickets. They’d wait until the tenement was asleep—and then they would test their creation.
Yet there were still contingencies to consider. The golem might not come to life on the first attempt; the synagogue elders might choose the wrong moment to visit their convalescing rabbi. And so, in his caution, Rabbi Altschul wrote a brief message to the synagogue president, requesting another week of seclusion and recovery. He couldn’t risk delivering it himself, and so he gave it to Kreindel. “Return quickly,” he told her. “There’s still much to do.”
The tenement hallway smelled of wood-smoke, and Kreindel wondered if autumn had arrived. But outside it was a summer night, warm and quiet. She scurried across the empty street and unlocked the synagogue door, then walked through the echoing sanctuary to the president’s office, and placed the note upon his desk.
And then she hesitated. Here in the darkened synagogue, she felt suddenly alone and frightened. Her father was deathly ill, and she was eleven years old. How could she possibly guide him to the Vilna Rav when she’d never once left the Lower East Side? Would he even survive the trip? What would she do if he didn’t?
Tears filled her eyes—but she wiped them away. Her father was a holy man, and the Almighty had set him on this course. She would not be so faithless as to doubt their purpose.
Leaving the note where it was, Kreindel crept back through the synagogue and opened the door—and only then did she see the rising smoke, and hear the cries of the gathering crowd.
* * *
The Golem was halfway home when she realized she’d forgotten her cloak.
At first she considered turning around. To be out alone this late, in only her shirtwaist and skirt, was tantamount to solicitation. But she couldn’t bear the thought of going back and knocking shamefacedly on his door; and so she kept on, hurrying north on Broadway, past shuttered shops that glowed beneath the streetlights.
This is not my fault, she thought angrily. But how could she explain to him what she’d felt from Mrs. Hazboun? The swell of excitement, hope, and lust; the image of him naked in her bed; the dark despair that lay beneath it, the fear of her husband’s fists—all of it colored by the opium that made her thoughts move like batter poured from a bowl. And then—
Your Jewess, the tall girl who dresses like a schoolteacher—
—she’d seen herself: a spindly, unattractive woman in buttoned boots and a dowdy cloak, her pale face pinched and querulous. A caricature, and a deeply uncharitable one—but on the heels of the woman’s fantasies, it had seemed a confirmation of all her self-doubts. He’ll tire of you, and break his promise, the image seemed to say. It’s only a matter of time. It had wounded her; and since she couldn’t lash out at Alma Hazboun, she’d lashed out at the Jinni instead.
If you were a jinniyeh. Had he ever so much as said the word before?
She turned east onto Grand, wincing as a driver whistled at her from a passing wagon. She doubted anyone would honestly mistake her for a prostitute, but the policemen must make their quotas. She imagined spending the night in a cell, and explaining her tardiness to the Radzins in the morning.
At Lafayette she heard footsteps from the south: quick and determined, timed to intersect with hers. Afraid, she reached out, but felt nothing—and thus knew exactly who it was, even before she turned and saw him there, holding her cloak.
Her first reaction was stark relief, but this only angered her further. She kept on, increasing her already considerable pace.
“Chava,” he said, hurrying to catch up to her. “Wait.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
A look of genuine hurt flashed across his face. It tugged at her conscience, and she might’ve relented—except that now a strange fear crept into her mind. She needed to get out, to wake the children and the neighbors; to grab her wedding photograph from the wall and the silver-plated candlesticks, and hurry down the stairwell—
Confused, she looked up—and saw the smoke, the glow in the sky.
“Chava?” But then he, too, came alert.
Something on Forsyth Street was burning.
The fire had begun on the second floor with a smoldering cigarette, its owner waking to find his bedroom in flames. An open window then beckoned the fire into an air-shaft, which drew it upward, toward the roof. The building was an “Old Law” tenement, built before the reforms, and so there were no iron staircases or brick partitions to slow the fire’s progress—only old, dry wood from one end of the building to the other.
The Golem rounded the corner onto Forsyth, the Jinni close behind. They saw it all at once: the growing crowd, the billowing darkness, the flickers of orange and red. Residents were pouring onto the street in their night-clothes, coughing and crying, carrying children, feather-beds, dining-chairs. Their terror pulled at the Golem, straining what was left of her composure. She needed to help, but how—
“Father!”
The cry came from a small, thin girl who stood nearby in a synagogue doorway. Her fear ripped through the Golem’s mind, and in its wake was an image: a bearded, emaciated man huddled in a parlor corner, surrounded by flames. He was ill, and helpless; and she had to save him.
The girl dashed across the street, slipped through the crowd, and ran into the burning building. And in the next moment, unable to stop herself, the Golem was running after her.