The headmistress of the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews frowned at the typed report before her.
Kreindel Altschul, eight years old, four feet two inches, 52 pounds. Mother, Malke, died of fever after childbirth. Father, Lev, a rabbi, died in tenement fire. No siblings or other relations. Child describes an isolated and neglectful upbringing. She has received no public education and speaks little to no English, but demonstrates intelligence. Plainly undernourished but otherwise no visible deficiencies.
“She’s too old,” the headmistress said at once. “You know that we draw the line at five.”
The man who sat across from her smiled thinly. “And you know that you may draw that line when a child is surrendered by its parent. But Miss Altschul is now a ward of New York State, and in this instance the state requires that an exception be made. I understand,” he went on as the headmistress drew breath to argue, “that it will take longer for her to adjust. But she has no relatives to foster her, and all the smaller Hebrew institutions are at their limit.”
“We, too, are at our limit,” said the headmistress, frost in her voice. “We’ve long since surpassed it, in fact. And we’ll be of little help to anyone if the state insists on treating us like a warehouse for difficult cases.”
“Why do you assume she’ll be a difficult case? Aside from her age, she seems exactly the sort of child your Asylum was intended to help.”
You know as well as I do what a girl like this would face here, the headmistress wanted to say. But that would be impolitic, a show of weakness, and she stayed silent.
“I’d hoped,” the man went on, “that we might manage this between ourselves. But if you think I ought to invite Dr. Wald to deliver a verdict . . .”
Her eyes narrowed. Dr. Wald was the Asylum’s superintendent, tasked with the oversight of the Asylum’s thousand-plus residents. The children knew him mainly as the man who appeared in the dining hall once a week or so, for impromptu uniform inspections. The rest of his time was spent glad-handing city officials, attending prestigious conferences, and making hopeful forays among New York’s German-Jewish beau monde. Interruptions to his schedule were rarely tolerated.
“I believe we needn’t burden him,” she said, defeat sour in her mouth.
The necessary arrangements were made, and the man took his leave without refreshment, citing the train schedule. The headmistress summoned her secretary. “Make a new file,” she said, “and tell Matron to expect a new resident for quarantine. Kreindel Altschul, eight years old.” She held out the report.
The secretary’s eyes widened. “Eight?” And then, perusing the report: “Oh, dear. A true orphan.”
“Indeed.”
“What name should I put on the file, do you think?”
The headmistress sighed. “Let’s try for Claire. I expect it’ll be a struggle—but hope springs eternal.”
* * *
The Jinni stood on the Amherst roof, rolling a cigarette.
It was the fifth morning since the fire, and still he hadn’t gone to the Golem’s boardinghouse. Let her wonder if she’ll see me tonight, he’d told himself that first night, just as I wondered if I’d ever see her again. But with each passing night the thought had lost more of its conviction. Now, he merely felt like a sulking child.
Footsteps, in the stairwell—and Arbeely emerged, puffing and smiling, already pulling biscuits from his pockets as the children gathered around him like famished seagulls. Watching, the Jinni realized for the first time that his partner had forgone not only a wife but a family. Guilt panged him anew. He turned away and watched the ships in the river instead.
Soon the biscuits had disappeared, and Arbeely came to where his partner stood. After a moment the man said, “You’ve been scowling more than usual lately. Ought we to talk about it?”
The Jinni raised an eyebrow. “I might say the same of you. Would you like to go first?”
A surprised pause—and then Arbeely chuckled ruefully. “Well. Perhaps it would do both of us good to simply enjoy the sunshine.”
“Perhaps,” the Jinni agreed.
They stood together, gazing out over the bay. Then Arbeely clapped the Jinni on the arm—the Jinni wondered if the man had decided to forgive him—and turned back toward the stairwell. “Coming?”
“In a moment.”
The man descended back to the shop. Alone, the Jinni finished his cigarette, and made his decision.
“Is everything all right, Mrs. Levy?”
The Golem glanced up from her work to find one of her hires watching her in confusion. “Yes, of course,” she lied quickly. “Why?”
“It’s just that you’re making the morning bialys, and it’s nearly closing time.”
She looked down, chagrined. Sure enough, there were the bialys, two whole trays of them, each flattened middle awaiting its helping of chopped onion. How could she have made such a mistake?
It’s Ahmad’s fault, she thought spitefully. She’d spent the last four nights trapped in her room, unable to walk away her distractions. He hadn’t even sent a message to ask how she was faring! “I’m just tired, I suppose,” she said, and scraped each of the trays into the trash-bin, wincing at the waste.
This has gone far enough, she thought as she walked home that night, dodging children and pushcarts without seeing them. She’d go to Little Syria before sunset, and demand that he speak with her. She’d even pound on the Amherst door if she had to, neighbors or no—
“Chava,” her landlady called to her on the staircase. “I was about to leave this in your room—it just arrived.” She handed the Golem a small, paper-wrapped parcel, addressed in familiar handwriting.
She took it to her room and tore the paper away to find a hinged box covered in dark pebbled leather, the sort a jeweler might use. Inside it was an oblong locket that hung upon a silver chain. The locket appeared to be made of steel, not brass—but otherwise he’d reproduced it exactly.
She hesitated, then pressed her thumb against the latch. The locket popped open, revealing a square of tightly folded paper.
Quickly she closed it again. Then she put the chain around her neck, tucked the locket inside her shirtwaist, and walked in the evening light to Little Syria.
His door opened before she could knock. She stepped inside; he closed it behind her. She watched his eyes travel over her, taking in her restored appearance. What would he say? You’re looking well, perhaps.
Instead he said quietly, “You have every right to be angry with me.”
Her eyebrows went up in surprise.
“It was wrong of me to stay away,” he said. “But I knew that I would give in, that you would convince me. And I had to convince myself first. I had to change my own mind, or else resent you for changing it. Does that make sense?”
She was still wary, but she nodded. This, she understood.
“So I decided,” he said, “to bow to your authority on the subject. If you must have that thing to feel in control of your life, then by withholding it, I am caging you, as certainly as this”—he held up his wrist—“cages me.” He sighed. “Now, if you still want to shout at me, I promise I’ll stand still for it.”
Do you wish I were a jinniyeh? The question faltered on her lips. He was offering her a way forward, and to ask would only set off an argument that neither of them could win. For once, she would leave it alone.
He was watching her warily, as though she were a stick of dynamite that might explode at any moment. She stepped closer, brought her face to his, and kissed him. For a moment he only stood there, unresponding—she quailed, regretting the impulse—but then his arms came around her, and he was kissing her back, his lips searing hers.
“Did you open it?” he asked, later.
The lamps were turned low; she lay with her head cradled on his shoulder. “I did,” she said. “But only the locket. Not the paper.”
She fell silent, and he knew what she was thinking. She wanted some confirmation, some promise, that he had in fact written what she’d asked—that she wouldn’t unfold the paper someday, in a desperate moment, to find only an apology, or nothing at all. He could feel her struggle not to ask, to show her trust through silence. It wasn’t a struggle she often won.
But the silence stretched, and gradually became a more ordinary moment of quiet between them. Surprised, he let go of the tension he’d been holding. One hand brushed along her hip; his fingers found a small divot where the metal spar had pierced her. He winced, and moved his hand away. “Does that hurt?”
“No, it’s only a little numb. Like there’s a piece missing.”
“You’re well, then? Nothing . . . permanent?” Certainly she seemed her usual self. He supposed that if he wanted to, he could pretend that nothing had happened at all.
“Fully healed,” she said. “And no one at Radzin’s noticed anything.”
“That’s good. I’m glad.”
“But—oh, I never told you.” And she related her tale of Selma Radzin, and the young woman’s startling moment of insight. “I’ll have to leave the bakery soon,” she said. “Or else they’ll all start to notice, not just Selma.”
“You can’t be sure of that.” Was she inventing this crisis, letting her fright run away with her?
“I can, though. It’s like when a woman hides a pregnancy. First one person knows, and the next day a dozen, though no one’s said a word. I don’t know how they do it, but they do.” She sighed. “I can’t work at another bakery, everyone knows me from Radzin’s. But to learn another trade all over again . . .”
He held her hand, lightly. “Well, what else do you like to do, besides baking?”
“I have no idea.” She said it with defensive embarrassment. “I suppose I could be a seamstress, if I had to. But I already spend half my nights sewing.”
“What about nursing?”
She thought. “Perhaps. But all those people in pain, all that need . . . I think I’d have a hard time not giving myself away. Especially in winter.”
“It’s a pity,” he said, “that women can’t be smiths, or I’d hire you as an apprentice.”
He felt her smile. “You would not.”
“Of course I would. Then you could tell me what Arbeely thinks about all day long.”
She chuckled. “Oh, I see.”
He remembered Arbeely’s letter then, and his own accidental culpability in the man’s failed love-affair. He knew he ought to tell her—but he felt himself shy away from the topic. Likely she’d insist that he raise the subject with Arbeely; she might even tell him that he, too, must find employment elsewhere, so the man might have his marriage. Already he could feel himself growing angry at the thought. “What about teaching?” he said, reaching blindly for a suggestion.
He’d expected her to dismiss it as she had the others. Instead she flinched in his arms.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just—my hip, where you’re touching it.”
“Oh.” He moved his hand to a safer spot.
After a moment she said, “Do you think that I look like a schoolteacher?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.” Something pricked the back of his memory—a conversation about schoolteachers? But he felt disinclined to search it out.
The silence went on. Then she said, “I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I’m already a teacher of sorts, if you count the new hires at Radzin’s.”
“That’s true. Did you enjoy teaching them?”
“I did, actually. And they learned more quickly than any of Thea’s trainees ever did.” Then, doubt creeping into her voice: “But wouldn’t I have to earn a degree first? I’ve never been to school a day in my life, how would I—”
“Chava, don’t worry about that yet. You’ll talk yourself out of an idea before you’ve considered it properly.”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s a good idea. It’s only daunting to think about.”
“I know.” He pulled her closer and kissed her, his hand avoiding her hip.
* * *
There’s a new girl in quarantine. Older, not a baby.
I heard she’s a true orphan.
Like most institutions of its kind, the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews wasn’t an orphanage in the strictest sense of the word. The vast majority of its residents could name at least one living parent, a mother or father who’d made the terrible trip uptown and left a wailing child behind them. But every so often a true orphan passed through the Asylum gates—and with this distinction came a fearsome prestige. Rooms went quiet when a true orphan entered. They were chosen first for every team, and given the pick of the dining hall. To steal from a true orphan, or bully or wallop them, was unthinkable.
This hushed deference had its advantages—but it also placed them outside the Asylum’s natural order. To be a true orphan was to endure a subtle yet permanent ostracism. They must put more effort into making friends; they must be cheerful and amusing and kind-hearted, and cast off as much of their status as possible—or else they would spend their Asylum years alone.
Kreindel knew none of this, only that she’d ended up in the very place that her father had feared for her, among people he’d despised.
On the first night of quarantine they stripped her and sat her in a metal bathtub, then filled it with water so hot she nearly screamed. A nurse searched inch by inch through her long, dark hair; a dentist peered into her mouth, extracted two molars, and pronounced the remainder sound. Eight years old, the nurses muttered, looking over Kreindel’s chart. A good height for eight, but so thin! We’ll fix that soon enough.
Kreindel, eleven, said nothing. It seemed useful to have a secret in this terrible place, something she might turn to her advantage.
They fed her soft white bread soaked in broth, but her grieving body rebelled, and everything came up again. The nurses held the bowl for her, and patted her back. At night she fell asleep listening to the distant cries of the newly surrendered babies in the nursery—but she herself did not cry, not once. If the nurses were concerned by this, as Kreindel secretly was, they said not a word. They sighed in relief that she could write her Yiddish letters—at least she wasn’t entirely illiterate—and gave her an English primer, decorated with apples, bells, and cows. She leafed through it without interest, then went to the window and gazed out at the immense building across the lawn: two stories of brick and granite, a gabled Gothic fortress topped by a squat, open-sided bell tower. The peal of the bell marked every station of the day, from rising to sleeping and everything in between: when to line up for the synagogue and when to exit the dining hall, when to muster for classes, when to disperse to chore duties, when to gather for inspection or extracurriculars or lectures or field trips. To Kreindel it seemed to ring incessantly. Sometimes she could see an answering commotion in a hallway, or a spilling of children from an open door. At other times, its effect was invisible.
You’ll get used to the bell, the nurses assured her. Soon you won’t even notice it.
Her appetite returned slowly, and before long the broth and bread stayed put. She slept poorly, but seemed to dream the moment her eyes closed: her father, and Yossele, and the tall man on the street, and the woman crying out above the flames. She’d wake, disoriented, and have to remember all over again what had happened, and where she was.
On the Sabbath she asked Matron for a pair of candles, so that she might say the blessing over them; and the nurses gathered in her doorway and wiped away tears as she lit them and prayed. Another woman watched with them, a steel-haired lady in a long, dark dress. This, Kreindel had learned, was the headmistress.
“Matron says you’re a healthy young girl,” the headmistress said briskly, once the others had left. She spoke her Yiddish like a German, just as the settlement ladies had. “We’ll keep you for the full week, to make certain. Then you’ll be ready to live in the dormitory.” She watched Kreindel for a moment, as though gauging her, then said, “Matron also tells me that she explained to you how most children arrive here.”
“She said that a parent brings them,” Kreindel said. “And that I’m much older than usual. Since I’m eight.”
The headmistress nodded. “It may feel overwhelming, at first. So let’s find an extracurricular or an interest group for you, something that you enjoy doing, and that might help you to adjust. If you like to sing, for instance, you could join our Glee Club. Or, let’s see—you could learn a musical instrument, or join the badminton squad, or learn Hebrew—”
“You have Hebrew lessons?” Kreindel said, surprised. “For girls, too? Not just boys?”
“We do indeed,” the headmistress replied, smiling.
For the first time since the night of the fire, Kreindel felt something stir inside her, her soul rousing itself from numbness. “I’d like to take Hebrew lessons, please.”
“Then I’ll tell the beginners’ class to expect a new student. Oh—and one more thing.” The woman smiled again, as though to soften whatever came next. “We encourage our new arrivals to adopt new names, to help them fit in more easily. It might feel strange at first, but I promise you’ll grow used to it. Now, what would you like to be called? Claire, perhaps?”
Kreindel stared at her dumbly. A new name? Claire? It was unthinkable—and yet the unthinkable had already happened. Her father was dead, and she was at the Asylum’s mercy. Would the other children make fun of her, with a name like Kreindel? Yes, of course they would.
The governess was waiting patiently, wearing her down with silence. It would be so easy to say yes, here in this place where she knew no one, an orphan, utterly alone—
No. Wait. She wasn’t alone at all. She would never be alone, for she had Yossele. She’d brought him to life, and now he was out there in the night, listening for her command. Her protector, and a sacred gift from her father and the Almighty both. She would prove herself worthy of him.
Her back stiffened. She glared at the headmistress. “My name,” she said, “is Kreindel Altschul.”
And in the waters of the East River, holding fast to a pier piling, Yossele saw what Kreindel saw, felt what Kreindel felt. Tugboats and rail barges plied endlessly back and forth above him, their shadows darkening the water. Currents and wakes pulled at him; engine oil slicked his glass eyes as he watched his master’s thoughts, waiting for her to call him to her side.
They tried, nevertheless, to call her Claire.
When she corrected them, they’d smile and move on, confident she’d accept the change once she was among girls who couldn’t remember being called Rivke instead of Rebecca, or Dvoire instead of Deborah. But when the quarantine ended at last, and she was taken to her new dormitory and saw the footlocker at the end of her cot with the name Altschul, Claire stenciled in black paint, Kreindel grew furious. Show me where it’s written, she demanded, that I must change my name to live here.
But of course there was no such rule. The “modernization” of the children’s names was meant to proceed naturally from the Asylum’s civic values, not from an order on high. She’d backed them into a corner; the matter was quietly dropped. But already her reputation had been cemented. Prickly, recalcitrant. A difficult child.
She fared little better among her peers. At first, a few of the bolder girls ventured to introduce themselves to her, and invited her into their playground circles, to shoot marbles and skip rope. At eight, Kreindel might’ve been glad for the inclusion; at eleven, she thought the games pointless and childish, and soon the others stopped asking. Were she another girl, they would’ve played the usual pranks: items snatched from her footlocker, her cot short-sheeted, her dinner-tray knocked from her hands. But Kreindel, true orphan, was left alone.
Each morning, at the rising bell, she donned her uniform of white blouse and brown skirt—a baggy, horrible thing, the cotton as stiff as canvas—and marched through the halls to a synagogue that had no partition, only an aisle to divide the girls from the boys. Then, the dining hall, where she murmured the proper prayers over her bread and margarine while the rest of her table stared and giggled. The bell, again—and up the hill they marched to P.S. 186, where she was sequestered with an English tutor. She resented the lessons, but learned quickly regardless, and soon was sent to the regular classes with her peers: Arithmetic and Science, History and Literature. Then back down the hill for a dinner of meat and stewed prunes—universally detested for the way they dodged and squirted when poked with a fork, as well as for what Matron called their “healthful effects”—and then, at last, to the class that the headmistress had promised her.
Hebrew study was the sole balm of Kreindel’s days. She was meant to be a beginner, of course, but it wasn’t long before the instructor realized she had a prodigy on her hands. She made Kreindel her assistant, and allowed her to correct the other girls’ papers, an arrangement that gained Kreindel little in goodwill.
Then to the muddy exercise yard for recess, the younger girls dispersing to their various territories and strongholds: the swing-set, the hopscotch board, the shady corner. Kreindel spent this time walking the perimeter of the yard, as close to the fence as the monitors would allow. She noted the small gate in the fence along 136th, and the path that led to a basement stairwell; and saw that the gate was held shut by a simple padlock, one that might be broken with enough strength.
At supper Kreindel once more prayed and ate, and endured the stares and quiet giggles. Then all went back to their dormitories, to wash and change and stand beside their cots for the nightly inspection. Each smudged face or dirty fingernail was announced by the monitor, and earned the miscreant a pinch or a slap. As Kreindel was fastidious about washing, it took some time for her to realize that most of these infractions were imaginary, merely excuses for the monitors to dole out punishments, and that she herself was immune.
At nine o’clock precisely everyone crawled beneath their thin cotton sheets and their blankets of gray shoddy. A final bell—and the lights went out in unison.
Coughs, sighs; the sounds of small, restless bodies, of lumpy pillows being punched into better shape. A few lonely, muffled sobs. Slowly the noises faded—but not until the entire dormitory had calmed into sleep would Kreindel at last slide out of bed and pad in her nightdress to the hallway door, crack it open bit by bit, and slip through.
The Asylum at night was a place of gigantic, moonlit proportions, where hallways stretched endlessly and ceilings disappeared into darkness. Night by night she learned her surroundings, memorizing the places where the old wooden floorboards groaned beneath her feet, staying alert for the creak of a door, the flush of a toilet. Sometimes she had to scurry for cover as, with a deafening chorus of whispers and shushes, a raiding party from a boys’ dormitory passed by on their way to the kitchen, hunting for slices of bread and cheese. Capture by the monitors was a rite of passage for the boys, who’d bear the beatings and then display their bruises proudly in the morning. Kreindel, long trained in silence, was never caught.
Each night she scouted, considering her options. The dormitory floor was too well traveled, too full of children. The ground floor seemed more likely to contain an unused coat-closet or forgotten niche—but in the end she couldn’t trust that what appeared abandoned at night would remain so during the day. And so, little by little, Kreindel’s search took her down the wide central staircase, and into the basement.
In daylight hours, the north wing of the Asylum’s basement was a place of loud and hectic industry. Clouds of steam billowed from the laundry, where the older residents spent their chore hours operating the gigantic pressers and mangles. Next door was the shoe-shop with its smells of leather and polish, its rows of iron lasts. Beyond that was the vast, naphtha-scented room where the boys of the Marching Band—the Asylum’s pride and joy—kept their feathered hats and braid-covered jackets, their shining white spats.
The basement’s southern wing, however, was seldom traveled: a place of custodial closets and supply rooms, boilers and pipes and valves. And it was here that Kreindel now crept in the darkness, just a little farther every night. The equipment room, the children’s property room, the textbook room: she tried each door but they all were locked, one after another, all down the length of the southern wing. It was well into autumn now, the weather turning colder day by day; on some mornings, lying in her cot, Kreindel could see her breath in the air. But the basement’s southern wing remained persistently warm, and grew more so the farther she traveled, as though she were approaching the building’s beating heart.
In November she reached the final door. She had little hope left; there was no reason to think this one would be different from the others. Was there a prayer for success in opening a locked door? In her desperation she could recall no prayers at all. She thought only, with great fervency: Please.
She grasped the knob—and felt it turn beneath her touch.
An hour later she crept to bed again, shivering with exhaustion. Dust and grime streaked her nightgown; cobwebs laced her hair. But she was elated nonetheless. She closed her eyes, and thought:
You have a new home, Yossele. Come and see.
Later that night, a longshoreman hauling barrels from an East River rail barge suddenly yelped in fright and let go of his barrel, which rolled off the ramp and landed in the river with a splash. When his boss berated him for the loss of cargo, he could only reply that he’d seen a dead man in the water, walking beneath the pier.
Northward Yossele went, fording along the bottom. He moved only at night, in utter blackness, blindly contending with the refuse of the shipping channel: rusted anchors and propeller blades, lengths of rope twined with river-weeds. He spent a day resting beneath a Gas House pier, next to the chain-wrapped remains of a corpse, while the Blackwell’s Island ferry plowed back and forth above him. Algae tried to take root in his body, without success. Bluefish and striped bass approached him, nibbled at him briefly, and then swam away.
The piers thinned, forcing him to walk in open water. The channel narrowed, and the currents strengthened until he had to crawl across the murky bottom, or else risk being pulled off his feet. The water grew colder, and only the friction of his clay muscles kept him warm. Now he must keep moving in day as well as night, or else he’d stiffen entirely.
On and on he crawled—until late one frosty night Kreindel was no longer north of him, only west. He surfaced beneath a narrow pedestrian bridge, and clambered to the shore at the edge of a coal-yard.
No one was about. These docklands were sleepier than their southern counterparts; here even the stevedores went home at a reasonable hour. He sidled between the coal-heaps, his joints tightening in the cold air. Nearby was a stack of crates, a canvas tarpaulin lashed atop it. He pulled the tarpaulin free and wrapped it around himself, marble eyes peering from beneath the makeshift hood.
He moved inland, slow and silent, past ice warehouses and saw-mills. Then the industrial yards turned to tenements, and he walked between the stoops, from shadow to shadow. At Saint Nicholas Avenue he crossed into a slice of parkland, up a rocky hill and down the other side, nearly stumbling from his stiffness. His frozen hands clutched the tarpaulin; his neck creaked as he turned his head to survey the way forward. He began, in his wordless way, to grow anxious.
Kreindel woke shivering on her cot, knowing somehow that he was near.
She crept out of the dormitory and down to the arched window at the end of the hallway. From here, she could see all the way to the iron fence with its padlocked gate, the thin path to the basement stairwell. A pair of apartment buildings sat across from the gate on 136th, an alley entrance between them.
There, Yossele, she thought. Go there.
Yossele saw it all in her thoughts: the alley, the gate, the path, the door. But first he must cross Amsterdam, and even at four in the morning that meant navigating the produce trucks and milk-wagons that had begun their daily rounds. He couldn’t hide and wait, couldn’t stop moving—so he clutched at the tarpaulin, sped up as best he could, and lumbered through the intersection like a drunkard.
Men shouted—horses whinnied and reared—and then he was across, stumbling into the alley behind the apartments. But he was moving too quickly now, he couldn’t slow down—
He tripped, fell against a garbage bin, and toppled over.
The noise was immense. Shouts rang down from the apartments above, from men and women startled out of sleep. He pulled himself onto his knees and elbows and crawled to the end of the alley, turned the corner, reached the sidewalk, and heaved himself to standing.
Kreindel stifled a gasp as he appeared between the buildings, huge and bent. Quickly she surveyed the street. At one end of the block, a wagon was turning onto Amsterdam; at the other, a man walking along Broadway crossed to the south and disappeared. There was no one else.
She thought, Now!
Across the street he ran, nearly crashing into the gate. One frozen hand lifted the padlock; the other clubbed it apart.
Open the gate slowly, it squeaks!
He did so, sidled through the gate, shut it again, and went on.
Kreindel clambered down from the window and padded to the stairwell. She couldn’t afford to run to him, she’d be caught and then so would he—but oh, how she wanted to!
Doggedly he heaved himself along the cobbles, rocking from side to side. The basement stairwell was before him; he could see the door through his own eyes and now Kreindel’s, too, as she hurried toward it.
He reached the stairwell, leaned against the wall, and slid slowly down the steps. In the warmth of the threshold, he sank to his knees and wrenched his arms outward to catch his master as she opened the door and fell upon him, weeping at long last.
* * *
The jinniyeh who feared no iron might’ve kept her secret indefinitely, bearing the strain year after year, had it not been for her new lover.
He was a jinni from the western reaches, come to the habitation’s center to seek refuge from the skirmishes at the border. Their attraction was mutual and immediate; he became her new favorite, and she sought him out often. Together they flew to the foothills, changing form to whatever shape pleased them that day: a pair of rutting jackals, or falcons falling together through the air.
Then one day he said to her,—I have an idea. Come with me, and we’ll play a trick on the humans.
Nervous, intrigued, she followed him west, skirting the battles and their telltale windstorms. At last they reached the desert’s edge north of Homs. They flew along the border, her lover searching the ground below.
—There, he said at last.
She peered down. A team of men had gathered at a roadside, and were now occupied in digging a trench across it. A clay-walled pipe, longer than the road was wide, sat waiting in the scrub nearby.
—They’ll put that thing beneath the road, her lover said. Water will travel through it to the fields, and the humans will reach a little farther into the desert. I’ve seen it before.
The jinniyeh watched the sweat drip from the men’s faces, saw the steel flash of their shovels and pickaxes. Already they had dug halfway across.—What do we do? she said.
—Just watch, he replied, smiling.
The breeze began a moment later. Soon the men were hunched over, clutching the ends of their head-scarves across their faces as the grit from the roadway assailed them. At last they dropped their tools, and took shelter behind the scrub.
—You see? her lover said, allowing the wind to drop. It’s easy, so long as you avoid the iron.
He was like one of the tales, she thought: the clever jinni who bests the humans, and makes them look like fools. Admiration and desire swelled in her, and the urge to show him that she could do the same.—My turn, she said, and gathered the winds again; and the men who’d begun to emerge from their shelter were forced once again to retreat.
Soon the pair was the scourge of the farmland. They scattered chickens, knocked down fences, ripped the grains of wheat from their stalks. A man might return to his plow only to find the harness missing, or the donkey gone lame with fright. It was dangerous work, for water was hidden everywhere in the farmlands, and iron, too: in the harness and the plow-blade, in buckets and grain-scales and the new telegraph wires that ran along the roadsides. And often their desires for each other overcame their plans, and they abandoned their mischief-making for other pleasures.
One afternoon, farther to the south, they found their biggest quarry yet: a crew of dozens of men, all swarming around a gigantic hole in the ground.
The jinniyeh laughed at the sight.—Why do they dig into the earth like ghuls?
Her lover did not laugh.—They call it a cistern, he said. It’ll collect the rainwaters, enough to feed their fields from here to the horizon.
A wooden beam hung across the hole, supporting a pulley from which a platform dangled, loaded with bricks. A pair of well-muscled men held the other end of the pulley’s rope, their arms straining against the weight. The men at the top shouted to the men at the bottom, the men at the bottom shouted back, and the platform began to lower.
A low breeze began, and turned to a buffeting wind that set the platform rocking. The men at the bottom shouted in fear, leaping up their ladders and pressing themselves against the cistern walls as the bricks slid from the platform one by one. The men at the top hurried to tie off the rope, then huddled coughing against the dust.
The jinniyeh laughed, watching them run back and forth in panic. She looked to her lover; he, too, was laughing. They will tell stories about us one day, she thought.
One of the men at the top was the son of a village shaman, and had learned in his childhood how to spot jinn in the patterns of their whirlwinds. He grabbed a shovel, took aim, and hurled it upward like a javelin, shouting, “Iron, O unlucky one!”
The jinniyeh didn’t think, only saw the danger to her beloved and pushed him out of the way—and so the steel sliced through her body, and not his. It ought to have crippled her. Instead her flame rejoined itself at once, as though the shovel had been nothing more than an errant tree-branch.
For a moment, as her lover stared in awful disbelief, she thought she might convince him that he hadn’t seen what he’d seen. But she’d allowed her shame to show far too nakedly. She knew that she was irredeemable; and now, so did he.
She tried to flee, but he was older, and stronger. He stole away the wind she rode, and dragged her back to the elders.
—This is true? they asked her. And you knew of this . . . defect?
—Yes, she said. I’ve known for many seasons. And even in her grief and terror, she felt the weight of her secret leave her.
The elders placed her under guard, then withdrew to decide her fate while onlookers screamed abuse at her, calling her human and storm-cloud. Her lover jeered the loudest of all. The noise drew more and more jinn, and the story traveled outward among them, accumulating quick drifts of detail, splitting into variations that rode their own random currents, crashing together and diverging again. She was immune to iron, and had promised to use it against her own clan. She had injured her lover with a human weapon, and cast him into a hole in the ground. She was in league with the humans; she’d vowed to eradicate the jinn and pave the habitation with steel, all the way from Homs to the Cursed City . . .
None of them would remember who’d first uttered those words, Cursed City, but soon they spread from voice to voice.
—Banish her to the Cursed City!
—Let the demons devour her, let shades and ifrits chase her through the columns!
—She is a monster of Sulayman, and that is where she belongs!
They didn’t wait for the elders; their own verdict had been reached. As one, the mob raised the winds into a funnel so fierce it nearly tore the jinniyeh apart. Eastward they herded her, all the way to the mountain range, and then pushed her over the ridge, down into the foothills, and out of sight.
Once the winds had died down, some of the jinn felt uneasy about what they’d done. Surely extinguishment would’ve been more kind? But no one spoke, and they dispersed in silence, shuddering as they imagined the horrors she now faced. Was she already cowering from the spirits that crawled through the ruins? How long could she possibly survive?
The jinniyeh took shelter in a small, dark cave at the bottom of the foothills. She was badly injured, and needed heat to heal properly—but to go outside would mean certain death. And so she hovered half delirious near the cave’s mouth, where it was warmest, and waited for the monsters to emerge howling from their wells, hungry for flame.
But nothing happened.
For days she cowered, expecting an attack. When none came, she began to wonder: Had some mistake been made? Had they banished her to the wrong place? But that made no sense—for there, just visible from the cave’s mouth, stood the lines of crumbling pillars, the scattered tower-tombs that housed the human dead. And yet she heard no awful howling, only the whistling of the wind.
Slowly her wounds healed themselves. Occasionally she’d hear the nicker of a horse, and peer out to see a handful of lean, black-robed men riding past, on their way to Homs to sell their sheepskins. As a child, she’d been taught never to approach the Bedu from the Cursed City, for it was well known that the spirits of that place liked to steal away inside the Bedu’s saddle-bags, or their horses’ ears.—And if they sense a jinn-child nearby, they poke out their heads and . . . snap!
Had the city’s spirits all escaped in the men’s saddle-bags? Was she hiding from nothing at all?
The spring rains arrived, soaking the thirsty valley.
Now the view from her cave grew more interesting, as each morning the Bedu drove their sheep into the grazing lands. New lambs trotted by on unsteady legs. Nettles and mallows sent their flowers forth, dotting the scrub with spots of white.
The jinniyeh watched the land grow green, watched the sheep fatten. And one morning—very slowly, floating on the thinnest of breezes—she ventured out from the shadow of the cave.
At the light’s first touch, she nearly cried out in happiness. How bright the world was, how wide the sky! Let the demons come, she’d defeat them all!—Come to me, demons! she cried. Come and fight! But still they didn’t appear—and she realized she no longer expected them to.
She ventured into the heart of the valley, and approached one of the tower-tombs: a tall column of rough stone bricks, its tumbled roof open to the clouds. She mustered her courage and flew inside, up past the scattered remnants of coffered ceilings and mosaics in blue and white. A face loomed from the shadows, and she nearly shrieked—but it was only a carving, its features worn away by the elements. She drifted from chamber to chamber, examining the sarcophagi and their shattered likenesses. What purpose, she wondered, did it serve to surround the bones of the dead with stones that were themselves destined to crumble?
She left the tomb and flew on, following the trail of fallen columns, until she was at the heart of the ruins, floating above a three-arched gate. Now, surely, the spirits would notice her!
But no—there were only stones. That was all. She’d been frightened of stones.
She could hear human voices now, could smell cooking-fires and camel dung. She followed these to an enormous stone citadel, only half in ruins. From above, the citadel was a maze of courtyards and covered walkways, storerooms and tents—all rife with humans of every age, all bent to their tasks like bees in a hive. And yet how little separated them from the skeletons in the tower-tomb! That man beyond the citadel gates, driving his sheep through the scrub: How many more years would he live? Thirty? Forty at most? Could he truly be said to be alive at all?
Let us see, she thought.
In the next moment, the shepherd’s flock was startled by something unseen. They bleated in fear and bolted, scattering in every direction. Cursing, the man chased them up and down the edge of the city, calling and coaxing them.
Suddenly the man felt a tug at his headdress. He clamped a hand to his head—but there came another tug, this time at the hem of his robe. He whirled around, staff raised, but saw only the empty desert. An iron amulet hung about his neck; he grabbed it and pointed it toward his unseen attacker. “Iron, O unlucky one!” he shouted.
A strange shimmer before him—and a naked young woman appeared out of thin air. Reaching out, she ripped the iron amulet from his neck and flung it away. In the next moment she was gone.
The flock scattered again as the shepherd turned and fled.
Smiling, the jinniyeh watched him go. Perhaps there’d never been terrors in Palmyra; perhaps Sulayman the Enslaver hadn’t ruled here at all. Why should it matter, in the end? The stories would keep her kin away; and the truth was that there were no monsters here, save for herself.
—Be quiet, child, she whispered, or the banished jinniyeh will find you, and grab you with her iron fingers.
* * *
The Teachers College admissions secretary was a limp, colorless woman, save for her ruddy nose, to which she applied a handkerchief every few moments. “I must apologize,” she said, “I’m always ill this time of year. Now, how may I help you, Miss Levy?”
The woman on the other side of her desk had been studying the photographs on the wall nearby. Each one was essentially the same: a group of young men or women standing in rows upon a set of marble steps, all of them dressed in robes and mortarboards. The woman turned back to the secretary, hesitated for a moment, then said, “It’s Mrs. Levy, if you please.”
Surprised, the secretary darted her eyes at the woman’s hands.
“My husband passed away a number of years ago.”
“Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry, my dear.” She peered at the woman; surely she was only in her twenties? “Forgive me, but you must have been quite young.”
“Yes, we both were,” Mrs. Levy said. “He died soon after we were married. He was a social worker.”
The secretary pictured a Lower East Side garret, the woman tending dolefully to her consumptive bridegroom. “I simply cannot imagine. You have my sympathies.”
“Thank you,” the woman said quietly.
“Well,” the secretary said, suddenly unsure how to proceed, “why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”
“I’m very interested in your Domestic Sciences program.”
The secretary nodded. “I can give you a copy of our Admissions Bulletin—”
“I have one already.” The woman removed from her purse a fat envelope, bearing the Teachers College seal. “I’ve studied it quite thoroughly. It says that all applicants must have completed their secondary education—but it also states that exceptions are occasionally made, on an individual basis.” She opened the bulletin to the relevant page, complete with underlining.
The secretary sighed to herself. “My dear, before we can reach that point we must look over your curriculum vitae, and assess whether your experience—”
Swiftly the woman pulled a sheet of paper from her purse, and laid it between them on the desk.
“Oh.” The paper appeared to be a neatly typed c.v. for one Chava Levy, resident of Eldridge Street. Born outside the Prussian town of Konin, no formal schooling of any kind—it was a wonder she could read the bulletin—and currently employed at an Allen Street bakery called Radzin’s. Head of hiring and training, it said. “Does this mean you taught the other bakers?” she asked, pointing.
The woman nodded. “The new hires, specifically. The bakery expanded a few years ago, and my employer put me in charge.”
“How did you go about it?” It was too much to hope that she’d followed a pedagogical process, of course . . .
“At first I taught them recipe by recipe, the same way I’d learned myself,” said the woman. “But it was far too inefficient, especially since I was teaching three young women at once. I realized I must change my methods, and develop a . . . I believe the word is pedagogy?”
The secretary blinked. “Indeed it is. Please, go on.”
“I decided to begin not with the recipes themselves, but with the basic techniques and principles underlying them. The fundamentals, as it were.”
The secretary’s eyebrows were creeping ever higher. “Such as?”
“Yeasted breads, for instance. It wasn’t enough merely to say that a dough must rise for a certain length of time, and then be punched down before it’s kneaded again. How does it rise? Why must it be punched down?” Mrs. Levy had been sitting rather stiffly; now she grew more animated, her hands rising to describe the shape of a loaf, the folding of the dough. “Once I explained the role of the yeast, they were much more likely to notice if the yeast refused to proof correctly. Since then, in fact, our wastage due to poor rising has been nearly eliminated.” She smiled, in modest pride.
“Very commendable.” There was something odd about the woman—she didn’t blink often enough, perhaps, and the precision of her language clashed almost comically with her accent. Still, she was growing more intriguing by the minute. “May I ask, though—why apply to our program if you’ve had such success at this bakery? It sounds as though you have a natural talent for it. You might even open a bakery of your own someday.” This would be a more appropriate course for her, surely? The Domestic Sciences program had its share of young Jewesses, but these were mainly the daughters of lawyers and businessmen, not girls from the tenements. It was all well and good that Mrs. Levy wanted to better herself—but far kinder, certainly, to dissuade her as gently as possible.
A troubled look had crossed Mrs. Levy’s face. She seemed to gather herself, a marshaling of resolve. “May I speak frankly?” she said.
“Of course,” the secretary said, a touch wary.
“You ask, quite rightly, why I would apply to Teachers College when I’ve found success as a baker. But it’s exactly that success that compelled me to find your program. Here—I will tell you a story. When I arrived in this country, I was alone, and young, and rather frightened. But worse than that, I had no purpose. Then, one day, a friend gave me a copy of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.”
The secretary nodded in approval. “A staple in my own household.”
“Then you’ll understand how reassured I was by Mrs. Farmer’s work. It was as though each recipe was saying to me, Put everything else aside for the moment. Do just this one thing. Measure this ingredient. And now take the next step, and the next. And with each step I moved forward. It seems like the smallest accomplishment now, but nothing will ever compare to the moment I took my first coffee-cake from the oven. It was a simple thing, but it gave me such confidence. And now I want to help others find that for themselves. So I promise you, if I’m allowed this chance, I won’t squander it. I will give it my all.”
The secretary was unexpectedly moved by this speech. She blew her nose with a bit more force than before. “Well, my dear,” she said, “you clearly have the motivation. But have you given any thought to securing the means? There are scholarships, of course, but—”
“There’s no need,” Mrs. Levy said. “I can pay the tuition myself.”
The secretary stared at her. “The entire tuition?”
“In advance, if necessary,” the woman said. “I have a nest-egg set aside.”
The secretary coughed. “Goodness. I applaud your frugality, Mrs. Levy. And yes, I expect that an entrance exam for you might be arranged.”
The woman’s eyes brightened. “And if I pass, can I enroll in time for the winter session?”
“One step at a time, dear.” She pulled a form from a drawer labeled Application for Exemption, wrote at the top Levy, Chava, and skimmed down the page to Extenuating Circumstances. “Mrs. Levy,” she said, her voice carefully neutral, “would you say that you were forced to leave your country for political reasons?”
The woman hesitated, an uncertain look in her eye.
Just say yes, the secretary thought.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Levy.
The woman nodded, and wrote, The candidate has escaped persecution in Europe and endured a young widowhood, appears to have considerable natural aptitude, and seems in all ways a credit to her race.