The Cardiff Giant

by Lockridge, Larry

  As the champagne went to my head, I tried my hand at flirtation. “Sheila, the Huron are the bad guys in Cooper’s novel. May I ask—are you bad too?”

  She paused at the fatuity of my question. Then, “Hasn’t Thor told you I’m celibate? . . . I used to be bad enough.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Esther. “Sheila’s a reformed strumpet.”

  Silence. Sheila didn’t find this funny.

  “I hope you’re not a zealot on the issue, Sheila,” I said jauntingly. “Do you mind if others carry on in the usual manner?”

  Sheila caught Esther and me glancing at one another and knew enough about her half-sister to draw a conclusion. “No, Sodomites, carry on without me. Three’s a crowd.” I flattered myself to hear a flirtatious undertone in this.

  “Well, Sheila, what did you think of the performance?” Not a tactful question.

  “I’m afraid Hazel Bouche has given the horoscope a black eye,” Esther put in. “Isn’t astrology on your own list of New Age fixes, sis?”

  To my mind Esther’s literal-minded version of Kabbalah exceeded even horoscopes in divinatory presumption. I held my tongue.

  “Low down on it, actually. Too abstract. Plant Spirit Medicine is the path. Remember our date, Jack.”

  I swelled at the idea that the sisters were tugging at me, engaged in some sort of rivalry. Yes, my fortunes they were a-changin’.

  “How long have you two known Thor Ohnstad?”

  Silence.

  “I find him diverting for a businessman,” I began, “but I’ve been getting a larger dose than I bargained for.”

  Silence. Esther looked at Sheila as if to say, You go first. Sheila looked at Esther as if to say, Keep your damn mouth shut.

  The silence was broken by a thunderclap so powerful that two hundred inebriated patrons were jolted to attention. Then came the downpour, trapping everybody and turning the tent into a giant drum. We huddled toward the center while I engaged in nervous small talk about tornados. I felt an erotic surge when, amid thunder, Sheila was forced to monitor my lips.

  Suddenly from the perimeter of the crowd, the diva’s scream broke champagne goblets. Natty Bumppo bellowed, “It’s the Cardiff Giant!”

  Through rain I could barely make out the frame of a gigantic figure slowly slouching in our direction, easily ten feet tall. Never did two hundred patrons so quickly disperse into a maelstrom. Esther seemed to forget that the giant was the golem who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Sheila forgot he was a mystical Druidic sculpture. We ran with the rest of them. Looking back I could make out the gray stone face of the giant as he leaned against a tent pole. He could have passed for Frankenstein’s monster pathetically crying out, “Friend! Friend!”—except that he was smiling. Was he taking some pleasure in crashing this party? Who knew? But one thing I knew for sure was that I now had a story for my producers.

  The next day they agreed to extend my stay at the Otesaga but were quite firm about my getting some footage of the giant. Otherwise, they would resort to digital imaging, a more costly way of getting at the truth of things.

  — Part Two —

  BREAK ON THROUGH

  — Chapter Eight —

  TO SHARON SPRINGS

  “Route 28 is not the way to Sharon Springs,” I insisted.

  “Let’s take it anyway—28 is a perfect number,” said Esther with warmth, revving the engine. “There are only five others.”

  “Let me guess—3, 7, 11, 69, 96?”

  “Not even close, Jack: 6, 28; then 496; then 8,128; then 33,550,336; then 8,589,869,056.”

  “I should have known. Well, must be something to Kabbalah. Route 8,589,869,056 is coming up—next right.”

  “Can’t fool me, mister. That’s Route 20.”

  “Okay, but it goes straight to Sharon Springs. Isn’t 20 a sacred number?” I was going on a hunch that most numbers are sacred for one reason or another.

  “Sacred, yes, perfect no. How many times must I explain the difference? We need perfect.”

  After driving forty miles out of our way on Route 28 and raising our velocity periodically to conform to various sacred numbers on the speedometer, Esther raced the rental Mercedes down Main Street, ran an intersection, and slid half-circle to a stop near the entrance to the Adler Hotel.

  The doorman leapt backward. “Lady, why stop there? Just break on through to the registration desk.”

  “We’re here, Jack. Let’s get to work.”

  I was relieved at the prospect of searching for a sacred kabbalistic tome, figuring we’d be rummaging safely on foot.

  The Adler had a built-in synagogue and sulfur bath, offering a special package of six baths, four massages, one hot pack, and one Scotch douche—all for $185. Esther insisted we instead visit the Imperial Baths down the street—older and more sulfurous. Sharon Springs’s ubiquitous stench was sufficient in itself to account for the village’s decline—the enigma was how it ever got started.

  Beyond the superintendent of Bath’s box office, there were three dour Hassidim whose sole function was the slow inspection of tickets. Esther ascertained, speaking fluent Hebrew, that we were their first customers in six months.

  We were ushered into the Vapor Room, at whose center stood a large many-tiered Victorian fountain, flanked by four naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Moss covered phlegm-green walls. Another squad of Hassidim was at the ready, handing us small towels, threadbare but rich in discoloration.

  “Not to worry,” said Esther, “we won’t undress. A naked woman would make the Hassidim faint. We’re just doing inhalations. People used to come here to cure lung infections—breathe the sulfur.”

  “But I don’t have a lung infection.”

  “Don’t be so unteachable. Remember, each of your organs represents a different vocalization of the tetragrammaton, the Word of God. Try to grasp what I’m telling you about lungs. The letter heh is the sole letter in the Hebrew alphabet that requires no oral movement. The Talmud teaches that heh is the aboriginal breath, the source of all creative power. When you say heh you massage—”

  Here the Hassidim turned on the fountain and water started cascading down its tiers, sending out orange mist that quickly enveloped us as we sat on clammy vinyl lounge chairs, purchased on the cheap, I’d guess, at local garage sales.

  “—you mass-saahaage your lungs and re-cre-eeate the mo-ho-ment of your bir-hirth . . .”

  Esther and I began heaving with paroxysms. “Is this suppo-hosed to ha-haa-p-pppen?” I wheezed. These sulfurous inhalations were making Tarbox’s pig farm ambrosial by comparison.

  “Yes, it’s a spiritual exercise, not meant to be ea-hea-heasy.” Esther was gasping like an expensive copper kettle. “We achieve balance and find the Zoh-ha-ar-ar. A spiritual qu-qu-qu-quest”—At this point Esther coughed so hard her lounge chair collapsed. She lay on the slick fungal floor—“requires a spiritually refi-fi-hined seeker.”

  Amid my own bronchospasms I detected that the Hassidim had ceased to be dour and even evinced slight smiles as they watched their therapy go to work. They themselves didn’t make a sound until some survival instinct got the better of Esther, and we bolted for the escape corridor. Our hosts then coughed to hint a gratuity was in order.

  I tipped enormously, fearing we’d otherwise be locked in and perish.

  “Okay, Ja-aa-ack-ack-ack, I admit—that was a bit mu-u-u-uch.” Our spasms didn’t relent, so Esther said we must take the waters down the block at the Magnesia Temple, an 1860 Renaissance Revival structure with Corinthian columns. At the center were twin stone lion heads from which spouted the highly esteemed magnesia water, said to cure everything from gout and impotence to depression and female troubles. If you were suffering from an overdose of medicinal waters, the best cure, it seemed, was homeopathic—more waters.

  Sure enough, the spasms subsided after we’d quaffed some of the smelly stuff, a liquid not unlike Mr. Plumber.

  We dined at the Adler.

  “Okay, Esther, gi
ve me a refresher—what are we looking for and why?”

  “You have a dim memory for a reporter.” It was in fact my way of checking for consistency. “It’s like this,” she said as we ladled up the borsht Romanoff and munched on challah. “I’m not that hard to analyze. You’ve surmised I hate my father. You’re right. His part of my genome feels like a contaminant.”

  “So you’re seeking Jewish roots to purge your father?”

  “Right. Took my mother’s name—remember, I dumped Drake for Federman. Her father, my grandfather, was a Polish Jew in the rag trade, working out of Rockaway. He hit on the idea of selling used clothes to Africa—simply a matter of fumigating them stateside and having them laundered in West Africa. They sold as prestige items in outdoor markets. He made a fortune.” We set at the potato knishes and prepared for the brisket.

  “As I recall, his son-in-law, the, uh, furrier, did your mother out of her share?”

  “Yes, her marriage to a goy made my grandfather wonder about her. He’d say, ‘If she could be with him, how good she could be altogether?’ He favored his two sons—my knuckle-headed uncles—but didn’t disinherit her. My father managed to abscond with her money and desert her at death’s door. Another reason for hating him. But hatred de-energizes my nefesh.”

  “Nefesh, yes, the animal life in you.”

  “You’re learning, Jack. Better to purge this father altogether. I want to bond with my dead mother and grandfather.”

  “Sounds like an improvement on Freud.”

  She ignored this as we chewed the tough flesh. “Strong memories of my mother—in an alcove, no windows, the waves outside, the cancer taking over. I get my own boobs checked every three months. Her parents outlived her—I remember them sitting shivah, quietly weeping on the cardboard. In happier days they came out here summers and stayed at the Hadassah Arms and took the waters.”

  “Very affecting. But what’s this about the Zohar in one of the old hotels? Are we caught up in some variation on Name of the Rose?”

  “Good analogy. My grandfather was no kabbalist but in one of his visits to Sharon Springs shortly after my mother died, he came across a rare old edition of the Zohar in the synagogue at the Hadassah Arms. Maybe because Kabbalah is beyond the pale for most Jews, the volume was tucked sideways behind Funk and Wagnall’s twelve-volume Jewish Encyclopedia. My grandfather was checking to see if there was an entry on the medieval rag trade when he spotted the hidden Zohar and pulled out the entire encyclopedia to get at it. Well, all the dust triggered an asthma attack. He lugged the Zohar to the hotel porch to catch his breath. It had oddly gathered no dust and seemed to quiver alive in his hands.”

  “Sounds talismanic.”

  “Lots of evidence it was, Jack. It had powers. My grandfather’s lungs cleared right away. He didn’t even have to read it—Aramaic wasn’t his strong suit. It had a healing aura—and when he took it to his room that night he swore it glowed in the dark. A few people going back to the nineteenth century had signed it on the frontispiece—so he added his own name, Mordechai Federman.” She looked up at me, her eyes slightly crossing. “I want to find that signature and add my own.”

  “For good luck?”

  “Yes, and for connection.”

  “But why do you think it’s still in that hotel?”

  “The Hadassah Arms was boarded up overnight in 1946 by the state health department when plague-carrying fleas were found in the lobby. Four guests died all at once. The owner had time only to remove valuables from the safe and didn’t bother with the synagogue library. He’d inherited the hotel from a distant cousin and didn’t know what a treasure he had under his nose. Nobody except my grandfather even knew the existence of the Zohar. He had put it back where he found it and kept quiet. Well, the hotel stayed under quarantine so long the owner went bankrupt and the place never reopened. It’s been falling into ruin ever since. The local building inspector denied my petition to search. Said the building could collapse any minute. We need to figure a way to break in tonight and find that book, take it with us.”

  “And maybe the plague to boot?”

  “No chance. Those fleas haven’t had any blood to suck for decades.”

  By now it was dark and we set off from the Adler and walked past the various edifices and ghosts of edifices on Main Street, lit up eerily by the half moon. The Sanatorium Hotel, Sticht’s drugstore, the Imperial Baths, the White Sulfur Temple. To our right beyond Brimstone Creek we could see the Eye Water Spring, the Magnesia Temple, and the Schaefer residence. All these were like memorials to themselves, the vestiges of human hopes and vacation leisure in a ghost town. At South Street we turned right and decided it was time to creep like bandits as we approached the intersection with Center Street. Here stood the Hadassah Arms, built in the 1920s, four stories with gabled dormers. The wraparound porch of Romanesque stone arcades was sagging disconcertingly.

  We approached the front door. To the right I could make out a weathered sign with faint letters: Music. Entertainment. Hotel Guests Only. Next to this was a sign of more recent vintage: No Trespassing.

  Esther whispered, “This is the very porch where my grandfather sat with the Zohar in his lap.” Well okay. Now what? The windows were all boarded up with plywood.

  Esther took out a Swiss Army knife with an official miniature crowbar attachment and said, “Jack, remove the plywood.”

  I set to and in a few minutes had cleared a way to the window, which opened with surprising ease. We peered in using pocket flashlights and beheld a ghastly mélange of rotting overstuffed furniture, cobwebs, tarnished candelabra, and stars of David. Esther had recovered architectural floor plans and knew the whereabouts of the synagogue. We crept through the vestibule and down a creepy corridor. I began to feel stomach pangs I took to be nerves.

  “We’re there,” said Esther, pushing open a door that creaked much like the one in the old radio show Inner Sanctum. We cast about with our flashlights. To our right were the bema and an ark with a Torah scroll, and to our left the dust-laden bookshelves. We approached these and quickly checked titles: Israel’s Settlement in Canaan, The Pharisees and Their Teachings, A History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, Old European Jewries, and many Hebrew titles.

  “Here it is,” she said. “The Jewish Encyclopedia!”

  There was—or was I hallucinating?—a faint glow behind the multivolume set. We pulled out the encyclopedia tome by tome and beheld the large leather-bound volume behind, set sideways, its cover suitably ornate for this famous fake.

  Fake? Yes, the Zohar was an inspired fake, acknowledged so even by the many scholars who read it devotionally. Journalists must be quick studies. In recent days I’d been reading about the Zohar in essays posted on the internet, where they could readily be plagiarized by students of religion. But I didn’t dare confess to Esther that I now knew almost as much about the Zohar as she did.

  Here’s the story. Moses de Léon was a thirteenth-century Spanish Jewish mystic in need of a living. He began distributing copies of passages he claimed were taken from a massive manuscript composed by a second-century Israelite, Rabbi Shim’on son of Yohai, who spent his life in a cave. These passages were inspired commentary on the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, which the good Rabbi took to be a mystical text written in code.

  Moses explained to his wife that nobody “would pay attention to [his] words, and they would pay nothing for them” if it were revealed that he made the whole goddam thing up. “Now that they hear that I am copying from The Book of Zohar composed by Rabbi Shim’on son of Yohai through the Holy Spirit, they buy these words at a high price, as you see with your very eyes!” When Moses de Léon died, his widow blew his cover. “Thus and more may God do to me if my husband ever possessed such a book! He wrote it entirely from his own head!”

  So Moses de Léon heads the list of great literary fakers—MacPherson, Chatterton, Wise, Irving. But devotees tell us this doesn’t impair the inspired nature of the Zohar. After all, eight c
enturies is pretty ancient too, if not quite so ancient as nineteen centuries.

  What Esther and I were looking at was an oversized sixteenth-century Italian edition with finely tooled binding that had somehow ended up in this resort hotel. We hauled it over to the bema and opened the cover. Names, all male, with dates beginning in the late nineteenth century were inscribed on the frontispiece: Jeremiah Kandelcukier, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1879; Levi Einhorn, Bronx, New York, 1899; Malachi Rabinowitz, Borough of Queens, 1904; Motl Szczupakiewicz, Orchard Street, 1910; and many others up to Mordechai Federman, Rockaway, August 12, 1946.

  “That’s my grandfather!” exclaimed Esther. “Jack, we did it! Let’s take it out of here.”

  This was no easy matter with a tome that would make Janson’s History of Art feel like a dime novel. We clumsily hoisted it and started to depart the synagogue. Then it happened.

  Throughout our act of stealth I’d been hearing some faint thumps I took to be raccoons or squirrels. But as we made our way toward the synagogue door, the thumps got louder. So loud they seemed like a large bear or even an elephant—but there had been few reports of bears and none of elephants in Schoharie County. Esther and I exchanged glances and peeked apprehensively out the door.

  Coming down the corridor from the direction opposite to what we’d traversed, now at a distance of perhaps sixty feet, was a gigantic form—not a bear, not an elephant, but the Cardiff Giant!

  I pointed my flashlight at him and saw the curious stony smile as he continued his slow steady stride in our direction. “Grrrrrrrr!”—a low malevolent growl coming from the depths of reanimated gypsum.

  Esther shrieked as we dropped the Zohar and set off down the corridor. Protector and domestic helper? Some golem. We could feel the entire edifice tremble rhythmically as he stalked us. I feared a building collapse. We jumped through the window and headed down the steep lawn.