Unsong

by Scott Alexander

  Then a miracle occurred.

  Not like the earthen golem of Czech fame,

  Laid low, and in some dusty attic stowed

  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates there strode

  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

  Was the imprisoned lightning; and a Name

  Writ on her forehead. In her crown there rode

  The Rebbe, and his face with Torah glowed

  “Sh’ma Yisrael HaShem elokeinu HaShem echad” prayed he

  Then, with silent lips: “Save them, Your tired, Your poor,

  Your huddled masses yearning to break free,

  The wretched refuse of your demon war.

  Save these, the hopeless, battle-tossed, for me,

  I lift my lance beside the golden door!”

  The Liberty Golem lifted her lance, formerly the spire of the Empire State Building. She loosed the imprisoned lightning of her terrible swift torch. From her crown the Rebbe flung warlike Names that sputtered and sparkled and crashed into the hellish hosts and disintegrated them like fire melts ice. They shrieked and began a retreat.

  The New York Guard would have none of it. Inspired with sudden new courage, they leapt into pursuit, swarming around the giant golem, picking off with their guns and nightsticks what she couldn’t with her lance and fire, until demon after demon disincorporated and the entire army that had set forth from Albany had been blasted back into the hell from which they came.

  IV.

  When it was all over, Ed Koch approached the golem. It lowered a giant green hand, picked him up, brought him face to face with the Lubavitcher Rebbe in the crown. Not that there had been any doubt.

  “Um,” said the Mayor, “You will be able to get the statue back, right? Not that I’m ungrateful. Just that it’s important to us.”

  The Rebbe still managed to seem humble and soft-spoken, even atop a 150-foot killing machine that had until recently been America’s most recognizable national monument. “Of course,” he said.

  “So is that how it works?” asked Koch. “If you write the Name of God on any human-shaped figure, it becomes a golem?”

  “Ah,” said the Rebbe. “Not the Name. God has many Names, Mayor. Some animate earth. Some animate stone. This one animates copper. And many others do entirely different things. I think you will be learning much more about them soon. But remember, however it may seem to you, God doesn’t give away any of His Names unless He wants someone to have them.”

  Koch couldn’t resist straining his head to try to read the Hebrew text written on the statue’s forehead, but it was very small, and he was very far away, and he couldn’t make out a single letter.

  The Rebbe smiled.

  “And God wanted you to have this one? Now?”

  “I asked him for it. Mr. Koch, do you know when I arrived in this city? 1941. Fleeing the Nazis. Those men you saw in that synagogue, most of them are all that is left of their families. You saved us, Mr. Koch, you and your people. Now it is our turn to return the favor.” He hesitated for a second. “And…I know I must seem very strange to the people of this city, but I am a New Yorker too. Praise be to God.”

  Ed Koch looked at the wizened old man, dressed in the clothing of 18th century Poland, seated atop of a golem made from the Statue of Liberty, and he knew the Rebbe was right. Heck, there were New Yorkers who were much stranger than that.

  “What about the other army?” he asked. “The one headed west. Is God going to send a miracle to stop them too?”

  “How should I know?” asked the Rebbe, cheerfully. “Let the West save the West. If God wants it to be saved, they’ll get their miracle too!”

  “But what about Canada?” asked Koch. “What about Russia? What about everyone who wasn’t saved? If you can call down miracles, then…”

  “Mr. Mayor,” asked the Rebbe, “Why do you think God grants me the power to perform miracles?”

  Koch thought a second. “To heal the sick…to save the righteous…that sort of thing.”

  “If God wanted the sick to be cured, why would He make them sick? If He wanted the righteous to be saved, why would He put them in danger? God lets people perform miracles to make a statement.”

  “Which is?”

  “Oho.” The Rebbe’s eyes sparkled. “God’s statements never have just one meaning.”

  “But if He’s already given you these Names, can’t you use them to save everybody, or to heal all the sick, or bring the country back together…”

  “Is that what you would do, if you had Divine Names?”

  “Yes! It’s what everybody would do!”

  The Rebbe looked positively amused now. “Perhaps God will give you the Names, then, and we will see if you are right.”

  He made it sound like a threat.

  “But for now I’ll be headed back toward Liberty Island. I’ll leave the spire at the base of the Empire State Building. You’ll have to figure out how to fix that one yourself.”

  Koch nodded mutely. The golem put him down and began to lumber away.

  V.

  When the statue had been safely restored, the Rebbe dismounted, walked back across the water to Brooklyn, and went back into his synagogue.

  “Rebbe,” said his assistant, “there’s a young woman here. Wants to talk to you about her chickens.”

  “Tell her to come back tomorrow,” said the Rebbe. “I’m exhausted.”

  He sank into his bed and drifted on the edge of sleep. Outside the his window, New Yorkers of a hundred different ethnicities danced in the streets, set off fireworks in celebration. Just past the synagogue, someone was singing an old patriotic song:

  My country, ’tis of thee,

  Sweet land of Liberty,

  Of thee I sing;

  Land where my fathers died,

  Land of the pilgrims’ pride,

  From ev’ry mountainside

  Let freedom ring!

  Let music swell the breeze,

  And ring from all the trees

  Sweet freedom’s song;

  Let mortal tongues awake;

  Let all that breathe partake;

  Let rocks their silence break,

  The sound prolong.

  Our fathers’ God to Thee,

  Author of Liberty,

  To Thee we sing.

  Long may our land be bright,

  With freedom’s holy light,

  Protect us by Thy might,

  Great God our King.

  .

  There is a new author’s note up here

  .

  .

  Chapter 29: He Who Respects The Infant’s Faith

  Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy

  Do you hear what I hear

  Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,

  Do you hear what I hear

  A song, a song, high above the trees

  With a voice as big as the sea

  — Noël Regney, Do You Hear What I Hear?

  October 2, 1978

  Colorado

  I.

  Sitting in his car, Father Ellis contemplated the Exodus.

  According to the aptly-named Book of Numbers, there were 603,550 men among the Israelites who fled Egypt. Add women and children, and you got about two million people going the same direction at the same time. If they’d all been in cars, it probably would have looked a lot like Interstate 25 did now.

  Someone honked, apparently optimistic that it might affect the fifty-mile backup of cars that had been almost motionless for several hours. The priest sighed.

  A knock on the passenger-side window. It was a little boy, eight or nine by the looks of him. You could never be too careful during times like these, but he rolled down the window anyway.

  “Are you a priest?” the child asked.

  Father Ellis was taken aback. He was dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes, and he was from up near Fort Collins, a hundred miles away.

  “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “I did
n’t,” said the boy. “I’ve been knocking on every car here, looking for a priest. I need your help.”

  Father Ellis looked the boy over. He looked foreign, maybe Indian, not the Native Americans who were so common around this part of Colorado, but Indian from India. But his hair was blond. In this light it even looked white. He’d never seen an Indian with blond hair. There were no Indians in his parish, but he’d heard some people from far southern India were Christian.

  “How can I help you?” he asked warily.

  The boy reached through the opened window, flicked the lock, opened the door, and sat down.

  “I need your help with a plan. First we need to wait for my uncle. I am Jala. Hello.”

  “No!” said the older man. “Get out!” He pushed the boy out as firmly as he could, but it was too late. The door had already closed. God. He’d heard of this scam. Now someone would be by to accuse him of kidnapping, and then threaten to take the case to court if he didn’t pay them hush money. All he had in the world was three hundred dollars he’d brought with him from Fort Collins for food and gas during the evacuation.

  “You are afraid I am trying to scam you in some way. I promise I am not. I want to help you. I want to help everybody. But you would not believe me if I told you, so for now we wait for my uncle. Unless you want to fight me. Please do not try this. I have a weapon.”

  Oh God. This got worse and worse.

  Right on cue, an Indian man peered through the window of his car and saw the boy. He started banging on the window, shouting incomprehensible things, demanding Father Ellis open up. Before he got the chance, the boy opened the door.

  “Hello, Uncle,” he said. “Get in the back seat. We are going to Silverthorne.”

  “Look,” said Father Ellis, for whatever it was worth, “I swear, I didn’t do anything. The kid just banged on the window, then forced himself in, and wouldn’t go away. He said he…look, this isn’t what it looks like.”

  The uncle stood outside the open door. “I’m sorry,” he told the priest, falling over himself to sound apologetic. “We are peaceful people. We do not want trouble. He is very strange. But…it is best to do what he says.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry! He is not my son! He usually stays with his grandmother, but we had trouble fitting the whole family into two cars. But when he wants something, it’s no use arguing with him. My wife and I have tried so many times, and it has never…Jala, you tell him!”

  “I am always right,” said the boy. “It is hard to explain.” He gestured again impatiently for his uncle to get in the car. The older man shot Father Ellis an apologetic look, then got into the back seat of his car.

  “I’m so sorry,” said the uncle. “I swear on my life, we are peaceful people. Good Hindus! We do not want trouble.” To the child: “Jala, must we do this?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “But the poor man – he doesn’t even know you. He wants to get to safety, just like – ”

  “Yes.”

  Defeated, the older man slumped down in the back seat.

  It was an evacuation. The police, if there were any left, were otherwise occupied. He was old, and the man in the back seat was young and spry. And if the child had a weapon…

  At least he had some idea what to do about a kidnapping. This just didn’t make sense.

  “God,” he whispered under his breath, “Help me get out of this one okay.”

  Meanwhile, the other two were talking. “Jala, where were you? Your aunt and I have been looking for you for hours! I cannot believe you slipped out of the car without us hearing you. Do you realize how dangerous…”

  “You still do not trust me, Uncle. Not completely. That was why I had to slip out. I knew you would look for me. Aunt Samira will be well. She and Uncle Pranav will go the rest of the way to Santa Fe without us. We have work to do.”

  “We’re not going to make it to New Mexico? Jala, this is unsafe!”

  “Yes, Uncle. We must make it safe.”

  “Why us?”

  “Somebody has to and no one else will.”

  The man sighed, the sigh of someone who is thoroughly beaten and knows he always will be.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated to the priest. “My name is Vihaan and this is Jalaketu. I live over in Boulder. Jala lives with his grandmother in Colorado Springs, but he was staying with us for the summer. He’s always had problems. His mother died in childbirth. He’s a good kid, though, I swear. We just cannot control him. He just…I don’t know.” He sounded totally humiliated, which under the circumstances Father Ellis supposed was reasonable.

  “Father John Ellis. I…How old are you, Jala? Eight?”

  “I am almost two.”

  “It’s true,” interjected Uncle Vihaan. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen his birth with my own eyes, but he’s only two years old. He has some kind of growth problem. He grows too much. That is why we cannot control him.”

  “There wasn’t enough time,” said Jala, apologetically. “I should be older. But I’m growing as fast as I can.”

  Father Ellis considered his options. He could try to fight them off – no good, not strong enough. He could escape and leave the car to them, but then he would have no way to evacuate. Or he could just give in and let them ride with him. Then they would all get to New Mexico, and the two of them would leave him alone. Maybe this was how people hitchiked in India, by crazy children breaking in and their guardians claiming implausibly low ages for them.

  That was it. They were probably weird hitchhikers. Would he have picked them up if they had been standing by the side of the road? Probably not. He was an old man, and cautious. But if circumstances had forced him into doing a good deed, perhaps he should thank God for the opportunity. Yes. That was it. Just thank God for the opportunity to do a good deed at no cost to himself.

  That lasted right until the child announced that they would be taking the exit to the 70 going West, which was insane.

  Father Ellis turned to him, spoke clearly but not patronizingly. “Jala, I am sure your uncle has already told you this, but Colorado is being attacked. By demons from Siberia, who took over Canada and now are invading the United States. They already got most of Utah and they’re crossing the Rockies towards us. We need to go south, all the way to New Mexico, to get away from them. That’s why everyone is evacuating. Going west wouldn’t take us away from them. It would take us right towards their army.”

  “Father,” said the boy, “do you remember the story of Sennacherib?”

  A moment of surprise. “That’s a very old story for a boy like you to know.”

  “King Sennacherib marched with an impossibly large army to destroy Jerusalem. King Hezekiah believed he was doomed, but the prophet Isaiah told him not to be afraid, for God was with him. And the angel of God destroyed the hosts of Sennacherib, and Jerusalem was saved. Do you know the poem, Father? The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were streaming with purple and gold…”

  “We are good Hindus,” said Uncle Vihaan, apologetically. “I don’t even know where he learns these things.”

  But Father Ellis was intrigued. “I know the poem. It’s true that with God, any battle can be won,” he said. “But God doesn’t work to a human schedule. Remember, before God saved Jerusalem, he let Sennacherib destroy all of northern Israel. The prophet Isaiah told Hezekiah not to fear. But when we don’t have prophets with us, we have to do what we think is best. And sometimes that involves retreating.”

  “I am…like a prophet,” said Jalaketu. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sorry!” protested the uncle again. “We are good Hindus!”

  “If you are a prophet,” said Father Ellis, “give me a sign.”

  “It is written,” said Jalaketu, “that you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

  “You are not the Lord,” said Father Ellis.

  Jalaketu glared at him, as if about to challenge the assertion.
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  “We are good Hindus,” the uncle protested feebly. Then added “But I swear to Vishnu, Jala’s mother had never slept with a man when she gave birth to him.”

  Then Jala sang. “KYA-RUN-ATEPH-NAHA-IALA-DEH-VAV-IO-ORAH”

  The car’s gear stick turned into a snake. Father Ellis shrieked and jerked his hand back, actually jerked his whole body back and hit his head against the car door. If traffic had been moving they would have crashed for sure; as it was, they remained motionless in the gridlock. The snake looked around curiously, then coiled up onto the center console of the car and fell asleep.

  “Oh!” said Jalaketu. “I’m sorry! I wasn’t expecting…I thought it would…I should have…I’m still kind of new at this. I’m growing as fast as I can, I promise. But you’ve got to help me.”

  Father Ellis’s mind went into high gear – no, scratch that, use literally any other metaphor – he started thinking quickly. He’d heard of such things. Kabbalistic Names. A few people had reported discovering them, old magic, returned to life after the sky had cracked. But none of them were public, and none of them as far as he knew turned things into snakes. The boy knew another Name, a Name nobody knew, he had independently discovered a new kabbalistic Name.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jalaketu, “I should do something more impressive. But I swear to you. I want to help. I’m here to help. We can stop these demons. Save everybody. But you need to believe me. Somebody has to do it and nobody else will, so please listen to me and take the exit.” Exit 70 was right in front of them now. The traffic was beginning to move. “Please, Father, if you have any faith at all, get in the exit lane.”

  “My gear stick is a snake,” said Father Ellis.

  “Oh!” said Jalaketu, and he sang another word, and the snake was a gear stick again.

  Father Ellis very gingerly put his hand to the gear stick, and when it didn’t bite him, he moved it forward. Then he sighed and got into the exit lane.

  II.

  The trip to Silverthorne had been fast and without traffic. Nobody was going towards the approaching demonic army. Nobody except them.