“I found him in the morning,” Grandma had told Max once with tears in her eyes. They had slept in separate beds for years, on account of Grandpa’s snoring. “His heart had given up the struggle,” Grandma continued. “His bowels, too. Typical of your grandfather, making a mess like that.”
Max was totally creeped out that he had to sleep in a bed where a man had shat and died. He couldn’t wait to get home to Mom’s house in Atwater Village, back to civilization. He had his own room there, his trusted bunny, and, of course, his comic book collection.
The most annoying thing about Grandma was that everyone she talked about was dead. She seemed to spend more time with the dead than with the living, and constantly told boring stories about long-lost relatives who had been killed in the war. It was confusing—she didn’t seem to realize that Max had never met his extinguished family. None of those people were alive anymore. They didn’t even have graves. They had become stories told by a lonely old woman, and once she left this world, all of them would be forgotten, fading out over time, as if they’d never existed. To Max, Grandma had always been old—he couldn’t imagine that she had been young once, a girl named Rosl Feldmann, with dreams and fears and a future. But that future was far behind her now.
Every once in a while, Grandma showed him her albums of faded black-and-white photographs, but he only glanced at them. There was, however, one picture he remembered quite vividly, the reproduction of an old photograph that he had found in a history book on World War II. It was a grainy, black-and-white picture showing a pile of human bodies, all naked and white, lying in disarray on top of each other. There must have been forty or fifty dead people, Max figured. They looked odd, like twisted puppets. A man in a uniform was standing in front of the pile like a proud hunter, leaning on his rifle. The picture was a snapshot that the officer had sent to his family. There was an inscription, in German, which Grandma had once translated for Max:
“My darling. Kiss the children for me. Love to all. Living the sweet life.”
Max was impatient to get back to his own sweet life. Not just because Grandma’s house was over-the-top weird, but because he knew that in his room, Zabbatini’s magic awaited him.
ALL THAT REMAINS
Rifka Goldenhirsch was buried in a small plot in the Old Jewish Cemetery by the Staronová Synagogue. Moshe was inconsolable, crying throughout the ceremony, and it was so cold that the tears froze on his cheeks. Laibl held him close, and they clung to each other for comfort, though there wasn’t much to be had. And then they said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead:
“May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel. Amen.”
It was all over within a few minutes. The mourners left the cemetery, moving quickly, and Moshe could scarcely hear their feet touching the frozen ground. A few minutes later, when everyone had gone and only Rifka Goldenhirsch was left—alone underneath the cold earth—the Locksmith came, sneaking into the cemetery like a beaten dog. He placed a stone on her grave. He, too, had ice on his cheeks.
After the funeral, they went to Zilberman’s, a kosher restaurant on the Pařížská, known among culinary connoisseurs as “the terror of Prague.” The food was awful and the service awful, and each visit there bordered on masochism. Moshe didn’t mind. He couldn’t eat anyway. Laibl and the others sat around in gloomy silence at an old wooden table. There was nothing to say. A life had ended, the world was poorer for it, and there were no words for that. The room was filled with cigarette smoke, wafting past the yellowing windowpanes. Laibl was drunk. He was drunk most of the time lately. In fact, Moshe was a bit tipsy as well.
The night before the funeral, Laibl had poured Moshe his first shot of schnapps, and the clear liquid had burned Moshe’s throat. But it didn’t seem to bother his father: he drank the schnapps as if it were water. Alcohol had become his constant companion.
Moshe carried the loss of his mother within him like a stone in his heart. The days following her death were a blur. He barely slept, he couldn’t concentrate, and he saw everything around him as if through a veil. It took several months for him to become a little more sociable again. And it was hard work. He played with the other children and pretended to be merry, as if there still was laughter left in this world.
But the earth kept turning. Winter became spring, spring became summer, and then, fall came. Moshe was nine years old. His days were hazy. He got up, ate, brushed his teeth and went to the toilet in the stairwell. He got dressed and met his friends on the street, so they could walk to shul together. He went to the Staronová Synagogue, where his father was the rabbi.
Laibl Goldenhirsch was very proud of the synagogue and its history, considering himself the guardian of a great treasure. The treasure, however, was cold, dark, and crumbling. It had oddly shaped, deep-set windows, and its inside walls were blackened with the soot of thousands of candles. It always smelled funny.
During the day, when Laibl taught, his senses were sharp, and he was even-tempered. But in the evenings, when he took to the bottle, he unleashed his grief and anger over Rifka’s death onto Moshe. When he was drunk, all the injustices in the world would roil up inside him and come thundering down on Moshe, who was helpless before his father’s sudden rages.
Until Rifka’s death, the relationship between father and son had been harmonious, but despair took its toll. Laibl became increasingly unpredictable. At times he was as sweet as honey; at others, he became bitter like maror, the disgusting herbs he and his son had to gulp down during Passover, in commemoration of the hard times the Jews had in ancient Egypt. When Laibl came home from the inn at night, Moshe never knew whether his father would be tearful or angry. Sometimes he took Moshe into his arms; other times, he would beat him. He was usually too drunk to seriously hurt him, but that was beside the point. It wasn’t the pain that hurt Moshe. He felt himself drawing away from his father, a little more with each passing day.
Laibl, too, could feel the increasing distance between them, and it bothered him. His son was the only thing he had left in this world. But the child seemed to him like a ship, drifting off toward the horizon.
One fall afternoon, in a rare display of paternal affection, Moshe’s father took him up the creaking steps into the synagogue’s attic. Moshe stood there waiting, amid the gloom and dust of the centuries.
“This is where Rabbi Löw kept the remains of the golem,” Laibl said.
His eyes were clear, and his breath didn’t smell. He hadn’t been drinking today, not yet.
“The what?” Moshe asked.
Laibl motioned for his son to sit, and he sat down as well on the wooden floor beside him to recount the story of the golem, a mythical homunculus made of clay, created by the famed Rabbi Löw to protect the Jews of Prague. A dumb creature that longed to be human.
“ ‘Your eyes beheld my unformed substance,’ ” Laibl said.
“What?”
“Didn’t you pay attention in my class?” asked Laibl with mock reproach.
“Is that from the Torah?” asked Moshe. It seemed a reasonable guess.
Laibl nodded. It dismayed him that his son showed not the least bit of interest in the mysteries of the Tanakh. The knowledge of the ages dripped off the boy’s thick head like water from a rock. “Psalms 139:16,” he said.
Moshe nodded, and suppressed a yawn. He felt uncomfortable in this dark attic. Outside, the sun was shining. There probably wouldn’t be too many more sunny days this year. He longed to be outdoors with his friends, playing, pretending to be alive.
Laibl got up and walked over to a large, wooden crate, covered with coarse cloth. With a theatrical gesture, he removed the cloth.
It was above all this gesture that would remain imprinted upon Moshe’s memory: the tiny bow his father gave, stretching out his arms to reach for the hemline, straightening his sleeves, then gently yet firmly touching the cloth and pulling it off in one sw
ift motion, the sheet making a sound like thunder, followed by a rising cloud of dust that sparkled in the thin beams of sunlight like a thousand tiny diamonds.
Though Laibl didn’t know it, the memory of this gesture would have a profound and lasting influence over the crooked course of Moshe’s life. With sudden fascination, Moshe looked at the wooden box. Laibl carefully pried it open.
“What do you see?” he asked his son.
Moshe came closer, raised himself up on his toes, and gazed into the darkness inside the crate.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, really?”
Moshe looked once more. In the darkness, he could barely make out a few clay shards at the bottom of the crate.
“ ‘Your eyes beheld my unformed substance,’ ” Laibl said again. “ ‘All my days were written in Your book when as yet there was none of them.’ ” He paused, then added, “They kept the golem in this crate. And these pieces of clay are all that remains.”
Moshe nodded.
Laibl said, “Remember that the Hebrew word for ‘substance’ is galemi.”
Again, Moshe nodded.
“One day, in the year 5340, Rabbi Löw and two of his assistants went to the bank of the Vltava River. In those days, rabbis were paid better and could afford help. At the river, the three of them measured out a man. They drew his face in the wet earth, his arms and legs. And then Rabbi Löw circled the Golem seven times, and when he was done, the shape lit up as red as fire. A vapor arose, and the golem grew hair, and a beard, and fingernails.”
Laibl took his son’s hand in his. With a dreamy look on his face, he said, “ ‘And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.’ ”
Moshe stared at him with fascination.
Laibl smiled and said, “And the Golem opened his eyes and peered out in amazement.” He cleared his throat.
Moshe leaned against the box, lifted himself up on his toes one more time, and looked inside again, this time much longer.
“Now what do you see?” asked Laibl.
“Everything,” said Moshe.
ETERNAL LOVE
Max carefully opened the garage door and peered into the darkness. This was where his parents kept all their old, discarded stuff. When he was five years old, he had stumbled upon a lizard in here. The encounter had been as troubling for the lizard as it had been for Max, but Max couldn’t have known that. The lizard was perched on a broken mirror, a creature from the age of dinosaurs, staring at Max. The two looked into each other’s eyes, like gunfighters in a Western movie, and then the lizard turned around and scrambled away. Ever since then, the garage had been a place of dark mystery to Max. It frightened him a little bit, but like all things mysterious, it also exuded a certain fascination. The furniture in the corners was covered with white sheets. The place was full of boxes, containing God knows what. The garage called out to him, challenged him to unearth its secrets. With death-defying daring, Max took a step inside. He had to find it.
That morning, Max had shown his mom the record: “This is Dad’s,” he explained. “I found it when he moved out.”
Mom seemed unimpressed by that momentous revelation. “So?” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray.
“This—was—Dad’s—record!” Max emphasized every word, as if explaining the world to an idiot. Ever since Dad moved out, Mom had changed, and not for the better. She was either rushing around the house, feverishly cleaning, or simply sitting there staring at nothing. Both displeased Max, and he was determined to do something about the current state of things.
To accomplish that, he needed an archaic device that his parents called a “record player.” Mom had told him that it was probably in the garage, behind Grandma’s old sofa. Although he didn’t find it there, at least he didn’t stumble upon any more members of the animal kingdom. Still, he was nervous. Rummaging through several boxes, he found many interesting treasures: broken picture frames, old action figures, ashtrays, yellowing papers. Relics of family life. A small sliver of sunlight fell through the crack above the garage door as Max continued his quest. Nothing could deter him, not even his fear of lizards. He looked into every box and crawled under every piece of furniture.
Then he found it. In an old cardboard box with the words BOX BROS written on it, buried under blouses and—gross!—several of Mom’s old bras. The record player was a large, bulky thing, with a round surface right in the middle, and something that looked like a thin robot-arm. A silver sliver by the side read DYNAVOX DL-420.
Max carefully carried the record player into the house and set it on the kitchen counter.
His mom seemed surprised. “Look at that old thing,” she said. Her voice had an odd quality to it that he couldn’t quite define. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves that went up to her elbows, and an apron. She had been cleaning all day, vigorously scrubbing every surface. It was as if she was trying to get rid of a bad smell. She threw her sponge into a bucket filled with soapy water. Then she cautiously approached the record player. “Your father and I used to listen to music on that,” she said.
Max was annoyed. Lately, she had started to call Dad “your father.” It made him a stranger.
Mom helped Max dust off the record player. She asked him if this was what he wanted for his eleventh birthday, which was coming up in two weeks.
“No way!” Max insisted. “I want a real gift.”
The record player had a switch to turn it on, and a knob to adjust volume. It was hard to believe people ever used anything like this. He carried it into his room. He wanted to be alone during the crucial phase of the experiment.
His mom looked on with some bemusement. Then she turned, got the sponge from the bucket, and threw herself frantically into the housework with renewed vigor.
At last, everything was prepared. Max had closed the door to his room, taken the record out of his closet, and drawn the curtains. He plugged the player in and turned it on. Then he carefully took the record from its sleeve and put it on the player. The turntable was spinning. So far, so good. Very carefully, he sat the needle down on the record. He heard a crackling noise. And suddenly, Zabbatini’s voice filled the room. The man spoke with a thick accent that Max couldn’t place. He sounded a little bit like his grandma and a little bit like Dracula from one of the old movies.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Here speaks to you the Great Zabbatini. . . .”
It worked! Max felt like an explorer encountering an exotic civilization. “On this record you will find very powerful magic to make better your life, or your money back.” Max closed his eyes. “My magic can everything make,” Zabbatini continued. “Is it money that you want? Strongness of the body? Or the mind? Happiness? Or eternal love?”
At that point, Max opened his eyes again. Zabbatini said the word love with a long, drawn-out o. It sounded like “eternaaal loooove.”
Max became impatient. He consulted the record sleeve to find out where the love spell was supposed to be. It was the last one. All right. Max raised the needle and carefully put it back down, more toward the end of the record. Zabbatini was talking about some other spell, but finally, Max heard:
“The next magic is maybe the mightiest magic in the big world, yes? Is love magic.”
It wasn’t easy to make out what the Great Zabbatini was saying. As the man rambled on, his accent seemed to become thicker, his grasp of the finer points of the English language ever more tenuous. But this much was clear: The spell was designed to make someone fall in love with you. “With this magic,” Zabbatini explained, “two people will become forever more closer together.”
If the spell worked, Dad would move back in, Mom would finally stop her infernal cleaning, and the divorce would be called off. Everything would be cool again. Max had to listen carefully—he didn’t want to miss anything. No easy feat, given the magician’s accent. Max learn
ed that for the spell to work, he would need a candle, which he hadn’t been aware of. All right. No problem. He stopped the record and hurried off to the kitchen.
Mom was standing in front of the fridge, pondering what to do with the brussels sprouts she had so carelessly bought.
“They were on sale at Ralphs,” she said. “You like them, don’t you?”
Max shrugged. When he was small, he had tasted the stuff once, and immediately felt like puking. No, he didn’t particularly like brussels sprouts. It occurred to him that other moms seemed to know what their children liked. Sometimes he felt like a stranger in this house.
“I need a candle,” he said.
“What for?”
“Nothing.”
He hunted through the cabinets until he found an IKEA tea light and some matches. Then he rushed off to his room. Hopefully, Dad would be back home soon, and that would be the end of brussels sprouts.
“Be careful!” Mom called. “Don’t burn anything.”
Max banged the door shut and set the tea candle on his desk next to the record player. After lighting the candle, he turned the record player back on.
“And now,” the Great Zabbatini boomed, “comes the spell. The spell of eternaaaaal loooooove!”
Max listened attentively. Maybe he should take notes, like in school? He fished around in his desk until he found a notepad and a ballpoint pen.
“The spell of eternaaaaal loooooove!” Zabbatini reiterated.
Max held the pen in his hand. He was ready. The candle was flickering. Hardly any daylight penetrated the drawn curtains. Even Bruno the Bunny, who was nibbling on a carrot in his cage on the other side of the room, seemed to listen up. His ears were perky.
“The spell of eternaaaaal loooooove!”
Yes, Max thought. I know. Got it. Moving on.
“The spell of eternaaaaal loooooove!”
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