by Judith Field
As they entered a long, well-lit locker room, Shelman called, “Vasily!” and waved the object of his shout toward them. As the man walked from the dim blistering space into the relatively cool room, Sergei was unsurprised to see it was Konetko coming toward them. In the bright light, Konetko looked even stronger than he had at the foundry’s entrance, slabs and cables of muscle moving together in the shape of a man. Konetko was not clumsy, though; he lacked the innate grace of a dancer, but Sergei figured Konetko had played sports—probably wrestling, Sergei decided—as a young man, and done well.
The muscular Belarussian stopped, and nodded at Sergei. “He’ll be the new driver?”
“That depends on him,” Shelman said. “Better show him what he’ll be driving.”
Konetko rubbed his chin for a moment, looking from Sergei to Shelman and back, and seemed to come to a decision. “Come on, then,” he said with a shrug, “and let’s see what you’re ready for.” He turned and walked back the way he came, Sergei and Shelman following a couple of steps behind.
The one-time master dancer carefully walked down a short flight of steps, and followed Konetko to a building within the main building, a severe block of steel that had, for some reason, an enormous rolling door at the opposite end, large enough to handle a pair of trucks and maybe a motorcycle between them. Konetko paused at the door closest to him and withdrew a ring of iron keys from his pocket, choosing a single slender brass key and opening the door onto a dim darkness. He paused halfway inside the doorway and turned to Sergei.
“Do not worry about what you see,” Konetko said. “They are inert until activated, and even then, only move when driven or verbally commanded by Rabbi Shelman, who has taken great care to make them so.”
“Rabbi?” Sergei said, turning to face Shelman. The square man nodded, his face flushed in the sweltering dimness.
Konetko flipped a heavy switch, turning on a bank of actinic white lights overhead. Beneath the lights, arranged in a short block of rows, stood about a dozen giant statues, roughly human-shaped but far larger; Sergei estimated that each stood about nine feet tall. There was little external detail to the statues, except for what looked like handles in the center of each torso, and strangely elongated faces on the stumpy heads, which sprung directly from the shoulders. Each statue did have well-articulated hands, arms and legs, though, which further mystified Sergei.
“Vasily, do we have any that Mr. Androv will fit without redoing the cage?” Shelman asked.
“Two on the far end, the ones Jacov and I usually use,” Konetko replied.
“Good,” Shelman said. He gestured for Sergei to wait, and walked to the end of the block, where Konetko had wheeled a small stepladder to the statue at the very end. Shelman quickly climbed the stepladder, took a slip of parchment from his pocket, and opened a compartment Sergei hadn’t noticed on the statue’s forehead, marked with a letter Sergei knew was Hebrew but didn’t recognize. The rabbi slipped the parchment inside, closed the compartment with a pat, and climbed down the ladder.
“Do you happen to know any Hebrew, Mr. Androv?” Shelman asked as he walked back toward Sergei.
“One or two words only,” Sergei said.
“Time to learn some more, then,” Shelman said. He turned back to the statue and shouted something in Hebrew.
The statue Shelman put the parchment inside seemed to vibrate for a second, as if it were stiff, and then took a step forward, its foot landing on the depot floor with a thump that shook Sergei. His mouth fell open, but he didn’t move otherwise, the evidence of his eyes stunning him into silence. The statue took another step, and another, steadily moving toward the side of the depot.
Shelman shouted another command, waving his arm in a “come here” gesture. In response, the statue turned and began walking straight toward the rabbi and Sergei. When it was three steps away, Shelman shouted a third command, and the statue stopped in its tracks and stood before the two men, impassive and utterly still. Sergei felt no sense of life or animation in it, but he knew his eyes had not tricked him in watching it, nor his ears in hearing or the soles of his feet in sensing the rumble of its movement.
He turned to Shelman, not trying to hide the shock in his face or the trace of fear in his eyes. “Rabbi, this…this statue is a golem, correct?”
“All of these statues are golems, Mr. Androv,” Shelman said, and patted his shoulder. “If I haven’t scared you off, you’re going to be our new golem driver.”
Sergei looked up at the statue, then at the muscular foreman and the foundry owner. If it was a joke, he decided, he would play along, and if it wasn’t…well, then, something new was about to enter his life. To his surprise, he felt a spark of excitement, something he’d almost forgotten, run through him. He had no idea how he was to proceed, and it felt new, energizing. “Where do I begin?”
¤
The first days of his training at Shelman’s foundry were both new and familiar to Sergei. He’d been a dancer virtually all his life, training from early childhood at a succession of academies and preparatory schools, so while hard work and discipline were old friends, work that didn’t involve dancing wasn’t. He spent hours learning the operations of the foundry, the terminology of steel, and the steps that took coal and ore and heat and transmuted them into steel and iron and the metal products that build worlds. When his head was stuffed full of concepts and terms, they took him to his training golem and began the long process of fitting him to his suit.
“Every golem can have a suit plugged into it,” Konetko told him as the first leather sleeves were fitted around his limbs, “but the suit itself has to be molded to you. It took us a while to figure that out. There were injuries.”
Sergei nodded. He understood the risk, and the toll. Moreover, after his first fitting, he could see where the early problems were. The suit of a golem driver was a series of leather and thin metal sleevings that covered the limbs, torso and the top half of the driver’s head. Each sleeve was connected to a flexible plate, and once placed inside the golem, the plate would make contact with a series of springs and gears. In this way, the driver’s movement was transmitted to the golem. Early versions, Konetko told Sergei, were loose and very flexible. However, if the sleeves slipped, a driver could easily find himself in contact with the machinery within, bruising and shredding skin and muscle. Shelman developed a more rigid structure for the sleeves, and injuries from machinery became rare.
“What about heat?” Sergei asked.
“The golems are good insulators,” Konetko said. “Not much gets through, but just working in there gets hot, so we put a water system in each one.”
“I thought golems were made of clay,” Sergei said.
“Rabbi Shelman glazes them, inside and out,” Konetko said. “Very waterproof.”
Konetko’s lack of concern comforted Sergei. Not only did Konetko put his own life on the line trusting in the suits and the golems, he seemed to think Sergei would pick it up without coddling. Maybe it was just giving him enough rope to hang himself, Sergei thought after his training ended, but it renewed a confidence he hadn’t known he’d lost. Now, after the theory and the fittings, he was ready to take his first steps as a golem driver. Or so he thought.
“Relax, Sergei,” Shelman told him as he walked across the locker room floor in his suit, testing it for range of motion and comfort. “I’d rather take a few days extra to get you trained up than let you out on the floor too soon and hurt yourself or someone else. Clay is cheap, and there’s plenty of work, even now.”
“I understand,” Sergei said, smothering the twinge of disappointment in his chest. Shelman was wise, Sergei knew, to insist on training and safety; it made for better work and better profit in the long run, and only a fool could miss it. Still, he’d been a cripple for so long, and while he would never be a dancer again, he finally began to believe there was work for him in movement, work that could sustain him. Waiting, even for another day when it was nearly upon him, hurt. But Sergei kn
ew pain, and he also knew how to withstand it. Another day, and it would be gone.
¤
Konetko hit the lights, filling the locker room with glassy brightness and the monotonous hum of the long tube lights overhead. He and Sergei were the first ones to arrive for the morning shift, first of the day and ready to begin. His body language was calm, but Sergei felt an anxiety in his gut he hadn’t felt for years. Today, he would start anew, not just as a steelworker, but as a figure from myth. Today he was a golem driver.
“Hard work today,” Konetko said, the tectonic rumble of his voice cutting through the hum. “Everything you were taught, you relearn, and more. Will your knee hold?”
“Don’t expect me to dance,” Sergei said.
Konetko laughed. “Maybe a jig, if you get through the day.”
Sergei frowned. “A jig? What kind of dance is that?”
“The Irish dance it,” Konetko said. “I’ve seen it done on bars, on doors held up by two men, on tabletops. It’s not as complicated as ballet, but you do it fast, it’s something to see. I can do it a little.”
“Maybe you should show me,” Sergei said, smiling.
“I will make you a deal. You get through the week, not just today, as a golem driver, and I will teach you what I know of the jig,” Konetko said. “I’m not kidding; driving the golem is very tough. You’re strong, but I don’t know if your leg can take it.”
“Let’s find out,” Sergei said. He stood up slowly, the lower half of his driver suit jingling and clinking as he stood, and pulled the top of the suit over his shoulders, buckling the thick straps across the broad expanse of his muscular chest. Within a minute he was fully suited, and he and Konetko walked toward the rolling door at the end of the locker room, where their golems awaited. Hooked ladders were attached to each golem, hanging down like phallic parodies. Sergei suppressed a grin as he imagined what they looked like from the vantage point of the far end of the room, and ascended into the open cavity of the golem.
“First?” Konetko called from the other golem.
“The Word,” Sergei replied, already climbing to the head of the clay statue, a piece of paper in his hand. As he had seen Shelman do that first day, he opened the small compartment built into the golem’s forehead and slipped the paper, which had the word “אמת” scrawled on it in Shelman’s rangy hand, into the drawer. Under his hands and feet, the clay began to hum, as if the buzzing of the fluorescents had leaked down into the golem and spread throughout its molecules. Sergei lowered himself to the edge of the cavity, shifted his grip to the handholds built into the top edge of the entrance, and gracefully pivoted his body into place, his legs sliding easily into the tops of the golem’s legs. He shifted his weight and checked the connections, making sure everything was locked into place as he’d been trained.
“Next?” Konetko said.
“The Prayer,” Sergei said. He didn’t see exactly why Shelman called it that, since there wasn’t any address to God in it. His factory, his rules, Sergei decided, and that was good enough. Shelman had given Sergei a copy of what to say, rendered in phonetic English, but Sergei’s memory was excellent, and he’d practiced the harsh Hebrew consonants and liquid vowels of the lines until the words flowed smoothly from his lips:
Your will is mine
Your strength is mine
Your movements are mine
We are one
Until released
“Eh, good enough,” Konetko said, and laughed. “Button up, and don’t forget—”
“—to open the mouth,” Sergei finished. “Got it.” He reached up and pulled a pair of levers, one of which opened the long vertical drawer of the golem’s mouth, the other raising a clear glass shield to protect the operator from sparks and flying metal burrs. Once the shield was in place, he closed the doors to the golem’s trunk and latched them in place. Now, Sergei knew, between the water system inside the golem and the tremendous heat resistance of its body, he was completely protected from burning, as long as he didn’t decide to take a swim in the molten steel vats.
“Can you hear me?” Konetko asked, his voice reflecting clearly through the acoustic tubes into Sergei’s ears. In response, Sergei slid his arms into the golem’s empty limbs, locked the sleevings into place with a few twists, and gave Konetko a thumbs-up, the golem’s hand and arm responding as easily as his own. Konetko nodded, making the entire golem shake up and down in a series of staccato bows.
“Now, the Work,” Sergei said, and shifted his weight. Beneath him, the golem’s legs rocked the body back and forth, balancing on one ponderous foot, then the other. There was a sense of heaviness, of geologic power stored within, but no drag or burden the former dancer could feel. Inside his own golem, Konetko lifted his arm in a sweeping gesture directed at the great rolling door.
“Lead the way,” he said.
Carefully, each step sending rolling vibrations up into his legs, Sergei walked out of the locker room onto the foundry floor. Konetko followed at his shoulder, waiting to see if Sergei remembered where to go. Without hesitating, Sergei strode across open space, heading toward the pour station that Konetko and Shelman assigned him that morning. Eventually, Shelman told Sergei, he would be trained on every station, but pouring was always the first, as it was the simplest in the ironworks.
“The rabbi has a large contract with the Navy,” Konetko said as Sergei reached the molds. “Lots of large pieces, but pretty standard shapes. You’ll be pouring for a while. Ready?”
“Yes,” Sergei said. He felt strong, jittery, just as he did before every one of his performances. Alive.
“OK,” Konetko said. “You’re on the clock.” A piercing whistle blasted throughout the foundry; shift start. Sergei turned to the first mold, awaiting a vat of molten steel for him to pour.
¤
By the end of the first day, Sergei estimated he’d sipped, chugged and guzzled roughly two gallons of water over the course of his shift. As Konetko told him, the glazed golem kept out the punishing heat, but his own exertions generated enough heat that he was hard-pressed to tell the difference, even with the cooling mist sprayed on him regularly. His clothes were stiff from repeated soaking and drying, and his muscles were stiff from the labor of pouring steel, maneuvering the heavy vats and molds to the next stations, and the tension of driving a golem with only his will and body. When the whistle blew at shift end, Sergei stretched his arms and back, deeply satisfied with the day.
Despite 30 minutes of stretching and calisthenics when he got home, and a long shower as hot as he could make it, he still woke up sore, slabs of tightness across his back and thighs, reminding him that this work was new to him. Now, though, Sergei knew what to expect, and had a better idea of how to avoid some of his mistakes of the previous day. Other workers were introduced to him over the next few days—Poles, Irish, blacks—and he added their names and personalities to all of what he needed to work.
The labor was hard, even with the golem’s power, but Sergei drank it all in. Marveling at work he’d never before even dreamed of doing, absorbed in the details and broad strokes of his tasks, the days skipped past him in a glow of sweat and manual labor. He’d finished the last pour of a support beam mold—thin and deep, the beam was almost more of a plate from a certain angle—and was preparing for another when Konetko clapped him on the shoulder as the shift whistle blew and told him it was time for the weekend.
“Weekend?” Sergei said.
“Tomorrow is the Sabbath for Jews,” Konetko replied, “and the rest take Sunday as the Sabbath, so we don’t work either day. Rabbi doesn’t seem to mind; we get enough work done during the week, he says.”
“Good,” Sergei said. “I could use the rest.”
Konetko laughed. “Get changed, and we’ll go have a drink. I have a present for you.”
Sergei nodded, bowing up and down quickly, and headed across the floor, waving to the three other golem drivers as he did and watching around him for careless pedestrians. Nobody had
suffered an accident in Shelman’s ironworks for months, but Sergei didn’t want to be the one to break that streak. He respected the power he held when driving the golem.
After parking the golem in place, deftly unseating his suit from the gears and levers as he did, Sergei opened the front hatch, climbed up onto the cavity and opened the golem’s forehead. He withdrew the scrap of paper within and closed the drawer, feeling the anima hum leave the glazed clay under his hands. Inscribed on the drawer was the Hebrew letter he’d noticed the first day he’d seen the golem: א. Sergei knew now it was aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, traditionally used in raising golems.
“The first,” Sergei said aloud. “Where things start.” He liked the sound of that.
Outside the cavernous ironworks, February showed no sign of releasing its grip, though no new snow had fallen. Despite being on his feet all day, lifting and pushing and moving, Sergei’s knee felt good, so he knew no snow would come for at least a couple of days. Pulling his coat open to let the chill cool him off, Sergei walked four blocks toward the city, and turned down a short bump of stairs. The Red Dog had been a speakeasy just a decade or so prior, but became a workingman’s bar when Prohibition ended, and served mostly steelworkers and Teamsters now. Sergei had never been inside a bar like it.
A blast of warmth, smelling of beer and sweat, met him when he opened the door. He stepped inside and waited a bit for his eyes to adjust, looking around the crowded bar and floor space, stuffed with tables and men talking, laughing, raising a glass to payday. Faces sharpened, and he saw Konetko and a couple of the men from the ironworks at the end of the bar. He walked toward them, skirting around the low-hanging lamps and the splintered tables.