It was Pearl with his coffee. He took it from her and drank it quickly. “Will you be all right?” she asked.
“I think so.”
He waited until she left, then took a book from his shelf and set it on his desk. It opened to page thirty-six, and he scowled. He paged back and forth, looking for a passage he remembered.
There it was: “On Making a Man of Clay.” Next to that was a note he had written, an idea he had had about the proper word to inscribe on the man’s forehead. It was as if he had always known he would come to this moment.
But to make a man, a golem as it was called … . How could he possibly think himself worthy? Only God could create life.
But the being would not be precisely a man. It would have the soul of an animal, not a human; it would be missing the light of God.
And he had no other choice. The emperor had forbidden the Jews to take up arms and learn how to defend themselves; it had made them easy targets for the mobs that overran the Quarter from time to time. He could not possibly gather a fighting force in the short time he had, even supposing he could find someone to train them. And the golem, of course, would be useful in protecting the thirty-sixth man, should he ever be found.
He shook his head, trying to drive away his melancholy thoughts. The man would be found, and Rudolf would respect tradition and not enter the Jewish Quarter. Everything would work out for the best.
He sat at his desk and prayed for the rest of the night, hoping to make himself pure for the task ahead of him.
DEE STAYED INSIDE THE NEXT DAY. AS ME HAD FEARED JANE had been terribly worried, and he told her how he and Loew had been imprisoned. He did not mention the demon, though, saying only that they had managed to escape from the castle.
“But the king will still be looking for you,” she said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, sweetling—I’m going to have to go away again. I’ll have to see if Prince Laski will receive me once more.” She sighed, and he brushed her cheek with his hand. “I know how difficult this is for you and the children. Loew has an idea, a way to protect himself from the king. I’m going to visit him tonight.”
All the while they talked he listened for a knock at the door and the sound of the king’s men forcing their way inside. At dusk he said farewell to Jane and set out for the Jewish Quarter, keeping to the shadows, ready to turn back if he saw anyone suspicious. As he went he thought of the psalm Loew had recited: “Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night … .” The night grew darker; he wrapped his cloak around him.
When he reached the square he heard the town hall clock strike nine, and then the faint echo of all the clocks across the city ringing out. Someone stood in front of the town hall holding two lit torches.
It was Loew. He saw Dee and smiled. “You made it after all,” he said. “I was afraid you’d gone to Poland.”
“My curiosity got the better of me,” Dee said. “I could not resist the riddle you posed last night. What is it you have planned?”
Loew handed him one of the torches. “Light is said to drive away demons,” he said. “The Talmud says that carrying a torch at night is as good as having a companion, and moonlight is as good as two men. There will be a full moon tonight.”
They began to walk. He led Dee not to his house but along an unfamiliar cobblestoned street. Houses flickered in the torchlight. Light shone out from some of the windows, the golden glow of hearth-fires. He saw people eating supper, talking, laughing, reading, and he wished he could return to his own home and sit by his own fire with Jane. He had never felt so much of an outsider.
They traveled for a while without speaking. Suddenly Dee smelled a familiar odor in front of him, of water and rich thick mud. A few steps more brought them to the banks of the Moldau. The moon began to rise, as full as Loew had promised; its silver light pooled out across the water.
The lane ended. They walked the last few yards in mud, their shoes sinking as they went. Loew set his torch upright in the sand, and Dee did the same.
“Come,” Loew said. “I’ll need your help. We are going to create a man from the mud.”
A man? Could Loew truly create a man? Some people, Kelley among them, thought that the Philosopher’s Stone could animate a lifeless vessel, but Dee had never heard of anyone who had done it successfully. Did Loew know the secret?
Loew knelt and began to shape the clay. Dee shook off his doubts and bent alongside him.
As they worked the moon rose fully. Its light shone down upon them, illuminating the figure as it slowly took form. Dee shoved his hands into the wet mud and felt it slip between his fingers. It was lifeless, inert. Could it possibly be roused to life?
He molded the curve of a shoulder, the flat plane of a chest, added mud to thicken the muscles of the thigh. To his surprise he saw Loew sculpt a penis and testicles for the thing; he wondered why, since it would never have the opportunity to use them. The only sound as they worked was the quiet slap of the river against the shore. Their torches hissed and went out, but the moon gave enough light to work by.
At one point he saw Loew separate the jaws and put a piece of paper in its mouth. Then he wrote something on its forehead in Hebrew characters. Emet, Dee read. Truth.
Dee sat back and wiped his forehead, realizing as he did so that his face had gone as muddy as his hands. He could see now that one of the thing’s arms was longer than the other; he had not managed to match the one Loew made. He bent back to work, to correct his mistake, but Loew held up his hand.
Loew stood and tried, futilely, to brush the mud from his trousers. “I need you to recite a psalm,” he said. “The one hundred and thirty-ninth. It says—”
“Wait,” Dee said. “We’re not finished, are we? The arms are wrong. And see—the features are misshapen. Look at its mouth and nose and eyes—they’re far coarser than a human’s.”
“We can’t waste any more time,” Loew said. “I don’t know how much longer this will take, and we have to finish before the night ends. To some people, what we do here is witchcraft.”
Dee nodded reluctantly.
“The psalm,” Loew said. “You must say, ‘My body was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, unperfect, and in thy book all my members were written.’ And you must walk in a circle about the body as you recite.”
Dee stood. He suddenly realized how tired he was, how unused he was to hard labor and no sleep. “And what will you do?” he asked.
“I will circle the body as well,” Loew said. “I will speak the shem, the name of God. I will combine the letters into all the permutations there are.”
Dee nodded. He had written the hidden name of God on one of his wax tablets; he remembered now that Loew had been alarmed when he had first seen it. It consisted of the letters Yod Hay Vav Hay—YHVH—though no one was certain exactly where the vowels should be placed or how it was pronounced. Kabbalists combined the letters into all their possible forms—only twelve words, since two of the letters were the same—in order to work their magic.
They began to walk around the body, their feet leaving tracks in the mud as they went. Dee recited the verses he had been given. He could dimly hear Loew speaking words as well, but he could not make them out. After a while he noticed that they were circling counterclockwise, going backwards like the clock in the town square.
He could never remember afterwards how long they had walked. It felt like hours; his legs ached and began to tremble, and his voice grew hoarse. The words he spoke sounded meaningless. Once Loew stumbled, and he hurried forward to support him.
After a while he felt certain that they had failed, that the body would never come to life. He wondered when Loew would realize this, when he would call a halt to his experiment.
The moon began to set. He could no longer see the river, could barely see the body they walked around. The moon glinted on the thing’s face.
The moonligh
t moved over the coarse features. No—the light was not moving at all. The head was turning slowly to one side.
Dee blinked. The face seemed stationary now. Surely he had not seen what he had thought he had seen. His circling turned him away from the body, and when he was facing it again it looked as lifeless as before.
Then the thing opened its eyes. Dee gasped and stood still. Loew pushed him roughly, indicating that he should continue walking; he did not stop chanting as he motioned.
Dee took a step forward, and then another. He was trembling strongly now, and not from tiredness. The thing sat up and studied its hands, turning them back and forth. Its head was cocked to one side as though it was puzzling something out.
“Good,” Loew said. “You may stop now.”
Dee sank gratefully to the ground. The thing seemed to study him. Its irises were not much more than depressions in the clay of the eyes, like thumbprints, but the eyes moved and seemed to see. It was all one color, hair and eyes, tongue and teeth, the muddy color of a riverbank.
The clay man got slowly to its feet. Dee had not realized how tall they had made it; if he were standing it would tower over him, and he was not a small man.
“I should tell you how to return it to clay,” Loew said. “In case something happens to me. First you must take the piece of paper from its mouth.”
“What did you write on the paper?” Dee asked. He could not take his eyes from the thing.
“The name of God, the shem,” Loew said. “Then you must erase the first letter on its forehead, the aleph. When you do this it will simply say met, or ‘dead.’”
Dee nodded.
“We call this a golem,” Loew said. “It has a soul like the souls of animals, but it lacks the light of God.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, he grinned. “I wasn’t sure I could do it. I have never heard of anyone succeeding.”
He sat abruptly near Dee. “I will call him Yossel,” he said. “He will ring the synagogue bells.” He laughed giddily.
Was he delirious? Dee wondered. Or was he simply elated at his success? Dee thought that he could not blame him for either. They had done something incredible here.
“We must go,” Loew said, turning serious. “I will take him home, and he will give us protection from the king’s men. And you will go to Poland.”
His voice had turned cold; it was as if he regretted his earlier giddiness, as if he felt embarrassed at showing such emotion to a man he thought of as an outsider. Still, Dee had heard the laughter, and he could not help but feel more warmly toward him.
“I wish you luck,” Dee said. “Farewell.”
“Farewell,” Loew said.
The golem moved. “Arrr elll,” it said, the words coming from deep within its chest. Its voice sounded like rocks rumbling down a mountain.
Loew turned to it, his face shining in the darkness. “I had hoped you would be able to speak,” he said. “You must say ‘farewell.’”
Dee took his leave. Behind him he could hear the rough voice of the golem and then Loew’s careful enunciation, sounding like the point and counterpoint of prayer.
He made his way through the darkened city. With the moon down the stars looked brighter, more substantial. For a moment he saw them as an exhibit in the Cabinet of Curiosities, the emperor’s astonishments, spread out across the table of the sky.
He shook his head. He was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life. More tired than when he had spent eighteen hours a day studying at Cambridge. It was only the fear of the king’s men that kept him from sleeping in one of the grassy parks, or on one of the benches by the city’s many statues and fountains.
He came to his house and climbed up the stairs to the bedroom he shared with Jane. She stirred when she felt him lie next to her but did not wake. He slept nearly a day and a night, dreamlessly, and when he woke it was almost dawn of the next day.
He stood. Jane looked up at him from the bed. “What on earth did you do?” she asked. “You’re covered with mud.”
He looked down at himself, saw the streaks on his hands and clothes. There was mud on the bed linen as well. “I’ll tell you while I get ready,” he said.
He went outside, pumped water for himself, and carried the bucket to the bedroom. As he undressed and wiped away the traces of the riverbank he told Jane what he and Loew had done together. She looked at him in astonishment when he described how the clay man had sat up and studied its surroundings.
“Be careful,” she said when he had finished.
“I will,” he said. “But I think Rabbi Loew is trustworthy, at least—he won’t play me false, as Kelley did.”
“No,” she said. “I think you’re right about him.”
Her agreement warmed him; he had confidence in her level-headed judgment. For the rest of the morning they packed together for his journey, then he kissed her and said goodbye to the children, and left for Poland.
PEARL WAS WAITING UP FOR LOEW WHEN HE CAME HOME: SHE had warned him that she would not be able to sleep. Her eyes widened when she saw the dark shadow behind him, and she backed away as it followed him into the house.
“What—what is that?” she asked.
“A golem,” Loew said. She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes flickering nervously between the two of them, and he added quickly, “It will protect us from the king.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“No, not at all. It obeys my every command. Yossel, sit over there.” The golem bent itself awkwardly into the chair Loew had indicated. “You see?”
The fear began to leave her eyes. “Yossel?” she said, almost smiling.
“Yes, well, it needed a name.”
“Where will it stay?”
“I thought in Bezalel’s old room.”
“And you’re certain it’s harmless?”
“Completely.”
She studied the golem a while. “What a thing,” she said softly. “What a thing to have created. You still amaze me, Judah. Could you make it stand up again? I think it might break that chair.”
Loew smiled and told it to stand, and the golem did as he asked.
Over the next few days he spent all his free time with the golem. He hurried through the rest of his duties—teaching, counseling, leading prayers—eager to get back to his son’s old room, to learn more about Yossel, and to teach it.
Yossel learned quickly. Loew taught it words by pointing to things; the golem remembered almost everything and in a very short time they were able to have simple conversations. He found chores for it around the house, and, as he had promised, he had it ring the synagogue bells.
One day Loew took down a book and opened it. “What is in that box?” Yossel asked. Its voice was deep and slurred, but Loew had come to understand most of what it said.
“This? This is not a box.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s a book. You read from it.” He looked down and noticed with annoyance that he had turned to page thirty-six.
“I read from it?”
“What? Oh, I see. No, not you. I read from it, I and other learned men. See these marks here? They are words—they tell me things.”
Yossel moved closer and peered at the upside-down book. “They look like fire,” he said.
Loew glanced at the golem, suddenly uneasy. Jewish mystics had compared the sinuous Hebrew letters to fire before; some said that the Torah had been written before the creation of the world, in tongues of black fire on a page of white fire.
“I would like to learn to read,” Yossel said. “I would like the fire to tell me things too.”
Loew’s uneasiness grew. The golem had never asked for anything before; he had thought it would do as it was told, without desires of its own. “No, that’s not possible,” he said.
“Why not?”
“No more questions,” Loew said sharply. “Come outside with me—I need you to chop some wood.”
“What is chop?” the golem asked. “What is wood?”
IN POLAND PRINCE LASKI RECEIVED DEE COLDLY. HE COULD not understand why Dee had left with no explanation, he said, and he pointed out acidly that he had still not been made king, that King Stephen Báthory continued to sit firmly on the throne of Poland and Hungary.
Dee did not know what to say. Kelley had been the one to predict the kingship for Laski, and Kelley, Dee now knew, had played him false. But when he admitted that Kelley had made mistakes, that, for example, Sir Henry Sidney had not died when Kelley had said he would, Laski grew colder still.
Laski gave him a small room in his manor house, a room that Dee suspected had once been used for servants. It took five steps to cross its width and six for the length; he knew this because he spent a good deal of his time pacing. The room held a bed and a chest and nothing else, and despite the fact that it was April a cold wind forced its way through the walls.
He asked for a desk and a chair, but Laski put him off with vague promises. While he waited, he studied obscure books in Laski’s library. The library was dark and gloomy and smelled of old wood; there were no windows, almost as if Laski had not wanted anyone to visit. If so he had gotten his wish; dust lay like fur on the books and shelves and piled up in the corners. One day the candle he had taken from his room burned down while he was reading, plunging him into darkness. He formed a small glow-light, enough to help him find his way from the room, and then went to beg for candles from the servants.
He spent days in the library, running his candle along the spines of the books, sometimes seeing the flame reflected in the shine of a leather book or an incised gold title. Finally he came upon something that looked interesting, a Latin treatise on astrology. The book was nearly two feet high, and heavy, but he managed to carry it to the table and open it. Almost immediately he found a passage about thresholds and doorways to other worlds.
“In some years,” the book said, “the other worlds lie closer to our own, and it is possible to walk from one to another as easily as one might walk through the doorway of one’s own house. Yet there is great danger here, for the spirits can venture into our world as well. And there is another danger, for we have evidence that learned men in previous Threshold Years have managed to return the spirits to their own realms, and in doing so have had to shut the door and secure it strongly, with the result that the spirits, both good and ill, were not able to find their way to our world for years, if not centuries. And there is also evidence that the next time the worlds move closer to each other it will be the last, that if the door closes it will close for the last time, that the spirits will come no more to our realm. And the stars say that this will happen in the year 1586.”
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