“I can bring her to you,” the Golem says with a nauseating grin, redolent of steeping fever and the moist haze of general infection. His face looks fibrous and drawn, in places the skin is white and dead like a webbed membrane over his flushed cheeks and forehead.
Griepentrog also smiles, a slow, vertiginous, infectious smile, that spreads from his lips across the room to crease Pracke’s and Kipe’s features as well, dreams coming true again like a golden boy can do no wrong. They are all smiling and their smiles get broader and broader and he flushes redder and redder as he explains his plan, and Griepentrog leans forward, his eyes on the Golem as he doodles a string of elegant loops of ink from a gold fountain pen, his smile still stretching, chiming into the room and coloring it deeper and deeper shades of orange. And as the Golem leaves, they watch his loping back through the closing door and glance at each other, smiling and nodding with an unspoken air of accomplishment, as if to say, “We finally brought him around.” The door shuts silently on their smiling nodding faces, and the secretaries sit and type without looking up as he passes.
As the Golem heads for the door, he engraves in his memory the image of Griepentrog’s smiling smiling nodding face, thinking all the time about the cars, the hounding, the chasing, the hectoring, of Christine, how far she ran to escape them—they are capable of doing anything to her, to learn what she knows, or will know.
He carries a sample of the Divinity Student’s tainted saliva in a gelatin envelope beneath his tongue. Pausing only for a moment, he lifts the ceramic lid of the water cooler by the door to the office and spits, dextrously squashing the gelatin bubble and ejecting its contents. (The envelope seals again the moment the pressure of the tongue is lifted: a skillful practitioner need never worry about self-contamination). The clear dollop of saliva dissolves instantly, infusing the entire volume of water in the tank.
Magellan’s secretary has the habit of eavesdropping on her employer, she is enterprising, she from time to time reads more of his documents than she is strictly speaking permitted to. She works at home, in her free time, and after a number of failed secret experiments, she mixes a preparation of paste, clear glue, pectin, and chemically very pure, very expensive wax in her bathtub. Stirred in hot water, the preparation gradually settles to the bottom of the tub; she skims the water into the sink with a bread pan.
Careful not to disturb it, she reaches down and feels the warm, doughy wax with the palm of her hand. Satisfied with its consistency, she seals the room, leaving only a small aperture, outfitted with a filter, in the window. Now, she lies on the floor, on her back, immediately alongside the tub, and recites from memory until she falls asleep. After her eyes have closed, and her breath has become shallow and slow, her voice continues to sound . . .
When she rises from the floor the next morning, her wax double rises from the bottom of the tub. Miss Woodwind stands facing her double, which reproduces her in every particular, down to the buttons on her blouse and the threads that fix them there. Studying the pale, white-yellow eyes, whose irises and pupils are delineated by fine grooves, she opens her mouth; the double does the same, opening a colorless mouth filled with facsimile teeth and tongue. After a thorough investigation, Miss Woodwind leads her obliging double through the door and conducts her to her bed. The double stretches herself out on top of the covers. Without pausing to look again, Miss Woodwind snatches up a few of her things, and is gone.
And now with eyes everywhere the Golem is biding his time, waiting until he can get away unobserved—wouldn’t want to give away any trade secrets. After a few days, he’s picked up again. Initially too busy trying to disengage himself from the car he doesn’t notice at first that that they are not parked in front of police headquarters. Pracke and Kipe spent the brief trip coughing and making liquid sounds in their throats, and now they assist the Golem through the glass doors of a small private hospital.
Prefect Griepentrog is on the sixth floor, lying in a small bed, hemmed in on all sides by a white linen curtain hanging from a track in the ceiling. A lurid green has crept into his pink complexion, and his oleaginous golden eyes have sprouted crystallized droplets of amber at the corners. His breathing is wet and labored, filtering through curtains of mucus in his lungs and throat. He lies propped up in his bed, hair graying against the stark white pillows and sheets, his hands lying flaccid and hot in his lap, his throat protruding, like warm ruddy parchment, from the collar of his white gown. Kipe approaches, whispers something through a handkerchief (to prevent further infection), and the Prefect turns his wasted gaze, now diffused and colorless, on the party. The Golem stands at the foot of his bed, leaning on the metal frame. He eyes the Prefect with a dire, exhausted look, as though he were about to collapse into a heap of dusty fragments.
Griepentrog opens his mouth, triggering an attack of convulsive coughing, eyes screwed shut, squeezing out thick orange tears. Pracke hands him a cup of water.
The Prefect tries to speak, his chest heaving. He rolls his head on the pillow and strains his wan face—“ . . . you . . . ” he says, feebly waving a finger toward the foot of the bed, “ . . . water . . . ”
Kipe hands him a cup of water. The Prefect knocks it aside, spilling it on the floor, and jerks forward shaking, lips writhing, glaring hatefully at the Golem.
The Golem bends down over Griepentrog’s face. With an expression of exaggerated sympathy he makes a glistening funnel of his lips “sshhhh . . . ” a gush of cesspool breath—Griepentrog hacks and gags, reeling over to the opposite side of the bed, greenish-black filth and gobs of tissue welling from between his clenched teeth. The nurse dashes in round the curtain and insists that they leave, holding Griepentrog’s head in her hands as he noisily fouls her uniform. As he turns to go, the Golem’s back straightens, the feeble act drops away.
THE UNDERWORLD
Having found his time, the Golem picks his way through the graves—under the bones, under the stones and the caskets, in deep ruts between the plots. Weathered old groundskeepers trickle dust from their footsteps along the ruts, nodding over him as he passes, moving their cold hands weakly from their pockets, into the grass, by the trees. Pickled old men with thousand-year voices wandering on dwindling pathways, in the tombs, on the stones, their frail gramophone voices eddy in stone corners in cobwebs, broken glass of boarded-up tombs, gingerly creaking iron gates rusting off their hinges, cobwebs of rust and water trailing smeared powder of flowers, dried and crumbled, streaking the slabs, running in cracks. The Golem finds his way in sunken paths worn down by mourners’ feet, stopping at a stone scroll half-collapsed into the rank grass. Miles away the Divinity Student nods, the Golem pulls the scroll aside, exposing a withered coffin on a bed of dried heather and woven round with white hawthorn. The Golem pulls the coffin open, the nails give way in softened wood, and inside the body is already falling away—inside the coffin he can see water dashing miles away, a quivering streak of reflected light at enormous distance, nearly lost to sight. The cadaver, dressed in its sentimental best, fragile and light as a dried cornhusk, has already vanished down a spiral flight of stairs, moving at unnatural speed owing to the greatly favorable ratio between its weight and its size. The almost silent brushing of its feet on the steps is vanishing without echoing, is already almost inaudible. The Golem drops his head dubiously into the coffin and sniffs—the air is invitingly moist and cold, scented with dust and mothballs and fossilized flowers, perfectly unique, flawless scent.
The Golem raises his braced leg and lunges forward—it clatters down on a metal landing that bobs precariously under him. With care, he brings his other foot down and begins to descend, holding the rim of the coffin, releasing clouds of pollen and pulverized heather. The darkness closes around him and he goes down slowly, the stairs coiling and uncoiling as he shifts his weight from one step to the next, swinging a little, the Golem feels weak old metal straining through his hands—the light from above is already far away, obscured by the stairs. Then, it’s gone forever. The shaf
t is dark and silent. The earth presses in on all sides and there is no stairway, no river. The earth presses in and crushes him, fills his mouth and eyes, his ears, cold and silent. The Golem flexes in space, murmuring, and the Golem reaches and finds the railing, descends, feeling the steps surely under his feet, listening to the sound of the water coming closer. Nearby the cadaver rattles in its throat—no matter what, the dead always laugh.
Then the Golem takes a step and lunges forward into space, there being no stair there for his foot. He holds onto the rail and lunges backward even as rough, papery fingers claw at his hands. He says, “Get away!” and the hands pull back, behind them a dry rattle in the dark air, then nothing. He gets his feet back above the amputated step and stands there thinking. He can hear the water beneath him, a huge volume of water making no more sound than a hollow, tinkling chuckle where the current wrinkles along the banks of the channel. There is no light anywhere, the water is blackest of all. The Golem leans forward and peers down anyway, feeling only the finest brush of spray on his face. He thinks, resolves himself, and tips himself forward—the stairs snap back upward like a released spring, and the Golem drops straight down into the water, plunging down through the surface into biting cold, tortured blackness of uncontrolled spins in speeding current in water black as oil. His body locks, a half-tumbled half-uncurling ball spinning in vast black water under a glowing ceiling of blue-white ice, curtained round in a sheath of tiny shining bubbles that rise slowly and collect in silver-edged blobs against the pack. The Golem, petrified, shoots down the stream forever, curving round on himself in ice water, turning round on himself in ice water, curving round on himself in ice water, turning round on himself in ice water, driven like a stone through chutes of ice water, down channels of ice water, through chutes of ice water, down channels of ice water, turning and staring, turning, slower and slower over infinite time, churned out in underwater froth into an underground lake, infinitely deep, boiling out in underwater froth from a stone channel—he drops in bottomless water, sinking in the cold, where no light is, his brace pulling him down like an anchor. Finally, the water becomes crushingly heavy, he stops sinking and floats in place, his flesh turning to water, still water in his flesh.
After a time he is aware that he is moving laterally on a weak current. After a time he feels himself bump up against something, an unyielding vertical surface. The current holds him there, eventually pressing him face-to-face with it, something like a stone pylon. With effort, the Golem reaches out to his arms and legs. He has to call them over and over until they come. Blindly fumbling over the surface of the pylon, he finds it is roughly made, covered with protrusions. He finally manages to take one in his hand, find another with his foot, and he begins climbing. Passing in and out of consciousness, he draws himself in the direction he hopes is up. As time goes by, the water seems to become less heavy, he begins to feel the weight of his brace, he begins to feel his own buoyancy. He climbs. Over time, he gradually begins to see his hands in front of him, he can make out a faint radiance, but no surface as yet. He climbs with his neck craned back. Like a man half-asleep he begins to see a surface far away. He climbs, and he can make out a thin line running across the surface, one that will intersect with his column. He can dimly make out other pylons in the water, miles off in either direction.
Then in a moment his head breaks the surface, which is still, and he freezes, feeling as if his head will burst in thin air. Stunned, he hangs there a moment. Then, he climbs out. The air restores his weight but relieves the pressure of the water. He climbs up, pulling himself over a stone railing onto an elevated road. He falls forward onto his face and lies there, staring beyond exhaustion at the surface of the road.
After a while, the Golem gets up and begins walking. The road stretches off in either direction in an endless series of bounding arches, from pylon to pylon, only a few yards beneath the roof of the vault. The water stretches off into a misty, horizonless distance, completely still, not even lapping at the pylons. The Golem walks pointlessly, with his head down, moving in one direction, although the road begins to branch almost immediately, spreading out like a web over the surface of the water as far as he can see.
Suddenly he has bumped into something—looking up he sees a tree growing in a huge clod of earth, sitting by the side of the road. A man is hanging from the tree; this is what he bumped into. Looking more closely, the Golem can see that the rope that hangs the man is not suspended from the branches, but extends up past the top of the tree to vanish into the vault’s ceiling. Looking more closely, the Golem can see that the hanged man is the Golem—he is upside down. The Golem stares into the Golem’s face, slack but not discolored, for a long time. Then, he reaches into his mouth and pulls a little on the end of his tongue. The stitches that hold it there writhe out of their holes and the tongue comes loose in his hand. The Golem gently turns the tongue over and slides it into the Golem’s gaping mouth, caked with dried blood, showing a stump where his tongue had been. The sutures in the Golem’s tongue bore into the stump and cinch the new tongue firm . . . the Golem kneels, and places his ear to the Golem’s mouth. The lips move against his ear—the tongue tells him which way to go, where to look, then falls silent. The Golem retrieves his tongue and puts it back in his own mouth; it tastes of bitter blood and rusty shears. The Golem wanted to cut the Golem down, but the Golem had told him simply to leave, and he does. When he looked back several hours later, he couldn’t see the tree, the rope, or the Golem.
When the vault opens out in all directions, the Golem can see the city spread out on the water, floating on a vast raft of tar-coated pilings. The city is only barely visible, as a complicated three-dimensional constellation of dim lights. Nearby, the road opens out onto a shelf in the cavern wall, which closes in around the road as he approaches, a puncture in a larger bubble in stone, the walls rushing in from out of limitless distance. There is a small railyard laid out on the shelf, lit by tall sodium lights, shadowy, charcoal-colored figures moving in and out among the heavy cars. The road leads into the yard, and then out again the other side—from here, the only way into the city. The Golem comes closer, and the figures seem to withdraw, having lined up a set of empty cars on the tracks. By weaving in and out among the cars and piles of empty crates, the Golem is able to avoid being seen. He walks out onto the center of the platform, crossing behind the line of cars, heading for the darker edge of the shelf. The platform is sheeted with oily steel; his footsteps rap on the steel as he crosses over past the rails. The cars are cable cars, pulled along by heavy chains set in grooves in the steel platform—the chain presumably attached to a winch at each end. As he crosses behind them, the line of cars begins to move, rolling down toward the city.
The Golem suddenly looks down at the groove beneath his feet in time to see the chain snag his leg brace as it slashes by and he is torn from his feet and falls half-turning and flying over the ground—he lands on his arm, his hand held out a little reaching and crushed back against his chest—his head whips on his neck, batters against the steel—his brace still caught he is dragged along with it slicing along the platform and then out over pummeling wooden ties—he is dragged unnoticed behind the cars—they tilt down over a rough concrete ramp with steps cut into it and the Golem is pulled down behind them and into the water at the bottom, he cannot lose consciousness—in the shock of the water he feels himself nearly twisting free from his caught leg, the weight of the water stretches him, he tries to reach up over his locked knee to the snag in the brace but the force of the water is pushing him back, his arms are shattered and torn open—the cars are yanked out of the water and the Golem is slammed against a concrete embankment, his unbraced left leg trails behind him nearly bent double at the ankle, he still can’t pass out, he can’t come apart, he even has to keep jerking to the right to keep his body from being caught by the other end of the chain going the opposite direction—if he were caught on both chains he’d be ripped in two at once—a steel shelf comes up
and chops at his left hip, he is flipped back and his head slams against the edge, but he is still conscious, the sutures hold, his back is burning with friction against the shelf, the cars turn a corner and again he nearly twists off his braced leg, his whole body ready to come apart but the sutures won’t give way even as the flesh around them tears—he is dragged past a platform and his head snaps back against one of the supports, his left eye clawed by a rivet, and as he is flipped again he sees they are crossing an embankment, the storehouse is up ahead, the cars disconnecting from the chain as they come in, the chain is speeding up as it is less and less encumbered, heading for the huge toothed gear that turns it and the Golem realizes he’ll be shredded by that gear—as he is pulled over a small bump his upper body flips up into a sitting position for a moment and, with his still-working left arm, he seizes his locked brace and holds himself in place, upright, pulling in a frenzy at the brace—the brace yields, unhooks, and he goes tumbling down the embankment to land face-first in thick mud and cold water. He has not lost consciousness.
With pain, he begins to paw at the bank with his left arm, the right floating useless in the water. He paws at the bank for a long time, without thinking, eventually realizes that he’s caught hold of a root. Almost inert, he pulls weakly at it, drawing himself slowly up the bank. His braced leg, wrenched but working, flounders a little in the water and against the bank, finally finding enough leverage to push him forward. By pushing off with his leg and pulling himself with his arm, he is able to drag himself up the bank, holding his head up with increasing pain. Every now and then he stops, dropping his head in the mud. If he could get into the water, he might be able to pull himself along more easily if his leg brace weren’t so heavy. Instead, he struggles along in the mud, occasionally turning his face up to look at the impossibly high bank overhead. He doesn’t know whether he should waste his energy trying to climb it, or keep going along the water’s edge in the hope it will level out further on. He hauls himself up onto a small mound and sees the city lights stretching out in front of him, and up to one side. He can see he’s on the edge of the raft on which the city rests, on a lip of pilings sticking out from beneath. The mud is runoff from the earth heaped on top of the raft. Pivoting on his stomach, he angles his body up the bank and starts climbing—if he loses his footing he could slide right down into the water. His grip fails once, but he turns as he slides and digs his brace into the muck, anchoring himself. Then he hauls himself up over the edge, feeling like he’s passing through a mangle, and comes to rest on top.
The Golum Page 7