But paralyzed as she is, Miss Woodwind’s hand, resting on her lap, feels the edges of the Golem’s Book through the fabric of her skirt’s left hip pocket. She will disappear before he discovers the theft.
THE CATHEDRAL
Days go by and the Golem does not appear again. He seems to have gone. For Christine, he can only get farther and farther away. She’s been staying in her enormous apartment with many small rooms. The days run by, watery and indistinct—no sign, and an intolerable derailed feeling grows and grows. The city rustles all around her, unmassed human shadows scatter like windblown cinders in the squares and along the streets, and dash against the bobbing foundations of the buildings. A terrible claustrophobia wrings her heart—she is stuck fast. She cannot return to San Veneficio. Given certain terms of her contract she is to wait the sufferance of certain signs, and these continue not to come. If they never do, she will never leave. When the fruit falls from the tree and is severed from its greater life, it isn’t dead or alive: it’s undead and potentially either, food for new flesh or new leaves. No Golem, and Christine fades away without a trace. After the Exodus a Pharaoh can only sit and stare bored and boring his half-empty empire, eventually to dwindle and to petrify into a million obsolete statues, mummies, museum exhibits.
Christine is now poised romantically at the water’s edge—she leans on the railing of the floating dock and sends her thoughts out aimlessly over the tarry water. Gray slate dome dimly lit from below with a wan spectral light to the horizon, the air between water and “sky” is black. Suddenly Miss Woodwind is there, coyly smiling at her from the doorway of a shambolic bait shack whose decrepitude clashes with her stylish coat. She steps to the rail and stands by it.
“Hello, Christine.”
Christine is hardening, her face glows white as paper, her coral mouth and green eyes light up.
“How dare you walk up to me and start a conversation like an old chum—what have you done?!” These last words are uttered nearly silently but they shake Miss Woodwind with stunning violence.
“I have something—”
“How dare you interfere!?” A slap in each word. Fireworks pop and crackle on the pier flash and jerk in the corners by the walls and in the windows of the bait shack.
“Do you want to know or don’t you?” Miss Woodwind replies obstreperously.
“Well?”
“I took it while he lay with his head in my lap—I’ve hidden it in a safe place. I know you want it—I know why you came here—I overheard everything you told Magellan. I’ll give you the Book.”
Christine leans against the rail, all her explosive vehemence gone, smiles a long slow smile. “Is that so?” Now she knows—he can’t pursue her effectively without that Book—that’s why she hasn’t seen him lately.
“That is so,” Miss Woodwind is saying.
“You can’t read his Book, can you? You’ve tried and tried, for weeks now, and now it’s on to plan B.”
Miss Woodwind’s nostrils flare. “I’ll give it to you, if you’ll tell me what it says.”
“What makes you think I can read it?”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
“Well then, what are we here for? He’s after you—if you had the Book—”
“What do I want with a Book I can’t read?”
“What are you playing at? You’re trying to keep away from him, aren’t you?”
“Why whatever gave you that idea?”
“Don’t be silly, without the Book he’s slower, he’s far less likely to catch you—”
“Then shouldn’t you be talking to him?”
“—as I was saying,” Miss Woodwind glares, “he’s less likely to catch you, but he still could—he has all the time in the world, and you’re trapped down here meanwhile—he’s bound to catch up with you sooner or later.”
“I suppose.”
“Translate the Book and we can both get out of here!”
“I’ve already told you, I can’t read it. Only he can read it.”
“Why?”
“Because only he has died and been brought back.”
“I don’t believe you—we could make something out if we tried—”
“Why should I help you?”
“Why should you help me ?! Who stole his Book for you? Who saved you from him twice?”
“I didn’t ask for any favors.”
“You won’t help?”
“Why should I?”
“Are you honestly so stupid?! Or do you have a way out . . . a way out that I don’t know . . . ”
Christine’s smile stretches.
“This has all been set up!” Miss Woodwind stares back at her openmouthed.
“Don’t feel bad—there are many things I didn’t tell Magellan . . . and that I certainly wouldn’t tell you. You came here thinking to profit yourself with some stolen knowledge, you came here on Griepentrog’s behalf, and for the sake of the Seminary. You have interfered in something that was none of your affair, and now in your ignorance you come offering me your worthless deals. I’ve already made a better bargain by far and I have earned what I was promised.”
With a calm blast of rebuking force Christine vanishes as a low, thick, heavy wind is vomited from black air, icy black waves, walls and vaults of frigid stone, invisible horizon.
Christine stands in the cupola of a towering victorian sort of building, railed along the roof with iron spikes which glow with a soft blue flame whenever lightning strikes the ground overhead—they are glowing now. A little wind trickles down from the vault and jabs into her with a shock with the thought of the Golem, whose vision lit her and made her dazzling, and her heart hardens as hard as a diamond brought fresh from the furnace sizzling against the air, the heat has not made it white-hot but clear-hot, so that its clarity burns back—she can see that this world is poised, even after all this time it is still poised in pain, waiting for her act, which can end the story. That is, the world of this story will begin and end with the pitch on one fulcrum, a diamond bullet flaring in her chest, lacing through every part of her a clear-hot stream of starry molten diamond. As the wind rises from across the dull black ridges of the water, she’s ferocious, strong, diamond-hard and clear-scalding, she seems to loom to the roof of the vault.
Stepping into a ravishing white spotlight that carves its circle on the stones of the balcony, Christine shrugs, removes a scintillating feathered cape revealing a pearl white trapeze costume. She poses on the balcony, the light rebounding from her white skin and teeth and shining like a beacon over the city, her ivory arms shoulders and neck emerging from her glistening white costume like lilies from a vase, all invoking the Golem.
Through the vault the great starry heavens are palpable, shrieking down through the stone, and what is howling further beyond that, where the light fails, is coming down somehow in soaring panic. Beyond the city lights the wall of the vault suddenly roars and splits, sending huge chunks of stone down into the water, raising waves to dash against the pilings and scatter them, pound them apart, the fabric of this flimsy, badly realized city crumbling and tearing to shreds. In the growing aperture in the vault wall, Christine can see something huge, like a filigreed stone wedge, plunging down, parting the rock in a big V. From it issues a deafening pounding of bells, through which the ravings of a howling organ intermittently escape. A tall bulb of neatly fitting stone blocks and pierced just above center by a huge circular window of florid, furious colors—Christine rushes back into the cupola and hastily throws on her clothes—running out across the railed roof she sees this stone ram has sprouted two level wings, glittering with stained glass like a coat of mail. As she reaches the door, she witnesses the appearance of spire and the long shaft of the nave, copper medallions green with verdigris at intervals along the ridge of its peaked roof like a spine—when these appear she knows what she is looking at.
Christine flits out onto the street and down the length of a stone pier, wafted almost off her feet by pu
ffs of hot air from slicks of burning oil on the surface of the water. The bells and the shriekings of the organ stop at once. The cathedral has disencumbered itself entirely of the wall and has precipitated itself onto the waves; the churchyard, crypts, and the slab of earth into which graves and apartments were sunk with the foundations, have been borne along with the building, and now form an island bristling with leafless, rook-haunted trees. Their sardonic calls rasp along the cavern walls to reach her. She sees colossal turbines of perfectly smooth-polished black stone attached to the sides of the cathedral like barnacles, and as she observes them, they start up, with a stern low vibration like the orchestra’s trombones—with a noise like slowly splintering wood, the arc lights crackle and ignite, one in each window and two in the spire, spreading their brilliant rays over the water. Softly at first, and as a snowy mist begins to rise from the foundations and spill out in all directions, the bells in the spire beckon to her. Their knells are so light, they sound as if they were being brushed rather than struck.
Christine looks around—finds a heavy iron rail lying jumbled in a pile of old tackle. She pries the pier loose with the rail, the moldering wood crumbles and spreads apart like stale hard cheese. The pier lurches free—Christine stands balanced in the center. The current bears her across the water, the current pulls her into the mist’s clammy folds. Bump—stone steps. Christine climbs and the cathedral door is ajar before her, exhaling a smell of old cloth, leather, dust, wax, varnish. As she steps inside, the statues reach up and snuff the lights, the doors swing shut behind her, and the world outside the walls roars. There is an earsplitting crack and then a tumult of battering stone outside while inside all is silent.
Diamonds sparkling in her hair, she drapes her head in a gleaming white veil. Christine begins to make her way down the aisle toward the altar. About halfway there and she is brought up short by a sound. The Golem appears, mingled with the shadows at the end of the aisle, his joints creaking. They observe each other.
“ . . . Why did you call me? Have you changed your mind?”
His voice, ragged with crippled, valiantly struggling hope, speaks from out of a well of sadness dark and cold; but all the same, she is ready to run should he take a step toward her.
“ . . . I know Miss Woodwind stole your Book from you—and that without it, you couldn’t find me. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.” She can see the glints of his moist eyes, and a rhomb of light across his brow, but the mouth that speaks is invisible in the dark.
“I didn’t think that was fair.”
“Thank you.”
It’s as though they are paralyzed and constrained to speak, although they still must improvise the words. Distant splashes are audible somewhere outside the walls, and another sound whose point of origin is more difficult to place, a whirring that seems to come from overhead, and might be very gradually growing louder.
“ . . . I’m curious—without your Book, how can you go on uh living . . . ? You are a Golem—”
“The writing that keeps me alive is in here,” he prods his abdomen, muffled noise of damp paper crumpling. “The writing in the Book lends me its power, when it’s needed.”
He takes a step forward, and now she can see his face. His calm, measured speech belies the look of anguish this reveals. His features are drawn and seared with exasperation. Christine takes a step backwards.
“Why did you call me here? Are you teasing me?”
“I might be.”
She is too hard to be broken, he is too inexhaustible to be consumed.
He takes another step—she tenses a little, but does not step away.
“Are you testing me?”
“I might be.” She hears another splash outside.
“Our marriage was arranged. If you intended to break the engagement, I don’t think you would run. I don’t think you would have called me.” He takes another step. She tenses a little more, but does not retreat.
“You wanted to know if I would suffer for your sake.” He takes another step—he is now only a couple of yards from her. She leans a little backwards but does not take a step.
“Yes,” she says, a little distracted.
He takes another step toward her—he is now so close she can smell his smell—formaldehyde, freshly turned earth, wet wool.
“If you run again, I will not be able to find you. You should decide now.”
From out of nowhere a tiny white card flutters down in front of Christine’s face—in Miss Woodwind’s sardonic handwriting it says “BEST WISHES ON YOUR WEDDING DAY.” Miss Woodwind stands smiling at the end of the aisle by the door.
“I object,” she says gaily. “The arrangement you mention is a sham. She has no intention of marrying you,” she adds snickering. “She never did.”
The Golem looks sharply at Christine.
“She’s right, isn’t she?”
Christine says nothing. Miss Woodwind snickers again. The echoes of her voice crinkle against the stones.
The whirring sound grows suddenly louder—and now Christine recognizes it: the flapping roar of a fire. In the darkened recess of the apse’s ceiling, above the altar, a gargantuan bell swings down, a metal ring of shade with a massive, swift clapper, and the moment before the clapper strikes the bells above begin to ring, the knells cascading into each other—the bell above the altar strikes with a crash that wrenches the floor dashes prayer books and hymnals from the pew shelves and spins them in flurries like dead leaves. With an awesome hum the bell falls back and the clapper strikes again on the far side, the report blurs the pews, Christine and Miss Woodwind reel and grapple on to the pillars like sailors on the tilting deck of a storm-tossed ship, but the Golem remains braced upright. The mammoth bell bangs again and again, Christine, hanging onto the iron grillwork of one of the side chapels, feels its reverberations through the floor, her hands buzz and her bones stutter together and her ears shriek in chords.
Now the spaces between the chimes lengthen. The protracted vibration of its tones settles into the building. Christine ventures to release the grillwork and stagger out into the aisle again, where the Golem stands unmoved, and Miss Woodwind, nearby, doggedly clutches a pillar behind her back. The long vibrations of the bell have altered the composition of the cathedral’s fabric, making it less opaque. Through the transparent slabs she can see the dead bodies interred beneath the floor, each one clutching a jar of preserves in its hands against the time when their jars will in turn be opened and their sweetness enjoyed by the one who sealed them there. A thunderous crack, like a cannon shot, rocks the floor—a shadow sweeps the cathedral, and when it passes, the statues have all acquired outspread wings of polished cherry wood, from each one new limber branches, drooping with clusters of glistening black cherries, have sprouted.
Color bleaches from the windows of the apse. The glass becomes transparent and clear, and evaporates. The leaded partitions that held the pieces together are the writhing, stiff branches of trees, which lean in through the windows and raise their bare boughs up into the shadows. Trembling sleeves of blonde flame slide down the walls of the apse, and the boughs become engorged, limber, and bristle with metallic black leaves. Black bulbs of flame, clustered like black cherries, dangle down from the shadows of the boughs. The volutes of smoke that billow from them, though dark as pitch, are cool like mist from off the ice, and possess only a weak, resinous odor, like frankincense. This smoke collects beneath the ceiling in a violently disturbed mass—the whirring sound now grows rapidly louder still—the Golem suddenly steps toward the apse, the altar, with a slow but not infirm step, and now the Divinity Student drops from the mass on telescoping metal rods, trailing tendrils of smoke trapped in his clothes. The two pools of smoke clinging to his eye sockets are the last to disperse, their dregs scattered to the surrounding air by the sudden fluttering of his eyelashes.
His body is as withered and wasted as a burnt log, white ashes flick from him and spin down like snowflakes. His face is a lurid whit
e, the skin is tattered, peeling, and laced all over with tiny black splinters. His eyes are filmed with glistening black stuff, like cherry preserves, so that the whites, which are now yellow as cheese, are visible only in patches, and the iris and pupil gleam with a faraway starry, black-red glare. The livid mouth sags a little from obsidian teeth. He is looking at Miss Woodwind, who has released her grip on the pillar.
“Well thief,” he says, his voice crumpled, his tone guttural, low but penetrating, “did you find what you came here to know?”
His manner indicates that he is not expecting, and would not welcome, any answer to his questions.
“Are you satisfied?”
His voice rivets Miss Woodwind to the floor, stops up her mouth, squeezes her whole body in a press. There is more resignation in it than anger.
“Trying to steal the words I suffered and died for, to use my words to tell your lies.”
He swings toward her on silent, telescoping rods.
“Ruining my experiment with your selfish interference.”
He is closer.
“All in order to steal secrets that you cannot understand.”
With great boldness and effort, Miss Woodwind asks, “Why not?”
“You never paid their price.”
“What price?”
He swings closer.
“What price?” she asks again, shrinking, frightened.
“What you try to steal, it will never be possible for you to steal. I brook no more interference from thieves.”
The Divinity Student makes a vague, small, almost shapeless gesture with his right hand, and as he drifts backwards toward the altar Christine can see his right hand now holds the Golem’s Book.
Without the slightest sensation, without so much as a jar, Miss Woodwind’s vision just blurs for a moment; when her eyes focus again, she sees the cathedral’s pale lights in the distance. She is standing on the soft, reedy bank of the lake, and the water, dotted with burning oil slicks, stands between her and the cathedral. Miss Woodwind, after the moment of her shock passes, rails and utters loud incoherent cries of frustration, kicking the ground. But the intervening barrier is mere water, and to a master of the element like herself, who can swim without being wetted, this is not an insuperable barrier. Miss Woodwind immediately flings herself from the bank into the water and swims furiously toward the island.
The Golum Page 15