The Golum
Page 16
The Divinity Student, as he drifts back to the altar, drops the Golem’s book. It falls at an angle, curving down past the Golem, who plucks it from the air with his right hand in a gesture like a man pinching up a bit of cooked rice in his fingers. The Divinity Student stops and descends a bit further, looking down at Christine with a more academic mien.
“I am ending this experiment; with Miss Woodwind’s interference, it would no longer be possible to derive a clear result. Now I must ask you, were you able to love the Golem? Think carefully before you answer.”
“No.” She turns to the Golem, again with an apologetic look.
The Divinity Student also turns to the Golem—“And were you able to love Christine?”
“No,” he says, looking up at the Divinity Student.
“It’s a shame,” the Divinity Student says.
The Golem shakes his head, with a terrible sadness. “She is magnificent—she is admirable.”
“Do you love her?”
“—I’ve failed.”
“All that is created here is a failure.”
Wobbling lights play over the features of the statues lining the nave, until they all appear to wear the Divinity Student’s face.
“These are elevated to saintly status because they are the valuable mistakes, and remain with the creator to remind and reprimand him. One must pursue every avenue in the labyrinth and discovering a cul-de-sac while disappointing contributes usefully to our knowledge—one goes on trying to be methodical but relying always on a judgment and patience that can neither of them be adequate, so relying too on luck—these experiments . . . trial and error.
“The Golem is an experiment of the Divinity Student and the Divinity Student is an experiment himself. Because not everything is known, and even one’s own knowledge is seldom if ever perfectly understood, we experiment. Your principle purpose here was not to love, but to suffer, to live. The faculty of life that I lent you must now be returned to me with that interest you have accrued in your experiences down here.”
He turns to Christine. “You upheld your end of the bargain admirably, and never broke our confidence—and, while it did not last long—long enough. Come forward, and receive your payment.”
Christine approaches the Divinity Student, who drops down to just above the floor. He pulls something from the leaves of his Book and hands it to her—a white card with a black engraving on it—as she takes it from him she sees it is undeniably a portrait of her, and apparently very old.
“That’s all?” she asks, looking at the card back and front. She opens it, and sees a smaller card, its corners pinched through slits in the backing, with two sentences written on it.
“Don’t read that yet,” the Divinity Student says. “Not just yet.”
Christine’s face darkens, she looks up at the Divinity Student.
“It is more than it seems. Had you not suffered for them, you would not have understood these words. And had you somehow apprehended their meaning without having first suffered for them, that instant you surely would have died.”
“But,” she begins to ask, gesturing toward his Book.
“This Book is the book of my life, not yours. It would mean very little to you. What I give you will prove.”
Christine looks up at his torn face and then nods. She takes a few steps away, and the Divinity Student turns his attention back to the Golem.
“May I stay and watch?” she asks a little hesitantly.
“No.” The Divinity Student makes a small circular flip with his left hand and the door at the end of the transept to the left of the altar swings open. Through the open door, in the even orange light of four beautifully carved jack-o’-lanterns, she can see the gondola of a hot air balloon waiting for her. Christine looks at the Divinity Student, and at the Golem, who stands leaning on his brace, his mouth a bit ajar. Then she strides through the door, which closes with a distinct thud behind her. The Divinity Student waves his stick once in the air and a fragile gust of wind disperses her scent, leaving only the smell of formaldehyde, dust, freshly turned earth, varnish, wet wool, smoke, wax . . .
The Golem looks up at the Divinity Student. “I never even had a chance.”
“I have suffered more. The experiment is over, the city is gone, she is gone, there is nothing for you to do here, and nowhere you can go. You cannot return to the surface but through me. Without you, I will continue to rot forever.” He holds out his hands indicating his pitiable condition.
“Will you kill me?”
“Of course not. You will live in me.”
“How?”
“We will be someone else, to whose life the life of decay will only contribute.”
“Haven’t I got a choice?”
“Never. Stand—here,” the Divinity Student points with his stick to a spot immediately below him.
Miss Woodwind approaches the cathedral from the far side, through the trees, and its bulk obscures the gaudy, red and gold balloon that rises toward the roof of the cavern on the other. Christine looks up at the stone ceiling—a patch in the gray-black stone proves to be nothing but smoke laced with jets of flame, toward which she is ascending.
Statues and carvings to the roof at every elevation—the windows that faintly shine between the buttress ribcage dim and flare with irregular shadow flurries. Again she comes up to the open door, and slips inside. She looks this way and that, but dark sifts down from the roof like snow—there is no sound is there? She can hear something like cloth being crushed. Slipping her shoes from her feet, Miss Woodwind pads along the wall, under the arches, toward the altar. Now she can just make out a single, enormous figure, slumped on the floor before the altar in a single great mass. A shadow stretches across its upper half, the lower half is invisible under a heavy pall of damp black wool coat. As her eyes become accustomed to the dimness, she can see that the weak, convulsive movements have stopped, it is lying still, and there are two humps on the back somehow. The humps flip up to the sides, and the vast shadow that lay across the front half of the mass flutters, shivers, and rises from the floor.
As the balloon enters the cloud of smoke, Christine hastily opens the card and reads:
WE ARE ALL PHANTOMS
MANUFACTURED FROM WORDS
HOWEVER IT DOES NOT FOLLOW
FROM THIS THAT WE ARE NOT REAL
Miss Woodwind recoils a scream bursting from her mouth, as if utterance could be reflexive like a knee jerk. It has turned toward her, the face invisible in the shade of its great black greasy pinions, hooding the entire figure. Two braced legs slip backwards into their shade. For a silent moment Miss Woodwind lying on the floor and the sound of the greasy separation of sticky feathers. Miss Woodwind bounds to her feet and runs—but the cathedral is confusing—she finds herself darting into a narrow doorway by a peripheral chapel—stairs coiling up toward the roof. From the gushing wind and rattle of plumage she knows it is following her—she flings herself on the steps screaming and clawing. She races straight up through hollow clouds of streetlights and tombstones hanging on rails, beams crisscrossing her course and weaving into subterranean tunnels, waving boughs shattered by its many wings spreading in lightless crystal spears peeling back layers of petrified earth, their colors fluorescing more and more brilliant as she nears the surface. In the first alcove she passes is deposited all her clothing, her skin and her hair. In the second, her eyes, her teeth, her bones. In the third, her muscles. In the fourth, her organs. In the fifth, her nerves and brain. And finally on the final turn—the desert, running away in all directions to the horizon and the ring of mountains black against the black sky pierced by white stars haloed with blue shadows the color of alcohol flames, the desert littered with pairs of reflecting lights reflecting back and piercing . . . the city describes its narrow circle around her feet so high up is she all of a sudden, standing in the highest place, on the pinnacle of the cathedral’s tallest spire, at such an elevation that the city’s walls appear no bigger than a tiny ridge o
f stone ringing her feet, she is thrust into the sky as the spire looms higher and higher dilate the stars and lights all around her, not a dome but a field of stars above below and on every hand, and it still immediately behind her but nevertheless she shrinks back almost touching it recoiling in terror with her hands to her mouth she cringes backward trying hysterically but unable to screw shut or avert her eyes, recognizing heaven as it engulfs her.