The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Ellen Datlow ed.

  So here is Schmuel, six years after the regression, at another crucial point of his beleaguered and circumstance-laden life, just shy of rabbinical ordination, drowning in a sea of Hebrew letters—

  I am spending less and less time in the Yeshiva classroom, less and less time studying the minutiae of religious laws governing kosher food and kosher sex, ritual handwashing and penitential fasting. Seeking more satisfying solutions, I am struggling to manipulate Hebrew letters in the back room of an arts and crafts shop on East Broadway under the watchful eye and sage tutelage of the wizened Rabbi Bentov. I am attempting to construct a golem. A golem in the form of a goat. Made of Hebrew letters, combinations of the letters in God’s Name. I will only construct the purest, most authentic golem—not constructed out of clay, with merely a few Hebrew letters engraved on its forehead, but the more difficult task of making the goat from nothing but the letters themselves.

  So can a golem be made in the form of a goat? Yes, according to the ancient Kabbalists. But can I trust them? Working at this, poring over the Sefer Yetzirah on East Broadway in an unusual divination of construction and dedication, I cannot answer, have no way of being sure. But then again, how can one be sure of anything, from divine revelation to divine retribution? But I know I must try to make this golem—this thing that has fascinated and called to me since the first time I ever heard the word golem from my rabbinic father, thundering in one of his sermons against “today’s irresponsible celebrities who demean Kabbalah by making it no more than a machine to manufacture good-luck charms and golems.” What is a golem, I had asked later. And had been thunderously told that I was too young and ignorant to understand, that a person may not study Kabbalah until he has mastered Bible, Talmud, commentaries, and Jewish law. Which only whetted my interest even more.

  The golem, I had discovered upon peering through my father’s library when he was sleeping, was a creature in the image of a man, constructed from mystical permutations and combinations of Hebrew letters, animate in its last stages and potentially dangerous—although, according to several renowned historians, the stories of destructive golems were likely the product of anti-Semitic lore. Some Kabbalists, I later learned, had also made animal golems. Practice makes perfect? Were they like scientists who must experiment on mice and monkeys before experimenting on a human being? No, I found out. The animals were to become sacrifices. Goats were a favorite.

  Young Schmuel, his little mouth open and his eyes round in the forbidden library, has transmogrified into Schmuel the soon-to-be-rabbi, the incipient Kabbalist, immersed in the terrifying and wondrous synergy of experience and history, symbol and reality. The journey from scapegoat to creator of goats. From tormented dreams to ferocious pilpul, to murmured incantations and esoteric combinations of Hebrew letters.

  “Why do you want to make a goat?” asks Rabbi Bentov yet again. “If you do not plan to sacrifice it, what is the point? The ancients sometimes created human golems to help them with tasks such as drawing water from a well or protecting the village from attack. Today I get mostly rabbinical students who have other ideas, equally practical. They usually want to make a female golem. For marriage. You know how congregations prefer to hire married rabbis so their wives can bake kugels and organize sisterhood meetings. Why a goat?”

  I could explain if I wanted to. But I do not want to. No one, not even my esteemed Kabbalistic instructor, can know about my memories, my real motives.

  Schmuel on the hypnotist’s couch, that fateful day, meeting himself for the first time—

  Hebrew chanting. “Please Lord, I have sinned, I have transgressed…Forgive my iniquities, as it is written, For this day of Yom Kippur shall atone for you.” The true and ineffable four-letter Name of God is uttered, mysterious and austere. And a resounding wave of voices, “Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.”

  I am hovering above the Temple of Jerusalem, looking down at a man dressed in white vestments. A priest. The High Priest. Surrounded by other priests, the Temple Mount thronged with thousands of worshippers, pilgrims from all over Israel.

  I move closer and suddenly I am on all fours. Something is hanging from the foot of my spine. A tail. My hands and feet are hooves and my legs are covered with white fur. I am a goat. A he-goat. There is another goat next to me. My brother. We suckled together, we grazed together, and we were taken together to stand beside this High Priest on this holiest day of the year. I call to him and my voice is a bleat. He understands and bleats back.

  We have been uneasy since we were wrenched from the bosom of our mother and the meadow of grass and flowers and led through the mountainous terrain of Israel to Jerusalem. Days of walking in the heat, with only occasional stops for hay and water. Where were we going? And why? We could not bear to look at one another, because our fear was mirrored in each other’s eyes, and there was no escaping it. Better to pretend we were merely being transferred to greener pastures.

  But no pasture, no meadow, instead a stone courtyard spattered with blood, an altar, a sharp silver object wielded by the priest in white. I do not understand. I do not recognize these things.

  The priest pulls my brother away. Oh, no, no! They are holding my brother down, he is crying for me to help him, but they are restraining me. Let me go, I want my brother, but they pull me away as the gleaming thing, the long silver thing, sharp, sharp, is near his throat, and—stop them! His throat is cut, his head tumbles to the ground, his legs are still kicking, and, improbably, his horn in the dirt is still trying to butt its way to freedom, but he is dead. Even as a goat, I know this. I know terror and I know death.

  The blood is running into a basin. The priest is dipping his finger in the blood, he is sprinkling it around. Then they lead me forward. I know what lies in store. I struggle and bite the restraints. I try to butt them with my horns. But they are stronger and I am pushed ahead to the murderous priest and his blood-spattered vestments. I am crying, begging God to have mercy on me, to save me on this holiest day of the year. I have not sinned. I do not deserve to die.

  The priest approaches. He lays his hands on my head. A gentle gesture, a benediction, and I briefly calm. Have my prayers been heard? His hands rest on my head as he again engages in the Confession. The people of Israel have sinned. Transgressed… Forgive…The people fall prostrate, blessing the Name again. Then the priest turns to a man who has been waiting on the side. “Take him away.”

  I am led away. I have been saved! In my jubilation, I push aside the picture of my brother in his final death throes, push away my questions about the God who spared me but killed him. I am alive. The only thought that is important now, I am alive.

  We are climbing a mountain steeper than any I trod in my journey toward Jerusalem. I am thirsty, my tongue dry as the sand, hard and cold as the stones underfoot. I try to lie down, but the man forces me up, dragging me forward. I stumble, my legs giving way, but he pulls again and I move ahead, pain and fatigue burning my thighs.

  We are almost at the top of the cliff. Suddenly, he cuts the rope and I am free! He moves behind me and I collapse gratefully, relief crowding out the pain, the terror. Gray numbness overtaking me, I lie down and—

  And there is pain. Red, searing pain. A sound as wind singing. It is the whirring of a whip as it lashes my hindquarters, the agony building until I must run away from it. I stumble, scramble to my feet, hurtling ahead to the top of the cliff, the whip landing again and again, as I surge forward, my lungs screaming, no longer allowing my legs the luxury of stumbling, so I run, forward, forward—

  And then I am airborne, catapulting downward, my heart exploding with merciless knowledge as the blood bursts forth, and I tumble toward the ravine, and—

  You will not get away with this, Lord, You, your priests, your people, your Torah—

  And then the impact. The shattering of bones. The silence.

  Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

  Vengeance is mine, saith the goat.

  “Call me Azaz
el,” says my goat.

  The incantations finally complete, the letters still swirling, my newly formed goat has risen to his feet. He is white and bearded, a visage wholly becoming an Orthodox goat. He bleats but his words have a distinctly human aspect. “Let us go to the Yeshiva together and we will take them by storm.”

  Rabbi Bentov steps forward, pride in his student’s accomplishment trumped by consternation. “What have you done? You used the wrong spell. Animals can’t speak, except for—”

  “If you bring up the story of Balaam’s donkey, I will butt you with my horns. Are you comparing me to that ass?” Rabbi Bentov backs away. “And that is exactly the point,” Azazel continues, “to speak. To utter words. In the beginning was the Word—”

  Rabbi Bentov holds up his hands. “But what will you do? I am responsible for anything that happens. I have taught Schmuel everything he knows about making a golem.”

  Azazel kicks his hoof impatiently. “You are responsible for everything and nothing. Come, Schmuel, we have work to do.” He turns tail and trots away, with me in pursuit. We leave Rabbi Bentov gesticulating helplessly, muttering prayers and Kabbalistic incantations.

  Off we go, Azazel and I, into the welter of East Broadway. I am no less surprised than the disconcerted Rabbi Bentov. Can golems talk? Can golems dispute, order, direct, pontificate? These are questions for the theoreticians, for the rabbi himself, but not for Schmuel or Azazel, who has not stopped talking since we left the arts and crafts store. “Consider the Israelites,” Azazel says. He has become chatty, confidential. “Not a goat but a golden calf. Isn’t that interesting? The goats have gotten short shrift in the Bible, let me tell you. Moses was praised for rescuing a lamb, not a goat. It was a ram who jumped onto the altar to save Isaac from slaughter, and Jacob did genetic engineering on sheep. Even the disgusting litany of prescribed sacrifices consists of mostly cows and sheep with very few goats—except for those who are tossed off cliffs. But”—he winks—“even though the goat has been neglected and scarcely worthy even of being victimized by atrocities, we do corner the market on the holiest day of the year. The most important sacrifice. Now, what do you think of that?”

  On and on. He seems more interested in venting his indignation at the ignominious treatment of his (our?) species, his (my!) brethren than responding to my feeble attempts to interject with such practical questions as how we will walk the long distance to the rabbinical school, and what we are planning to do once we get there. He keeps up his pace of walking, as of speaking, stopping only to offer commentary about the neighborhood and its inhabitants. “Isn’t it interesting how New Yorkers keep to themselves? No one greets us, no one waves hello—humans are the rudest, the most self-absorbed species. I know some of us”—he nudges me and winks conspiratorially, we are after all brothers—“don’t always mind our manners, but this is terribly disturbing.” I note that he does not refer to me as his creator but as his equal—perhaps correctly; after all, I have been a fellow goat in my last incarnation. Perhaps he even was my unfortunate brother, slaughtered just hours before my own death.

  “Disturbing,” Azazel prattles on, “because their utter self-centeredness bespeaks their utter inconsideration for any species but their own. Pardon me,” Azazel calls to an obviously frum lady with a large wig, black stockings, and a long dress, pushing a double stroller with shopping bags dangling from the handles and a crying infant in each seat, a toddler clinging to her arm. So preoccupied is she with her children she appears oblivious to the talking goat and his partner. “Excuse me,” Azazel calls again and this time she stops, as if the sight finally registers. Her frum mouth opens in a little O of astonishment and contemplation as she drops her shopping bags and grabs her toddler. He is gesticulating rapturously in our direction. “Nice boy,” Azazel comments as we start off again, leaving the woman pointing and shouting in Yiddish. “Got to get them when they’re young. Before they start studying and preaching and praying. When they’re old geezers it’s too late, they deserve to be shoved off some cliff.”

  I am panting, as much from the effects of hearing him as from the physical exertion of keeping up with the four-legged Azazel. He has the advantage, he knows it, and he’s wickedly flaunting his superior ambulation. I grab him by the tail.

  He pirouettes, an elegant, almost dainty maneuver, and I narrowly avoid being butted by his horns.

  “I just want to slow down,” I say, still panting.

  “Did they give you a chance to stop and catch your breath when you were on your way to the cliff?” he demands. He winks again, an overused mannerism that’s becoming increasingly annoying. “Ha, got you now!”

  “Why are you treating me like this?” I ask in a plaintive voice. I hear the little whine of the supplicant, the victim.

  “Just because you suffered, you think you deserve to be coddled and pampered? We all suffer, friend. You chose to create me, now you have to listen to me. Or why did you create me anyway?”

  Why indeed. I had thought—ridiculously, I now realize—that I would find companionship, simpatico. My goat and I would compare notes about what it is like to be a goat, to suffer at the hands of human beings. I could share the trauma of my memories, receive his warm, nuzzled consolation. But apparently he has an agenda of his own, and I now know that one can never account for one’s creation, that the very act of creation is the act of self-abnegation, of self-destruction. Goat or human, the end must be accounted for in the beginning.

  These are philosophical reflections of some import, but they do not concern me so much as the state of my feet as I try to keep up with Azazel. Somehow, the frum lady appears to be pursuing us and keeping up with our lightning pace—nothing short of remarkable, as she is weighed down by wigs and children and packages and by sexual repression and anxiety (tip-of-the-yarmulke to the hypnotist). But here she is, her wig only slightly disarranged, her babies still crying, her toddler still laughing and pointing.

  We seem to be moving uptown, to Washington Heights, to the rabbinical school, through streets replete with old men and boom-box-wielding teens and gaudy clothing on racks, Spanish and Hebrew and German and Yiddish competing for purchase. Cheerfully, Azazel thrusts a horn into the clothing rack as sweaters and slacks tumble onto the sidewalk, the owner cursing in Spanish. “See”—his face assumes a goatlike smirk—“does he notice me? Only when his sales rack falls—and my, how angry he gets. But it is nothing compared to what the rabbis will do when we teach them a lesson.”

  We? I feel sick. My mouth is dry, the mouth that uttered Kabbalistic incantations. My hands are shaking, the hands that formed the Hebrew letters that birthed Azazel. Waves of sickness overtake me as I contemplate what he might have in mind for the rabbis. The Yeshiva looms within sight, seen through the haze, the traffic, the disorder of Pinehurst Avenue, an unhappy edifice lurking by the river, and only then does the impact and circumstance of our journey come upon me. Exactly what am I to do? I will introduce Azazel to the Rosh Yeshiva—the dean of the rabbinical school—and I know that only then will the true purpose of the golem be revealed…but it is unclear what I intend to happen. The proximity to the Hudson River and the beckoning Jersey Palisades is disconcerting. Will the astonished rabbi be conveyed to the Jersey Palisades and thrown off a cliff? Will Azazel himself become a Jersey-bound golem, seeking rocky ascent on those shiny rungs of grass and stone, then a quick fall? Will he want me to jump to my fate yet again? I shudder. Surely I cannot know any of this; I am merely the vessel of vengeance, the agent of reconstruction: agent of the golem goat, I can only witness this last and terrible reparation. Or so I would hope. For at the heart of this speculation is a vast and consuming emptiness, once disguised as mastery, now in its truer incarnation as terror but beyond the possibility of answer.

  The school beckons. The Rosh Yeshiva is standing at its entrance, a volume of Talmud in one hand, a prayer book in the other. A frown tugs at the panels of his face, rippling through his beard: “So you have decided to grace us with your
presence? Three weeks, and you don’t come to class, you don’t call, you don’t write, you don’t visit. I hear you fancy yourself a Kabbalist.” (He has heard? And from whom?)

  Azazel tugs at my hand. “Would you look at that? You show up with a goat and instead of marveling, he complains you’re cutting classes. The pettiness of human beings, especially rabbis, cannot be fathomed.”

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” the Rosh Yeshiva asks me. “Please say it quickly. I have a class to teach.”

  I clear my throat, an uncomfortable noise, rather like a bleat. I open my mouth but before I can say anything, Azazel leaps in. “Teach, teach, teach, class, class, class. Don’t you rabbis ever think about anything other than the Torah? The law? The teachings?”

  The Rosh Yeshiva seems to notice my goat for the first time. “Schmuel, what kind of farce is this? Take that animal away.”

  I am about to say that I created the goat but as usual, Azazel is faster than I and infinitely more talkative. “That animal, is this what you just called me?”

  “And stop putting words in its mouth,” the Rosh Yeshiva continues. “I don’t know what magic you’re using, sleight of hand, ventriloquism, to make it talk but it is very disrespectful—”

  Azazel rises on his hind legs with indignation. “He is not putting words in my mouth! I can speak for myself thank you very much, and we have some business to transact, you and I. Liberation, my friend. And you will be the first liberated.”

  The Rosh Yeshiva draws himself up to his full height, which isn’t very tall, and folds his arms, the Talmud and prayer book against his chest. “There is no greater liberation than Torah study,” he says stiffly.