by Soji Shimada
“And this one is Goddess Hunting Deer. The deer, the dogs and the horse all move.
“This one is The Gardener. Unfortunately, he doesn’t sprinkle water from that watering can any more.
“And over here we have a tabletop water fountain made for a nobleman in the fourteenth century. This one doesn’t spout water any more either.
“In medieval Europe these kinds of magical playthings were popping up all over the place. These new marvellous mechanisms came about and changed people’s view of magic. It was fun to surprise people. For many long years that role was taken by witchcraft and sorcery. And then finally, these kind of automata were invented and took over the role. The worship of machinery, perhaps you could say. There was a trend for people to design machines that were copies of things found in nature. And so witchcraft and machinery for quite a while were synonymous. It was a transition period. Of course these were meant to be toys, something to play with, but that is only obvious when looked at from the standpoint of our modernday science.”
“You don’t have any Japanese artefacts,” Sasaki pointed out.
“That’s right. Nothing besides the Tengu masks.”
“What about Japanese karakuri dolls? Are they poorly made?”
“Not at all. There’s the famous Tea Server and all the dolls that were made up in Hida Takayama. The inventor Hiraga Gennai and especially Giemon, the pseudonym of Tanaka Hisashige, were responsible for making the most sophisticated automata. It’s just they’re impossible to get hold of. The reason is that in Japan they have very few metal parts. Long ago the cogs were made from wood, and the springs from whalebone, and after a hundred years they’d be worn out. Even if you could get hold of one, it’d be a replica, a copy. But even those replicas are almost impossible to get your hands on.”
“Are there any blueprints still in existence?”
“Yes, there are a few. Without the blueprints no one could have made those replicas. But they’re only drawings, really.
“On the whole, Japanese craftsmen didn’t tend to leave blueprints behind. They wanted to keep the art of making karakuri dolls their own secret. It wasn’t a problem of poor technique at all. I really question this aspect of Japanese people’s behaviour. For example, back in the Edo Era, there was apparently a rather splendid karakuri doll—a child playing the fife and drum. It could blow on a small flute and play the drum at the same time. Neither the original nor the blueprints have survived. So I’ve been complaining to the engineers of many countries: if you develop a new product or technology, please record the process in minute detail and leave it for future generations. It should be your legacy to the future.”
“What a good story!” said Michio Kanai. “I also heard that karakuri craftsmen were looked down on in Japan. Is that true?”
“I think it is. Japanese automata were considered to be nothing more than toys, purely for amusement. Unlike in the West, where they were developed further into clocks and mechanical objects, and eventually computers.”
For a while the guests wandered around the room, each taking in the collection at their own speed. Kumi was drawn back to the letter-writing boy and the noblewoman at her dulcimer; Michio Kanai and Kozaburo strolled together, while Hatsue Kanai headed off by herself at a much faster pace and soon found herself in the far corner of the room in front of a single doll. She was suddenly overcome with paralysing terror. The secret fear that she had felt as she entered the room was instantly revived. Or rather the unearthly feelings that had been slowly growing on her since she set foot in this room now all seemed to be embodied in this one antique figure.
Hatsue had always believed she had some kind of psychic powers. Even her husband admitted that she had some sort of special ability. And now, looking at this doll, she felt it giving off some sort of unusual presence.
It was Golem, the life-sized doll. She’d seen it before as a body lying in the snow, and again when it had been put back together in the salon, but this was the first time she had seen its face. It had huge eyes, a moustache and beard, and sat on the floor, just to the right of the Tengu-covered south wall, leaning against the west wall, under the window onto the corridor, both of its legs splayed out in front.
Its body was made of wood; also its hands and feet. Its head was probably wooden too, but although its face was carved in fine detail, and its hands and feet painted, the torso was made of rough, unfinished timber.
Hatsue guessed that the doll had once worn clothes. This seemed to be borne out by the way the arms from the wrists down were realistically depicted, and the feet were made to look as if they were wearing shoes; in other words, the parts of the doll that would not have been covered by clothing. On closer inspection, both hands were curled as if they had been holding a thin stick or pole at some point in the past. Right now, though, they were empty.
The whole of the doll gave off a ghostly aura, but the strongest sensation came from its head, that face. Its expression revealed a more extreme madness than that of the other Western dolls in the room, and the smile on its lips was closer to a sneer. Hatsue could understand a craftsman wanting to make cute dolls, but why would anyone think of making this giant of a man with its creepy smile?
She realized that her husband and Kozaburo were standing behind her. Bolstered by their presence, she leant towards Golem to examine his face more closely.
His skin was a little dark, like an Arab’s maybe, she thought. But the tip of his nose gleamed whitish. The paint on his cheeks had started to peel away like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. He looked as if he had suffered severe burns or frostbite. But his smile seemed to say that he wasn’t bothered at all by any of this. Apparently, the damage was painless.
“Ah, yes, this is the first time you’ve met this one,” said Kozaburo.
“Yes, er… Go—something wasn’t it?”
“Golem.”
“Yes, that’s it. Why does he have that name?”
“Everyone in the shop where I bought him used to call him that. So I just kept calling him by the same name.”
“He has such a hideous face. I was just wondering what he was staring at with that sneer. It’s kind of frightening.”
“Do you think so?”
“There’s nothing cute about him at all. Not like that doll that could sign its name. Why on earth did they make something with a grinning face like this?”
“Maybe the craftsmen those days believed that all dolls had to have a smile on their face?”
Hatsue said nothing.
“When I come here alone at night and see him sitting there in the darkness, grinning to himself, sometimes even I get the creeps.”
“He’s horrible.”
“He has feelings, you know.”
“He really does seem to,” said Sasaki as he joined the others. “He’s always staring at something that human beings can’t see. And he has that smile of satisfaction on his face. It makes me want to follow his stare, find what it is he’s watching.”
“Is that how you feel? It’s what I thought one time, right after this room was constructed but was still empty. He was the first thing I brought in, and I sat him down. He was staring at the wall behind me and I was sure there must be a fly or a wasp or something that had landed there. He has such a strong presence. He’s a peculiar looking doll, isn’t he? As if he’s got some secret plot he’s hatching, but his expression gives nothing away. I think that’s the brilliance of whoever made him.”
“Why did they make him so huge?”
“Well, he’s human-sized. He was probably attached to a kind of horizontal bar like a gymnast, and part of a circus act originally. Or a kind of amusement park. If you look closely at his hands there are small holes in the palms. I think that’s where he was attached to the bar. All of the joints in his legs and arms have the same range of movements as a human body’s. I’m guessing he used to do a giant swing on the horizontal bar. His body is just a chunk of wood, though, with no kind of special features.”
&nbs
p; “It must have been quite a sight—a life-sized doll performing like that.”
“Yes, quite a draw, I’m guessing.”
“And why is he called Golem? Does it have any meaning?” asked Hatsue.
“Wasn’t ‘golem’ a word for a kind of automaton that appeared in a story or something?” said Sasaki. “He was forced to carry a jar filled with water for eternity. I’ve got this image that he used to move like a robot… Or maybe that was something else.”
“A golem is a man-made creature in Jewish folklore that looks like a human being. Seems the original concept of a golem was mentioned in Psalm 139:16. For generations it was believed that leading figures of the Jewish faith possessed the ability to create golems. There’s supposed to be a passage that describes how Abraham, together with Noah’s son Shem created a great number of them, and led them into Palestine.”
“So golems have been around for thousands of years? Since the Old Testament?”
“That was their origin. But they aren’t widely known. I’ve done a little research into their history. The golem stories came back to life around 1600 in Prague.”
“Prague?”
“That’s right. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Prague was a bright centre of learning and culture. It has been referred to as the City of a Thousand Wonders and Countless Terrors. The main areas of study that it was known for were astrology, alchemy and magic; in other words, it became a flourishing centre for mysticism and the occult. The mystics and thinkers and magicians who had proclaimed that they could perform all kinds of miracles were drawn to the city in droves. And that was the environment in which golems were reincarnated. This was because Prague also had the largest Jewish population in Europe—a large ghetto community. A golem was as much part of the Jewish teachings as Yahweh. For their persecuted community, he was a ferocious protector. With superhuman strength he was considered to be invincible. There was no figure of authority, no weapon with the power to defeat him. The Jewish people had been nomadic, had suffered, and been persecuted since ancient times. Yahweh and golems were created out of imagination and hope. Well, that’s the way I’m going to explain it. Yahweh is God, but a golem is a kind of man-made being or automaton that only an ascetic holy man or wise man has the power to create. Kabbalah is a branch of the Jewish religion that believes in mysticism and magic, and its practitioners studied how to become great enough to create a golem.
“Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the character of a golem began to turn up in essays published in France and Germany. A rabbi by the name of Hasid and the French mystic, Gaon, left behind written descriptions of how to form a golem from clay and water. They included precise details of required incantations and rituals. It was the secret formula that since the time of Abraham no one but the highest-ranking holy men had been privy to. And now it had finally been written down. The Golem of Prague was based on the golem of these essays.”
“So the practice of creating golems in Prague came from its status as a centre of learning and from it having a Jewish community?”
“That and from the persecution of those Jews. Prague was also a centre of persecution.”
“Who were the persecutors?”
“The Christians, obviously. That was why the Jewish community needed golems. They were constantly in danger. The first maker of a golem was believed to be Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, a leader of the Jewish community. He is said to have taken clay from the banks of the Vltava River that runs through Prague to create his golem. There have been many pieces of folklore and stories about this handed down, and even, much later, a black-and-white silent film, and they all say approximately the same thing: the rabbi created the golem out of clay while reciting some kind of incantation.”
“So there’s a film about it?”
“Many films in fact. It was from these that the story of the Golem of Prague became well known. The German film-maker, the genius Paul Wegener, made three different films about golems.”
“What kind of films?”
“All sorts. I’ve kind of forgotten which was which, but in one a rabbi brings his home-made golem to the royal court at the request of the king. This rabbi uses magic to create a kind of film about the history of the hardships and perpetual nomadism of the Jewish people, and shows it to the king. But right at that moment the court jester tells an ill-timed joke, and all the nobles and dancing girls fall about laughing. The Jewish God is furious and with a thunderous roar begins to tear down the palace. In exchange for a vow to end the persecution of the Jewish people, the rabbi instructs his golem to save the king’s and the courtiers’ lives.”
“Wow.”
“Another film starts the same way with a rabbi creating a golem, but unfortunately, he wasn’t a very skilled holy man yet, and he’s unable to control the golem he produces. It ends up being way larger than he intended, and its head breaks through the roof of his home. So he tries to destroy it.”
“How does he do that?”
“The secret Kabbalah ritual involves writing the word emet on the golem’s forehead in the Hebrew alphabet. Otherwise it won’t move. If you remove one of the letters, equivalent to the ‘e’ from the word, it spells met, which means ‘death’, and makes the golem return to the earth from which it came.”
“Huh.”
“In the Jewish faith, words and letters have spiritual power. And so the important ritual and incantation for bringing a golem to life revolved around the letters written on its forehead. The rabbi ordered the golem to tie his shoelaces for him, and when the golem knelt down before the rabbi, he quickly erased the letter ‘e’ from his forehead. Cracks immediately began to appear in the golem’s body and it crumbled to the ground.”
“Wow.”
“This golem here is made from wood, but if you look very carefully, you’ll see very tiny Hebrew lettering on his forehead. It says emet.”
“Does it? So if this golem starts moving, I should get rid of this letter here?”
“That’d do it.”
“I’ve read a story about golems somewhere before,” said Sasaki.
“Oh? What kind of story?”
“The well in some village dries up and the villagers have nothing to drink. They order a golem to go and fetch them a jar of water from a river far away. The loyal, hard-working golem obeys, and the next day, and the day after that, he goes back and forth between the river and the well, refilling the well with the river water. Eventually the well begins to overflow with all the water he’s brought, and the village is flooded. The houses begin to disappear under the water but nobody can stop the golem. They don’t know the right spell to make him stop. And that’s the story.”
“Terrifying,” said Hatsue Kanai.
“Automata are unable to be flexible, to adapt to circumstances. That’s their fatal defect. It comes across to human beings as a kind of insanity, and incites fear. Do you think dolls have the same tendency to inspire fear?” asked Kozaburo.
“That’s probably true. Isn’t it like the fear of nuclear warfare? Human beings press the button but once the weapon has begun to deploy, there’s nothing they can do about it any more. They can beg all they like but their words are useless. The expressionless face of a doll or an automaton is similar.”
Kozaburo looked impressed and nodded vigorously.
“You make a good point, Sasaki. Very well put.
“By the way, this doll originally had the perfectly ordinary name of Jack. He’s Gymnastic Jack. It just so happened that the old man who ran the second-hand shop in Prague where I bought him told me that on stormy nights he goes out by himself to find wells, rivers or any other place where there’s water.”
“Ugh!”
“And he said that on the morning following a storm, Jack’s mouth is always wet.”
“Ha! That’s ridiculous!”
“There were always signs that he’d been drinking water. After that, the shopkeeper gave him the nickname Golem.”
“It’s just a
made-up story, right?”
“No, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“What?”
“One morning I looked at his face and there were drops of water trickling down from the edge of his lips.”
“Honestly?”
“Honest to God. But I thought nothing of it. It was just condensation. It happens a lot, doesn’t it—like glass getting misted up—that a face can get beads of sweat on it? It had trickled down and followed the line of his lips.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Yes, well that’s how I managed to explain the phenomenon.”
The guests began to laugh, but were stopped by a piercing scream behind them. Everyone jumped in surprise, then turned to see Kumi, her face drained of colour, collapse to her knees. The men rushed to support her.
Kumi was pointing at Golem.
“That’s him! That’s the man who was looking in my window!”
SCENE 10
The Salon
In the end, this new piece of information did very little to advance the investigation. As always, the detectives were overly cautious; for the rest of the day they refused to believe Kumi’s story. It wasn’t until the morning of the 30th that they reluctantly admitted that it could be true. To them the story was beyond the bounds of common sense, but eventually after struggling with the idea for half a day, they found a loophole that made the outrageous possible—namely, that some person or persons unknown had used the doll to frighten or intimidate Kumi. This was the three detectives’ classic modus operandi. But of course the moment they began to consider who, or for what reason, or why Kumi specifically had been the victim, they immediately hit a wall.
They found it difficult to imagine that the perpetrator had been trying to kill Kumi. She hadn’t suffered any harm in the days since. In fact, Golem had appeared around the time a completely different victim, Ueda, had been murdered.
It was even less likely that the murderer had thought scaring Kumi would make it easier to kill Ueda. Kumi had reported seeing Golem a full thirty minutes after he had been murdered.