The Golem and the Djinni. Helene Wecker
unsure. Should she join them? Find somewhere to hide? Their minds clamored at her, all wanting only a speedy trip through Ellis Island and a clean bill of health from the inspectors.
One of the uniformed men saw the Golem standing alone and hesitant, and walked toward her. A passenger intercepted him, put a hand to his shoulder, and began to talk in his ear. It was the doctor from steerage. The ship’s man was carrying a sheaf of papers, and he flipped through them, searching. He frowned and stepped away from the doctor, who melted back into line.
“Ma’am,” the officer called, looking straight at the Golem. “Come here, please.” All around them went quiet as the Golem approached. “You’re the one whose husband died, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“My condolences, ma’am. It’s probably just an oversight, but you don’t seem to be on the manifest. May I see your ticket?”
Her ticket? She had none, of course. She could lie, and say she’d lost it, but she’d never lied before and didn’t trust herself to do it well. She realized that her only options were to remain silent, or to tell the truth.
“I don’t have a ticket,” she said, and smiled, hoping that would help.
The officer sighed wearily and placed a hand around the Golem’s arm, as though to prevent her from running away. “You’ll have to come with me, ma’am.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going to sit in the brig until we get the passengers sorted, and then we’ll ask you a few questions.”
What should she do? There was no way to answer their questions without exposing herself. Already everyone was staring. Alarmed, she turned in the man’s insistent grip, looking for some sort of escape. They were still under way, fording the middle of the river, smaller ships gliding to either side. Beyond the busy piers, the city gleamed invitingly.
The officer gripped her arm harder. “Ma’am. Don’t make me force you.”
But he didn’t want to force her, she saw. He didn’t want to deal with her at all. More than anything, the officer wished she would just disappear.
The edge of a smile lifted the Golem’s mouth. Here, finally, was a desire she could gratify.
With a flick of her elbow, she broke from the startled officer and ran to the railing. Before anyone could even shout out, she vaulted the edge, arced out into the shimmering Hudson, and sank like a stone.
A few hours later, a stevedore smoking a cigarette on the corner of West and Gansevoort saw a woman walk past from the direction of the river. She was soaking wet. She wore a man’s woolen jacket and a brown dress that clung immodestly to her body. Her hair was plastered to her neck. Most astonishing was the thick, brackish mud that covered her skirt and shoes.
“Hey, miss,” he called out to her, “you go for a swim?”
The woman gave him a strange smile as she went by. “No,” she said. “I walked.”
2.
In the neighborhood of Lower Manhattan called Little Syria, not far from where the Golem came ashore, there lived a tinsmith by the name of Boutros Arbeely. Arbeely was a Maronite Catholic who’d grown up in the bustling village of Zahleh, which lay in the valley below Mount Lebanon. He had come to adulthood at a time when it seemed every man under the age of thirty was leaving Greater Syria to seek his fortune in America. Some were spurred on by missionaries’ tales, or by relatives who’d made the journey and whose letters home now arrived thick with banknotes. Others saw a chance to elude the army conscription and punishing taxes demanded by their Turkish rulers. In all, so many left that in some villages the markets fell silent, and the grapes on the hillsides were left to burst on the vines.
Arbeely’s late father had come from a family of five brothers, and over the generations their land had been divided and redivided until each brother’s parcel was so small it was hardly worth the effort of planting. Arbeely himself made barely a pittance as a tinsmith’s apprentice. His mother and sisters kept silkworms to bring in extra money, but still it wasn’t enough. In the general rush to America, Arbeely saw his chance. He bid his family farewell and boarded a steamship bound for New York, and soon had rented a small smithing shop on Washington Street, at the heart of the growing Syrian neighborhood.
Arbeely was a good and conscientious worker, and even in New York’s crowded marketplace his goods stood out as quality for the price. He made cups and plates, pots and pans, household tools, thimbles, candlesticks. Occasionally a neighbor would bring him something to repair, a damaged pot or a twisted door hinge, and he would return it in better shape than when it was new.
That summer Arbeely received an interesting request. A woman named Maryam Faddoul came to the shop with an old, battered, yet rather lovely copper flask. The flask had been in Maryam’s family as long as she could remember; her mother, who’d used it for olive oil, had given it to Maryam when she’d sailed to America. “So you’ll always have a piece of home with you,” her mother had said.
With her husband Sayeed, Maryam had opened a coffeehouse on Washington Street, which quickly became a thriving hub of the neighborhood. One afternoon, while surveying her bustling kitchen, Maryam decided that the flask, while still beloved, had grown a bit too pockmarked and worn. Would it be possible, she asked Arbeely, to repair a few of the dents? And perhaps restore the polish?
Alone in his shop, Arbeely examined the flask. It was about nine inches high, with a round, bulbous body that tapered to a thin neck. Its maker had decorated it with a very precise and detailed band of scrollwork. Instead of the usual repeating pattern, the loops and whorls threaded through their neighbors seemingly at random, before joining up with themselves again.
Arbeely turned the flask around in his hands, fascinated. Clearly it was old, older perhaps than Maryam or her mother knew. Copper was rarely used on its own anymore, owing to its softness; brass and tin were much more durable and easier to work. In fact, given its likely age, the flask didn’t seem as battered as perhaps it should have been. There was no way to determine its provenance, for it had no forger’s stamp on its bottom, no identifying mark of any kind.
He examined the deep dents in the scrollwork, and realized that correcting them would lead to visible seams between the new work and the old. Better, he decided, to smooth out the copper, repair the flask, and then rework the entire design.
He wrapped a sheet of thin vellum around the base, found a stick of charcoal, and took a rubbing of the scrollwork, careful to catch every mark of the maker’s awl. Then he secured the flask in a vise, and fetched his smallest soldering iron from the fire.
As he stood there, his iron poised above the flask, a strange feeling of foreboding stole over him. His arms and back turned to gooseflesh. Shivering, he put down the iron, and took a deep breath. What could possibly be bothering him? It was a warm day, and he’d eaten a hearty breakfast. He was healthy, and business was good. He shook his head, took up the iron again, and touched it to the scrollwork, erasing one of the loops.
A powerful jolt blasted him off his feet, as though he’d been struck by lightning. He flew through the air and landed in a heap beside a worktable. Stunned, ears ringing, he turned over and looked around.
There was a naked man lying on the floor of his shop.
As Arbeely stared in amazement, the man drew himself to sitting and pressed his hands to his face. Then he dropped his hands and gazed around, eyes wide and burning. He looked as though he’d been chained for years in the world’s deepest, darkest dungeon, and then hauled roughly into the light.
The man staggered to his feet. He was tall and well built, with handsome features. Too handsome, in fact—his face had an eerie flawlessness, like a painting come to life. His dark hair was cropped short. He seemed unconscious of his nakedness.
On the man’s right wrist was a wide metal cuff. The man appeared to notice it at the