The Golem and the Djinni. Helene Wecker
The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship. The year was 1899; the ship was the Baltika, crossing from Danzig to New York. The Golem’s master, a man named Otto Rotfeld, had smuggled her aboard in a crate and hidden her among the luggage.
Rotfeld was a Prussian Jew from Konin, a bustling town to the south of Danzig. The only son of a well-to-do furniture maker, Rotfeld had inherited the family business sooner than expected, on his parents’ untimely death from scarlet fever. But Rotfeld was an arrogant, feckless sort of man, with no good sense to speak of; and before five years had elapsed, the business lay before him in tatters.
Rotfeld stood in the ruins and took stock. He was thirty-three years old. He wanted a wife, and he wanted to go to America.
The wife was the larger problem. On top of his arrogant disposition, Rotfeld was gangly and unattractive, and had a tendency to leer. Women were disinclined to be alone with him. A few matchmakers had approached him when he’d inherited, but their clients had been from inferior families, and he’d turned them away. When it became clear to all what kind of businessman he really was, the offers had disappeared completely.
Rotfeld was arrogant, but he was also lonely. He’d had no real love affairs. He passed worthy ladies on the street, and saw the distaste in their eyes.
It wasn’t very long before he thought to visit old Yehudah Schaalman.
Stories abounded about Schaalman, all slightly different: that he was a disgraced rabbi who’d been driven out of his congregation; that he’d been possessed by a dybbuk and given supernatural powers; and even that he was over a hundred years old and slept with demon-women. But all the stories agreed on this: Schaalman liked to dabble in the more dangerous of the Kabbalistic arts, and he was willing to offer his services for a price. Barren women had visited him in the dead of night and conceived soon after. Peasant girls in search of men’s affections bought Schaalman’s bags of powders, and then stirred them into their beloveds’ beer.
But Rotfeld wanted no spells or love-potions. He had something else in mind.
He went to the old man’s dilapidated shack, deep in the forest that bordered Konin. The path to the front door was a half-trampled trail. Greasy, yellowish smoke drifted from a chimney-pipe, the only sign of habitation. The walls of the shack slouched toward a nearby ravine, in which a stream trickled.
Rotfeld knocked on the door, and waited. After some minutes, he heard a shuffling step. The door opened a hand’s width, revealing a man of perhaps seventy. He was bald, save for a fringe. His cheeks were deeply furrowed above a tangled beard. He stared hard at Rotfeld, as though daring him to speak.
“Are you Schaalman?” Rotfeld asked.
No answer, only the stare.
Rotfeld cleared his throat, nervous. “I want you to make me a golem that can pass for human,” he said. “And I want it to be female.”
That broke the old man’s silence. He laughed, a hard bark. “Boy,” he said, “do you know what a golem is?”
“A person made of clay,” Rotfeld said, uncertain.
“Wrong. It’s a beast of burden. A lumbering, unthinking slave. Golems are built for protection and brute force, not for the pleasures of a bed.”
Rotfeld reddened. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”
“I’m telling you the idea is ridiculous. To make a golem that can pass for human would be near impossible. For one thing, it would need some amount of self-awareness, if only enough to converse. Not to mention the body itself, with realistic joints, and musculature .”
The old man trailed off, staring past his visitor. He seemed to be considering something. Abruptly he turned his back on Rotfeld and disappeared into the gloom of the shack. Through the open door Rotfeld could see him shuffling carefully through a stack of papers. Then he picked up an old leather-bound book and thumbed through it. His finger ran down a page, and he peered at something written there. He looked up at Rotfeld.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said.
Accordingly, Rotfeld knocked again the next day, and this time Schaalman opened the door without pause. “How much can you pay?” he demanded.
“Then it can be done?”
“Answer my question. The one will determine the other.”
Rotfeld named a figure. The old man snorted. “Half again, at the very least.”
“But I’ll have barely anything left!”
“Consider it a bargain,” said Schaalman. “For isn’t it written that a virtuous woman is more precious than rubies? And her virtue”—he grinned—“will be guaranteed!”
Rotfeld brought the money three days later, in a large valet case. The edge of the nearby ravine was newly disfigured, a piece the length of a man scooped away. An earth-stained spade leaned against a wall.
Schaalman opened the door with a distracted look, as though interrupted at a crucial moment. Streaks of mud crusted his clothing and daubed his beard. He saw the valet case and grabbed it from Rotfeld’s hand.
“Good,” he said. “Come back in a week.”
The door slammed shut again, but not before Rotfeld had caught a glimpse inside the shack, of a dark figure laid out in pieces on a table—a slender trunk, rough limbs, and one curled hand.
“What do you prefer in a woman?” Schaalman asked.
It was the following week, and this time Rotfeld had been allowed inside. The shack was dominated by the table that Rotfeld had glimpsed before, and the young man couldn’t help sneaking glances at its burden: a human-shaped form, draped with a sheet. He said, “What do you mean, what do I prefer?”
“I’m creating a woman for you. I assumed you’d want some say in the matter.”
Rotfeld frowned. “I like an attractive figure, I suppose—”
“Not her physical aspects, not yet. Her temperament. Her personality.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, I believe that I can,” the old man said with pride. “At least, I can steer her toward certain proclivities.”
Rotfeld thought hard. “I want her to be obedient.”
“She’ll already be obedient,” Schaalman said, impatient. “That’s what a golem is—a slave to your will. Whatever you command her, she’ll do. She won’t even wish otherwise.”
“Good,” Rotfeld said. But he was perplexed. Having put aside appearance and obedience, he had little idea what else he wanted. He was about to tell Rotfeld to do whatever he thought best—but then, in a burst of memory, he recalled his younger sister, the only girl he’d ever truly known. She’d been full of curiosity, and a burden to their mother, who could not stand her always underfoot and asking questions. In one of the few generous acts of his life, young Otto had taken her under his wing. Together they’d spent whole afternoons wandering through the woods, and he’d answered her questions about anything and everything. When she’d died at age twelve, drowned in a river on a summer afternoon, he’d lost the only person in his life who’d ever really mattered.
“Give her curiosity,” he told Schaalman. “And intelligence. I can’t stand a silly woman. Oh,” he said, inspiration warming him to his task, “and make her proper. Not … lascivious. A gentleman’s wife.”
The old man’s eyebrows shot up. He’d expected his client to request motherly kindness, or an eager sexual appetite, or else both; years of manufacturing love spells had taught him what men like Rotfeld thought they wanted in a woman. But curiosity? Intelligence? He wondered if the man knew what he was asking for.
But