The Golem Read online

  I made the usual objection that he was taking too pessimistic a view of things, but he waved it away with a smile. “It’s better like that. It would be no pleasure to act the part of the great physician, perhaps even to end up with a title after a career as a licensed poisoner. However”, he added with his caustic humour, “I’m afraid this earthly ghetto is soon going to be deprived of the benefit of any further medical miracle-working from me.” He picked up his hat. “But I won’t take up any more of your time. Or is there something else we need to discuss in the Savioli case? I think not. But you will let me know directly you hear anything new, won’t you? The best thing would be to hang a mirror up in the window as a sign that I should come to see you. One thing, though – you must never come to my cellar, Wassertrum would jump to the conclusion that we are in this together straight away. I’m very curious to know what he’ll do, now that he has seen the lady come to see you. You must simply tell him she brought you a piece of jewelry to repair and if he tries to press you, just pretend to go berserk.”

  No suitable opportunity arose to press the bank-note on Charousek, so I picked up my modelling clay from the window-sill. “Let’s go then; I’ll accompany you downstairs as far as Hillel’s. He’s expecting me”, I lied.

  He stopped in surprise. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “In a way. Do you know him? Or do you suspect him as well?” I had to smile at the very idea.

  “God forbid!”

  “What makes you say it like that?”

  Charousek hesitated, pondering before he answered. “I’ve no idea why. It must be some subconscious impulse. Whenever I meet him in the street I want to step off the pavement and go down on my knees before him, as if he were a priest carrying the host. You see, Pernath, in Hillel you have a person who is the opposite of Wassertrum in every atom of his being. For example, among the Christians in the district, who, in this case are as wrongly informed as always, he has the reputation of being a miser and a secret millionaire; in fact, he’s incredibly poor.”

  I stopped, appalled at the thought. “Poor?”

  “Yes, even poorer than I am, if that’s possible. I think he only knows the verb ‘to receive’ from books. When he leaves the Jewish Town Hall on the first of the month, the beggars run away from him because they know he would press his meagre salary on the first one he came across and end up starving – together with his daughter – a few days later. There’s an old Talmudic legend that says that of the twelve tribes of Israel, ten are cursed and two holy. If that’s true, then he represents the two holy ones and Wassertrum all the ten others put together. Have you never noticed the way Wassertrum goes all colours of the rainbow whenever Hillel passes him in the street? Interesting fact, that. I tell you, blood like that could never mix, the children would all be stillborn; that is, assuming the mothers hadn’t died of horror first. And another thing: Hillel’s the only person Wassertrum steers clear of, he avoids him like the plague. Probably because Hillel represents something completely incomprehensible to him, something he just cannot work out. Perhaps he senses the cabbalist in him, as well.”

  We were already on our way down the stairs.

  “Do you believe there are still cabbalists around today? Do you believe there is anything at all in the Cabbala?” I asked, curious as to what he would answer, but he seemed not to have been listening. I repeated my question.

  He seemed flustered by it and diverted my attention to a door giving onto the stair-well that was made from the lids of packing-cases nailed together. “You’ve got some new neighbours there”, he said. “It’s a Jewish family, but poor: that meshugge musician, Nephtali Schaffranek, with his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. When it gets dark and he’s left alone with the girls, he goes into one of his crazy moods and ties their thumbs together so they won’t run away. Then he squeezes them into an old chicken-coop and gives them ‘singing-lessons’, as he calls it, so that they’ll be able to earn a living when they grow up; that is, he teaches them the weirdest songs, fragments, German words that he’s picked up somewhere and, in his deranged mind, takes for – Prussian battle-hymns, or I don’t know what.”

  And, true enough, strange music could just be heard wafting out onto the landing. The vague contours of a music-hall song were being scraped out on one and the same excruciatingly high note of a fiddle, whilst two squeaky children’s voices sang:

  Frau Pick,

  Frau Hock,

  Frau Kle – pe – tarsch

  Always gossiping together

  Never mind the wind or weather –

  It was crazy and comic at the same time, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  “Schaffranek’s son-in-law – his daughter sells the juice from pickled gherkins by the glass to schoolchildren at the egg market – spends the whole day running round from office to office”, Charousek went on in his bitter manner, “begging for old postage stamps. He sorts through them, and whenever he finds some that happen to have been franked on one half only, he puts one on top of the other, cuts them in two, then sticks the unfranked halves together and sells them as new. At first business boomed and sometimes he even made the grand sum of a crown a day, but eventually the Jewish businessmen of Prague cottoned on, and now they do it themselves. They cream off most of the profit.”

  “Would you try to help the poor and needy, Charousek, if you had more money than you knew what to do with?” I asked him quickly. We were at Hillel’s door now, and I knocked.

  “Can you think me such a wretch that I wouldn’t?” he asked in astonishment.

  Miriam’s footsteps were approaching. I waited until she had her hand on the latch, then I quickly stuffed the bank-note into his pocket. “No, Charousek, I don’t think that of you, but then you ought to think me a wretch if I didn’t.”

  Before he had a chance to reply, I shook his hand and closed the door behind me. While Miriam was greeting me I listened to find out what he would do. He stood still for a while, then gave a sob and made his way down the stairs, slowly, feeling for each step, as if he had to hold on to the banister.

  It was the first time I had gone to Hillel’s apartment. It was as bare as a prison cell. The floor was spotlessly clean and sprinkled with white sand. There was no furniture apart from two chairs, a table and a sideboard; standing against either wall to the right and left were two wooden stands. Miriam was sitting opposite me at the window, and I was kneading away at my modelling clay.

  “Does an artist have to have a face in front of him in order to catch the likeness?” she asked shyly, and only to break the silence. Bashfully our eyes avoided each other. She was so tormented by embarrassment at the wretched room that she didn’t know where to look, and my cheeks were burning with self-reproach at not having taken the trouble sooner to find out how she and her father lived.

  All the same, I had to find some answer.

  “It’s not so much in order to catch the likeness as to make sure that one’s inner vision is right.” Even as I spoke, I could feel how false, how completely false everything I was saying was. For years I had parrotted the mistaken dictum of the painters that to create a work of art one had to study nature. It was only since that night when Hillel had woken me that my inner eye had opened, that sight behind closed lids which vanishes the moment you open your eyes, a gift that everyone believes they possess, but that is given to less than one among millions.

  How could I talk of even thinking of checking the infallible guidance of spiritual vision against the crude measure of appearances. Miriam seemed to be thinking similar thoughts, to go by the look of astonishment on her face.

  “You mustn’t take it literally”, I said in excuse.

  Attentively she watched me as I deepened the lines of the model with the graver. “It must be immensely difficult to transfer all that precisely onto the gemstone?”

  “That’s only mechanical work; more or less, anyway.”

  A pause.

  “May I see it when it’s finished?”


  “But it’s meant for you, Miriam.”

  “No, no; that’s impossible … it … it …” I could see her hands start twisting nervously.

  “You won’t accept even a little thing like this from me?” I quickly broke in. “I wish I could do more for you.”

  Hastily she turned away.

  What had I said!? I must have wounded her deeply. It sounded as if I were referring to her poverty. Should I try to explain what I really meant? Would that only make matters worse? I decided to try. “Listen to what I have to say, Miriam. Do please listen. I am so much in your father’s debt, you’ve no idea how much …”

  She looked at me, unsure of herself; clearly she did not understand.

  “… how very much I owe him. More than my life.”

  “Because he did what he could for you after you had fainted? Anyone would have done that.”

  I could sense that she had no idea what the bond was that tied me to her father. Cautiously I probed to see how far I could go without giving away things he had concealed from her. “I would say there is intangible aid that is more highly to be valued than mere physical succour. I mean the spiritual influence that can radiate from one person to another. Do you understand what I mean, Miriam? It is possible to heal someone spiritually and not just physically, Miriam.”

  “And my –”

  “Yes, that’s what your father did for me!” I took her hand. “Surely, then, you can understand how deeply I feel the desire to do something that will give pleasure, if not to him, then to someone close to him? Won’t you trust me just a little? Is there nothing at all that I could do for you?”

  She shook her head. “You think I must be unhappy here?”

  “Of course not. But perhaps you sometimes have worries I could take care of? It’s your duty – your duty, do you hear – to let me share them. Why would you both live here, in this dark, depressing alley, if you didn’t have to? You’re still so young Miriam and –”

  “But you live here yourself, Herr Pernath”, she interrupted with a smile, “what binds you to this house?”

  Her question stopped me in my tracks. She was right. Why did I live here? I couldn’t explain why. What binds you to this house? I repeated to myself absent-mindedly. I could not find an explanation, and for the moment I completely forgot where I was. Then, suddenly, I found myself carried away somewhere high up … in a garden … the enchanting fragrance of lilac … far below me the city …

  “Have I touched an old wound? Have I hurt you?” Miriam’s voice came to me from far, far away. She was bending over me, scanning my face with an anxious expression. I must have been sitting there in a trance for a long time for her to be so concerned.

  For a while waves of feeling surged and sank inside me, until suddenly they burst the dam and overwhelmed me, and I was pouring out my whole heart to Miriam. As if I were talking to a dear friend I had spent all my life with and from whom I had no secrets, I told her the truth about myself, how I had learnt from Zwakh’s story that at some time, years ago, I had been mad and robbed of all memory of my past; I told her how images had recently awoken within me that must have their roots in those days, and how I was trembling at the thought of the moment when everything would be revealed and would tear me apart once more.

  The only things that I kept back from her were those which would involve mentioning her father, my experiences in the underground passages and all that.

  She had moved her chair close to mine, and was listening with deep, breathless sympathy, which comforted me more than I could say. At last I had found someone in whom I could confide when my spiritual loneliness became too heavy to bear. Of course, there was always Hillel, but for me he was like a being from beyond the clouds, like a ray of light which came and went, so that I could not see it just whenever I happened to feel a longing for it.

  I told her that, and she understood. She, too, saw him in the same way, even though he was her father. He was filled with an immense love for her, and she for him, “and yet”, she confided, “I am separated from him as if there were a glass wall between us which I cannot break through. It has been like that for as long as I can remember. Whenever as a child I dreamed I saw him standing by my bed, he was always wearing the robes of the high priest, with the golden breastplate of Moses with the twelve stones in it over his breast, and blue rays of light shone out from his temples. I believe his is the kind of love that reaches beyond the grave, and is too great for us to comprehend. That was what my mother always said when we used to talk about him secretly.”

  She suddenly gave a shudder and her whole body quivered. I was about to jump up from my chair, but she put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Just a memory. When my mother died – I alone know how much he loved her, although I was only a little girl at the time – I thought I was going to suffocate with the pain, and I ran to him and clung to his robe and wanted to scream but couldn’t because my whole being seemed paralysed; then … and then – it sends shivers down my spine whenever I think of it, even now – then he looked at me with a smile, kissed me on the forehead and passed his hand over my eyes, and from that moment on it was as if all my grief at losing my mother had been washed away. I could not cry one single tear when she was buried; I saw the sun in the sky as the radiant hand of God and wondered why people were crying. My father was walking beside me behind the coffin, and every time I looked up he gave a gentle smile, and I could feel the tremor of horror that passed through the crowd when they saw it.”

  “And are you happy, Miriam? Really happy? Isn’t there also something terrifying in the idea of having as a father a being who has grown so far beyond humanity?” I asked gently.

  Miriam gave a joyful shake of the head. “My life seems to pass like a blissful dream. When you asked me just now whether I had any worries and why we lived here, Herr Pernath, it almost made me laugh. Is nature beautiful? The trees are green and the sky is blue, of course, but it is all much, much more beautiful when I close my eyes and see it in my imagination. Do I have to be sitting in a meadow to see it? And as for the bit of poverty and … and … and hunger, hope and expectation make up for that a thousandfold.”

  “Expectation?” I asked in astonishment.

  “Expecting a miracle. Don’t you know what it is to do that? No? You poor man, I pity you. So few people know what it is to expect a miracle! That’s the reason, you see, why I have no friends and never go out. I used to have a few friends – Jewish girls, of course, like myself – but we always seemed to be talking at cross-purposes. They didn’t understand me, nor I them. When I talked about miracles they thought at first I meant it as a joke, and when they realised that I was serious, and that when I talked of miracles I didn’t mean what the Germans, with their spectacles on their noses, mean when they use the word – the way the grass keeps growing, and things like that – but the opposite, if anything, then their first impulse was to call me mad. But since that was obviously not the case – I am pretty quick-witted, have learnt Hebrew and Aramaic, can read the Targumim and Midrashim, and have other such trifling skills – they had to find another word for it, and finally settled on one that is completely meaningless: they called me ‘highly strung’.

  When I tried to get them to see that for me the important – the essential – thing about the Bible and other holy writings was the miraculous element and that alone, and not moral or ethical commandments, which can only be hidden ways of approaching the miraculous, then all they could do was to throw platitudes at me. They were afraid to admit openly that the only parts of the sacred writings they believed in were those which could just as well be in the Civil Code. They were uncomfortable at the very mention of the word ‘miracle’. It felt as if the ground were opening up at their feet, they said.

  As if there could be anything more marvellous than to have the ground open up at your feet!

  ‘The world exists for us to think it to tatters’, I once heard my father say. ‘Then, and only then, does
life begin.’ I don’t know what he meant by ‘life’, but sometimes I do feel that one day I will do what I can best describe as ‘wake up’, even if I have no idea what kind of world I will wake up in. And I’m sure that miracles will precede it.

  ‘Have you already witnessed a miracle, that you are constantly expecting another?’ my friends often used to ask me, and when I said I hadn’t, they immediately started gloating. Tell me, Herr Pernath, can you understand the workings of hearts like that? That miracles have happened to me, even if only little ones, tiny little ones”, Miriam’s eyes were shining, “was something I wouldn’t reveal to them” – I could hear the tears of joy in her voice – “but you will understand. Often, for weeks, for months even”, she was speaking very softly now, “we have lived from miracles alone. When there was no more bread in the house, not a single mouthful, then I knew the hour had come! And I would sit here and wait and wait until my heart was pounding so that I could hardly breathe. And … and then I would feel drawn outside and I would run downstairs and this way and that through the streets, as fast as I could so that I would be back in time before my father came home. And … and every time I found money. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always enough for me to be able to buy the bare necessities. Often there would be a crown coin lying in the middle of the street. I would see it glittering from far off, and people would tread on it or slip on it, but none of them noticed it. Sometimes I was so full of confidence, that I didn’t even bother to go out, but searched the floor in the kitchen over there to see whether some money or bread had not fallen from heaven.”

  An idea flashed through my mind, and I smiled with pleasure at it.

  She noticed my smile. “Don’t laugh, Herr Pernath”, she begged. “Believe me, I know that these miracles will grow, and that one day –”

  I reassured her. “But I’m not laughing, Miriam. Whatever gave you that idea? I’m eternally happy that you’re not like all the rest, looking for the usual cause behind every effect, and taking exception when, for once – in cases where we shout, ‘Thank God!’ – things turn out differently.”