The Golem Page 8

  “Thou camest to me in a deep sleep and I have woken thee. In the Psalm of David it says, ‘Then spake I with myself, now shall I begin. It is the right hand of the Lord that hath wrought this change.’

  When men arise from their beds, they think they have shaken off sleep and they know not that they have fallen victim to their senses and are in the grip of a much deeper sleep than the one they have just left. There is only one true state of wakefulness, and that is the one you are now approaching. If you should speak to others of it, they will say you are sick and they cannot understand you. For that reason it is pointless and cruel to speak to them of it.

  Lord, Thou carriest them away as with a flood;

  They are as a sleep:

  They are as grass which groweth up:

  In the evening it is cut down and withereth.”

  I wanted to ask, ‘Who was the stranger who came to me in my room and gave me the Book of Ibbur? Was I awake or dreaming when I saw him?’ but Hillel answered before even I could put the thought into words.

  “Assume that the man who came to you and whom you call the Golem signifies the awakening of the dead through your innermost spiritual life. Each thing on earth is nothing but an eternal symbol clothed in dust.

  How is it possible to think with your eyes? Each shape that you see is a thought in your eye. Everything that takes on shape was a ghost before.”

  I felt ideas, which until then had been firmly anchored in my mind, tear themselves loose and drift like rudderless ships on a boundless ocean.

  Placidly Hillel went on,

  “Anyone who has been wakened can no longer die; sleep and death are the same.”

  “… can no longer die?” A dull ache gripped me.

  “Two paths run beside each other: the Path of Life and the Path of Death. You have taken the Book of Ibbur and read in it. Your soul has been made pregnant by the Spirit of Life”, I heard him say.

  “Hillel, Hillel, let me take the path that all men take, the Path of Death!” everything within me screamed out loud. Hillel’s countenance froze in an expression of deep earnestness:

  “Men do not take any path, neither that of life nor that of death. They drift like chaff in the wind. In the Talmud it is written, ‘Before God created the world he showed the souls a mirror, wherein they could see the spiritual sufferings of existence and the joys that followed. Some accepted the suffering. But the others refused and God struck them out of the Book of the Living.’ But you are taking a path and you have set out on it of your own free will, even if you are no longer aware of it. Do not grieve; as knowledge comes gradually, so does memory. Knowledge and memory are the same thing.”

  The friendly, almost kindly tone in which Hillel concluded this speech restored my calm, and I felt safe and sound, like a sick child that knows its father is close by.

  I looked up and saw that the room was suddenly peopled with figures standing in a circle round us. Some had white shrouds such as the rabbis of old used to wear, others had three-cornered hats and silver buckles on their shoes. But then Hillel passed his hand over my eyes and the room was empty once more.

  Then he accompanied me out onto the stairs and gave me a burning candle for me to light my way up to my room.

  I went to bed and tried to sleep, but sleep would not come and instead I found myself in a strange state that was neither dreaming, nor waking, nor sleeping.

  I had snuffed the candle, but in spite of that everything in the room was so clear that I could distinguish each individual shape. At the same time I felt completely comfortable and free from that agonising restlessness which usually torments you when you find it impossible to get to sleep.

  Never before in my life had I been capable of such sharp and precise thought as now. The rhythm of health flowed through my every nerve, arranging my thoughts in orderly rows, like an army awaiting my command.

  I only needed to call on them, and they stepped up and did what I wanted.

  During the last few weeks I had been trying, without making any progress whatsoever, to carve a cameo out of sunstone; I never managed to make all the flecks in the stone fit in with the face I had in mind. Now I remembered the piece, and in a flash I could see the solution and knew precisely what line to take with the graver to do justice to the texture of the gem.

  Formerly I had been the slave of a horde of fantastic impressions and visions, and often I could not say whether they were feelings or ideas. Now I suddenly found I was lord and master in my own kingdom. Calculations, which previously I had only been able to do with much groaning on paper, now seemed to work themselves out in my head as if by magic.

  All this was the result of my new-found ability to perceive and retain those things – and only those things – that I needed: numbers, shapes, objects or colours. And if it was a matter of questions which could not be answered by means of such tools – philosophical problems and the like – then my inner vision was replaced by hearing, and the voice I heard was that of Shemaiah Hillel.

  I was granted the strangest insights.

  I suddenly saw things, which a thousand times previously I had allowed to slip past my ear as mere words, now clear before me, and soaked with significance in every pore; things I had learnt ‘off by heart’, I now ‘grasped’ at one stroke so that I ‘owned’ them. Mysteries hidden in the forms of words that I had never even suspected were now revealed to me.

  The ‘high’ ideals of humanity, which until now, chests puffed out and besplattered with decorations, had looked down their respectable aldermanic noses at me, removed the masks from their features and apologised: they themselves were really only poor souls, but still they were used to prop up an even more insolent fraud.

  Might I perhaps not have been dreaming after all? Could it be that I had not talked to Hillel?

  But no, there was the candle Shemaiah had given me. Happy as a little boy who has slipped out of bed on Christmas Eve to make sure the marvellous jumping-jack really is there, I snuggled back down into the pillows.

  Like a tracker dog I penetrated further into the jungle of spiritual puzzles surrounding me.

  First of all I tried to go to the point farthest back in my life that memory could reach. From there it must be possible, or so I believed, for me to see that part of my life which a quirk of fate had hidden in darkness.

  But however hard I tried, I still could get no farther than seeing myself in the gloomy courtyard of this house with a view through the arched gateway to Aaron Wassertrum’s junk-shop; it was as if I had spent a hundred years as an engraver of gems in this house without ever having been a child.

  I had almost decided that any further groping around in the wells of the past was hopeless, when I suddenly realised with dazzling clarity that, although in my memory the broad highway of events ended at that arched gateway, that was not the case with a whole host of narrow footpaths which had presumably always accompanied the main road, but which I had ignored. ‘Then where’ – it was like a voice screaming in my ear – ‘did you learn the skills by which you earn your living? Who taught you to engrave gems, and everything that goes with it? To read, to write, to speak? To eat and walk, breathe, think and feel?’

  Immediately I began to follow the advice that came from within me. Systematically I retraced my life.

  I forced myself to follow an uninterrupted but inverted chain of thought: What had just happened? What had led to it? What came before that? And so on, back into the past.

  I was back at that arched gateway again. Now! Now! Only a little jump into empty space and surely I would have crossed the abyss separating me from my forgotten past? Then I saw something which I had missed on my way back through my thoughts. It was Shemaiah Hillel passing his hand over my eyes, just as he had done before in his study.

  And everything was erased. Even my desire to delve into the past.

  There was only one thing left that I had gained from it, and that was the realisation that the sequence of events in one’s life is a road leading
to a dead end, however broad and easy it might appear. It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland; what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life’s rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved in our body.

  Just as I could find my way back to the days of my childhood, if I went through my alphabet book from back to front, from Z to A, to reach the point where I had started reading it at school, so too, I realised, I ought to be able to journey to that other distant home which is beyond all thought.

  I carried a world of work on my shoulders. Hercules, I remembered, had also borne the weight of the vault of heaven on his head, and I saw the gleam of hidden significance in the old legend. And just as Hercules had managed to escape from it through his cunning in asking Atlas, ‘Just let me tie a layer of rope round my head so that the awful burden does not crush my brain’, so perhaps, I sensed, there was a dark path leading away from this precipice.

  A deep distrust of blindly following my thoughts any farther in this direction suddenly crept over me. I stretched out straight in bed and covered my eyes and ears with my hands so as not to be distracted by my senses; so as to kill off every thought.

  But my determination was smashed by an iron law: one thought could only be driven away by another thought, and if that one should die there would already be the next feasting on its flesh. I sought refuge in the roaring torrent of my blood, but my thoughts were ever at my heels; I hid in the pounding forge of my heart, but after a short while they had discovered me there.

  Once more Hillel’s kindly voice came to my rescue, saying, “Keep to your path and do not falter. The key to the art of forgetting belongs to our brothers who follow the Path of Death; but you have been made pregnant by the Spirit of Life.”

  The Book of Ibbur appeared before me with two letters engraved in flame upon it: the one representing the bronze woman was throbbing, powerful as an earthquake; the other was infinitely far away: the hermaphrodite on the mother-of-pearl throne with the crown of red wood on its head.

  Then Shemaiah Hillel passed his hand over my eyes for the third time and I fell asleep.

  SNOW

  Dear, dear Herr Pernath,

  I am writing this letter to you in great haste and fear. Please destroy it as soon as you have read it – or, even better, bring it to me together with the envelope. Only that will put my mind at rest. But do not tell a soul I have written to you! Not even at the place where you will go today!

  Recently (from this brief reference to an event that you witnessed, you will guess who is the author of this letter; I am too afraid to put my name at the end of it) your good, honest face filled me with a great feeling of trust; also, your dear late father taught me as a child: all this gives me the courage to turn to you, perhaps you are the only person who can help me!

  I beseech you: be in the Cathedral on the Hradschin at five o’clock this evening.

  A lady known to you.

  I must have sat there for a quarter of an hour with the letter in my hand. The strange atmosphere of reverent solemnity, in which I had been enveloped since last night, was dissipated in a trice, blown away by the fresh breeze of a new day with its earthly tasks. A new-born destiny, wreathed in auspicious smiles, a veritable child of spring, was coming towards me. A human soul had turned to me for help! To me! What a change it brought about in my room! The worm-eaten cupboard suddenly had a smile on its carved features and the four chairs looked like four old folk sitting round the table, chuckling happily over a game of cards.

  Now there was something to give meaning to my days, something rich and radiant. Was the rotten tree to bear fruit after all?

  I could feel a current of vital energy coursing through my veins. It had long slept within me, concealed in the depths of my soul, buried beneath the debris of daily routine, but now it poured forth, like a spring gushing from the ice when the grip of winter is broken. And I knew, just as certainly as I knew I was holding her letter in my hand, that I would be able to help, whatever the danger that threatened her. It was the rejoicing in my heart that gave me that certitude.

  Again and again I read the line, “… also, your dear late father taught me as a child …” It took my breath away. Did it not sound like the promise, ‘Today thou shalt be with me in paradise’? The hand that she was stretching towards me for help also held out a gift: the memory that would lead me back to the past I longed to reach; it would reveal to me the secret, help to lift the veil that had closed off my past.

  “Your dear late father”, how alien the words sounded when I repeated them over to myself! Father! For a brief moment I saw the tired face of an old man with white hair appear in the armchair beside the chest: a stranger, a complete stranger, and yet so eerily familiar! Then normal vision reasserted itself and the hammerstrokes of my heart beat out the actual hour of the clock.

  I started in horror. How long had I been dreaming? Had I missed the appointed time? I looked at the clock: the Lord be praised, it was only half past four.

  I went into my bedroom for my hat and coat and set off down the stairs. Today I was impervious to the mutterings of the dark corners, the petty, spiteful, sour misgivings that emanated from them: “We’re not letting you go – you belong to us – we don’t want you to be happy – happiness in this house, the very idea!” Usually in these passages and alcoves there is a fine, poisonous dust that grabs me by the throat and chokes me, but today it retreated before the vital breath streaming from my mouth. I paused for a moment outside Hillel’s door. Should I go in? Some hidden awe kept me from knocking. I felt so different today, as if it would be wrong for me to go in to him. Already the hand of life was pushing me on, down the steps.

  The street was white with snow.

  I think many people wished me good afternoon; whether I replied or not, I can’t remember. I kept touching my breast pocket to make sure I still had the letter. The place where it lay felt warm.

  I made my way through the massive stone arcades of the Old Town Square, past the bronze fountain, its baroque railings covered in icicles, and across the stone bridge with its statues of saints and its monument to St. John Nepomuk.

  Down below, the river foamed as it pounded the piers of the bridge with waves of loathing.

  Half dreaming, my eye caught the monument to St. Luitgard: on the hollowed-out sandstone the ‘Torments of the Damned’ were carved in high relief and the snow was lying thick on the lids of the souls in purgatory and on their manacled hands raised in supplication.

  Arches swallowed me up and released me, palaces with arrogant carved portals on which lions’ heads bit into bronze rings slowly passed me by.

  Here too was snow, snow everywhere. Soft and white as the fur of a gigantic polar bear. Tall, proud windows, their ledges glittering with ice, stared coldly up at the sky. I was astonished to see the air so full of migrating birds. As I climbed the countless granite steps to the Hradschin, each one the width of four bodies laid head to foot, the city with its roofs and gables sank, step by step, from my conscious mind.

  Already the twilight was creeping along the rows of houses as I stepped out into the empty square in the middle of which the Cathedral towers up to the heavenly throne. Footsteps, the edges encrusted with ice, led to the side door.

  From somewhere in a distant house the soft, musing tones of a harmonium crept out into the stillness of the evening. They were like melancholy tears trickling down into the deserted square.

  The well-padded door swung to with a sigh behind me as I entered the Cathedral and stood in the darkness of the side aisle. The nave was filled with the green and blue shimmer of the dying light slanting down through the stained-glass windows onto the pews; at the far end, the altar gleamed at me in a frozen cascade of gold. Showers of sparks came from the bowls of the red glass lamps. The air was musty with the smell of wax and incense.

  I leant back in one of the pews. My heart grew strangely calm in this realm where everything stoo
d still. The whole expanse of the Cathedral was filled with a presence that had no heartbeat, with a secret, patient expectation.

  Eternal sleep lay over the silver reliquaries.

  There! From a long, long way away the sound of horses’ hooves reached my ear, muffled, scarcely audible; they seemed to approach and then fell silent.

  A dull thud, like the closing of a carriage door.

  The rustle of a silk dress came through the church and a slim, delicate lady’s hand touched my arm. “Please, please can we go to that pillar over there. Out here among the pews I cannot bring myself to speak of the things I must tell you.”

  The holy images all around came into sharp focus. I was suddenly wide-awake and alert.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Herr Pernath, that you have come all the way up here in this terrible weather for my sake.”

  I stammered a few banal phrases.

  “But I could think of no other place where I would be safer from spies and danger than here. I’m sure no one has followed us to the Cathedral.”

  I took out the letter and handed it to her. She was almost completely enveloped in a luxurious fur, but I had recognised her as the terrified woman who had sought refuge from Wassertrum in my room in Hahnpassgasse. It did not surprise me at all; I had not expected it to be anyone else.

  My eyes did not leave her face, which presumably seemed paler in the twilit alcove than it was in reality. Her beauty took my breath away and I stood there, spellbound. It was all I could do not to fall down on my knees and kiss her feet because she was the one I was to help, because she had chosen me for the task.

  “Please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart to forget – at least for as long as we are in here – the situation in which you saw me when we last met”, she went on urgently. “I don’t know how you feel about such things …”