The Golem (7 page)

“Aren’t you going to tell us more, Zwakh?” asked Prokop, with a questioning look at Vrieslander and myself, to see whether we agreed.

The old puppeteer began hesitantly. “I don’t know where to begin”, he said, “the story of the Golem is so difficult to pin down. It’s just like Pernath said, he knows exactly what the stranger looked like, but he can’t describe him. Roughly every thirty-three years something happens in these streets which is not especially exciting in itself and yet which creates a sense of horror for which there is no justification nor any satisfactory explanation: at these intervals a completely unknown person, smooth-faced, with a yellow complexion and mongoloid features, dressed in faded, old-fashioned clothes and with a regular but oddly stumbling gait, as if he were going to fall down on his face at any moment, is seen going through the Ghetto from the direction of Altschulgasse until … the figure suddenly vanishes.

Usually it turns a corner and disappears.

Once, so it is said, it walked in a circle and returned to the point from which it started out, an ancient house close to the Synagogue.

On the other hand, you come across agitated people who maintain they saw it coming round a corner towards them. Although it was quite clearly walking towards them, it gradually grew smaller and smaller, like the figure of someone disappearing into the distance, until it finally disappeared.

Sixty-six years ago it must have made a particularly profound impression; I can still remember – I was just a little boy at the time – how they searched the house in Altschulgasse from top to bottom. All that they discovered was that there really was a room in the house with a barred window to which there was no access. They hung washing from all the windows, so as to check the rooms from the street, and that’s how they found out about it. As there was no other way in, a man had himself let down by a rope from the roof in order to look in. Scarcely had he reached the window, however, than the rope broke and the unfortunate man smashed his skull on the pavement. And when they decided to try and repeat the experiment some time later, they could not agree on which was the right window and gave up the whole idea.

It was about thirty-three years ago that I encountered the Golem myself for the first time in my life. It was coming towards me in a passageway and we almost knocked against each other. Even today I still can’t work out precisely what was going on inside me. You don’t go around, day in, day out, expecting to meet the Golem, for God’s sake, and yet I’m certain, absolutely certain, that in the instant
before
I saw it something inside me screamed ‘The Golem!’ And at that very moment something came stumbling out of the darkness of a doorway and an unknown figure passed me. A second later a stream of pale, agitated faces was coming towards me, bombarding me with questions. Had I seen it?! Had I seen it?!

When I answered them, it felt as if my tongue were suddenly free, although before I had not been aware of being unable to speak. I felt astonished that I could move my limbs, and I realised that I must have suffered from a kind of paralysis, even if only for a fraction of a second.

I have thought about this long and often, and I think that the closest approach to the truth is something like this: once in every generation a spiritual epidemic spreads like lightning through the Ghetto, attacking the souls of the living for some purpose which is hidden from us, and causing a kind of mirage in the shape of some being characteristic of the place that, perhaps, lived here hundreds of years ago and still yearns for physical form.

Perhaps it is right here among us, every hour of the day, only we cannot perceive it. You can’t hear the note from a vibrating tuning fork until it touches wood and sets it resonating. Perhaps it is simply a spiritual growth without any inherent consciousness, a structure that develops like a crystal out of formless chaos according to a constant law.

Who can say?

Just as on sultry days the static electricity builds up to unbearable tension until it discharges itself in lightning, could it not be that the steady build-up of those never-changing thoughts that poison the air in the Ghetto lead to a sudden, spasmodic discharge? A spiritual explosion blasting our unconscious dreams out into the light of day and creating, as the electricity does the lightning, a phantom that in expression, gait and behaviour, in every last detail, would reveal the symbol of the soul of the masses, if only we were able to interpret the secret language of forms?

And just as there are natural phenomena which suggest that lightning is about to strike, so there are certain eerie portents which presage the irruption of that spectre into the physical world. The plaster flaking off a wall will resemble a person striding along the street; the frost patterns on windows will form into the lines of staring faces; the dust drifting down from the roofs will seem to fall in a different way from usual, suggesting to the observant that it is being scattered by some invisible intelligence lurking hidden in the eaves in a secret attempt to create all sorts of strange patterns. Whether the eye rests on a uniform sameness of texture or focuses on irregularities of the skin, we fall prey to our unwelcome talent for discerning everywhere significant, ominous shapes which grow to gigantic proportions in our dreams. And always, behind the spectral attempts of these gathering swarms of thoughts to gnaw through the walls surrounding our everyday existence, we can sense with tormenting certainty that our own inmost substance is, deliberately and against our will, being sucked dry so that the phantom may take on physical form.

When I heard Pernath tell us just now that he had encountered a man with a beardless face and slanting eyes, the Golem immediately appeared before my inward eye, just as I had seen it all those years ago. It just seemed to materialise from nowhere, as if by magic. For a moment I was seized with a vague fear that once again something inexplicable was about to happen. It was the same fear I had felt as a child when the first eerie portents foreshadowed the appearance of the Golem.

That must have been sixty-six years ago now. It happened one evening when my sister’s fiancé was visiting us and the date of their wedding was decided upon. For amusement, they decided to tell their fortunes by dropping molten lead into water. I looked on open-mouthed, not really understanding what they were doing. In my confused, childish imagination I connected it with the Golem I had often heard of in my grandfather’s tales. I could almost visualise the door opening and the strange figure entering the room.

My sister poured the spoonful of molten metal into the tub of water and, when she saw me looking on all agog, gave me a merry laugh. With wrinkled, trembling hands, my grandfather picked the glittering lump of lead out of the water and held it up to the light. Immediately the grown-ups became excited and all started talking at once. I tried to push my way to the front, but they held me back. Later on, when I was older, my father told me that the molten metal had solidified into the distinct shape of a small head, smooth and round, as if it had been poured into a mould. Its resemblance to the Golem was so uncanny that they all felt a shiver of horror.

I have often discussed it with Shemaiah Hillel, the archivist at the Jewish Town Hall and Warden of the Old-New Synagogue who also looks after that clay model from Emperor Rudolf’s time that I told you about. He has studied the Cabbala and thinks the lump of clay shaped into human form is a portent from the old days, just like the lead that shaped itself into a human head in my youth. He believes the unknown figure that haunts the district must be the phantasm that the rabbi in the Middle Ages had first to create
in his mind,
before he could clothe it in physical form. It reappears at regular intervals, when the stars are in the same conjunction under which it was created, tormented by its urge to take on physical existence.

Hillel’s late wife also saw the Golem face to face and had the same sensation as I did of being paralysed as long as the mysterious being was in the vicinity. She used to say she was firmly convinced that it could only have been her own soul which had left her body for a moment and confronted her for a brief second with the features of an alien creature. In spite of the terrible dread with which she was seized, she said she was never in the slightest doubt that the other could only be part of her inmost self.”

“Incredible”, muttered Prokop, lost in thought. Vrieslander also seemed engrossed in his ruminations.

Then there was a knock on the door and, without a word, the old woman who brings me water and anything else I need in the evening came in, put the earthenware jug on the floor and went out. We all looked up, staring round the room as if we had just woken, but for a long time no one spoke. It was as if some new influence had slipped in through the door behind the old woman and we needed time to get used to it.

“Yes!” said Zwakh suddenly, apropros of nothing, “that Rosina with the red hair, she has one of those faces that you can’t get out your mind, that keep on popping up all over the place. That frozen, grinning smile has accompanied me throughout my life; first her grandmother, then her mother! Always the same face, not the slightest change. The same name, Rosina, each was the resurrection of the previous one.”

“Isn’t Rosina the daughter of Wassertrum, the junkdealer?” I asked.

“So people say”, replied Zwakh. “But Aaron Wassertrum has any number of sons and daughters people don’t know about. As for Rosina’s mother, no one knows who
her
father was either, nor what became of her; she had a child when she was fifteen and no one’s seen her since. As far as I can remember, her disappearance was connected with a murder, of which she was the cause and which took place in this house.

Just like Rosina today,
her
image used to haunt the minds of all the young men. One of them’s still alive; I see him quite often, but I’ve forgotten his name. The others did not live long. In fact, all I can remember from those days are brief episodes that drift through my memory like faded pictures. For example, there was a simple-minded man who used to go from bar to bar at night, cutting out silhouettes of the customers from black paper for a few kreutzer. And whenever they managed to get him drunk, he would become unutterably sad, and sob and weep as he snipped away at a girl’s pert profile, always the same one, until his stock of paper was all used up. I have long since forgotten the details, but I think it was suggested that, while still not much more than a child, he had fallen so deeply in love with a certain Rosina – presumably the grandmother of the current one – that he had gone out of his mind. Yes, when I count back over the years, it can have been none other than the grandmother of the current Rosina.”

Zwakh stopped talking and leant back in his chair.

In this house, destiny seems to run round and round in circles, always returning to the same point. As this thought came to mind, it was accompanied by a horrible image: a cat with one half of its brain damaged staggering round and round in a circle …

I was suddenly aware of Vrieslander’s high voice saying, “And now for the head”, and he took a round piece of wood from his pocket and began carving it. My eyes grew heavy with tiredness and I pushed my chair back out of the light. The water for the punch was bubbling in the kettle, and Joshua Prokop refilled our glasses. Softly, very softly the sound of the dance music could be heard through the window; sometimes it would fade away and then return, depending on whether the wind dropped it on the way or carried it up to us.

After a while I heard Prokop ask me whether I wasn’t at least going to say cheers, but I gave no answer. I had so completely lost the will-power to make my limbs move, that it did not even occur to me to open my mouth. I thought I was asleep, so rock-like was the calm that had taken possession of me. I had to look across at the glitter of Vrieslander’s shining knife as it restlessly sliced tiny shavings off the wood to convince myself that I was awake.

Far away, I could hear Zwakh’s rumbling voice telling all kinds of strange stories about marionettes and recounting the elaborate fairytales he thought up for his puppet-plays. He came round to talking about Dr. Savioli again and the fine lady, the wife of some aristocrat, who secretly visited Savioli in his hide-out in the studio.

And once again in my mind’s eye I saw the mocking, triumphant expression on Wassertrum’s face.

I wondered whether I shouldn’t tell Zwakh what I had seen, then I decided it was of such trifling importance it wasn’t worth the effort. Anyway, I realised that at the moment my will-power would not be strong enough to enable me to speak.

Suddenly the three of them round the table gave me a sharp look and Prokop said quite loud, “He’s fallen asleep”, so loud, indeed, that it almost sounded as if it were meant as a question. Then they went on talking in subdued voices, and I realised they were talking about me. Vrieslander’s knife went on dancing up and down; it caught the light from the lamp and the reflection burnt into my eyes. Someone said something like “be mad’, and I listened to what they were saying to each other.

“Topics such as the Golem shouldn’t be mentioned when Pernath’s around”, said Prokop reproachfully. “When he told us earlier on about the
Book of Ibbur
, we just sat still and asked no questions. I wouldn’t mind betting he dreamed it all up.”

Zwakh nodded. “You’re quite right. It’s like taking a naked light into a dusty chamber, where the walls and ceiling are lined with mouldy cloth and the floor is ankle-deep in the withered debris of the past: one little touch and the whole lot would burst into flames.”

“Did Pernath spend a long time in the lunatic asylum?” asked Vrieslander. “It’s a pity about him, he can’t be any more than forty.”

“I don’t know, nor have I any idea where he might come from or what work he did before. With his slim figure and pointed beard he looks like some ancient French nobleman. A long, long time ago an old doctor I was friendly with asked me to take him under my wing and find him a room somewhere round here, where no one would notice him or bother him with questions about old times.” Again Zwakh gave me a concerned look. “Since then he’s lived here repairing antiques and engraving gems, and he’s managed to make a decent living out of it. The fortunate thing is that he seems to have forgotten everything to do with his madness. I beg of you, never ask him about things that might call the past back to mind for him. How often the old doctor used to emphasise that. ‘You know, Zwakh’, he would always say, ‘we have our method for dealing with this; with great effort, we’ve managed to wall up his illness, if I can put it like that, just as you might build a wall round the site of some tragedy, because of the unhappy memories associated with it.”