The Golem and the Jinni (60 page)

“I remember everything,” she said, ire growing despite her terror. “Although
you
might recall that I was being beaten half to death at the time.”

“Then answer my question.”

She hesitated—and her unguarded face answered for her. “I see,” he said. “You’re afraid of her. More than of me, it seems.”

She swallowed against a dry throat. “What is she?”

“That’s her secret. Not mine.”

A faint laugh. “And what are
you
?”

“What I am is not your business. You need only know that, like her, I’m dangerous when angered.”

“Is that so?” She sat up straighter. “Well, so am I. I meant what I said. I
will
tell the police, if I have to.”

“A strange threat, when the money is there in your hand. Or do you mean to repeat your blackmail, when this first payment is spent? Will you rob me little by little, relying on my discretion and goodwill? Because both have reached their limit.”

“I’m not a thief,” she shot back. “I don’t mean to do anything like this ever again. I only need something to live on until the baby is born and I can find work.”

“And what will you do with the baby? Keep it here?” He glanced around with distaste.

She shrugged. “Give it away, I suppose. There’s plenty of women who want one. Some’ll even pay.” She affected a carelessness she didn’t feel in the least.

“And your lover? He knows of this plan?”

“Don’t call him that,” she snapped. “He isn’t anything to me, or to the baby. Why should I care what he thinks? He told me to get rid of it, that night. Called me a scheming whore and said I couldn’t prove it was his. It would be over between us even if Chava hadn’t—” Her throat tightened. “But that doesn’t make it right, what she did. I heard he can’t even walk now. The doctors say he’ll be in pain for the rest of his life.”

She saw him wince. “Does Chava know this?”

“How should
I
know? I haven’t even set foot in the bakery since then. I only heard about her marriage from the papers.”

At that, the Jinni went absolutely still. “What marriage?”

“You didn’t know?” She stifled a smile, sensing the upper hand at last. “She married again,
very
soon after that night. To a man named Michael Levy.” The naked shock on his face emboldened her, made her rash. “He’s a social worker, so of course he’s poor as dirt. But she married him anyway, so there must be something between them, don’t you think?”

“Be quiet,” he whispered.

“And you two seemed so
friendly
, dancing together—”

“Be quiet!”

He was staring fixedly at the wall. He wore a look she remembered from her father, whenever he heard bad news: as though he was trying to undo the truth by sheer willpower. In that, then, he was no more than just a man. For a moment, she nearly pitied him.

“The money in your hand,” he said, his voice strained. “Consider it a loan. It will be repaid, someday soon. And if any more threats are made against myself—or Chava, or anyone else—they will be answered. My patience with you has reached its end.”

With that, he reached out and put a finger to the candle’s burning wick. The flame erupted, turning to a white-hot jet of fire. She cried out and turned away, covering her eyes. Almost immediately the candle dimmed to its usual glow; and by the time she could see again, he had disappeared.

Around the corner from the Sheltering House lay a nondescript basement tavern called the Spotted Dog. A popular haunt for dockworkers and day laborers, it was nevertheless a quiet place at midafternoon, while the day shift waited for the whistle and the night shift slept off the morning’s excesses. Only two souls were in evidence: the barkeep, who was using the lull to sweep up the old sawdust and spread a new layer; and Michael Levy, who sat at a small table hidden in the shadows.

Michael hadn’t gone out drinking in the afternoon since his school years. Back then, his cohorts’ ideas had never seemed so right-minded, so
noble
, as when shared over a glass of schnapps. Now, though, he was merely drinking to get drunk. Before him were his uncle’s notes, a not-too-clean tumbler, and a bottle of something that called itself whiskey. It had a slippery taste, like rotting apples. The bottle was now a third gone.

He downed another swallow, no longer wincing at the taste. He’d come here to decide what to do with the papers. Written and dated in his uncle’s hand, they were a liability and an embarrassment. They said things that could not possibly be true. And yet Michael was beginning to believe them.

He’d told the Sheltering House staff that he felt ill, that he was going home for the day. They’d made sympathetic noises, assuring him that they could manage without him until morning. Joseph Schall in particular had insisted he only return when he felt better. A decent fellow, Joseph. He remembered his wife’s probing questions and winced. She’d made it seem as though she suspected him of something; but what if it was the other way around? Had
he
noticed something strange about
her
?

Good God, he would go mad if he continued like this.

He sat up straighter, ignoring the swimming sensations in his brain. Perhaps it would be best to treat the whole thing like a mental exercise. He would assume, purely for the moment, that his uncle had not been in the throes of senility, that the papers weren’t merely the fantastic ramblings of a superstitious mind. His own wife was a clay golem with the strength of a dozen men. She knew all his fears and desires. The dead husband—the man she never spoke of—was in fact her master, the man for whom she’d been built.

Suppose all this were true: what, then, would he do about it? Divorce her? Alert the local rabbinate? Go on as though nothing had changed?

He flipped back through his uncle’s notes, searching for the line that had had seized him like a fist:

Will she ever be capable of real love, of happiness? Beginning to hope so, against my own better judgment.

Was that not the crux of the matter? Could he stay married to any woman—flesh
or
clay—who wasn’t able to love him back?

He took another swig and thought of their first meetings, all those shy smiles and companionable silences. He’d loved her for those silences, as much as for what she said. Before her, he’d met women who thought the way to an intellectual’s heart was through an overflow of conversation. But not his wife. He recalled the silent trip to his uncle’s graveside. She’d said just enough—she’d seemed to
understand
him, just enough—that he’d hung on every syllable, treated her words like rare jewels. The fact that she was saying exactly what he wanted to hear had only made her remarks seem all the more precious. And when she’d refrained from speaking, he’d taken her silences and filled them with an alluring profundity.

A dull headache was gathering at the front of his skull. He felt the urge to laugh, stifled it with another swig of the liquor. Really, did it matter whether she was woman or golem? Either way, the plain truth remained: he had no idea who his wife really was.

The Jinni stood on the roof of his building, rolling and smoking cigarette after cigarette. The walk back from his meeting with Anna had not even begun to calm him down. He recalled the night he’d stared out Arbeely’s window, impatient to begin his exploration of the city. He should have stayed hidden in the shop, blissfully ignorant. He should have stayed in the flask.

She’d married
. Well, what of it? Already she’d removed herself from his life. It changed nothing. So why did it still seem to matter?

For weeks now he’d tried to relegate her to some remote corner of his mind, only to have her reemerge when least wanted. Perhaps he was going about it the wrong way; he’d never tried to forget anyone before. But then, he’d never needed to. Relationships between jinn were altogether different. A tryst could be calm or volatile, could last a day or an hour or years on end—and often overlapped with one another in a way that the residents of Little Syria would find completely amoral—but always they were impermanent. Whether begun out of lust, whim, or boredom, each pairing eventually ran its course, and over the years they all had softened equally in his recollection. Why was it not the same with her, when they’d spent so little time together? A few conversations and arguments, nothing more than that—she’d never even been his lover! And yet the memories refused to lie still, to grow weathered and distant, the way he desperately wanted them to.

Married. To Michael Levy. She hadn’t even
liked
the man.

He rolled another cigarette, touched the end, inhaled. The iron cuff peeked out from beneath his shirtsleeve, winking at him in the dull afternoon light. He considered it a moment; then carefully, from beneath it, he drew out the square of paper he’d taken from her locket. He opened one fold, so that only a single crease hid the writing from him. The paper was thick and heavy, but still he could see the shadows of the letters on the other side. He could open it and read it. He could drop it into the gutter. He could burn it in his fingers, and scatter the ashes to the wind.

A small hand pulled at his shirt.

He jumped, startled. It was Matthew, manifested from thin air. How did the boy do it? Quickly the Jinni folded the paper again and slipped it back under the cuff.

“I suppose Arbeely sent you,” he muttered. He was having a hard time looking at the boy. The morning’s events had pushed the previous night from his mind, but now it all came rushing back—the tiny parlor room, Matthew’s mother on the couch struggling for breath—and with it an obscure, uncomfortable shame.

The boy shook his head vehemently, then pulled on the Jinni’s shirt again. Puzzled, the Jinni leaned down, heard the small, urgent whisper:

“Bring her back!”

Astonished, the Jinni stared at him. Bring her
back
? The woman was dead!

“Who told you I could do this?” he said. But the boy spoke no more, only let his expression of stubborn hope say it all for him.

Slowly the realization dawned on the Jinni.
This
why Matthew had stayed by his side for these months? Not friendship, or admiration, or a desire to learn? The boy had run to him, instead of Maryam, or Dr. Joubran—someone,
anyone
else, who could’ve truly helped—and all because he’d thought the Jinni could heal his dying mother, as easily as patching a hole in a teapot!

The day’s angers and disappointments roiled inside him. He crouched down, took the boy by his thin shoulders.

“Let me tell you,” he said, “about the souls that go on after death, or are brought back against their will. And this is the truth, not some story told to children. Have you ever seen a shadow that flies across the ground, like that of a cloud? Except that when you look up in the sky, there are no clouds to speak of?”

Hesitantly Matthew nodded.

“That is a shade,” the Jinni said. “A lost soul. In the desert there are shades of every type of creature. They fly from here to there in perpetual anguish, searching and searching. Can you guess what they are searching for?”

Matthew had gone pale and still. He shook his head.

“They’re searching for their bodies. And when they find them—
if
they find them, if their bones haven’t long turned to dust—they crouch over them, and weep, and make the most horrible noises. Would you like to know what they do then?”

The boy’s frightened eyes were filling with tears. The Jinni felt the first twinge of remorse, but pressed on. “They find the nearest of their kin, and plead with them, asking to help them find rest. But all their kin can hear is a kind of wailing, like a high wind. And all they feel is the cold chill of death.” The Jinni gripped the boy’s shoulders harder. “Is this what you want, for your own mother? To see her soul go howling down Washington Street, and hear her shrieking like a windstorm? Looking for her bones that lie rotting in the ground? Looking for
you
?”

The boy gave a hiccupping gasp, tore from him, and ran.