The hidden palace, p.10
The Hidden Palace, page 10
Something the Golem had said managed to pierce through his musings. “Wait,” he said. “An award? What award?”
“The Man of the Year, from the Lower East Side Merchants’ Association,” the Golem said again. “‘For Enlarging Our Vision of Tomorrow’s Bakery.’ It’s why Thea wants a stole, for the award luncheon. She thinks her usual coat is too dowdy, even though Selma said, and I agreed, that the—”
“But do you mean that Moe won this ‘Man of the Year’?”
The Golem sighed. She’d tried to sneak Moe’s award into the conversation when his attention was elsewhere, knowing that otherwise it was bound to start an argument—because the truth was that the startling success of the bakery’s expansion was her own doing just as much as Moe’s. Yes, the new ovens turned out twice as many goods as before, and the gleaming new display case gave the customers a full and tempting view of the day’s selection—but it was the Golem’s new hires who’d pushed the endeavor into greatness. She’d trained them in record time, and along the way they’d absorbed something of her manner as well, rolling and mixing with a crisp precision that was mesmerizing to watch. Once the Golem had noticed this effect, she’d suggested placing their worktables in a row at the front of the shop, so that all the customers could admire their skills as they waited. Moe had agreed with little thought, not caring at all where the tables went—and then, like everyone else, had been shocked by the result. Simply to watch the women work was an entertainment in itself. Passersby who’d never set foot in Radzin’s would spy them through the plate-glass windows and be lured inside. A simple trip to the baker’s, once a dull and ordinary errand, now had the feel of an exhibition, an event—and the customers, their spirits brightened, often bought more than they’d planned.
“Chava, that should be your award, not Moe’s!” the Jinni said.
“Oh, that’s not true,” she replied at once. “The expansion was all Moe’s idea, I never would’ve dared. And the girls deserve credit, too, they’re such diligent workers—”
“Yes, because you trained them to be! You don’t want to go about bragging, I understand—but if there are more customers per hour, and each customer is spending more—”
“Yes, I’ve done the calculations,” she said, growing irritated.
But the Jinni wasn’t finished. “Maybe Moe could’ve succeeded without you, but not like this. He certainly wouldn’t have won that award. You’re the one who ‘enlarged their vision,’ Chava. Not him.”
“Oh, stop needling me. Why does it matter if he should win an award or not? It’s not as though they’d make me their Man of the Year.”
“But does he understand? Does he know that you’re the reason?”
“He’s begun to wonder,” she muttered, “whether he simply has a natural talent for these things.”
The Jinni snorted angrily. “Idiot.”
“That’s easy to say when you know something he doesn’t. But why do I feel it’s me you’re angry with?”
“Because you seem content to let him think he’s . . .” He waved his hands, searching.
“The ‘cock of the walk’?”
“Yes, that. And perhaps you can’t go to this association and say, Excuse me, you’re mistaken about Mr. Radzin. But don’t you wish that you could? Aren’t you the least bit angry?”
She shook her head. “What good would my anger do?”
“None whatsoever! But it would be true, and honest, and understandable!”
“But I can’t!” The words came out louder, sharper than she’d meant, echoing from the painted iron storefronts. She winced; then she said, “I can’t wish that they knew the truth, or that I could show them what I’m capable of. I don’t want to go to work every day resenting their ignorance. In the end, a man has given me less recognition than he ought—and that makes me no different from all the women who stand in line thinking about their own employers, how miserly they are with compliments and how quick to take the credit.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the same at all, Chava.”
She was growing annoyed. “You’re right. I’m far more fortunate. I won’t get ill, or starve to death. I don’t live in fear of a man’s fists. I’m spared all of that.”
“And in return, you only need to hide.” His voice was bitter.
“Many of them are hiding, too, Ahmad.”
“I am not talking about them!”
He’d shouted it loud enough that a nearby night-watchman, asleep on his stool behind a window, woke with a start and peered out at the street. Chagrined, the Golem put out a hand: Lower your voice.
“I’m talking about you.” He’d quieted, but he was still more angry than she’d seen him in some time. “You and me. We are different, Chava. We cannot be their drudges, or allow them to . . . to wipe their feet upon us, all in the name of ‘hiding.’ You let them rule you far too easily.”
She’d stiffened at the word drudges. “That’s all well and good, coming from you.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean?”
“Only that you have freedoms that I don’t. You can choose to lock yourself away in your shop, and take no note of others’ opinions, and speak as little to your neighbors as you wish, and all they will think is, There goes Ahmad al-Hadid, that unsociable fellow. What do you think would happen if I were to do the same?”
“They’d say, There goes Chava Levy, that unsociable woman.”
She snorted. “That is the least of what they’d call me. It’s different for women, Ahmad—no, don’t argue, just listen. If a man smiles at me, I must smile back, or else I am a shrew. If a woman mentions she’s having a terrible day, I’m obligated to ask what the matter is, otherwise I’m arrogant and uncaring. Then I become the target of their anger, and it affects me whether I deserve it or not. If I were to act as you do, and alienate half the people I meet—how long do you think it would be before the noise grew unbearable?”
He frowned and looked away, as though trying to imagine what it would be like to hear the unspoken opinions of his neighbors as he passed them on the street. Not for the first time, the Golem wondered if it would change him in the least.
“I can’t afford their anger,” she said quietly. “You know that better than anyone.”
He blew out an explosive breath, and scrubbed his face with his hands. Then he took a step toward her, reached out, and pulled her close. She put her arms around him; and for long and wordless minutes, they held each other.
* * *
“Have you seen the embossing hammer?” the Jinni asked the next morning.
Arbeely looked up from his workbench, already scowling. “No, I haven’t,” he said. “And our good rawhide mallet is missing, too. I assume they’re both in the back, inside that tangled mess of wrought iron you’re building.”
“It isn’t my fault if there isn’t enough space—”
“If you want to go on with these experiments,” the man spoke over him, “then please find another place to do it. It’s interfering with our paid work.”
The Jinni snorted. “Yes, our endlessly interesting paid work. Necklaces and earrings and reading-lamps, cover plates for electrical switches, the same old trinkets for Sam Hosseini to sell. I could make them in my—with my eyes shut,” he said, seeming to catch himself.
Arbeely sighed, and put down his tracing pencil. “So you’re bored,” he said dryly.
“Yes,” the Jinni said, crossing his arms. “I am bored.”
“And this isn’t to do with the weather, or a fight with Chava.”
The Jinni shot him a contemptuous look.
“I was merely asking,” Arbeely insisted, hurt. “It’s been the case before.”
“I know, I know.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then dropped into Arbeely’s desk-chair—the man winced as its springs let out a squawk—and rolled a cigarette, touched it, inhaled. “We went to Chelsea last night, to the construction pit for the new station,” he said, through the smoke. “You should see it. They’ve built an entire narrow-gauge railroad just to haul the dirt up to the street. They’re starting to lay the foundation, there are piles of girders everywhere, I’ve never seen so much steel . . . The river tunnels will connect straight to the concourse, all of it beneath the subway. It’ll be a feat in itself.”
“And then you came back here,” Arbeely said, “to the reading-lamps and cover plates.”
His partner nodded, his eyes elsewhere.
“People need such things,” the man said gently. “Besides, we’re tinsmiths. Not an engineering firm.”
The Jinni was silent a moment. Then he got up from Arbeely’s chair and disappeared into the back room, and returned a moment later with a short length of wrought iron. He sat down across from Arbeely and gripped the rod in one hand. A long pause, the familiar smell of heated metal—and the iron began to glow. He shifted his grip, the length of iron now between his palms, fingers laced above, like a gambler shuffling his deck. A quick push: and now his hands were cupped together, the iron vanished inside. A twist and a pull, and the rod stretched between his hands like glowing taffy. He brought the ends together, folded the iron and spun it, stretched it again: and now there were many strands, far thinner and finer, and for a moment Arbeely was a child in his mother’s kitchen, watching her make the noodles for supper. Another dizzying series of folds, a spin—something flared inside his hands—
Swiftly the Jinni bent to the water-bucket at the end of the workbench. There was a startling clap of steam—and when he appeared again he was holding a hollow globe, perhaps six inches in diameter, made of dozens of thin and swirling filaments that all ran together seamlessly at its poles.
Arbeely took it and stared. There was a lightness to the globe, and a sense of motion, like a captured water-current. “What is it?” he said.
“A finial for a banister,” the Jinni said. “Or for a bedpost, or a set of fireplace andirons. It could be a child’s top. It might perch upon a gate. I could make all these things and more.”
Arbeely laughed, suddenly giddy.
“It’s time we enlarged our vision,” the Jinni told him; and then he fetched his jacket, and left.
The street outside darkened as Arbeely sat in the shop, examining the precious globe by lamplight. Part of him expected it to vanish, like a fading enchantment—but it persisted, cool and real in his hand.
Enlarge our vision . . . They’d need more space. A factory floor, if possible. New equipment, a better forge. And privacy, a hidden room of some sort, for the Jinni to work his magic. They could call it a trade secret, but a landlord would grow suspicious, wouldn’t he? Better to own the place outright, though of course that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
From a desk drawer he fetched his private ledger, opened it to numbers that would’ve made his neighbors gasp: the result of long hours, simple habits, and a shining spark of luck that had burst into his life from an old copper flask. He’d spied his partner’s ledger, knew that the numbers there were roughly the same as his own. But no, it still wouldn’t be enough, he was letting his enthusiasm run away with himself—but imagine it . . .
At some point he put his head down atop the ledger; and when he opened his eyes again, the sun was shining. He stood, wiped at his eyes. His stomach growled. What was he still doing in the shop?
The swirling globe caught his eye, and he remembered.
He put the globe carefully in a drawer and went out to the street, where the morning was already underway, the sidewalks bustling with neighbors. Perhaps he’d go to the Faddouls’, for a cup of coffee. And a word with Maryam, if she wasn’t too busy.
He opened the coffee-house door—and Maryam caught his arm as though she’d been waiting for him. “Boutros,” she said, “you play backgammon, don’t you?” And before he could utter a word, she’d steered him to a table where one of her regular customers sat alone before a backgammon board, his usual opponent having succumbed to a toothache. Arbeely, an indifferent player at best, proceeded to lose three consecutive games while the man complained at length about his brother-in-law, a lazy oaf who smoked his narghile all day long and sent his wife out to earn in his stead. And now it seemed that her job was in jeopardy, for she worked at the lace-maker’s in the Amherst—Arbeely knew the Amherst, didn’t he? Yes, the loft building at the corner of Washington and Carlisle. Well, it seemed the owner had been ruined in the “Panic” in October, and was faced with selling a number of his properties at a loss. No doubt the Amherst would be snapped up by some faceless financier who’d see fit to raise the rents. It was a shame, the man said as he moved a checker across the bar, that so few of the buildings in Little Syria were owned by actual Syrians; it would be such a boon for the neighborhood businesses . . .
Arbeely lifted his eyes from the board. Maryam was watching him from the far corner, smiling with excitement.
* * *
In the spring of 1908, the elders of the Forsyth Street Synagogue gathered for a secret meeting to discuss the problem of Rabbi Altschul.
None of them could say exactly when their rabbi’s odd behavior had begun. He was a holy man, of course, and a touch of dreaminess or self-absorption was to be expected—but lately he seemed to be coming entirely untethered. He’d developed the habit of wandering off the dais during the Saturday service, and more than once had to be guided back by a congregant. At a recent Hebrew lesson, he’d startled the boys by closing his eyes and chanting, trancelike, in what might have been Aramaic. And what no one wished to mention, but was foremost in their minds, was that their rabbi had begun to exude a terrible odor, a graveyard stench of soil and decay. No one could tell whether it was coming from his garments, or the man himself.
A delegation was sent to his apartment, to discuss matters. They knocked on the door, but no answer came. One of them bent to peer through the keyhole—and suddenly the door opened. In the threshold stood the rabbi’s daughter, young Kreindel, her blouse and skirt entirely caked with mud. It streaked her face, and daubed the ends of her braids, and coated her arms up to the elbows.
“Please come in,” Kreindel said. “My father wishes to speak with you.”
Stunned, unsure, they crept into the apartment. The door closed behind them.
A little while later, the delegation returned to the synagogue and reassured the others that all would be well. Rabbi Altschul, they said, had indeed taken ill, but was now recovering under his daughter’s care. In the meantime, he was not to be disturbed. All sighed in relief, glad that an end was in sight. Then the men of the delegation all went home and fell deeply asleep, and woke with no recollection at all of having gone to the Altschuls’ apartment, or of what had happened inside.
Now, Rabbi Altschul and Kreindel could devote themselves entirely to their task. Kreindel, it seemed, had a gift for artistry, and had taken it upon herself to resculpt the golem’s crude features and rag-doll limbs, giving them a more lifelike appearance. Her father recalled that Malke, too, had shown some talent for art, and had liked to sketch the view from their window, or a bowl of winter oranges. He’d often scolded his wife for wasting time in this manner, but now he silently thanked her for the gift she’d passed to their daughter.
There were limits, though, to Kreindel’s abilities. The ears she’d made for their golem were slightly mismatched, and his hair was sculpted all of one piece, like a cap atop his head. His eyes, too, gave them some trouble, until Kreindel went up to the roof and came back with two abandoned marbles, one a deep indigo, the other a softer blue with swirls of white. Rabbi Altschul installed them in the empty eye-sockets, where they fit as though made for the purpose.
It was a good deal of effort for what was only meant to be a trial, their first attempt at bringing a golem to life. Still, Rabbi Altschul wanted to make it as safe and thorough as possible. He had no wish to subject their neighbors to the same fate as their medieval forebears in Prague, whose golem had turned upon the very population it was meant to protect. He would bring their creation to life, test its abilities, and watch it carefully for any violent tendencies. Once he was satisfied of their success, he would destroy the golem and take the books across the Atlantic to Lithuania, so that he might deliver his formula to the Vilna Rav himself.
“And I will come with you,” Kreindel told him.
He tried to protest, saying that the voyage would be long and difficult. “I’m not afraid,” she told him. “The Almighty has chosen you for this path, and placed me at your side. I will be your support, as Miriam was for Moses.”
At last her father agreed. Neither of them wished to say the obvious: that Lev had grown so weak it was doubtful he could make the journey alone. The smallest exertions tired him; he could barely stomach any food at all, and slept only fitfully, consumed by dreams. His eyesight, too, had deteriorated so that he saw everything through a curtain of golden sparks. He’d forbidden Kreindel from reading the books, or even touching them—but now he copied out the command to bring the golem to life, and told her to memorize it, in case his eyesight should fail him completely. She did so, then burned the paper in the grate, and went to sit at the golem’s bedside, next to her father.
“What shall we name him?” she asked.
Her father smiled. “You never met your grandfather Yossele, of blessed memory,” he said. “He was a large man, like this one—but gentle, not brutish. Let us name him Yossele, and hope that he adopts my father’s better qualities as well.”
6.
June 7, 1908
Star of America
AMHERST BUILDING CHANGES HANDS TO SYRIAN BUSINESSMEN.
* * *
Ironworks Opens on Ground Floor.
* * *
