“Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the character of a golem began to turn up in essays published in France and Germany. A rabbi by the name of Hasid and the French mystic, Gaon, left behind written descriptions of how to form a golem from clay and water. They included precise details of required incantations and rituals. It was the secret formula that since the time of Abraham no one but the highest-ranking holy men had been privy to. And now it had finally been written down. The Golem of Prague was based on the golem of these essays.”
“So the practice of creating golems in Prague came from its status as a centre of learning and from it having a Jewish community?”
“That and from the persecution of those Jews. Prague was also a centre of persecution.”
“Who were the persecutors?”
“The Christians, obviously. That was why the Jewish community needed golems. They were constantly in danger. The first maker of a golem was believed to be Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, a leader of the Jewish community. He is said to have taken clay from the banks of the Vltava River that runs through Prague to create his golem. There have been many pieces of folklore and stories about this handed down, and even, much later, a black-and-white silent film, and they all say approximately the same thing: the rabbi created the golem out of clay while reciting some kind of incantation.”
“So there’s a film about it?”
“Many films in fact. It was from these that the story of the Golem of Prague became well known. The German film-maker, the genius Paul Wegener, made three different films about golems.”
“What kind of films?”
“All sorts. I’ve kind of forgotten which was which, but in one a rabbi brings his home-made golem to the royal court at the request of the king. This rabbi uses magic to create a kind of film about the history of the hardships and perpetual nomadism of the Jewish people, and shows it to the king. But right at that moment the court jester tells an ill-timed joke, and all the nobles and dancing girls fall about laughing. The Jewish God is furious and with a thunderous roar begins to tear down the palace. In exchange for a vow to end the persecution of the Jewish people, the rabbi instructs his golem to save the king’s and the courtiers’ lives.”
“Wow.”
“Another film starts the same way with a rabbi creating a golem, but unfortunately, he wasn’t a very skilled holy man yet, and he’s unable to control the golem he produces. It ends up being way larger than he intended, and its head breaks through the roof of his home. So he tries to destroy it.”
“How does he do that?”
“The secret Kabbalah ritual involves writing the word emet on the golem’s forehead in the Hebrew alphabet. Otherwise it won’t move. If you remove one of the letters, equivalent to the ‘e’ from the word, it spells met, which means ‘death’, and makes the golem return to the earth from which it came.”
“Huh.”
“In the Jewish faith, words and letters have spiritual power. And so the important ritual and incantation for bringing a golem to life revolved around the letters written on its forehead. The rabbi ordered the golem to tie his shoelaces for him, and when the golem knelt down before the rabbi, he quickly erased the letter ‘e’ from his forehead. Cracks immediately began to appear in the golem’s body and it crumbled to the ground.”
“Wow.”
“This golem here is made from wood, but if you look very carefully, you’ll see very tiny Hebrew lettering on his forehead. It says emet.”
“Does it? So if this golem starts moving, I should get rid of this letter here?”
“That’d do it.”
“I’ve read a story about golems somewhere before,” said Sasaki.
“Oh? What kind of story?”
“The well in some village dries up and the villagers have nothing to drink. They order a golem to go and fetch them a jar of water from a river far away. The loyal, hard-working golem obeys, and the next day, and the day after that, he goes back and forth between the river and the well, refilling the well with the river water. Eventually the well begins to overflow with all the water he’s brought, and the village is flooded. The houses begin to disappear under the water but nobody can stop the golem. They don’t know the right spell to make him stop. And that’s the story.”
“Terrifying,” said Hatsue Kanai.
“Automata are unable to be flexible, to adapt to circumstances. That’s their fatal defect. It comes across to human beings as a kind of insanity, and incites fear. Do you think dolls have the same tendency to inspire fear?” asked Kozaburo.
“That’s probably true. Isn’t it like the fear of nuclear warfare? Human beings press the button but once the weapon has begun to deploy, there’s nothing they can do about it any more. They can beg all they like but their words are useless. The expressionless face of a doll or an automaton is similar.”
Kozaburo looked impressed and nodded vigorously.
“You make a good point, Sasaki. Very well put.
“By the way, this doll originally had the perfectly ordinary name of Jack. He’s Gymnastic Jack. It just so happened that the old man who ran the second-hand shop in Prague where I bought him told me that on stormy nights he goes out by himself to find wells, rivers or any other place where there’s water.”
“Ugh!”
“And he said that on the morning following a storm, Jack’s mouth is always wet.”
“Ha! That’s ridiculous!”
“There were always signs that he’d been drinking water. After that, the shopkeeper gave him the nickname Golem.”
“It’s just a made-up story, right?”
“No, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“What?”
“One morning I looked at his face and there were drops of water trickling down from the edge of his lips.”
“Honestly?”
“Honest to God. But I thought nothing of it. It was just condensation. It happens a lot, doesn’t it—like glass getting misted up—that a face can get beads of sweat on it? It had trickled down and followed the line of his lips.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Yes, well that’s how I managed to explain the phenomenon.”
The guests began to laugh, but were stopped by a piercing scream behind them. Everyone jumped in surprise, then turned to see Kumi, her face drained of colour, collapse to her knees. The men rushed to support her.
Kumi was pointing at Golem.
“That’s him! That’s the man who was looking in my window!”
SCENE 10
The Salon
In the end, this new piece of information did very little to advance the investigation. As always, the detectives were overly cautious; for the rest of the day they refused to believe Kumi’s story. It wasn’t until the morning of the 30th that they reluctantly admitted that it could be true. To them the story was beyond the bounds of common sense, but eventually after struggling with the idea for half a day, they found a loophole that made the outrageous possible—namely, that some person or persons unknown had used the doll to frighten or intimidate Kumi. This was the three detectives’ classic modus operandi. But of course the moment they began to consider who, or for what reason, or why Kumi specifically had been the victim, they immediately hit a wall.
They found it difficult to imagine that the perpetrator had been trying to kill Kumi. She hadn’t suffered any harm in the days since. In fact, Golem had appeared around the time a completely different victim, Ueda, had been murdered.