If there is a G-d, it doesn’t seem that it is a player in human affairs. I heard people speaking all the time of events that they called blessed, as if the G-d were enthusiastically endorsing their lives. And yet blessings did not go consistently to the good, nor did misfortune visit only the bad.
The future, as I saw it then, was not all dismaclass="underline" there clearly were some joys ahead for the Rabbi and his family.
The Rabbi had a daughter of many accomplishments, named Feigeleh, who had at that time given birth to a girl child. The Rabbi’s granddaughter, whose name was Eva, still had the big grey eyes of an infant, and yet I knew that this being had a love of knowledge, and an ability to absorb it that transcended my own. It came to me, as if I saw this with my eyes, that she would be a respected rabbinical scholar herself, she would have children who would also become rabbis, and she would die in vigorous old age, while journeying to Jerusalem. This was a wonderful thing for me to know, and I longed to tell the rabbi, but of course I had no way to communicate it. I was less effective than a flower or a bird.
And I ask myself now if it would it have been good for the Rabbi to know of the full life awaiting his granddaughter if he also had to know the horrors awaiting some of his other descendants? It may be a blessing to them, that humans cannot see into the future.
I think that Praha is a beautiful city, though I have never seen any other with which to compare it, nor even seen all of Praha itself. Maybe all cities are filled with such delights as the clockwork in the town square that displays the state of the universe, all day and every day, for the benefit of the townspeople.
Working for the Rabbi, I had sympathy for the clock, which performed rain or shine, and was never rewarded except with a nod when someone passed it by. It gave pleasure to others, but received no pleasure from anyone. In that way, I felt, it was superior to myself, for although I offered security and performed many tasks, I never offered anyone pleasure.
Perhaps if I offered pleasure, I thought, I would fulfill my purpose and be allowed to return to the earth. Although, even as I thought that, I realized that both the clockwork and its creatures — the gothic figures that guarded its perimeter — were taken, like myself, from the earth, but were unlikely to be allowed to return to it. So it made no sense for me to have such an expectation. But it was an idea, it gave me something to try. My options were so few.
However, I was not sure how to go about even trying to give pleasure. I tried to observe the people around me offering joy to one another. I saw the Rabbi doing small favors for his wife, and that she was made happy by them. I saw her cooking special things for her husband and children, and that all, even herself, were made happy by the acts and the foods. I heard the noises that the Rabbi and his wife made at night, while I was ceaselessly stacking stones and chopping wood, and I understood that these noises meant they were offering pleasure to one another.
I tried to do small favors for the Rabbi, but he did not seem pleasured by the things I did under my own volition. The more I did by myself, in fact, the more he wrinkled his brow. G-d himself, if the stories are true, does not like to see too much initiative from his creations.
I could learn to cook, I supposed, but as I didn’t eat, I had no way of knowing whether things I cooked would be pleasing. As for my making the Rabbi or his wife give forth sounds of pleasure in the night, perhaps the less said about that the better. I didn’t know much, but I did have a sense of my own limitations.
But here I am getting away from the thread of my story: the loss of my strength. The Rabbi had been told that some of the townspeople were preparing an attack on the Jewish Town. This was why he created me, to defend against such an attack, and I was very interested and needful to learn more of what defending my people entailed. If I had had my strength, I could have picked the attackers up like rats, tossed them in a sack, and thrown it in the river. Or perhaps I could have kept them, bred them, and turned them loose, as it was sometimes said the ratcatcher did, though I have no idea to what purpose.
Praha was then a relatively comfortable place for Jews to live, and had been so even before the Rabbi arrived. The Emperor Rudolph and his father before him understood that gentiles and Jews could do business together without undue conflict, and each could become more prosperous in the bargain. But there were some who saw prosperity among the Jews as something taken from the gentiles. In earlier times the synagogue had more than once been painted with blood, the blood of real people, and the Jewish Town had been burned. Jews were beaten and killed, and plots were hatched to create fear and hatred of the Jews among the other citizens of Praha. This seemed to be a way that the unstable among the goyim sought control over their small area of the universe.
I wondered what happened to the unstable Jews? Why did they not do the same thing? Also, I wondered, why did these goyim not have their own golem, who would fight for them as I would fight for the Jews? Then they would not have to savage other human beings, and the two communities could just put their two golems to battle.
But on the day of which I am speaking, I worried, though there was no danger evident, that if I could not even hoist an armload of gravestones, I would be of no use against an attack by the goyim. I would be unable to pick them up like rats. And, in my silence, of course, I could not talk them out of their insanity, as someone might do who was not reliant on physical force.
The only sensible thing to do, I thought, was to understand the scope of the problem and lay it before the Rabbi. I would test my strength by trying my simplest accustomed tasks, chopping wood and carrying water. I left the cemetery, and headed for iroká Street, where the Rabbi’s house was.
I approached the house from the back, to go in by the tool room door. There was no one in the yard. Usually the place was buzzing with servants and children. I entered the house, walking past the oiled sharpened axes and into the big family room. There was no one inside. There was no fire, there were no lights.
I walked out the front door and out the gate. It was dark, and the streets were empty. There weren’t even any stray dogs searching the gutters. The other houses of the Jewish Town were quiet; the lights were dim, the windows were shuttered. Did nobody know that Rabbi Loew’s house was empty? What was going on? I heard a sound from the alleyway and turned in that direction. It was no threat to me, of course. I am afraid of no one, and, really, if I were, the idea of death by someone’s hand would arouse in me only enthusiasm.
It was the ratcatcher. He was moving very slowly, limping as though his leg were damaged, and making very low noises to himself. He looked up as I approached.
“Yossele,” he said, although the sound of my name was not so attractive as when it had issued from his daughter’s mouth. I wondered why that would be. He is very similar to his daughter, in coloring and facial structure. And yet they have such a different effect upon me. The ratcatcher’s voice tears at me, like the voices of many trapped rats. His daughter’s voice is as light and sweet as the piping of a happy rat, free to do as she wishes in a fruitful midden, unmolested by humans.
“Yossele,” said the ratchatcher, “help me home.” I looked at him closely, and saw that his clothing was torn and bloody. He was not a neat or clean man, but his clothing was not usually in such disarray. I picked him up.
“Yossele,” he said, “they set upon me, and beat me, and ran off. And then the emperor’s men came and took the Rabbi, and all his family.” I almost put him down, I was so surprised. But I kept walking, and waited for him to tell me more.