As I walked the streets of Praha, people gave me easy passage, moving quickly out of my way. This was because I was large and did not talk. Talking is the way men see inside one another’s minds. Because they could not see inside my mind, they were fearful and hostile.
Suddenly, a gentile boy of about eleven years old came scurrying towards me, chased by a slightly older boy who was obviously a ruffian. The younger boy got behind me, and the ruffian pulled up short, his snarls choking back in his throat at the sight of me. He turned and ran.
The other boy came out from behind my back. I had only to look at him to know that he was a merchant’s child, warmly dressed and with good shoes. He had a large scrape on his forehead, and he regarded me thoughtfully: curious, cautious, without the fear he had shown but a minute ago.
I wondered about him. He was like a learned Jewish boy, like a student at the shul, someone that the street urchins set upon and beat up. I had not seen many gentile children like that. I walked along with him in the direction that he wanted to go, down a narrow street to a building with a metal gate. He opened the gate, went inside, and turned to look back at me and wave. His eyes were as large as gooseberries.
The Jewish men and boys in the shul were mostly people of thought, not of action. To them I was all action and no thought. And, really, it was only extraordinary men like the Rabbi who were of both thought and action. What, I wondered, would this boy become?
Soon after, I passed a large, thin dog, the color of a faded sunset, dark at the edges and warm in the center. It was not tied up, as most dogs are. I wondered if it was a stray. It eyed me and crept towards me in a highly submissive manner. All over Praha, as I walked through the city, there were gentile dogs that tugged at their chains, barking at me and showing their teeth. Some gentile dogs backed off, growling. But this dog did not do either of those things. It did not warn me off or try to scare me away: it came up to me and it cried, quietly, just like a human being.
Was it, I wondered, a Jewish dog? Did it recognize me for what I was and think I would give it food?
It looked very hungry. There was no chance that dog would get food from me. Why would I feed it when I myself required nothing? And where would I get food, except to steal it?
They say that dogs know when the Angel of Death is near, though they do not necessarily announce him. Long ago, when the Angel of Death passed among the Egyptians and took their firstborn sons, the dogs of the Jews did not cry out. Perhaps I had something in common with the Angel of Death, but I did not think that this was a Jewish dog. It was merely a stray, and if caught, it would be killed.
I moved toward it, and it kept its eyes on me. It slunk down, it abased itself before me, but it did not move away. I put my hand out toward it, for what reason I cannot say, and the dog came hesitantly towards me. It licked my hand, briefly, but stopped — surprised, I am sure, that my hand tasted of clay, not of salt sweat. The startled dog looked at me, and I looked back at it.
I walked away, and the dog followed me. I accepted its companionship and the burden it laid upon me. I walked further, pondering my problems, which had now doubled. What could I do to get it food? Like the gentile woman, I now had someone dependent upon me.
I thought of the boy. Perhaps the gentile boy would care for the gentile dog. The dog and I walked back to the yard in which I had seen him. He was still there, and he watched me approach. I stopped in front of him, with the dog at my heels. I looked at the boy, and met his honest, inquiring eyes. I looked at the dog, whose eyes were like the boy’s. I looked back at the boy.
“A dog!” said the boy, and he approached carefully and held out his hand cautiously. The dog did not cringe, but licked his fingers gently and then sat down by the gate. “Is he yours?” I shook my head. In truth, I shook the entire upper part of my body: I am not particularly flexible. The dog settled himself fully down, paws in front, as if he were his own front gate. I gestured toward the dog and then toward the boy.
“Oh, yes, Yosef,” said the boy. “I will take care of him. …And,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “I hope he will take care of me.” I think he will, I thought. These two creatures are more powerful together than either of them is alone. That sometimes happens with living creatures.
And I thought: he knows my name.
I waved good-bye, and as I walked away, I realized that my strength had returned: I could feel it. I am not sure why this small deed had so large an effect, but it was truly my own, and it had worked a change in me. I uprooted a tree that was blocking the narrow walkway, not to test myself, but simply because I could do it. I chopped it into firewood with the side of my hand. It all gave me pleasure, the deed and the return of my strength, the plucking of the tree and its reduction to firewood. That pleasure, however attenuated, is with me still.
I returned to the Jewish Town and the Rabbi’s hearth, where I placed the huge stack of firewood, which, to tell the truth, I owed him. He and I went promptly to the castle, where, under his direction, I moved the Emperor’s gate. It stands there still, where I rebuilt it.
I compliment you on the skill with which you have restored me, and I am quite astounded by being given the power of speech. Nobody has ever coaxed a word out of me before, even the Rabbi.
I have lain here in troubled sleep these last four centuries, with no way to use the strength that I guarded so carefully after the time of which I just spoke.
Unable to move, alone with my thoughts — I am sure that you can understand how difficult this has been. I, the golem, whose only purpose was to protect the Jews, have lain here, aware of all the passing centuries and their events, unable to raise a hand.
With no human will at work to animate me, I was just broken shards of dried-up clay, not the cool, wet, malleable clay of the riverbank. When the Holocaust was upon my people, I could do nothing.
Was there no one who knew where I was? It was widely known in the Jewish Town that I was in the attic of the Altneushul, where the Rabbi stored me away so carefully. Could no one be bothered to search for me? You found me easily enough, didn’t you?
Was there no one who knew the Kabbalah well enough to animate me? It would not have taken the wisdom of the high Rabbi Loew to animate me — you did not find it so hard, did you? A man with the Rabbi’s knowledge, with his far-reaching mind, comes along very seldom, and not many such men study the Kabbalah now. Some men of that type, now, are not even Jews. It would not be like the Rabbi to leave the gift of a tool such as myself when no one could learn to operate it. That would be no gift at all.
Most likely, it was mere chance that I was not found. Men came up and searched, perhaps, but I was well hidden. A door not opened, a cloth not lifted, a staircase left unexplored: it is easy to imagine how such things could have happened. The Rabbi did not want the ignorant happening upon me and animating me without any knowledge of how destructive I could be and animating me without any information as to how to direct my action. Men make mistakes, and even small mistakes can have large consequences.
The fact is indeed that no one came and found me and put me together. But can any one person be blamed for what everyone did not do? I don’t think so.
Perhaps it was no human failing and no accident, rather G-d’s will, that I not be found. How can we know the reasons of the G-d of the Jews, who is limitless and unknowable? This is a possibility that the Rabbi would perhaps countenance, in his belief that G-d takes a personal interest in each of us who please Him.
But perhaps G-d no longer acts in human affairs at all. Perhaps pain and death are irrelevant now to G-d. They are irrelevant to me, after all. Maybe G-d no longer sees human suffering, and so the thought of relieving it does not even occur to Him.