And then a sudden silence.
He could only hear the pounding of his heart.
The breeze abruptly died.
And then two dark hands gripped the sides of the tub and the Golem pulled himself up.
It was him.
The Golem.
Everything was true.
Sitting there, the Golem was as dark as Jackie Robinson, his hazel eyes full of sorrow. He looked from left to right, the sorrowful eyes taking in the desolation of the sanctuary. He seemed to have expected this sight. He leaned forward and looked at the palms of his immense black hands before turning them over to gaze at their blackness. Then he stared at Michael for a long moment. Michael did not move. The Golem bent a knee, shifted his weight, and stood up.
Michael backed up as the Golem stood naked in the tub, his muscles rippling like bags of stones. He must be eight feet tall, Michael thought; bigger than any man I’ve ever seen. Without a sound, the Golem stepped over the wooden framework of the bimah to the floor.
Michael needed words. The words did not come. He fought the impulse to run. Talk to him, he thought. Speak to him.
The Golem stared at Michael and then reached forward, touching his face. His hand felt like the sole of a shoe.
“I’m Michael Devlin,” the boy said. “Can you understand me?”
The Golem nodded yes.
“Can you speak?”
He shook his head sadly. No.
Michael tried to control his trembling. When he first had heard the stories of the Golem from Rabbi Hirsch, he imagined a figure from comic books. Made of pen lines and brush marks. Simple, sometimes even humorous, sent on missions of justice by a good rabbi. He did not expect this naked creature, as large as a tree, as dark as night. Standing before him, waiting for instructions. For a moment, he wanted to reverse the process, to send the creature back to where he came from. But then he remembered his mother’s humiliation and the battered face of Rabbi Hirsch and his own lost summer. No: he could not turn back. He had invoked the name of God. He must go on.
“We… we have to find you some clothes,” Michael said, pulling on his T-shirt. “You understand? Clothes. Because we have some things to do out there tonight.” He pointed at a broken stained-glass window and the visible fragment of the August evening. “Out there in the street.”
The Golem understood. He gazed around the dusty sanctuary, as if looking for clothing.
“Come on,” Michael said. “Let’s see what we can find.”
They opened closets and pantries, the Golem defeating locks and layers of cementlike paint as he effortlessly jerked them open. They found banners, books, old Ark curtains; but no clothes. Until the Golem suddenly emerged from a tight, small subbasement with what seemed to be a cape. There were golden cords or tassels on the ends, and he tied them at his neck to make the cape. In Rabbi Hirsch’s kitchen, he bent his knees to fit under the ceiling, and whirled the cape. The frayed tassels crumbled and the cape fell. He grunted sadly.
“Wait,” Michael said.
He removed the I’M FOR JACKIE button from his T-shirt and jumped up on a chair in front of the Golem. He held the two ends of the cape together and fastened them with the button.
“Great!” he shouted. “It works.” The Golem laughed without sound. Michael said: “You look like you could fly.”
Michael went to the small bureau where Rabbi Hirsch kept his shirts and underwear and in the bottom drawer he found a sheet. Perfect. The creature could tie it around his middle like a giant diaper. Or, what did they call it in those stories about India by Rudyard Kipling? A breechclout. When he turned with the sheet in his hand, the Golem was holding the photograph of Leah in his leathery hands, staring at her face.
“She’s part of the reason you’re here,” Michael said, as the Golem replaced the photograph on the shelf. “That’s the rabbi’s wife. Killed by the Nazis.”
He showed the creature what to do with the sheet, and the Golem tried clumsily to wrap it between his legs and around his massive hips, the sheet slipping until Michael tied the ends as tightly as he could. Michael stepped back, smiled, and said, “You look like Gunga Din.” The Golem did not smile. He moved a huge hand toward the framed photograph, and then Michael told him some of the story. About Rabbi Hirsch and Leah and Hitler and the millions of deaths. About Frankie McCarthy and the Falcons, Mister G on the day of the snowstorm, and what was done to Michael and to Rabbi Hirsch and to Michael’s mother. The Golem listened in a fierce way, his brow furrowing, a gash deepening through the word for Truth, which was lighter against the black skin. His head moved slowly from side to side. As his anger built, his eyes receded under his slablike brow. He did not smile. He did not laugh. His immense hands kneaded each other. When Michael told him about Frankie McCarthy’s plans, a bright sheen appeared on his black skin.
“That’s about it,” Michael said. “That’s why we brought you here. We have to stop them. We have to make sure they don’t do stuff like this ever again. We have to make sure they are punished.”
The Golem sat there for a long moment. Then he gazed again at the photograph of Leah, and Michael was reminded of the story about the Golem in Prague and how he fell in love with the girl named Dvorele. That was a heartbreaking story, but it also showed that the Golem didn’t simply follow orders. He had his own feelings, his own ideas. Michael began to worry that he would not be able to completely control the creature. Then he saw that the Golem’s eyes had fallen on the shofar, which lay on a lower shelf. The creature rose and gently picked up the shofar in his giant thumb and forefinger.
“Rabbi Hirsch tried to play tunes on it,” Michael said, and smiled. “But he couldn’t do it. Maybe you could.… Maybe you could send them a message down at the poolroom. Let them know we’re coming.”
Exhaling softly, the Golem took Michael by the hand and led him upstairs to the sanctuary. Pausing, the Golem stood with the shofar in both hands and bowed his head to the Ark. Then, with Michael behind him, he moved to the rear of the sanctuary and up the stairs to the loft. He seemed to know the way. He found another door and jerked it open. They stepped out to a small flat roof. For a dazzled moment, the Golem gazed at the million lights that were scattered across the blackness all the way to distant Manhattan. This was not Prague. He grew very still. Michael said nothing. The August heat was deadening, and there was no breeze. From this height, Michael could pick out the glow of the Grandview’s neon sign, the tower of the Williamsburg Bank Building, the arc of the Brooklyn Bridge, and off to the left in the black harbor, pale green and small, the Statue of Liberty. There were still some people waiting out the hot night on blankets on rooftops and fire escapes.
The Golem brought the shofar to his mouth.
He blew one long, terrifying note. It seemed to rip a hole in the heat-stricken night.
He blew another.
And then a third.
Michael backed away, frightened by the power and savagery of the three notes blown on the ram’s horn. Notes as old as the world.
But the Golem placed a hand on his shoulder. Reassuring him. Cautioning him. Telling him to wait. Telling him, without words, that something was coming.
Something was.
It began to snow.
Millions of flakes, radiant and beautiful, drifting down through the August night. Black when Michael looked up, brilliantly white as they passed the level of his eyes, melting as they touched the hot rooftops and the sweating foliage of trees and the soft asphalt and the torrid steel of parked cars.