protect the Jews,” I tell her. “Rudolf the Second—the Holy Roman emperor of the time—had declared that all the Jews either be killed or expelled, but the Golem rose up from the earth and dust and became a living warrior. He killed anyone who hurt the Jews.”
There is steam rising from Marta’s untouched cup of cocoa. Her eyes are filled with tears. Her red hair limp behind her ears. I drink my coffee black without sugar.
The emperor, seeing the destruction cast upon his city and its people, begged the rabbi to stop the Golem. In exchange, he promised to stop the persecution of the Jews. “To stop the Golem’s deadly and vengeful path,” I explained, “the rabbi only needed to erase the first letter of the Hebrew word emet or ‘truth’ from the creature’s forehead. The new remaining word would thus read met, which translated as ‘death.’”
This act of ending the Golem’s life was done with the understanding that should the Jewish people ever be threatened within the walls of Prague, the Golem would rise again.
I took a deep breath and looked at my sister. Her crying had stopped and her color was less pale. Still, she was clearly shaken from the fire at Papa’s warehouse and by the motive of the attack.
To reassure her, I added what was always my favorite part of the story. Legend has it that the Golem’s body is stored in the attic of the Old New Synagogue. There he waits to have the missing letter on his forehead replaced so he may avenge any who seek to harm the Jews.
I can see the eyes of my twelve-year-old sister at the end of this story, like a child who still wants to believe that magic could exist.
“Will the Golem wake up and protect us now?” she says, staring down at her cold cocoa.
I tell her he will. I tell her if not Rabbi Loew’s Golem, I will take the clay from my modeling class and make one of my own.
CHAPTER 12
JOSEF
I have always believed in the mystical. One cannot study the science of conception and the practice of obstetrics without being in awe of how the human body can create new life. In medical school, we learn that everything that is essential to life exists in the midline of the body. The same can be said about love.
The mind, the heart, the womb. Those three are all threaded in a sacred dance.
A woman’s pelvis is like an hourglass with the capacity to tell time. It both creates and shelters life. When the mother’s diet is insufficient, nutrients are pulled from her own teeth and bone. Women are built to be selfless.
As a young man, I fell in love with a girl who loved me. Her smile was a golden rope around my heart. Wherever she pulled me, I followed.
But sometimes even the thickest rope frays and one gets lost.
I still dream of her. The first girl whose hand ever laced through mine. Even when there was another woman in my bed, I’d dream only of her. I’d try and conjure her face at twenty, then thirty or forty years of age. But as the years passed and I grew older, I stopped imagining her with a face that was lined or with hair tarnished like silver.
Every person has an image or a memory that they hold secret. One that they unwrap, like a piece of hidden candy, at night. Pass through there and you will fall into the valley of dreams.
In my dreams, I imagine her naked. Long white limbs, reaching to thread through mine. Hands reaching to undo damp, fragrant braids. Chocolate-brown hair falling over a collarbone as sharp as an archer’s bow.
She crosses her arms over her breasts.
I kiss her hands, the pale of her fingertips. I turn up her palms and lift them from her breasts to my cheeks. She finds my temples, then my hair, pulls me toward her lips, and kisses me.
The kiss. The kiss. I am haunted by that kiss.
Sleep.
If only I didn’t have to wake so soon. The beeper sounding that I am needed. The number at the hospital telling me I must go.
To sleep, where I am young again. To wake, where I am old, with weary limbs. The sound of that