The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick

for Turtelman.”
    â€œThe special project for Turtelman,” Puttermesser said coldly, “is my vanquishment. My vanishing. My send-off and diminishment. So long, Leon. May you win your case against the mediocre universality of the human imagination.”
    â€œYou been canned?”
    â€œYou know that.”
    â€œWell, when Polly walks in you figure what’s up. You figure who’s out.”
    â€œBeware of Schadenfreude , Leon. You could be next.”
    â€œNot me. I don’t look for trouble. You look for trouble. I knew right away this whole setup with the kid was phony. She’s typing up a craziness—whatever it is, Bureau business it isn’t. You let in the crazies, you get what you expect.”
    At that moment—as Cracow’s moist smile with its brown teeth turned and turned inside Cracow’s dark mouth—a clarification came upon Puttermesser: no: a clarity. She was shut of a mystery. She understood; she saw.
    â€œHome!” Puttermesser ordered the golem. Xanthippe gathered up her clothes and shoved the typewritten sheets into one of the blouse bags.

V. WHY THE GOLEM WAS CREATED ; PUTTERMESSER ’ S PURPOSE
    T HAT NIGHT THE GOLEM cooked spaghetti. She worked barefoot. The fragrance of hot buttered tomato sauce and peppers rushed over a mound of shining porcelain strands. “What are you doing?” Puttermesser demanded; she saw the golem heaping up a second great batch. “Why are you so hungry?”
    The golem looked a little larger today than she had yesterday. Then Puttermesser remembered that it was in the nature of a golem to grow and grow. The golem’s appetite was nevertheless worrisome—how long would it take for Xanthippe to grow out of over one hundred dollars’ worth of clothes? Could only a Rothschild afford a golem? And what would the rate of growth be? Would the golem eventually have to be kept outdoors, so as not to crash through the ceiling? Was the golem of Prague finally reversed into lifelessness on account of its excessive size, or because the civic reforms it was created for had been accomplished?
    Ah, how this idea glowed for Puttermesser! The civic reforms of Prague—the broad crannied city of Prague, Prague distinguished by numberless crowded streets, high growth of iron masts and spires! The clock-tower of the Jewish Community House, the lofty peaked and chimneyed root of the Altneuschul! Not to mention Kafka’s Castle. Allthat manifold urban shimmer choked off by evil, corruption, the blood libel, the strong dampened hearts of wicked politicos. The Great Rabbi Judah Loew had undertaken to create his golem in an unenlightened year, the dream of America just unfolding, far away, in all its spacious ardor; but already the seed of New York was preparing in Europe’s earth: inspiration of city-joy, love for the comely, the cleanly, the free and the new, mobs transmuted into troops of the blessed, citizens bursting into angelness, sidewalks of alabaster, buses filled with thrones. Old delicate Prague, swept and swept of sin, giving birth to the purified daylight, the lucent genius, of New York!
    By now Puttermesser knew what she knew.
    â€œBring me my books,” she ordered the golem. And read:
    A vision of Paradise must accompany the signs. The sacred formulae are insufficient without the trance of ecstasy in which are seen the brilliance of cities and their salvation through exile of heartlessness, disorder, and the desolation of sadness.
    A city washed pure. New York, city (perhaps) of seraphim. Wings had passed over her eyes. Her arms around Rappoport’s heavy Times , Puttermesser held to her breast heartlessness, disorder, the desolation of sadness, ten thousand knives, hatred painted in the subways, explosions of handguns, bombs in the cathedrals of transportation and industry, Pennsylvania Station, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, terror in the broadcasting booths with their bustling