Now he, too, was growing angry. “And what would you have me do, Chava? I’m supposed to be a member of this society, am I not? Everyone else considers her a nuisance, and therefore so do I!”
She folded her arms. “Who lives on this floor, other than the Hazbouns?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your other neighbors, this ‘everyone else’ who sets the example for you. Name five of them, please. No, three.”
This was growing ludicrous. “Elias Shama, next door,” he said. “Marcus—” No, he realized, Marcus Mina had been the prior tenant. The young man who lived there now was . . . who? The Jinni could picture him, but had never learned his name. He thought harder. The man next to the Hazbouns had married and moved to Brooklyn and been replaced by an elderly couple who only called each other habibi and habibti in his hearing. The family two doors down was the Naders, but they must’ve left; he hadn’t heard their piano in quite some time. Finally he remembered the boy at the end of the hall whose mother was constantly yelling, Rami, come back this instant! “Rami,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Rami?”
Exasperated, he said, “I am barely ever here! And can I help it if they move so often? I learn a name, and they vanish!” It was the truth, he realized: at some point he’d grown inured to the ever-changing faces, and had simply stopped asking. And yet they all seemed to know who he was. The Bedouin. Arbeely’s strange partner. The one who walks the rooftops, with his lady-friend. “You wish impossible things of me, Chava,” he told her. “I don’t have your talents. I have no doubt that Alma leads a troubled life, but when she offers herself to me in a hallway, all I see is a woman who wants something I’m not allowed to give her.”
The Golem’s eyes widened. “‘Not allowed’?”
He closed his eyes, fighting back a curse. He knew he ought to reverse track, to correct his poor choice of words—and yet he couldn’t. He’d had enough of being shamed for one night. “Is that not so?” he said. “If I’ve mistaken our promise, please tell me, and I’ll seduce every woman on this street.”
“That’s not amusing, Ahmad.”
“When I came in,” he said, “I had the distinct impression that you’d been standing at the door, listening.”
Her chin lifted. “I came to the door because I’d heard your voice in the hallway.”
“So you were coming to greet me? Unaccompanied, in my apartment, in full view of a neighbor who stood only feet away?”
“Of course not. I only wanted to confirm that it was you.”
He smirked. “These are thin walls, and you have exceptional hearing. There isn’t a spot in this room where you couldn’t recognize my voice. But what you could not do at a distance was look into Alma Hazboun’s mind, deeply enough to be certain I’d never accepted her advances. For that, you’d need to get as close as possible.”
Guilt and defiance warred on her face. “Can you blame me? Her thoughts were rather explicit. I couldn’t tell if they were fantasies or memories, because of the opium.”
“And if instead you’d merely waited and asked me for the truth—would you have believed my answer? Believed it absolutely, without her thoughts to confirm it?”
She started to speak, hesitated for only a moment—but it was enough.
He made a harsh noise and turned away from her. “I’ll never prove myself to you. You’d pry my mind open like an oyster if you could. You are responsible for your fears and your distrust, Chava, not I. If you were a jinniyeh—” He caught himself, stopped.
Her eyes had gone wide. “Ahmad, what? If I were a jinniyeh, what?”
But he only stood there, radiating frustration.
She gave an angry laugh. “There, you see? You insist that I trust you, and then you refuse to speak! You dangle riddles for me to lunge at, but you tell me nothing!” And she strode past him and into the hall, slamming the door behind her.
This is not my fault, he thought. I’ve done everything she’s asked of me, but still she insists on doubting, when I am blameless!
He looked around at the empty apartment, which now chided him with its neatness. She hadn’t even told him what had brought her to Little Syria. His gaze fell on the precisely made bed—and her cloak, lying on top of the coverlet. Left behind, in her urge to get away.
Cursing, he grabbed it and went after her.
* * *
At last the Altschuls’ golem was complete.
Father and daughter made their final preparations in an air of tense excitement. Kreindel packed a small carpet-bag, light enough for her to carry. The precious books sat ready in their suitcase. There was a steamship leaving for Hamburg the next afternoon, and enough money put aside for a pair of third-class tickets. They’d wait until the tenement was asleep—and then they would test their creation.
Yet there were still contingencies to consider. The golem might not come to life on the first attempt; the synagogue elders might choose the wrong moment to visit their convalescing rabbi. And so, in his caution, Rabbi Altschul wrote a brief message to the synagogue president, requesting another week of seclusion and recovery. He couldn’t risk delivering it himself, and so he gave it to Kreindel. “Return quickly,” he told her. “There’s still much to do.”
The tenement hallway smelled of wood-smoke, and Kreindel wondered if autumn had arrived. But outside it was a summer night, warm and quiet. She scurried across the empty street and unlocked the synagogue door, then walked through the echoing sanctuary to the president’s office, and placed the note upon his desk.
And then she hesitated. Here in the darkened synagogue, she felt suddenly alone and frightened. Her father was deathly ill, and she was eleven years old. How could she possibly guide him to the Vilna Rav when she’d never
