The biscuit-makers were the next to leave, although theirs was a more orderly and dignified departure. There was no profit in it anymore, the owner told his workers sadly, not for the little outfits like theirs. He paid out their wages, sold the equipment at auction, and set a final tin of biscuits next to the Arbeely & Ahmad door on the way out.
The Jinni couldn’t have said how long it was before the cigar-makers, too, disappeared. He simply realized one morning that he hadn’t heard anyone in the stairwell in quite some time. He went upstairs to investigate, and found the fifth floor deserted, the long wooden tables still scattered with knives and cutting-boards and pots of sealing gum. Crumbled tobacco leaves littered the floor like an autumn forest.
He broke up the wooden tables and tossed the pieces down the stairwell, then heaped them out the door and into the alley, where they quickly disappeared. Before long, the rooftop fire-barrels of lower Manhattan all smelled of quality tobacco.
Alone, the Jinni walked the Amherst from top to bottom, seeing the building itself as though for the first time. Each floor was a vast expanse of wooden boards, the support columns piercing them at regular intervals. He stood in the empty stairwell, and looked up at the sharp-angled spiral that the railings made.
Then he went back to the forge, and kept working.
* * *
Eventually, the Golem stopped waiting each night at her window.
More than anything else, it was a matter of self-preservation. Winter was approaching, and with it her restlessness; she must learn to manage without him. And the solution, when it came to her, felt entirely obvious: instead of taking the subway, she’d simply walk to her classes instead.
Now she spent six hours each day in walking: three hours north and three south again, over two hundred and forty blocks in total. She learned the different patterns of morning and afternoon traffic, and which short-cuts she might take along the way. She enjoyed the feeling of moving with the crowd, of being merely one among many. When the rains began, she bought a good umbrella, and learned to angle it into the wind. On the wettest mornings she’d duck into a cafeteria to wait out a squall, and buy a cup of coffee and a sticky bun as payment for the shelter. The counters would grow crowded with others like herself, a temporary fellowship, all with their own buns and coffee-cups, their own furled umbrellas dripping onto their shoes. At last the rain would pause—and then everyone would hurry out together, umbrellas open and raised, coffee warm in their bellies. It was the most mundane of experiences, and yet the Golem found that she treasured it.
The return home was different. At Columbus Circle she’d feel the first pangs of indecision, and by the time she reached Washington Square she’d be arguing with herself. Don’t. It’s getting dark. You’ll only draw attention. He didn’t want to see you yesterday. He won’t today, either.
But it didn’t matter. She had to try.
At Grand she would turn west instead of east, and hurry down Washington Street to knock upon the Amherst door and then wait, huddled beneath the awning. She knew he was there; she could hear him sometimes, walking about in the building’s depths. At first she’d slipped notes into the letterbox, but then she ran out of ways to plead with him, and it began to feel demeaning. So now, she merely knocked—and never once did he open the door.
* * *
Boutros Arbeely took his final breath on a January night in 1912, while Little Syria slept around him. The Faddouls were there, and a Maronite priest, and the friends and neighbors who’d shared the vigil. It was after midnight when the priest said the final prayer. The director of the funeral home was summoned, the arrangements made. Maryam Faddoul dried her eyes, went to the telephone, and asked the operator for a number on the Lower East Side.
The Golem heard the ’phone ringing in the parlor and rushed downstairs to answer it. “Hello?”
“Chava? It’s Maryam.” The woman’s voice trembled. “Boutros just passed.”
“Oh, Maryam. I’m so sorry.” An awkward pause, and then, “Ahmad never came, did he?”
“No. He didn’t.” A quick touch of anger in the words. Then, “Chava . . . someone has to tell him.”
The Golem heard the unspoken plea. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll do it. And I’ll go now, before he finds out some other way.”
It was an unpleasant night to be out of doors. It had snowed all day, and now a cutting wind began, whipping her cloak about. The streets were nearly deserted, but still she paused at each corner to listen for anyone ahead who might give her trouble. Twice she managed to avoid policemen cooping in doorways, out of the cold.
At last she reached the Amherst. She knocked, first hesitantly and then with more insistence. As always, there was no reply.
She hesitated, glanced up and down the empty street, and then gave the doorknob a sharp and forceful turn.
Metal pinged. The knob came off in her hand. Carefully she laid it out of the way, and then opened the door.
The air inside was thick with heat. “Ahmad?” she called. The murmur of the forge seemed to swallow all noise. She found Arbeely’s rolltop desk, switched on the lamp—and saw that the show-room walls had been torn away, with only crumbs of plaster left to mark where they’d been. Much of the workshop, too, was gone, save for a few cabinets, a solitary worktable, the anvil, and the forge’s oblong pool of glowing coals.
She gazed at it all in mounting dismay, and then ventured into the supply room. It was darker here, the windows covered or else obscured—and there was a strange taste in the air, like burning earth. Her boot nudged something on the floor. She bent down and picked up a rock, dark and glittering,
