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“Four hundred years ago, I witnessed the activities of the first golem, which the great magician Loew created deep in the ghetto at Prague. He sent it out from its attic of shrouds and cobwebs to instill fear into the enemies of his people. It was itself a creature of magic, but it worked against the magic of the djinn. It wielded the essence of earth with great weight: our spells failed in its presence…
- The Golem’s Eye, 198, Jonathan Stroud
Twilight. 13 Golden Lane. Prague.
Kavka added another stroke with his quill and hissed in frustration. He took out his knife and trimmed the edge.
Each line drained him, tipped him deeper over the edge of his exhaustion, left his limbs trembling and his head swimming. The veins stood out beneath his translucent skin. In a few short months, he had become a frail old man.
He surveyed his work. It was very beautiful for something so deadly. And it was killing him as surely as a bullet to the heart. But as the neat, swirling figures brushed across the creamy parchment, he still found it, the oasis of calm that came with his work.
He paused mid-stroke, tilting his head. He thought he heard a sound and almost rose to check the protective nexus surrounding the cottage before realizing it was coming from his own mouth.
He hadn’t noticed he was humming under his breath as he worked. He paused, paying mind to his words.
…And may Your mercy overflow Your attributes and slake the thirst of those longing for Your kindness, from the river that flows from Eden…
His quill kept moving, serene and steady to the pace of his singing, though his hands shook whenever he lifted them.
Sabbath hymns. He might not live to see the Sabbath come.
Likely would not. The Englishman was coming at dawn.
**
Kavka did not know how the blue-eyed Englishman had found him.
He was a scribe, skilled but far from prosperous. He had always known to keep his head down.
“Kavka is a dangerous last name, Tzali,” his father had told him, even as they clung to it, even as he imparted the secrets that made it so dangerous. He could not turn his back on the lifework of his father’s fathers any more than he could abandon their name.
Before the Englishman found him, Kavka had earned a modest but respectable living drafting Torah scrolls for synagogues and mezuzahs for doorposts, marriage documents and phylacteries and writs of divorce and the rare piece of calligraphic artwork.
He had always been meticulous, but both the clarity of his hand and its speed had improved tenfold since he’d penned his first book of Esther.
The parchment he was using for his current task had been earmarked for a new scroll of Song of Songs commissioned by the synagogue.
The half-written manuscript must have still been lying somewhere under all the debris. For a moment, he saw it in front of him on the table, in place of the text he labored over. Instead of swirling figures in black and red, the parchment humming with energy, he saw the neatly scored lines, uniform square letters crowned with tiny turrets; he could almost hear the musical cadence of the words:
…The rainy season is past…new blossoms have appeared in the land…
If only it were so…if only he could see the sun shine again.
…The guardsmen of the city found me; they struck me and wounded me…
His mouth set grimly. That felt more accurate to his life.
He never should have agreed. He dared not think what havoc the creature was wreaking across London. But he did not have a choice. He closed his eyes, Karl and Mia’s faces bursting across his eyelids. Karl and Mia – he did this for them. Not the threat of death or the promise of reward. The project would kill him anyway, but his children… he could not let them suffer…he did not trust the Englishman, but if there was any hope he could protect his children…
**
He had tried so hard to keep them out of this business, his whole life he had.
When Mia had been a child, she had looked up at him with her wide brown eyes and asked, “Did the Maharal really build a golem?”
Her innocent words were like a cold hand clutched around his heart. For a moment he thought it had been that, his heart stopping, the sudden death that had been his father’s end.
Careful, child, he thought. You are a Kavka. The old name still means something in Prague. No talk of golems is innocent for us.
Instead, he’d forced his face into a gentle smile. “The Maharal? So, you have taken interest in our venerated Rabbi Loew, then? We are no Englishmen to waste our time with demons and magic, golems and other foolishness. I will show you the true wonders of the Maharal. Get me a volume of Gur Aryeh from the shelf, book of Genesis.”
Mia had trotted over to the bookcase on her short legs, easing the volume out of the shelf with care.
“Do you know what gur aryeh means, Mia’leh?”
She shook her head.
“It means a lion cub. Now, Rabbi Loew’s first name was Judah, and in Jacob’s blessings, Judah is compared to a lion cub—yes Karl,” he said, nodding to his son, who had wandered into the room and interjected. “Just like great-uncle Lev’s name is Judah in Hebrew."
He gestured for Karl to take a seat.
“Now Mia, can you read this passage for me? What happens? Precisely.
“Jacob finds himself alone and wrestles with a man until dawn arrives. Of course, the man in question is an angel, but we will get to that shortly. He walks off with a limp, and a new name.
“Now, if you ever become a scribe, Karl, you will notice that the word ‘vayeavek,’ denoting Jacob’s struggle with the angel, appears only once in the entire Torah; even the verbal root appears only twice, both in this passage. See the Masoretic notes in the margins? I will teach you how to read them when you are older.
“At dawn Jacob asks the angel to bless him.
Maharal questions the nature of this blessing. Now, of course, in order to understand the Maharal’s question, we must first look in Rashi…
“Mia’leh, how is your grasp on Rashi script? You have been practicing? Good, I’m proud of you. Now, look here. Karl, can you see over her shoulder like that? Go fetch another volume, if you need, at least to follow along with Rashi…”
**
Simpler times. Happier times. Before disease had taken Esther, before Karl and Mia had been tempted by distant shores.
The cottage had always been small and spare, but it had been full of joy and laughter, neat piles of manuscripts and the smell of home-cooked meals.
He had always kept Rabbi Loew’s less esoteric books proudly displayed on the shelf. There was nothing incriminating about them. Even Prague, with its deep ambivalence towards the golems of its past and its ruthlessness towards such esoteric arts in the present, still prided itself in the scholarship of Rabbi Loew.
The other books, he had kept in the secret panel in his trunk, bound with false bindings and wrapped in cloth, layer upon layer of obfuscation, but of course, none were helpful when he himself had been the one to unwrap them.
The Book of Formation, The Wondrous Deeds of Rabbi Loew by the Canadian mystic Rosenberg, piles of manuscripts and pamphlets without titles or binding, passed down hand to hand for centuries by the Kehillah of Prague.
Always, there had been someone to preserve them, at least one a generation, though the knowledge had been forbidden since the fall of Prague to Gladstone’s army.
He had learned the secret arts in his father’s study, the old man (always old in his memory, though younger when he died than Kavka himself was now) frantic to impart the ancient knowledge while he still lived, so sure, even in the peak of health, that he would suffer the early death that was the inheritance of his family.
Kavka had sworn to himself that he would never put them into practice. And he had vowed that if he ever took an apprentice, it would not be one of his children. Too precious for these dangerous secrets.
He cursed the foolishness of his youth. He should never have learned. He should have let the old knowledge die.
How had the Englishman discovered him?
It was the name. The name Kavka had not been forgotten in Prague, not if you knew who to ask, quiet as they’d been in the century and a half since Gladstone’s conquest. They should have abandoned the name, shredded every last connection to their heritage. Pride. Pride and foolishness. Dangerous foolishness, but too late now, far too late.
Lord, how I long for the sweetness of the Sabbath.
**
Several hours later.
Kavka stumbled to his worktable. He could only hope the young magician would keep his promises. He ripped the parchment in two, his life force torn out of him.
Let these letters fly into the air, he thought. I have written better ones.
His lips formed words he would never speak.
**
Holy Sabbath, the souls of Israel shelter in your wings.