by Bari Wood
“He went with me and we walked a little way to the side of the barracks and squatted together next to the fence.
“I’m a fool and no matter what Streicher has said about Jews being inferior, I looked into the little bastard’s eyes and I knew he was an intelligent man. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked him. ‘Three years,’ he answered. ‘Then you know what we’re like, don’t you?’ He smiled and nodded at me. ‘So,’ I said, ‘what do you think they will do in Berlin when they find out that I’ve stopped . . . our work? And they will find out.’ ” The little bastard doesn’t answer, so I say, ‘They’ll destroy this camp and everyone in it, and even if the thing in there survives, all the men with you will be dead. So will everyone here; Germans, Poles, and Jews. I can keep you and your people alive. That’s all I can do, no matter what you threaten me with.’ ”
“And so all the rest died. Amen,” Hawkins said.
Bianco ignored him and kept talking to Rachel. “Speiser was right. The Nazis were beginning the ‘final solution’ and if they had found out that a couple of thousand Jews stayed alive because of a fairy tale monster. . . .”
Hawkins stood up. “It’s not a fairy tale. It’s worse. It’s a Boris Karloff movie.”
Bianco said, “Speiser believed it.”
“And you believed him,” Hawkins said. “Why? Deathbed truth? You don’t think he’d risk damnation by having a little fun with you?”
Bianco said quietly, “You weren’t in that room, Inspector, or you wouldn’t ask that. He was sick and starving and about to be hanged for one of the worst crimes in history. It wasn’t a setting for a last joke. Whatever Speiser said, crazy or not, he believed it.”
Hawkins headed for the door and Bianco followed them to the door; he kept looking at Rachel and apologizing, which Hawkins didn’t understand. Then when they were outside the house, just getting into the car, he ran out the door after them. “You’ll let me know?” he said to Rachel.
She nodded.
“Please,” he said urgently. “I’ve waited a long time. You’ll tell me . . .”
“I promise,” Rachel said solemnly.
Hawkins didn’t say anything; he was looking through his pockets for Chaim Garfield’s phone number.
The youngest son was supposed to ask the four questions at the Seder. But Chaim Garfield didn’t have any sons or grandsons, so his granddaughter asked them. She was six, she’d memorized the Hebrew and the English, and she asked each question first in Hebrew, then translated. She faltered once, but went on bravely. She had round cheeks that were blushing now and dark blue eyes like Ada’s, and, as she read the questions in her trembling voice, Garfield felt a rush of love so intense he thought he’d faint. Dorothy, his older daughter, was thirty, and lovelier than he ever thought she’d be. Her husband was okay; he watched a little too much TV, talked a little too much about money, but he was good to Dorothy, he loved his daughters, and if he wasn’t the intellect of all time, he was kind. Garfield’s other daughter was plain, sweet, and bright, and her husband was just like her. Chaim loved them all. So much, he could fall into his soup in a spasm of love. Drown for love in chicken soup.
After the feast, and after he had gotten through most of the Haggadah, his normally flat belly swollen and the men leaning back on pillows behind their chairs, he filled the beautiful Elijah’s cup that had belonged to Ada’s mother. It was silver and carved so fine that it looked embroidered. He filled it carefully and with the sweet taste of the Passover wine coating his mouth, he took his granddaughter’s hand and they went to the front door carrying the cup. She opened the door, and he put the wine cup on the hall floor. He looked down toward the elevator; it was almost nine, and practically every door on his floor had a cup in front of it.
“For Elijah,” he told the little girl, “Elijah who heralds the Messiah and who might visit us any time, in any disguise. And no matter how he appears, even if he is in rags like a beggar, tonight—Seder night—we give him wine, and feed him.”
She started to close the door, but he stopped her. “We leave the door open for him. So he doesn’t have to knock or ring the bell. . . .” She left the door open, and he picked her up and carried her back to the table. There were other reasons for leaving the door open, but he didn’t ever want her to know them. In Poland, Hungary, Russia, the Gentiles believed that Jews drank Christians’ blood at Seder, and Jews who wanted to live to the next Passover left the door open so the Gentiles could come in and see it was only wine they drank. In some ghettos the cup was for the Gentiles, not for Elijah—in the vain hope that it was harder to murder a man and his family after drinking his wine.
PART FOUR: THE RABBIS
Chapter 1
Chaim Garfield lived in an old ersatz-Tudor apartment building that hung out over the river. Rachel carried Leah and followed Hawkins into a paneled elevator that was oiled to hide graffiti. Garfield’s apartment was on the fifth floor, at the end of a long hall that was carpeted like the hall in Rachel’s old building on Seventy-second Street. It even smelled the same, and she thought of the families who lived behind the doors of that hall: the Kleins, the Farbers, the Bernsteins—it was a family building, like this one was; and she knew they were in their kitchens having breakfast. Eggs without bacon, lox, cream cheese, bagels, olives. She wanted to grab her daughter, take her lover’s hand, and drag them both out of there onto the neutral street, but the door opened, and Chaim Garfield smiled at them.
“Inspector . . . Mrs. Levy.” He took Rachel’s hand, bowed Hawkins into the apartment. “Ah . . . your daughter?” he asked Rachel. She nodded dumbly and he kissed Leah on the cheek. “Please, please, sit down. No, wait! The kitchen.” He led them down a hall to the kitchen. Other doors they passed were closed and behind one Rachel heard a woman talking on the phone. Mrs. Garfield, she thought, the reason the line was busy. The kitchen was big, all its windows were on one wall facing the river, and in the gray light they could see sailboats, barges, the Day Line cruiser, and past the boats, the Palisades. “West Point’s up there,” Garfield told them proudly. “Sit,” he said, pulling chairs up to the table. “I’ll get coffee . . .” Leah whimpered, and Garfield put his hands to his face as though he were witness to a tragedy. “A toilet . . . oh my. Let me take her?” he asked Rachel.
“No, I couldn’t,” she said.
“Please. I had little girls once. Oh, they’re grown now. I’m a zayda,†††† but how I miss those days.” He laughed. “You can’t imagine it, can you. Oh, but it’ll happen, I swear. Let me take her? You make the coffee . . .” He lifted Leah out of Rachel’s arms, and Leah stopped crying. “See?” Garfield said. His arms were long and thin and he was almost as tall as Hawkins, but much thinner. His nose was long and thin like the rest of him, and the end of it turned down. His hair was thin, wispy, but still very black, and a black yarmulke covered the top of his head. Hawkins stared at the man as he relinquished Leah and Garfield laughed. “Nu?” Garfield said, “I should look like my brother?”
“More like him,” Hawkins said.
Garfield laughed. “I favor my mother, he looks like our father. My mother was sweet, but very ugly.” He held Leah, who was beginning to smell close to him, and kissed her hair. She kissed him back. “My brother thinks he’s Samael . . . the demon . . . and that I’m Metatron . . . the angel.” Still holding Leah, he went to the cupboard and took down the coffeepot. “Not just an angel, mind you, but Metatron himself. Angel of angels . . . Prince of Countenance . . .” He laughed, jiggled Leah, who squealed and laughed with him, and managed to get the top off the coffeepot all at the same time. “Now look at me!” he commanded. Rachel and Hawkins did. His eyes were bright black, round, and set close together. The irises were too large for the whites, and his thick black eyebrows almost met over his nose. His ears stuck out, his chin was too long, and his beard was too scraggly to hide the fact. He kept laughing. “Nu?” he asked, “do I look
like an angel? Don’t be shy!” he cried. “Tell me I look like a minor angel . . . Raphael . . . Gabriel . . . not Metatron.” He grinned and hugged Leah closer. Then he said, “She’s leaking,” and he put the coffeepot on the counter and ran out of the room.
Rachel and Hawkins looked at each other and Hawkins started to laugh. She’d never heard him laugh like that, absolutely, helplessly. It was irresistible and she started to laugh with him, but it got out of hand and she sobbed. He put his arms around her and held her against him.
“Hey, hey,” he whispered, holding her tight. “Hey . . . sshhh . . . love, Rachel, shh . . . don’t be scared . . .” He kissed her face, then her lips. “Oh, Rachel,” he whispered, “I’ll kill it, if it’s there, I promise. It won’t get you or me or anyone. . . .”
Suddenly it was the climax in a Western, Rachel thought, and the marshal had the villain in his sights and John Wayne or Clint Eastwood whispered, He’s mine, and the marshal knew his place and stood aside.
He’s mine, Rachel thought. I’m not scared and you won’t kill it. He’s mine.
Garfield came back into the kitchen but Hawkins and Rachel didn’t jump apart. Garfield looked at them for a long time. Leah stood next to him, holding his hand.
“Nu,” he said finally. “Black and white lovers . . .”
Hawkins said, “Rabbi . . .” But Garfield held up his hand and Hawkins was quiet. Garfield shook his head. “I don’t care about that part, but you,” he told Hawkins, “are not Jewish.” Hawkins smiled, but Garfield was serious. “Meyer thinks I’ll marry you . . . maybe I will, but only—and I mean this—if you are circumcised and convert. I won’t even consider it otherwise . . .”
“But—” Hawkins started.
“No, no!” Garfield was upset and it showed. “There’s no argument. I love my brother. I’ll never convince him of it, but I do. And he told me that you tried to save his son, that you risked your life to save a stranger. But I won’t marry you to a Jewish woman unless you convert.”
He’ll convert, Rachel wanted to say. And he’s circumcised. I know that. So marry us, just marry us. That’s all we want.
But she said, “We didn’t come here for that.” She filled the coffeepot, opened the strange refrigerator, and found the coffee. Garfield gave her a measuring spoon and said, “No? For what, then?”
Rachel and Hawkins looked at each other. The sun was burning off the smog. The room brightened and suddenly Rachel said, “We have to kill a golem.”
All Garfield did was put down the spoon. “A golem,” he said.
She nodded.
“You’ve seen a golem?” he asked kindly.
“No,” he admitted, “we haven’t seen it.”
“Ah, someone told you about it.”
“Partly,” Hawkins said.
Garfield sat back and spread butter on the coffee cake Rachel had sliced for him. He ate as he talked, blowing crumbs and bits of nut across the table. Leah watched him, enthralled. “My brother says to see you, I see you. You come here in the morning with a little girl who should be home where it’s warm. You laugh and cry like mad people and I find you necking in the kitchen and you tell me you want to kill a golem that you’ve never seen and only heard about.” He sounded more bewildered than angry. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” Hawkins said.
“What would you do if you were me? It’s pointless to call the police, you are the police. And you,” he looked at Rachel, “are the daughter-in-law of a loved and respected man.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“Why?” Garfield repeated. “Why is Jacob Levy loved?”
“Yes. Why?”
“They say he outwitted the Nazis and saved the people,” Garfield answered.
“The golem saved them,” Rachel said.
Garfield stared at her.
“It killed Nazi guards,” Rachel told Garfield. “The Germans were terrified, not outwitted.”
“Who told you that?” Garfield snapped.
“Major Louis Bianco . . . the man who opened the camp.”
“Ah, a major,” Garfield intoned, “he saw the golem.”
“No. He . . . he heard about it.” Oh God, Rachel thought, it sounds so lame. He won’t believe us, he won’t help.
“Heard?” Now Garfield sounded sarcastic. “From whom did he hear this wonderful tale?”
“From the commandant of Belzec,” Rachel said quietly. “Johann Speiser.” The name had an effect. Garfield was quiet for a moment, then he asked, “Where is this golem?”
“Long Island,” Rachel said, blushing.
“Ah. A golem kills some Nazis and moves to Long Island.”
Rachel was quiet.
“Johann Speiser didn’t tell anyone about a golem on Long Island. Who did?”
“We know it . . . by its work,” Rachel said.
“What work?” Garfield asked. “Does it serve at Seder? Build swimming pools? Golems aren’t just swords of vengeance you know.” Then it hit him and he groaned. “Clay; the black family in Laurel . . . mother and sons . . . covered with clay . . .”
Rachel said, “There were some kids in Brooklyn, too, and the guards at Belzec . . .”
Garfield held Leah against him, drank coffee, and looked out of the window. “I’m an Orthodox rabbi in Riverdale,” Garfield said. “I perform weddings and funerals, conduct Sabbath prayers, preside at High Holy Days, and supervise kashruth‡‡‡‡ should anyone ask, which they seldom do . . .” He threaded his fingers through the sparse beard and kept on clutching Leah. She didn’t mind. He paused, then went on quietly. “I’m not a cabalist, I’m not a mystic, I’m not even sure I believe in God. Still, I’m a good Jew. Which means that if I believe you I have to help you because if they’ve done what you tell me they have, they are disciples of Samael . . . that’s Satan,” he explained.
“I don’t know about Samael,” Rachel said. “But you have to help us.”
Garfield turned to Hawkins. “She does all the talking. Is that because she’s pushy or because you don’t believe any of this?”
“I don’t believe it,” Hawkins said.
“But you?” Garfield said to Rachel.
Rachel hesitated, then she said, “I think it’s true.”
“So,” Garfield said, “I might know a cabalist.”
“You studied the Cabala,” Garfield said to Wolf Tepel.
“So what?” Tepel asked.
“I need a cabalist.”
Tepel took a heavy gray cardigan out of his desk drawer and gave it to Garfield. Garfield wrapped it around his shoulders.
“Schnapps?” Tepel asked. Garfield grinned and Tepel took a bottle out of another drawer and handed it to Garfield. The liquor tasted good and Garfield took two deep swallows and handed the bottle back to Tepel.
“Nu,” said Tepel after a while. “How can a down-at-the-heels one-time almost-cabalist help the great Chaim Garfield?”
“Am I great?” Garfield asked.
Tepel shrugged. “You’re a nice man. What do I know. Just tell me what you want before I have to turn the heat on and dry up the brains in both our heads.”
“Wolf, I think someone built a golem.”
Tepel drank. “Lots of people built golems. Loew in Prague, Elijah in Chelm, Elijah in Vilna, the prophet Jeremiah—who says, by the way, that the ritual of creation . . . the golem recipe . . . incites feelings of ecstasy. But you can’t trust the cabalists. They say everything incites ecstasy . . .”
Tepel raised the bottle, then pulled it away from his mouth, and stared at his friend.
“You mean now, someone built a golem? A clay man that stands and walks?”
“And kills,” Garfield said.
Tepel looked at his friend.
“It killed a family on Long Island and some
boys in Brooklyn.”
“Were they Jews?” Tepel asked.
Garfield jumped up and Tepel did, too, still holding the bottle.
“I’m sorry,” Tepel said, “I know I shouldn’t feel like that. I don’t feel like that. But I do. You do. Everybody does. So I ask, that’s all.”
Garfield took the bottle, drank, and handed it back. “No,” he said, “no Jews.”
“It won’t.”
“Kill Jews?”
“It’s not supposed to.”
Garfield laughed explosively, spraying brandy in Tepel’s face; Tepel wiped it off.
“Who’s supposed to kill Jews?” Garfield asked. They both laughed, and passed the bottle again. Suddenly Tepel grabbed the bottle, put it in the drawer, and shut the drawer.
“This is nuts. You’re drunk or crazy,” he told Garfield.
“Listen, two young people came to me today. They told me there’s a golem on Long Island. They told me it’s killed boys in Brooklyn and Nazis in Belzec. They told me Rabbi Jacob Levy—you know who Jacob Levy is— built it. They told me it’s gotten out of hand. Guards in Belzec, okay. The men who killed your son, maybe. But a mother and two children in a little town near the sea? That’s crazy. That’s . . .” Garfield searched for the right word but since Theresienstadt, words like evil or bad or wrong could never be used again. “Not nice,” he said finally. Tepel looked at him in amazement, and they laughed again, wildly this time, clutching each other. Tepel opened the drawer and took out the bottle, and they drank some more.
Tepel thought.
“Okay,” he said after a while, “there’s a golem on Long Island . . . so what?”
“They want it killed.”
Tepel asked, “Who are they, and why should we go around killing golems for them?”
Garfield told him; and all the time he talked, Tepel nodded. His fine white hair floating around his head like an aura.
