The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  “Okay,” Weiser said. “Each of the elements you represent corresponds to an angel. Fire—Michael; air—Raphael; water—Gabriel. Notice, the angels’ names have seven letters. Start with Michael.

  “He leaves the star and circles the golem seven times to his right, saying his name as he goes. But every time he finishes a circle, he drops a letter of the name. So he starts with Michael and ends on the L. He should say it llll . . . as seriously as if he were saying Kaddish. When Fire-Michael is done, Air-­Raphael does the same thing, then Water-­Gabriel. . . .”

  “The golem is going to sit still for all of this?” Tepel asked.

  “The golem has no will. It can’t speak, it can’t be counted in a minyan.”¶¶¶¶ Weiser grinned and Garfield realized that he was a little drunk. “The golem has no sex drive and no intelligence. It will do whatever its creator tells it. If the creator knows what you’re doing, he will undoubtedly try to stop you. Okay, after the three of you have made your seven circles each, you bow to the south, north, west, and east.”

  “Sounds very silly,” Garfield said.

  “Of course it’s silly,” Weiser said.

  “But it’ll work?”

  Weiser finished the water glass of brandy and Tepel poured more. It was almost ten and except for a cop and a bus driver eating soup, the place was empty. The busboy stood at the front, watching them.

  “It’s supposed to,” he said.

  “Damn it, Weiser,” Garfield cried, “it worked for them.”

  Suddenly Weiser’s face was full of contempt. “You putz,” he said, “sure it worked. Eight crazy men, you tell me. Sorely tried. You know what that says to me? It says Dachau or Buchenwald or Auschwitz. I was in Buchenwald.”

  Tepel leaned toward him, but Weiser waved him back.

  “I don’t care if you were there. I didn’t know you. I didn’t know your dead brother or father or son. I don’t want to know. I was there,” Weiser said, “like you were, like they were. Maybe they found virgin clay in the middle of Poland, but I doubt it. And maybe all this gibberish made a monster out of that clay, but I doubt that too.”

  Garfield was confused by Weiser’s attack. “But it’s there. I know it is. Whether you believe me . . .”

  “Okay, I believe you. Okay, it moves, it breathes, it kills. Good. They could have made it out of chopped liver and written ‘walk, don’t walk’ on its forehead and their hate would move it. You want to stop it from killing? I don’t know why you should unless it killed your son, but as long as you do, and as long as I hear you’re a good man, and even though I don’t know what that means, I’ll help you. You want to stop it? Hate as much as they do. Get as angry. Make your voice shake with rage as you spiel out all that drek, then raise your hand to the monster’s forehead. On it will be this word—Emet, the seal of the Holy One.” He wrote Hebrew characters on his napkin. “Then with that hand of yours trembling with fury, rub out the aleph.”

  Weiser crossed out the aleph and held the napkin up for Garfield to see.

  “Read it,” Weiser said.

  It said met—dead.

  Weiser said, “Then, if your passion matches theirs, maybe it’ll die.”

  §§§§ Strong man.

  ¶¶¶¶ The ten men needed to make a shul.

  Chapter 3

  The Garners had been his parishioners, Ryder thought. Part of his flock. No matter what Rachel Levy said, that made it his business and he was going to get into that basement somehow and look behind that flowered curtain. But he couldn’t tell his wife what he was doing, and he tried to get out of the house without her knowing. The kitchen door squeaked, the side door was weather-sealed shut, and the only way out was through the front. But to get there, he had to pass the open library door. His wife and daughter were inside watching Dark Victory on the late show. Bette Davis was on her knees in the garden. She felt the sun on her hands but couldn’t see it, and she knew she was blind and dying. Ryder’s daughter sobbed. Even his wife sniffled. He waited a second, then stepped past the open door. His body blocked the hall lamp and his wife looked up, saw him dressed to go out, and she stood up.

  “Ed, it’s almost midnight.”

  His daughter shushed them and his wife came out into the hall and shut the door.

  “Where’re you going?” she asked. She looked tense, like everyone else did since the murders.

  “For a ride,” he said. “It’ll help me sleep.”

  She knew he hadn’t been sleeping well. “It’s still cold. Take your scarf.” She pulled his winter muffler off the old antler hooks on the hall and draped it around his neck, but she held the ends of the scarf and looked closely at him. It made him uncomfortable and he stepped back, pulling the scarf out of her hands. “What’s the matter, Betsy?”

  Her face was white and suddenly she grabbed the scarf again. “Don’t go,” she said. Her voice was hushed, nothing like itself, and he looked at her amazed.

  “What?”

  “Don’t go. If you can’t sleep, take a pill.”

  “I don’t have any pills.”

  “Have a drink, get drunk. But don’t go.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I’ve got this feeling . . . I . . .” She stopped and then let the scarf go. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said.

  He kissed her. “Everyone’s edgy. We’ll feel better when they get whoever did it.” He went to the door.

  “Make it a short ride,” she said.

  He thought she’d gone back into the library, but when he stopped at the end of the drive and looked back, he saw her watching him through the judas window. He bicycled to the center of town and some of his wife’s feeling—whatever it was—infected him and he pedaled faster. He wished that the moon was out and the streets weren’t so empty.

  He turned into the Main Street Extension and saw hedges and the dark strip of Sutter Lane ahead. It started to rain lightly. His hair and shoulders got wet but he went on. He stopped at the shul and looked up the path through the break in the hedge. The main floor was dark but the basement was still lit. He leaned the bike on its kickstand and went up the path around the side of the house. The hedge blocked the next house and he felt alone. He leaned down and looked in the window. Everything looked the same. The night light shone dully, the curtain hung straight. Nothing happened. There was no obliging draft this time and his knees started aching. He stood up and went to the cellar door at the back of the little house, but it was locked. Then he went back around the front and up the stairs to the porch. He expected the front door to be locked, but it wasn’t. He opened the door and went inside. If someone saw lights at that time of night, they might call the rabbi, or worse, the police, so he’d brought his utility lantern and he switched it on and shone it around the vestibule. The basement stairs were to the left; there was no door at the bottom, and he went down the stairs by the light of the lantern and into the basement room. The room was uncannily silent, and he looked up and saw a celotex ceiling that would soak up noise. Then he crossed the room to the wooden box and stood in front of the drawn curtain. He didn’t want to pull it, but he knew he was too much like his father not to. He’d come this far and he had to see once and for all what was in the box, and he reached out for the drape.

  Levy dreamed that they were beating Reuben Smolska to death again. He was crying, falling, trying to get up, but they kept hitting him. One club smashed his back and he was down again, blood and spit running out of his mouth. The Germans stood over him, light shone on their insignias, guns, belt buckles, buttons. Their uniforms were black, the fronts splattered with blood. One pulled Reuben up by the hair. One of his eyes was closed, the other was full of blood, his front teeth were gone. They hit him on the chest with the club, in the belly, and Reuben fell on his hands and knees. They pulled his pants down so they could hit
his bare skin. One German had an erection and Levy thought he was going to vomit. Then the German looked at him and smiled and Levy was overcome by rage he never thought he could feel.

  Someone screamed and Levy opened his eyes. He was in the shul, awake, not dreaming, but he still heard it. Then something hit the basement wall, the building shook, and Levy jumped up and ran to the basement stairs just as Reverend Ryder careened into the entryway. He stared up at Levy without seeing him and pulled himself up the bannister with his right hand. His left arm was gone, blood pumped out of the empty socket, hit the wall, and splashed the stairs. He smashed into Levy and kept going. Levy ran after him, shouting that he could help him. Ryder fell down the front stairs of the porch. He got up, ran to his bike, and rode away, one handed, blood running down his side.

  Levy ran after him. One block, two, until he gasped and his throat burned. He staggered and leaned against a tree. The rain was heavy, it washed away the blood. Levy caught his breath and started running again. He knew he couldn’t keep going, there were pains in his chest, his legs were numb. Then he saw Ryder ahead, lying on the grass in the empty square.

  He staggered across the square and fell to his knees next to him. Ryder was on his back with his eyes open. Levy felt for a pulse in his neck, couldn’t find it and tried his wrist, then chest. His heart wasn’t beating. Levy put his palm against the half-­open mouth, but Ryder wasn’t breathing.

  Levy looked up at the bike which had fallen next to the dead man. It was old and too small for Ryder. It was his son’s, or had been his since he was a child. The man had a wife and children and Levy knew he’d done this somehow. The dream he’d had, or the terror when he’d heard the scream made it happen. He stared at the dead man and tried to feel something. Forty years ago he’d have been in anguish, but that was before everything. Now he felt some remorse, but it was vague, like a needle pricking a callus. He stayed on his knees anyway, until he was soaked through, and the skin on his back was wet. Then he stood up, crossed the square, and looked back at the body. The streetlight and glow from the sky and rain lit the body on the lawn so it looked like it was under a spotlight.

  Levy looked around at the pretty streets that surrounded the square. Beyond them were trees, lots, people’s houses, the highway. On the other side, the Sound. But it looked like a stage set to him, and he had a terrible feeling that he could walk around a facade of two-­dimensional houses and cut-­out trees and on the other side he would find the barracks, the fence, the ovens. The fresh rain would stop and in its place ash would fall out of the cloud of smoke from the ovens and in a few minutes it would cover his hair and shoulders. He had never been so tired, and he wanted to kneel on the ground again and roll over like a trained dog.

  “It was an accident,” Rachel said desperately. Garfield just looked at her. “Here.” She spread the news­paper on the table and Garfield and Hawkins looked at it, then at her. She tried to explain, as if they couldn’t read or understand.

  “The freight train goes through every night and he rode too close. He was on his bike and he threw up his arm . . .”

  Garfield interrupted. “Gets it torn off, rides ten minutes toward town away from the hospital, collapses in the square.”

  “He was in shock,” Rachel tried.

  “For ten minutes, on a bike with one arm? . . . Think, Rachel. What was he doing riding by a railroad track in the dead of night? What freight train goes so fast?”

  “They found his arm,” Rachel cried.

  “On the tracks. So how did it get there? They carried it, maidel, and put it there.” Rachel looked sick and Garfield said, “It sounds awful, but I’ve done worse things . . .”

  She cried. “He never hurt them, he didn’t live near us. Why would they do it?”

  “Tell me why?” Garfield asked softly.

  She looked lost for a minute, then her face changed.

  “He thought he had to help,” she said very quietly. “It was his job, he thought, and he went back there. . . .”

  “Yes, maidel.”

  “And he saw it and they let it kill him.”

  “Yes. So what are we talking about? Not something in a vault or a cave, but in a basement in a little town on Long Island. They’ll kill to keep it secret, and anyone might get in there. So what do we do?”

  “Kill it,” Rachel said hoarsely. Hawkins and Garfield stared at her. “Kill it now—” She stopped, then said, “Maybe they’ve already done it.”

  Garfield shook his head. His face was quiet and his eyes had a faraway look. “No,” he said after a moment, “no. They’d keep it as long as they could. Oh, not too long. They know that if it happened with Ryder, it could happen again. And they might be found out, and they know that they’re old and could get careless. So sooner or later, Joseph Golem has to die. . . .”

  His voice had gotten very soft and he was looking past them, out the window.

  “Old man Weiser said Loew of Prague loved the golem, in a way,” Garfield said in a dreamy voice. “Maybe Jacob Levy does too. But even if he doesn’t, even if it’s just a weapon to him, for as long as it’s there—for the days or weeks they let themselves keep it—they’re safe. Can you understand what that means to men like them? Like us,” he corrected himself. “Safe. No one can threaten them, no one can hurt them, no one can take them away—” He stopped, came to himself, and smiled at them. “It’s still there. So we do it, kinderlech,***** we do it now.”

  “How?” Hawkins asked.

  “I have . . . instructions.”

  He brought paper to draw Weiser’s diagram, then he said, “We need three people, okay, but only one does the . . . killing. That’s you,” he told Hawkins. “I would, I swear to you. I don’t think I’m a coward, but young I ain’t. . . . Even that isn’t so bad, but I’ve got angina. I don’t think I’d die in the middle, but I might. The chances are I’d collapse, all right, then where are we?”

  Garfield had pleaded with Tepel to do it but Tepel had shaken his head. “Everyone but you knows I’m nothing but an old rummy. I’m scared to leave my bedroom every morning and you think I can kill monsters. You’re crazy, Chaim. I’ve always said it, friend or no friend, to your face I’ve said it. You’re crazy and I’m an old yutz.”

  “Nu, Roger, that means you do the killing,” Garfield said.

  But Rachel knew Garfield was wrong. Hawkins was taller than she, heavier, stronger, but she still knew he wasn’t the one to do it.

  “You said we need three men,” Hawkins was saying to Garfield.

  Garfield nodded at Rachel. “Meet the third man.” Hawkins jumped up. “That thing’s killed eight people. . . .”

  “It could kill you and me, too. But it won’t kill her.” He turned to Rachel. “Your father-­in-­law loves you, doesn’t he?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not ‘of course.’ Does he love you?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “She’s protection,” Garfield told Hawkins.

  “Protection!” Hawkins shouted. “I saw what they did, you didn’t. They killed five kids in fifteen minutes; you got that? One kid every three minutes; and you’re going to put her in the middle of this while you and I run around like rats until we throw up, chanting names backwards, bowing this way, then the other. . . .”

  “What are we doing here?” Garfield asked. “You’re John Wayne all of a sudden, looking out for the little lady? She’s all the protection we’re going to get, and she takes her chances with us. Or we forget the whole thing and never listen to the radio or read the paper again for fear of finding out what it does next.” His voice was gentle in spite of his angry words. “Roger, Roger,” he said, “we can’t have no shit here. Shit’ll kill us. We need someone, and we can’t advertise, so it’s got to be her.”

  Hawkins rested his forehead on his hands.

  “It won’t work.”

  �
��What would you do instead?” Garfield asked.

  “Burn it, blow it up. Blow up the whole fucking bunch of them in their little white house. Kill them . . .”

  Garfield touched his shoulder. “Darling,” he said. It was a common endearment in Russian, but sounded extreme in English. “Darling, wouldn’t the Germans have done that if they could? Wouldn’t they?”

  Hawkins didn’t answer.

  “They would,” Garfield said softly. Then he took a deep breath. “We’ll go at night while it’s . . . alone. Maybe. But not on Shabbes. I don’t know what the rule would be about killing golems on Shabbes anyway. . . .” It was a weak joke; the others didn’t even smile.

  Garfield said, “The golem will have a word incised on his forehead.” He wrote the characters out for Hawkins. “The word is Emet, which means life, or God, or the infinite. This character”—he pointed to the first letter on the right—“is an aleph. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Rub it out and the word becomes met. Dead. Dead. We finish the ceremony, you go up to the thing, and with that hand of yours trembling with fury obliterate the first letter. Nu, the golem dies.”

  Hawkins stared at him. “You can’t believe this,” he said softly.

  “I don’t. But I’m not a cabalist.”

  “You’re going to get us killed.”

  “I’ve thought that over and over,” he said. “All night I thought, they’re going to die because of me; I’m going to die, too. Because I know it’s there. I know it’s meant to kill, has killed, could kill us. But what do we do, Inspector? Rachel? What? Tell me, I’ll listen.”

  Neither Hawkins nor Rachel said anything. “Listen to me,” Garfield said softly. “That thing isn’t transistorized, it doesn’t run by computer. So something else makes it move. The old man said it’s hate. I believe him. Rage. I believe that, too. So, I say to myself, we must feel what they do. Match their passion with ours.