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The Golem and the Djinni
Helene Wecker
THESE NEWCOMERS ARE DIFFERENT. THEY WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.For fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.‘By far my favourite book of of the year’ Guardian‘One of only two novels I've ever loved whose main characters are not human’ Barbara KingsolverOne cold night, two newcomers emerge onto the streets of 1899 New York, and it is never the same again.But these two are more than strangers to this land, they are strangers to this world. From the depths of folkloric history come Chava the golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi and Ahmad, a djinni, born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped in an old copper flask released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop.Two companions who were never meant to be released, and never meant to meet. And when they do, their opposing natures will be sealed by a special bond, but one that is threatened by watching eyes, roaming owners and a misunderstanding world.A glittering gem of a novel, as spell-binding as it is compelling, The Golem and The Djinni asks us what we’re made of and how we can break free.
About the Book
Chava
is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.
Ahmad
is a djinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable band of iron binds him to the physical world.
The Golem & The Djinni
is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice …
About the Author
Helene Wecker grew up near Chicago, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York. Her work has been published in the online magazine Joyland, and she has read from her stories at the KGB Bar in New York and the Barbershop Reading Series in San Francisco. After a dozen years of moving around between both coasts and the Midwest, she now lives near San Francisco with her husband and daughter. The Golem and the Djinni is her first novel.
Praise for The Golem and The Djinni
‘Set against the vivid backdrop of New York City’s immigrant neighbourhoods in the late 19th century, Helene Wecker’s tale of two fabled creatures has the intimate feel of a story handed down from generation to generation. With a delightful blend of the prosaic and the fanciful, The Golem and The Djinni explores what it means to be human as Chava and Ahmad struggle to live and find love while overcoming the powerful adversary who threatens to destroy them’
Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witches
‘An astonishing debut novel that sweeps us into a gaslit alternate reality rich enough to get lost in – a vision of fin de siècle 19th century New York as a city that had all the world’s immigrants descending on it, including supernatural ones … It is Helene Wecker's triumph that these supernatural beings – one made of fire, the other of clay – seem as real and as poignant in their struggles for love and belonging as any of their fellow human immigrants, until together they face a villain of truly monstrous proportions’
Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist and The Black Count
HELENE WECKER
For Kareem
Table of Contents
About the Book (#u409cb425-d921-5c66-8973-7f4977b50b01)
About the Author (#uc0a25a7d-58f6-51e1-89bd-1fc486a4c694)
Praise for The Golem and The Djinni (#u93bf66e5-e3d9-5561-bea9-3a0668e27e92)
Title Page (#u4811ef37-d95f-5172-b057-a66b0b162bc1)
Dedication (#u297cb40e-0a1c-5ea4-908f-d0eedd27ebc3)
Chapter 1 (#uc1bb1686-f31c-5d7e-a231-2ca6a58a1a2e)
Chapter 2 (#u5613ee25-56af-556c-bd5c-eeedf7f8b441)
Chapter 3 (#u53f1d270-9522-5983-a8e9-4008c7653210)
Chapter 4 (#u6135f5cc-ebd5-591a-8ab5-4490e19da2ec)
Chapter 5 (#u821e6ea2-6486-584d-a1e2-bd74953384e9)
Chapter 6 (#u575702f2-9227-5934-bdec-69413a8ef515)
Chapter 7 (#u3cd0f228-5959-5df3-90df-1c36354bce29)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1.
The Golem’s life began in the hold of a steamship. The year was 1899; the ship was the Baltika, crossing from Danzig to New York. The Golem’s master, a man named Otto Rotfeld, had smuggled her aboard in a crate and hidden her among the luggage.
Rotfeld was a Prussian Jew from Konin, a bustling town to the south of Danzig. The only son of a well-to-do furniture maker, Rotfeld had inherited the family business sooner than expected, on his parents’ untimely death from scarlet fever. But Rotfeld was an arrogant, feckless sort of man, with no good sense to speak of; and before five years had elapsed, the business lay before him in tatters.
Rotfeld stood in the ruins and took stock. He was thirty-three years old. He wanted a wife, and he wanted to go to America.
The wife was the larger problem. On top of his arrogant disposition, Rotfeld was gangly and unattractive, and had a tendency to leer. Women were disinclined to be alone with him. A few matchmakers had approached him when he’d inherited, but their clients had been from inferior families, and he’d turned them away. When it became clear to all what kind of businessman he really was, the offers had disappeared completely.
Rotfeld was arrogant, but he was also lonely. He’d had no real love affairs. He passed worthy ladies on the street, and saw the distaste in their eyes.
It wasn’t very long before he thought to visit old Yehudah Schaalman.
Stories abounded about Schaalman, all slightly different: that he was a disgraced rabbi who’d been driven out of his congregation; that he’d been possessed by a dybbuk and given supernatural powers; and even that he was over a hundred years old and slept with demon-women. But all the stories agreed on this: Schaalman liked to dabble in the more dangerous of the Kabbalistic arts, and he was willing to offer his services for a price. Barren women had visited him in the dead of night and conceived soon after. Peasant girls in search of men’s affections bought Schaalman’s bags of powders, and then stirred them into their beloveds’ beer.
But Rotfeld wanted no spells or love-potions. He had something else in mind.
He went to the old man’s dilapidated shack, deep in the forest that bordered Konin. The path to the front door was a half-trampled trail. Greasy, yellowish smoke drifted from a chimney-pipe, the only sign of habitation. The walls of the shack slouched toward a nearby ravine, in which a stream trickled.
Rotfeld knocked on the door, and waited. After some minutes, he heard a shuffling step. The door opened a hand’s width, revealing a man of perhaps seventy. He was bald, save for a fringe. His cheeks were deeply furrowed above a tangled beard. He stared hard at Rotfeld, as though daring him to speak.
“Are you Schaalman?” Rotfeld asked.
No answer, only the stare.
Rotfeld cleared his throat, nervous. “I want you to make me a golem that can pass for human,” he said. “And I want it to be female.”
That broke the old man’s silence. He laughed, a hard bark. “Boy,” he said, “do you know what a golem is?”
“A person made of clay,” Rotfeld said, uncertain.
“Wrong. It’s a beast of burden. A lumbering, unthinking slave. Golems are built for protection and brute force, not for the pleasures of a bed.”
Rotfeld reddened. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”
“I’m telling you the idea is ridiculous. To make a golem that can pass for human would be near impossible. For one thing, it would need some amount of self-awareness, if only enough to converse. Not to mention the body itself, with realistic joints, and musculature .”
The old man trailed off, staring past his visitor. He seemed to be considering something. Abruptly he turned his back on Rotfeld and disappeared into the gloom of the shack. Through the open door Rotfeld could see him shuffling carefully through a stack of papers. Then he picked up an old leather-bound book and thumbed through it. His finger ran down a page, and he peered at something written there. He looked up at Rotfeld.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said.
Accordingly, Rotfeld knocked again the next day, and this time Schaalman opened the door without pause. “How much can you pay?” he demanded.
“Then it can be done?”
“Answer my question. The one will determine the other.”
Rotfeld named a figure. The old man snorted. “Half again, at the very least.”
“But I’ll have barely anything left!”
“Consider it a bargain,” said Schaalman. “For isn’t it written that a virtuous woman is more precious than rubies? And her virtue”—he grinned—“will be guaranteed!”
Rotfeld brought the money three days later, in a large valet case. The edge of the nearby ravine was newly disfigured, a piece the length of a man scooped away. An earth-stained spade leaned against a wall.
Schaalman opened the door with a distracted look, as though interrupted at a crucial moment. Streaks of mud crusted his clothing and daubed his beard. He saw the valet case and grabbed it from Rotfeld’s hand.
“Good,” he said. “Come back in a week.”
The door slammed shut again, but not before Rotfeld had caught a glimpse inside the shack, of a dark figure laid out in pieces on a table—a slender trunk, rough limbs, and one curled hand.
“What do you prefer in a woman?” Schaalman asked.
It was the following week, and this time Rotfeld had been allowed inside. The shack was dominated by the table that Rotfeld had glimpsed before, and the young man couldn’t help sneaking glances at its burden: a human-shaped form, draped with a sheet. He said, “What do you mean, what do I prefer?”
“I’m creating a woman for you. I assumed you’d want some say in the matter.”
Rotfeld frowned. “I like an attractive figure, I suppose—”
“Not her physical aspects, not yet. Her temperament. Her personality.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, I believe that I can,” the old man said with pride. “At least, I can steer her toward certain proclivities.”
Rotfeld thought hard. “I want her to be obedient.”
“She’ll already be obedient,” Schaalman said, impatient. “That’s what a golem is—a slave to your will. Whatever you command her, she’ll do. She won’t even wish otherwise.”
“Good,” Rotfeld said. But he was perplexed. Having put aside appearance and obedience, he had little idea what else he wanted. He was about to tell Rotfeld to do whatever he thought best—but then, in a burst of memory, he recalled his younger sister, the only girl he’d ever truly known. She’d been full of curiosity, and a burden to their mother, who could not stand her always underfoot and asking questions. In one of the few generous acts of his life, young Otto had taken her under his wing. Together they’d spent whole afternoons wandering through the woods, and he’d answered her questions about anything and everything. When she’d died at age twelve, drowned in a river on a summer afternoon, he’d lost the only person in his life who’d ever really mattered.
“Give her curiosity,” he told Schaalman. “And intelligence. I can’t stand a silly woman. Oh,” he said, inspiration warming him to his task, “and make her proper. Not … lascivious. A gentleman’s wife.”
The old man’s eyebrows shot up. He’d expected his client to request motherly kindness, or an eager sexual appetite, or else both; years of manufacturing love spells had taught him what men like Rotfeld thought they wanted in a woman. But curiosity? Intelligence? He wondered if the man knew what he was asking for.
