The World That We Knew(11)

Ettie marveled at what she had wrought. The mystery of creation hung in the air, a thick, deep curtain that carried the odor of blood and of the future and of all the lives that had come before this one. The creature’s eyes were closed.

Hanni was in knots, terrified they had failed and that her daughter would have no protector. Perhaps the creature had been stillborn. Without thinking, Hanni reached out. Its skin was warm beneath her touch, but it had no reaction. “Why isn’t it moving?”

“It has to be activated,” Ettie told her. “That is the last step.”

She rushed upstairs to her father’s study to search for his pen and a vial of ink that had been sanctified for the use of creating sacred scrolls. She had never been allowed to enter this room, and now grew light-headed at the thought of all she had done. She could hear the youngest of the children rustling under their blankets, and her father groaning as he began to wake. The day was moving too fast, like a spoke in a wheel that would not stop spinning. What was done was done, and so it must be completed. Ettie returned to the cellar, taking the steps two at a time. She had peered through the keyhole during the making of her father’s golem, and she knew the last step. Her father had written the word emet on the creature’s arm. Now she carefully did the same. The word meant truth.

She put down the pen and took the golem’s hand, which tightened in her grasp. It was then its eyes flew open. They were deep gray, the color of the river at the hour when they had assembled on the bank to dig for clay.

“Is it alive?” Marta asked, her voice hoarse from fear.

Ettie hushed her sister. “You can walk among us,” she told the golem. “Sit up.”

As the creature did so, Hanni was overcome with tears when she saw the expression of mute trust in its eyes.

Ettie sat back on her heels, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was an intense connection, as if the four were one. The very air was smoky and foul.

“She should have a name,” Marta whispered, for the clay was now clearly alive.

“Don’t be silly. The other one wasn’t named.” The men had called it “you” and “it” before they had destroyed it. Ettie doubted that a naming was proper.

But Marta was unyielding. Her blood had helped bring it to life. They could not treat it like a slave with no identity. “She must be named.”

Ettie was reluctant to treat a monster as if it were human, but her sister was so insistent that in the end she relented. What difference would a name make? Dogs were named, and that was not an affront to God. They decided to call the thing Ava, reminiscent of Chava, the Hebrew word for life. They hadn’t expected her to be beautiful or young, but she was both, appearing to be no more than twenty-five. When they began to clean up the mud and muck, the creature quickly took over, sweeping the floor, cleaning out the basket in which they’d carried the clay that had made her. Then she clapped her hands together so that any remnants of soil were dispersed. She was given the dress Hanni had sewn, which fitted her perfectly. The sisters offered up a pair of the rabbi’s old boots, for the creature’s hands and feet were as large as a man’s. She was strong, they could see that, and, they could tell, she was learning more about their world every second. She cocked her head and listened to their conversation.

“Do you understand us?” Ettie inquired.

The golem stared at her, then nodded.

“I believe you do,” Ettie told her creation. “You should know from the beginning you do not have a heart or a soul and can never be a woman.”

The creature nodded again, acknowledging what she’d been told. Ettie took Hanni aside, out of the golem’s hearing, and out of Marta’s hearing as well. There were rules when one fashioned a golem, some of which Ettie believed her sister was too sensitive to hear. It concerned the creature’s extermination, which Ettie now revealed was as important as her creation. Everything had an appointed season and there was a time for every matter under heaven.

Hanni gazed at the innocent creature with compassion when she was told of the last step.

“You must understand,” Ettie confided. “It doesn’t matter that she looks like us. She is not human. If she lasts too long, and gathers too much strength, she will be uncontrollable, and will no longer do as she’s told. As in all things, there is a beginning and an end. This is what my father told his students, and this is what I must tell you.”

When they came back to address the golem, Ettie informed the creature of what her task would be, from this time forward. “You’ll do as this woman tells you. You’ll care for her daughter at all costs. You cannot abandon her or leave her on her own. She is the only one who matters to you.” The golem nodded, having understood.

Now that the deed was done, Hanni gave the rabbi’s daughter the packet of jewels and two tickets to Paris on the night train. She was a thief and a murderess, but she paid her debts and she knew how to love someone. In this brief time, she had come to love this serious red-haired girl. In a moment of raw emotion, she threw her arms around Ettie. “You would have been a great rabbi,” she told her. It was likely a sin to say such a thing, but what was one more sin after what she had already been party to?

For so long, that had been Ettie’s secret wish, the reason she had yearned to have been born a boy. But that was no longer her desire. She didn’t ask to be a scholar or a student or even to earn her father’s respect. The most she dared to wish for now was to live long enough to become a woman.