Golem was not even a few hours in New York before she began to long for the relative calm of the ship. The din of the streets was incredible; the noise in her head was worse. At first it nearly paralyzed her, and she hid under an awning as the desperate thoughts of the pushcart vendors and paperboys rode ahead of their shouting voices: the rent is due, my father will beat me, please somebody buy the cabbages before they spoil. It made her want to slap her hands over her ears. If she’d had any money, she would’ve given it all away, just to quiet the noise.
Passersby glanced her up and down, taking in her staring eyes, the dirty and disheveled dress, the ludicrous men’s coat. The women frowned; some of the men smirked. One man, weaving drunk, grinned at her and approached, his thoughts bleary with lust. To her surprise she realized this was one desire she had no wish to fulfill. Repulsed, she dashed to the other side of the street. A streetcar came rattling around the corner and missed her by a hair. The conductor’s curses trailed her as she hurried away.
She wandered for hours, through streets and alleys, turning corners at random. It was a humid July day, and the city began to stink, a pungent mix of rotting garbage and manure. Her dress had dried, though the river silt still clung to it in flaking sheets. The woolen coat made her even more conspicuous as the rest of the city sweltered. She too was hot, but not uncomfortable—rather, it made her feel loose-limbed and slow, as though she were wading through the river again.
Everything she saw was new and unknown, and there seemed to be no end to it. She was frightened and overwhelmed, but an intense curiosity lay beneath the fear, leading her on. She peered inside a butcher’s shop, trying to make sense of the plucked birds and strings of sausages, the red oblong carcasses that hung from hooks. The butcher saw her and started to come around the counter; she gave him a quick, placating smile, and walked on. The thoughts of passersby flew through her mind, but they led to no answers, only more questions. For one thing, why did everyone need money? And what exactly was money? She’d thought it merely the coins she saw exchanging hands; but it was so ubiquitous in both fear and desire that she decided there was a larger mystery to it, one she had yet to decipher.
She skirted the edge of a fashionable district, and the shop windows began to fill with dresses and shoes, hats and jewelry. In front of a milliner’s she stopped to gaze at an enormous, fantastical hat on a pedestal, its wide band bedecked with netting and fabric rosettes and a gigantic, sweeping ostrich plume. Fascinated, the Golem leaned forward and put one hand on the glass—and the thin pane shattered beneath her touch.
She jumped back as a rain of shards tumbled from the window and scattered onto the sidewalk. In the shop, two well-dressed women stared out at her, hands over their mouths.
“I’m sorry,” the Golem whispered, and ran away.
Afraid now, she hurried through alleys and across busy thoroughfares, trying not to blunder into pedestrians. The neighborhoods shifted around her, changing block to block. Grubby-looking men and indignant shopkeepers shouted at one another, airing grievances in a dozen languages. Children dashed home from shoeshine stands and games of stickball, thinking eagerly of supper.
A sort of mental exhaustion began to set in, dulling her thoughts. She headed eastward, following the tips of the shadows, and found herself in a neighborhood that bustled with less chaos and more purpose. Shopkeepers were rolling up their awnings and locking their doors. Bearded men walked slowly next to each other, talking with intensity. Women stood chatting on corners, string-tied packages in their arms, children pulling at their skirts. The language they spoke was the same one she’d used with Rotfeld, the language she’d known upon waking. After the day’s riot of words, hearing it again was a small, familiar comfort.
She slowed now, and looked around. Next to her a tenement stoop beckoned; she’d seen men and women, young and old, sitting on such stoops all day. She tucked her skirts beneath herself and sat down. The stone was warm through her dress. She watched people’s faces as they came and went. Most were tired and distracted, occupied with their own thoughts. Men began to arrive home from their shifts, exhaustion on their faces and hunger in their bellies. She saw in their minds the meals they were about to tuck into, the thick dark bread spread with schmaltz, the herring and pickles, the mugs of thin beer. She saw their hopes for a cooling breeze, a good night’s sleep.
A loneliness like fatigue pulled at her. She couldn’t sit on the stoop forever, she must move on; but for the moment, it felt easier to stay where she was. She rested her head against the brick of the balustrade. A pair of small brown birds was pecking in the dust at the bottom of the stoop, unconcerned by the tramping feet of passersby. One of the birds fluttered up the steps and landed next to the Golem. It prodded at the stone with its sharp beak, then turned sideways and hopped onto the Golem’s thigh.
She was surprised but managed to hold perfectly still as the bird perched in her lap, bobbing and pecking at the remains of the riverbed silt that still dusted her skirt. Thin, hard feet scratched at her through the fabric. Slowly, very slowly, she extended a hand. The bird hopped onto her palm and stood there, balanced. With her other hand she stroked its back. It sat patiently as she felt its soft sleek feathers, the tiny fluttering heartbeat. She smiled, fascinated. It tilted its head and looked at her with a round unblinking eye, then pecked once at her fingers, as though she were simply another patch of earth. For a moment they regarded each other; and then it gathered itself and flew away.
Startled, she turned to track its path—and saw an elderly man watching her from the shadow of a grocer’s cart. Like her, the man was dressed in a black wool coat despite the heat. A white fringe peeked out from underneath the hem. He wore a white beard, neatly trimmed, and his face beneath his hat was a net of deep lines. He watched her calmly, but the thought she heard was tinged with fear: could she be what I think she is?
Hurriedly the Golem stood and walked away, not looking back. Ahead of her was a crowd of men and women, passengers from the Second Avenue Elevated. She tried to lose herself among them, following the main part of the crowd as small groups splintered away at corners and doorways. At last she ducked into an alleyway, then dared to look out. The man in the black coat was nowhere to be seen.
Relieved, she emerged from the alley and continued east. Now the air smelled of the sea again, of salt and coal smoke and engine grease. The shops were mostly closed, and the pushcart vendors were packing up their suspenders and cheap trousers, their pots and pans. What would she do once night fell? Find a place to hide, she supposed, and wait for morning.
A stab of reflected hunger struck her. A scrawny, dirt-stained boy was loitering on the sidewalk ahead, eyeing a nearby vendor who stood sweating over his cart. As she watched, a man in shirtsleeves approached the vendor and gave him a coin. The vendor plucked up a sheet of waxed paper, dipped into his cart, and emerged with a doughy disk the size of his fist. The man bit into it as he walked toward the Golem, fanning the steam from his mouth. The boy’s hunger rose, desperate and all-consuming.
If the boy were not starving, if the man had not passed so near—if, most of all, her experiences that day had not drained her so—she might have controlled herself, and walked away. But she was not so lucky. The boy’s visceral plight had transfixed her. Didn’t he need the meal more than the man did?
No sooner had she formed this thought than her hand reached out, plucked the man’s meal from his grasp, and handed it to the boy. In the next moment he was running away down the street, as fast as his legs could carry him.
The man grabbed her arm. “What did you mean by that?” he snarled.
“I’m sorry,” she began, about to explain; but the man was red-faced and furious. “You thief!” he shouted. “You’ll pay for that!”
Others were beginning to notice. An older woman stepped to the man’s side. “I saw the whole
