she’s simple,” muttered the assistant.
“Not necessarily. These peasants have iron stomachs. Simon, keep that clamped!”
“Sorry, sir.”
But the figure on the table was struggling for life. He inhaled once, and again; and then, with a long, rattling sigh, Otto Rotfeld’s final breath left his body.
The Golem staggered as the last remnants of their connection snapped and faded away.
The surgeon bent his head to Rotfeld’s chest. He took up the man’s wrist for a moment, then gently placed it back. “Time of death, please,” he said.
The assistant swallowed, and glanced at the chronometer. “Oh two hundred hours, forty-eight minutes.”
The surgeon made a note, true regret on his face. “Couldn’t be helped,” he said, his voice bitter. “He waited too long. He must have been in agony for days.”
The Golem could not look away from the unmoving shape on the table. A moment ago he’d been her master, her reason for being; now he seemed nothing at all. She felt dizzy, unmoored. She stepped forward and touched a hand to his face, his slack jaw, his drooping eyelids. Already the heat was fading from his skin.
Please stop that.
The Golem withdrew her hand and looked at the two men, who were watching in horrified distaste. Neither of them had spoken.
“I’m sorry,” said the surgeon finally, hoping she would understand his tone. “We tried our best.”
“I know,” said the Golem—and only then did she realize that she’d understood the man’s words, and replied in the same language.
The surgeon frowned, and shared a glance with his assistant. “Mrs. … I’m sorry, what was his name?”
“Rotfeld,” said the Golem. “Otto Rotfeld.”
“Mrs. Rotfeld, our condolences. Perhaps—”
“You want me to leave,” she said. It wasn’t a guess, nor was it a sudden understanding of the indelicacy of her presence. She simply knew it, as surely as she could see her master’s body on the table, and smell the ether’s sickly fumes. The surgeon’s desire, his wish for her to be elsewhere, had spoken inside her mind.
“Well, yes, perhaps it would be better,” he said. “Simon, please escort Mrs. Rotfeld back to steerage.”
She let the young man put his arm about her and guide her out of the surgery. She was shaking. Some part of her was still casting about, searching for Rotfeld. And meanwhile the young assistant’s embarrassed discomfort, his desire to be rid of his charge, was clouding her thoughts. What was happening to her?
At the door to the steerage deck, the young man squeezed her hand guiltily, and then was gone. What should she do? Go in there, and face all those people? She put her hand on the door latch, hesitated, opened it.
The wishes and fears of five hundred passengers hit her like a maelstrom.
I wish I could fall asleep. If only she would stop throwing up. Will that man ever quit snoring? I need a glass of water. How long until we reach New York? What if the ship goes down? If we were alone, we could make love. Oh God, I want to go back home.
The Golem let go of the latch, turned, and ran.
Up on the deserted main deck, she found a bench and sat there until morning. A chill rain began to fall, soaking her dress, but she ignored it, unable to focus on anything except the clamor in her head. It was as though, without Rotfeld’s commands to guide her, her mind was reaching out for a substitute and encountering the ship’s worth of passengers that lay below. Without the benefit of the bond between master and golem, their wishes and fears did not have the driving force of commands—but nonetheless she heard them, and felt their varying urgencies, and her limbs twitched with the compulsion to respond. Each one was like a small hand plucking at her sleeve: please, do something.
The next morning, she stood at the railing as Rotfeld’s body was lowered into the sea. It was a blustery day, the waves white-tipped and choppy. Rotfeld’s body hit the water with barely a splash; in an instant the ship had left it behind. Perhaps, the Golem thought, it might be best to hurl herself overboard and follow Rotfeld into the water. She leaned forward and peered over the edge, trying to gauge the water’s depth; but two men hurriedly stepped forward, and she allowed herself to be drawn back.
The small crowd of onlookers began to disperse. A man in ship’s livery handed her a small leather pouch, explaining that it held everything that had been on Rotfeld’s person when he died. At some point a compassionate deckhand had placed a wool coat about her shoulders, and she tucked the pouch into a pocket.
A small knot of passengers from steerage hovered nearby, wondering what to do about her. Should they escort her below decks, or simply leave her be? Rumors had circled the bunks all night. One man insisted that she’d carried the dead man into steerage in her own two arms. Then there was the woman who muttered that she’d seen Rotfeld at Danzig—he’d made himself conspicuous by berating the deckhands for not taking care with a heavy crate—and that he’d boarded the ship alone. They remembered how she’d grabbed at the doctor’s hands, like a wild animal. And she was simply odd, in a way they couldn’t explain even to themselves. She stood far too still, as if rooted to the deck, while those around her shivered in the cold and leaned with the ship. She hardly blinked, even when the ocean mist struck her face. And as far as they could tell, she hadn’t yet shed a single tear.
They decided to approach her. But the Golem had felt their fears and suspicions and she turned from the rail and walked past them, her stiff back a clear request for solitude. They felt her passing as a slap of cold, grave-smelling air. Their resolve faltered; they left her alone.
The Golem made her way to the aft staircase. She passed steerage and continued down to the depths of the hold: the one place in her short existence where she hadn’t felt herself in peril. She found the open crate and climbed into it, then drew the lid into place above her. Muffled in darkness, she lay there, reviewing the few facts of which she was certain. She was a golem, and her master was dead. She was on a ship in the middle of the ocean. If the others knew what she was, they would be afraid of her. And she had to stay hidden.
As she lay there, the strongest of the desires drifted down to her from the decks above. A little girl in steerage had misplaced her toy horse, and now wailed for it, inconsolable. A man traveling second class had been three days without a drink, trying to make a fresh start; he paced his tiny cabin, shaking, fingers knotted in his hair, unable to think about anything except a glass of brandy. Each of these, and many others, pulled at her in turn, rising and falling. They urged her to climb out of the hold, to help in some way. But she remembered the suspicions of the passengers on the foredeck, and stayed in the crate.
She lay there the rest of the day and into the night, listening to the boxes around her shift and groan. She felt useless, purposeless. She had no idea what to do. And her only clue to where they were going was a word that Rotfeld had spoken. America. It might mean anything.
The next morning, the
