The Golem Lover

by J.H. Siegal

I have learned of a lace that runs through my little village. Geilevska, nestled within the bosom of nearby hills, rests upon these strands, sewn around the fertile patchwork of letters learned in the men’s yeshiva, through the words traded by merchants, beneath the whispers of the crops waving in the fields. I speak, of course, of the hidden discourse of the women of Geilevska.

Every village in the pale has such a lace, to be sure. We are not the only people for whom a matron’s eyebrow may hold the fate of many, whether it raises or lowers, and the strength of the twinkle yet in the eye of an aged woman holds much solace for a young widow such as myself.

Before I came to know of such secrets, it was the eyes of Avram, my dear late husband, that lingered with me. How they would speak to me across the field, or at the well, or outside the shul, dark and sweet, resting above a half-smile that creased his beard. Always lingering with my own gaze, turning away just perfectly a moment too late. I had known he was asking about me — who didn’t know? — and I began to ask about him as well. The night of our wedding, as we say, no bread was braided: all the work was banging around the bed. He was a sweet man, a smart man, smooth and strong between our bedsheets, gentle during the day. We loved with that pastoral romance the poets describe, until the Cossacks came and slew him in the fields.

Then the Golem, the divine monster of our town, was roused to thrash the invaders and drive them away.

The trouble for me started not with this Golem, exactly, but with Zalman Scholem, a learned man from a good family, not unhandsome, a bit quiet and awkward of speech, and waiting — so obviously waiting — until respectable months of mourning had passed, to begin to seek my hand. Zalman had a reputation as a nice man, a gentleman, but as a bit of a schlemiel in social matters. With him, there came no lingering gaze, no smooth words, just a shuffling and fumbling about of his tongue in his mouth when he had occasion to speak to me, and two eyes that found anywhere to look but my face.

When one is young and unbidden yet by a certain longing, the smallest bed can be a refuge, and no matter how many siblings curl up, your little space is a sanctuary. But, when one has grown and come to know a different kind of warmth in one’s bed, its lack spreads beyond where you might lay your hand and feel only a cold sheet.

So, welcoming some attention, I did nothing to dissuade Zalman Scholem.

Carrying water one day, I spied Zalman (there was no way he would have spied me first) lingering outside the yeshiva, his classmates yet to arrive.

“Good morning, Mr. Scholem,” I said.

“Zalman, please, you could call me Zalman.”

“Good morning, Zalman Scholem.”

I put down my water bucket and stretched my back, a playful motion, if I’m doing it right, that Avram used to consider irresistible.

Zalman was looking at the ground.

“A pleasant morning, Hannah,” he said.

“It’s not,” I said, but without reproach. “Early and already too warm.”

“Yes, you’re right,” he said, still looking at the ground.

I felt for him, in his awkwardness.

“May it rain soon — and at least the well is still going strong.”

“Yes,” he said, “may it!”

And with that, Zalman Scholem nodded toward me and made a red-faced retreat into the yeshiva house, and then it was that I happened to look at the spot on the ground where Zalman had fixed his gaze, and I saw the limb of the Golem lying there in the grass. When I say the limb of the Golem, it is both an unfitting description, as it was not any of the four limbs of a man you may think of, but it was also a very fitting description.

You may imagine that I at once snatched up the piece of clay from the ground and ran home with it, but this is not what I did. In truth, I had no idea yet what I was looking at. I picked up the shaft of clay and held it in my hand — just standing in the field next to the yeshiva with our Golem’s member in my hand! The clay was of a sort that I had never seen before, grey and smooth and compact, almost like a porcelain, but also raw and unglazed. I thought it such a curious find that I stood there, turning it over in my hands, unable to return it to the grass. At that moment, I had a flash in my mind, a sort of surreal smeary image of my dear lost Avram, the way he looked as he readied for bed in the evenings, and it was then that I decided to keep the clay artifact and make of it a simple tribute to my late husband.

My idea for the clay was to roll it flat, like a dough, and to carve my husband’s name in it, to paint it in Avram’s favorite colors (gold, blue, red), and then to take it to the village potter, where it could be fired into a lovely tray. A tray for the holidays and for special visitors, but mostly for hanging on the wall.

The oblong lump turned out to be a match for my rolling pin. I wet the clay, and although it didn’t seem to absorb any moisture, I tried to roll it out, and it softened not at all. I worked the roller on angles, as with a stiff dough, with no luck. I even got up on a stool and leaned with all my weight, at which the rolling pin skipped away across the table and to the floor.

Ah well, I thought, at the least, I can try to carve Avram’s name in it, paint it, and leave it out to remember him by. I took a knitting needle from my sewing kit and sat with the lump of clay in my lap, prepared to carve and etch and scrape away at the strange material, but when I touched the needle to it, the point sank in.

I began to carve Avram’s name, and through the first long stroke of the letter alef, I meditated on my dear late husband’s tall and sturdy frame. I was not allowed to attend the village yeshiva, but I could read and write a bit, and I knew that, to us Jews, the writing of a name is a sacred activity. While carving the ascending and descending portions of the letter, I remembered the mornings we rose together, and the nights we lay down. I remembered the grief of my empty bed.

And then, as my needle moved over for the second letter, I felt the clay change within my fingers. It grew rather smoother to the touch and more defined, taking on a shape at once foreign to me and familiar — that of a penis; as surely as the river smoothens and hardens into a sheen of ice in the winter, this limb of clay in my hands had refined (there is really no other word for it) into a dick.

I laughed. The first laughter to grace our little home in many months.

This was the Golem’s dick I held in front of me, I was sure of that. We Jews of Geilevska may debate and fret over the holy mysteries, but we do not question them when we see them, especially not when they present such welcome companions. I don’t know how long I sat there marveling at the wonders possible in the world (or at the smooth and stony member itself), but somewhere between pondering the mysteries of the universe and staring at the letter alef, still carved in the head of the Golem dick, I was moved to action.

There was only so long I could sit alone with this penis that had come to life in my hands, and not be tempted. A widow’s house is lonely, after all.

I moved the Golem dick down beneath my underskirt, and realized when I placed it against myself that not Avram’s spirit, but some other force must be at work. From the moment it merely touched me, a ripple of sweetness spread throughout my body. I leaned back on one arm and lifted a leg into the air — who has a moment for shame when penetrating one’s self with a magical porcelain penis? — and tried to move the head of the thing inside a bit. I flushed instantly.

The Golem dick was possessed of an eagerness, and though I knew I was the one playing with it, it seemed to tease me, moving of its own accord. I reached down with both hands to steady it, and was just beginning to feel that we could come to a mutual understanding, when there came an insistent knock at the door.

This unscheduled tea with my visitor Zalman Scholem was an unfortunate affair, not least because of the fervent ache still between my legs. Poor Zalman! Never has a man put himself up to such an unwitting contest. In my bedroom closet lay a magical temptation, and this unlucky man showed up to sip tea and worry his teacup with nervous fingers.

“I apologize for my rudeness in coming unannounced,” he said. “It’s just that I have a rather urgent question for you, and a bit uncomfortable, I’m afraid.”

“Of course.”

“Did you happen to find anything . . . unusual or unexpected . . . in the field where we spoke yesterday?”

I blew steam off my tea.

“Did you lose something, Mr. Scholem?”

“No, it’s not something that belongs to me.”

I simply shrugged.

“It’s something that’s hard to describe, it probably belongs to the yeshiva or the shul or maybe even the Rebbe? I’m not really sure. You’d know it if you saw it — it’s a rather unusual piece of clay.”

“What use would I have for an unusual lump of clay?”

Zalman’s hands became even more nervous.

You may notice that I didn’t, strictly speaking, lie to Zalman Scholem. I simply let him draw his own conclusions: that, on the one hand, I had not seen the lump of clay, and, on the other, that I had found it. I allowed him to realize, sipping tea across the table from me, that his inexperienced bachelor’s mind much preferred to imagine that it was misplaced anywhere else than my house.

I suppose that I figured I would eventually return the Golem’s missing part to its rightful owner. It was not something I was inclined to think about at the time.

A Golem, as I have learned, must be made, like Adam in the scriptures, of clay. This is so that the spirit of life may enter and animate it — but though it has the shape of a man, a Golem is a giant beast, dumber than the cows in the fields. It knows only one purpose once the letter alef has been carved into its head: to aid the Jews of its village. But, because it lacks the faculties of a true human being, always the Golem goes wild. This is one of the things you must understand, my dear reader, but which I, as a young widow, did not.

I didn’t return to the guest in my bedroom closet after Zalman left. The heat in my body had died down a bit during the visit, and it wouldn’t do to have another interruption — to properly spend time with my new friend, I needed absolute privacy, or as much as one can have in such a village.

Instead, I went out to the village square to get some provisions for dinner, a loaf of bread, maybe a little fish, my head in the clouds, a happy knot of excitement in my stomach. There, I found the men of the village gathered. In Geilevska, one often finds a group of two or three people tethered to some conversation or other, but such a bundle of men in their long coats all together meant there was something amiss. They were focused completely inward, debating, nodding, pointing, throwing their arms up.

At the bread cart, I felt a tug on my arm, and turned to see Mrs. Freyd, one of the old women of the village, looking up at me.

“Good afternoon, Hannah, dear,” said Mrs. Freyd.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Freyd.”

“Do you know,” she said, “what it is that has the men so worried?”

She was about to tell me.

“It’s the Cossacks,” she spat. “They are attacking nearby villages.”

I looked at the men. Zalman was there, protesting something vigorously.

“But we have the Golem,” I said.

“They’re worried,” Mrs. Freyd said. “The Golem won’t protect us this time. Ask me how I know.”

She tugged at my elbow again.

“The old women of this village,” she said. “We know everything.”

That evening, I said an extra prayer for the safety of the village, and then I lit a candle in my little bedroom, made sure the curtains were shut, and went to retrieve my visitor from the closet. When I picked it up, it fairly quivered in my hand. I slipped into bed and under the sheet. I was a bit worried that my insistence might erase some of the mystical excitement of this object, but when it came against me, again a pleasure spread, rolling throughout my body.

This time, my negotiations with the Golem dick were more fruitful. I made of it a knowing partner, guiding it with one hand while I lay back and enjoyed a sensation that had not come to me in many months. The clever thing almost seemed to have an appreciation for my need, working so dutifully that I let my grip abandon it.

I had a vision during that throw, wherein I gazed upon a field of wheatstalk fingertips brushing the sky, as a cloud of dark smoke rose on the horizon.

After I had finished, I was surprised that, despite my slow and patient efforts, the Golem dick was a bit difficult to remove. My body complained at me, and twice the thing — despite it hardly fitting at first — slipped right back in.

In the morning, I slept through the crowing and brays of the animals, and when I finally roused myself from the sheets to pray and wash and dress, I found a welcome lack of soreness anywhere in my body. Apparently, though my guest had been impolite in staying, he had been gracious in leaving.

The grass under my feet was and lush and dewy that late morning, and the well seemed high, though no rain had fallen. The earth of Geilevska itself rejoiced at the awakening of my companion.

Returning with water, I spied Mrs. Freyd chatting with a few other old women of the village. They all stopped and watched me pass, in that way that old women can trade opinions about someone by staring all as one.

When I returned to the house, the Rebbe was waiting for me at the door.

You may have heard stories or seen paintings of our shtetl Rebbes, the ones with round cheeks and soft eyes, this hand wrapped around a prayer book while the other pats the head of a village boychick. Our Rebbe was not such a Rebbe. Our Rebbe, though kind and thoughtful, was also brooding and solemnly serene.

He moved aside his dark form as I opened the door, and he followed me into the house.

“Won’t you come in, Rebbe,” I said, preserving for myself the illusion that I might have had the choice to turn him away.

“Thank you, child,” he said. He took a seat at my table.

“Some tea?”

“Of course, some tea. If you have a little sugar, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t have sugar, I’m afraid.”

The Rebbe nodded. He didn’t expect me to have sugar.

I stood near my little pantry. In truth, I was afraid to sit down across from those penetrating blue eyes. The Rebbe stroked his beard while I warmed the kettle.

“I came to talk to you about Zalman Scholem,” he said.

A relief!

“Oh, that’s kind of you, Rebbe. I’m not really interested in remarrying yet. And also Zalman is . . . well, I think there is still more time that must pass.”

“It is not required of you to remarry,” said the Rebbe. “But all the same, I would like to know — if you’ll permit me the courtesy — do you have, in general, a favorable opinion of the young man?”

“I have nothing against him. He seems . . . mild.”

The Rebbe stood up, his hands on the table. His voice filled my kitchen.

“And what do you think will happen to such a mild and intellectually sharp man as Mr. Scholem when the Cossacks again come over the hills, drunk on their horses and with their blades out!”

I could say nothing. I knew too well.

“Tradition. Propriety. Discretion. These things sustain us. And so I must insist that you, and Zalman, and whomever else may be involved in this prank, put an end to your games, before it’s the ruin of this village, or may you all turn inside out like mashed grapes!”

He went to the door and began to let himself out, then turned back.

“If you can sip tea without sugar, you can get by without certain other sweetnesses.”

And with that, he was gone.

I must admit that I thought the men of the town to be more insulted than worried. How like them, to fixate and fret and cast blame about, over the missing schvantz of a clay man. You would think I had stolen their very manhoods away from them — and perhaps I had, in a way. Well, good for them. If you want to see men bicker like children, get them talking to one another about what’s between their legs.

It’s easy to hold such thoughts when you’re falling under the spell of lust.

That night I went to sleep alone, sure of the need to avoid a commotion such as the previous afternoon. But when I closed my eyes to sleep, a terrible vision confronted me: Avram, carried through the town square by grim-faced men, his body lifeless, long red gashes crossing his shirt, his face colorless and still. Then came to me the sound of my own wailing, something you only remember in a vision, the wailing and the tears clouding your eyes, and the arms of others pulling you away from the man you only want to kiss one more time, will never kiss one more time.

I woke from this vision with wet cheeks, and went to open the little bedroom closet. I took the Golem dick into my bed, entranced by grief and lust and a burning desire for comfort. I felt the same magical pleasure I had before, now with a hot curl of anger rising beneath. As it worked within me, my breath blew through gritted teeth. I grasped my bedsheet in my hands and twisted it into a knot and bit down on it. I let my arms go limp, allowing the thing to push into me at will. Below the sweetness rising within me, I felt a great welling, sadness and anger and lust, and when I came, I instinctively moved my legs, and I could nearly feel the form of the giant, hard and of clay, working like a brute. I turned myself over and had another vision, myself as the Golem, trudging through the fields, each stomp a spasm of pleasure, quaking the earth beneath me, fires burning in the distance, and my fists bashing the invaders, bludgeoning them into red blotches in the grass, spurting their bodies, each blow plunging, as I gripped the form of the Golem, losing myself, biting into the cloth knot in my mouth.

Somewhere during this bout, I regained my senses and found that I was alone in my bed, the Golem dick pounding away, my body greedily spasming, but my thoughts clear.

I reached down to remove the clay shaft, but my grasp could not catch it.

A thought came to me: in the stables, there were large iron tongs, used for moving hay. I wrapped my bedsheet around me and ran — skipping, in the dark village night, for the stables, my knees wobbling all the way.

When I reached the stable, I stole inside and collapsed into an empty stall, legs rubbing together of their own will, torso quivering, breath huffing. I dragged myself over to the tools and found the iron tongs. Lying there like an animal, I raised the tongs and clamped them down on the Golem dick. I put my heels on the arms of the tongs and pushed with all my strength, and out came the Golem dick, clattering onto the floor of the stable.

For a horrible moment, I thought it might continue clattering, but it fell silent.

And then a lantern light grew in the stable, casting itself on me. I could only pant there, sweat-covered and spent.

“Child,” said the crinkled voice of Mrs. Freyd.

She shuffled over to me and gave me her shawl.

“We know,” she said, “what you’ve been doing. All the old women of the village, we know.”

I gathered myself in her shawl and could only stare up at her.

“We know that you’re a widow, and so young. We know you’ve gotten lonely too soon in life. But the Golem needs its cock back, my dear.”

From behind the lantern light, she continued.

“The men of this town, when they write the histories and the tales, you know they will tend to leave out the things that make them uncomfortable. There are some things for which they won’t even tell you the words. But you should know, my dear, that when the Golem goes forth to protect our village, its cock is standing out, hard and rigid and bare like a branch of a tree. And though they do not fear death, the Cossacks fear to face such a naked clay monster. So you and I will go now to the little shed behind the yeshiva, and we will return this piece of clay to its place, so that the Golem can do its terrible work.”

She reached out her hand, and I felt her deep strength as she lifted me up.

“And don’t worry, my dear,” she said, “about your loneliness. We women of this village — not all of us can read and write, but we have all learned to make the letter alef.”

She put her hand on my back and we began to shuffle, the two of us, out of the stable.

“What animates the Golem is not the letter one carves, but the prayer that comes with it,” she said, patting my back, “and there better things to pray for than vengeance.”