LITMIR.BIZ

       6.

      It was almost the end of September, but the summer heat lingered without mercy. At midday the streets thinned, and pedestrians congregated under the awnings. The brick and stone of the Lower East Side soaked up the day’s heat and released it again at sundown. The rickety staircases that ran up the backs of the tenements became vertical dormitories as residents dragged their mattresses onto the landings and made camp on the rooftops. The air was a malodorous broth, and all labored to inhale it.

      The High Holy Days were near unendurable. The synagogues sat half-empty as many chose to pray at home, where they might at least open a window. Red-faced cantors sang to a few miserable devout. At Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, not a few congregants fainted where they stood, the prescribed fast having worn away the last of their strength.

      For the first Yom Kippur since he became a bar mitzvah, Rabbi Meyer did not fast. Though the elderly were exempted from fasting, the Rabbi had been loath to give it up. The fast was meant to be the culmination of the spiritual work of the High Holy Days, a cleansing and purifying of the soul. This year, however, he had to admit that his body had grown too frail. To fast would be a mark against him, a sin of vanity and a refusal to accept the realities of aging. Hadn’t he once counseled his congregants against this very misdeed? Nonetheless he took no pleasure from his lunch on Yom Kippur, and could not escape the feeling that he was guilty of something.

      He was comforted that at least there was plenty to eat—for, to pass her time, the Golem had taken up baking.

      It had been the Rabbi’s idea, and he scolded himself for not thinking of it earlier. The notion came to him when he stopped at a bakery one morning and glimpsed a young man at work in the back, rolling and braiding dough for the Sabbath challahs. Loaf after loaf took shape underneath his hands. His quick, automatic movements spoke of the years he’d spent in this very spot, at this very task; and in that moment he seemed to the Rabbi almost a golem himself. Golems did not eat, of course—but why should that keep a golem from becoming a baker?

      That afternoon, he brought home a heavy, serious-looking English volume, and gave it to the Golem.

      “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” she read, nonplussed. She cracked the tome with trepidation—but to her surprise the book was simple, sober, and clearly written. There was nothing here to confuse her, only patient and consistent instruction. She repeated the names of the recipes to the bemused Rabbi, in English and then in Yiddish, and was astonished when he declared many of them completely alien to him. He had never eaten finnan haddie—a type of fish, apparently—or gnocchi à la romaine, or potatoes Delmonico, or any of a host of complicated-sounding egg dishes. She declared that she would cook a meal for him. Perhaps a roast turkey with sweet potatoes and succotash? Or lobster bisque followed by Porterhouse steaks, with strawberry shortcake for dessert? The Rabbi hastily explained, not without regret, that these dishes were too extravagant for their household—and besides, lobsters were treyf. Perhaps she should start small, and work upward from there. There was nothing he liked more, he said, than a fresh-baked coffee cake. Would that do for a beginning?

      And so the Golem ventured alone out of the tenement, and went to the grocer’s at the corner. With money from the Rabbi she bought eggs, sugar, salt, and flour, a few different spices in twists of paper, and a small package of walnut meats. It was the first time she had been truly alone, out in the city, since her arrival. She was growing more accustomed to the neighborhood; she and the Rabbi had taken to walking together a few afternoons a week, the Rabbi having decided that the Golem’s need to experience the world far outweighed whatever gossip might result. Still, he kept a close eye on her at all times. He’d begun to have a recurring nightmare of losing her in a crowd, seeking her in a growing panic, and finally glimpsing her tall form in the middle of a mob shouting for her destruction.

      The Golem would sense these nightmares, of course, not as clearly as waking thought, but clear enough to know that the Rabbi was afraid for her, and afraid of her as well. It saddened her deeply, but she tried not to think on it. To dwell on his fears, and her own loneliness, would do no one good.

      She baked the coffee cake, following the directions with fervent exactitude, and was successful in her first attempt. She was pleasantly surprised at the ease of the chore, and at the almost magical way that the oven transformed the thick batter into something else entirely, something solid, warm, and fragrant. The Rabbi ate two slices with his morning tea and declared it one of the best cakes he’d ever tasted.

      She went out and bought more ingredients that afternoon. The next morning, the Rabbi awoke to find a bakery’s worth of pastries on the parlor table. There were muffins and cookies, a phalanx of biscuits, and a towering stack of pancakes. A dense, strongly spiced loaf was something called gingerbread.

      “I had no idea one could bake so much in an evening!” He said it lightly, but she saw his dismay.

      “You wish I hadn’t,” she said.

      “Well”—he smiled—“perhaps not so much. I’m only one man, with one stomach. It would be a shame to let this all turn stale. And we must not be so exorbitant, you and I. This is a week’s worth of food.”

      “I’m so sorry. Of course, I didn’t think—” Shame filled her, and she turned from the table. She’d been so proud of what she’d done! And it had felt so good to work, to spend all night in the kitchen measuring and mixing, standing before the little oven that spilled its heat into the already sultry room. And now she could barely look at her handiwork. “I do so many things wrongly!” she burst out.

      “My dear, don’t be so hard on yourself,” the Rabbi said. “These concerns are all new to you. I’ve been living with them for decades!” A thought came to him. “Besides, none of this need go to waste. Would you be willing to give some of it away? I have a nephew, Michael, my sister’s son. He runs a hostel for new immigrants, and has many mouths to feed.”

      She wanted to protest: she’d made these for the Rabbi, not for strangers. But she saw that he was offering her a gracious way to salvage her mistake, and that he hoped she would take it.

      “Of course,” she said. “I’d be happy to.”

      He smiled. “Good. In fact, let’s take them together. It’s time you had a conversation with someone besides a butcher or grocer.”

      “You think I’m ready?”

      “Yes, I do.”

      Excited, nervous, she struggled to stand still. “Your nephew. What sort of man is he? What should I say to him? What will he think of me?”

      The Rabbi smiled and raised his hands, as though to hold back her tide of questions. “First, Michael is a good boy—I should say a good man, he’s nearing thirty. I respect and admire his work, though we don’t see eye to eye. I only wish—” He paused, but then remembered that the Golem would certainly see some part of it. Better to explain, than leave her with a vague, confusing picture. “We used to be closer, Michael and I. My sister died when he was young, and my wife and I brought him up. For many years, he was as close as a son. But then—well, certain things were said between us. A sadly typical argument between the old and the young. The damage was never quite repaired. We see each other less often, now.”

      There was more to it, the Golem saw—not an evasion on the Rabbi’s part, but an unspoken depth of detail. Not for the first time she felt the vast chasm of experience between them: he, who had lived for seven decades, and she, with barely a month’s worth of memories.

      “As for what you shall say to each other,” the Rabbi continued

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