The Golem Read Free Page B

through they suffer the torments of lust, these men, and fight an unending, losing battle against their desires, on the rack of a constant, loathsome fear for their health.
    It was not at all clear to me how I had come to assume Rosina and the junk-dealer, Aaron Wassertrum, were in any way related. I have never seen her anywhere near the old man, nor ever noticed them calling out to each other.
    But she was almost always in our courtyard or hanging around the dark corners and passages of our house.
    I am sure that all the other inhabitants of the building think she is a close relative or some kind of ward of the old junk-dealer, but I am convinced that not one of them would be able to give a reason for this supposition.
    I wanted to drag my thoughts away from Rosina, so I looked out of the open window of my room, down into Hahnpassgasse. As if he had felt my eye light on him, Aaron Wassertrum suddenly turned his face up towards me, a horrible, expressionless face, with its round, fish’s eyes and gaping hare-lip. He seemed to me like a human spider that can sense the slightest touch on its web, however unconcerned it pretends to be.
    And whatever did he live on? What were his thoughts, his plans? I had no idea. The same dead, worthless objects hang down from the rim of the arched entrance to his shop, day after day, year in, year out. I could have drawn them with my eyes shut: the buckled tin trumpet without any keys, the picture painted on yellowing paper with that strange arrangement of soldiers; and in front, piled up close to each other on the ground so that no one can cross the threshold of his shop, a row of round, iron hotplates from kitchen stoves.
    These objects never increase or decrease in number, and whenever the occasional passer-by stops and asks the price of this or that, the junk-dealer falls prey to a violent agitation. It is horrible to see then how the two parts of his hare-lip curl up as he spews out a torrent of incomprehensible words in an irritated, gurgling, stuttering bass, so that the potential buyer loses all desire to pursue the matter further, shrinks back and hurries off.
    Quick as a flash Wassertrum’s gaze had slipped away from my eye to rest with studied interest on the bare walls of the neighbouring house just beyond my window. What could he find to look at there? The house turns its back on Hahnpassgasse and its windows look down into the courtyard! There is only one that gives onto the street.
    By chance, someone seemed to have entered the rooms next door – I think they form part of some rambling studio – that are on the same storey as mine; through the wall I can hear a male and a female voice talking to each other.
    But it would have been impossible for the junk-dealer to have heard that from down below!
    Someone moved outside my door, and I guessed it must be Rosina, still standing out there, hot with expectation that I might yet call her in after all.
    And below, on the half-landing, Loisa, the pockmarked adolescent, would be waiting with bated breath to see if I would open my door; even here in my room I could feel the air quiver with his hatred and seething jealousy. He is afraid to come any closer because Rosina might see him. He knows he is dependent on her, as a hungry wolf is dependent on its keeper, yet most of all he would like to leap up and abandon himself to a frenzy of rage.
    I sat down at my table and took out my tweezers and gravers, but no creative work would come out right, and my hand was not steady enough to clear out the fine lines of the Japanese engraving.
    There is a bleak, gloomy atmosphere hanging round this house that quietens my soul, and old images keep surfacing within me.
    Loisa and his twin brother Jaromir cannot be much more than a year older than Rosina. I could scarcely remember their father, a baker who specialised in communion wafers, and now, I believe, they are looked after by an old woman, though I have no idea which one it is of the many who