Watch Your Mouth Read Free Page B

circled a num- ber of times argued over extensively in horrifically dull texts on Jewish mysticism. The prayers are of course also in dispute, but my favorite is an alphabetical one sung by a hopelessly Gentile tenor in Golem, one of the productions that summer at the Pitts- burgh Opera: “Ah, By Clay Destroy Evil Forces, Golem, Help Israel: Justice!” This brought the clay to an obedient, powerful and creepy life.
    The fact it’s the alphabet is worth noting. The golem, like so many aspects of Judaism, is inundated with the power of the Word. God’s name is a secret—abbreviated “Ha Shem,” or “The Name,” most of the time. In the beginning, of course, was the Word. It’s generally agreed that a short prayer, inscribed on a scroll of paper, should be placed in the golem’s mouth; if he ever speaks, the Word of God tumbles out and the golem turns back into clay. Pretend you’re an evil Christian, sneaking through the ghettos of Worms with a dead baby, when a seven- foot silent figure of clay steps out of the shadows. No way are you returning the next morning with a mob. That’s the power of the Word. The name of the beleaguered rabbi was Rabbi Liva.
    The name of the river from which the flesh was taken was the Moldau River. The name of the first golem was Joseph. The name of the story where all this is told is The Wondrous Tale That Was Widely Known As The Sorrows Of A Daughter.
    Cyn had not the slightest interest in her religious heritage, but one time we were caught in a freak thunderstorm while walking around the campus cemetery, one of those picturesque old ones where people are always doing rubbings. We huddled underneath a tree, getting damp, then soaked, then horny: we did a rubbing. Cyn always preferred being on top and I always submitted, even when that meant my bare body pressed into mud and her hair and face dripping on me like a wet tree. Even when she shifted her position and moved her hands from the mud to my chest, leaving a thick handprint of clay on each shoulder, I didn’t mind. As she constricted around me I felt like I was coming to life, obedient to her will. She stuck a clay- stained finger into my mouth and though the taste was bitter I was afraid to say anything and ruin it. The rain stopped but we didn’t; I was afraid that somebody might see us, stepping out of the shadows on their way somewhere. But I didn’t speak. I’d do anything for her.
    And that’s how Cyn and I ended up living in her parents’ house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summer before my senior year at Mather. The curtain rises.
    ACT I, SCENE ONE

    The set for the first scene would probably win something in Operagoer magazine’s Annual Audience Awards. In the fore- ground is an expensive garden, not quite in bloom but full of promise. There are a handful of enormous ceramic pots, large enough for a child’s first bath, with small lime trees waving in the summer breeze like the hands of a spindly pianist, warming up. In fact the whole place is warming up: the flaccid hose, ready to spring into action if somebody pumps in water; bags of pot- ting soil, swollen pregnant with earthy minerals and expensive dung; the prongs of polished tools, catching the glare of the sharply-angled lights installed for security reasons; a beckoning watering can and packets and packets and packets of seeds. In Pittsburgh, it’s the heat and the humidity, so although the soil looks parched, the leaves are moist from the evening’s conden- sation. If you touch them they feel like showered skin. The propsmistress accomplishes this look with a thin, clear paste— the same stuff they use to make those new-album posters stick to construction sites in seedier parts of town.
    Cyn’s neighborhood was a nicer one, and Cyn’s street was a nicer street. Some English-majors-turned-urban-planners had named the streets after the headings in their syllabi; the Glass home was located in the middle of Byron Circle, a cul-de-sac