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By Root 12432 0

became for the first time aware of a church bell chiming, far-off but distinct, in the direction of Flatbush Avenue. At once poignant and reminiscent of Southern Sundays, it also unnerved me a little, since I had the firm impression that synagogues did not come equipped with belfries. Very briefly I closed my eyes as the chimes descended on the stillness, thinking of a homely brick church in a Tidewater town, piety and Sabbath hush, the dewy little Christian lambs with flower-stalk legs trouping to the Presbyterian tabernacle with their Hebrew history books and Judaical catechisms. When I opened my eyes Morris was explaining, “No, that’s no synagogue. That’s the Dutch Reformed church up at Church Avenue and Flatbush. They only ring it on Sundays. I go by there sometime when they got a service going. Or Sunday School. They sing their fuckin’ heads off. ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ Shit like that. Those Dutch Reformed broads are something. A lot of them look like they need a blood transfusion... Or a hot meat injection.” He gave a lewd snort. “The cemetery’s nice, though. In the summer it’s cool in there. Some of these wild Jewish kids go in there at night and get laid.”

“Well, Brooklyn’s got a little bit of everything, hasn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah. All religions. Jewish, Irish, Italian, Dutch Reformed, boogies, everything. Lots of boogies comin’ in now, since the war. Williamsburg. Brownsville. Bedford-Stuyvesant, that’s where they’re movin’ into. Fuckin’ apes, I call ’em. Boy, do I hate those boogies. Apes! Aaaa-gh!” He gave a shudder, and baring his teeth, made what I took to be a simian grimace. Just as he did so, the regal, celebrant strains of Handel’s Water Music shimmered down the stairs from Sophie’s room. And very faintly from above I heard Nathan’s laughter.

“I guess you got to meet Sophie and Nathan,” Morris said.

I allowed that I had, in a manner of speaking, met them.

“What do you think of that Nathan? Don’t he break your balls?” A sudden light glowed in the lusterless eyes, his voice became conspiratorial. “You know what I think he is? A golem, that’s what. Some kind of a golem.”

“Golem?” I said. “What on earth’s a golem?”

“Well, I can’t explain exactly. It’s a Jewish... what do you call it?—not exactly religious, but some kind of monster. He’s been invented, that’s what, like Frankenstein, see, only he’s been invented by a rabbi. He’s made out of clay or some kind of shit like that, only he looks like a human. Anyway, you can’t control him. I mean, sometimes he acts normal, just like a normal human. But deep down he’s a runaway fuckin’ monster. That’s a golem. That’s what I mean about Nathan. He acts like a fuckin’ golem.”

With a vague stir of recognition, I asked Morris to elaborate on his theory.

“Well, this morning early, see, I guess you were asleep, I see Sophie go into Nathan’s room. My room is right across the hall and I can see everything. It’s about seven-thirty or eight. I heard them fightin’ last night, so I know that Nathan’s gone. Now guess what I see next? This is what I see. Sophie’s cryin’, softly, but still cryin’ her head off. When she goes into Nathan’s room she leaves the door open and lays down. But guess where she lays down? On the bed? No! On the fuckin’ floor! She lays down on the floor in her nightgown, all curled up like a baby. I watch her for a while, maybe ten, fifteen minutes—you know, thinkin’ it’s crazy for her to be in Nathan’s room layin’ on the floor like that—and then all of a sudden down below on the street I hear a car drive up and I look out the window and there’s Nathan. Did you hear him when he came in? He made a hell of a lot of noise, stampin’ and bangin’ and mutterin’ to himself.”

“No, I was sound asleep,” I replied. “My noise problem there—in the crater, as you call it—seems to be mainly vertical. Directly overhead. The rest of the house I can’t hear, thank heaven.”

“Anyway, Nathan comes upstairs and goes to his room. He goes through the door and there’s Sophie all curled up and layin’ on the floor. He walks over to her and stands there—she’s awake—and this is what