"Avram Davidson - The Golem" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

"When you talk to my wife, talk respectable, you hear?"

Old Mrs. Gumbeiner, cheeks very pink, pushed her husband back to his chair. Then she leaned forward
and examined the stranger's head. She clicked her tongue as she pulled aside a flap of grey, skinlike
material.

"Gumbeiner, look! He's all springs and wires inside!"

"I told you he was a golem, but no, you wouldn't listen," the old man said.

"You said he walked like a golem."
"How could he walk like a golem unless he was one?"

"All right, all right … You broke him, so now fix him."

"My grandfather, his light shines from Paradise, told me that when MoHaRal—Moreynu Ha-Rav
Löw—his memory for a blessing, made the golem in Prague, three hundred? four hundred years ago? he
wrote on his forehead the Holy Name."

Smiling reminiscently, the old woman continued, "And the golem cut the rabbi's wood and brought his
water and guarded the ghetto."

"And one time only he disobeyed the Rabbi Löw, and Rabbi Löw erased the Shem Ha-Mephorash
from the golem's forehead and the golem fell down like a dead one. And they put him up in the attic of
the shule, and he's still there today if the Communisten haven't sent him to Moscow … This is not just a
story," he said.

"Avadda not!" said the old woman.

"I myself have seen both the shule and the rabbi's grave," her husband said conclusively.

"But I think this must be a different kind of golem, Gumbeiner. See, on his forehead; nothing written."

"What's the matter, there's a law I can't write something there? Where is that lump of clay Bud brought us
from his class?"

The old man washed his hands, adjusted his little black skull-cap, and slowly and carefully wrote four
Hebrew letters on the grey forehead.

"Ezra the Scribe himself couldn't do better," the old woman said admiringly. "Nothing happens," she
observed, looking at the lifeless figure sprawled in the chair.

"Well, after all, am I Rabbi Löw?" her husband asked deprecatingly. "No," he answered. He leaned over
and examined the exposed mechanism. "This spring goes here … this wire comes with this one …" The
figure moved. "But this one goes where? And this one?"

"Let be," said his wife. The figure sat up slowly and rolled its eyes loosely.

"Listen, Reb Golem," the old man said, wagging his finger. "Pay attention to what I say—you
understand?"