Содзи Симада - Murder in the Crooked House

“Why did they make him so huge?”

“Well, he’s human-sized. He was probably attached to a kind of horizontal bar like a gymnast, and part of a circus act originally. Or a kind of amusement park. If you look closely at his hands there are small holes in the palms. I think that’s where he was attached to the bar. All of the joints in his legs and arms have the same range of movements as a human body’s. I’m guessing he used to do a giant swing on the horizontal bar. His body is just a chunk of wood, though, with no kind of special features.”

“It must have been quite a sight—a life-sized doll performing like that.”

“Yes, quite a draw, I’m guessing.”

“And why is he called Golem? Does it have any meaning?” asked Hatsue.

“Wasn’t ‘golem’ a word for a kind of automaton that appeared in a story or something?” said Sasaki. “He was forced to carry a jar filled with water for eternity. I’ve got this image that he used to move like a robot… Or maybe that was something else.”

“A golem is a man-made creature in Jewish folklore that looks like a human being. Seems the original concept of a golem was mentioned in Psalm 139:16. For generations it was believed that leading figures of the Jewish faith possessed the ability to create golems. There’s supposed to be a passage that describes how Abraham, together with Noah’s son Shem created a great number of them, and led them into Palestine.”

“So golems have been around for thousands of years? Since the Old Testament?”

“That was their origin. But they aren’t widely known. I’ve done a little research into their history. The golem stories came back to life around 1600 in Prague.”

“Prague?”

“That’s right. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Prague was a bright centre of learning and culture. It has been referred to as the City of a Thousand Wonders and Countless Terrors. The main areas of study that it was known for were astrology, alchemy and magic; in other words, it became a flourishing centre for mysticism and the occult. The mystics and thinkers and magicians who had proclaimed that they could perform all kinds of miracles were drawn to the city in droves. And that was the environment in which golems were reincarnated. This was because Prague also had the largest Jewish population in Europe—a large ghetto community. A golem was as much part of the Jewish teachings as Yahweh. For their persecuted community, he was a ferocious protector. With superhuman strength he was considered to be invincible. There was no figure of authority, no weapon with the power to defeat him. The Jewish people had been nomadic, had suffered, and been persecuted since ancient times. Yahweh and golems were created out of imagination and hope. Well, that’s the way I’m going to explain it. Yahweh is God, but a golem is a kind of man-made being or automaton that only an ascetic holy man or wise man has the power to create. Kabbalah is a branch of the Jewish religion that believes in mysticism and magic, and its practitioners studied how to become great enough to create a golem.

“Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the character of a golem began to turn up in essays published in France and Germany. A rabbi by the name of Hasid and the French mystic, Gaon, left behind written descriptions of how to form a golem from clay and water. They included precise details of required incantations and rituals. It was the secret formula that since the time of Abraham no one but the highest-ranking holy men had been privy to. And now it had finally been written down. The Golem of Prague was based on the golem of these essays.”

“So the practice of creating golems in Prague came from its status as a centre of learning and from it having a Jewish community?”

“That and from the persecution of those Jews. Prague was also a centre of persecution.”

“Who were the persecutors?”

“The Christians, obviously. That was why the Jewish community needed golems. They were constantly in danger. The first maker of a golem was believed to be Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, a leader of the Jewish community. He is said to have taken clay from the banks of the Vltava River that runs through Prague to create his golem. There have been many pieces of folklore and stories about this handed down, and even, much later, a black-and-white silent film, and they all say approximately the same thing: the rabbi created the golem out of clay while reciting some kind of incantation.”

“So there’s a film about it?”

“Many films in fact. It was from these that the story of the Golem of Prague became well known. The German film-maker, the genius Paul Wegener, made three different films about golems.”

“What kind of films?”

“All sorts. I’ve kind of forgotten which was which, but in one a rabbi brings his home-made golem to the royal court at the request of the king. This rabbi uses magic to create a kind of film about the history of the hardships and perpetual nomadism of the Jewish people, and shows it to the king. But right at that moment the court jester tells an ill-timed joke, and all the nobles and dancing girls fall about laughing. The Jewish God is furious and with a thunderous roar begins to tear down the palace. In exchange for a vow to end the persecution of the Jewish people, the rabbi instructs his golem to save the king’s and the courtiers’ lives.”

“Wow.”

“Another film starts the same way with a rabbi creating a golem, but unfortunately, he wasn’t a very skilled holy man yet, and he’s unable to control the golem he produces. It ends up being way larger than he intended, and its head breaks through the roof of his home. So he tries to destroy it.”

“How does he do that?”

“The secret Kabbalah ritual involves writing the word emet on the golem’s forehead in the Hebrew alphabet. Otherwise it won’t move. If you remove one of the letters, equivalent to the ‘e’ from the word, it spells met, which means ‘death’, and makes the golem return to the earth from which it came.”

“Huh.”

“In the Jewish faith, words and letters have spiritual power. And so the important ritual and incantation for bringing a golem to life revolved around the letters written on its forehead. The rabbi ordered the golem to tie his shoelaces for him, and when the golem knelt down before the rabbi, he quickly erased the letter ‘e’ from his forehead. Cracks immediately began to appear in the golem’s body and it crumbled to the ground.”

“Wow.”

“This golem here is made from wood, but if you look very carefully, you’ll see very tiny Hebrew lettering on his forehead. It says emet. ”

“Does it? So if this golem starts moving, I should get rid of this letter here?”

“That’d do it.”

“I’ve read a story about golems somewhere before,” said Sasaki.

“Oh? What kind of story?”

“The well in some village dries up and the villagers have nothing to drink. They order a golem to go and fetch them a jar of water from a river far away. The loyal, hard-working golem obeys, and the next day, and the day after that, he goes back and forth between the river and the well, refilling the well with the river water. Eventually the well begins to overflow with all the water he’s brought, and the village is flooded. The houses begin to disappear under the water but nobody can stop the golem. They don’t know the right spell to make him stop. And that’s the story.”

“Terrifying,” said Hatsue Kanai.

“Automata are unable to be flexible, to adapt to circumstances. That’s their fatal defect. It comes across to human beings as a kind of insanity, and incites fear. Do you think dolls have the same tendency to inspire fear?” asked Kozaburo.