Edgar Brau

The Golem Project

Translated by Andrea G. Labinger

(excerpt)

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Now, slightly more than a month since the Council announced the conclusion of The Golem Project, it is possible to verify that the outrageous suppositions and groundless allegations provoked by the revelation at the time still persist, creating a state of anxiety in which uneasiness and suspicion dangerously combine. Misinformation, misinterpretations, omissions, and conjectures daily establish a foundation on which the Project’s origins, its results, its future, and even the punishment that the creature —the Golem— must face, all fade in a haze of imprecision, or worse yet, ambiguity. As one of the representatives of the Council before the scientists in charge of the Project, I believe it might not be without merit to interrupt the current scandal (the current chaos) with this personal report.  Perhaps a precise spatial and temporal index of the Project and its development may serve to lessen, even indirectly, the blows of the dark, powerful current that alarms and overwhelms us today.

  The Golem Project. The start of The Golem Project, its genesis, can be traced to the final months of the Second World War, when the creature’s death was revealed, and we may assume, through the efforts of a sort of dream of justice on the part of some soldiers of Jewish descent who served in the vanguard of the Soviet Army, upon their occupation of a thoroughly defeated Berlin. Unfortunately, neither the names of those heroes nor the details of their actions have survived, but in fact, approximately half a year after that death and the end of the war, a portion of the creature’s remains (stolen from the Soviets, who, in turn, had salvaged them from a hasty German bonfire) were found in Jerusalem, protected by those who would become military leaders when the creation of our State was announced. According to certain documents of that period, it had been resolved from the beginning that the urn containing the “monster’s relics,” as they were then called, would remain hidden from public view. It did not indicate what the remains consisted of or what their specific use might be. Somehow, although neither those primitive documents nor subsequent ones mentioned anything definite about the future of the remains, it was obvious that those pioneers considered them something like a legacy, a tribute to successive layers of Israeli leadership. Furthermore, a tacit appeal was established and launched into time: each generation was to find the most appropriate way to deal with that secret, symbolic urn.

  As one might imagine, the secret could not be contained. Very soon rumors that the bones of “that man” were in Israel began circulating throughout our country and even abroad. The legends followed. For example, and just to mention a very worthy precursor of The Golem Project, in some cases those remains became transformed into an entire body, a cadaver that popular fantasy declared vulnerable to the resuscitative arts of a select group of rabbis, descendants of that ancient rabbi who, long ago in Prague’s Jewish Quarter, had created a near-human being, a golem, out of clay and prayers. If that magic had really succeeded, then one might discover a whole series of complementary fables, anticipating, in the strongest possible way, the future of “that man” restored to life, especially the punishments he was to endure.  Other legends, in contrast, emphasized the existence of the creature’s partially destroyed head, which supposedly had been deposited in the basement of the main synagogue of Jerusalem, where every day at sunset it would receive the curses of the great rabbi. As for this version, it should be pointed out that some of its essence has survived to the present day, at least during the childhood of the writer of these words.  It wasn’t unusual then for grandmothers at the start of Shabbat to remark, heads turned toward the synagogue, that the great rabbi had hurried there to spit on the “devil’s bones.” But no legend or rumor has ever managed to spread its charm, its radius, beyond reasonable limits, especially if its content cannot be confirmed by living, tangible evidence. Not much later (bolstered, admittedly, by the grave threats hanging over our nation), the vague murmurs related to this question grew more precise, crystallizing in a certain proverb or in some tidbit of homegrown superstition. That generation somehow managed to put an end to its dealings with the Golem.

  Several decades then passed without incident, until a scientific event caused certain glances to converge once again – with piqued interest – upon the “infernal urn” (another expression of the period): an animal was created by cloning (I use this already antiquated term, the equivalent of our “mirror voice,” in order to recreate something of the atmosphere of those times). Possibly today, when even children employ these techniques to bring a recently deceased pet back to life, such an announcement may seem trivial and inconsequential, but in those days it signified the opening of a door, and insofar as our Golem is concerned, the possibility that not too much later, when society went from reproducing animals to reproducing identical humans, he could exist once more in his full physical state. Of course this was rather simple, really, as a bit of organic material from the original (to put it very roughly) was sufficient. The difficult part, however, was obtaining a facsimile whose personality (not to mention memory and perceptions) would be completely identical to that of its model. Nevertheless, several attempts were made. Right around the end of the beleaguered twentieth century, the Golem’s admirers acquired a few samples of the remains of their revered mentor on the Russian black market (with the Communist empire defeated, anything could be obtained) and through collusion or bribery persuaded some scientists to give them the help they needed to carry on their reconstructive projects.  The most successful of these took place in the Golem’s adoptive country, at the conclusion of the fourth decade of the twenty-first century. During a political meeting, and before the expectant eyes of the world (as it was said at the time), a double of the Golem was presented to the clamoring throng. The work was perfect and the effort expended, according to the sponsors, enormous. (The task had taken nearly forty years, since a Golem the same age as the original at the peak of his powers was required. As for the obstacle of creating a similar personality, this was attempted by providing the replica, from infancy on, with family and environmental conditions identical to those of the real character.) Nevertheless, it was an abject failure. Whether because the task was beyond his capabilities or because preparations hadn’t been as meticulous as necessary, the fact is that the double turned out to be something like the leader’s negative image: his voice, even when enhanced by the most advanced technology of the time, couldn’t be heard; his arms couldn’t be unstuck from his body, and worst of all, his eyes, as if assailed by the brightness of the lights, remained permanently closed. A cross between a paralytic and a blind man. To keep the deception (or public furor) to a minimum, the organizers proffered the explanation of a mental block (an emotional reaction to the public’s effusions) and withdrew, promising a new unveiling in the immediate future.

  Following these efforts, or rather, stimulated by them, in later years, specifically in the seventh and eighth decades of the twenty-first century, golems became fashionable.  Doubles of a twentieth-century Communist leader named Lenin; of an English writer, Shakespeare; of another writer (Italian, in this case) by the name of Alighieri; of Landru; Jack the Ripper, star athletes and luminaries of the “Silver Screen” were presented in different capitals, to scandals, protests, and promises of investigation by several governments. A young Eskimo, grown suddenly wealthy by bottling melted ice from the North Pole, offered a fortune for any fraction of the body of the French guerrilla Napoleon Bonaparte, whom, once recreated, he hoped to install in a huge, lavish igloo. Because of all this, the most prestigious cemeteries had to close off access to the tombs of their more prominent denizens or relocate the caskets to a hidden spot. Deceit and trickery soon abounded. A number of golems whose features bore no resemblance to those advertised by the purveyors of organic matter turned up abandoned in the flower of their youth. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs established (tried to establish), for purpose of exhibition in traveling circuses, groups of male and female prospective golems who had died of repulsive deformities; ancient champions of a sort of bestial sport called boxing, which had been abolished long before; peculiar human beings, inhabitants of South America until the end of the twenty-first century that were known as Argentines. . .  Alarmed by these experiments and by certain earlier results, humanitarian organizations pressured those in power, who then enacted some regulatory legislation, neither very profound nor very explicit. But it was, in truth, a question of fashion – that is, the trend was self-regulating, controlled by the vagaries of public taste. When it became clear that this phenomenon afforded nothing more than mere physical resemblance, when it was finally understood that the miracle did not extend far beyond the ability to watch something not unlike an animated mask, public attention began to wane, and then science promptly retreated to its hidden dominions. But meanwhile, in a certain part of our country, the lid of a secret, symbolic urn had been lifted, never to close again.

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