The Golem and the Djinni. Helene Wecker

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ always ways.

      He was beginning to shiver, but he ignored it. Instead he turned and gazed up at the city that rose from the water’s edge, the enormous square buildings that reached far into the heavens, their windows set with perfect panes of glass. As fantastical as cities like ash-Sham and al-Quds had seemed from the caravan men’s tales, the Djinni doubted that they’d been half so wondrous or terrifying as this New York. If he must be marooned in an unknown land, surrounded by a deadly ocean, and constrained to one weak and imperfect form, at least he’d ended up somewhere worth exploring.

      Arbeely stood a few feet away, watching the glow of the iron railing fade beneath the Djinni’s hands. It still seemed impossible that this could be happening while the rest of the city went about its business, unchanged and unknowing. He wanted to grab the nearest passerby and shout: Look at this man! He isn’t a man at all! See what he’s done to the railing! He supposed that if he wanted to be hauled off to the lunatic asylum, there were worse ways to go about it.

      He looked out across the bay, trying to see it through the Djinni’s eyes. He wondered how he himself would feel, to wake up and discover that over a thousand years had passed. It would be enough to drive anyone mad. But the Djinni only stood straight-backed and grim, staring at the water. He didn’t look like a man about to run amok. The dirty, too-small clothes he wore clashed ludicrously with his figure and features, hanging from him as though in apology. He turned his back to the water and gazed at the buildings massed at the park’s edge. It was only then that Arbeely noticed that the Djinni was shaking from head to toe.

      The Djinni took a step from the railing. His knees buckled, and he fell.

      Arbeely lunged and caught him before he hit the ground, and hoisted him to his feet. “Are you ill?”

      “No,” the Djinni muttered. “Cold.”

      They made their way back to the shop, Arbeely half-supporting, half-carrying his new acquaintance. Once inside, the Djinni stumbled to the banked forge and collapsed, leaning against its scorching side. The borrowed work shirt smoldered where it touched the metal, but he didn’t seem to notice. He closed his eyes. After a while his shaking stopped, and Arbeely decided he’d fallen asleep.

      The man sighed and looked about. There was the copper flask, sitting on the shelf, but he didn’t want to think about it for the moment. He needed an easy task, something quiet and calming. He found a teakettle with a hole in the bottom, brought to him by a local restaurant owner. Perfect: he could patch a teakettle in his sleep. He cut a patch from a sheet of tin plate, heated both kettle and patch, and set to work.

      Occasionally he glanced at his guest, and wondered what would happen when he woke. Even silent and unmoving, the Djinni carried a strange air about him—as though he were not quite real, or else the only real thing in the room. Arbeely supposed that others would sense it as well, but he doubted they’d ever guess at its meaning. The young mothers of Little Syria still tied iron beads around their babies’ wrists and made gestures to ward off the Evil Eye, but out of tradition and fond superstition more than true fear. This new world was far removed from the tales of their grandmothers—or at least so they’d thought.

      Not for the first time he wished he had a confidant, someone with whom he could share even the most outrageous secret. But in the tightly knit community, Boutros Arbeely was something of an outsider, even a recluse, happiest at his forge. He was terrible at idle chitchat, and at wedding banquets could be found sitting alone at a table, examining the stamp-marks on the cutlery. His neighbors greeted him warmly on the street, but never lingered long to talk. He had many acquaintances, but few close friends.

      It had been no different in Zahleh. In a family of women he’d been the silent, dreaming boy-child. He’d discovered smithing by lucky accident. Sent to run an errand, he’d stopped in front of the local forge and watched, fascinated, as a sweating man hammered a sheet of metal until it became a bucket. It was the transformation that enthralled him: useless to useful, nothing to something. He returned over and over to watch until the smith, exasperated with being spied upon, offered to take on the boy as an apprentice. And so smithing came to fill Arbeely’s life, to the near exclusion of all else; and though he supposed in a vague way that someday he’d find a wife and start a family, he was content with things as they were.

      But now, glancing at his guest’s prone form, he felt a premonition of lasting change. It was the same as when he’d been seven years old and heard his mother’s rising wail through the open window as she learned of her husband’s death, killed by bandits on the road from Beirut. Now as then, he sensed the threads of his life scattering and rearranging before this new and overwhelming thing that had landed among them.

      “What is that you’re doing?”

      Arbeely jumped. The Djinni hadn’t moved, but his eyes were open; Arbeely wondered how long he’d been watching. “I’m patching a teakettle,” he said. “Its owner left it on the stove too long.”

      The Djinni inclined his head toward the kettle. “And what metal is that?”

      “It’s two metals,” said Arbeely. “Steel, dipped in tin.” He found a scrap on the table and held it out to the Djinni, pointing out the layers with his fingernail. “Tin, steel, tin. You see? The tin is too soft to use on its own, and with steel there’s the problem of rust. But together like this, they’re very strong, and versatile.”

      “I see. Ingenious.” He sat up straighter, and held out his hand to the teakettle. “May I?” Arbeely handed him the kettle, and the Djinni peered at it, turning it over in his now-steady hands. “I assume the difficulty lies in thinning the edges of the patch without exposing the steel.”

      “That’s it exactly,” said Arbeely, surprised.

      The Djinni laid his hand over the patch. After a few moments, he began to carefully rub the patch around its edges. Arbeely watched, dumbfounded, as the outline of the patch disappeared.

      The Djinni handed the teakettle back to Arbeely. It was as though the hole had never been.

      “I have a proposition for you,” said the Djinni.

      Spring rains can come on suddenly in the desert. On the morning after the Djinni returned from following the caravan to the Ghouta, the skies clouded over, releasing first a thin patter of raindrops, and then a respectable downpour. The dry riverbeds and gullies began to run with water. The Djinni watched the rain sluice down the walls and crenellations of his palace, irritated at the inconvenience. He had planned to depart for the djinn habitations at first light, but now he would have to wait.

      And so he roamed his glass halls, examining the metalwork and making idle changes here and there to pass the time. His thoughts returned to the men of the caravan, their conversations and jests. He remembered the old man’s songs about the Bedouin, and wondered if the men in them had truly been so brave, the women so beautiful. Or were they only invented legends, the details altered and exaggerated over time?

      For three days the rains came and went, three days of infuriating confinement. If the Djinni had been able to go outside, and chase himself to the ends of the earth, then his growing obsession with the world of men might have dissipated, and he might have gone to visit the djinn habitations of his youth, as planned. But when the clouds exhausted themselves and the Djinni at last emerged to a newly washed landscape, he found that all thoughts of returning to his own people had vanished with the rains.

       3. СКАЧАТЬ