“A movie!” Garfield cried. “Can we see it . . . can we see it now?”

The young man looked down. “I’m sorry. It’s difficult to arrange a showing.”

“I couldn’t bribe you?” Garfield asked, half-­serious.

“You could, but it wouldn’t do any good.” The boy started to put the card back, then thought for a minute. “Would stills help?” he asked.

“They might,” Garfield said.

“Wait a minute.”

The boy left and Garfield wandered back into the hall where black and white photographs hung on the walls. They showed men dressed up like women, old ladies with crooked, painful-­looking legs wearing paper sack masks, a giant of a man in a living room with his mother and father, who were normal-­sized but looked like dwarves compared to their son. The texture of the photos was fine, but the demarcation of light and dark was harsh, and the people should have looked ugly, but didn’t. They didn’t look sad either, or resigned. They looked . . . ready, Garfield thought. Good and ready. They looked . . . distinct, too. Separate, absolutely themselves. Garfield thought he would love them for that, or in spite of it, and he smiled at the photo of a transvestite who stared defiantly out at him through beaded lashes.

“Sir . . . sir . . .”

The boy was looking for him, and he had a bunch of pictures with him. Back in the library, he spread them out on a counter for Garfield, and there, shot through a gauze-­covered lens, coming up an alley, led by a man with a beard who could have been him or Tepel or Jacob Levy or Moses himself, was the golem.

Weiser pushed his chopped liver sandwich to the side and held the photograph to the light; the golem was huge, gray, menacing. The man who led him was sad and wise-­looking.

“Joseph Golem,” Weiser said softly.

Garfield’s skin prickled.

“I think Loew loved him,” Weiser said. “The love of a father for a retarded son . . . Loew never had a son.”

“But he killed it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. People thought for centuries that it was still there in the ghetto; in the tower of the synagogue, waiting for the rabbi to wake it up again, so it could finish what it had started.”

“What had it started?”

“Depends on who you ask. The Prague Jews said it rescued them. The Prague Gentiles said it murdered them.”

“Did Loew kill it?”

“Some say he did.”

“How?”

“I told you I’m not sure he did. I’m not sure he ever even built the thing.”

“He did,” Garfield said.

“You were there?” Weiser’s voice was full of sarcasm.

“I just know he did.”

“So he built it, he killed it, he put it in the freezer. So what?”

“I want to know how.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Weiser laughed. “You want to make the sequel, Return of the Golem?”

“Please,” Garfield said softly, “we need your help.”