“They were sorely tried,” Garfield answered.

Weiser thought for a minute, then asked, “Who built it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Who’s the shtarker§§§§ who’s going to kill it?”

“Me,” Garfield said.

Weiser drank; his eyes were soft and kind, and he said gently, “That might not be so easy, Rabbi.”

Garfield didn’t say anything, and Weiser picked up the movie still and held it up, facing Garfield. The golem was a mass in the shape of a man. Weiser tapped the picture. “Sefer Yezirah creations are gentle symbols,” Weiser told him; “a breath of distrust, of disbelief or disaffection, and they’re gone. But this is a monster, Rabbi, it’s not going to just stand there and let you kill it. . . .”

Garfield’s heart beat normally. Ada was asleep, with the windows open and cold wind blowing into the room off the river, bringing some fog with it. He closed the windows, pulled the covers up over her shoulders, undressed, and went into the hallway in his shorts. He closed the bedroom door, turned on the hall light, and confronted himself in the full-­length mirror on the back of the hall closet door. Everything about him, his body hair, muscles under his flesh, the flesh itself, even his bones, seemed sparse. He looked critically. He wasn’t ugly. What there was of him was firm and smooth, but he was slight, insubstantial-­looking. He leaned close and looked at his sternum, behind which his heart beat. A skinny man, not old, not ugly, but not young either, with a bad heart. Not the stuff of golem killers.

“To kill a golem,” Weiser had said, “you need three people. They represent air, fire, water.”

“What about earth?” Tepel grinned.

“Look, don’t laugh at me. You want something grand, go get a priest. Do an exorcism. We’re talking Cabala, which is old, disorganized, and maybe a little silly. But they built the thing with it, and it’s unsilly enough to scare the shit out of you.” Garfield and Tepel fidgeted.

“So,” Weiser said, “you need three people to represent air, fire, and water . . . the golem is earth.”

The golem is earth, Garfield thought, like Adam was, and Lilith.

“The three of you confront the golem,” Weiser said. “And you must join the spirit as much as possible, give yourself to it, try to be one with it.” Then he asked, “Will you be in a house or a field?”

“In a basement.”

Weiser shook his head. “Meshugah.” Then he said, “Okay, okay. Now, pick a point in the basement, a window or post at the farthest point from the golem, and think of it as spirit . . . the top of a five-­pointed star.”