The Golem by Gustav Meyrink Page A

go – you belong to us – we don’t want you to be happy – happiness in this house, the very idea!” Usually in these passages and alcoves there is a fine, poisonous dust that grabs me by the throat and chokes me, but today it retreated before the vital breath streaming from my mouth. I paused for a moment outside Hillel’s door. Should I go in? Some hidden awe kept me from knocking. I felt so different today, as if it would be wrong for me to go in to him. Already the hand of life was pushing me on, down the steps.
    The street was white with snow.
    I think many people wished me good afternoon; whether I replied or not, I can’t remember. I kept touching my breast pocket to make sure I still had the letter. The place where it lay felt warm.
    I made my way through the massive stone arcades of the Old Town Square, past the bronze fountain, its baroque railings covered in icicles, and across the stone bridge with its statues of saints and its monument to St. John Nepomuk.
    Down below, the river foamed as it pounded the piers of the bridge with waves of loathing.
    Half dreaming, my eye caught the monument to St. Luitgard: on the hollowed-out sandstone the ‘Torments of the Damned’ were carved in high relief and the snow was lying thick on the lids of the souls in purgatory and on their manacled hands raised in supplication.
    Arches swallowed me up and released me, palaces with arrogant carved portals on which lions’ heads bit into bronze rings slowly passed me by.
    Here too was snow, snow everywhere. Soft and white as the fur of a gigantic polar bear. Tall, proud windows, their ledges glittering with ice, stared coldly up at the sky. I was astonished to see the air so full of migrating birds. As I climbed the countless granite steps to the Hradschin, each one the width of four bodies laid head to foot, the city with its roofs and gables sank, step by step, from my conscious mind.
    Already the twilight was creeping along the rows of houses as I stepped out into the empty square in the middle of which the Cathedral towers up to the heavenly throne. Footsteps, the edges encrusted with ice, led to the side door.
    From somewhere in a distant house the soft, musing tones of a harmonium crept out into the stillness of the evening. They were like melancholy tears trickling down into the deserted square.
    The well-padded door swung to with a sigh behind me as I entered the Cathedral and stood in the darkness of the side aisle. The nave was filled with the green and blue shimmer of the dying light slanting down through the stained-glass windows onto the pews; at the far end, the altar gleamed at me in a frozen cascade of gold. Showers of sparks came from the bowls of the red glass lamps. The air was musty with the smell of wax and incense.
    I leant back in one of the pews. My heart grew strangely calm in this realm where everything stood still. The whole expanse of the Cathedral was filled with a presence that had no heartbeat, with a secret, patient expectation.
    Eternal sleep lay over the silver reliquaries.
    There! From a long, long way away the sound of horses’ hooves reached my ear, muffled, scarcely audible; they seemed to approach and then fell silent.
    A dull thud, like the closing of a carriage door.
    The rustle of a silk dress came through the church and a slim, delicate lady’s hand touched my arm. “Please, please can we go to that pillar over there. Out here among the pews I cannot bring myself to speak of the things I must tell you.”
    The holy images all around came into sharp focus. I was suddenly wide-awake and alert.
    “I don’t know how to thank you, Herr Pernath, that you have come all the way up here in this terrible weather for my sake.”
    I stammered a few banal phrases.
    “But I could think of no other place where I would be safer from spies and danger than here. I’m sure no one has followed us to the Cathedral.”
    I took out the letter and handed it to her. She was almost completely