The desert goes on for infinity. The sun shines bright on the cracked ground within the ball of fire’s unholy gaze, a wasteland of dried dirt and stone. Nothing green grows here. No water dwells in the infertile soil; only empty cracks litter the landscape. No hills or mountains decorate the horizon; only a straight line divides earth and sky. Nothing is native to this wretched land; only the screams from the outside call this desert home.
A peacock rests upon the dirt. The once majestic golden feathers have softened to a muddy yellow, the color indistinguishable from the ground on which the peacock lies. It takes deep breaths, air coming out its dried mouth with a low wheeze. Blood drips from its breast and sizzles as it wets the soil. The blood is tainted with lead, its rubicund color staining its feathers, muddying them further. Its glazed eye slowly looks upon the sun above, and the sun looks back. Breathing, bleeding. There is nothing else. The peacock does not have the strength to think; it can only feel and feels nothing but sorrow.
A great shadowy figure slowly rises above the sea of cracked ground. Every few minutes, it appears bigger, taking up more space across the blue sky. It trudges along the barren soil, its stomps filled with ambition. Soon, its shadowy frame blocks out the sun, as it nears the peacock, granting a brief reprieve from the merciless brightness. A cloak parts ways, and a smooth figure of clay is revealed; its hulking physique still smells of fresh, wet soil. The peacock recognizes this great giant. He is nothing less than a goylem of legend—a creature born from the earth, shaped with human hands and holy words to do its master’s bidding, a tool and a weapon for change, the declaration אמת, truth engraved on its forehead.
But no holiness radiates from this goylem. Its typical stench of wet dirt is tainted with a faint odor of dung, thickened by the desert’s unforgiving heat. Its skin of soil does not seem muddy, appearing as solid as the cracked ground. Its skin does not crack under the sun’s gaze. Innocent blood drips down the goylem’s rocky feet, the cracked soil desperately absorbing what little moisture it can get from each drop. Finally, the peacock looks upon the goylem’s forehead and sees the greatest error of its creation; the alef is nowhere to be found. All that remains is the declaration מת: corpse, cadaver, an order of death. The peacock sighs and closes its eyes, for it can voice its sorrows only for so long, and can do so no longer.
The goylem opens its hands and brings them down to the peacock with a lumbering motion, its fingers clasping around the beak. It slowly opens the peacock’s beak, stretching it open to a wide angle. Callously, it sticks its bulky hand into the peacock’s mouth, its arm descending, reaching down the throat of this majestic creature. The peacock cannot help but retch and squirm, but it cannot move. The goylem’s tough skin pushes against the cervical skin, causing red gashes to open up, the blood being a lubricant for the goylem’s arm as it reaches deep.
The ominous sound of cracking rings out across the vast desert. With ease, the goylem pushes its hand through the peacock’s bones and muscles, clasping its fingers around its most precious organ. The peacock lets out a final wheeze. Nothing moves. Its eyes slowly glaze over; one last stare at the merciless sun. Swiftly, the goylem pulls the precious organ out of the broken fowl’s beak, a trail of blood dripping from its hand as it observes its precious prize: the heart of the golden peacock, the heart of millions.
The goylem gently places its fingertips against the edges of the peacock’s heart and slowly pares it open. After peeling through, it cracks open the heart like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. When opened, a bright light briefly flashes out of the heart, and the goylem looks inside with pride. Inside is the answer to its trials: a tender piece of flesh shaped like a komets-alef, the komets attached to the alef by a thin string of meat. Without hesitation, the goylem tears the komets off the alef and tosses it to the side, blood spewing from the bottom of the alef before it slows to a trickle.
With a slight smile, the goylem raises its hand to his head, crudely smooshing the alef against his forehead, right next to the letters מת already present. Blood squirts out from the meat-string where the komets were once attached, staining the goylem’s face as it presses hard against the flesh. Despite its hopes, the alef does not stick; it falls to the cracked desert ground when the goylem lets go, and the declaration מת, of death, remains. The goylem stares at the alef before tightening its fist, smashing the piece of flesh into the rock, the sound echoing for miles. The blood left in the alef spits out, staining the ground before being dried by the unrelenting sun.
The goylem remains silent. It turns its head towards the peacock’s carcass, getting down on one knee beside it. It plucks the golden feathers out of the dead fowl one by one until it is as smooth as a plucked chicken. The feathers’ golden color had dimmed when the goylem found the peacock; the color is even murkier now. Uncaring of this detail, the goylem glues each of the feathers to its cloak, covering its pitch-black hue with the restrained shine of dimmed gold. It wraps the cloak around itself once more and is satisfied, for it may not be what the goylem sought, but it covers the blood on its body quite nicely.
The goylem turns around and trudges back into the distance, the shine from its newly decorated cloak making it appear as a second simmering sun. The corpse of the martyred fowl is left to rot, never fully decaying, for no maggot could survive long enough in the desert to feast on its moldy flesh. There is nothing native to this wretched land. And even as screams and weeping could be heard from far beyond the horizon, there would be no more visitors.
?אױב מ׳שטעלט אַ שטרײַמל אױף אַ חזיר, װעט ער װערן אַ רב
