The Golem of Los Angeles

Parable of the Hunter

54 Parable of the Hunter There is an animal that is marvelous because it doesn’t exist. Like the unicorn, when you look at it closely, it turns out to be a two-horned oryx seen from the side, or a deformed goat. And yet in the moonlight . . . . Medieval allegorists have figured the creature in their Bestiaries as a symbol of the poet’s recalcitrant inspiration or of evasive love, though modern critics have understood it as a manifestation of those elusive forms that fall between categories, such as the prose poem. Although its meat is considered of dubious value, this is a product of ignorance. Those who know will go to almost any length to obtain it. The hunter of this beast will spend weeks in the forest listening to the trees until he has achieved the necessary silence, then will stand very still, his breaths as shallow as a Los Angeles conscience, waiting for the beast, and turning green. Centuries pass. The cities crumble like bread into the seas. The beast still has not come. By now, the hunter is half buried in the forest floor. He peers out from a tangle of strangling vines, covered with forest grubs, his long hair rooted in the earth. for the first century, his thoughts had been rapid and filled with regret. Why am I such a fool? Even if I capture the thing, no one will care. They like the caged creatures at the zoo, with their well-studied habits and habitats, with children poking them through the bars and mustached janitors to clean up their feces. Even if I could capture it, the biologists won’t know what to call it, and so they’ll call me a fraud. And what of Mary? I told her I would be back in a week. 55 in the second century, his thoughts became a slow cycling like the sap inside the trees. Warmed by the sun, they would rise, driven by some hidden hydraulic pressure, and in the coolness of night they would subside and harden into a thick dreaming. in the third century, his face is cracked and brown as tree bark, and his thoughts have stilled and almost stopped, but on certain nights, as tiny full moons reflect in the dark marbles of his eyes, a great unspoken word ripples out as if from the ground and the trees themselves. it says, come! That’s all, but each month it grows louder in its silence: come! COME! COME! The beast still does not come. And slow tears well from the hunter’s eyes, crusting his cheeks with salt. in another century, the hunter is dead. And, now that he no longer exists, the creature appears. it steps out from a fold in the air, like an actor from a stage curtain, and on long, silver legs delicately approaches the hunter’s corpse. it parts the vines and hair with its slender nose, and licks the crusted salt from the hunter’s cheeks. it is so beautiful, but who is left to see it? only the great-great-great-great-greatgreat grandson of the hunter, who has wandered off from the campground and gotten lost in the deep woods. He stares at the great animal with its tufts of hair like frosted wind, its wild dark eyes, its form shifting and slipping in the mind, neither this nor that. He puts out his tiny hand, and in a cracked, trembling voice calls out, Come here, puppy. Here, pup! ...