The Golem of Paris (18 page)

H
e phoned Neil Adler from the road.

“Christ, you’re impatient.”

“I need Russians,” Jacob said. “That narrow it down for you?”

“Lot of Russians in this universe.”

“Do your best.”

“I expect another meal out of this,” Adler said.

“You got it.”

“And an exclusive.”

“No promises,” Jacob said, clicking off.

Fighting his way to Hollywood along side streets, he pulled into the body-dump alley and stopped behind the bakery.

Two slots, filled by a white delivery van and a tan Sentra. He blocked both and entered the bakery through the rear door, walking a hallway crammed with cleaning supplies.

Dry heat radiated from the kitchen, where a pair of Hispanic men in hairnets toiled, one painting a sheet of dumplings with egg wash, the other tilting a fifty-pound sack of flour into a mixer. Neither man looked up as Jacob passed.

The same counterwoman was on duty. She did a double take, quickly returned her attention to the customer at the display case.

Jacob got in line.

While he waited, he scanned the corkboard, covered with bilingual fliers. English and Russian. He read the labels in the case, written in both Latin and Cyrillic characters.

Syrniki
.
Vatrushka
.
Bird’s Milk Cake.

The customer was an old woman. She left a smudgy trail on the glass as she indicated various piles of cookies.

“Dva . . . Pyat . . .”

The counterwoman dutifully filled a box, her eyes occasionally darting to Jacob.

“Okay,” the old woman said.
“Chorosho, dostatochno.”

The counterwoman reached up to tug string from a reel bolted to the wall. The old woman counted coins from a beaded purse. Jacob’s eye snagged on the girl depicted on the box of chocolate bars beside the register.

Like TJ, a child who’d never age.

The old woman finished paying for her cookies. Said,
“Spasiba,”
and tottered out, activating an electric chime.

The counterwomen said, “Can I help you?”

Unmistakable now, the guttural
h
.

Ken
I chelp you.

He was starting to take out the case file when the door chimed again. A man in a gray suit and no tie got in line behind him, shifting his weight impatiently.

The start of the lunch rush. Jacob ordered a cup of coffee and a couple of mushroom
pirozhki
and sat on the bench beneath the corkboard, eating. He waited for the gray-suited man to leave with his
sandwich, then set his cup down, walked to the front door, flipped the sign around from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
, and threw the dead bolt.

“Excuse me please,” the counterwoman said. “What are you doing?”

Jacob took out the file, selected a close-up of TJ with his eyelids cut off, and slapped it on the marble counter.

“Look,” he said.

As she’d done before, she averted her face toward the ceiling. He’d thought then that she was reacting to the brutality of the image.

I have customers.

Now he knew better. She’d looked away because she was afraid.

“Look at him,” Jacob said.

The woman’s lips bunched. “Leave my shop, please.”

“Not until you look.”

“I will call police,” the woman said, loudly.

He held up his badge. “Be my guest.”

She said nothing.

“Look at his face.”

“I do not need to.”

“I think you do.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“I hear that a lot,” Jacob said. “Nobody ever says it unless they have something to say.”

“I want lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest. We’re talking.”

She said nothing.

“You have kids,” Jacob said.

She blinked, but didn’t answer.

“They’re probably grown up by now. Do they have kids? Are you a grandmother?”

A rattle at the door—a pair of men in work clothes, trying to enter the bakery.

“He has a grandmother,” Jacob said. “You want to meet her? I could bring her by.”

The men began to knock.

“I have business,” the woman said. “Please.”

“You’ll get back to it, soon enough.” Jacob wagged a finger at the men. Pointed to the
CLOSED
sign.

Consternation, then shrugs. The men left.

One of the bakers poked a floury head out. “Zina?
¿Todo bien?
”

“Tell him to get lost,” Jacob said.

There was a small dent in the counterwoman’s jaw, just to the left of her chin. She rubbed at it, as though trying to smooth it out.
“Vete fuera,”
she said.

The baker didn’t move.

“Rafael, tambien,”
the counterwoman said.
“Ahora, por favor.”

The baker disappeared; Jacob heard the back door open and shut.

“Ten years ago,” he said. “And you still think about it.”

She was twisting her apron.

“But it wasn’t your fault. Was it? I don’t think it was. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I think you were afraid, just like you are now.”

“Please,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“Then why won’t you look at him?”

“Because I don’t want to see,” she said shrilly.

“You think I like looking at it?”

She shook her head, disgusted. “You are making problems.”

“For who? Him? He’s dead. His mother’s dead. That’s never going to change. But me? I’m a policeman. It’s my job to make sure the person who did this doesn’t do it again, to anybody, ever. That
means I have to ask you questions, again, and again, and again, until you talk to me.”

She began to laugh. “Okay, mister.”

“That’s funny?”

“
You
are funny,” she said. “You know what’s policeman? He comes to your house in middle of night. He bangs down door. He spits in your face. He breaks your bones,” she said, pointing to the divot in her jaw. “He puts you in cell. You don’t know what you did. You don’t know how long you will be.
That
is policeman,” she said. “You? You are
nothing
.”

She crossed her arms and nodded to herself.

Jacob said, “That’s not how it works here. That kind of law doesn’t last.”

Another customer was rapping, hollering through the glass.

The woman said, “I know nothing.”

Jacob picked up the photo of TJ. He tacked it to the corkboard, along with his business card, and left via the back.

PRAGUE RUZYNĚ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

OCTOBER 25, 1982

B
ina blearily follows the group off the plane to the gate, where two men await them. The first is sallow and trim in a brown polyester suit, smiling blandly over the shoulder of a compact, bushy-headed fellow in snug blue jeans and a hairy green turtleneck.

PRAGUE WELCOMES

INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF JEWISH ARTISTS

They number eighteen, hailing from points across the United States, plus a token Canadian to make the alliance international. Strangers when they convened in the international terminal at Kennedy, they now share the peculiar, mildly delirious intimacy that comes of long distance traveled at close quarters.

The man in the turtleneck folds his sign and addresses them in clean English.

“Honored guests.” Black eyes gleam above tracts of five o’clock shadow. “I am Ota Wichs. On behalf of the Jewish community, it is my privilege to be the first to say:
vítejte
!”

Mumbling:
hello
and
thank you.
Bina catches herself before she replies in Czech.

“My friends, we have eagerly anticipated your arrival. There is much to do and see. Before we proceed, however, it is my added privilege to introduce to you my esteemed colleague Mr. Antonín Hrubý, religious undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Culture, without whose support this opportunity to host you would not have been possible.”

He begins clapping loudly. Confusion passes over the group before they get the message and join in. The man in the brown suit takes a shallow bow.

“Friends,” Ota Wichs says, “please, come with me.”

They proceed down the arrivals corridor, bunched uneasily, like sheep. A souvenir vendor offers tin buttons imprinted with the Czechoslovakian flag. Other carts stand idle, covered in heavy plastic tarps and chained, though it is midday. Bina counts more soldiers than passengers, and while the place has the correct layout, the correct stale plasticky odor, something about it feels misaligned—theoretical, the result of asking someone who’d never been in an airport to build one.

A sandy-haired photographer from Seattle uncaps her camera, drawing Hrubý’s instant attention. He brings the group to a halt.

Ota Wichs clears his throat. “For reasons of security, we ask that you refrain from taking photographs inside the airport, please.”

Hrubý puts a hand out.

There’s a tense moment before the photographer pops open her
camera, removes the film, and gives it to him. He pockets it and walks on.

“Please continue,” Wichs says.

Bina hears her father’s old rebuke.

You were not there.

She’s here now.

•   •   •

T
O AVOID AN IMMIGR
ATION
LINE
three hundred strong, Hrubý herds them down a side corridor to a cramped office, where he calls roll and checks passports against a preprinted list. Nervous chuckles as they answer
here
like schoolchildren.

To offset the coarseness of the process, Ota Wichs makes sure to smile at each of them individually.

“Bina Reich Lev,” Hrubý reads
.

Wichs meets her eye. “Welcome.”

Hrubý looks up from his clipboard. “Bina Reich Lev?”

“Here,” she says.

He crosses off her name and moves down the list, leaving Bina to reflect on the fact that Wichs knew who she was before she’d spoken a word.

•   •   •

T
HEY
BOARD A TOUR
BUS
. Bina takes a row at the back, putting her legs up to ward off company. Thus far she has succeeded at keeping mostly to herself, and the group has tacitly designated her resident oddball, with her long skirt and her head scarf and her kosher airplane meal.

As they merge onto the highway, the faulty seal around her window begins to stream cold air. Not the worst thing, as several people
have lit up, the cabin growing hazy. Bina watches the passing countryside, orange farmhouse roofs licking at a pitted gray sky.

Ota Wichs blows into a microphone. “Testing. Testing . . . Okay. Now, friends, I must ask if anyone has been to Prague before.”

Bina nearly raises her hand. But she has only false memories. Ghost stories.

“Then I welcome you again. Please, to your left, you may see the nature preserve of Divoká Šárka, named for the lady warrior, wild Šárka. According to our legend, many years ago these lands were ruled by women. You see, my friends, our people are very progressive, we had female leadership long before it became fashionable in the West . . .”

There are few other cars on the road until they reach the outskirts of town. In a bid to distract them from the increasingly grim landscape, Wichs keeps up his patter, clutching at a seat back as the bus sways between stacks of concrete painted harsh primary colors.

“To your right, you may see the military hospital.”

Everything from shoes to street lamps has been designed with function foremost in mind, and the sunlight that worms through the clouds serves mainly to harden angles and expose seams.

“To your left, a brand-new gymnasium . . .”

Bina doesn’t care about the accomplishments of the state.

She’s looking up at the apartment buildings.

Behind one of those dingy curtains, her mother is chopping vegetables.

She’s looking at the bent-backed man, smoking on a park bench: her father, following a fourteen-hour day, not yet ready to face his family.

I’m here now, Taťka.

The city’s brutalist shell begins to crack open, a foot at a time,
giving way to Old Town, the architectural elegance that remains because no one has bothered to dismantle it. Traffic congeals. After thirty minutes trapped on the Hlávkův Bridge, suspended over a river Vltava crawling thick with pollutants, a vote is taken to walk the last half mile. They drag their bags over cigarette butts to the musty lobby of the Hotel Důlek. Wichs distributes room keys, allotting them a brief break to freshen up before the welcome reception.

•   •   •

I
T TAKES PLACE
at the old Jewish town hall and is attended by community leaders as well as a cadre of local artists. Before the meal come greetings, expressions of fellowship, and a speech from the chief rabbi of Bratislava, who has taken the train in for the occasion and who talks at length about the Torah’s connection to the class struggle.

“We observe that many religious rules have a socialist character,” Wichs translates, “such as the abrogation of property rights every seven years, during the
shemittah
year, so that in a real sense we may regard Moses as a forerunner to Marx.”

Undersecretary Hrubý leans against the wall, taking notes.

The window nearest Bina overlooks the scabby roof of the Alt-Neu Synagogue. On the way over from the hotel, Wichs paused outside the
shul
to provide a thumbnail biography of Judah Loew, the Maharal. Were they familiar with the golem of Prague?

Everyone was, although no one perhaps as intimately as Bina. Sam is a devotee of Loew’s, introducing his ideas into most Shabbat table discussions. She’s heard the golem legend and its variants too many times to count.

Someone asked if Wichs had ever been up to the garret.

He placed his hands on his heart.
I regret to inform you that there
is nothing but broken furniture. But we will learn more tomorrow. For now let us move on, please.

The rabbi from Bratislava wraps up, drawing tired applause. Teenagers acting as waiters distribute bread baskets and pitchers of water and beer.

Joining Bina at her table are five locals, an installation artist from San Francisco, a painter from Dallas, and, to her left, a dour Brooklyn lithographer who drinks pint after pint of pilsner, growing more slurred and more insistent as he tries to engage the Czechs on politics, while they smile awkwardly and attempt to steer the conversation back to art.

Dinner arrives: a platter of sausages, wallowing in fat.

“I’m not saying I was
happy
Reagan got shot,” the lithographer says, sliding a sausage onto his plate.

“Hello, my friends.” Ota Wichs drags a chair over, inserting himself next to Bina, moving the platter along before she can take food. “We are enjoying ourselves?”

“I don’t like it if anyone gets shot,” the lithographer says.

Wichs claps him on the shoulder. “Yes, of course, this is tragic, this is no way to celebrate, we must talk about more pleasant things.”

He fills the nearest glass.

“To art,” he says. “The universal language.
Na zdraví.
”

“I thought love was the universal language,” the lithographer says.

“Love, art,” Wichs says. “To an artist, they are the same thing, yes?”

The sausages have migrated halfway around the table, coming to rest in front of a Czech writer, who is telling the Dallas painter that she has lovely lips. Bina waves to get their attention and is startled by Wichs, murmuring in her ear.

“I understand that you observe the kosher laws.”

Bina looks at him.

“I believe it said so in your application,” he says. “Unless I am mistaken.”

“No,” she says slowly. “I do.”

“Then you will not want to partake of the meat.”

“It’s not kosher?”

“Unfortunately, our community lacks a butcher. However, I have arranged for a special meal.”

“Thanks.”

Wichs beckons a waiter. “Don’t thank me until you’ve seen what it is.”

A limp, undressed salad; an extra bread roll and a pat of margarine.

“Please accept my apologies,” Wichs says. “The beer is quite tasty, though.”

“I don’t drink,” Bina says.

“I’ve never met a Czech who didn’t drink.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m not Czech.”

“Your application said you spoke the language.”

“What else did my application say?”

A wry smile. “You ought to know. You wrote it.”

She didn’t, though. Frayda did. “My parents spoke Czech at home.”

“Ah. And did they drink?”

“My father,” she says, tearing open a roll. “Too much.”

Wichs presses his palms together. “Again, my sincerest apologies.”

“Forget it,” she says, spreading margarine. “Excuse me.”

In the restroom, she washes her hands, stepping outside to make the blessing. When she returns to the table, Wichs waits for her to make the blessing on the bread and take a bite, allowing her to speak again.

“What must it be like for you,” he says, “to come home.”

The bread is chalky; she sips water to wash it down. “I was born in New York.”

“But your soul is from Prague.”

“Was that on my application, too?”

He laughs. “No. But I can see your nature plain as your nose.” He tilts his empty glass, laced with foam, toward her paltry dinner. “It’s the way of our people to accept their fate without complaint.”

Nineteen sixty-eight, Soviet tanks grinding through Wenceslas Square.

Her father, throttling the newspaper.

“I’m also Jewish,” she says. “Jews love to complain.”

“Yes, that’s true. I suppose I’ve offended you, reducing you to one aspect when clearly you have many sides.”

“We all do,” she says. “Did my application mention that I observe the Sabbath?”

“It did, yes. Friday night you will dine with me and my family.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“It is kind of you to come.” He rises. “I hope you will find your visit inspiring.”

•   •   •

T
HE NEXT DAY
, everyone else is hungover, pulling coats against the seven a.m. chill. Last night brought a bit of musical beds. Bina lay awake until two, listening to laughter and grunts through the thin walls, and now cigarettes and sheepish grins go around.

“Good morning, my friends.”

Ota Wichs wears the same clothes as yesterday, a fresh crop of stubble already rising. He inquires after their accommodations,
exclaims approval, and announces the day’s itinerary: a tour of Josefov, the former Jewish quarter.

They proceed on foot through wet, cobbled streets. Wichs peppers them with a mixture of statistics, Communist rhetoric, and hoary Tales from the Ghetto. It’s unclear to Bina how much he believes what he’s saying, and she feels saddened by this caricature, so at odds with the Prague she inherited from her parents, a city at once profound and everyday.

All the same, she can appreciate the need for caution. Leaving dinner, the Czech writer gripped her by the arm, whispering that her hotel room was bugged. He offered to take her home instead, which did throw his motivation into question.

Their first stop is the old Jewish cemetery. Official visiting hours don’t begin until nine-thirty. Undersecretary Hrubý is there to open the gates.

Behind them lies a mess of broken stones and unchecked vegetation, bottles and spent condoms, moss and rotting leaves.

“To the naked eye,” Wichs says, “not very large. But remember: the dead lie twelve deep. In terms of luminaries per square meter, you will not find a more illustrious resting place in Europe.”

He leads them along the perimeter path, pointing out the grave of the astronomer and mathematician David Ganz; the grand monument to financier Mordecai Meisel.

Hrubý trails them, taking notes.

“And here we come to our most famous resident, Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal.”

They crowd around a formidable marble tomb framed by cartouches. Wichs launches into a lengthy discourse on the headstone’s motifs—the grapes, the lion—as well as the inscriptions detailing Loew’s literary achievements.

“And beside him for eternity, his beloved wife, Perel.”

Bina has to smile. Just another rabbi’s wife. Some things never change.

“Now that we have paid our respects to the individuals,” Wichs says, “we shall proceed to the Alt-Neu Synagogue, where, it is said, the famous golem was given life.”

He plucks a pebble from the ground, places it atop the monument, and walks on.

Bina lingers, waiting for the group to dissipate. Sam would want her to pay respects. She kneels to get a pebble of her own.