The Golem of Paris (23 page)

He leans in, his nose inches from the surface of the clay. “I’m tempted to make the transfer right here and now.”

“You’ll still need to fire them,” she says. “And they need to dry first.”

He nods reluctantly.

Peter begins straightening up, dousing the stove, rewrapping the remaining clay.

“Yes, very good,” Ota says. He worries his chin. “Now, if you can make a hundred more, we’ll be fine.”

•   •   •

T
HE NEXT NIGHT
is the Sabbath eve. With no events scheduled, the rest of the group scatters to various wine bars and beds across the city.

Boarding the tram to Prague 11, Ota Wichs remarks to Bina that Hrubý must be having a fit, trying to figure out whom to follow.

Shabbat dinner at the Wichs home is a stripped-down affair, in keeping with its setting: fifty square meters on the sixth floor of a joyless concrete monolith. Husband, wife, and child share a bedroom, a toilet, and a combination kitchen/dining/living space. For the sake of economy—and to stave off claustrophobia—furnishings are minimal.

Ota and Peter and Bina sit on the floor around the coffee table, while Pavla Wichs ceaselessly shuttles to and from the counter, bringing alternating courses of brown bread and cheese in an attempt to create the impression of variety.

When the last crumbs are gone, they recite the Grace After Meals. Pavla does not participate, and as she bends to collect her husband’s plate, a small crucifix swings free of her blouse. Catching Bina’s eye, she smiles and gives a helpless shrug.

The singing ends.

“Děkuji vám,”
Bina says. “Everything was delicious.”

Pavla excuses herself and disappears into the bedroom.

While Peter begins doing the dishes, Ota retrieves a photo album from a shallow pressboard bookcase. His knees crick as he settles on the floor, paging through black-and-white snapshots with scalloped edges.

He stops at a picture of two men, early twenties, shirts unbuttoned three deep, sleeves rolled. It’s a moment of intimacy, a private joke.

The taller man wears his dark hair swept into glossy waves; he faces the camera without noticing it, crease-eyed in laughter, taut cheeks drawn back to the molars.

His companion is squarely built, balding, his expression contented as he cocks his hip and gazes out of frame. Smoke leaks from the butt between his fingers.

Wichs taps the smoker. “Karel Wichs, my father.”

He slides his finger over to the other man. “Your uncle Jakub.”

Well, but—no. Bina knows better. She knows what her uncle looked like. His portrait sat on her parents’ living room mantel.

“Here,” Wichs says, prying the photo up at the corners.

Sure enough, the date on the back is wrong:
3. květen 1928.
Her mother was born in 1927. Jakub was five years older, making him six at the time of this picture.

“I think you’re mistaken,” Bina says. “He was a child when this was taken.”

“Ah. Of course you are confused. This is your father’s brother, Jakub Reich. Not your mother’s brother Jakub. Yes, confusing. Two Jakubs. Like the Holy Roman emperors, all Ottos and Henrys.” His smile falters. “I thought you would be pleased.”

“No,” she says. “I am. I’m . . .”

What? Part of her is filled with gratitude. Another part, a surprisingly large part, swells with resentment. The man in the photo looks far too happy to be her relative.

She says, “My father never mentioned anyone named Jakub.”

“That does not prove he did not exist. I assure you, he did. My father spoke of him often. They were dear friends. They fought
together in the resistance. Jakub was shot attempting to bomb the tracks to Theresienstadt.”

Maybe he’s her uncle after all. He shares the futility gene.

And if he had succeeded?

Perhaps her mother’s family would not have died. Perhaps Jozef would not have come to America. Perhaps she would not exist.

Ota says, “To me, it is good to know these things. It takes away some of my loneliness—to know that we are not the first, we will not be the last. It was your uncle who made the last batch of jars, when my father was the sexton. There was a connection between them, and now between us. We both have sons—”

Bina says, “Please don’t talk about that.”

The kitchen sink shuts off; the faint swish of the dish towel.

She says, “I should go home.”

Ota nods disappointedly. “Of course. You must be tired.”

He remounts the photo. “I shall escort you to the tram.”

“I was planning on walking.”

“Then we will walk together. For your safety.”

“Everyone says the streets are safe.”

“This is true. Very little to steal. Still, it is not chivalrous to let you go alone. Don’t argue, please, I insist.”

“Can I come, Papa?” Peter asks.

“Certainly not.”

“Then who will walk back with you?” Peter says. “It is not chivalrous.”

His father, bested, sighs. “Put on your scarf.”

•   •   •

T
HEY DON
’
T GET VERY FAR
. It’s waiting for them, right outside the building: a black snub-nosed car, engine running, coils of exhaust
snaking toward the sky. Behind the smeared windshield sits a bulky shape, black paws resting on the steering wheel. The passenger door opens on agonized hinges and Undersecretary Antonín Hrubý gets out.

He’s wearing the same brown suit.

Bina wonders if he ever takes it off.

“Good evening,” he says. “If you wouldn’t mind coming along with me, Mrs. Lev. You too, Mr. Wichs.”

“My dear sir,” Wichs says. A servile smile. “I wonder, is it possible for me to please understand the purpose of this request?”

Hrubý’s head yaws. “Is it
possible . . . ?
”

Lazy traffic rumbles along the highway.

Ota touches Peter’s shoulder. “Go home. Tell Pavla I’ll be back soon.”

The boy does not move.

“Listen to your father,” Hrubý says, holding the rear door. “He’s a clever man.”

J
acob twisted in a coach seat designed by sadists.

A filmy sleep had settled over the dimmed cabin, buckles biting into hips, sticky necks bent at angles that predicted morning misery. He’d passed out during takeoff but awoken for dinner, and now, feeling restless, he unlatched his seat belt and high-stepped over his seatmate, who opened an annoyed eye.

He moved up the aisle, parting the nubby curtain separating coach from business. Unchallenged, he proceeded through the next layer of social stratification into first class, where eight lucky souls snoozed in individual pods.

Seven lucky souls, and one Something Else.

Paul Schott curled up fetal, the blanket across his rump like a postage stamp on a rhinoceros, the very opposite of wakeful.

He was dressed in supersized travel casual: circus-tent jeans, a flannel shirt large enough to move the price of cotton. A pair of battered brown cowboy boots, kicked off. He shifted and the pod’s plastic housing begged for mercy.

No food, yet he looked like that. Did he work out or was that part of the angelic package?

A deep snore. Obviously, they slept.

Waking him up was going to feel good. Petty, but good.

Jacob poked him in the shoulder. “Hey.”

The big man jerked up on one elbow, ripped off his eyeshade, blinking. “What. What. What.” Then: “You’re not supposed to be up here.”

“Just stretching my legs,” Jacob said. “I don’t think Mallick would be pleased to learn you’re nodding off on the job.”

“There is no job right now. We’re over the goddamned Atlantic.”

“I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on me.”

“I’m here,” Schott said evenly, “as your interpreter.”

“I didn’t request one.”

“You should be grateful to have a native speaker.”

“Native to where.”

Schott regarded him warily. “Montreal.”

“You don’t say. Hockey player?”

Schott said, “You and me? We’re not friends.”

“How come you get the royal treatment?”

“I need the legroom.”

“And I don’t?”

“You’re one entitled son of a bitch,” Schott said.

He lay back, drawing the shade over his face.

Ninety minutes before touchdown, as Jacob was sawing open a wooden croissant and bitterly imagining the omelet growing cold on Schott’s china plate, a flight attendant swished down the aisle, bearing a tray.

“A gentleman in first class would like you to have this,” she said, swapping out Jacob’s breakfast for one that drew envious stares.

Tucked between the salt and pepper shakers was a note. Jacob unfolded it.

goalie

Smiling, he scooped up a bite of still-warm eggs.

•   •   •

S
CHOTT
’
S LUXURY ALLO
WANCE
ended on the ground. They took the bus from de Gaulle, chugging beneath a leaden, swaybacked sky.

“Thanks for breakfast,” Jacob said.

Schott grunted.

“Goalie, huh?”

The big man flexed his lats. “Better believe it.”

He wiped at the window condensation. “Always wanted to see Paris.”

They plunged beneath a densely graffitied overpass.

Schott said, “So far it’s ugly.”

Jacob said, “I assumed you’d been.”

“Nope.”

“You’ve been to Prague.”

“That was for business.”

“I was here once, with my ex-wife,” Jacob said. Adding: “The second.”

A romantic Hail Mary, culminating with a drizzly spring night spent walking the banks of the Seine because Stacy had locked him out of their hotel room.

“Take it it didn’t help,” Schott said.

“In retrospect, the money would’ve been better spent on a decent divorce lawyer.”

Schott clucked his tongue.
“C’est la vie.”

•   •   •

T
RAFFIC GREW
SULLEN
around the
banlieues
, low-rent outskirts oozing their way into the city proper. The bus listed, gasped,
collapsed at Gare de Lyon. They changed to the Métro, resurfacing at Saint-Paul and proceeding along the Rue de Rivoli through slush, Schott cursing as his roll-aboard bounced and snagged on the cobblestones.

Jacob’s cell had found a local carrier and was showing a time of eleven a.m., though it felt like evening, ashy light caulking a cityscape in contradiction. Plastic mauve signage bolted to five-hundred-year-old stone; barren planter boxes hanging from immaculate Art Nouveau ironwork. Soggy undernourished teenagers huddling in their screens, blue-faced as drowning victims. Whiny mopeds and lurid commercialism, stripped trees forming a picket line against svelte women tottering in heels, shopping bags and hips swinging. Jacob could smell chestnuts.

It would be Christmas soon, he realized.

In the alleyway behind a
boulangerie
, an African man in an apron stomped fruit crates to pulp, venting the rage of generations.

Jacob and Schott dropped their stuff at their hostel, a shabby affair in the Marais, set on a narrow run of cobblestones called the Rue des Mauvais Garçons.

“Bad Boys’ Street,” Schott translated.

“Like the modern classic buddy comedy,” Jacob said, “starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.”

Schott gave him a strange look.

Jacob chucked him on the arm. “You and me, dude. BFFs.”

•   •   •

T
HE
I
NS
TITUT
C
URIE
was not one but several buildings bunched together in the Fifth Arrondissement. Smokers congregated on the hospital steps, like some sort of breeding program for future patients.

They tracked down the correct ward. A nurse informed them that
Monsieur Breton already had a visitor, they had to wait. They signed the register and Jacob went off in search of coffee.

Forty minutes later, a man with a frail blond goatee stumbled through the lobby, looking lost, twitchy fingers referring to a pack of cigarettes stuffed in his breast pocket. He did a double take at Schott before getting into the elevator.

The nurse reappeared to beckon them forward.

At a hall closet, they paused to gown and glove up. Schott, his hands suffering inside a pair of extra-larges, flailed around, trying to catch hold of the gown’s strings.

“Suck in,” Jacob said.

Schott glared but complied, producing enough slack for Jacob to tie a knot, leaving the back of the gown looking like a corset.

Outside Breton’s room, the nurse paused to whisper.

“He’s very ill,” Schott translated. “Even talking exhausts him.”

Jacob nodded, and the nurse knocked softly.

Capitaine Théo Breton lay with eyes half-shut, arms slack and bruised, bedsheet tented at his hipbones, knees, ankles. Only his head had any mass to it; it sagged into the pillow, grotesquely large at the end of a stemlike neck.

“Bonjour, monsieur,”
the nurse said.
“Encore de la visite pour vous.”

Breton’s chest rose and fell shallowly in time to the monitors.

“Bonjour, Inspecteur,”
Schott said.
“Excusez-nous de vous déranger.”

Jacob leaned back on his heels, surprised to feel uncomfortable. He’d witnessed more than his fair share of decline, in much more depressing venues. He supposed the environment’s sterility made its true function that much starker.

The nurse said,
“Vous avez vingt minutes,”
and exited.

With one eye on the clock, Jacob introduced himself, asking how
Breton had gotten his number. Schott’s translation got no response; Jacob moved on to the Duvall case, pausing occasionally to hold up a crime scene photo before Breton’s unseeing eyes.

At the mention of Tremsin’s name, the heart rate monitor jagged, and Breton began sliding sideways on the pillow.

“Easy now,” Jacob said.

Carefully, they righted him. Breton’s tongue probed the air.
“Eau.”

Jacob poured water from a jug on the nightstand, inclined the bed a few degrees higher. The sound of Breton’s swallowing was sharp and painful, a kinked hose. Water dribbled down his chin as he spoke in a quick, desperate rasp, Schott hustling to catch up.

“He asked the judge to put a . . .
Comment on appelle ça?
Okay. He wanted to tap Tremsin’s phone. The next day his boss has him in for a talk about mandatory retirement. That’s when the woman took over.”

“Odette Pelletier,” Jacob said.

“Menteuse,”
Breton rasped.

Schott said, “Liar.”

“What’s her motivation to lie?” Jacob said.

“Tremsin has connections in the Prime Minister’s office. He’s been paying people off for years. Everyone knows.”

“Does he have any evidence of that?”

Schott frowned at the response. “He says what happened to him is evidence.”

“Besides that.”

“The timing. As soon as he brought up Tremsin’s name, the well ran dry. He’s appealing his retirement,” Schott said. “He’s waiting to hear from the union.”

Breton eked out a sarcastic smile.

“Who else is in on this?” Jacob asked. “His boss?”

Schott hesitated, keen to the skepticism in Jacob’s tone. “He doesn’t think so.”

“He’s the one who took you off the case.”

“Under pressure.”

“What’s his name?”

“Don’t get him involved,” Schott translated. “He’s a decent human being.”

“And Pelletier’s not?”

Breton’s answer was a dismissive grunt.

The twenty-minute mark had come and gone. “What about the victims?” Jacob asked. “Pelletier said they hadn’t been identified.”

Breton didn’t wait for Schott, instead fetching out his go-to word:
“Bullshit.”

“You know who they are?”

“The woman was a maid,” Schott translated. “She worked at the Russian embassy, near the park where the bodies were found.”

The nurse appeared through the curtain, frowning at the clock.
“Excusez-moi, messieurs. Le patient a besoin de repos.”

“Un moment,”
Breton said.

“Désolée, Monsieur Breton, ce n’est pas possible
.
”

“When can we come back?” Jacob asked. “Tonight?”

She shook her head.
“Certainement pas
.
Demain. Midi. Pas avant.”

“Tomorrow noon at the soonest,” Schott said.

“Ma musique,”
Breton said.
“S’il vous plaît.”

The nurse sighed. On the nightstand, behind the wall of get-well cards, sat a cumbersome CD player. She switched it on and hectic acoustic guitar started up. She adjusted the volume down to a level barely audible, pointed to the door.

“Bonne journée, messieurs.”

Back in the hallway, Jacob removed his gloves. He was helping Schott off with his gown when the music coming from inside the room swelled drastically, distorting. He heard the nurse shriek, followed by a pale, crusty laugh.