The Golem of Paris (11 page)

“I’m not learning anything.”

“Nonsense. I’ve seen myself how much you’ve grown.”

Searching for a new subject, she asks what the tree is.

Rav Kalman glances up at the weathered branches. “An olive. A friend of mine who knows such things told me it’s a thousand years old.”

“Can you eat the olives?”

“It doesn’t give fruit. It never has.”

“It might have at one point, if it’s that old.”

“True.”

“Or it might in the future. Don’t lose faith,” she says.

Rav Kalman laughs heartily. “Touché. And what a day that will be.”

He sweeps his hand over the slumbering hills, dotted with orange light. “You’ve arrived at an auspicious moment. For the first time in centuries, we control our holy places. It would be a shame if you left before you had a chance to experience it.”

She hasn’t said a word about leaving. She thinks about it nonstop, though.

Gawd, it’s pathetic, how transparent she is.

He says, “Do you know the story of Rabbi Akiva?”

She shakes her head.

“There lived a man, one of the wealthiest in Jerusalem. His name was Kalba Savuah. I should point out that names are vitally important in our tradition. They reveal a person’s character. Your own name, for example.”

Her mouth twists. The irony is lovely, just lovely:
Bina
means “understanding.”

“‘Kalba Savuah’ means ‘satisfied dog.’ The Sages say that anyone who entered his home ravenous as a dog left satiated. Though, of course, there are other interpretations, not all of them as complimentary.”

Barbara enjoys the wryness in his tone.

“At any rate, Kalba Savuah had a daughter, Rachel, who fell in love with one of his shepherds. Now, this fellow, Akiva, was illiterate, from the lowest class. Yet Rachel looked beneath the layers of ignorance. She saw his soul.”

“A talent for spotting talent,” Barbara says.

Rav Kalman claps his hands delightedly. “Yes. Exactly. It’s a skill we all possess when it comes to the person we love. Akiva and Rachel became secretly betrothed. Think of Rockefeller’s daughter eloping with . . . eh . . .”

“Steve McQueen?”

A belly laugh. “Maybe Steve McQueen’s poorer cousin.”

“What does ‘Akiva’ mean?”

“Good question. It derives from ‘Jacob,’ which itself comes from the word for ‘heel,’ because our forefather was born holding Esau’s heel. Jacob, too, was a shepherd with a difficult father-in-law. And ‘Rachel’—who was both Jacob’s and Akiva’s beloved—means ‘ewe.’ The words, the themes, they repeat, time and again. That’s a fundamental principle. The cycle of history.”

Barbara has friends back home who dabble in Eastern religions. The notion wouldn’t sound weird coming from them. But she’s surprised to hear it from a rabbi.

“When Kalba Savuah found out about the engagement, he threw Rachel out of the house and disowned her. Think of the fortitude required for her to remain by her husband’s side: she went from bathing in golden tubs to selling her own hair for money. Akiva,
naturally, lost his job, but Rachel insisted that he forget about getting another and devote himself to learning Torah. He left and studied for twelve years, beginning with the alphabet and rising to become the greatest sage of his generation.”

“While his wife supported him.”

“Yes.”

“Classy,” Barbara says.

Rav Kalman’s eyes twinkle darkly. “I thought American girls believed in a woman’s right to work . . . In any event, at the end of twelve years, Akiva decided to pay his wife a visit.”

“How generous of him.”

“As he walks up to the door, he overhears a neighbor taunting Rachel, saying her husband has abandoned her. Rachel says, ‘If it were up to me, he’d stay another twelve years.’ So he does. He turns around and goes back. He never steps foot inside the house. Never even says hello. What do you think of that?”

“I think,” she says, “that’s incredibly cruel.”

Rav Kalman nods slowly. “Perhaps it is.”

“I think that Rachel is the real hero of this story.”

“That is without a doubt true. When Rabbi Akiva came home at last, after his second twelve years, he brought his disciples with him, numbering twenty-four thousand. They arrived in his village, and a wrinkled woman came running out to greet him. The students started to push her back. They had no idea it was his wife. Rabbi Akiva said, ‘Let her be. Everything that I know, and everything you know, belongs to her.’”

Silence.

“There’s a happy ending,” Rav Kalman says. “Kalba Savuah apologizes and gives them half his estate.”

“Of course he does,” Barbara says.

Rav Kalman chuckles and twirls his beard. “You’re very cynical, you know that?”

“I guess.”

“It won’t help you here,” he says.

“It doesn’t hurt, either,” she says, but she feels ashamed.

“I don’t pretend that real life is simple,” he says. “That’s why we tell stories.”

The sky hints at dawn.

Rav Kalman says, “Let’s see if we can’t figure out a way to help you get a foothold, eh? In the meantime, you should get out a bit, see the country. Make art. The bottom line is to do whatever it takes to make yourself feel at ease.”

“What if nothing makes me feel at ease?” she says.

He rises, dusts himself off. “Then, my dear, you are human.”

•   •   •

M
ONDAY AFTERNOON
, she sits beneath the tree, creating and destroying a series of shapes. She forms a giant cockroach, squashes it; raises and demolishes a ladder. She hasn’t been to class in four days. She spends her nights in the garden, sleeps through the morning session, skips meals, rising to action only when Frayda comes to warn her that the solar heater is running low; better hurry up if she wants a hot shower.

She has an idea that she will never be this lonely again.

The odd truth: she will miss it.

“Hello?”

A male voice, not Rav Kalman’s.

Barbara sets aside the bird she has been shaping and rises on tiptoes to peer over the retaining wall.

A young man of about twenty-five stands halfway up the slope. For a second Barbara wonders if he’s drunk: he’s tottering, arms out for balance, a book in each hand. Painfully thin, with a long, curious face and a close-cropped beard, he wears a large black knitted yarmulke, pale blue polyester slacks, a short-sleeved white button-down shirt, and cork-soled sandals. He peers at her through dense eyeglasses.

“Bina?”

Without waiting for an answer, he drops to his haunches and scoots downhill toward her, triggering an avalanche of pebbles. “They said you were out here.”

She backs away as he descends the ladder.

“I’m not interrupting you, am I?”

“Who are you?”

“Right,” he says. He hops from the bottom rung. “I’m Sam. Rav Kalman asked me to come. He thought maybe I could show you the ropes.”

She appraises him coolly. “Ropes.”

“With Hebrew, or just in general. Anyhow, sorry for barging in. We don’t have to start—I can come back tomorrow. Or never, it’s really up to you.” His eyes shift. “Wow. That’s incredible. Did you make that?”

Once again he’s moving before she can reply, striding toward her bird.

“Don’t,” she shouts.

Sam goes rigid, his arm outstretched. He’s paler than a moment ago, if such a thing is possible.

Feeling a little bad, she explains that it’s Plasticine, not real clay. “It doesn’t dry hard, so if you don’t handle it carefully—”

She makes a squelching noise.

“Got it,” Sam says. He cranes over, studying the bird through those thick, distorting lenses. “What is it?”

“Uhm. A bird.”

“Right,” he says. “But what
kind
?”

She’s at a loss there. Her models are the tiny creatures who visit the olive tree, delicate brown and orange bodies that flit through the leaves.

“It looks like a finch,” he says.

“Are you a bird person?”

“Not in the slightest,” he says.

“Then how can you know what it is?”

“I don’t.” He grins. “That’s the first thing you learn in rabbinical school: how to pass judgment with complete confidence, especially when you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Anyway . . . Marvelous.”

Barbara bites her lip.

“Right,” Sam says. “Like I said, I’m here to help if you want.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“Not the first person to tell me that,” he says, sitting cross-legged in the dirt.

After a moment, she joins him, waiting for him to open the books.

Instead he smiles at her. “How about we start like this?
Shalom
, Bina.”

She rolls her eyes.
“Shalom.”

“Toda raba,”
he says.

“You’re welcome.”

“
Ma shlomech?
”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Right on,” Sam says. “Now you try.”

She thinks a moment.
“Slicha,”
she says, leaning over to shove him playfully.

Sam falls back on his hands, gaping at her, and in an instant her pleasure curdles. Frayda has warned her about avoiding physical contact with religious men. Barbara forgot; she was just beginning to feel comfortable in Sam’s presence, she wanted to impress him with her Israeli street savvy.

She starts to stand. “I’m so sorry.”

“No no no no,” Sam says. His hand on her arm, gentle but insistent. “Really.”

His glasses have slid to the end of his nose.

She must have pushed him harder than she thought.

She is half up, half down.

“Please don’t go,” he says. “Please stay.”

Barbara chooses down.

“Thanks,” he says. “I appreciate your tolerance. But: question? What did you mean by that, ‘
slicha
’?”

“That’s what people say on the bus when they knock you out of the way
.
”

Sam explodes in laughter.

“What?” she says.

“Slicha,”
he says, “means ‘excuse me.’”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh my God,” she says, starting to laugh, too. “I thought it meant ‘push.’”

“Welcome to Israel,” he says.

They laugh and laugh, and she watches it leaving her, the loneliness that has become her companion, she watches it spread its wings and rise, good-bye, good-bye, you’ve been a good friend; a second
self, undiscovered, rising to fill the void; and she finds herself forming her own question, almost unconsciously.

“Sam what?” she asks.

“Lev.”

“That means ‘heart.’”

“There you go,” he says. He smiles. “You know more than you think.”

M
arquessa Duvall’s former modeling agency occupied a suite in a mid-rise on Wilshire and Gale, a few blocks west of the Beverly Hills city limits. Scanning the lobby directory, Jacob counted no fewer than three plastic surgeons, which had to be extremely convenient for the models.

He rode up and badged the receptionist, an unimpressed, emaciated redhead sucking Diet Coke through a straw. “And this is about?”

“I’ve left several messages.”

She told him to feel free to have a seat.

Beside the agency logo, a flat-screen scrolled through glamour shots and magazine covers of the female clientele. The sole recurring male presence was a tan, handsome man with a three-day beard, posing with celebrities: courtside with Jack, bro-hugging Kanye. He had one or more women on his arm at all times.

The receptionist hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. Jacob walked back to her desk and waited for an image of the tan man to cycle up. “Who’s that?”

“Uhhhh. That’s
Alon
.”

“The boss?”

“Uh,
yeah
.”

“Tell him I want to talk to him, please.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“When will he be free?”

“It’s tough to say.”

“Now, when you say that,” Jacob said, “do you mean it’s literally tough for you to say? As in, he’ll be free at six, but you have a speech impediment—a lisp, say—and pronouncing ‘six’ is difficult for you? Or maybe you don’t actually know. In which case, it’s not tough to say. It’s impossible to say. Right?”

She stared at him.

“Or—I’m thinking out loud here—maybe you have the capacity to tell me, but you’re not
supposed
to tell me, so in that sense it’s tough for you, because while it’s physically possible for you to articulate that information, it entails overcoming a certain amount of apprehension.”

He smiled. “Which one is it?”

She said, “It’s tough to say.”

“Okay,” he said, and strode past the desk.

“Excuse me. Excuse me.
Sir.
”

He walked directly to a door at the end of the hall, which—while standing at the desk—he had pegged as the leading candidate for the biggest office, with the best view.

Alon Artzi

Jacob did him the courtesy of knocking once.

Handsome and tan, Alon Artzi stood beside an expansive glass desk, his jeans down around his ankles, getting head from another,
equally handsome man. For one spellbinding instant they both sort of levitated, leaving the carpet before settling into decidedly more prosaic and awkward postures: Artzi rocking back on his bare ass on the bare glass, his fellator springing backward into a minimalist floor lamp, entangling himself in the cord that yanked out of the wall with an audible crackle of voltage.

“Shit,” the receptionist was saying. “Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit—”

Jacob said, “Bad time?”

Artzi had managed to plant his feet and was hopping around, trying to get his pants on, bellowing in a thick Israeli accent.

“Am-
berr
, what the
fuck
.”

“I’m so so so sorry, I told him to wait, he just came like running in.”

“Call to the security. Go.
Go.
”

The receptionist hustled out, the second man close behind.

Artzi zipped up his fly and assumed a martial arts posture. “Fuck you, you shitfuck, who the fuck are you think you are?”

Jacob showed his badge.
“Mishtara,”
he said.

Artzi sagged, rubbed one scruffy cheek. He pushed the intercom button.

“They’re on their way,” the receptionist’s voice said.

“Call them back,” Artzi said. “Never mind.”

•   •   •

A
FULLY CLOTHED
A
LON
A
RTZI
glanced at the blowup of Marquessa Duvall’s DMV photo. “Of course I know her. The police come to interview me.”

“There’s no record of it in the file,” Jacob said.

“This is not my problem.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I say it’s sad.” Artzi turned the photo facedown on the desk and leaned back in his Herman Miller chair. “But I don’t know nothing.”

“Who did she work with?”

“Lot of people. She was very beautiful girl.”

“What type of gigs did you get her?”

“All type. Photo shoot, magazine, parties, everything.”

“Anyone who stands out? Repeat customers?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Can I get copies of her contracts?”

“There is nothing you can learn from this. What can you learn? Tell me.”

Jacob mentioned the limousine that had come to pick Marquessa up.

“One week,” Artzi said, “you know how many limousines I am going in?”

“I’m not saying it was you,” Jacob said, although it then occurred to him that he hadn’t bothered to evaluate Artzi himself as a suspect. “Somebody out there liked her.”

“Yes, okay, so what?”

“And maybe she didn’t like him back.”

“This is the world,” Artzi said.

“You must’ve been asked to make arrangements.”

Artzi feigned incomprehension.

“Sex,” Jacob said.

Artzi scoffed. “I am running a talent agency, not . . . eh. How you say?
Beit zonot.
”

“You expect me to believe that not one of your customers has ever tried to put a move on a girl?”

“My customers, if you knowed who they are, they’re not need to beg. They get anything they like. There is girl who says no? Okay, fine,
b’seder
, they take different girl.”

“It’s the things people can’t get that they want the most,” Jacob said.

Artzi smiled. “Yes, okay. But still I don’t know nothing.”

From the file, Jacob took a picture of TJ and set it on the desk. “Her son. He was murdered with her.”

He watched the tan bleed from Artzi’s face.

“You didn’t know she had a son.”

Artzi shook his head.

“He was five. His name was TJ.”

A picture window showed a gull-gray sky, tatty clouds migrating across the glassy surface of the Flynt Publications tower, an umber oval outthrust like a disembodied thigh. Traffic throttled the streets. For some reason, Jacob found the view sad, and his thoughts slid toward his mother.

He’d forgotten to pick up challah and wine. The kosher markets closed early on Fridays; he’d have to scrounge.

“Why someone does this?” Artzi asked.

Jacob shook his head.

“The other cops, they didn’t say nothing about this boy.” Artzi turned TJ’s photo facedown, as well. “I am tell you the truth. She work for many, many people.”

“Let’s focus on six months before she died. I need your records from then.”

“I don’t have them here. They go to storage.”

“How soon can you get them out?”

“I don’t know, I’m busy.”

“Send your secretary. She’s not.”

Artzi slid both photos right up to the edge of the desk, getting them as far away as possible. “I try, okay? Now, please.”

Jacob thanked him. He put the photos away and headed for the door.

“Hey, but—where you’re learn to speak Hebrew?”

Jacob shrugged. “Where’d you learn to speak English?”

“The movies,” Artzi said.

•   •   •

E
N ROUTE TO TH
E
CARE
FACILITY
, he stopped to pick up a bag of onion rolls and a bottle of Welch’s, the closest substitute for traditional Shabbat fare that the Alhambra Vons had to offer. As he stepped into the lobby, Rosario intercepted him.

“We need to talk.”

She led him to an unoccupied office, locked the door.

“Your mother was talking in her sleep. I recorded it.”

She took out her phone, hesitated. “It’s not easy to listen to.”

Jacob made an impatient noise. She pressed
PLAY
.

The file began abruptly—in the middle of a shriek that tightened Jacob’s scalp.

The sound died, replaced by faint moaning and recording hiss.

“I heard her from the hall,” Rosario said. “I went in to check on her.”

New sounds: footsteps, an unoiled doorknob; the moans growing louder and more distinct, his mother’s voice, ropy with dread, evolving into a chant, low and frantic.

“What’s she saying?” Rosario asked.

Jacob shook his head. It sounded like
Michael
, or
Micah.

He could hear the bed’s steel feet stamping, limbs whipping against sheets.

A second voice joined the mix: Bina’s roommate, yelling at her to shut up
.
And then Rosario’s soothing contralto, close to the microphone.

It’s okay, Mrs. Abelson.

At first Jacob thought she was comforting the roommate. Then he remembered that was the name the staff knew Bina by. Another piece of his father’s deceit.

Be quiet, you stupid bat.

Go back to bed, please, Mrs. Delaney.

Tell her to be quiet.

Micah
Bina moaned.

Shutupshutupshutup.

Mrs. Delaney, please.

She woke me up.

I know she did, but—

Micah.

I can’t sleep with her squawking like that.

I—one
second
, please. Mrs. Abelson. Listen to me. You’re okay. Shh. Shh.

Micah. Micah. Micah. Micah.

Shh. Shh . . .

A final shriek, the speaker distorting and crackling, and then the sound cut off.

Jacob was bent over, palms pressed to thighs, sweat-soaked from the waist up.

“I’m sorry,” Rosario said. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”

“. . . no. I needed to hear it.”

She nodded doubtfully.

“Does anyone else know? Besides Mrs. Delaney.”

“No. I didn’t tell the MD.”

“Good. Let’s leave it like that for now, okay?”

Rosario nodded. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve. “I couldn’t help her.”

He managed to find a smile for her. “You did what you could.”

•   •   •

O
UTSIDE
, Bina was on her bench, her dinner tray clean. Jacob sat beside her.

“Ready?”

Same ritual. It felt more futile than usual, which was saying something: he sang in a low voice, raced through the blessings, watched her pick at the onion rolls.

He refilled her cup with grape juice. “I understand you’ve been having some trouble sleeping.”

Bina slurped, reached for the roll.

“Ima? Who’s Micah?”

The roll stopped moving, hovered a few inches from her lips.

“You said it in your sleep. ‘Micah.’ Is that someone you know? Who is he?”

Bina’s lips pursed in and out and in and out.

“Does he have something to do with the bird you made?”

Her nostrils flared. Would he kill her if he didn’t stop? In a sense, she was already dead. He wouldn’t be a murderer; he’d be a reviver. Like a last-chance emergency surgeon. Win some, lose some.

Or he was simply a bastard.

Bina’s head turned, her eyes crossing as she stared at the roll in front of her face.

She crammed it into her mouth.

“Ima,” he said.

Her cheeks bulged, crumbs spilled down her sweater. Her chewing was almost comically loud, her face purpling, the vein in her forehead beginning to writhe. She had turned to stare straight at him, her expression ripe with purpose, and he could hear her banging at the walls of her mind, demanding his attention through the luminous, vibrating air. Her ferocity terrified him and he groped for the water bottle.

“You’re going to choke,” he said, uncapping it and raising it to her lips.

She swatted the bottle from his hands, sending it skipping across the concrete.

With a sickening grunt, she swallowed.

Stared at him.

Waiting.

He said, “Take it easy—”

She snatched up the second roll and tore into it like an animal.

The vein stood out like scar tissue. The muscles in her jaw swelled and hardened, determination and pain in every bite.

“Ima—”

A wet gag trickled out of her.

She began clawing at her throat.

“Shit,” he said. “Oh,
shit
.”

He ran behind her, fought to get his arms around her midsection. Her head lolled, and she stared up at him, never losing eye contact even as drool streamed from her mouth and over her chin and down her neck.

He shouted for help, and a pair of nurses burst from the dayroom.

“She’s choking,” he yelled.

They were all over Bina in an instant, wrestling her upright. But
she pried herself free and lunged forward off the bench, stumbling to the center of the patio, where she turned and faced them, bending at the waist like a ham actor and bearing down. From ten feet away, Jacob heard a series of moist pops, the cartilage in her throat buckling and unfolding, moving the huge mass of dough down, like she was giving birth in reverse.

She stood up, sucking air. Looked Jacob in the eye.

Opened her mouth.

Stuck out her tongue.

She’d swallowed.

One of the nurses said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“She doesn’t talk,” the other nurse said.

“Are you okay? Nod if you’re okay.”

Bina could breathe, that much was clear; she was heaving, eyes pegged to Jacob.

“She bit off more than she could chew,” the second nurse said, giggling tensely.

Jacob took a step forward. “I don’t understand, Ima.”

The first nurse said, “We’re going to need to write this up.”

Rosario came hustling out. “What’s going on?”

“She’s fine,” the second nurse said. “She got it down.”

“Jacob?” Rosario asked.

The first nurse said, “I need to go write it up.”

Jacob said, “Can I have a minute alone with my mother, please?”

Rosario frowned.

He faced her. “One minute. Please.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, come on, let’s go,” Rosario said, and she ushered the other two nurses inside, leaving Jacob and Bina standing together.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Please help me.”

She was swallowing saliva, head craning forward and retracting, like a pigeon.

“Do you still have something stuck?”