The Golem of Paris (22 page)

W
hile it was happening, Jacob kept waiting for it to end—waiting for the cry of agony, the eyes rolling back in the head, the muscles locking up. His heart ran fast and rudderless, terror piled on top of arousal, needing her and needing to escape before he shredded another woman’s psyche.

Divya Das was no ordinary woman.

Astride him, her black eyes glistened. She did what she wanted, rolled off, positioned him on top of her as if he was tissue paper, bracketed her legs around him and held him fast and clawed his back and kissed him with force enough to incinerate the breath inside his lungs.

Afterward, she lay back.

He said, “Are you all right?”

She turned on her side, grinning.

Smug, even.

She reached for him again.

On the drive home, the world blared hyperreal.

Divya was one of them.

She was immune.

But was he? He kept leaning forward over the dash to peer up at the darkening sky, expecting retribution.

The unseen fist, streaking down, to send his car tumbling end over end.

Was this how it was going to be, for the rest of his sexual life?

He could only sleep with the members of Special Projects?

Member. Singular. Schott and Subach and the men in the vans, not his type.

His laugh was brittle, forestalling the next wave of anxiety.

Another mile. Nothing happened.

He was now the protagonist of a cheesy ballad.

Send me an angel.

Send me an angel . . . hybrid.

He made it back to his place in record time, parking on a slant and sprinting upstairs, eager for the mock safety of ceiling, walls, and floor.

•   •   •

H
E SHOWERED
, drank till he was right, fixed himself a batch of Paleolithic mac and cheese and ate from the pot, standing by the range. Using his free hand to work the laptop, he burrowed into Zinaida Moskvina’s history.

Opened the bakery in 1998.

Silent partners? Men who wore big vulgar rings?

Naturalized in 1999.

A debt with roots in the old country?

All he could do was wonder. Nothing close to a concrete suspicion.

Her daughter remained her most glaring weakness.

The coke bust was for a small quantity that classified it as personal use, not dealing. It had occurred after her first DUI, before
Katie had established herself as a chemical dependent. She pled out, no time served.

No bankruptcies, no credit issues, no defaults.

The icon for an incoming e-mail popped up, interrupting his train of thought. Thinking it might be from Divya, he opened his inbox.

It was from an ICE agent.

Subject: Query TREMSIN Arkady

Jacob scanned the first line and grabbed his phone.

Divya answered, groggy. “Hello?”

He said, “He was in the country. Tremsin. He entered through LAX customs on a six-month visa, July 11, 2004. The victims were killed the night of December 19, discovered the next morning. His exit stamp was December 22.” He paused. “Hello?”

“I’m here,” she said.

“Okay. So? Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Very,” she said, yawning.

Her lack of enthusiasm irritated him a bit. Then he remembered her overnight shift. “I woke you up, didn’t I.”

“Indeed you did.” She yawned again. “I’m glad for you, Jacob. Well done.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean, everything’s . . . okay.”

“If you want to have a
talk
talk—”

“No need here.”

“Then let’s agree that it was a nice thing that happened and leave it at that.”

“It was,” he said. “Nice.”

“Well, I thought so.”

He laughed softly. “Go back to bed.”

“Aren’t you going to get some sleep yourself?”

He glanced at the clock. Eleven p.m. For the last couple of weeks, he hadn’t gotten more than four or five hours a night. That he didn’t feel tired awakened a dormant fear: in a manic phase, his mother would stay up for days on end.

His laptop sat open. More work to do, threads to pull.

He said, “Stay on the line with me?”

“Hurry,” she said, yawning.

He didn’t bother to brush his teeth. He stepped out of his shoes, out of his clothes, and got into bed. He put the phone on speaker and set it on his chest. “Still there?”

“Barely.”

For a few minutes, they said nothing, sinking into the silence together. Then he said, “Good night, Divya,” and she said, “Good night, Jacob,” and he tapped the screen and rolled over.

•   •   •

I
N HIS DREAM
, the garden has changed.

What was once gold and green has been leached to mud gray, leaves of stone and tendrils of graphite, dead and depthless.

Flitting from a distant corner of his consciousness:

Forever.

The ground trembles and smokes, and he turns, looking for her.
Mai?

You said forever.

He still can’t see her.
Can you come out, please?

You lied.

The air shimmers dangerously.

You need to understand how this is for me
he says.
I’m a human being
.
I’m alone.

When she replies, her voice is full of quiet menace.

What do you know about loneliness?

Mai.
He starts to walk toward the sound of her, but a hellish wave of heat drives him back, and he blinks at the garden, rippling beyond a curtain of invisible flame.

Let’s be reasonable about this
he says.

A wild laugh.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no no no. I’m not going to let you get away with
that
again.

Get away with wh—

You think because you’re good with words you can talk your way out of anything.

I don’t think that.

“I have loved you forever and I will love you forever still.”

Mai. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You think I don’t remember? “I need you to come home to.” Lies.

I never said those things to you
he says.

Yet the text is familiar, a lesson from the womb.

If I did
he says
then I apologize.

No answer.

I’m sorry
he says. Then shouts it
.

But the heat closes in, and amid the stench of broiling hair, blackening flesh, he perceives that he, too, is aflame.

•   •   •

J
ACOB SEIZED
AWAKE
.

His upper lip itched like mad.

Every smoke detector in the apartment was howling.

He charged out of bed and ran toward the bitter clouds billowing from the kitchen.

The leftover mac and cheese, sending up a pillar of smoke.

He threw up a window, wrapped his hand in a towel, dumped the pot in the sink, ran cold water, thermal shock crackling the aluminum.

The upper left burner, cranked to high, screamed with blue flame.

He remembered shutting it off, before heading to bed.

He wasn’t sure, now.

He twisted the knob down.

A cold gust passed over his naked body, and he turned and saw the living room window, cracked an inch.

He was sure: he’d never opened it.

He walked over.

Outside, the streetlight, insects coalescing, an electric dandelion.

He slammed the window down, latched it, yanked the curtains together.

•   •   •

H
E CHECK
ED EVERY INCH
of the apartment, finding nothing else amiss.

Returning to bed, he sat with his damp back against the wall.

He said, “I don’t know if you can hear me. I’ll assume you can.”

Silence.

“I’m not going to call Mallick,” he said. “In case you’re worried about that. I’d never try to hurt you.”

He imagined her reply:
Promises, promises.

“I don’t think you really want to hurt me, either.”

He thought that was true. She could have easily done much worse.

“You need to think about it,” he went on. “What if the batteries in my smoke detector were dead and I never woke up?”

Shivering, he drew the blanket up to his chin.

“I had one decent pot,” he said. “You ruined it.”

Eventually the sun rose, slashing open his bedroom. He started to get dressed, thinking he ought to get on with his day.

The bed began to vibrate.

He bunched with dread.

His phone buzzed its way out from under his blanket.

The screen showed a mass of digits—a foreign number.

Odette Pelletier, having second thoughts?

But it was a man’s voice, barely, that said, “
Allo.
Police?”

“This is Detective Jacob Lev. Who am I talking to?”

A rattle of phlegm. “Capitaine Théo Breton.”

The man began speaking in a hurried whisper.

“Slow down, please. I can’t understand you.”

“Pelletier,” the man said. “She is bullshit.”

“Pe—are you a cop?”

There was a commotion on the other end of the line.

“Hello? Hello.”

A rustling sound came over the phone. Then a rush of incoherent anger, growing louder until Breton managed to croak out a single, hoarse word.

“Tremsin.”

Before Jacob could respond, a woman came on and began reprimanding him in blistering French. The line went dead.

Jacob pulled up the number on caller ID.

“Institut Curie, bonjour.”

“Hello, English?”

“Yes,
monsieur
.”

“I just had a call from you,” he said. “I got disconnected.”

“With whom you were speaking,
monsieur
?”

“Mr. Théo Breton. I’m a colleague of his.”

“Pardon?”

“From the police department.”

“One moment.”

The line rang and rang and rang. He tried several more times before giving up.

Jacob sat on the edge of the unmade bed, thinking.

The smell of smoke was still fresh in his nostrils.

After a few minutes, he fetched down an overnight bag from a high shelf in his closet. He filled it with a variety of clothes, suitable for a variety of tasks. It was December, so he grabbed all three of his sweaters. Then he began looking around for his passport.

•   •   •

T
HE SOONEST FLIGHT
to Paris was a red-eye that evening. He bought the last remaining coach seat and sent an e-mail to Mallick.

Late in the day, packed and ready, he wondered if he had enough time to visit his mother. In the end, he decided not to go. What could he say that didn’t risk harming her?

He phoned Sam instead, bypassing
hello
and getting right to the point.

“Did Ima ever mention the name Arkady Tremsin?”

“I don’t believe so. What is it?”

“Tremsin. Think, Abba. It’s important.”

“I don’t remember that,” Sam said. “I suppose I could ask her when I—”

“Absolutely not,” Jacob said. “Do
not
do that.”

Silence.

“Forget I mentioned it,” Jacob said. “I mean that.”

Sam said, “As you wish.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” Jacob said. He wanted to believe him. “Here’s something you can tell her: I’ll see her soon as I’m back.”

A distressed inhalation. “Back from where.”

“Paris. Not sure how long I’ll be gone.”

“Jacob?” Sam said. “Can I give you
tzedakah
money?”

It was an old custom: giving a traveler charity money to protect him from harm. Sam had made the same offer before Jacob’s trip to Prague.

A lot of good that had done.

Jacob said, “No, thanks.”

•   •   •

W
H
EN THE HONK SOUNDED
from the street, he hefted his carry-on, pausing by the door to address the empty air:

“Try not to burn anything down while I’m gone.”

•   •   •

N
OT A CAB IDLING
by the curb, but a silver Town Car.

Jacob approached, slowly.

The window buzzed down.

Jacob said, “You’re kidding.”

Behind the wheel sat big Paul Schott. He patted the front seat and gave a dour smile.
“Mais oui.”

PRAGUE

OCTOBER 28, 1982

L
ater, Bina will remember the ascent to the synagogue garret in fragments.

Moving through the women’s section, stepping into a wood-paneled room the dimensions of a phone booth, she and Ota Wichs and the boy Peter pressed bodily close, the dampness of her hair against her neck.

A rope dangled from the ceiling. Ota reached for it, pausing to suggest she shut her eyes.

She complied, and a blast of dust filled every crevice in her head. Four hands guided her to the rungs of a ladder, urged her upward into lightless infinity.

Then nothing.

Now she lies on the attic floor, Wich’s shining face bobbing like a lure.

“Breathe,” he says.

Croak of inhalation, tinged with death rattle.

“Now out. Good. In again. Thank you.”

Father and son raise her up to a seated position.

Her surroundings appear in expanding circles of awareness.

A pulsing lantern. A pile of rags.

And beyond, a wondrous vision unfurls: a sunken garden, the hills of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem she remembers, its golden green horizon, dry and verdant.

The olive tree, in full bloom.

She cries out in amazement. Her voice cracks.

But Ota is forcing her to drink from a flask. “You have had a difficult ascent,” he says, and she sputters and swallows the water along with the dust, which mingles in her throat to become mud. She chokes it down, eyes watering.

When she looks again, the city is gone.

The tree, the garden—a bright promise, broken.

She cries out again, in grief.

“A memory, nothing more,” Ota Wichs says, holding her. “You are here, now, Bina Reich.”

She wrenches free and stands unaided, peering into the unending clutter, cobwebs and shadows, rafters ghoulishly looming.

Ota says, “Whenever you’re ready.”

The garret stretches the length of her imagination.

Purpose settles over her like a past life.

She says, “I’m ready.”

•   •   •

T
HEY WALK FOR WHAT
seems like hours, covering an immense distance that does not square with the building’s exterior dimensions. Peter carries the lantern, avoiding obstacles invisible to Bina
until she trips over them. The floor is slick with frost, uneven beneath a sea of junk: listing coatracks, steamer trunks, fossilized shoes, oxidized candlesticks, orphaned eyeglasses.

All that and more, mixed with enough ritual objects to stock ten synagogues; prayer shawls, candles, velvet scraps of Torah covers, wine bottles ringed in sandy purple, books and books and books.

Ota says, “Almost there.”

Squeezing between two wilting stacks of chairs, they arrive into a kind of clearing, a semicircle fanning out from an enormous rectangular object pushed flush to the wall and covered in a canvas sheet.

Arrayed on the floor are the components of a makeshift pottery studio. A low three-legged stool; a wooden handwheel; rags; a leather tool roll; a galvanized bucket filled with water beginning to ice over.

Wrapped in blotchy muslin, a football-sized lump.

Modernity pokes its head up: a portable propane stove.

You’ll get everything you need on site.

Peter Wichs lights the stove from a match and hefts the bucket over the burner.

Bina kneels before the pottery wheel. It’s old, the wood split and warped. When she gives it a spin, it wobbles.

“I don’t know if I can use this.”

“Try,” Ota Wichs says.

“I can’t do anything if the clay won’t stay on the wheel.”

“It will.”

She frowns, shifts to inspect the leather roll. Inside are two dozen tools of varying sizes and shapes. Spearheads, spoolies, fettling knives. Metal parts look new but wooden handles are well-worn, the grain enriched by oil from human skin.

She selects a potter’s rib and her thumb settles perfectly into a notch rubbed smooth, as if she has been using it for years.

Ota says, “Originally they belonged to the wife of the Maharal. They have been passed down from maker to maker. Now they are yours.”

You need to face up to the nature of your gift.

It’s irresponsible not to.

There are things only you can do.

“Her name was Perel,” she says. “Not ‘the wife of the Maharal.’”

Ota gives a shallow bow. “Were she here, I’m sure she would say the same.”

Peter has nearly finished untying the ropes that hold the canvas sheet, standing on tiptoes atop a stack of crates to release the topmost. His father gathers up a corner of the cloth and counts:
“Raz, dva, tři
.
”

They pull.

A giant cloud engulfs them.

When the dust clears, she beholds a massive piece of furniture. It might be an armoire, except for the many holes drilled into its sides. Ota Wichs unlatches the doors, which swing open on wooden hinges. The shelves have holes drilled in them, too, and they are littered with shards of ceramic.

It’s a drying cabinet, used to store pottery before firing.

Back home, she has one of her own, much smaller and made of steel mesh.

Ota reaches in armpit-deep and withdraws a jar about the size of a softball. When he holds it to the lantern light, the clay appears translucent, with subtle gradations of color swirled in, like a sheet of mica.

“It’s fine work,” she says.

“As will yours be.”

“You’ve never seen my work,” she says.

“Your reputation precedes you,” he says.

He tilts the jar, revealing a hairline crack in the lid. “As you can see, it has already begun to deteriorate. Once that happens, we try to replace it as soon as possible. But tell me, please. The clay—is it enough?”

“For one jar? That’s plenty.”

“No, no. More than one. As many as you can.” He scratches at his shaggy head, calculating: “You can work for a few hours tonight. Tomorrow is Shabbat, then four nights next week before your flight leaves . . .”

He tenses. Glances at his son. “I sincerely hope that yours will last longer than the last batch. So if you think you will need more clay, tell me, I will send Peter to the riverbank.”

The boy is toiling silently, wiping down the work area. Bina hates to think of him running through the streets of Prague in the dead of night, lugging a bucket of mud.

“Why don’t we start and see how it goes?”

“Very well.”

She puts her hand out for the jar. “May I?”

Ota hesitates, then places it in her palm.

Her skin tingles. She feels warmth, and a slight pulse, as though the clay is alive.

An overwhelming desire fills her: lift the lid.

She starts to reach for it.

Ota catches her by the wrist, not exactly gently.

“Better not,” he says.

But the clay is singing to her.

She says, “I need to look at the interior if I’m going to be able to copy it.”

He hesitates again. “I will do it, please.”

He takes the jar from her. Gingerly he raises the lid.

Inside the jar, an enormous roach lies belly up. Jet-black, with a great tusk erupting from its head, it reminds her of the
juke
that crawled out of her shower drain so many lifetimes ago.

But bigger. Twice as wide.

Not a roach at all. A beetle.

She ought to recoil, but she finds herself suffused with peace, fascinated by the reflections in its hard underbelly. She wants nothing more than to touch it.

Her hand begins to move through liquid space.

Legs stir.

Ota hurries to clap on the lid, nearly pinching her finger.

“You must never do that,” he says.

She stares at the jar, blinking.

“Bina Reich. Are you hearing me? It must never be allowed to get out. Under no circumstances can it leave this building. Do you understand?”

She nods, thinking vaguely that he got her name wrong again.

“The ones who sent you,” he says. “They didn’t tell you what to expect.”

She shakes her head.

“What did they tell you?”

“Just that I needed to make a piece.”

His laughter devolves into a sigh. “I’ll never understand them. But I suppose they don’t much understand people, either.”

He returns the jar to the cabinet, pushing it as deep as he can, beyond her reach.

•   •   •

S
MALL BUBBLES HAVE BEGUN
to break the surface of the water in the bucket. As Bina sets the clay next to the stove to thaw, Ota
excuses himself: he must return to the park before Hrubý notes his absence. He will come to collect her before dawn.

“Peter will remain behind, to assist you.”

She glances at the boy, a toy soldier, awaiting orders. Truthfully she’d rather work alone, without his hovering over her. But she nods.

Ota bows and departs, his footsteps receding.

She prods the clay. It isn’t getting softer. At this rate, it could take an hour.

“What we need is a pot,” she says.

Peter runs off.

Clanking and shifting.

He returns with a tarnished saucepan.

“That should work,” she says. “Well done. We’re also going to need a color TV.”

He hesitates, then starts to go.

“Wait, wait. I’m kidding.”

He smiles uncertainly.

Bina rests the saucepan atop the now-simmering bucket, creating a double boiler. As the clay warms, it separates, parts of it becoming dry and crumbly, others slimy.

She moves the bucket off the fire; scoops up a handful, and begins kneading it to fuse it back together, wedging it against the floorboards.

“You see what I’m doing?” she says. “This forces air out, and redistributes the water, which is important when you’re dealing with clay that has been frozen. We’ll have to let the piece dry thoroughly. Otherwise you get pockets of steam that expand when the piece is fired. What do you imagine happens then?”

Peter thinks. “It cracks.”

“Exactly,” she says. “Very good. Here—you give it a try.”

He takes some clay from the saucepan, mushes it between his palms, then slams the mass down, repeatedly, with startling ferocity.

“Good,” she says, a bit alarmed by his violence. “You don’t want to overwork it, either. Actually, that looks about right.”

She wets her palms and rolls a ball, assessing the clay’s character. How forgiving it is; how stubborn. As many personalities as man.

“Once I get the wheel going, I need you to make sure it doesn’t stop. And you’re in charge of making sure the water doesn’t freeze, either. But you can’t let it get so hot that it burns me. You’ll have to keep moving it on and off the fire.” She pauses. “I know that’s a lot to concentrate on. Do you think you can handle it?”

Peter nods.

She sets the pliant clay in the middle of the handwheel. “Here we go.”

At speed, the wheel loses its wobble, flattening out in the horizontal plane. Already her arms feel tired. At home she uses a kickwheel, and the cold has tightened her muscles.

She pokes the crown of the clay, forming the beginnings of an interior. Peter keeps the wheel going with methodical strokes, his lips moving as he counts the rhythm. Watching him, she feels the distance to her own family, and she briefly surrenders to longing, blotting wet eyes in the crook of her elbow.

He stops counting, looks at her curiously.

She smiles. “Come on, now. Don’t stop, please.”

He resumes turning the wheel.

Bina rewets her hands. “Do you go to school?”

“Of course.”

“What’s your favorite subject?”

“History.”

“That’s a good one,” she says, wondering which version they teach in Czechoslovakia. “Do you help your father out a lot?”

“I have to.” Peter sits up, dignified. “It will be my job to take care of the synagogue when he dies.”

“I see,” she says. “What about your brothers and sisters?”

He shakes his head. “It must be me.”

“You’re an only child.”

He nods.

“My son is an only child, too,” she says. “Only children are special.”

He shrugs.

She deepens the hollow, forming the sides of the jar. “Your father must be very proud of you. Your mother, too.”

“My mother is dead.”

“The woman I met at the picnic—”

“Pavla is my stepmother,” he says. “My real mother died when I was five.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

He listlessly traces the edge of a floorboard.

“My parents died a few years ago,” she says. “They were older. I was older. But I still miss them.”

Peter nods.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Rachel.”

“That’s a pretty name. An important name. In the Bible, she was the wife of Jacob.”

The boy grins. “You told my father not to call Perel ‘the wife of the Maharal.’”

Bina laughs. Scoots back from the wheel. “Would you like to try?”

“My father wouldn’t like it.”

“Then it’s a good thing he isn’t here.”

Peter smiles. He crawls over.

“Let’s get your hands wet . . . Okay, now, the less you move, the better. The clay will shape itself. Your job is to encourage, not to control.”

She gives the wheel a couple of pushes, guides him into position.

“Like this. See? See how it’s growing?”

He is wide-eyed, delighted and petrified in equal measure.

“You’re doing great . . . Whoops. Okay. Don’t worry. We’ll fix that . . . All right. We’re losing speed. Let me work awhile, then you can try again.”

He keeps the wheel turning, keeps the water temperate. Bina thought that she would need to refer to the old jar, but as she sinks into concentration, her fingers take up a march, the cadence confident, innate. The clay feels wonderful, at once pliable and strong and responsive. She presses herself: Can she make the walls thinner? How thin, before they fold? And the lids—it’s the lids that take the longest. To ensure a perfect fit, she labors over them by hand, scraping, smoothing.

By the time Ota returns, she has completed a pair of jars, setting them on a shelf to dry.

He inspects the results, smiles at her with evident relief.

“I knew you would succeed.”