The Golem of Paris

by Jonathan Kellerman

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  PRAGUE RUZYNĚ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

  OCTOBER 25, 1982

  Bina 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.

  • • •

  TO AVOID AN IMMIGRATION 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.

  • • •

  THEY 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 t
o 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.

  • • •

  IT 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.”

  • • •

  THE 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.

  “Excuse, please.”

  Hrubý stands on the path, frowning at her.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I was just . . .”

  She gets up, brushing herself off, laughing self-consciously. “Sorry.”

  Hrubý flips to a new page in his notebook and begins to write.

  Bina hurries to rejoin the group. Not until they have exited the cemetery does she realize she forgot to place the pebble.

  • • •

  THREE DAYS GO BY, three days of sightseeing and workshops, capped by long indulgent evenings in wine bars or beer halls, hashing out meaningless points of aesthetics in order to get to the real goal: determining that night’s couplings.

  And all the while, Bina hovers at the edge.

  They visit the Alt-Neu and stand in the antechamber listening to a pro forma lecture on Gothic architecture. Bina looks at the Maharal’s chair. She looks at the Torah ark. She peers through slots cut into the wall at the shuttered women’s section. She rubs the pews’ soft wood, waiting in vain for the heavens to call to her.

  They visit the site of Theresienstadt concentration camp, where Věra’s family died, where the memorial plaque commemorates 35,000 Czechoslovak citizens without mention of Jews. Bina puts her ear to the wind and hears nothing.

  She sits on a panel discussion about craft and class without opening her mouth.