The Golem of Hollywood

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “I still can’t see why it’s necessary to go all the way there.”

  “This guy wouldn’t talk to me otherwise.”

  “What makes you think he’ll talk to you in person?”

  “He implied as much.”

  “But what if I need to get in touch with you?”

  “Call my cell.”

  “It’s too expensive.”

  “Call collect.”

  “Too expensive for you.”

  “I’m not paying. Give it up, Abba.”

  “I do not approve.”

  “I understand.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going?”

  “What do you think?”

  Sam sighed. He plucked two softcovers from the nearest pile and slid them to Jacob. “I took the liberty of pulling these for you.”

  Jacob picked up a guidebook to Prague. “I didn’t know you’d been.”

  “I haven’t. But where you can’t go, you can read.”

  The guidebook had to be a quarter century old, minimum. Jacob scanned the table of contents and saw a chapter devoted to traveling in Soviet bloc countries, including a subsection titled “Bribes: When and How Much?”

  “I’m not sure this is current.”

  “The important stuff stays the same. Don’t take it if you don’t want. The other one I know you’ll like.”

  Jacob recognized the cover art immediately: the lurching ogre that had sent him fleeing into his mother’s arms. He’d forgotten the title, if he ever knew it.

  Prague: City of Secrets, City of Legends

  Classic Tales from the Jewish Ghetto

  TRANSLATED FROM THE CZECH BY V. GANS

  “Thanks, Abba. Not sure how much pleasure reading I’ll do.” He was thinking of the file from Aaron Flores, arrived that morning, occupying the front pocket of his carry-on.

  “There’s the plane ride.”

  “I was hoping to sleep,” Jacob said. Sam’s evident dismay led him to add, “I’m sure I’ll appreciate it when I’m jet-lagged and up at two in the morning.”

  Sam said, “That was your favorite book, when you were little.”

  Mine, Jacob thought, or yours? He nodded, though.

  “I was thinking about how we used to read together, when you were very small. Most babies, they come out smushed. They barely look human. That wasn’t you. You . . . you had a face, a—a substance, to you. Fully formed, from the womb. I looked at you and I thought I could see the future, read all the days, even the ones that hadn’t been written yet.” He paused. “And I would read to you, and you would listen. I would read the words and you would look up at me, like a wise old man, and you wouldn’t stop looking until I said, ‘The End.’ I must’ve read that book to you five hundred times. You didn’t like to sleep, so I would tie you inside my bathrobe and read to you till the sun came up and we said Shema.”

  He paused again. Cleared his throat. “Those were good mornings.”

  Sam abruptly removed his spectacles and tapped the book twice. “Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it.”

  “Thanks,” Jacob said. He was picturing himself as a grown man, tied inside his father’s robe, pressed to his bony chest. It was both creepy and comforting, as was the revelation that Sam had been reading him the tales since before he could remember. “You want me to bring anything back for you?”

  Sam shook his head. Then: “As long as you’re there, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “Visit the Maharal’s grave. Place a stone for me. Not if you’re too busy, of course.”

  “I’ll find the time.”

  “Thank you. One more thing,” Sam said, reaching into his pocket. He pressed some money into Jacob’s hand. “For tzedakah.”

  It was an old custom: giving a traveler charity money to ensure his safe passage. When one was engaged in a good deed, no harm could befall him, and charity, in particular, preserved one from death.

  Allegedly.

  Jacob ironed out the bills, expecting a couple of dollars, seeing instead two hundreds.

  “Abba. This is way too much.”

  “How often are you in Prague?”

  “I don’t need two hundred. One’s fine.”

  “One for the way there, one for the way back. Remember: you’re my messenger. That’s what protects you. The kindness, not the money.” He reached for Jacob’s neck, pulled him in for a scratchy kiss. “Go in peace.”

  THE BEGINNING OF FOREVER

  Father always said that souls passed from the earth and returned to the garden, to reside for eternity in closeness to the Lord.

  Asham, falling, sees the ground screaming toward her and hears Cain screaming betrayal in her ear and her chief thought is a peaceful one: soon she’ll be with Abel, forever. As her tumbling body picks up speed, and the stones of the tower streak past like clay comets, Cain with a wounded shriek spirals away into oblivion, and it occurs to her that—if what she was told was true—he’ll be there, too, forever.

  She hadn’t considered that part of it.

  She does not have time to decide what she’ll say to him before she dies.

  —

  NOTHING SHE WAS TOLD is true.

  No garden.

  No Abel.

  No Cain, either. That’s a relief.

  She’s right where she landed, standing on the ground.

  All around her is chaos, a terrifying din that drives her to crouch and cover her ears.

  She has no hands to cover them with.

  She has no ears to cover.

  She is not crouching.

  She has no feet.

  She has no legs, either. She’s not actually standing but—

  What?

  She’s existing.

  She tries to cry, has no lungs, no throat, no lips, no tongue, no mouth.

  The chaos is men, hordes of them. They’ve dropped their axes and are running; they pour off the tower, sprinting past her, carrying torches, cloth, jugs of water. Their voices are louder than a pack of beasts and Asham fails and fails to cry.

  A sweet voice: Don’t be frightened.

  Before her stands a woman on fire, beautiful face smoldering with compassion and wrath.

  Asham screams; nothing comes out.

  You’re confused, the woman says. It’s understandable.

  The woman puts out a fiery hand. Here.

  I don’t understand.

  The woman smiles. There. Nicely done.

  Asham has said nothing yet the woman heard her.

  You’re trying too hard, the woman says. You have to let it come naturally.

  What?

  That.

  This?

  Excellent. You’ll get better with practice. The woman smiles. My name is Gabriella.

  Your clothes, Asham says. Your hair.

  I know. It takes me forever to get ready in the morning.

  Asham doesn’t know what to say.

  A joke, Gabriella says.

  Oh. Asham feels calmer, now that she can communicate. She looks around. Where am I?

  Technically, you’re right where you were a moment ago.

  I—I am?

  Yes.

  Where?

  See for yourself?

  How?

  Gabriella says, See.

  For Asham to see requires that she exert herself. Like standing on her head or balancing on one foot. It isn’t a matter of moving her body or her eyes but of projecting her will. Her perspective waddles here and there like a newborn chick, alighting on the smoke rising from the kilns, the outline of the unfinished tower, the mules with their besmirched hindquarters.

  Good, Gabriella says. That’s very good.

  Asham beholds the focal point of the commotion, a stand of collapsed scaffolding
.

  Is that me? My body?

  No. Cain’s.

  How’d he get way over there?

  He hit a beam on the way down.

  Asham winces. Where am I?

  Gabriella smiles sadly. Right there.

  Asham shifts below.

  Beneath her hovering presence, her body lies in pieces.

  Her limbs are split, her bowels strewn, her head obliterated.

  She emits a cry of grief.

  It’s hard, Gabriella says. I know.

  I was so beautiful.

  Yes, you were.

  Why are they there, with him? Why does no one come to care for me?

  He was their leader. You killed him.

  Asham weeps without weeping.

  —

  FOR SEVEN DAYS, Gabriella sings to her.

  As painful as needles to the flesh of the living,

  so is the destruction of the body to the spirit to which it once cleaved.

  It is

  the shattering of a fine vessel;

  the collapse of blown glass;

  the casting off of an anchor;

  the razing of a temple.

  Gabriella stops singing.

  All right, she says. That’s enough of that.

  And she spirits Asham away on a warm western wind, raising her over the world, a shifting patchwork of color. Boastful yellows, living greens, the steady marine of peace.

  What is this? Asham asks.

  Mankind, Gabriella says. Look.

  Where?

  Come with me, Gabriella says, taking her hand.

  Their perspective shrinks.

  In the city that bears his name, Enoch stands before his father’s funeral pyre.

  A gray aura surrounds him.

  Perched at his side, the dog sticks out its tongue, licks his hand.

  Enoch glares at it.

  A priest is chanting the funerary rites.

  The dog again licks Enoch’s fingers.

  Stop it, he says.

  It whimpers. Sticks out its tongue.

  Enoch lashes out, striking it across the muzzle.

  The dog yelps and flees.

  What’s the matter with him? Asham says. Why would he do that?

  He’s angry, Gabriella says. Look.

  They shift again, and Enoch, a young man of fifteen, crowned in gold, sits upon the throne. The gray around him has thickened, a mucoid mass that pulses and oozes and drips. His face is a stone as he listens to the pleas of his advisers. There are not enough men to complete the tower, they tell him. There is not enough money. The treasurer rises to speak and Enoch takes a gray sword from his belt and drives it through the man’s heart, which spurts.

  He always was his father’s son, Gabriella says. What was good in him has been extinguished.

  I didn’t mean for this to happen, Asham says.

  Nobody ever does.

  Please. I don’t want to see any more.

  I’m sorry to have to show this to you. Look.

  Enoch, a young man of twenty-two, rides out of the valley amid a rumbling gray cloud, leading his army to war. They return with a caravan of captives and treasure. The prisoners are brought to the marketplace where once Asham walked with the boy, laughing and eating fruit. Ten of the vanquished are tied to posts, whipped until their skin hangs in strips before being beheaded as examples. Of the rest, the women and children are sold for private use and the men strung together with gray chains and sent to work on the tower, where they all die eventually, their skulls staved in by falling bricks, their chests crushed under timber piles, diseased and hacking up blood.

  Please, Asham moans. Stop it.

  But Gabriella gently insists. It’s the way of this world. Look.

  A vengeful tribe arrives at the valley to make war upon Enoch.

  Blood flows in the gray streets.

  What have I done. What have I done.

  Look.

  Enoch, an old man of forty, encased in a hard gray shell, dies at the hand of his own son, who kills his brothers and ascends to the throne.

  All right, Gabriella says. I think you get the point.

  Aloft, they leap eons. The gray mucus continues to spread. It overflows the valley; it washes across the plains and mountains; between the reds of lust and the golds of joy it fills the gaps, overruns them, hardening like mortar along the borders of nations, its advance mindless and ravenous and inevitable.

  Gabriella says, We begged Him not to allow this. We said, What is man, that You are mindful of him?

  I wanted justice, Asham says.

  And yet you wrought more death.

  In a gray alley of a distant gray city, gray men hold down a woman. Her screams, purple and fungal, catch the attention of a passerby, who watches what is happening for a moment and then walks on, leaving gray footprints.

  Make it stop, Asham says. Please.

  One thing at a time.

  How can you say that? Look what they’re doing to her.

  No, Gabriella says. I mean: I can only do one thing at a time. I’m here with you, so I can’t help her.

  Then go.

  Gabriella shakes her head, trailing flame. It’s not my charter.

  A gray fog cloaks the woman, and she is gone, and silence prevails.

  Call it a question of jurisdiction, Gabriella says. The world was not given to us, but to men.

  She pauses. They’re doing a terrible job, mind you.

  They rise, watching the gray as it smothers the surface of the earth.

  It’s really a mess down there. It’s gotten so bad He’s thinking of starting over.

  I’m a monster, Asham says.

  No. It only seems that way to you, because you see the consequences of your deeds. Go forward. Learn from your mistakes. Turn a negative into a positive. Right? Gabriella puts a burning arm around her, squeezes. That’s where you come in.

  Me?

  Gabriella nods. If you want. I can’t get involved, but you can.

  Anything, Asham says. Anything to make it right.

  You’re sure? If you agree, you will be committed to this pursuit.

  I agree. I’m committed.

  Gabriella opens the ledger. Sign here.

  Asham looks at the book. Its pages are white fire, and for a moment she hesitates.

  What’s wrong? Gabriella asks.

  Nothing. I just—what am I signing?

  Gabriella’s expression grows fearsome. You want to help, don’t you?

  Yes. Yes. Of course.

  Then sign.

  Asham thinks of the gray world and thinks of her ravaged self. What else remains, if not to correct the wrong she has done? She commits herself, and when she looks at the book again, her name has appeared in letters of black fire, tremulous against the white fire of the page.

  Other figures appear on the fringes of her perception, arrayed in ghostly semicircles, their tall forms nodding at her; they come from all directions, borne in on waves of earth and crests of wind, their faces numbered one and two and three and four, reflecting an eternal light. Prominent among them stands the man Michael, who smiles his sad smile and says, You have chosen. You can’t go back.

  The tall figures around him nod. Something in their eyes frightens Asham: their single-minded stares.

  The planet has gone chillingly gray, from one end to the next.

  Asham says, When do I begin?

  It’s not time yet, Gabriella says.

  Asham looks down at the world, up at eternity. Until then? Where do I go? What do I do?

  Gabriella smiles at her. Touches her cheek.

  Sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jacob shuffled off the jetway in Prague having slept two hours of eighteen.
Much of those 120 minutes had been occupied by muddled green dreams: Mai, old tools, his mother babbling manically to his father, his father pretending to understand.

  The endings of every dream identical: butchered women, facing east.

  Bringing up the rear for a zombie-squad of backpackers and businessmen, he advanced down the terminal amid piped-in Lady Gaga, lining up to confront a beagle-faced bureaucrat who scanned and stamped and waved him on into the City of Legends without a second glance.

  Some quick math revealed that the spring breakers sharing his bus to town had been born after the Velvet Revolution. Jacob could therefore excuse their enthusiasm on grounds of naïveté. They had, absurdly, dressed the part of early-nineties pioneers, arrived to prospect among the cultural rubble of the Berlin Wall: carrying rolled copies of The Metamorphosis and sporting vintage Nirvana T-shirts, inherited from uncles who “were there.”

  Feeling ancient, he squinted through scratched plexi at flat polygons of gold and green, periodically relieved by wooded breaks and farmhouses. A quaint countryside diorama that curdled into the present day, one billboard at a time.

  Piebald Communist-era apartment blocks appeared, arrayed without logic, like partygoers milling around after the stereo cuts out. At the outskirts of the city, he noted a lot of construction, much of it halted midway, offering itself up as a canvas for graffiti.

  So far, the only legend he’d seen was the one on the complimentary map he’d swiped at the airport, and its only secret was the location of TGI Fridays.

  The road rose, then dipped into a shallow valley. An uneven mosaic of burnt-orange roofs rimmed a glaucous coil of river, sun-dappled and sluggish.

  The bus lumbered down over a bridge, depositing him at the central station.

  He bought a bottle of mineral water and took a tram schedule; changed his mind and set out on foot, trying to stave off jet lag, his carry-on rumbling over sidewalks patterned from black and white stone and grouted with cigarette butts. It was a glorious bath of an afternoon, mellow and dreamy and warm. High, narrow streets snuck up behind him, jackknifing, warping, fracturing into ghostly echoes the whine of a motor scooter, the disco ringtones of cheap phones.

  There was something disconcerting about foreign signage, and Czech, with its sibilants, its unexpected letter combinations barbed with diacriticals, read like the words of a madman hissing condemnation.