However, it did so happen that there once was a gentile man, a tanner of leather, who employed a certain Jewish maid, an orphan, a girl of great beauty, and also very pious and chaste, which qualities the tanner did not fail to notice. Day by day he observed her kindness and modesty, and soon he came to love the maid, and to desire her for his wife.
But when he professed this wish to her, the maid refused, citing the laws of her fathers, and although the tanner continued to petition her with amorous declarations, she continued to spurn him, her obstinacy serving to inflame his wrath, until at last there came a day when, catching her unawares, he sought to take her by force.
Valiantly the maid fought to free herself by any means necessary, and this she did, seizing upon a pair of heavy iron shears, made to cut animal hide, and blinding the tanner in one eye, so that he cried out and released her, and she fled.
The tanner’s convalescence lasted many weeks, but more painful than the healing of his wounds was the humiliation boiling inside him. Thus he schemed to enact a wicked revenge. He charged the local priest to investigate the disappearance of a Christian child, a boy, also an orphan, and said further that he had seen this boy in the company of a certain Jewish man, named Schemayah Hillel, who was in plain fact the aforementioned maid’s uncle.
Accompanied by the royal guard, the priest arrived at Schemayah Hillel’s house and demanded admittance on the grounds that a crime had taken place therein. And Schemayah Hillel, knowing himself to be innocent of any crime, permitted the priest to enter. This proved a grave error, for the tanner had some days earlier stolen into the courtyard behind Schemayah Hillel’s home and placed the murdered body of the boy, killed at his own hand, beneath a pile of burlap sacks.
Upon discovery of the corpse, the priest charged Schemayah Hillel with having taken the boy’s life for the purpose of extracting blood for the Passover ritual.
Now, it was clear to all that Schemayah Hillel was a respected elder, not to mention feeble-bodied and therefore incapable of committing such a foul deed. Nevertheless, he was hanged in the street, and as ever men hate and fear what is different from them, many innocent souls, women and children alike, perished at the hands of the mob. And the distraught maid, seeing the misfortune that had come about, stood on the edge of the Charles Bridge and, filling her apron with stones, cast herself down into the waters of the Vltava to be drowned.
In those days, the holy and revered Rabbi Judah son of Bezalel, sometimes called MaHaRaL by his initials, presided over the community. After meditating upon these matters for thirty days, he summoned two of his most trustworthy disciples to the banks of the river. There they gathered mud and clay and, moving quickly in the dead of night, they ascended to the garret of the Old-New Synagogue.
In accordance with his Heavenly vision, Rabbi Judah instructed his disciples to fashion the clay into the shape of a man of towering height. Then, placing a piece of parchment containing sacred names of God in the creature’s mouth, he inscribed a mark in its forehead, letters to form the word EMETH (truth), from which the world is built.
Seventy times seven they circled the creature, reciting incantations that caused the creature’s body to glow red-hot with life. At the third hour of morning, when the Holy One roars like a lion, Rabbi Judah spoke and said, “Arise!” And at once the creature sprang up, landing on his feet with a mighty crash. The disciples swooned with fear, but Rabbi Judah came forward and spoke to the giant in a powerful voice.
“You shall be called Joseph. You shall do as I command, just as I command it, and you will never disobey me, for I have created you to serve.”
The disciples saw that Joseph had comprehended the Rabbi’s words, for he nodded. However, he did not answer, lacking the power of speech, which is not man’s to give.
They dressed him in simple peasant’s clothes, and Rabbi Judah set him to work in the synagogue as a sexton, explaining to anyone who questioned the giant’s sudden appearance that the man was a mute, found wandering in the streets, unable to pronounce his own name.
To discourage inquiries, the Rabbi established for him a bed in the corner of his very own home. This bed was never used, though, for every night, Joseph would leave the Rabbi’s home and walk the ghetto, protecting its inhabitants and driving out evil.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Loud pounding dissolved the gold-green of Jacob’s dream, bringing his cheap room to the fore.
He sat up, the splayed paperback sliding from his stomach as he knuckled the crust from his eye. His phone, charging on the bureau, said 6:08 a.m.
“Come back later, please,” he yelled.
But the knocker kept knocking, and Jacob angrily pulled on jeans and a shirt. He put on the chain and squinted out at a man with a shaved head and a lean but soft body. Early twenties, at most. Red-eyed, wheezy, he wore shin-length denim shorts and a brown DKNY shirt. His thin goatee looked like mascara, and as he twiddled it, Jacob half expected it to smear.
“Can I help you?”
“Jacob,” the man said.
“Yeah?”
“I am Jan.”
The mismatch between Jacob’s mental image and the man-boy before him spurred rapid revisions. Screaming kids became kid brothers. Smoker’s hack became asthma.
“Can I come in, please?”
“ID first.”
Jan grimaced. “You also, please.”
They traded cards through the gap, each of them pretending to verify the other.
“All right.” Jacob undid the chain, and Jan sidled inside, taking stock of the room before settling on the edge of the chair.
“I waited for you for two hours,” Jacob said.
“I apologize.”
“What happened?”
“I wanted to see you.”
Jacob held out his arms. “Happy?”
“Yes, okay.”
“Look, forget it. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
But Jan had fixed on the manila envelope nosing from Jacob’s bag. “Your photos?”
Jacob nodded.
“Can I see, please?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Jacob watched Jan’s fingers struggle with the clasp, watched the evolution of understanding in his face: horror to disbelief to resignation.
“Look familiar?”
Jan nodded.
“The neck.”
“The neck, and the vomit.”
“The arrangement? The Hebrew?”
“It’s the same.”
“You never found a body.”
Jan said, “I am not supposed to discuss this with anyone.”
“Why not?”
Jan did not answer.
“Who said you couldn’t discuss it?”
Jan said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Jan shook his head.
“What’s that mean, you don’t know.”
“I never saw them before.”
“Who’s they? Your boss?”
“Him also.”
“Did he say why?”
“This was like a very unusual occurrence.”
“I’m sure.”
“No,” Jan said, regaining some spine, “you don’t understand what I’m saying to you. In Czech Republic we don’t have murders. We have, okay, people get drunk, they fight, sometimes there can be like a bad accident. But this? Never. My boss, he said, ‘Jan, this could cause very big problems. People will feel scared.’”
“He told you to bury it? A homicide?”
“Not to bury. To be quiet.”
“But some other guys came to talk to you, too.”
Jan hesitated, then nodded.
“Before your boss spoke to you, or after?”
“After. I went to United States, and when I came back men were at the airport.”
“They were tall,” Jacob said.
Jan started.
“Like, really tall.”
Jan stared, egg-eyed.
“They claimed to be from some department you’d never heard of. Friendly enough, but there was something weird about them, and they made you promise you’d never discuss what you’d seen, or else you’d be transferred out, or some other bullshit.”
Jan said, “I can lose my job.”
“That’s what they told you?”
Jan nodded.
“The same guys came to see me,” Jacob said. “They didn’t threaten me. The opposite: they claimed to be helping me. But actually, they’ve been cockblocking me left and right. Then when I said I wanted to come here, they approved, so I don’t know what the hell’s going on. Maybe they’re happy to get me out of town. The whole thing’s weirder than shit.”
A silence.
“What is ‘cockblocking’?” Jan asked.
Jacob broke up laughing, and for the first time, Jan grinned, and then they were two cops laughing together, bound by resentment of superiors.
“In this—in this context, uh—like, stalling. Like, they’re blocking my, uh. Cock.” Jacob pointed.
“Yes, okay. I like this word. I, also, am cockblocked.”
Jacob said, “That’s why you wanted to see me. To see how tall I was.”
Jan nodded.
“You were at the bar last night.”
“My sister.”
Jacob smiled. “Tatjana.”
“This is what she told you? Her name is Lenka.”
“Well, whatever. She found me.”
“She said, ‘Jan, don’t worry, he is like a nice guy, he bought for me a beer.’ She wants to be a policewoman, too. I told her it’s not a good job for her. I said, ‘You are young, be happy.’”
“Says you. What are you, twelve?”
“Twenty-six.”
“How in the hell are you a lieutenant?”
“After the Revolution . . .” Jan whistled and made a wiping motion. “We begin again.” He sighed. It turned to a cough.
“Lenka,” he said. “Lenka, Lenka.”
He slapped his thighs. Stood up.
“Okay, let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Dlouhá veered southward to Old Town Square, silent but for the purr of pigeons foraging between the legs of café tables.
Jan laid a hand on a park bench, one of many ringing a sprawling bronze monument.
“The girl was here,” he said. “She was crying, like very upset. She says there is a man, he tried to rape me outside the synagogue. The patrolman calls for the ambulance to take her to hospital, then he goes to look for the man. Follow me, please.”
They walked over damp cobblestones and onto , toward Josefov.
Jacob should’ve known better than to trust his father’s guidebook. The former Jewish quarter was no longer run-down, but leafy and posh. Designer clothing draped mannequins posed behind boutique windows. A man in a chef’s jacket emerged from a basement door to tip a bucket of sudsy water into the gutter.
Jan said, “The policie cannot investigate murder, they must call us. Usually there are several detectives, crime technics. But when I came, I didn’t find this, only one patrolman. Very soon a technic I don’t know arrived to collect the remains.”
“Was he tall, too?”
Jan had to think. “. . . yes. I didn’t pay attention to this. I was not investigating him, I was investigating the scene. This is what you experienced?”
“Basically.”
“The technic was making me crazy, because I wanted to look carefully, and he says, ‘Hurry, please, we must go quickly.’ I thought he wants to clean up before the tourists arrived.”
He paused his account to snap a picture of a metallic gold Ferrari with Russian plates.
“Lenka wouldn’t approve,” Jacob said.
“She is too angry. I told her, this time is over.”
“Not for her.”
“This is because she was not there. I told her, you can’t be angry, you need to be practical. It’s the same with the police. These guys who were working for—do you know what is ehs-teh-beh?”
Jacob shook his head.
“Státní . Czechoslovak secret police. Most of them, they left after the Revolution. Some were very bad guys, okay, it’s true. But some of them, we said, ‘Stay,’ because they have experience, knowledge.”
“You don’t find that uncomfortable? Working with them?”
Jan shrugged. “The policeman, he’s the hand of the law. Before, our laws were bad, so . . .” He mimed slapping a face. “Now, we have good laws. So it’s okay. Okay, we are here.”
Jacob recognized the shape of the Alt-Neu Shul from the grainy black-and-white guidebook photograph. In real life, it was waist down the color of parchment, its upper half layered in brown, scabby brick, as though the orange roof tiles had bled downhill and clotted. Ten steps led to a cobbled area inset with a central drain, given onto by an embossed metal door.
Trash cans were stacked nearby: this was the service entrance. A cloudy stained-glass rosette cut into the building’s exterior wall revealed its considerable thickness.
A stack of metal rungs rose to a smaller wooden door, three stories up.
Weighty with soot, sunken into the earth, the entire structure seemed nevertheless to hover, its contours uncertain.
Jan paused halfway down the steps. “You are coming?”
“Yeah,” Jacob said. He followed. “Yeah.”
—
“THE HEAD WAS HERE.” Jan was crouched near the drain, indicating with his finger.
He pointed two feet to the left. “There, the vomit.”
Standing, he arched his back and coughed. “This was like difficult for me to understand. There is no blood, so it must be they washed it to the drain. But the head and the vomit they left.”
“Same thing with me. I figured the murder took place somewhere else.”
Jan shook his head. “The girl, when she goes, the man is standing here. The patrolman comes, the body is here. The killer takes him away, cuts his head, and brings it back? This is not logical. There is not enough time. Where can he do this? I search the neighborhood. There is no blood. There is no weapon. Nobody hears nothing. Nobody sees nothing.”
Despite himself, Jacob felt his own theories starting to slip. He had come seeking the certainty of common ground. “We’re in the middle of the city. No witnesses?”
“At that time, it is quiet.” Jan pointed across , to the luxe apartments set over a brasserie. “These flats, the bedrooms are away from the street. The jewelry store has a camera, but the angle is not right. Here, it’s like invisible.”
Jacob’s gaze traveled up to the small wooden door.
. . . moving quickly in the dead of night, they ascended to the garret . . .
Jan said, “It was open.”
“That door?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, Jacob’s field of vision pinched. When the world returned, Jan was staring at him, brows knit. “Jacob? You are okay?”
“Fine.” Jacob swallowed, smiled. “Jet lag.”
He turned to study the undersized door. At that height, it appeared to serve no purpose, as though a child had gotten hold of the blueprint and scribbled it in, builders following the instructions unthinkingly before anyone noticed the absurdity.
“Any idea how it got open?”
“The man in charge of security for the synagogue said a wind.”
“Was it windy that night?”
Jan shook his head: I don’t know.
Distantly, unwillingly, the city stirred: arthritic trams, gaseous hiss of street sweepers.
“Tell me about the girl. What brought her here?”
“She works in the synagogue, cleaning at night. She is standing here, there is a noise behind. She turns and sees a man with a knife. He grabs her, she is fighting, boom, he lets her go, and she runs away.”
“Did she see what happened to him?”
“She was scared, she’s not staying there to wait.”
“She could positively ID the head as the same guy who jumped her, though.”
“I came to hospital to show her a picture. She started to scream again.”
“I assume that she denied having anything to do with killing him.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you believe her.”
“She was not strong enough to do this.”
“She was strong enough to fight him off.”
“Yes, okay, but this is not the same. She had no blood on her clothes.”
“She could have changed.”
“I’m telling you, it is not possible.”
“The reason I ask, it was a woman who called in my case.”
Jan raised his eyebrows.
Jacob got out his phone, and together they listened to the audio file. It disturbed him to realize that he was still hearing the voice as Mai’s. He thought he’d worked through that possibility, and dismissed it.
If Jan noticed anything amiss with the woman’s words, he didn’t mention it.
“This cannot be the same person,” he said. “She was Czech girl.”
Jacob believed him—believed that he believed it, at any rate.
On the sidewalk above, a man with a briefcase hurried past, barking into his headset, paying the detectives no heed.
“Where’d you find the Hebrew?” Jacob asked.
Jan pointed out a blank cobblestone, less foot-worn than those around it. “When I came back from United States, it was replaced.”
“What happened to the original?”
“The case was not mine, so I was not able to ask questions.”
“Do you have a picture of it?”
“On my computer. I can send it to you.”
“Thanks.”
Jan said, “The man in charge of security for the synagogue, I showed him this word. It means, ‘Justice.’ This made me think of the girl’s boyfriend or brother or father. But she has no boyfriend or brother or father. She has a sister. It cannot make sense. The killer, where did he come from? I look for footprints, for fingerprints. There is nothing. It’s like a bird came down, shhhhp.”
The Golem of Hollywood Page 25
