So was the man with the dead infant.
Down Ziegengasse, across the Grosse Ring, riverbound.
Someone else wishing to dispose of a dirty secret?
The bundle is the right size to hide a child’s corpse.
Or, more charitably, a loaf of bread—a householder getting a jump on cleaning out the pantry for Passover.
In the dead of night?
A northward turn at double-wide Rabinergasse forces her to hang back. Thirty seconds later she steps out, and the figure has vanished.
Bootprints dwindle in the pounding rain. They arc toward the Alt-Neu and culminate in a series of muddy smears on the stone: feet wiped before entry.
The door to the synagogue remains closed, no violence done to it, although she supposes any competent thief could make short work of it. Before she arrived, vandalism was a perpetual plague. Torah scrolls shredded, ritual objects looted or destroyed.
She tries the handle.
The door swings open, unlocked.
Only Rebbe and the sexton have a key, and they are both in bed, or ought to be. Perhaps Rebbe has come seeking an hour or two alone? No. The figure she saw was too short. Besides, he wouldn’t disregard his own edict. He leads by example.
She shakes the rain off her cloak and steps inside.
In the sanctuary proper, Wichs has pursued his duties with especial vigor, not a tassel astray. The holiday of Passover, Rebbe says, stands for cleansing and rebirth. Every craftsman in the ghetto has come through in recent days, sawing and sanding and polishing. The Ark has been inspected for mouse holes, its curtain laundered free of smoke. Perel took it upon herself to re-embroider the fraying bimah cover, adding a personal touch, decorative floral motifs.
There’s another aspect to Passover. It is also the time of year when those who hate the Jews come seeking revenge for imaginary crimes.
She stands, listening to the storm beat down.
The stone walls smolder with the light of the Eternal Flame, filled to burn all night.
Then: a gray throb bulges through the viewing portals to the women’s section.
It sickens and excites her.
She knows that color.
She squats down to look through the portals. The light is coming from the far eastern end of the room, radiating through the crack beneath a wooden door. She feels slightly foolish to realize that she has never noticed that door and does not know where it leads. Although she attends services three times a day—standing with inert lips, her arms and head wrapped in specially made tefillin, the work of Yosie the Scribe, who complained to Rebbe that he would need a whole calfskin to make them—she’s never been inside the women’s section.
Why would she? She’s a man. She belongs with the other men.
If they knew who she really was—
There’s a sound, too, a distant grinding drone, punctuated by a chunk, like a lame wagon.
Its rhythm matches the pulse of the light.
—
SHE LEAVES THE SANCTUARY and rounds the corridor, entering the women’s section and pausing to watch the light. Each peak shines brighter than its predecessor, each trough correspondingly vacant. She can see now that it possesses its own unique shade, more silver than gray, cool and annihilating and beautiful.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
She can’t remember the last time she felt afraid.
It’s strangely satisfying.
She crosses to the unknown door and pulls it open.
Silver swells out, clinging to her like wet wool.
An antechamber, no bigger than four cubits on a side and swirling with dust. It is half her size and yet it yawns to admit her, and she places her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder that stretches up through a hole in the ceiling.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
She lays partial weight on the rung, expecting it to splinter. It holds, as does the next, and she commences to climb, covering the distance to the top in three reaches.
She surfaces through a trapdoor into a sloped room awash in silver light: a human figure, bent over with busy hands, barely visible at the center of a raging gray inferno, burning cold and glossy and charging the air so that it snaps and seethes.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
The rhythm stokes her desire to kill, her need building to a full-body thrum.
Whoever it is—whatever is happening—she must stop it.
She takes a step forward.
Tries to.
The light pushes her back.
She is unused to this. She has not known any physical limitations. She gathers her strength and steps forward again, and the light warps, groaning, shoving her into the wall with a heavy crash.
Startled, the figure looks up, and its aura immediately dims, revealing surroundings previously drowned out: a low, three-legged stool; the undone bundle, consisting of a piece of burlap and its dirty secret, a small pile of riverbank mud.
Lastly, the source of the noise, a spinning wooden wheel set atop a table, a half-formed lump at its center.
The wheel begins to slow.
The aura to fade further.
Her bloodlust subsides.
In half a minute all is still, and the only light is that of a small lantern, and the figure is fully visible.
She wears a long woolen skirt. Her wimple pulled free, a corona of frizzy black hair. The sleeves of her cloak are rolled up to her elbows. Muddy water streaks smooth, slender forearms. Delicate hands are gloved in clay, swollen to twice normal size. Wry green eyes regard her with resignation.
Perel says, “It’s a good thing you can’t talk.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The likeness of the face in Jacob’s hands to Samuel Lev was close to perfect. It was a face he loved, the face of a man who had kissed him, blessed him. The face of a man who had died four hundred years ago.
He said, “How did you get this?”
Peter Wichs said, “It’s always been here.”
“Where did it come from? Who made it?”
“Nobody knows, Jacob Lev.”
“Then how do you know it’s the Maharal?”
“How do we know anything? We tell our children, who tell their children. My father worked at the shul, his father before him. I grew up hearing their stories, passed down from generation to generation.”
“A myth.”
“You may call it that, if you prefer.”
Jacob’s arm began to cramp, and he looked down to see the muscles in his forearm quivering; he had the object in a split-fingered grip, as though to pulverize it. He relaxed his hand, leaving red dents in the flesh of his palm.
“Do me a favor,” Jacob said. “Stand back.”
Peter obliged.
He appeared as short as Jacob remembered.
Not much faith in his memory, though. “Are you one of them?”
“One of whom?”
“Special Projects.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Peter said.
“A police division.”
“I’m not a policeman, Jacob Lev,” Peter said. “I have one job, and that is to stand guard.”
Jacob looked again at the face. It was so vivid that he expected it to open its mouth and speak in Sam’s voice.
You can’t go. I can’t allow it. I forbid it.
You can’t do this to me.
You’re leaving me.
Jacob said, “Why did you let me up here?”
“You asked.”
“I’m sure a lot of people ask.”
“Not a lot of policemen.”
“Who else?”
Peter smiled. “Tourists.”
“Did you let Lieutenant Chrpa up?”
The guard shook his head.
“Then who.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Detective.”
“You said this place affects everyone differently. Who else has it affected?”
“This is an ancient place, Jacob Lev. I can’t claim to know everything that has gone on here. I know that, of those who come, some find happiness, and peace. Others leave bitter. For a few it can be too much to handle, enough to drive them mad. All leave changed.”
“What about me,” Jacob said. “What’s happening to me.”
“I can’t read your mind, Detective.”
A wild laugh. “That’s good to know.”
“I think it’s time for us to leave now, Jacob Lev,” Peter said.
He plucked the clay head from Jacob’s limp hand, began to rewrap it.
“Why do you keep calling me that.”
“What?”
“Jacob Lev.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Peter got on the stool and put the bundle back on the top shelf. “Your name, it means ‘heart’ in Hebrew, I think. Lev.”
“I know what it means,” Jacob said.
“Ah,” Peter said. “Then I think perhaps I have nothing more to offer you.”
—
THEIR DESCENT WAS QUICK, no different from climbing down any moderate flight of stairs. Jacob’s limbs worked smoothly, his chest felt open. His mind? Another matter.
Moments after they’d reemerged through the purple curtain, a woman in her forties, modestly clad in dark knits, entered, a prayer book tucked under her arm.
“Gut Shabbos, Rebbetzin Zissman,” Peter said.
“Gut Shabbos, Peter.”
“Gut Shabbos,” Jacob said.
The woman took in Jacob’s dusty, uncovered head. “Mm,” she said.
A bearded man in a fur hat and a black satin caftan waited expectantly by the sanctuary entrance. Peter greeted him in Czech, and Jacob heard his own name spoken.
“Rabbi Zissman apologizes for his poor English and invites you to join us for services.”
“Maybe another time. Thanks, though. Gut Shabbos.”
The rabbi sighed, shook his head, and disappeared into the sanctuary.
“You were smart to say no,” Peter said. “He speaks forever.”
Outside, Ya’ir sat on the curb, reading Forbes. He stood up to shake Jacob’s hand.
“I hope you luck finding this person.”
“Thanks,” Jacob said.
“Go take a break,” Peter said.
Ya’ir shrugged. “Okay, boss.”
He tossed Peter the magazine and trotted down the block to light a cigarette.
When they were alone, Peter said, “What’s next for you, Detective Lev?”
“Go to England. Find out more about Reggie Heap.”
“As I said, I’m no policeman. But if that’s your instinct, I’d say you should heed it.”
“My instincts made me want to throw myself out a window.”
Peter smiled. “You’re down here, now.”
He patted Jacob on the shoulder and went to take up his watch.
Jacob glanced at the Hebrew clock tower. Once again, he needed a moment to be certain he wasn’t reading it wrong. But his phone agreed. It was 6:16 p.m.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The flight to London lasted two brutish hours. He spent the first downing airline booze and the second eating peanuts to mask his breath—successfully, because the fellow behind the Gatwick rental counter handed him the keys to a bare-bones English Ford.
Driving on the left side of the road, sheeting rain, and a pervasive sense of dread that made every other vehicle appear hell-bent on a head-on turned the ride to Clegchurch into a nerve-corroding ordeal.
The outskirts of town had been given over to sad blocks of council housing, and while the high street retained its architectural charm, plastic bottles and Mylar snack wrappers lined the rushing gutters. The two establishments doing a midday trade were the off-track-betting facility and the adjacent pub, called the Dog’s Neck.
He pulled over, cut the engine. Rain thumped the roof.
Perhaps the adrenaline had cleansed his system, because his days in Prague had already begun to acquire the quality of a dream, the smooth flow of time calving into chunks that drifted away from each other, softening at the edges, so that no event or sensation bore any causal relationship to any other.
He listed off the reasons not to trust himself.
Stress.
Jet lag.
Genetics.
The poison he’d pumped into himself for the last twelve years.
The city of Prague itself, a four-dimensional fever dream.
Happened every day; you saw someone who looked like someone else. Function of statistics: seven billion–plus people in the world. Had to happen. Not happening would be more remarkable. Why else would the idea of a doppelgänger exist?
Atop that argument he piled a layer of generalized language. Stuff had happened to him; weird stuff, but not impossible stuff. Stuff he would process at a more convenient later date, long after it had begun to break itself down and digest itself into a warm heap of forgetfulness. Cross your eyes hard enough, you could always find a rational explanation.
And on some level, he had been waiting for this moment—looking forward to it, even—his unconscious counting down, clicking away like prayer beads. He had gotten away too long with simple depression. He felt he should send himself a bouquet of flowers. Congratulations on finally losing your mind! It was something of a relief to realize that he no longer had to pretend he was the master of his own fate. He would go home, surrender to expertise, find himself a doctor, tell the story, have a cry, climb the wagon.
Start jogging. Eat organic. Take pills. Get right.
For the moment, he had a job to do. A blessedly concrete job, in drab, sensible England.
And if that job entailed going into a bar, he wasn’t about to argue.
—
THE DOG’S NECK SHARED some of the Czech beer hall’s decorative features. It did not, however, share its convivial vibe. A group of mouth-breathing layabouts watched a televised soccer match, their apathy thrown into high relief by the histrionics of the play-by-play man. A woman with teased hair mashed the smeared screen of a video poker machine. The air reeked of bleach and burnt cooking oil.
Jacob shook the water off his sleeves, sat at the bar, and ordered a pint of stout.
The bartender vacillated between several glasses before selecting one of average filth.
Jacob slid him a ten-pound note. “Keep it.”
“Cheers.”
He drank it quickly and ordered a second, again paying with a ten and telling the bartender to keep the change. The injection of alcohol diminished his road jitters but exposed a deeper, rawer current of anxiety. The clock above the bar read eleven a.m. Three a.m. in California. He was tempted to call his father. Ordinarily Sam wouldn’t answer the phone on Shabbat, but the late hour might lead him to assume an emergency, justifying desecration of the holy day.
Jacob wasn’t sure what he’d say.
You know that dead rabbi you admire so much?
Well, he’s you.
By the way, before I forget: I’m being pursued by a beetle.
The bartender came to collect his empty glass.
“One more,” Jacob said.
“Commin right oop.”
It came right oop.
Jacob dropped a third ten and said, “I’m looking for someone.”
The bartender grinned. He had enormous teeth. “Are you, now?”
“Edwyn Heap.”
The grin disappeared.
“You know him?”
The bartender developed an interest in polishing a spot at the other end of the bar
.
The soccer commentator was saying I can’t believe it, I simply can’t.
Jacob addressed the room. “Anyone?”
No one looked at him.
“I’ve got a twenty for whoever can tell me where Edwyn Heap is.”
No answer.
“Thirty,” he said.
The poker machine blooped a downward-spirally losing noise.
“Or his son,” Jacob said. “Reggie.”
One of the TV watchers told him to fuck off.
“Nice,” Jacob said. “That’s the way to welcome a tourist.”
The man stood up, as did another, and they began making their way toward him.
A fantastic shot!
They were drunk and unshaven, badly but abundantly fed. The guy on the left wore a yellow Oxford United jersey; the guy on the right, a shabby crewneck.
They flanked him at the bar.
Jersey said, “So it’s the Heaps you’re wanting?”
“Yeah.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’m trying to get in touch with them,” Jacob said.
“That’s a bit of circular reasoning, that,” Jersey said. “Wanting to see them because you want to get in touch with them.”
The woman at the poker machine had upended her purse in search of money.
“I heard they lived around here.”
“Did you?”
Jacob nodded.
“Hate to break it to you, mate, but you heard wrong. Ages since Reggie Heap’s been seen in these parts.”
“Ages,” Crewneck confirmed.
Ooooooh, that’s a vicious maneuver.
“What about his father?”
“He’s not like to show his face.”
“Why’s that?”
“What’s it you want with him, aside from to see him?”
“I want to talk to him.”
“He’d be a friend of yours, then.” Jersey spoke to the bartender. “Imagine that, Ray. Here’s a friend of old Ed’s.”
“Imagine that,” the bartender said.
“Imagine that, Vic.”
“Can’t,” Crewneck said.
“I didn’t know Ed had any friends left,” Jersey said. “Reggie neither.”
The remaining men had begun to approach the bar.
The Golem of Hollywood Page 31
