The Golem of Paris (33 page)

Forty feet of leaf-strewn tile and fragrant mist and gauzy orange light.

If there was a stairwell, it had to be there.

If he got close enough to find out, she’d be on him in seconds.

Or maybe she wouldn’t bother. Maybe she’d bide her time till the cavalry arrived.

A ray of illumination washed over him. He peered up at the skylight.

Peaceful, abundant clouds.

Was Mai behind them?

Schott was in the building. Molchanov, too.

Waiting for her.

She knew. She wasn’t coming.

Nobody was coming.

Pelletier said, “Tremsin thought you were someone else.”

“Who?”

“We didn’t get that far,” she said. “You made him upset, though.”

“He went to that party, didn’t he?”

She said, “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You don’t get to learn the truth before you die.”

“What makes you think I’m going to die?” he said.

“What makes you think you’re not?”

He ducked through the curtain into the barbershop, grabbed a razor with a knurled steel handle from the collection, swung it open, grabbed another blade, and reemerged.

Pelletier had closed the gap between them to ten feet.

She halted.

He opened the second razor, held both weapons out like a teppanyaki chef.

“Do you know how to use those?” she said.

Jacob hated knives. In a way they were worse than guns. Even from close range, ninety percent of shots missed. A knife didn’t have to be accurate to do real harm. It could cripple you with a glancing cut.

He said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

He kicked up a fan of leaves and sticks and slurry and rushed her.

She pivoted sideways to narrow her profile, her razor out, glinting, threatening, and he tried to slide off axis to hack at the inside of her elbow, hoping to disarm her right off the bat. But she was nimble and compact and she folded her limbs against her body and corkscrewed down and away from him.

Momentum carried him past her, and the edge of a blade whispered along the back of his leg, opening the denim several inches below his left rear pocket, close enough that he felt thankful for not buying into the skinny jeans fad.

He jerked around to slow himself, crouched, ready to fight her off.

She hung back, her posture relaxed, quick eyes conducting damage assessment.

They’d switched positions, relative to the antechamber door.

Warmth trickled along the back of his knee, over the swell of his calf.

No pain.

Which was either good or a disaster, the wound either so minor as to be irrelevant or so deep that his nervous system had flooded with override signals, enabling him to do the sensible thing: flee.

He didn’t want to look. If he looked, he’d know, and knowing could undo him, mentally. The crucial fact was that he was still standing, his left hamstring strong enough to bear weight.

He went at her again, driving her back over the tiles, swinging the razors in two planes, her belly, her neck. Instinct. Two blades were a bitch to control; he had to slow down to avoid cutting himself, and Pelletier exploited his treadling gait, drawing him away from where he needed to go, which was the alcove behind him, maybe the one with the stairs.

He did the sensible thing.

He stopped attacking her.

Turned and ran.

The next moment swelled monstrously, a blister in the soft tissue of time. He slipped. His injured left leg slewed loose in mud and dead vegetation and his foot lost contact with the ground and he pitched forward, landing on the beak of his elbow, bone on tile, a stunning wave of pain traveling up his humerus and into his shoulder socket. He rolled partway onto his flank, scrabbling with his heels, kicking at the floor, backstroking through debris as Pelletier charged toward him.

He saw her dark brown roots and her neat bared teeth, the diagonal creases of her shirt, her arm spring-loaded across her body, razor
held high, front leg planting, torso unwinding to loose the backhand that would spill his innards.

He didn’t have time to shout, to shut his eyes, to throw up his arms.

He listened to his heart’s closing measures.

A wet socket punched through her forehead, just left of center, and her head snapped back and the live pressure dumped out of her body and she flopped down atop him. Her face mashed his chest, then lolled over so that he was staring into her matte eyes.

The exit wound had taken off the back of her skull. In the airspace above them hung microscopic drops of blood and cerebrospinal fluid, clinging to the perfumed mist, a pink filter through which to view the skylights.

The moon had come out.

A tinny pip, as the razor slipped from her hand and fell to the tiles.

Soft bootsteps approached.

A waxy face drifted into view, a human eclipse.

Dmitri Molchanov said,
“Nu.”

H
e stepped on Jacob’s left wrist and kicked the razor out of Jacob’s right hand, into the pool. He stepped on Jacob’s right wrist and did the same for the razor in Jacob’s left hand. He kicked Pelletier’s blade in with the other two.

“Up.”

Jacob stood. Blood and tissue and splinters of bone smeared his shirtfront.

Molchanov was holding a black-and-brown pistol, surveying the chaos, trying to reconstruct what had happened, his eyes finally fixing on the barbershop alcove.

He waggled the pistol:
move
.

Jacob took half steps, partly because his left leg was starting to throb, partly because he had a notion that he’d be shot as soon as Molchanov saw Tremsin’s body.

The bead curtain was still swaying, just perceptibly.

Jacob stepped into the alcove, Molchanov close behind.

Tremsin’s smock had soaked up so much water that the fabric had darkened several shades, the true red visible in patches near the collar.

“I’m sure it won’t matter,” Jacob said, “but I didn’t kill him.”

Molchanov’s gaze shifted toward the main room.

Jacob nodded. “She injected him with something. The needle’s in her wristband.”

“Hm,” Molchanov said. His accent rendered it as
chm.

He regarded Tremsin dispassionately. “Thirty-six years.”

“That’s how long you worked for him?” Jacob said.

Molchanov nodded.

“That’s a long time,” Jacob said.

“Whole life,” Molchanov said. “He goes, I go.”

Jacob said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

He felt ridiculous. Sullied. Consoling one monster over another monster.

Molchanov touched his earpiece, spoke in Russian. Then he told Jacob to kneel.

“Face down. Arms behind.”

Assuming the position limited Jacob to a few inches of peripheral vision, as well as a clear view down the corridor of his shins. Rusty streaks in his left pant leg. He didn’t appear to be actively bleeding.

Take what you can get.

Molchanov kicked aside one of the overturned hand baths and stepped toward the counter that held the collection of straight razors. Jacob snuck a glance. The Russian was opening drawers in search of a clean smock, which he draped over Tremsin’s body. Then he opened a razor and began sawing the cord off the hairdryer.

He noticed Jacob watching and clucked his tongue. “Face down.”

Jacob’s head throbbed against the tile. His shoulders screamed from the effort of keeping his arms up and back. He was getting dizzy, bright spots stippling his field of vision. Through the gap in his feet, he noticed a black speck near the junction of the cabinetry and the floor. Tremsin’s ring.

A shadow shifted, Molchanov circling around behind him. Jacob flinched. Waiting to be strangled, raped; a blade, a bullet; any combination.

Molchanov tightly bound Jacob’s wrists, pulled him up, marched him back through the curtain, made him kneel by the edge of the pool.

Wet warm scummy water seeped into Jacob’s jeans.

He said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Molchanov raised an eyebrow.

“Last night, when you were chasing me. You wanted to have a conversation,” Jacob said. “We could have it now.”

Molchanov smiled. “Talking is complete.”

The spa door opened. Two new guards appeared.

They held Jacob at gunpoint while Molchanov left the room.

Another silence, longer.

The skylight pinged: the rain returning, tiptoeing at first, then steadily gaining in confidence.

He weighed the pros and cons of trying to run.

He said to the guards, “Your boss is dead.”

They didn’t reply. A sullen pair, each sporting the beginnings of a beard.

“That makes you unemployed.”

No answer.

Molchanov returned carrying a clunky metal cylinder, an attached hose and wand.

The exterminator’s spray tank.

He set it down and dismissed the guards. Righted a teak chair and sat down a few feet in front of Jacob, propping the pistol on his knee. He produced Jacob’s phone from his greatcoat pocket and began thumbing through it.

Searching for the picture Jacob had taken of him in the Marais?

No: Molchanov turned the screen around, showing the photo of the Gerhardt fob.

“You have it?” he asked.

Jacob shook his head.

“Where is it?”

“I gave it to the French police. They’re running it for prints.”

Molchanov nodded, unconcerned.

Jacob said, “Tremsin must have paid you well, you can afford a car like that.”

“Doktor Tremsin,” Molchanov corrected.

Thirty-six years.

He goes, I go.

Jacob said, “Did he have anything to do with Lidiya and Valko?”

Molchanov appeared briefly confused. Then he said, “From embassy.”

Jacob nodded.

“No,” Molchanov said.

“That was all you.”

Molchanov gazed wistfully at the picture of the fob. “After I lost, I called dealership. Three thousand euros to replace.”

“What about Marquessa and TJ? All you?”

Molchanov lobbed the phone into the pool.

“How many others?” Jacob said.

Molchanov tucked the gun in his coat pocket, swapping it for the potter’s knife.

“Your friend,” he said, rolling the handle between his fingers, “did brave thing.”

He wiped the blade against his coat sleeve, leaving an iridescent blue trail.

“He tried to fight.”

Jacob suppressed a retch of terror and grief.

Oh God. Oh no.

“Very brave,” Molchanov said. “Also very stupid.”

Jacob said, “He was your kind.”

Molchanov said, “I have no kind.”

He stood up. He hefted the spray tank, tried to put it on. The straps were too narrow for his huge frame.

To afford himself a little more slack, he shrugged off his greatcoat and draped it over the back of the chair, managing then to get the tank on.

He felt around for the dangling wand, gave a few test sprays.

Jacob said, “You really think that’s going to work?”

Molchanov smiled, shrugged. “Bug is bug.”

He tugged his scarf up over his face and came behind Jacob.

“What is it with you about mothers and sons?” Jacob said.

Molchanov barked a laugh. “You never knew my mother.”

With the sprayer hand, he grabbed a handful of Jacob’s hair and pulled back, resting the blade against Jacob’s windpipe.

“However,” Molchanov said, “I knew yours.”

PRAGUE

FALL 1982

B
ina steps out onto the far end of Lunatics’ Boulevard, Dmitri close behind.

They pass the other solitary confinement cells. Behind one of those doors, Olga is serving out her punishment. Bina will not get a chance to say good-bye to her.

She won’t get a chance to say good-bye to Fat Irena.

To Majka—poor lovely Majka.

They made a pact, yet she’s stealing away in the dead of the night like a thief.

No stealth in it: the sedative gives her a shuffling gait and her rubber-soled shoes squeak on the linoleum. The noise draws the interest of other patients. Cages rattle, voices demand to know.

Who is leaving?

Why?

Starbursts of fatigue rock her back on her heels.

Dmitri takes her by the arm and hurries her along.

They pass the snoring staff room; doctor’s offices and treatment
rooms, Hydrotherapy, Electroshock. She struggles to keep pace with Dmitri’s brisk strides. They pass a series of doors marked with numbers. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Seven. Eight.

Her body knows what’s coming: it’s starting to seize in anticipation.

Dmitri grabs her around the waist before she keels over.

“You must walk,” he says.

She hides from room nine, ceaselessly shaking her head:
no, no, no.

“You are leaving. You are going home.”

Sick. A sick joke.

“Look at me,” he says.

She won’t. He takes her chin in his gloved hand and forces it around and up.

“Look at me,” he says. “You have a son.”

She gapes at the face strangely handsome, the features continuously reweaving themselves.

“I read it in your file. What is his name?”

She won’t tell him. Won’t allow him to desecrate it.

She whispers, “Jacob.”

“Don’t you want to see him again? Jacob?”

More than anything else in the world.

“Then you need to walk.” He props her up. “He is not coming to you.”

•   •   •

T
HE GUARD AT THE
GATE
snaps off a salute. “Sir.”

Dmitri hands him paperwork certifying that the patient Bina Reich Lev has been remanded into his custody for discharge.

The guard salutes again and goes to unlock the gate.

Snow throws a shroud over the courtyard. Frigid air needles through her thin sweater. Behind her lies an indictment, rows and rows of cell windows. She will not turn to gaze upon their misery, lest she become a pillar of salt.

Dmitri puts his hand on her elbow, urges her forward.

Bina stumbles through the gate. Cured.

•   •   •

H
E DR
IVES AGGRESSIVELY
, rolling through red lights, taking turns at high speed, muttering to himself about the poor quality of the brakes.

Nauseated, Bina huddles against the rocking of the vehicle, her lubricated mind twisting this way and that, trying to make sense of what is happening.

All questions boil down to two.

Is she safe?

Will she get home?

There’s a kind of urgent solicitousness in Dmitri’s manner. He keeps glancing over at her, making sure she hasn’t evaporated.

“Are you all right?” he asks. He eases off the gas. “Are you going to be sick?”

She says, “Where are we going?”

Without taking his attention from the road, he reaches over her to unlock the glove compartment and withdraws a rubber-banded packet that he drops in her lap.

Her passport, along with a small stack of money.

Dmitri uses his teeth to remove one leather glove. A black ring on his index finger, identical to the ring Tremsin wears. She’s never noticed it. On the ward, he kept his hands covered.

“There is a train departing for Berlin in two hours,” he says,
checking his watch. “Once there you should proceed to your embassy. Beyond that, I cannot help.”

Over the river, through a labyrinth of unpeopled streets. She can tell they’re in Old Town. When he pulls over, however, the silhouette looming beyond the glass is unmistakably that of the Alt-Neu Synagogue.

He shuts off the engine. “A quick errand, first. The golem—it is no longer safe here. You must go up to the garret and fetch the jar so I can move it elsewhere.”

She doesn’t reply.

“There is no need to pretend,” he says. “I read your file. I know who you are.”

Languid wet flakes touch the windshield, dissolve.

She says, “Who are you?”

His smile is stunted. “A friend.”

I am your friend.

We all are.

We always will be.

Checking his watch again, he says, “They have recalled us to Moscow, now that Brezhnev is dead. Doktor Tremsin has already left. I am due to depart before the year’s out. Hence the rush.”

A friend.

She says, “Is he . . . ?”

Dmitri starts to laugh. “Him? No. No. He is the man I work for. He has given me opportunities. I try to be loyal. After he got his marching orders for Prague, I was the only member of the circle who volunteered to come into exile with him. Truthfully, I was glad. It was always the city of my dreams. I studied Czech hoping that I could one day come. I owe him much. But he is a man. No more.”

Bina wonders what more a person could be.

She recalls Frayda crushing her hands; an inhuman shadow looming up.

“I won’t be with him forever,” Dmitri says. “For me, greater things lie ahead.”

It must never be allowed to get out.

Under no circumstances can it leave this building.

Bina says, “What are you going to do with it?”

“That is not your concern,” he says. He squints ahead, perks up.
“Nu.”

He springs from the car.

A small shape is coming up the sidewalk toward them, a flashlight bobbing.

Little Peter Wichs.

Outside, Dmitri says, “Did you bring it?”

Peter unzips his coat and tugs out his twine necklace with the key to the
shul
.

Dmitri turns to her expectantly.

She looks at Peter.

He raises a mittened hand, smiles shyly.

Aware that she is relying on the assurances of a child, she gets out of the car.

•   •   •

P
ASSING THE COBBLED TERRACE
at the rear of the synagogue, they head up the alleyway, pausing once to allow Bina to vomit.

“You will be fine,” Dmitri says. “There is only this to get through, and then you will be on your way home.”

At the main entrance, he stands well back as Peter unlocks the door.

“We will wait for you here,” Dmitri says.

She says, “I’ll need an assistant.”

Dmitri says nothing. His eyes dart between her and the boy.

“Either him or you,” she says.

Dmitri blinks. The prospect of entering the building clearly unnerves him.

“Do you want me to do this or not?” she asks.

A beat. Dmitri says, “Your passport.”

She hands him the packet. He slips it in his coat pocket. “Be quick about it.”

Bina places a hand on Peter’s shoulder, and together they step down into the darkened synagogue.

•   •   •

I
N THE BASEMENT
, she prepares for immersion by rinsing off in the camp shower. The freezing water kicks her partly from her stupor. A repulsive second skin covers her from head to toe, filling the plastic tub with a cloudy black liquid, her feet disappearing.

Taking a threadbare towel from the bureau, she scrapes herself down further.

The towel turns black.

She takes another, commences scraping.

It turns black.

She goes through the entire stack, nine in all, and still she is mottled and streaked like a farm animal. Without warning, she breaks into sobs. Her immersion will not be valid. She isn’t clean, she will never be clean again, she feels so out of control.

Think about what matters.

Think about Jacob.

She grabs ahold of her bucking mood, wrestles it to the earth.

Walks to the edge of the
mikveh
, encounters her ruined reflection.

Stepping down into the warm water, she wades forward until it covers her breasts.

She dips once, quickly, and resurfaces. Crosses her arms over her heart, dividing the upper and lower bodies, the holy from the profane, an act she has performed countless times. But the distinction has lost all meaning, and she lets her arms drop, weeping once more as she recites the blessing.

Blessed are You, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us regarding immersion.

She plunges.

•   •   •

U
P ON
THE GROUND FLOOR
, Peter has unlocked the women’s section.

They cross to the curtain that conceals the garret entrance. Peter slides it aside and they crowd into the booth. Bina seals her lips, her eyes, waits for the blast of dust.

Nothing happens.

She looks at Peter.

He has his flashlight pointed at the trapdoor in the ceiling.

He’s waiting for her to pull the rope.

He’s too short to reach it.

Her whirling sense of déjà vu dissolves, as she perceives the contrast between then and now, what’s missing.

Ota Wichs.

She considers what Dmitri appears to know.

The jar. Its location. Its significance.
Her
significance.

She considers that he has saved her, in a way, escorting her out of hell.

To bring her here.

Is there really a train to Berlin?

There are other things he does not know.

Under no circumstances can it leave this building.

Or he knows, and does not care.

For me, greater things lie ahead.

She says, “That man outside. Have you ever met him before?”

Peter shakes his head. “He called on the phone.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. He said to come tonight and bring the key to the
shul
. He said don’t tell my stepmother.”

“Did he tell you what he wants me to do?”

“Move the golem,” Peter says. “He said my father asked him to do it.”

Silence.

She says, “Have you seen your father recently? Spoken to him?”

“No. But the man said that he would take me to him if I did what he said.”

A brick in her throat. She starts to reply, but Peter speaks first:

“He lied, didn’t he.”

She says nothing.

A businesslike nod. “I thought so. I was excited when he told me. But he lied. My father is dead.”

She says, “He might still be alive.”

“That’s what Pavla thinks,” Peter says.

“Well, she’s—I’m sure she’s right.”

“No,” the boy says leadenly. “She’s wrong.”

He appears to be aging before her very eyes.

“He’s been arrested before,” he says. “We always got a letter. But we didn’t get one, this time. So I know. It was the same when they took my mother.”

No child of nine ought to wield such arid logic.

Bina says, “I’m so sorry, Peter.”

He is tight around the mouth, but dry-eyed, his mind already aligned with hers, toward survival.

“All right,” he says. “What should we do?”

She describes a plan, as best she can. It’s getting harder and harder to keep her thoughts in order. “Does that sound all right?”

Peter nods. He shuts his eyes against the dust. “Go ahead.”

•   •   •

H
ER SECOND ASCENT
is more difficult than the first. The sedative moves through her bloodstream in spurts, and her limbs feel alternately flimsy and sandbagged as she climbs through stinging, choking clouds of dust. She has no strong arms to guide her; no enduring faith; she follows only her instincts and the bead of Peter’s flashlight as it ricochets in infinity; flickering, feinting, collapsing to zero.

Jacob.

A heartbeat, a wheel, a contracting womb.

Jacob. Jacob. Jacob.

Up, up, up she goes, toward the new light that spreads like a canopy. She pulls herself onto the attic floor, striving to raise her head, hoping to catch another sweet glimpse of her Jerusalem.

Her chance has passed.

Nothing but broken furniture.

And no time to mourn: Peter has kindled the lantern and stands expectantly.

Bina coughs, pounds her chest. Rises.

They begin to walk.

•   •   •

I
N HER MEMORY
, the journey across the garret took hours. Now space telescopes, and they arrive at the scene, laid as it was on the night of the National Day celebration.

Cabinet, wheel, stool, portable stove.

The lump of clay. The bucket of water, gone scummy.

The tool roll.

She was supposed to come back.

She was supposed to make as many jars as possible.

A hundred more, we’ll be fine.

Bina and Peter remove the drop cloth and open the cabinet.

Inside is the completed pair of jars. Despite never having been fired, they’ve set up well, the surfaces dully polished.

She moves them aside and thrusts her arm deep into the cabinet. Her fingertips skim the old jar that holds the beetle. She senses its warmth, the magnetism. She can’t quite reach it. Ota made sure of that.

Peter drags over a crate for her to stand on, hands her the arm from a coatrack.

“Thank you.”

She uses the hook to ease the jar out, trying not to knock it over, not to touch it with her bare skin. Once she’s gotten it close enough, she lets the boy take over.

He sets the jar on the floor beside one of the newer jars.

“You need to help me,” he says. “I only have two hands.”

She smiles despite her nerves. “Tell me what to do.”

“You lift the lids. I’ll tip her out into that one. Then you put the lid down.”

She nods. She gets down on her knees. Then she says, “Her?”

“Ready?” Peter says.

She positions her hands over the clay knobs.

“One, two, three.”

The operation takes a fraction of a second, Peter’s lithe hands darting in, the beetle tumbling through open space and landing at the bottom of the new jar, where it stirs and rolls over, sitting up like a dog, its forelegs working excitedly, waving.