The Golem of Paris Read online

  Six-plus spectacular feet of Divya Das materialized from the shadows like a struck match. She was dressed in white linen slacks—gutsy choice for a pathologist—and a silk blouse in her preferred orange. Black hair buried one shoulder. Her eyes were huge and glittering, her mouth amused as she took in his sad little fiefdom. “So this is where they’ve got you.”

  “I’ve always considered exile romantic.”

  “It’s bloody freezing in here. How do you stand it?”

  He indicated the space heater.

  “Those things are terrible fire hazards,” she said.

  “Let’s hope so.” Waving at the acres of paper. “Save me a shitload of work.”

  Divya laughed. “Have you taken your lunch?”

  “Nope.”

  “Want company?”

  “You buying?”

  “Cheek. Well, fine, I’m in a benevolent mood.”

  “Good deal,” Jacob said. “I’ll drive.”

  “No,” she said, switching off the space heater. “I believe I’d rather.”

  • • •

  HE REMEMBERED HER OLD CAR, a silver Toyota sedan dating to the turn of the millennium. The upgrade shocked him.

  Orange Corvette, chrome rims, a discreet little spoiler.

  She laid a loving hand on the hood. “It improves the commute.”

  Jacob just managed to buckle his seat belt before she peeled out, spitting gravel.

  The howl of the engine made conversation a nonstarter, so he settled back. It was hard not to see Mallick’s hand in her drop-in. The voicemail Jacob had left her mentioned nothing about his assignment, yet she’d tracked him down easily enough.

  As excited as he felt to see her, he could not lose focus on the fact that, in the end, she was still one of them.

  Taking city streets at dangerous speeds, she arrived at a strip mall on Rosemead.

  “Your bonus,” he said, after she’d cut the motor.

  “Pardon?”

  “After the Pernath case, I got a check for ten grand.” He tapped the dash. “Not that that would cover the down payment on this.”

  Divya shrugged. “I heard you didn’t cash yours.”

  “It costs more than that to buy me off.”

  “So cynical. Why not just see it as a reward for a job well done?”

  “I understand why they’d bribe me,” he said. “I’m supposed to pretend what happened didn’t happen. But why you?”

  They had pulled up in front of a restaurant called Flavors of Bombay. Divya continued to grip the steering wheel, stacks of glass bangles tinkling on slender, cinnamon-colored wrists.

  “I’ve told you before,” she said. “We’re not all the same.”

  “No?”

  “No. And frankly I’m insulted that you continue to act as if we are.”

  “You take orders from Mallick.”

  “As do you,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “You need to learn who your friends are,” she said.

  Jacob glanced at the restaurant. “This place any good?”

  “Yelp seems to think so.”

  “You don’t have to take me for Indian food. I wouldn’t take you for gefilte fish.”

  She drew the key from the ignition. “Thank God for that.”

  • • •

  THE DINING ROOM WAS PACKED. A waiter handed them menus, but halfheartedly, knowing full well they were going to opt for the $8.95 buffet.

  “You go first,” Divya said. “I’ll watch our things.”

  Jacob joined the line, piling a plate with rice, dal, saag paneer, lamb tikka masala.

  In his absence, a basket of naan had appeared on the table, along with two plastic tumblers of water. He spread his napkin on his lap, waiting for Divya to take her turn at the buffet. She didn’t budge.

  “Start,” she said. “It’ll get cold.”

  “Don’t make me eat alone,” he said.

  She got up to join the line, came back with a basically bare plate.

  “I’m sorry I missed your call the other day,” she said. “I was out.”

  “It’s not like I gave you any notice.”

  “What brought you to my neck of the woods?”

  He grinned, spooning spinach onto a triangle of flatbread. “That didn’t take long.”

  “I’m making conversation, Jacob.”

  “Perhaps the mysteries of Culver City entranced me.”

  “Might I point out that you called me? I’m exhibiting normal curiosity.”

  It was true. She’d never done anything to cause him to distrust or resent her.

  Still: one of them.

  She said, “I know you’ve had a damned hard time of it. How could you not? What you saw that night—there’s not a person on earth capable of holding it in their head. Even you.”

  He snorted.

  “Don’t undersell yourself,” she said.

  “Oh, but that’s part of my charm.”

  She smiled. She reached across the table and took his hand. He was too surprised to move away, and once they were touching he saw no reason to let go.

  He said, “I’ve got a case I’m looking into.”

  She nodded as though she already knew.

  Maybe she did.

  But her skin felt warm and comforting, embers at the end of a long night, and right then, he didn’t care if she was manipulating him. Right then, he didn’t give a shit about anything but a dead woman and her son.

  Divya said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He did.

  • • •

  “THAT’S ALL I’ve got so far.”

  The restaurant had emptied out. Jacob had finished his food, gone up for seconds.

  Divya had yet to unwrap her silverware, was staring over woven hands at her untouched plate. She said, “Kids always get to me.”

  He nodded. “Any thoughts?”

  She seemed reluctant to speak. Shook it off. “The mutilation,” she said. “Your description put me in mind of someone with surgical experience.”

  “I had the same thought. Doctor, dentist, nurse, vet. The file doesn’t mention anyone who meets the criteria, but it’s far from complete. Have you ever heard of anything like that? Just the eyelids gone?”

  “Thankfully not.”

  He said, “When I was at the scene, I had this weird idea. Kids, you know how they’ll set up their stuffed animals?”

  “As an audience,” she said.

  “Exactly. I’m not sure what it means. Marquessa was a model, so she had experience with being looked at. Posing.”

  “Your bad guy was reversing the process?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been calling the modeling agency, but they keep putting me off. I’m going to go over there in person as soon as I get a chance.”

  He stirred his cup of rice pudding. “I’d appreciate if you told Mallick that I’m diligently applying myself to my day job and nothing else.”

  “Will do.”

  He said, “I want so badly to believe you.”

  “Then believe.”

  Jacob smiled sadly. He chinned at her tray. “Don’t you ever eat?”

  “Your case ruined my appetite.”

  That he most assuredly did not believe. Generally speaking, crypt doctors had the strongest stomachs around. You saw bags of Doritos lying open on autopsy tables.

  “Not just now,” he said. “Not just you. All of you. Mallick. Schott. I bought Mel Subach a piece of baklava last year and he made a huge deal about how he couldn’t touch it cause he’s on a diet.”

  “And so he should be,” she said. “He’s a tub.”

  “Apparently not from excess calories,” he said.

  She snatched a shred of naan from the b
asket and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing with effort, her long neck convulsing, her eyes watering as she worked to get it down. He began to worry she would choke. “Hey,” he said. “Take it easy.”

  She gagged, pounded her chest.

  “Are you okay?”

  She reached for her water glass, took a spiteful sip, and showed him an empty mouth.

  “Happy?” she said.

  She sounded hoarse and close to tears.

  Taken aback, he said, “I didn’t mean you had to—”

  “Leave off,” she said. “Please.”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She took out a twenty. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I earned this myself.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOD AIRPORT, ISRAEL

  JUNE 2, 1969

  The El Al stewardesses pin their little hats on with one hand, using the other to hold back the crush of bodies in the aisle.

  Children wail and adults shove and bags rain from the overhead bins. Fourteen hours in the air, and Barbara hasn’t slept one second. Dazed, dehydrated, she clings to Frayda’s sleeve, and together they inch toward the exit.

  When they finally step out, they’re hit with a blast of heat and light. Barbara hesitates at the top of the steps, blinking, and receives a swift elbow to the back from the octogenarian behind her.

  Nu!

  She stumbles her way down to the tarmac. The welcome committee consists of a pair of rust-bucket minibuses belching exhaust. A few people have already climbed aboard and are tapping their feet impatiently, waiting to be driven to the arrival terminal. Many more of the passengers have fallen to their hands and knees, pressing their lips to the cracked, oil-stained ground. They weep and chant prayers of thanksgiving.

  Bless you, Lord, our God, Ruler of the universe, Who has given us life, and sustained us, and enabled us to reach this moment.

  Frayda drops to her knees.

  Barbara shakily sinks down beside her. Gravel bites into the flesh of her palms.

  She kisses the earth.

  Her first impression of the land of Israel, ancestral home of her people, will always be smarting hands, the astringent stink of jet fuel, sacred dust coating her tongue.

  • • •

  THE SULAM WOMEN’S SEMINARY is located in the West Jerusalem suburb of Bayit V’Gan, atop a hill that forms the third point of a triangle with Sha’arei Tzedek hospital and the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

  Sulam, Frayda explains, means “ladder” in Hebrew.

  Bayit V’Gan means “a house and a garden,” and that’s essentially what the place is, or was, before Frayda’s uncle Rav Kalman bought it: a shambling pile of Jerusalem stone plopped down at the end of a dirt cul-de-sac.

  Barbara drags her suitcases into a stuffy foyer dimmed by metal shutters, the air vaguely redolent of noodle soup. She starts looking around for food, but there’s nothing doing, and within a day or two she will come to realize that the whole school smells that way, all the time, an aroma equal parts salty human sweat and floury baked paper, finished with a glaze of bookbinding glue.

  Books huddle three deep on cinder-block shelves.

  Books on the tables, on the chairs; books the upholstery of cast-off furniture.

  Books the only adornment, unless you count the small tapestry hanging from a nail in the dun-colored plaster, a verse embroidered in golden thread.

  And you shall meditate on it, day and night.

  Books, a landscape in flux, like the city of Jerusalem itself. Put one down and leave the room and it might very well materialize elsewhere, opened to a different page. The same principle of communal ownership applies to hairbrushes, pencils, socks, cosmetics—a loosening of the boundaries between yours and mine.

  The student body consists of seven girls, including her and Frayda, the others a pair of Israelis and three from England. All except Barbara were raised religious. All except Barbara speak Hebrew.

  As such, she is an object of fascination. Why has she come? It’s not a challenge, just friendly interest. They know the literal answer. She came because Frayda brought her, and Frayda came because her uncle runs the place.

  But why?

  Upstairs are two bedrooms, shockingly inadequate by American standards. Some miraculous geometry has enabled Rav Kalman to fit three beds in each room. The Brits—Wendy, Dafna, and Margalit—bunk together, and Barbara moves in with the Israelis, a pair of warmhearted girls from old Jerusalemite families. Allegedly this arrangement will help her practice her Hebrew, although her roommates refuse to speak anything but English to her, so that they can practice their English.

  “I am so exciting to meet you,” Zahava says.

  “Excited. ‘I’m so excited to meet you.’”

  “Ah, yes?”

  “Please,” Shlomit says, “you like petel?”

  Barbara warily sips the cup of scarlet liquid, sweet to the point of bitterness.

  “Yum,” she gasps.

  “Take more,” Shlomit says, pouring.

  Barbara has most of the bureau to herself. She packed light, but the Israelis—all the other girls, for that matter—own nearly nothing, content to wear the same skirt two weeks running. Barbara tries to emulate them, to simplify. In the shower, she shuts off the tap while shampooing, in order to conserve water.

  Soap runs into her eyes; she wipes it away and looks down and screams.

  “What it is,” Zahava says, running in. “What.”

  Barbara can only point at the giant roach that has crawled out of the drain.

  “Ah, yes,” Zahava says. “One moment.”

  She calls Shlomit into the bathroom.

  “Wow,” Shlomit, “look this juke.”

  “Kill it,” Barbara yells. She is sudsy, smushed into the corner. “Kill it.”

  But the Israelis are admiring the insect, using their hands to estimate its size.

  “This juke,” Zahava says philosophically, “is a finer juke.”

  “Kill it now.”

  With a sigh of regret, Shlomit removes her sandal and slaps it down, splattering shell and guts.

  • • •

  AND YOU SHALL MEDITATE on it, day and night.

  There is no curriculum, no real schedule. By six-thirty a.m., everyone’s awake and praying—all except Barbara, who stands with her siddur open, eyes blurring at the muddy field of words.

  Afterward they breakfast on sliced cucumbers, feta, tea. Rav Kalman’s wife, Rivka, serves as mother hen and cook. She and her husband make up the sum total of the staff, unless you count Moshe, the ancient Yemeni fixit who pedals around the neighborhood on a rattling bicycle, dropping in to patch leaks or unclog toilets. There’s a sense of adventure, of life improvised, like they’re camping indoors. Everyone has to pitch in, and the girls rotate helping out in the kitchen.

  All except Barbara, who doesn’t know the ins and outs of keeping kosher. On her third day, she causes a minor kerfuffle by using a meat fork to break off a piece of cheese, resulting in the whole precious chunk going in the trash, and the utensil being whisked outside for purification by burying.

  Frayda lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. You’ll learn.”

  Barbara fights back tears of humiliation. That’s why she’s here: to learn.

  But how?

  Trial and error? Until every last fork is jutting up out of the dirt?

  Dear Máma and Taťka, Israel is amazing, and I am having a wonderful time.

  During the morning session, the girls pair off to pore over passages of Talmud and commentaries. Officially, Barbara is the third wheel attached to Frayda and Wendy. Really, she spends the majority of the three-hour block floating around the room like a homeless electron, awash in Aramaic and Hebrew.

  The others do their
best to include her, and she puts on a show of gratitude, all the while sinking deeper into despair.

  Dear Máma and Taťka, every day I learn something new.

  What was Frayda thinking, bringing her here?

  What was she thinking, coming along?

  And you shall meditate on it, day—

  At eleven, Rav Kalman appears, smiling beatifically through a luxuriant gray and black beard that spills like moss from the great tawny cliff of his face. He is a tall man, his shirtfronts tested to the limits. Whenever Barbara sees him, she instinctively cringes, afraid a button’s going to come shooting off and take out her eye.

  “My dear, holy daughters, good morning.”

  The girls rise out of respect. Then they gather around the dining room table for his lecture—also in Hebrew. Barbara can tell he’s going slowly, for her sake. But it’s still a torrent. Even with Frayda continually translating in her ear, she’s absorbing at most half a percent, and she feels bad for interfering with Frayda’s comprehension.

  “I’m fine,” Frayda insists. “And how else are you going to learn?”

  Good question.

  Dear Máma and Taťka—

  Lunch is more vegetables and cheese, followed by an afternoon of free study, the girls recombining into new pairs to review the Bible or Prophets.

  They’re on their own for dinner. As a group they tramp down the dirt road to the neighborhood falafel stand, where thirty agorot buys a soft, fresh pita stuffed with shatteringly crispy chickpea fritters, stiff hummus, and watery tomatoes, washed down with a can of Tempo Cola.

  Barbara stands at the side of the road, chewing and gazing out at the sunset, honey over the bleached limestone faces. To the north, Mount Herzl swells through the haze raised by a citywide frenzy of construction.

  “Right, then,” Wendy says. “What d’you make of it? Some place, no?”

  Barbara smiles and tries not to cry.

  • • •

  ON A THURSDAY NIGHT, hopeless and exhausted after yet another day of floundering, she slips from her bed at four in the morning.

  Bayit V’Gan; a house and a garden.

  The garden behind Sulam is a rude dirt patch, sunk into the steep hillside and accessible via a rickety ladder. Nothing grows there except a stark, gnarled tree with oblong gray leaves. Sometimes she skips the afternoon session to sit under its branches, brooding and planning her escape.