The Golem of Hollywood

Chapter thirty-seven

“You are here, Jacob Lev.”

Jacob lay on his back, body stunned and numb, chest thudding.

Through fuzzy infant eyes he saw Peter kneeling over him. Not a hair out of place. His shirt unwrinkled.

“How do you feel?”

“I ffff...” Tangle-tongued. “I feel... I can prowuh, proll, prolly... skippa gym... today.”

Peter smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “You did well.”

The guard hoisted him to a sitting position.

Blood stormed into his temples, and his vision went gold-green, and for less than a second he peered through a green filter at a lush garden, green grass insisting through the floorboards, spore-engorged ferns exploding greenly from the rafters, vines climbing through mist, dripping orchids, acres of lichen, an ecosystem thriving and sultry, sexual in its zeal, real enough to fill his nostrils with the heady vapors of rot and regeneration.

Then his mind clenched like an overused muscle and the green band lifted and the garden withered and petrified, curvaceous tendrils stiffening to woodwormed structural beams.

“Can you stand?”

“Think so.”

“Okay, up up up.”

A brief, awkward dance, Jacob leaning on the smaller, older man.

“I’m going to let you go. All right? Yes? Okay? Here we go... Very good. Very good.”

They were at one end of a sprawling, windowless, unfinished attic, amok with a truly awesome amount of junk.

Lingering vertigo yanked the horizon back and forth. A kerosene lantern hanging from a wall bracket made a meager and uncertain buffer against the darkness that slunk through the crevices, expanded in the open air, obscured the peak of the sloped ceiling.

“How are you now? Better?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m okay.”

Peter regarded him skeptically. With good reason: it was taking every ounce of focus for Jacob to keep himself upright. His neck and face felt flushed with fever, his damp shirtfront swaying in a sourceless breeze. Clearly he was in lousier aerobic shape than he’d imagined. Or maybe he was sick. Physically sick. The dust. An allergy attack from hell.

Could allergies tweak your visual field? Make you hallucinate?

He was probably dehydrated, too; in mini-withdrawal and jet-lagged, and preoccupied. Any of these explanations he greatly preferred over the onset of psychosis.

“As you say,” Peter said. “Now, listen carefully, please. If you have any unusual thoughts, you must tell me, at once.”

“Unusual?”

“Anything at all. A strong urge to do something, for instance.” Peter unhooked the lantern. “Please stay close; it’s easy to get lost.”

They waded into the maze, the lantern swinging, carving shapes in the gloom, throwing weird shadows that evolved from moment to moment, so that blank space lurched forth as solid and vice versa. The darkness had a tangible, oily quality, contracting at the touch of light like a drop of soap in grease, alerting Jacob at the last second to shifting floor depths, sagging planking, masonry remnants, and flaccid, chin-high ductwork.

More dust. Not as bad as in the shaft. It stuck to his skin, mixed with the sweat, formed a kind of clayey paste that dried and crackled as he moved. But his lungs weren’t rebelling.

He was, in fact, breathing easily. Better than usual.

“Must be tough getting a vacuum up that ladder.”

“Pardon?”

“To clean it. Every Friday.”

“I said I tend it,” Peter said.

“There’s a difference?”

“Naturally. That’s why there are two separate words.”

A vacuum would have been beside the point, a blowtorch the right tool for the job. Much of the mess was bookcases, stacked deep with water-stained parchment scrolls, moth-eaten talleisim, crates of prayer-book confetti — the components of a genizah, a community depository for disused ritual objects too holy to destroy. There were other items, too: peeling steamer trunks and wrecked furniture and piles of shoes filled with rodent droppings.

Eight centuries, he supposed stuff added up.

His equilibrium was returning, and with it, his detachment.

He said, “Have you ever considered a garage sale?”

Peter chuckled. “Most items of value have already been sold off. Almost nothing here predates the war.”

“Mind if I take a couple of pictures? My father’s a big fan of the Maharal.”

The guard glanced back to arch an eyebrow. “Is he.”

“It’s kind of an obsession, actually.”

“I wasn’t aware that rabbis had fans.”

“They do among other rabbis.”

“Ah. Please.”

They paused so Jacob could dig out his camera. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to achieve, other than to prove to Sam that he’d been here — not that you could prove anything from pictures of garbage. “What was here before that was so valuable?”

“Old books, manuscripts. There was also a letter, the only one surviving in the Maharal’s own hand.”

Jacob whistled. “No kidding.”

Peter nodded. “You’d do better to bring your father photographs of that, Jacob Lev.”

“I assume it’s in the state museum or something.”

“Unfortunately not. The Bodleian has it.”

Jacob’s heart kicked. “The Bodleian Library.”

“Yes.”

“In Oxford.”

“Unless there’s another I don’t know about. Is something wrong, Jacob Lev?”

“... no. No.”

They resumed bushwhacking in silence. Jacob was wondering whether to share with the guard that Oxford was Reggie Heap’s alma mater — simultaneously wondering whether there was any significance to that fact — when Peter spoke.

“The Nazis leveled many of the cities they came through. The Communists, too. But they left Prague intact. Do you know why?”

“Hitler wanted to convert the ghetto to a museum of a dead culture. The Communists didn’t have the money for demolition.”

“That’s what historians say. There’s another reason, though. They were afraid to overturn the earth. Even men such as they, evil men, understood that things are buried here that one should not disturb.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t believe me,” Peter said. “It’s all right. Ya’ir is the same way.”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me to believe.”

Peter didn’t reply.

Jacob said, “How’d the letter end up in England?”

“A later chief rabbi sent it away with the manuscripts for safekeeping. It was a prophetic decision; soon afterward, there was a pogrom, and everything in the shul not nailed down was dragged out into the street and burned.” Sidling past a crippled lectern. “This rabbi, Dovid Oppenheimer, was a German, a great lover of books. Accepting the position in Prague meant leaving behind a huge library in Hanover in the care of his father-in-law. After both men had passed, the entire collection, including the Maharal’s letter, was bundled together. It changed hands several times before the Bodleian bought it.”

“Kind of a shame it’s so far from home.”

“Frankly, it’s better this way, Jacob Lev. They are precious pieces of history. We couldn’t care for them properly. The insurance alone would eat up our annual budget ten times over. Though I will admit that it would be nice to see them.”

“Cheap flight to Gatwick. Thirty pounds. I just booked it.”

“Yes, well, I’ve never left Prague.”

“Really?”

“When I was a boy, travel was restricted, and then I took over at the shul.”

“They don’t give you a day off once in a while? I’m sure Ya’ir can hold down the fort.”

Peter swiveled aside a freestanding mirror, de-silvered to flat pewter. “Here we are.”

Along the length of the eastern wall ran a three-foot-wide path cleared of detritus, providing access to the exterior door, its arched shape outlined in sunlight, an iron bar holding it firmly in place.

“May I?”

Peter hesitated. “If you must.”

Jacob worked to pry free the bar, which was heavy and rusty to boot. The door swung in with an ovine croak. Light dazzled him; instantly he felt tugged toward the cool evening air. He braced his hands on the doorframe and thrust his head out.

“Careful, please,” Peter said.

Jacob peered down.

Below, the rungs.

The cobbled area.

The drain.

Foot traffic coursed along Pařížská Street, backlit by a pinkening sky, shoppers and lovers and sunburnt vacationers oblivious to the eye observing them from above. It put Jacob in mind of that morning, standing with Jan at the scene, the man on the cell phone rushing along, taking no notice of them.

Here, it’s like invisible.

He swooned, drunk on fresh air.

“Detective,” Peter said. “Careful.”

“How high’s the drop?”

“Thirty-nine feet.”

“And there’s no way to open the door from the outside.”

“None. That’s enough, now, step back.”

But Jacob craned further, gulping sweet air, so wonderful, inviting him to dive into it...

He wouldn’t fall.

He would float.

He let go.

With shocking strength, Peter grabbed him by his shirt and hauled him back inside, slamming him against the wall, pinning him there. The guard said, “Don’t move, Jacob, please,” and released him, hurrying to slam and bolt the door.

Jacob wasn’t moving. He had slumped docilely and he remained that way as the drop in brightness caused his eyes to ache. With the door shut, the urge to hurl himself out had begun to dwindle, and in its stead came the horror, humiliation, and confusion of realizing how close he had been to obeying it. He shuddered violently, chewing the edge of a thumbnail, while in his mind he saw the cobblestones rising up to meet him.

Peter crouched down in front of him. “What happened.”

What do you think, motherfucker? I’m going off the deep end.

Jacob shook his head.

“Jacob. You must please tell me what you were thinking.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what came over me. I just — I don’t know.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.” He commanded his body to stop shaking. “I’m fine. I mean, obviously, I’m — tired, and I was just standing there, and...”

“And...”

“And nothing. I slipped, okay? My hands — they’re sweaty. I’m all right now, thank you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I really don’t know what came over me.”

Peter smiled sadly. “It’s not your fault. This place affects people in unpredictable ways. Now we know how it affects you.”

Jacob bit off another spasm. He would not allow this to happen to him. He waved off Peter’s offer of help, struggling to his feet, resting against a splintery beam.

“I trust you’ve seen what you wanted to see,” Peter said.

“Unless you’re going to show me where you keep the golem.”

The smile he received was a dry reflection of his own.

Peter said, “Prepare for disappointment.”

They followed the cleared path around the corner to the end, coming up against a hulking rectangular shape standing inert in shadow.

Ten feet tall, broad as two normal men, it slumbered beneath a moldering shroud held tight by ropes — a coffin for a giant.

Peter set down the lantern and began untying the ropes. One by one they fell to the ground, until he whipped the shroud away and the tension whooshed out of Jacob’s chest, and he realized he’d been holding his breath, brain coiled up in expectation of a monster crashing forth with crushing hands.

He began to laugh.

“Not what you were expecting.”

“Not really, no.”

Rudely built, unvarnished, the cabinet squatted on warped legs — a flea market leftover. One door was missing; inside were deep shelves, riddled with scores of peculiar, quarter-inch holes. The back and sides were similarly perforated.

For the most part, the cabinet appeared empty. Drawing closer in the low light, however, Jacob saw a number of pottery shards scattered on the center shelf — wafer-thin husks of clay. It was then that he understood what he was looking at: a drying rack, an old-fashioned version of the one his mother had kept in the garage. Before he could ask what such a thing would be doing in the attic of a synagogue, Peter pointed to one of the shards and said, “There.”

Jacob looked at him. “What.”

Peter’s answer was to lightly pluck one of the shards and place it in Jacob’s palm. It felt insubstantial; it grew translucent as Jacob held it up to the lantern.

The guard said, “I told you to prepare for disappointment.”

Jacob stared at the shard, uncomprehending.

“You may find this of greater interest,” Peter said.

The guard dragged over a crate to stand on, reaching elbow-deep into the topmost shelf, withdrawing an object the size of a pomegranate, wrapped in black woolen cloth and fastened with twine. He traded it to Jacob for the clay shard.

The bundle was heavier than its size predicted, as though it contained a miniature cannonball. Jacob picked loose the knot, let the cloth fall open. Inside lay a matte ceramic spheroid, gray mottled with black and green. Its cool surface warmed rapidly as he turned it in his fingers.

A head; a human head, modeled by hand, finely wrought. Of special delicacy were the needle-like fronds of a beard. The same precision had been applied to the sharp jaw; the brow nobly swollen; the parentheses around the mouth; the eyes clenched against a blinding light.

Peter said, “It’s the Maharal.”

“Really?” Jacob said, fighting to keep his voice even.

In his mind, the truth: assaultive, clangorous.

My mother’s work.

My father’s face.