The Golem of Paris

Chapter twenty-six

PRAGUE RUZYNĚ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

OCTOBER 25, 1982

Bina blearily follows the group off the plane to the gate, where two men await them. The first is sallow and trim in a brown polyester suit, smiling blandly over the shoulder of a compact, bushy-headed fellow in snug blue jeans and a hairy green turtleneck.

They number eighteen, hailing from points across the United States, plus a token Canadian to make the alliance international. Strangers when they convened in the international terminal at Kennedy, they now share the peculiar, mildly delirious intimacy that comes of long distance traveled at close quarters.

The man in the turtleneck folds his sign and addresses them in clean English.

“Honored guests.” Black eyes gleam above tracts of five o’clock shadow. “I am Ota Wichs. On behalf of the Jewish community, it is my privilege to be the first to say: vítejte!”

Mumbling: hello and thank you. Bina catches herself before she replies in Czech.

“My friends, we have eagerly anticipated your arrival. There is much to do and see. Before we proceed, however, it is my added privilege to introduce to you my esteemed colleague Mr. Antonín Hrubý, religious undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Culture, without whose support this opportunity to host you would not have been possible.”

He begins clapping loudly. Confusion passes over the group before they get the message and join in. The man in the brown suit takes a shallow bow.

“Friends,” Ota Wichs says, “please, come with me.”

They proceed down the arrivals corridor, bunched uneasily, like sheep. A souvenir vendor offers tin buttons imprinted with the Czechoslovakian flag. Other carts stand idle, covered in heavy plastic tarps and chained, though it is midday. Bina counts more soldiers than passengers, and while the place has the correct layout, the correct stale plasticky odor, something about it feels misaligned — theoretical, the result of asking someone who’d never been in an airport to build one.

A sandy-haired photographer from Seattle uncaps her camera, drawing Hrubý’s instant attention. He brings the group to a halt.

Ota Wichs clears his throat. “For reasons of security, we ask that you refrain from taking photographs inside the airport, please.”

Hrubý puts a hand out.

There’s a tense moment before the photographer pops open her camera, removes the film, and gives it to him. He pockets it and walks on.

“Please continue,” Wichs says.

Bina hears her father’s old rebuke.

You were not there.

She’s here now.

To avoid an immigration line three hundred strong, Hrubý herds them down a side corridor to a cramped office, where he calls roll and checks passports against a preprinted list. Nervous chuckles as they answer here like schoolchildren.

To offset the coarseness of the process, Ota Wichs makes sure to smile at each of them individually.

“Bina Reich Lev,” Hrubý reads.

Wichs meets her eye. “Welcome.”

Hrubý looks up from his clipboard. “Bina Reich Lev?”

“Here,” she says.

He crosses off her name and moves down the list, leaving Bina to reflect on the fact that Wichs knew who she was before she’d spoken a word.

They board a tour bus. Bina takes a row at the back, putting her legs up to ward off company. Thus far she has succeeded at keeping mostly to herself, and the group has tacitly designated her resident oddball, with her long skirt and her head scarf and her kosher airplane meal.

As they merge onto the highway, the faulty seal around her window begins to stream cold air. Not the worst thing, as several people have lit up, the cabin growing hazy. Bina watches the passing countryside, orange farmhouse roofs licking at a pitted gray sky.

Ota Wichs blows into a microphone. “Testing. Testing... Okay. Now, friends, I must ask if anyone has been to Prague before.”

Bina nearly raises her hand. But she has only false memories. Ghost stories.

“Then I welcome you again. Please, to your left, you may see the nature preserve of Divoká Šárka, named for the lady warrior, wild Šárka. According to our legend, many years ago these lands were ruled by women. You see, my friends, our people are very progressive, we had female leadership long before it became fashionable in the West...”

There are few other cars on the road until they reach the outskirts of town. In a bid to distract them from the increasingly grim landscape, Wichs keeps up his patter, clutching at a seat back as the bus sways between stacks of concrete painted harsh primary colors.

“To your right, you may see the military hospital.”

Everything from shoes to street lamps has been designed with function foremost in mind, and the sunlight that worms through the clouds serves mainly to harden angles and expose seams.

“To your left, a brand-new gymnasium...”

Bina doesn’t care about the accomplishments of the state.

She’s looking up at the apartment buildings.

Behind one of those dingy curtains, her mother is chopping vegetables.

She’s looking at the bent-backed man, smoking on a park bench: her father, following a fourteen-hour day, not yet ready to face his family.

I’m here now, Taťka.

The city’s brutalist shell begins to crack open, a foot at a time, giving way to Old Town, the architectural elegance that remains because no one has bothered to dismantle it. Traffic congeals. After thirty minutes trapped on the Hlávkův Bridge, suspended over a river Vltava crawling thick with pollutants, a vote is taken to walk the last half mile. They drag their bags over cigarette butts to the musty lobby of the Hotel Důlek. Wichs distributes room keys, allotting them a brief break to freshen up before the welcome reception.

It takes place at the old Jewish town hall and is attended by community leaders as well as a cadre of local artists. Before the meal come greetings, expressions of fellowship, and a speech from the chief rabbi of Bratislava, who has taken the train in for the occasion and who talks at length about the Torah’s connection to the class struggle.

“We observe that many religious rules have a socialist character,” Wichs translates, “such as the abrogation of property rights every seven years, during the shemittah year, so that in a real sense we may regard Moses as a forerunner to Marx.”

Undersecretary Hrubý leans against the wall, taking notes.

The window nearest Bina overlooks the scabby roof of the Alt-Neu Synagogue. On the way over from the hotel, Wichs paused outside the shul to provide a thumbnail biography of Judah Loew, the Maharal. Were they familiar with the golem of Prague?

Everyone was, although no one perhaps as intimately as Bina. Sam is a devotee of Loew’s, introducing his ideas into most Shabbat table discussions. She’s heard the golem legend and its variants too many times to count.

Someone asked if Wichs had ever been up to the garret.

He placed his hands on his heart. I regret to inform you that there is nothing but broken furniture. But we will learn more tomorrow. For now let us move on, please.

The rabbi from Bratislava wraps up, drawing tired applause. Teenagers acting as waiters distribute bread baskets and pitchers of water and beer.

Joining Bina at her table are five locals, an installation artist from San Francisco, a painter from Dallas, and, to her left, a dour Brooklyn lithographer who drinks pint after pint of pilsner, growing more slurred and more insistent as he tries to engage the Czechs on politics, while they smile awkwardly and attempt to steer the conversation back to art.

Dinner arrives: a platter of sausages, wallowing in fat.

“I’m not saying I was happy Reagan got shot,” the lithographer says, sliding a sausage onto his plate.

“Hello, my friends.” Ota Wichs drags a chair over, inserting himself next to Bina, moving the platter along before she can take food. “We are enjoying ourselves?”

“I don’t like it if anyone gets shot,” the lithographer says.

Wichs claps him on the shoulder. “Yes, of course, this is tragic, this is no way to celebrate, we must talk about more pleasant things.”

He fills the nearest glass.

“To art,” he says. “The universal language. Na zdraví.”

“I thought love was the universal language,” the lithographer says.

“Love, art,” Wichs says. “To an artist, they are the same thing, yes?”

The sausages have migrated halfway around the table, coming to rest in front of a Czech writer, who is telling the Dallas painter that she has lovely lips. Bina waves to get their attention and is startled by Wichs, murmuring in her ear.

“I understand that you observe the kosher laws.”

Bina looks at him.

“I believe it said so in your application,” he says. “Unless I am mistaken.”

“No,” she says slowly. “I do.”

“Then you will not want to partake of the meat.”

“It’s not kosher?”

“Unfortunately, our community lacks a butcher. However, I have arranged for a special meal.”

“Thanks.”

Wichs beckons a waiter. “Don’t thank me until you’ve seen what it is.”

A limp, undressed salad; an extra bread roll and a pat of margarine.

“Please accept my apologies,” Wichs says. “The beer is quite tasty, though.”

“I don’t drink,” Bina says.

“I’ve never met a Czech who didn’t drink.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m not Czech.”

“Your application said you spoke the language.”

“What else did my application say?”

A wry smile. “You ought to know. You wrote it.”

She didn’t, though. Frayda did. “My parents spoke Czech at home.”

“Ah. And did they drink?”

“My father,” she says, tearing open a roll. “Too much.”

Wichs presses his palms together. “Again, my sincerest apologies.”

“Forget it,” she says, spreading margarine. “Excuse me.”

In the restroom, she washes her hands, stepping outside to make the blessing. When she returns to the table, Wichs waits for her to make the blessing on the bread and take a bite, allowing her to speak again.

“What must it be like for you,” he says, “to come home.”

The bread is chalky; she sips water to wash it down. “I was born in New York.”

“But your soul is from Prague.”

“Was that on my application, too?”

He laughs. “No. But I can see your nature plain as your nose.” He tilts his empty glass, laced with foam, toward her paltry dinner. “It’s the way of our people to accept their fate without complaint.”

Nineteen sixty-eight, Soviet tanks grinding through Wenceslas Square.

Her father, throttling the newspaper.

“I’m also Jewish,” she says. “Jews love to complain.”

“Yes, that’s true. I suppose I’ve offended you, reducing you to one aspect when clearly you have many sides.”

“We all do,” she says. “Did my application mention that I observe the Sabbath?”

“It did, yes. Friday night you will dine with me and my family.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“It is kind of you to come.” He rises. “I hope you will find your visit inspiring.”

The next day, everyone else is hungover, pulling coats against the seven a.m. chill. Last night brought a bit of musical beds. Bina lay awake until two, listening to laughter and grunts through the thin walls, and now cigarettes and sheepish grins go around.

“Good morning, my friends.”

Ota Wichs wears the same clothes as yesterday, a fresh crop of stubble already rising. He inquires after their accommodations, exclaims approval, and announces the day’s itinerary: a tour of Josefov, the former Jewish quarter.

They proceed on foot through wet, cobbled streets. Wichs peppers them with a mixture of statistics, Communist rhetoric, and hoary Tales from the Ghetto. It’s unclear to Bina how much he believes what he’s saying, and she feels saddened by this caricature, so at odds with the Prague she inherited from her parents, a city at once profound and everyday.

All the same, she can appreciate the need for caution. Leaving dinner, the Czech writer gripped her by the arm, whispering that her hotel room was bugged. He offered to take her home instead, which did throw his motivation into question.

Their first stop is the old Jewish cemetery. Official visiting hours don’t begin until nine-thirty. Undersecretary Hrubý is there to open the gates.

Behind them lies a mess of broken stones and unchecked vegetation, bottles and spent condoms, moss and rotting leaves.

“To the naked eye,” Wichs says, “not very large. But remember: the dead lie twelve deep. In terms of luminaries per square meter, you will not find a more illustrious resting place in Europe.”

He leads them along the perimeter path, pointing out the grave of the astronomer and mathematician David Ganz; the grand monument to financier Mordecai Meisel.

Hrubý trails them, taking notes.

“And here we come to our most famous resident, Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal.”

They crowd around a formidable marble tomb framed by cartouches. Wichs launches into a lengthy discourse on the headstone’s motifs — the grapes, the lion — as well as the inscriptions detailing Loew’s literary achievements.

“And beside him for eternity, his beloved wife, Perel.”

Bina has to smile. Just another rabbi’s wife. Some things never change.

“Now that we have paid our respects to the individuals,” Wichs says, “we shall proceed to the Alt-Neu Synagogue, where, it is said, the famous golem was given life.”

He plucks a pebble from the ground, places it atop the monument, and walks on.

Bina lingers, waiting for the group to dissipate. Sam would want her to pay respects. She kneels to get a pebble of her own.

“Excuse, please.”

Hrubý stands on the path, frowning at her.

“Sorry,” she says. “I was just...”

She gets up, brushing herself off, laughing self-consciously. “Sorry.”

Hrubý flips to a new page in his notebook and begins to write.

Bina hurries to rejoin the group. Not until they have exited the cemetery does she realize she forgot to place the pebble.

Three days go by, three days of sightseeing and workshops, capped by long indulgent evenings in wine bars or beer halls, hashing out meaningless points of aesthetics in order to get to the real goal: determining that night’s couplings.

And all the while, Bina hovers at the edge.

They visit the Alt-Neu and stand in the antechamber listening to a pro forma lecture on Gothic architecture. Bina looks at the Maharal’s chair. She looks at the Torah ark. She peers through slots cut into the wall at the shuttered women’s section. She rubs the pews’ soft wood, waiting in vain for the heavens to call to her.

They visit the site of Theresienstadt concentration camp, where Věra’s family died, where the memorial plaque commemorates 35,00 °Czechoslovak citizens without mention of Jews. Bina puts her ear to the wind and hears nothing.

She sits on a panel discussion about craft and class without opening her mouth.

Hrubý takes notes.

Alone in her dingy room, she pleads yet again with the hotel operator to grant her a connection to the United States.

“I’ll pay for it in advance,” she says. “Please.”

She hasn’t spoken to her husband or son in four days.

What is she doing here?

She wants to consider her decision to come to Prague as a form of temporary insanity, caught from Frayda. But she needed weeks to get ready. She had to get the visa, secure child care. So she isn’t insane, or else it wasn’t temporary.

On the morning she left, Sam accompanied her to the gate at LAX, making a puppet of Jacob, waving his hand. Good-bye, Ima! We’ll miss you! She leaned in to kiss them and Jacob lunged out and clung to her. His nails bit into the nape of her neck. They grow so fast, and Sam is helpless with the clipper. She mumbled something about an emery board in the bathroom; she freed herself from her son’s arms, and walked down the Jetway to the sound of his screams.

Clearly you have many sides.

Never has she been aware of so many of them simultaneously; never have they felt so at war. Artist. Jew. American. Czech. Wife. Mother. The tide in her head builds to a roar as the operator informs her, for the fourth day in a row, that it is not possible to call abroad at the moment.

Bina slams the phone down.

Thursday, October 28, is a national holiday, the anniversary of the founding of the independent Czechoslovak state. Along with thousands of others, the group boards the tram to the parade grounds at Letná Plain. Weather balloons bob, numbered by city district, the sections further subdivided by employer: the Skoda automobile factory, the Ministry of Information. Members of the Workers’ Militia usher folks amid a tossing sea of tricolors. Scratch at the patriotism, though, and find mischief; a torn cup becomes a megaphone, used to direct a question toward the bandstand.

“Here I am, Mr. Husák,” the man yells, addressing the absent Prime Minister. “Where are you?”

The International Alliance of Jewish Artists has its own private section, set up with chairs so that they can observe the proceedings in comfort. A nice surprise is the presence of Ota Wichs’s family: his wife, Pavla, an angular woman toting a picnic basket, and son, Peter, who’s nine but looks five, with elfin features and a thatch of shiny black hair. His shy smile gives Bina a dull ache in her chest.

Wichs’s attempts to translate are drowned out by overloud cheers. Then follows a lively display of strength, intelligible in any language: MiGs thunder overhead, soldiers march, a military band blares. The national anthem starts up, and thirty thousand people lift their voices, and Hrubý climbs up onto a chair, waving his arms like a conductor. Words Bina thought she’d forgotten fall from her mouth like tears.

Kde domov můj? Kde domov můj?

Where is my home? Where is my home?

They sang it, her parents and their friends; potlucks in Prospect Park, the adults drunk at midday and telling sappy stories. Where is my home? Bina understands, now.

It’s not a question, but an accusation.

Where is my home?

What have you done with it?

The festivities last for hours, district divisions breaking down, people trampling the vast brown lawns, toasting, singing, dancing, hugging. They share sandwiches, a precious bottle of wine. A stranger hands Bina a cucumber, which he boasts was grown by the sweat of his labor on his allotment garden. He insists that she eat it, watching her with a squint of profound pleasure; when she finishes, he kisses her cheek and runs off.

As dusk falls, she has put nothing else in her stomach except acrid water. Her bladder is bursting. She goes off in search of a bathroom that turns out not to exist. Men and women alike are simply doing whatever they need to do, wherever they can find room to do it. Bina weaves between the locust trees, her feet squelching. Over the plain roll accordion music and the urgency of sexual congress. Fireworks explode. She’s going to want a long, hot shower.

Finding a suitable clump of privet, she waits for the night to fade to black before gathering up her skirt. To the west, the turrets of Prague Castle are lit red, white, and blue — a hilariously romantic view for peeing. She starts to giggle.

“Promiňte.”

Bina shrieks and leaps up.

A whistle lances the sky, light bursts, and she discerns the shape of a boy.

“Excuse me,” Peter Wichs says. “I did not mean to scare you.”

Her heart is racing, a stray drop of urine trickling down the inside of her thigh. She feels vaguely assaulted. She reminds herself that he’s a child.

She asks in Czech if he’s lost.

“Please come with me,” he says, and he slips off into the night.

He moves quickly, playing a weak flashlight through the trees, short legs pumping.

Bina hurries to catch up. They’ve gone some distance before she realizes they’re headed in the wrong direction.

“We should go back,” she says. “Your father will be worried.”

“My father sent me.”

“To do what?”

“Bring you.”

“Bring me where?”

“You can speak English,” he says. “I know how.”

They stumble along the paths sloping toward the Vltava.

“Peter.” She assumes her most maternal tone. “Peter, let’s stop for a second and you tell me what’s going on.”

“Can you walk faster?”

They reach an unpeopled area. The edge of the city comes into view.

“That’s enough,” she says, grabbing at his sleeve.

He regards her with weary patience. “I thought you would go sooner.”

“What?”

“To the bathroom,” he says. “I was waiting all day. What took you so long?”

He removes her hand. “We’re late.”

Crossing over the Čechův Bridge, graffiti shouting from its rusting balustrades, Bina finds herself starting to speed up, and then to outpace him.

She knows where they’re headed.

In the wan moonlight, the Alt-Neu shul broods like a bird of prey.

“My father will be here as soon as he can,” Peter says, reaching into his shirt.

He tugs out a key on a necklace of twine.

They enter the synagogue and step down into the antechamber, chilly, resonant. She follows Peter along the hall. He unlocks a door and reveals an unlit stairway.

“I’ll wait here to give you privacy,” he says, handing her the flashlight.

He offers no further explanation. Bina makes her way down carefully, fingers brushing the wall for balance. The stones grow slippery, the air damp and fungal.

She reaches bottom, a candlelit room with a small bureau, a stack of fraying towels, a camp shower in a plastic tub. Through an arch, she sees a second room. More candles dance in the rippling surface of a ritual bath.

There’s no one to supervise her. No wise husband to teach her, no friend making obscure demands.

We need you to be physically present.

She is here. She could not articulate why she is here. Yet the moment is calling to her, like a song in a forgotten language.

She strips, showers off, and immerses, finding the mikveh pleasingly warm. She dresses and heads upstairs, reaching the top just as Ota Wichs arrives.

He bolts the front door and comes to join them. “Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” Peter says. “No one saw.”

Ota kisses him on the head. “Well done.” Turning to Bina, he says, “I apologize for the secrecy. Obviously, we have had to be extra careful. Hrubý — you have seen enough of him to know what type of fellow he is. His father was a hammer, his mother, a sickle. But it’s all right, he’ll be drunk tonight.”

He smiles. “Shall we ascend?”