The Golem of Paris

Chapter thirty-nine

The last thought Jacob had as the chandelier came down on him wasn’t a neat summing-up of his life. No jubilation, no regret; instead, the petty disappointment that he would die drunk, yet not drunk enough.

He thought, breathlessly, that he was still thinking.

The point of the chandelier, a spear finial aimed for his breastbone, ready to butterfly his heart, bounced twice before coming to rest a foot above him, swinging lazily.

It reminded him of something. A Foucault pendulum. He’d last seen one here, in Paris, at the Panthéon. He’d gone alone. Stacy had wanted to sleep in. That one swung from an anchor in the ceiling.

Now he gazed up the chandelier’s hollow body and saw the broken chain, stretched taut, tethered to nothingness. He felt a powerful downward wash of air; heard the effortful buzzing of wings. Against the vaulted black, he saw a black speck.

The scar on his lip was on fire.

He scratched at it, hypnotized, as the beetle began to move, towing the chandelier behind. It went up the aisle a safe distance, centered itself between the pews.

Let go.

The chandelier landed with a deafening peal, spraying marble chips, toppling to the left and crushing several seats, its graceful curves deformed, branches bent like drinking straws.

Behind the wreckage stood Mai, naked, glorious, hands on her hips. Her eyes were green tonight, her hair an untamed crown, her skin flushed red. Sweat coursed between her breasts, over her tight belly, which swelled and deflated; sweat collected between her thighs to hang in quivering droplets.

She ruefully contemplated the damage. “Whoops.”

Jacob said, “I’m sure they’ll understand.”

She grinned at him. “You always know how to cheer me up.”

He got to his feet, working a finger in his ringing ear.

Mai said, “Are you okay? Are you going to pass out?”

“... fine.”

“Aren’t you going to thank me?”

He ought to. She had saved his life. For a second time. The words wouldn’t come.

“What?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

She could see his aura. He had to remember that. Surely she could tell that he was angry. She might even know the specific reason, his suspicion that the chandelier hadn’t fallen on its own, but had required a bit of encouragement.

Was it ungrateful of him to wonder where she’d been thirty minutes ago, when he was being chased?

He put on a smile. “Thank you.”

“Be a gentleman,” she said. “I’m freezing.”

He stumbled over to the rack of prayer shawls, selecting one large enough to cover her to the ankles, holding it out at arm’s length as she wrapped herself.

“Just like the first time we met,” he said.

“Just as itchy.”

“And now we meet again.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t?”

He said, carefully, “I’m glad you were around.”

“Of course I’m around,” she said. “That’s what ‘forever’ means, Jacob Lev.”

Wind hammered through the broken windows.

She said, “Did you think you could get on a plane and be free of me?”

“I’m here for a case,” he said. “And I don’t want to be free of you.”

“Don’t you.”

He said, “Look, Mai. What happened, with Divya—”

“‘Happened.’ That’s an interesting way to put it. ‘Occurrences occurred.’ I like how it sounds, as if you didn’t have a choice.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“Actually, you didn’t.”

“Well, I am. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes changed, became the color of lead. “Not good enough.”

“Really? Cause I was thinking we’re even, considering you tried to burn down my apartment.”

“I didn’t do anything. You passed out and left the stove on. Not my fault you drink too much.”

What was it the couples’ counselor had told him, so long ago? Find the hurt behind the anger? “I am attempting to express—”

“What you’re attempting to do, Jacob Lev, is turn it around on me.”

“I screwed up,” he said. “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I’m a normal human male.”

“The oldest excuse,” she said. “Also the most predictable. And the worst.”

“And that justifies killing me?”

“Frankly, I think I’m being a lot nicer than a lot of women would be in my position.”

“What do you expect? I’m going to be celibate for the rest of my life?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t say no.”

“We are not having this conversation,” he said.

“And why’s that?”

Because you’re a beetle.

A monster.

A figment of my fucking imagination.

What he said was, “I barely know you.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Ever.”

She came closer. Her face was wet and twisted. “I knew you before you knew yourself. I read the pages before they were written.”

Fear coursed through Jacob.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not prepared for... all I can do is say I’m sorry.”

She wiped her cheeks on the prayer shawl.

“I don’t want to fight,” he said. “It’s a nice night. We’re in Paris. Let’s try to enjoy it. Can we do that?”

“... all right.”

“Thank you.”

“What should we do?” she asked.

Another blast of wind; the balcony wailed.

“I’m thinking,” he said, “we might want to get out of here.”

She gave a wicked smile. “Sounds good,” she said, whipping off the shawl and tossing it in his face.

He clawed free. She’d already vanished, though.

“Mai.”

And suddenly she was behind him, against him, but she wasn’t a woman any longer; he felt a hard breastplate pressed to his spine and legs like iron rods lashed him, strapping him in at the shoulders, waist, thighs. He experienced a brief sensation of weightlessness, dislodged immediately by the stronger, gut-churning sensation of violent acceleration as she flew straight up, hauling him into the air.

“Mai.”

She launched forward, their flight path obvious as they leapt over the women’s-section balcony and jetted toward a stained glass panel on the left, and he curled chin to chest to avoid the debris and she lowered her horn and punched through glass and lead.

Jacob screamed.

Kept screaming as they climbed through the storm, bursting thunderheads and raging seams of light, higher and higher until the altitude left him gasping for breath.

Mai crested softly, affording him a panorama.

Paris, through patches of black velvet, a coursing circuit board, so splendid that for a moment he forgot to be terrified.

Then she dropped in, streaking toward the earth, dragging him through strata of mist, rain blistering his face, his nervous system sparking, eyelids soldered shut, lungs filling with force-fed wind, the glowing heat of reentry.

“Down.” He was yelling so hard he could taste his lungs. “Down.”

Undoubtedly she was getting a kick out of hearing him squeal: a little payback. He bit down hard, determined not to give her the satisfaction of making him puke.

She flattened her angle of descent and they exploded through the dark cloud underbelly, leveling off over a broad stroke of concrete: the Champs-Élysées, terminating in a luminous bull’s-eye, roundabout and spokes, the grinning Arc de Triomphe.

“No.”

She dove.

They threaded the monument and the flame of the Unknown Soldier licked his chest and he went eyeball-to-eyeball with granules of concrete before she pitched up to reascend.

“No. Mai. No.”

She took him over the rooftops, lustrous zinc tangrams, and vaulted the river.

The crown of the Eiffel Tower flashed by.

She banked hard, circling the observation deck, spiraling inward.

A warm gush of gratitude.

They were going to land.

She didn’t land.

She slingshotted out of orbit, the tower’s spire shrinking in the distance.

“Goddamn it.”

Could beetles laugh?

She zagged along the river, bouncing between the quais, leaping and ducking bridges. Jacob had given up screaming. He was beyond fear, another sensation emerging, a tautness in his groin. He felt her armor, hot as a spent casing, and he surrendered to the present and let beauty flood in: the water, daubed with lamplight, its funk in his nostrils as they dipped to skim its surface; the musical plash of bateaux moored till morning, when they’d fill with tourists who’d never know what the city could look like from another perspective.

She went over and back again, showing him a geometry of fantasy.

The Place de la Concorde with its whipping tentacles. The candy box that was the Jardin des Tuileries, the Louvre’s pyramids burnished like quartz. He leaned to the right and Mai understood and fulfilled his wish, the two of them rising, soaring.

He heard the sound of snapping fabric and tilted his chin down, laughing to realize he was still clutching the tallit in his left hand.

The river forked to accommodate two teardrops of land, the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint-Louis. Below, Notre Dame, a low-waisted stick figure basking in starlight. Mai lined up along the nave of the cathedral, shedding speed, cheating in the direction of the north tower, the air congealing around them, now water, now oil, now thick as honey, until his toes touched stone, and the constriction across his body eased.

He wobbled.

Stood.

He was soaked with sweat and rain.

He felt the tallit tugged from his fist.

“Come on,” she said. She had wrapped herself in it, her eyes back to green, her amusement plain. She took his hand. “Let’s watch the sun rise.”

They stood together atop the north tower, fingers laced, facing east, flanked by gargoyles.

She said, “I wake up. Strange place. Strange body. I couldn’t tell you how much time has passed. I couldn’t tell you when I was last awake. I see a person. Sometimes he — it’s always a he — sometimes he’s kind. Sometimes he wants me to do horrible things. I can’t say no. He says kill and I kill.”

She sagged, hiding in her hair. “A day goes by. A year. My mind starts to clear. Fragments come back. I begin putting them together and then it all goes dark.” She paused. “It’s horrible.”

He nodded.

She said, “For the longest time, it went on like that, over and over.”

“What changed?”

“There was a woman. She gave me the body I have now.”

“Well,” he said. “If I ever run into her, I’ll thank her.”

Mai laughed softly. “It was many years ago. After she remade me, I saw my reflection and recognized myself. Even though I was new. I know it sounds strange. She did that for me.”

Jacob said, “It sounds like love.”

Mai said, “She looked like you.”

Silence.

“She set me free,” Mai said. “The tall men were furious. They hunted me, for years and years. A few times, they managed to corner me. They seemed to expect they could snap their fingers and return me to dust. But I wasn’t as malleable anymore. The woman knew me. She knew how I was supposed to be. The form she had given me, it was... sticky. I always got away.

“In the end, I came back on my own. To see her. I had to. Nothing else mattered.”

She could have been describing any addiction.

“She was expecting me. She’d left the garret door open. She said they had ordered her to destroy me. They threatened her. She said, ‘I’d never do that to you.’

“She showed me a jar. It looked so delicate, you can’t imagine.”

He could. He had seen one like it. More than once.

In a garret, shards.

In his apartment, intact. He used it to store sugar.

Mai said, “I did what she asked. I crawled inside. I felt so tired I could hardly move. It was like that, if she touched me, and the jar came from her hands; it had her in it.”

He made to release her fingers, but she held on tightly.

“Right now,” she said, “this is where I want to be.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I broke out. It takes time, but I’ve done it, more than once. I’ll open my eyes and see light everywhere. Not a pleasant light. Sludgy, like a window that’s never been cleaned. As long as it’s there, I have the strength to kick. When it fades, I fall back asleep. Eventually, though—”

“The jar cracks,” he said.

“Usually someone’s waiting there to put me back in.”

“Not the last time,” he said.

“No.”

“You saw a man, attacking a woman.”

“Yes.”

“You acted.”

A dreamy smile, as though she was recalling an especially delicious dinner. “Yes.”

Reggie Heap, a rapist and murderer. In general, Jacob believed he’d gotten his due. Nonetheless it unsettled him to perceive the pleasure she could take in ripping someone’s — anyone’s — head off.

“When I touched him, I saw the others he’d hurt, the men who helped him. I went to find them. I found you, too.”

Jacob shivered, recalling her, naked in his apartment, a girl he didn’t remember picking up, a creation without equal, bathed in early morning sun.

I’m just a nice young lady who came down for some fun.

“They’ve never stopped watching you,” she said. “You do know that.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t, and while the deception infuriated him, worse was realizing his own naïveté.

“They backed off a bit. They’re still in your neighborhood, though. I fly over them most nights. They keep a van at the ready, half a mile from the archive.”

The desire to bash Mallick’s smug face in gave way to a pinch of anxiety. “Do they follow me in the car?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I try to shake them,” he said.

She said, “They know about your mother.”

He stared at her. “How do you know about her?”

“You visit her every week. It’s not hard to see. You have her face.”

Silence.

“Why haven’t they gone after her?” he said.

Mai bit her lip. “I suppose they think she’s in no state to help them.”

He said, “Is she?”

Mai considered her answer at length.

“I do love her,” she said. “But I love you more.”

A queasy smile. “Thanks?”

She laughed softly.

They were quiet together awhile.

“Schott’s here,” he said. “In Paris.”

She nodded.

“You’re not worried?”

“Not at the moment. I’m safe. Any house of worship, really. It frightens them.”

“I didn’t realize they got frightened.”

“Everybody’s got something they’re afraid of. I’m afraid of them. They’re afraid of you. You’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not—”

She shut her eyes. “Please don’t lie. I can’t stand that.”

He wondered what it looked like to her — the texture and hue of his fear.

“He’s not the only one,” she said. “The man who followed you tonight. He’s one of them, too.”

“That can’t be right,” he said. “He works for Tremsin.”

“I know what I saw.”

“His colors.”

She said, “He doesn’t have any.”

A beat.

“That’s why he never entered the synagogue,” Jacob said.

“Yes.”

“Why you couldn’t help me.”

She grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

He pulled her closer.

“I want to be there for you,” she said. “I’ll be there, as much as I can.”

He said, “So, just to be clear, that’s your interpretation of ‘forever.’”

She smacked him on the arm. “Stop.”

“I’m just pointing it out,” he said. “I’m not the only one who picks and chooses.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t go back in the jar.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

But she was drawn and trembling. “I can’t stand it in there. Not one day more.”

She was right to be afraid, wrong about the reason.

Subach and Schott had ransacked his apartment. They could’ve taken the jar. They took the potter’s knife.

So that’s your strategy for dealing with her. Containment.

Ask yourself what you’d do in my position.

An immense sadness gripped Jacob.

“They’re not going to give up,” he said.

“You want me to turn myself in?”

“Of course not.”

“Convenient for you. Sleep with anyone you want, get your old job back—”

“Cut it out.”

She said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how this is supposed to work. You and I.”

It can’t.

“The woman who set you free,” he said. “What was her name?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. I’ve always had trouble with names.”

“Perel,” he said. “Perel Loew. Is that right?”

A smile broke open on Mai’s face, and she burrowed deep in his chest, and they laughed and cried and rocked together, sheltering each other from the morning chill.

The tower bells began to toll.

She said, “You should go.”

“Not yet.”

“He’s going to wonder where you are.”

“Let him,” he said.

She raised her mouth to his, and he remembered the taste of her, the way it coated his tongue like earth.

He staggered forward, hungry for more.

But the flesh was gone, and he felt himself embraced, rising, warmth at his back, as she floated him down to the garden behind the cathedral and set him gently on his feet.

Shrunk to a point, she hovered briefly before him, then flew off, a scribble in his visual field, an error corrected by the higher functions of his brain.