Джонатан Келлерман - The Golem of Paris

“Next week?” Frayda says.

“You bet.”

Cindy is waiting for her on the corner of Nostrand and Avenue D, the knapsack slumped at her feet.

Barbara blows out an anxious breath. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, baby, sure. So?” Cindy bites off a cuticle. “How did it go? Is it true love?”

“You bet,” Barbara says.

The second class meets indoors at 11 Minetta, in Sri Sri Jivanmukta Swami’s second-floor studio apartment. Again the group sits in a circle on the floor, which is really the only option, because Sri Sri doesn’t own any furniture.

There’s clay, at least — a little ball, the diameter of a nickel.

“All creation begins from a single point,” he says.

They spend the hour forming tiny bowls by hand.

“You’re really good at this,” Frayda says.

Barbara shrugs.

Sri Sri presses his palms together. “The purity of the beginner.”

Each week he allots a bit more raw material, until, by week eight, they are making vases using hand-turned wheels. Sri Sri shuttles back and forth, dispensing advice and mopping up gray water with a rag.

“Next week,” he says, “we return to the garden to seek inspiration.”

“And to protect your floors,” Frayda mutters.

Barbara’s parents are happy to see her taking her studies so seriously.

Cindy, on the other hand, is starting to get restless.

“I’m happy to keep covering for you, baby, but don’t I deserve to meet him?”

“It’s tricky,” Barbara says.

“What, he’s a secret agent?”

“Something like that.”

The following Wednesday it’s drizzling. Barbara and Frayda arrive at the park to find it deserted. On the door to number eleven Minetta hangs a sodden note, ink running.

They head to a café.

Frayda says, “I don’t understand why he doesn’t just put down a drop cloth.”

“He’s wearing it,” Barbara says. She picks up her turkey sandwich but hesitates. Frayda isn’t eating or drinking, and that makes her feel weird — observed. “You’re sure you don’t want anything? A cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Barbara takes a bite, chews, swallows. Frayda has missed a couple of pottery classes due to a spate of Jewish holidays.

“You keep kosher,” Barbara says.

Frayda nods.

“I’m sorry.”

“That I keep kosher?”

Barbara laughs. “I don’t want to be rude,” she says, putting the sandwich down.

“Please,” Frayda says. “Enjoy.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

“I don’t know,” Barbara says.

Frayda gestures to the carnival that is Greenwich Village. “A turkey sandwich,” she says, “is the least of my concerns.”

They talk about their families, about school. Frayda studies accounting at Hunter. She’s nineteen, two years older than Barbara, but also a junior. With a detached air, she mentions that she’s engaged.

“Cool,” Barbara says, although she’s amazed. “When’s the happy day?”

“We don’t know yet. We’re not formally engaged. More like... betrothed .”

“That sounds fancy.”

“It’s not. We’ve known each other since we were five. Our families are friends.”

Her accepting manner disquiets Barbara. “What’s his name?”

“Yonatan. You could meet him sometime. You could come for Shabbos dinner.”

“Sounds like fun,” Barbara says, hoping she sounds more sincere than she feels.

“It really is,” Frayda says. “You could come this Friday, if you wanted.”

“Maybe.” She promised Cindy they’d go to a movie. “I have to check.”

“Sure.”

There’s a silence. Then Frayda peers at her suddenly.

“Do you have a Hebrew name?” she asks.

She does, but it’s purely an abstraction. Talk of God enrages her father. He is clear: God perished in the camps. It is with barely contained disgust that he watches his wife light the yahrzeit candle for her brother. They eat pork, they drive on Saturdays, they socialize with other Czechs, Jewish or Christian, it doesn’t matter, every last one of them is a devout atheist.

And yet he has chosen to live in Flatbush, surrounded by Jews. And when he drinks too much, he boasts. Reich is German for “rich,” does she know that? They come from royalty.

They hate us because we are better.

Barbara looks across the café table at Frayda’s cool, benevolent face, the temples tinged with premature gray. She decides she will cancel her plans with Cindy; she will go to Friday night dinner, if for no other reason than to please her new friend, a friend who asks questions and then actually listens to her answers.

Plus, she’s curious. The concept of the Sabbath is foreign, and mysterious, and a bit naughty — an attractive combination.

“Bina,” she says. “My name is Bina.”

Rosario heard Jacob running toward the lobby and smiled without looking up.

“No more cookies.”

“Something’s wrong with my mother,” he said.

Out on the patio, Bina was as Jacob had left her, fetal, sheened, the vein bisecting her forehead hideously engorged, neck a tendon cage, fluid hands shrunk to clubs. The remains of her dinner had been swept to the concrete, the tray pinwheeling, mashed potato skid marks.

Rosario took her blood pressure and pulse. She had a temporal lobe artery thermometer, which was a good thing, because Bina wouldn’t open her mouth.

“Come on, honey. I need to look in your eyes.”

Slowly, Bina’s eyelids parted, allowing Rosario to check her pupillary response.

Like the rest of her vitals, it was normal.

While Rosario went off to page the on-call MD, Jacob paced, trying to talk his own heart down. The silence felt much heavier than usual, thrown into hard relief by his mother’s burst of life.

For a brief moment, he’d seen her.

Now she was gone again.

“He’ll be here as soon as he can,” Rosario said, returning. She glanced at Bina, whose body had begun to lose its tautness, causing her to slide down, her head wilting over her chest. “She seems like she’s okay now.”

Jacob said, “You didn’t see what I saw.”

“What did you see?”

He didn’t know how to answer that.

The doctor arrived inside the hour, by which point Bina had gone completely limp.

“We’ve got it from here,” Rosario said. “Promise.”

Jacob hesitated. “If you need to admit her, call me. Not my father. Okay?”

Rosario nodded, both of them knowing full well it was Sam’s name on the proxy.

She touched his arm. “There’s really nothing more for you to do.”

He could take a hint. He’d done enough already.

The first and only time his father had accompanied him to the care facility, he’d led Jacob along a circuitous route — east through Boyle Heights, south through Downey. It was absurd, really, taking driving directions from a blind man, and Jacob had laughed, asking if they were being followed.

There was nothing joking in Sam’s response.

You tell me.

The precautions went further than that: he’d registered Bina under a false name, going so far as to sign himself in as Saul Abelson.

Jacob still didn’t understand exactly what, or whom, his father was afraid of. They’d never gotten a chance to discuss it. But Sam’s sins didn’t change the fact that he was a thoughtful man. If he deemed precautions necessary, Jacob would take precautions.

Tonight he performed his usual pre-drive check, feeling in the wheel wells and peering at the car’s underbody for tracking devices. He made a few wrong turns, pulling over to flush out tails. Once on the freeway, he pushed the needle to eighty-five, his salivary glands pinching in anticipation as he neared the exit for his former favorite bar.