Джонатан Келлерман - The Golem of Paris

No stealth in it: the sedative gives her a shuffling gait and her rubber-soled shoes squeak on the linoleum. The noise draws the interest of other patients. Cages rattle, voices demand to know.

Who is leaving?

Why?

Starbursts of fatigue rock her back on her heels.

Dmitri takes her by the arm and hurries her along.

They pass the snoring staff room; doctor’s offices and treatment rooms, Hydrotherapy, Electroshock. She struggles to keep pace with Dmitri’s brisk strides. They pass a series of doors marked with numbers. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Seven. Eight.

Her body knows what’s coming: it’s starting to seize in anticipation.

Dmitri grabs her around the waist before she keels over.

“You must walk,” he says.

She hides from room nine, ceaselessly shaking her head: no, no, no.

“You are leaving. You are going home.”

Sick. A sick joke.

“Look at me,” he says.

She won’t. He takes her chin in his gloved hand and forces it around and up.

“Look at me,” he says. “You have a son.”

She gapes at the face strangely handsome, the features continuously reweaving themselves.

“I read it in your file. What is his name?”

She won’t tell him. Won’t allow him to desecrate it.

She whispers, “Jacob.”

“Don’t you want to see him again? Jacob?”

More than anything else in the world.

“Then you need to walk.” He props her up. “He is not coming to you.”

The guard at the gate snaps off a salute. “Sir.”

Dmitri hands him paperwork certifying that the patient Bina Reich Lev has been remanded into his custody for discharge.

The guard salutes again and goes to unlock the gate.

Snow throws a shroud over the courtyard. Frigid air needles through her thin sweater. Behind her lies an indictment, rows and rows of cell windows. She will not turn to gaze upon their misery, lest she become a pillar of salt.

Dmitri puts his hand on her elbow, urges her forward.

Bina stumbles through the gate. Cured.

He drives aggressively, rolling through red lights, taking turns at high speed, muttering to himself about the poor quality of the brakes.

Nauseated, Bina huddles against the rocking of the vehicle, her lubricated mind twisting this way and that, trying to make sense of what is happening.

All questions boil down to two.

Is she safe?

Will she get home?

There’s a kind of urgent solicitousness in Dmitri’s manner. He keeps glancing over at her, making sure she hasn’t evaporated.

“Are you all right?” he asks. He eases off the gas. “Are you going to be sick?”

She says, “Where are we going?”

Without taking his attention from the road, he reaches over her to unlock the glove compartment and withdraws a rubber-banded packet that he drops in her lap.

Her passport, along with a small stack of money.

Dmitri uses his teeth to remove one leather glove. A black ring on his index finger, identical to the ring Tremsin wears. She’s never noticed it. On the ward, he kept his hands covered.

“There is a train departing for Berlin in two hours,” he says, checking his watch. “Once there you should proceed to your embassy. Beyond that, I cannot help.”

Over the river, through a labyrinth of unpeopled streets. She can tell they’re in Old Town. When he pulls over, however, the silhouette looming beyond the glass is unmistakably that of the Alt-Neu Synagogue.

He shuts off the engine. “A quick errand, first. The golem — it is no longer safe here. You must go up to the garret and fetch the jar so I can move it elsewhere.”

She doesn’t reply.

“There is no need to pretend,” he says. “I read your file. I know who you are.”

Languid wet flakes touch the windshield, dissolve.

She says, “Who are you?”

His smile is stunted. “A friend.”

I am your friend.

We all are.

We always will be.

Checking his watch again, he says, “They have recalled us to Moscow, now that Brezhnev is dead. Doktor Tremsin has already left. I am due to depart before the year’s out. Hence the rush.”

A friend.

She says, “Is he...?”

Dmitri starts to laugh. “Him? No. No. He is the man I work for. He has given me opportunities. I try to be loyal. After he got his marching orders for Prague, I was the only member of the circle who volunteered to come into exile with him. Truthfully, I was glad. It was always the city of my dreams. I studied Czech hoping that I could one day come. I owe him much. But he is a man. No more.”

Bina wonders what more a person could be.

She recalls Frayda crushing her hands; an inhuman shadow looming up.

“I won’t be with him forever,” Dmitri says. “For me, greater things lie ahead.”

It must never be allowed to get out.

Under no circumstances can it leave this building.

Bina says, “What are you going to do with it?”

“That is not your concern,” he says. He squints ahead, perks up. “Nu.”

He springs from the car.

A small shape is coming up the sidewalk toward them, a flashlight bobbing.

Little Peter Wichs.

Outside, Dmitri says, “Did you bring it?”

Peter unzips his coat and tugs out his twine necklace with the key to the shul .

Dmitri turns to her expectantly.

She looks at Peter.

He raises a mittened hand, smiles shyly.

Aware that she is relying on the assurances of a child, she gets out of the car.

Passing the cobbled terrace at the rear of the synagogue, they head up the alleyway, pausing once to allow Bina to vomit.

“You will be fine,” Dmitri says. “There is only this to get through, and then you will be on your way home.”

At the main entrance, he stands well back as Peter unlocks the door.

“We will wait for you here,” Dmitri says.

She says, “I’ll need an assistant.”

Dmitri says nothing. His eyes dart between her and the boy.

“Either him or you,” she says.

Dmitri blinks. The prospect of entering the building clearly unnerves him.

“Do you want me to do this or not?” she asks.

A beat. Dmitri says, “Your passport.”

She hands him the packet. He slips it in his coat pocket. “Be quick about it.”

Bina places a hand on Peter’s shoulder, and together they step down into the darkened synagogue.

In the basement, she prepares for immersion by rinsing off in the camp shower. The freezing water kicks her partly from her stupor. A repulsive second skin covers her from head to toe, filling the plastic tub with a cloudy black liquid, her feet disappearing.

Taking a threadbare towel from the bureau, she scrapes herself down further.

The towel turns black.

She takes another, commences scraping.

It turns black.

She goes through the entire stack, nine in all, and still she is mottled and streaked like a farm animal. Without warning, she breaks into sobs. Her immersion will not be valid. She isn’t clean, she will never be clean again, she feels so out of control.

Think about what matters.

Think about Jacob.

She grabs ahold of her bucking mood, wrestles it to the earth.

Walks to the edge of the mikveh , encounters her ruined reflection.

Stepping down into the warm water, she wades forward until it covers her breasts.

She dips once, quickly, and resurfaces. Crosses her arms over her heart, dividing the upper and lower bodies, the holy from the profane, an act she has performed countless times. But the distinction has lost all meaning, and she lets her arms drop, weeping once more as she recites the blessing.

Blessed are You, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us regarding immersion.