Джонатан Келлерман: The Golem of Paris

BOHNICE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

DECEMBER 17, 1982

The patient will wake up.”

The Russian’s voice is soft and careful, handling the words in Czech like an unfamiliar weapon.

She has taught herself deafness. How else to sleep in this deranged place, its nights clotted with moans and prayers to a God that does not exist, cannot exist, for the State has declared him dead.

The State is correct.

Proof of God’s death is all around her.

Senseless, trying to hide. She cowers just the same as the Russian kneels to unlock her cage, his greatcoat opening like a pair of dark wings. The cell door stands ajar, admitting a sickly fan of light from the grease-smeared bulb that smolders in the corridor.

“The patient will stand, please.”

She will be punished. Her cellmates want none of it. Fat Irena pretends to snore, blowing white balloons. Olga’s fingers are knotted in the hollow of her belly.

The fourth bed is empty.

“Little bird,” the Russian says. “Do not make me ask again.”

She swings her feet to the freezing concrete, finds her paper slippers.

They step into the low, broad passageway known as Bulvár šílenci.

Lunatics’ Boulevard.

While the Russian finds the correct key, she assumes the mandatory posture, kneeling with forehead to the linoleum. Along the corridor, a feverish racket is stirring. The other inmates have heard jangling. They want to know. Who is leaving? Why?

“The patient may stand.”

She rises, using the wall for support.

He leads her down the Boulevard, past the staff room, where orderlies doze in armchairs under heavy doses of self-prescribed sedatives. Past physicians’ offices, exam rooms, Hydrotherapy and Electroshock and rooms unmarked except for numbers. Rooms that cannot be labeled truthfully.

The women’s ward ends at two consecutive locked doors, gray paint peeling to reveal steel the same color.

Where is he taking her?

Syringes crunch beneath his boot-heels in the dank stairwell, the temperature dropping with every step. Upon reaching the ground floor, the Russian pauses to remove his greatcoat and drape it over her shoulders. The hem puddles. He places his ushanka on her head, ties the flaps under her chin.

“I would give you my shoes,” he says, tugging off his gloves, “but I must drive.”

He pauses, frowns at her. “Are you all right, little bird? You look unwell.”

Bare fingers brush her cheek. The sudden warmth causes the cold to constrict around her viciously, and she recoils, shivering.

He withdraws his hand. “Forgive me.”

He looks almost remorseful, twisting the thick black ring on his index finger. “Do not be afraid. You are leaving this place.” He offers the gloves. “Please.”

She steps out of the paper slippers and pulls the gloves on over her numb feet. They cover her to the ankles.

He laughs. “Like a chimpanzee.”

She smiles obligingly.

They step out into the frigid courtyard.

The guard manning the hospital gate wears a Socialist Union of Youth pin on his lapel. The Russian returns his salute and says that the patient Marie Lasková has been remanded into his custody.

A riffle of paperwork, a signature, a second exchange of salutes.

And like that, she is cured, no longer a menace to society, but a healthy, sane, productive citizen of the republic.

The guard unlocks the gate and shoves it wide.

“Ladies first,” the Russian says.

It’s there, three steps away: freedom. Yet she does not move, gazing back across the courtyard, a brown scalloped mass. The snow of St. Catherine’s Day, well on its way to Christmas mud. A single locust tree stands denuded, its branches pruned back to thwart escapees, the trunk wrapped in barbed wire for good measure.

The Russian watches her patiently. He seems to understand what she is doing before she understands it herself.

She is counting.

The rows of windows, chiseled through concrete.

The ravaged faces beyond. The afflicted bodies. The hunger and the thirst, the cold and the heat and the squalor. The names.

She is counting them all, inscribing them in the ledger of her mind.

She must bear witness.

“Come, little bird. We should not keep him waiting. I left the car running.”

She asks who he is.

The Russian raises his eyebrows, as though the answer should be self-evident.

“Your son.”

She turns the corner, moving fast as she can in her gloved feet.

I’m coming, Danek .

But the car draws her up short: a Tatra 603, squat, matte black, tailpipe stuttering exhaust, identical to the car that brought her in for interrogation so many lifetimes ago.

Who knows? It may be the very one.

They came to her door one afternoon, a pair of men with cement eyes.

Inspector Hrubý requests that you accompany us.

So polite! You couldn’t possibly say no.

She didn’t worry. She didn’t even bother to send Daniel next door, confident she’d be home in time to cook dinner. And what a dinner it would be: she had half a package of lasagna noodles. Not the gray Russian kind that boiled for hours without dissolving, but authentic, a little Italian flag on the box. Daniel was delirious with anticipation. When she went to the kitchen for her coat, he was eating them straight out of the box, crunching brittle planks between his teeth and giggling. She smacked his hand and stuck the box up on a high shelf, telling him she’d be back soon and not to be a pig.

Downstairs, she got into the Tatra and spoke the name of her contact. She knew what to expect. For the sake of appearances, they would take her to the StB headquarters on Bartolomějská Street. Confirmation would require a phone call. They would let her go without apology or explanation, and she would board the tram back to her apartment. As they pulled into traffic, she sat back, preoccupied foremost with how to make a decent filling for the pasta without butter, cheese, oil, or tomatoes.

Now she sees the car, maybe the same car, and her bowels clench. It’s a hoax, another ingenious ploy to grind down her will and pulverize her spirit.

The tinted back window drops in jerks.

“Matka.”

The voice is impossible. The face, too. She left a laughing six-year-old and has returned to a sober little judge. Lank brown hair tumbles down his forehead. He is not smiling. He looks as though he has never smiled in his life.

“Why are you waiting,” he says.

Why, indeed. Cheeks streaming, she waddles forth, climbs into the backseat.

And immediately he shrinks from her, pressing into the opposite door, his nose scrunched. She must stink. She takes his face in her hands and smothers it in kisses. Still he won’t look at her, his eyes bent toward the ceiling. She says his name; kisses him, again and again, until he forcibly pulls away, and she falls back, her throat salty and raw.

The Russian gets behind the wheel. He tries to shift into gear and stalls out.

“Garbage,” he mutters. Of all his cold-weather clothing, he has chosen to retain his scarf, and he pinches the fringe annoyedly, struggling to restart the motor. “You people don’t know the first thing about making cars.”

She says Daniel’s name again, softly.

He sits with his body twisted away from her, glaring at the fists in his lap.

“Mercedes-Benz,” the Russian says. “Now that is a car.”

I thought I would be back for dinner, Danek. I thought we would eat lasagna.