The Golem of Paris

Chapter thirty-seven

Asleep by eight p.m., Jacob rolled over at one-thirty a.m., wide awake.

Schott was on his back, snoring, the mattress a hammock beneath his bulk. Jacob lay there awhile, dissecting the noise that filtered up from the street, then got out of bed.

Finding his clothes, he tripped on the nightstand, knocking his phone to the floor.

Schott didn’t stir.

Jacob said, “Sweet dreams,” loud enough to wake anyone.

Not Schott.

He raised his voice. “Yo, fatso.”

Schott continued to saw wood.

They didn’t eat, but they slept. Oh, did they sleep.

The slumber of the just? Or the comfort of no conscience?

He got dressed, not even bothering to be quiet.

Down in the lobby, he buttoned up against the cold, grabbed a cheap map off the wire, and stepped out into the Marais.

Once the city’s primary Jewish enclave, the neighborhood had largely gone hip. Same phenomenon as the Prague ghetto, New York’s Lower East Side: squalor, polished up; the old soul, decomposing to fertilizer.

Within a block he’d found an Irish pub called Molly Bloom’s, a perfectly adequate cliché in orange, white, and green, fiddle music testing the limits of the PA. He ordered three shots of tequila at eleven euros apiece, along with a nine-euro Guinness; drank quickly and got out.

He meant to go straight back to the hostel, but getting lost in the crowd was pleasant after a day with Schott bearing down on him like a slow-moving avalanche. The map showed a ten-square-block area outlined in pink, its watering holes conveniently tagged with martini-glass icons. For several hours he weaved up, down, and around Rue Vielle du Temple, squinting at chalkboard drink specials streaked with drizzle. It became something of a challenge: how many places could he hit?

The answer, it turned out, was most of them. He drank from a plastic flying saucer at a space-themed lounge. He entered a gay bar and in the span of one Manhattan collected three unsolicited numbers. He choked down arak at a place called Medina.

A nightclub bouncer appraised his running shoes and no-brand jeans and waggled a finger. Jacob saluted him and moved on.

The sidewalks coursed with sexual electricity of every variety, the landscape loosely brushstroked. A rainbow flag lifted in the wind to reveal a Star of David carved over a doorway, and he stopped at a boutique window, tracing remnants of gilt lettering.

BOUCHERIE — VIANDE CACHER —

Once upon a time, a place for Jewish housewives to buy their chickens.

Now racks of stiff denim replaced sides of beef.

He’d chosen the hostel for its low rates and centrality, but had to wonder if some subconscious directive had been in play.

He turned to find the next bar and saw a big body, idling in the green light of an apothecary’s sign.

Schott?

No. This guy was as tall, but leaner. By no means narrow, but proportional. Hanging back, checking his phone. The only solo act in sight, other than Jacob himself.

Waiting for a friend?

Jacob walked on.

In an effort to get some nutrients into his system, he found a tiki lounge and spent twelve euros on a concoction more fruit juice than booze. Emerging with a pocketful of change, he saw the same man, tucking away the phone.

Jacob doubled back toward Rue des Mauvais Garçons.

Height alone made the guy a lousy tail. He was making no effort to hunch down. Maybe he didn’t care about being spotted. Maybe the goal was intimidation.

Good news, if you chose to take it that way. Someone didn’t want him here.

As he walked, Jacob fished out his own phone, meaning to call Schott, or text at least. He thought better of it. He didn’t need a lecture. Instead he raised the phone as if to take a selfie, fudging the angle over his shoulder.

The flash blew open the darkness, showing an ankle-length coat; knob of flesh on the neck, like a volume dial for the carotid — leader of the pack, outside Tremsin’s place.

The photo vanished, replaced by a live image: the man, wearing a pissed-off smile.

Jacob picked up his pace.

He’d achieved his goal: he was hammered. He thought he knew where the hostel was but within a few blocks had begun making random turns, casting about for landmarks as the foot traffic thinned. His shoes seemed to slosh as though full of seawater. He put his head down and pulled his jacket tight, the folded map jabbing him in the ribs. He wanted to get it out but the man was swiftly eating up the distance between, courtesy of his huge stride.

Jacob hooked left, coming up on a small fenced park. Scaffolding covered the street signs. Why didn’t they put the damn things on poles, like a normal city?

The romance of getting lost in Paris.

He hopped off the curb, sidling around a pair of Citroëns parked nut to butt.

The guy was fifteen feet behind him, the tread of his boots audible.

Jacob hooked again and found himself passing the same park.

Okay. No. A different park. The city was full of parks. Big parks, like the one Lidiya and her son had died in. Little ones like scattered gems.

A sign. Rue Payenne. He chased a faint glow, arriving at Rue des Rosiers, blessedly semipopulated; turned right, hustled past unlit shop windows. Handbags. Activewear. Sunglasses. Window-box topiary, scooters chained under cover, gas lamps dripping icy wet runoff down his collar and along his spine. He reached the core of the Jewish district, kosher restaurants, kosher bakeries, a chocolatier.

“Mr. Lev.”

The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

How the fuck did the guy know his name?

“Mr. Lev.” Thick Russian accent. “Conversation, please.”

An art gallery opening had spilled into the street. Plastic champagne flutes, lilting chatter, glassy laughter. Jacob wedged through the crowd and dared to glance back. The man was caught up in the morass, his head bobbing like a cork on the ocean.

Jacob broke into a sprint.

He slammed into a T intersection. Rue Vielle du Temple, now deserted. He hooked left, what he thought was south, moving in the shadows, nearly colliding with a trash can set out for collection, dodging the next one. Couple more turns and he’d be back at the hostel. A breach appeared and he took it.

He’d screwed up.

Cul-de-sac, more shuttered shops, less fashionable, foyers barred. Reversing direction would put him face-to-face with his pursuer. He hurried forward, seeking cover, confronting a large limestone building with a moody countenance.

It had been assaulted, the stonework gouged. The graffiti that elsewhere animated the Marais and stoked its youthful urgency here took on the laser focus of hatred.

Swastikas. Stars of David on gallows. Multilingual slurs. La mort aux juifs.

Stained glass columns ran the height of the façade; the lowest sections sported matching damage, red shards clinging to the twisted leading, scabs begging to be picked.

The man appeared at the far end of the street, began running at him.

Jacob hurdled a sawhorse, bags of cement; he grasped the synagogue doorknob, a big metal fist, greasy with rain. He expected resistance, but it yielded and massive oaken doors yawned inward.

“Mr. Lev.”

Jacob scrambled into the vestibule and heaved himself back against the door, securing it with an iron bar, which fell into place with a crash.

He’d screwed up, again.

The guy was huge, and the broken windows sat only seven or eight feet aboveground, easily reachable if he stacked up a couple of bags of concrete. Plastic sheeting flapped in the wind; the leading that remained was bent, fragile, easily kicked in.

Jacob bolted for the sanctuary, a cavernous triple-high room in the traditional layout: central podium, elevated ark on the eastern wall, U-shaped balcony for the women’s section. He sprinted up the aisle, through a rear door, and into a courtyard.

Brick walls, razor wire. Dead end.

Back inside, he paused on the threshold. His cuffs dripped on foot-worn marble. What remained of the stained glass dropped colored shafts of moonlight across the pews.

He let his eyes adjust.

Nobody had worshipped here for a long time. Seats dilapidated, books moldering, ragged prayer shawls shingling a slanted wooden rack. A cataract of dust covered the founders’ plaque and memorial boards. Cobwebs tangled the chandeliers — two enormous pear-shaped neoclassical fantasies in wrought iron, like suits of armor exploded.

They had to be worth a fortune. Amazing that no one had stolen them.

He crept back to the vestibule. Crouching to avoid the broken windows’ sightlines, he made for the staircase that led to the balcony, parting more plastic sheeting (ACCES INTERDIT) and climbing three stories.

The women’s pews were more cramped than the men’s, the floor steeply pitched and crackling underfoot. A second, shorter run of steps led up the aisle to the back wall, where the stained glass columns topped out.

Jacob teetered, still drunk, fighting vertigo.

He climbed atop a seat and peered out through blue glass.

The man had retreated down the block, shoulders caved in, looking defeated.

Playing dead?

A couple of minutes later, he left.

Wary of coming in alone? Fetching reinforcements?

Either way, time to go. Jacob jumped off the seat, landing in the aisle on the balls of his feet.

The balcony groaned sickeningly.

The floor dropped out.

For an instant he hung in midair, crashing down in a heap as the floor halted a full three feet below its previous level, and there was a hideous structural belch and loud pops cascaded along the length of the building, walls puffing plaster like a controlled demolition bang bang bang bang.

The clangor faded to nothing.

He tried to stand.

Another groan of wood, deeper and unhappier.

A host of fresh cracks raced across walls and ceiling.

He lay there, letting the building settle down, stifling his heaving chest so the next breath wouldn’t level the whole place, aware of time burning, the guy phoning his posse.

He began worming on his stomach toward the stairwell, distributing his weight as broadly as he could. Sensing every buried defect, every corroded joist. Smelling the mildew digesting the place from the inside out.

Ten feet to his destination. An inch at a time.

He reached the landing.

The stairs were gone.

Thirty feet below, a smoking pile of beams.

He remained flattened, motionless, calculating.

Jump down? Jump into the sanctuary?

At best, two broken ankles.

Then he recalled a second stairwell in the northeastern corner. He’d passed it while looking for a way out.

Getting there meant traversing the left tine of the balcony’s U. He sighted along its length. The torque in the floor was pronounced.

A loud scrape, sourceless. Vibrations.

He edged forward, brailling the carpet, hunting for soft spots. Through the walls came a taunting, hungry rumble.

He was a quarter of the way there and it was getting harder to crawl, his body listing to the right in accordance with the steepening floor.

Wind slapped the building, plaster flakes showering his sweat-drenched neck.

He slid along. Halfway.

The balcony had begun to wag. Then bounce. Like a gently activated diving board. Picking up momentum, a deadly rhythm, prologue to collapse.

The worst urge rose: run.

He crawled. The scar on his lip had of course chosen that moment to begin itching ferociously. He didn’t dare reach for it; that was extraneous movement, and the balcony was swaying and cackling, a suicidal hag, threatening to give way.

He reached the landing.

Not in the clear yet. There were steps to be conquered. He went backward, treading delicately and briefly. The carpet was loose, the braces torn out. Down, down he went, until he reached the blessed horizontal and giddily broke for the sanctuary aisle. He could see the vestibule doors. He was going to make it. He had to hope the guy had not yet come back. But he was going to make it outside.

A wretched whine from above, and he instinctively froze and looked up and felt an onrush of air and a cobweb tendril kissing his cheek, mild forerunner to the chandelier plummeting toward him.