She said, “You’re sure it was this man.”
“A hundred percent sure, ma’am.”
“And he’s dead.”
“He is.”
Silence filled the line.
“I feel something,” she said. “I just can’t say what it is yet.”
She exhaled. “Well. You told me you’d do your best, and I believe you have.”
“It’s good of you to say so, ma’am.”
“Now I need your address.”
Jacob said, “Ma’am?”
“Do you want a cake or not?”
• • •
HE HAD MESSAGES on his answering machine, one from his father, one from Divya, and two in the last twenty-four hours from Detective Jan Chrpa in Prague.
Please call, it’s important.
Jacob, it’s again Jan. I called your mobile. Where are you, please?
It was after midnight in Prague. Jacob dialed anyway.
“Ahoj.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” Jacob said.
“No, it’s okay, it’s quiet.”
The feuding kids seemed to have gone to bed. Jacob could hear Jan shifting the phone, opening a squeaky drawer. “I did not want to e-mail. I thought maybe they check.”
They probably would. But it no longer mattered; it wasn’t Special Projects that posed the greatest danger to his mother.
“Thanks,” he said. “I was away on a case. What’s up?”
“You remember about this division, ÚDV.”
“For crimes committed under Communism.”
“Yes. They have a big building, it’s like a library. I made searches for the things you said. Arkady Tremsin, in the computer there is nothing. But many files are missing.”
“Purged.”
“Yes, or someone put in the wrong place. Or there is a file, but the names are black. Bohnice hospital, the material is large, many boxes. It will take me too long, so I started to read the murders from these years.” Jan paused. “Jacob, I was surprised.”
Marie Lasková, thirty-seven.
Her six-year-old son, Daniel.
Shot to death.
Their eyelids removed. Their bodies propped.
Marie had recently been discharged from Bohnice.
“They are behind the synagogue,” Jan said. “In the same place with the head from last time.”
Jacob said, “Unsolved.”
“Yes. But wait, it’s getting more weird. Any Czech person can request to look at the files. This is so people can know the truth. When you ask, you must put an application with name and birth number. This file, there is only one person who wanted it,” Jan said, “Peter Wichs, this Jewish guy works at the synagogue. I thought, ah, okay, he’s in charge of security, it’s important to him. But the murder, it’s in 1982. This guy now, I remember him, he is the middle of forties, so then he was a boy.”
“Do you know when he requested the file?”
“First time is nine March, two thousand. Then again, twenty June.”
“Same year.”
“Yes, two thousand.”
The date a branding iron.
June 20, 2000.
Three weeks before Bina’s second suicide attempt.
He said, “Are there photos in the file? Of the victims?”
“Yes, some. I can send copies.”
“Please. Thank you.”
“Okay,” Jan said. “Something’s wrong?”
“. . . no.” A beat. “What are the nicknames for someone named Marie?”
“Nickname?”
“What you call someone for short. For my name, it’s Jake, or Jack.”
“Ah. Okay. Marie could also be Marča, Mařenka, Máňa, Manka—”
“Micah?” Jacob asked.
“Yes, this too.”
“Can you spell it?”
“M-a-j-k-a. It’s important?”
She screamed that name. She was screaming it in her sleep.
Jacob told him about Dmitri Molchanov.
Jan said, “It’s him? Not Tremsin?”
“For the murders, yes.”
Jan said, “Where is Molchanov?”
“Dead.”
“Ah,” Jan said. “Good.”
Before they hung up, Jacob thanked him again and promised him a third beer.
His injured ear was throbbing. He walked to the kitchen to get ice, wondering how early was too early to call Peter Wichs.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
1. červenec 2000
Milá Bino,
It is with apprehension that I enclose the photographs you requested. For the last week I have wrestled with whether to send them or not. They are extremely disturbing, and I hoped that reading the report would satisfy you that the past is better left buried.
However I am also aware that there is no straight path through grief, and the destination lies beyond a shroud. We proceed forward never knowing if we will arrive in a garden or a ruin, or indeed if we will arrive anywhere at all.
But I beg your forgiveness: you never asked my permission.
Permit me to remark that your Czech remains impressively fluent, which is fortunate, because I could not hope to capture my thoughts in English. I suppose I presume to write to you in this manner because I still see myself as a nine-year-old boy in your presence, slightly insolent. I believe too that part of me wants to shield you, as a form of repayment, however poor.
I must clarify that I was delighted to hear from you, whatever the reason. I realize that may not have come across over the telephone. Inevitably there is pain attached to revisiting that period, and a distorting film hangs over my memories. Some details of what took place appear to me firmer than this chair I sit in. Others are lost completely. And we must acknowledge that time is indiscriminate, flattering good and evil alike.
You asked about my father. I still do not know the exact circumstances of his death. I believe the article you read mentioned that the criminal archive has only recently been opened to the public. Thus the demand for information has been great, while the majority of the files remain to be organized. Eventually my father’s name will make the register. I accept that this day may not come soon. I suspect work will slow when somebody decides that the energy is better spent inhabiting the present, or building the future.
Sometimes I feel compelled to agree. As a nation we seem eager to throw off the yoke of history, or at least to capitalize on it. Did you know there are plans to open a museum of Communism? It will be at Na Příkopě. The curator consulted me, in my capacity at the Jewish Museum, for information about our community. In the end it was decided to keep the two subjects distinct, both parties preferring to retain ownership of their piece of the story.
While visiting the archive for a second time, I took the opportunity to look up the men whose names you mentioned. I think it will not come as news to you to learn that I could find nothing relating to either of the Russians.
However there is a substantial dossier on Antonín Hrubý, who at the age of sixty-eight is retired and living in the suburbs. The government has been slow to prosecute those who thrived under the former regime. Many remain in positions of power, for they alone understand the system well enough to keep it running. A select few have been held accountable, in what feels like symbolic justice.
Yet, as before, I think we must strive for acceptance. Half a century was taken from us. We may choose to spend what time remains to us seeking vengeance, or celebrating existence; this choice becomes our monument.
A confession: just the other day, I decided I wanted to see Hrubý for myself. I took the bus to his neighborhood. He lives in a small house with a drab brown roof, one of several identical houses in a row. As I approached the door, I became frightened, not that a monster would emerge, but that he
would be no such thing.
A neighbor was in her yard, tending her roses. Fortunately she turned out to be a gossip. She told me Hrubý lives alone. He has no wife, and his son moved to Brno. She said that he spends his days volunteering at the animal shelter. She mentioned, specifically, and with some measure of disdain, that he is a vegetarian. Eventually she realized I was a complete stranger and grew suspicious, so I left.
Someday, perhaps, I will work up the courage to knock.
What else can I tell you?
Pavla passed away last year, of ovarian cancer. We remained close, and for this reason, it shocked me to learn that she had recently undertaken conversion to Judaism. I never knew her as a spiritual woman. I’m quite sure she was an atheist, the crucifix she wore being an inheritance from her grandmother. According to the rabbi, Pavla had expressed a wish to end up with my father, on the slim chance that there was an afterlife. Unfortunately she became too ill to complete the process.
The rabbi too is a convert, an interesting fellow. He used to be a playwright. Lately we have as a community faced internal friction, the typical arguments between those who would keep things the way they are and those who would make changes. I’m ashamed to say that the debate has at times gotten ugly. I suppose you could regard it as a sign of recovery, we are now healthy enough to indulge in hurting each other.
As for me, my work at the synagogue continues. I believe I mentioned I have not married, so if you happen to know any eligible young women who love a challenge, please send them airmail to Prague.
I wish I had more to say. In truth, I do, but I don’t know how to say it. I suppose that I am stalling, because I don’t want you to look at the pictures.
However there is one more very important question, namely, that of the jars.
The situation here sits on the knife’s edge, with just the one jar that you left behind. I understand that you found unusable the clay you brought back from Prague, but I do not think it feasible, as you suggested, for me to send you a fresh package. We could try, but my belief is that it would be far preferable if you were to return in person to complete the work here. Given the untimeliness of my father’s death, I am somewhat uncertain as to the absolute necessity of this. As you can imagine, we began many conversations that were never completed. It may in fact be that I am wrong and that it is not necessary.
Regardless, I humbly ask again that you consider sending me the second jar as a stopgap. I confess that I found your reluctance to do so difficult to understand. Perhaps we could discuss it further once you have had a chance to look at the materials, which I hope will not prove too upsetting.
S úctou váš,
Petr Wichs
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Sam opened the door and drew a sharp breath. “Thank God.”
“I asked Mallick to send you a message,” Jacob said.
“He said you’d been held up but that you were all right.”
Sam’s dark glasses shifted in the direction of Jacob’s bandaged ear.
“It’s nothing,” Jacob said. “I went to the doctor yesterday. I’ll be fine.”
“But you’re back,” Sam said, as though to cement it.
Jacob nodded. “Can I steal a little time?”
“What am I doing.” Sam stood aside. “Yes. Of course. Come in.”
“I was hoping you’d come with me, actually. I’m going to see Ima.”
Sam swallowed drily. “Let me get my coat.”
• • •
JACOB TOOK a roundabout route.
They’ll be hunting for me, too.
I think that’s a fair assumption.
And Bina: was she a target now, too?
Could he visit her after today?
He would need to talk about it with Sam. They would need to talk about Jacob’s conversation with Peter Wichs; they would need to talk about Prague, and about Paris.
If Vallot sent the notebook, they might need to talk about that, too. Although Jacob wasn’t sure he’d do anything but burn it.
So much to talk about. They were scions of a tradition of words, and they hadn’t spoken, really spoken, in more than two years.
“I was thinking,” Jacob said, “that we could start studying together again. Not the usual stuff. Golem literature. Maharal. Family history. What do you think?”
He glanced over.
Sam said, “I think that fortune favors the prepared.”
“It’s a deal, then.”
“It’s a deal.”
• • •
THEY ARRIVED at the care facility. Before getting out of the car, Jacob said, “Do you have a cousin in Calgary? François Louis?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Why do you ask?”
Jacob grabbed the door handle. “Never mind.”
• • •
BINA SAT under her fig tree. Her fidgeting hitched as she saw Jacob and Sam step from the dayroom and walk across the patio.
“Hi, Ima.”
Sam tucked the blanket around her waist. “Hello, Bean.”
They each kissed her on the cheek and sat flanking her.
It was midafternoon, the light desultory, the day ready to be over. Through a window Jacob could see residents wheeled into a semicircle around the TV. Rosario was making the rounds, dispensing medication. She looked up and noticed Jacob, reacting with surprise, and pleasure, when she saw it was three of them on the bench, not two.
She gave a little wave.
Jacob waved back.
She smiled and returned to her duties.
Wind rattled the branches, throwing a flourish of dry leaves.
Jacob said, “I have something I want to show you, Ima.”
He reached in his pocket and took out a plastic baggie from which he removed the iron ring. Placing the ring in the center of his palm, he held it out to her.
“I got them,” he said. “Both of them.”
Bina’s head moved slowly. She stared at the ring. Her expression remained inscrutable, and for a moment, Jacob feared he’d assumed too much. Or worse, that he would cause her to fly apart, irreparably.
Her hands stopped moving.
She said, “Majka.”
Sam began to breathe rapidly. He said, “Jacob?”
Bina tilted her head back.
She was smiling.
Jacob followed her gaze to a large jointed branch of the fig tree. It was bobbing gently, as though something had been sitting there, just a moment ago.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
David Wichs, Zach Shrier, Rena and Mordecai Rosen, Julie Sibony, Emily at Paris Paysanne, Rabbi Yehuda Ferris, Lev Polinsky.
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