He thanked her and promised he’d be in touch.
Next, a note from Divya Das.
Hey—
A little birdie told me you had to take a trip. I hope it’s going well. Do keep me informed.
I wanted to reiterate my regrets that we had to part on an awkward note. I hope you can appreciate that it was never my intention to mislead you. Believe you me, if I had any say in the matter, I would relish the chance to get to know you better. But in the words of a great philosopher, you can’t always get what you want.
Warmly,
He reread it twice, prying for meaning.
Why didn’t she have any say in the matter?
Hey Divya,
Greetings from Prague. Interesting developments, though I’m not sure where it’s all leading. I promise to keep you looped in.
About the rest of it, no problem. Like I said, I’m a big boy. It’s been fun working with you and I wish you nothing but the best.
Anyhow, don’t count me out yet. I’ve been known to wear a girl down.
Hope to see you soon.
Pruning the rest of his inbox took him to the bottom of a second beer. He swirled his finger at the waitress: Keep it coming.
The address Reginald Heap had given turned out to be Waterloo Station, and after further searches yielded nil, Jacob began to worry that the name was bullshit, as well.
He tried Reggie Heap, and up came an archived page with an Oxford University domain name.
In 1986, when Reggie Heap had won the Undergraduate Art Society’s award for a work on paper, the prize money was a modest two hundred pounds, a fifth of the present-day sum.
The other hit was a newspaper article, seven years old, concerning proposed legislation to ban fox hunting. The writer quoted one Edwyn Heap, of Clegchurch.
They ought to mind their own damned business.
To create ironic contrast, Heap’s son, Reggie, was also quoted.
I can’t conceive of anything more barbaric.
Jacob could.
He mapped the village along the M40, halfway between Oxford and London, then called the airline to price out a ticket, placing a hold on a short haul from Prague to Gatwick, leaving tomorrow mid-morning; ditto a Monday morning reroute, Heathrow to LAX. He’d talk to the guys at the shul first, see if they could help him justify a $450 detour.
Five o’clock. He took a long draught, considered calling his father to wish him a Shabbat shalom, but balked. Doubtless Sam would want to know if he’d visited the grave.
I tried.
There were bugs.
The waitress approached with the sloshing pitcher. He covered his glass with his hand. “I’m good, thanks.”
The bill — six bucks for five beers — sparked a momentary fantasy about selling his worldly possessions and moving to Prague.
If he got past the case and looked at the city as any tourist would, it was lovely and vibrant. A place for new beginnings. Buildings built atop buildings. A police force wanting elder statesmen.
He could meet a nice Czech girl, convince her to lay off the eye shadow...
Remembering something, he flipped through the guidebook.
This work, commissioned by the municipal authority and executed by famed Art Nouveau sculptor Ladislav Šaloun, imagines Rabbi Loew moments before his death. That it was chosen to adorn a public building stands as testament to the reverence with which all Czechs, Jew and gentile alike, regard Loew, and his importance to Czech culture as a whole.
The map showed the statue on his way to the shul. It wasn’t the same as putting a stone on the grave, but a photo of the great man might soften Sam’s disappointment.
He left a generous tip and got going.
Carved from black stone, standing well over six feet tall, atop a five-foot pedestal, the Maharal cast a surreally long shadow in the late afternoon light.
For his subject matter, Šaloun makes use of a popular legend. It is said that, having achieved an unprecedented spiritual level, the Rabbi could foresee the coming of the Angel of Death. As the day drew near, he embarked upon a program of round-the-clock study, heeding a Kabbalistic tradition which states that any man so engaged cannot die.
One afternoon, the Rabbi’s granddaughter entered his chambers to present him a freshly picked rose. Seizing the opportunity, the Angel stole into the center of the flower, and as the Rabbi paused to inhale its sweet scent, he expired.
The figure twining around the Maharal’s legs looked more imp than granddaughter. Notably, she was naked — pretty unseemly for a member of the rabbi’s household.
The statue’s impressive height is in keeping with a tradition that describes Loew as extremely tall. No portrait of him is known to exist, however, so Šaloun’s rendering should be regarded as a work of pure imagination.
The sculptor might’ve been admired in his day, but his take on Loew’s face revealed a certain laziness: grotesquely large nose; dour pout; eyes filled with Pharisaic scorn.
Obeyest thou the Law!
Still, Jacob didn’t want to come home empty-handed, so he got the camera out, zooming in and out on the statue’s face, wondering what Loew had really looked like.
He finished and slid the camera back in his pocket. He stooped to the sidewalk and snatched a nugget of asphalt, placing it at the foot of the statue. He stared at it for a few moments, then changed his mind and brushed it away.
Chapter thirty-five
Grand title notwithstanding, Chief of Synagogue Security Peter Wichs stood all of five-foot-four in polyester pants and a short-sleeved shirt with a chewed-up collar. Black eyes floating in black pools snapped from point to point on Jacob’s face, committing him to memory — a veteran security man’s practice.
“You are the detective Jacob Lev,” Peter said.
Jacob laughed. “Heard of me?”
Wichs’s smile resembled a badly broken bone: jagged and white and protruding unnaturally through split flesh.
The handshake went on a bit too long for Jacob’s taste; his palm felt moist when he offered it to Wichs’s assistant, Ya’ir, a rangy blond man no older than Jan, with an Israeli accent.
They went inside the shul, ducking under the barrier rope and heading down the hall, past the rabbi’s study and various offices labeled in flaking gilt, to a door marked BEZPECÍ/SECURITY.
The log was kept in English, the guards’ common language. The entry for the night of April 15, 2011, described a white male, 1.75 to 1.8 meters tall, approximately 70 to 80 kilos. He had light eyes and brown hair and wore metal eyeglasses, brown overcoat, gray suit, black necktie with silver or light blue stripes. He’d kept his hand in his coat pocket and appeared to be making a fist, raising the possibility of a concealed weapon. He sweated visibly and sounded nervous. He stated that he came from the UK, but declined to supply a passport or ID. He could not correctly name the last Jewish holiday, and when asked to wait, he had run away.