She stands, listening to the storm beat down.
The stone walls smolder with the light of the Eternal Flame, filled to burn all night.
Then: a gray throb bulges through the viewing portals to the women’s section.
It sickens and excites her.
She knows that color.
She squats down to look through the portals. The light is coming from the far eastern end of the room, radiating through the crack beneath a wooden door. She feels slightly foolish to realize that she has never noticed that door and does not know where it leads. Although she attends services three times a day — standing with inert lips, her arms and head wrapped in specially made tefillin, the work of Yosie the Scribe, who complained to Rebbe that he would need a whole calfskin to make them — she’s never been inside the women’s section. Why would she? She’s a man. She belongs with the other men.
If they knew who she really was—
There’s a sound, too, a distant grinding drone, punctuated by a chunk, like a lame wagon.
Its rhythm matches the pulse of the light.
She leaves the sanctuary and rounds the corridor, entering the women’s section and pausing to watch the light. Each peak shines brighter than its predecessor, each trough correspondingly vacant. She can see now that it possesses its own unique shade, more silver than gray, cool and annihilating and beautiful.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
She can’t remember the last time she felt afraid.
It’s strangely satisfying.
She crosses to the unknown door and pulls it open.
Silver swells out, clinging to her like wet wool.
An antechamber, no bigger than four cubits on a side and swirling with dust. It is half her size and yet it yawns to admit her, and she places her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder that stretches up through a hole in the ceiling.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
She lays partial weight on the rung, expecting it to splinter. It holds, as does the next, and she commences to climb, covering the distance to the top in three reaches.
She surfaces through a trapdoor into a sloped room awash in silver light: a human figure, bent over with busy hands, barely visible at the center of a raging gray inferno, burning cold and glossy and charging the air so that it snaps and seethes.
sssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMPsssssssTHUMP
The rhythm stokes her desire to kill, her need building to a full-body thrum.
Whoever it is — whatever is happening — she must stop it.
She takes a step forward.
Tries to.
The light pushes her back.
She is unused to this. She has not known any physical limitations. She gathers her strength and steps forward again, and the light warps, groaning, shoving her into the wall with a heavy crash.
Startled, the figure looks up, and its aura immediately dims, revealing surroundings previously drowned out: a low, three-legged stool; the undone bundle, consisting of a piece of burlap and its dirty secret, a small pile of riverbank mud.
Lastly, the source of the noise, a spinning wooden wheel set atop a table, a half-formed lump at its center.
The wheel begins to slow.
The aura to fade further.
Her bloodlust subsides.
In half a minute all is still, and the only light is that of a small lantern, and the figure is fully visible.
She wears a long woolen skirt. Her wimple pulled free, a corona of frizzy black hair. The sleeves of her cloak are rolled up to her elbows. Muddy water streaks smooth, slender forearms. Delicate hands are gloved in clay, swollen to twice normal size. Wry green eyes regard her with resignation.
Perel says, “It’s a good thing you can’t talk.”
Chapter thirty-eight
The likeness of the face in Jacob’s hands to Samuel Lev was close to perfect. It was a face he loved, the face of a man who had kissed him, blessed him. The face of a man who had died four hundred years ago.
He said, “How did you get this?”
Peter Wichs said, “It’s always been here.”
“Where did it come from? Who made it?”
“Nobody knows, Jacob Lev.”
“Then how do you know it’s the Maharal?”
“How do we know anything? We tell our children, who tell their children. My father worked at the shul, his father before him. I grew up hearing their stories, passed down from generation to generation.”
“A myth.”
“You may call it that, if you prefer.”
Jacob’s arm began to cramp, and he looked down to see the muscles in his forearm quivering; he had the object in a split-fingered grip, as though to pulverize it. He relaxed his hand, leaving red dents in the flesh of his palm.
“Do me a favor,” Jacob said. “Stand back.”
Peter obliged.
He appeared as short as Jacob remembered.
Not much faith in his memory, though. “Are you one of them?”
“One of whom?”
“Special Projects.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Peter said.
“A police division.”
“I’m not a policeman, Jacob Lev,” Peter said. “I have one job, and that is to stand guard.”
Jacob looked again at the face. It was so vivid that he expected it to open its mouth and speak in Sam’s voice.
You can’t go. I can’t allow it. I forbid it.
You can’t do this to me.
You’re leaving me.
Jacob said, “Why did you let me up here?”
“You asked.”
“I’m sure a lot of people ask.”
“Not a lot of policemen.”
“Who else?”
Peter smiled. “Tourists.”
“Did you let Lieutenant Chrpa up?”
The guard shook his head.
“Then who.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Detective.”
“You said this place affects everyone differently. Who else has it affected?”
“This is an ancient place, Jacob Lev. I can’t claim to know everything that has gone on here. I know that, of those who come, some find happiness, and peace. Others leave bitter. For a few it can be too much to handle, enough to drive them mad. All leave changed.”
“What about me,” Jacob said. “What’s happening to me.”
“I can’t read your mind, Detective.”
A wild laugh. “That’s good to know.”
“I think it’s time for us to leave now, Jacob Lev,” Peter said.
He plucked the clay head from Jacob’s limp hand, began to rewrap it.
“Why do you keep calling me that.”
“What?”
“Jacob Lev.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?” Peter got on the stool and put the bundle back on the top shelf. “Your name, it means ‘heart’ in Hebrew, I think. Lev.”
“I know what it means,” Jacob said.
“Ah,” Peter said. “Then I think perhaps I have nothing more to offer you.”
Their descent was quick, no different from climbing down any moderate flight of stairs. Jacob’s limbs worked smoothly, his chest felt open. His mind? Another matter.
Moments after they’d reemerged through the purple curtain, a woman in her forties, modestly clad in dark knits, entered, a prayer book tucked under her arm.
“Gut Shabbos, Rebbetzin Zissman,” Peter said.
“Gut Shabbos, Peter.”
“Gut Shabbos,” Jacob said.
The woman took in Jacob’s dusty, uncovered head. “Mm,” she said.
A bearded man in a fur hat and a black satin caftan waited expectantly by the sanctuary entrance. Peter greeted him in Czech, and Jacob heard his own name spoken.