The Columbus Affair: A Novel

from the clay of the Earth and breathed the breath of life into his mouth.’ The golem rose to his feet. Rabbi Loew told the golem that his mission was to protect the Jews from persecution. His name would be Josef and he must obey the rabbi’s commands no matter what may be asked.”

Tom listened as his grandfather explained how Rabbi Loew would give the golem a plan every Friday and Josef would follow it for the next week, protecting the Jews. One Friday he forgot to provide direction and the golem, with nothing to do, went on a rampage, wanting to demolish anything and everything. People were terrified until Rabbi Loew ordered him to stop. From that day on, he never forgot to provide weekly instruction. By 1593 threats to the Jews had lessened. Rabbi Loew decided it was time to send Josef from this world.

“He told the golem to spend the night in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague. After midnight, the rabbi and two others climbed up and proceeded to do backward everything that had been done to create the creature. If they were at his feet then, they were at his head now. All the words were recited in reverse. When done, the golem was again a mass of clay, which was left there. From that day on it was forbidden for anyone to go into the loft of the Old-New Synagogue.”

Tom sat on the sofa in Inna’s apartment and thought about Saki. He’d loved that gentle soul. When he’d read Abiram’s note and caught the reference to the golem, he’d immediately recalled that day long ago when he’d first heard the story.

And that’s all it was.

A story.

As an adult, he’d written a puff piece for the LA Times about Prague and the legend. Golems were not a Czech concoction. They were first mentioned in ancient Egypt. Kabbalist texts spoke of them. The Bible even used the word. They were never associated with Prague until the 19th century. And nothing in any historical record connected the great Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who lived in the 16th century, known as Rabbi Loew, with any golem. The story was first told in an obscure travel guide, reprinted in a popular book from 1858 on Jewish legends called Sippurim. After that, the golem became a part of Czech lore. Novels and more books followed that incorporated the story, each incantation making the tale even more fantastic.

“This book is one of my favorites,” Saki said to him. “It’s a novel published in 1915. I was a boy when I was given this copy. I’ve kept it ever since.”

He stared at the thin volume, printed in another language.

“Czech,” Saki told him. “It’s called The Golem and was written by a man named Gustav Meyrink. A huge bestseller for its time. It’s about magical Prague. Mystical things.”

“You can read this?”

“My mother was from there. She taught me Czech as a child.”

While writing the piece he’d made a point to learn more about Meyrink’s novel, which stoked the legend and eventually caused people from all over the world to visit Prague. The Iron Curtain halted those pilgrimages for decades, but the Velvet Revolution again allowed them. His story for the Times reported on how hundreds of thousands of Jews came each year in search.

The golem helps protect our secret in a place long sacred to Jews.

That’s what Abiram had written. His grandfather, Abiram’s father-in-law, had apparently used a fiction to shield a fact.

He held the key from the grave, with its strange markings.

What did it open?

Alle was asleep in one of the bedrooms. Inna’s children had doubled up in the other. He and his daughter spoke little after Alle returned. She’d stayed quiet, calm, her customary anger suppressed. Which made him even more suspicious. Right now he was at least two steps ahead of Zachariah Simon, and he planned to stay that way.

At least until he solved this mystery.

And he’d decided to do just that.

All this talk of Levites, Temple treasures, and great secrets held for centuries. If there was something to find, then he was damn well going to find it. True, he would not be honoring what Abiram had wanted, but so what? He was in charge now. A man died earlier. He wondered how many more had died before him. He once reported problems, exposed wrongdoing. Informed people what they needed to know. Keeping secrets was contrary to that mission. Surely Abiram knew that when he chose to pass down the duty.

He walked over and sat before Inna’s computer. The apartment was wired with high-speed Internet—essential, he knew, for anyone in the newspaper business. When he’d first started in the business cyberspace had barely existed. Now it was indispensible. Certainly, writing novels had been made much easier with billions of websites available to surf. He’d never had to leave his house. He typed OLD-NEW SYNAGOGUE into Google and selected from the 2,610,000 offerings, skimming the high points of a few.

The oldest building in Prague’s Jewish quarter. The oldest extant synagogue in Europe. 700 years it had stood, virtually undisturbed. War had passed it by, and even Hitler had not razed it. When it was first built, there was already an Old Synagogue. So this one was labeled New. Then, in the 16th century, another was built and called the New Synagogue. Since the Old one still existed, someone came up with Old-New, and the name stuck. Both of the other buildings were razed in the early 20th century. But the Old-New Synagogue survived.

He found an exterior picture.

A simple oblong with a saddle roof and Gothic gables, facing east. Buttresses supported exterior walls punctuated by narrow, pointed windows. Low annexes surrounded its lower parts on three sides. It had been completed in 1270, but renovations had occurred as recently as 2004.

He clicked around and found photos from other angles, one showing the building’s east side. The loft seemed spacious, the roofline set at a high pitch. Nineteen U-shaped iron bars extended from the east side of the building, forming a path up to a loft door. A caption informed him that the fire ladder had been installed in 1880 to allow access to the roof in an emergency, but the first rung was a good fifteen feet off ground level. Another shot, a close-up of the loft door at the top of the iron rungs, showed a Star of David adorning its exterior. He noticed the lock and the keyhole. Arched at the top, flat at the bottom. The key from the grave sat on the tabletop beside the computer.