He glanced down at her. ‘I’ve been arrested more than once. Each time it’s trickier, but I am also wilier. But it’s a risk.’

‘Then what are you doing with Anatomie?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

‘Proving to myself that, despite your sly insinuation, I’m not inert, which was what Jan Palach accused us Czechs of.’ Laure didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘1969. A bad year,’ he said.

‘Palach?’

‘Palach was a student and set himself alight in Wenceslas Square, which was his protest at our failure to resist. By burning himself to a shrieking cinder, he was pointing out that taking refuge in cartoons, opera and depression, which the Czech people do, was not good enough.’ He sounded strained. ‘So help us, Palach was right.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘Leo and Manicki feel the same as me, though we don’t talk about it.’ After another pause, he said, ‘It’s both a good and a terrible story.’

Pain. Smell. Dying in a violent, excruciating way for a cause. She found it too terrible to say anything.

‘He left us a challenge to prove we are not inert.’ He pulled Laure to a halt and, leaning against the wall, kissed her again. Eventually, he drew back and said, ‘And you’re not.’ His teased her bottom lip. ‘Inert, I mean.’

The vision of Palach routed (for the time being), Laure sighed with relief and happiness.

‘But, really, what are you doing?’ she repeated later as they slowly made their way across the Charles Bridge towards the house in the Můstek quarter where Tomas lived with a bunch of musicians, which included Manicki.

‘I’m a rock soldier making war on the system.’

A couple of girls in frayed cotton trousers passed them on the bridge and stared and one of them sent a filthy look at Laure.

‘A rock god, you mean,’ said Laure.

Where Tomas lived had once been expensive and desirable but was now rundown and, he told Laure, its basement so damp only a duck could survive.

‘Careful,’ said Tomas as they entered the front door and pointed to the stone corbels flanking it. ‘Mrs Pigeon is bringing up a large family.’

Sure enough there were guano splashes on the stone floor and a mighty susurration of young, hungry birds sounding from a nest on the ledge.

The facilities were shared, including a cracked lavatory that did not look as though it had long for this world. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Tomas as he pointed it out.

‘I don’t care,’ said Laure.

His hand on her back propelled her up the stairs to the first floor where Tomas had his room. ‘When the snow comes, I share it with Manicki because the roof leaks. But today it’s all mine.’