For the following Wednesday, Heinrich learned the Czech word for “bowl.” “I said bowl, she said bowl, I said bowl, she said bowl.” It meant something different to each of them.

Next Wednesday it was the word “sleep.”

The following Wednesday it was “castle.”

The Wednesday after that it was “tonight.”

And the Wednesday after that Heinrich haltingly stitched together his first complete Czech sentence, an invitation he whispered into her ear: “Ludmila sleep castle tonight.” Her reaction was not what he had hoped. What had he done wrong? Brooding upon it afterward, Heinrich realized—“Like my father I have no talent for languages!”—that he had conjugated “sleep” in the imperative rather than the interrogative. The sentence had emerged as an injunction rather than an invitation. The following Wednesday, Heinrich once again whispered into her ear “Ludmila sleep castle tonight,” but so fretfully did he concentrate on conjugating “sleep” in the interrogative mood that instead of the word “castle” he accidentally said the words “blood bowl.” Her reaction was not what he had hoped. The Wednesday after that, however, Heinrich said the sentence flawlessly, at last, and just loud enough, evidently, for Zikmund to overhear, for though Ludmila, whose daughterly devotion was unequaled in the world, wrapped her arms round one of her father’s legs and gave every indication that she did not wish to be separated from him, Zikmund, who it must be said was an ambitious man who must have foreseen the benefits that would accrue to the father of the mistress of the heir apparent to the imperial throne, walked with stiff clownish steps over to the Prince, one leg heavy with the weight of his weeping daughter. Heinrich: “I ask you, Father, does a man like this deserve his daughter’s devotion? She binds herself to him, to his leg, and he strides over and offers her up to me. What kind of father is this? Was it merely self-justification to ask myself, as I playfully pried little Ludmila off her father’s leg, if she would not actually be happier with me in the Castle?” That playful prying of Ludmila off her father’s leg was the first time he had ever touched her. Zikmund left, Ludmila’s wails dwindled in time into whimpers and snorts, Heinrich told her that she had nothing to fear, nothing at all to be afraid of, they would have fun, “We shall become family!” Of course he said this all in German and she understood none of it. He tried to soothe her with a comforting remark in her own tongue but the words that came spontaneously to his lips unfortunately were the words “blood bowl.”

Thereafter Ludmila lived at the Castle.

The astronomer tugged on his hood and held up his staff. “Go on, my son.”