He entered the thronged, smelly, noisy Cattle Market and mingled with the crowd heading towards the Vltava and the Stone Bridge. He needed to vanish and there was a good chance of doing so in the crowded bottleneck on the bridge, in the narrow corridor linking the Old Town with the Lesser Quarter and Hradčany, in the hubbub and crush. Reynevan wove through the crowd, jostling passers-by and earning insults.

“Reinmar!” One of the people he bumped into, instead of calling him a “whoreson” like the rest, greeted him with his baptismal name. “By God! You, here?”

“Indeed. Hey, Radim… What’s the bloody stink?”

“It’s clay and sludge.” Radim Tvrdík, a short and not very young man, pointed at the bucket he was lugging. “From the riverbank. I need it… For you-know-what.”

“I do.” Reynevan looked around anxiously. “I do, indeed.”

Radim Tvrdík was—as the enlightened few knew—a sorcerer. Radim Tvrdík was also—as even fewer members of that enlightened circle knew—obsessed with the idea of creating an artificial person, a golem. Everybody—even the more poorly enlightened—knew that the only golem ever to have been created was the work of a certain Prague rabbi whose name, probably misspelled, was given as “Bar Halevi” in surviving documents. Long ago, that Jew, so the story went, used clay, sludge and mud scooped from the bottom of the Vltava to make the golem. However, Tvrdík—and he alone—presented the view that the causative factor was played here not by ceremonies and spells, which were in any case well known, but rather by a specific astrological configuration that acted on the sludge and clay in question and their magical properties. However, having no idea what the precise planetary configuration might be, Tvrdík operated using trial and error, gathering clay as often as he could, hoping one day to finally chance upon the right kind. He also took it from various places. But that day he had gone too far; judging from the stench, he had taken it straight from near some shithouse or other.

“Not working at the hospital, Reinmar?” he asked, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

“I took the day off. There was nothing to do. It was a quiet day.”

“Let’s hope it’s not one of the last,” said the magician, putting down his pail. “Times being what they are…”

Everybody in Prague understood, knew what “times” were being discussed. But they preferred not to talk about it and would cut short their speech. Cutting off one’s speech suddenly became widespread and fashionable. The custom demanded that the listener assume a thoughtful expression, sigh and nod meaningfully. But Reynevan didn’t have time for that.

“On your way, Radim,” he said, looking around. “I can’t stop here. And it’d be better if you didn’t, either.”

“Eh?”