Hideously undignified, really. Mud was one step above shit.
The legend had become the wellspring of a gaudy commercialism, the monster’s lumpy form cropping up on signs and menus, mugs and pennants. In one particularly rank bistro near Heap’s hotel you could buy a brown-sauce-soaked Golem Burger and wash it down with Golemtinis enough to rot your liver.
People would pay for anything.
People were disgusting.
The laughter of the couple had faded in the warm wind.
Heap decided to give it one more night. More foreplay made for a better climax.
Friday evening, the Old-New was a busy place, worshippers filing in, some stopping to talk to a blond man stationed out front with a walkie-talkie. With smiles all around, and everyone afforded entry, the attempt at security struck Heap as a bit of a sham.
Nevertheless he’d come prepared, his better suit (his only decent suit since Papa had screwed tight the tap), a mild white shirt, and his old school tie, plus inoffensive flat-lensed specs. Approaching the entrance, he hunched to take off some height, blousing his jacket, eliminating the bulge of his inside pocket.
The blond guard was more of a boy, hardly out of nappies. He shifted his body to block Heap’s progress, addressing him in a throaty, vulgar accent. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to pray,” Heap said.
“Pray,” the guard said, as if that were the strangest reason to visit a house of worship.
“You know. Give thanks. Praise God.” Heap smiled. “Perhaps it’ll help.”
“Help?”
“World a mess and all that.”
The guard studied him. “You want to come into the shul?”
Dense little turd. “Indeed.”
“To pray for the world.”
Heap lowered the level a few notches. “That and personal good fortune, mate.”
“You are Jewish?”
“I’m here, am I not?”
The guard smiled. “Please, you can tell me: what is the last holiday?”
“Sorry?”
“The most recent Jewish holiday.”
A furious moment while Heap ransacked the files. A light sweat broke out on his forehead. He resisted the urge to wipe it away. Aware that he was taking an awfully long time, he coughed up what he had. “Well, then, that would be Passover, would it not?”
The guard said, “Passover.”
“Reckon so, yes.”
The guard said, “You are British.”
There’s a clever lad. Heap nodded.
“I can see your passport, please?”
“One wouldn’t think one would need it to pray.”
The guard made a show of taking out his keys and locking the synagogue door. He gave Heap a condescending pat on the shoulder. “Wait here, please.”
He sauntered off down the street, murmuring into his walkie-talkie while Heap swam in the red tide of his mind. The sheer nerve: to touch him. He puffed his chest against the bulge. Stag bone handle. Six-inch blade. Ought to give thanks of your own, mate.
Twenty yards hence, the guard stopped at a doorway. A second man materialized and the two of them conferred, appraising him openly. The sweat kept oozing. Sometimes the sweat was a problem. A drop ran in Heap’s eye and stung and he blinked it away. He knew when he wasn’t wanted. He could be patient. He left the guards talking and went on his way.
Every man has his limits, though. After six more days without a fair chance, he was aroused to the brink of madness, and he decided that tonight would be the night, come what may, and how lovely it would be.
By three a.m., she’d been inside the synagogue for over two hours. Heap slouched in darkness near the steps, listening to distant bleats from somewhere well beyond the Jewish quarter, rolling the knife handle between his fingers. He began to wonder if she’d snuck in a brief nap. Busy girl, she must be falling off her feet.
The iron door screamed on its hinges.
Number Nine stepped out toting a sizable plastic tub. She turned her back to him, headed for the rubbish bins, hoisted the tub and dumped it out noisily, clanking cans and rushing paper, and he unfolded the blade (oiled and silent, a welcome release it was, like his lungs filling with fresh air) and moved on her.
Halfway to her, a muffled clap froze him in panic.
He glanced back.
The alley was empty.
As for the girl, she hadn’t noticed the noise; she continued about her business, raking out the last of the rubbish with her fingers.
She set the tub down.
She untied her hair and began to regather it, and her raised arms formed a wide-hipped lyre, oh lovely lovely shape, and his blood boiled afresh and he started forward again. Too eager: his shoe caught the cobblestone and sent a pebble clicking toward her and she went rigid and turned, her mouth already poised to scream.
She didn’t have time enough before his hand mashed against her lips and he twirled her, her back to his belly and his stiffening prick. Practical hardworking girl, she kept her nails cut short; hard rounded calluses clawed ineffectually at his arms and face before a deeper prey instinct took hold of her and she sought his instep to stomp it.
He was ready. Number Four, Edinburgh, had done the same. A sharp little heel; a broken metatarsal; a good pair of loafers, ruined. Heap had learned his lesson. He had his feet splayed as he braced against her. He twined his fingers in her hair and yanked her head back to form a graceful convexity of her gullet.
He reached up to stroke the blade.
But she was a resourceful lass, and it seemed she must have fingernails after all, because she made a spittly hiss and he felt a hideous stab in his eye, like an awl driving through the lens and the jelly to scrape his optic nerve. False colors gushed. The pain made him gag and loosen his grip on her hair and his hand went up to protect his face. He had prey instincts, too.
Her distorted form broke away from him and ran for the steps.
Groaning, he lurched forth, grabbing at her.
Another hiss; another stab of pain, his other eye, driving him stumbling into the rubbish bins, both eyes streaming, the knife flung from his hands. He could not understand. Had she shot him? Thrown something at him? He blinked forcefully to clear the blurriness and he saw the girl reaching the top of the steps, disappearing round the corner onto Pařížská, and her waning form brought the awareness of a dawning catastrophe.
She had seen his face.
He struggled to his feet and started after her, and from behind he heard a hiss and pain knocked him flat, as if someone had buried a claw hammer in the base of his skull, and as he pitched against the hard ground, his fine roaring brain grasped that something was happening to him, something wrong, because the girl was long gone.
Sprawled on his stomach in scattered rubbish, he opened his tearing eyes and saw it, half a foot away, a coin-sized spot, glittering blackly on the cobblestones.
A hard-domed insect, shimmering antennae, long black thorn sprouting from its head.
It charged him, driving itself into the center of Heap’s forehead.
He screamed and swatted at it and tried to stand up, but the thing kept coming at him, fast and vicious, the growl of its wings audible in every direction, like a cattle prod touched to Heap’s neck, his spine, the backs of his knees, herding him away from the steps and backing him into the wall of the synagogue, where he balled up with his arms thrown over his head.
Abruptly, the assault broke off, and the night went still save a faint wooden clapping noise. Heap waited, shaking. Puncture wounds seeped along his hairline, blood trickling along the side of his nose and into his mouth.
He uncovered his head.
Down on the cobblestones, the bug squatted, peering up at him.