Gabriel can’t help it. Each time he watches the Astronomical Clock strike the hour in the old town square in Prague, he sees his own death. Today, it is the death he cheated, has kept folded in his pocket like a used handkerchief for sixty-four years. The death that will someday jump out and claim from him what it is owed. Before today, he had not stood in Staroměstské náměstí since he was a young boy, squeezing his father’s hand. Yet even then, staring up at the gold-engraved disks with their strange and magical symbols, he knew enough to be terrified.
They used to walk here, he and his father, every Saturday when prayers at the Altneuschul were finished. Once in a while, his brother came, too, but usually Bruno was busy with his horses. On the way, the old baker from the shop on Maislova Street came to his door to present Gabriel with a fruit dumpling. A Shabbas gift. Father and son stood beneath the Old Town Hall’s tower, Gabriel chewing his dumpling—perhaps now he stands on his own childhood footsteps—and waited for the doors at the top of the clock to open. A mixture of thrill and dread pounded against his ribs. The adult Gabriel feels the same syncopation now.
There are eight intricately carved and colorful figures that flank the clock’s two disks. In their gilded robes they seemed to the childhood Gabriel as if they had escaped his folktale books and landed on the tower to rest. On either...
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