Do golems dream? Impossible to answer, impossible to know. Besides, there is only one golem. There, in this old synagogue of Prague, under the roof that cracks with each rain, lying on the worm-eaten floor, reading a hundred times, a thousand times the same books, the same manuscripts, to kill the time that never ends . Sometimes, during the prayer, we hear footsteps on the ceiling, crunches … We know it’s him, the Golem, but no one goes up, the door is walled for 320 years.

Do golems dream? I do not know, but what I do know is that you appeared to him for a night.

I had been visiting the synagogue for years – ever since I was a child – and had always wondered who the Golem was. I do not know if Golem dreams but ever since the night you appeared before him, all I heard was soft sounds of weeping from the closed room above. On the staircase that led to the Golem’s room which was never discovered, the next day I had found traces of a woman’s feet. One day, when I finally couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer, I borrowed some equipment from my lab (I am a forensic pathologist) and went in search of the Golem. From where the sounds came, and where the naked eye could detect nothing, I saw with my macro lens a shapeless mass. In the Psalms, it was written that golems were created by clay or mud. However, upon further investigation of the invisible mass, I could make out (though I wasn’t sure yet) that the Golem had once been a heart.

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These sounds of a female foot, the Golem has waited them for centuries, but he does not know that. At the summit of the old synagogue of Prague, the Golem does not even know which hour it is (night or day?), which day it is (shabbat? maybe…), which week, month, year, even century. Time does not exist anymore for him. His heart beats at its own rhythm, the one of a lost love. The girl he loves died 320 years ago, but he does not know this. He still thinks that the last time he saw her was two days ago, but how could he count time without any sun or moon? God gave him a candle that never dies, to read books only. He can ear all the sounds of life outside, but cannot understand them. He hopes, he hopes so much, and that day (that night?), when he eared these female foot walking slowly on the stairs, he hoped with all his argyle-heart that it could be the return of his beloved Anna. But Anna’s grave is now covered by lichens, some meters away, in the old jewish cemetery, next to Rabbi Loew tomb… (the Golem’s creator).

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting (for nothing?). This is the most unbearable, the longest, the most difficult. Anna was no longer in this world for 320 years, she had lived her 28 years without even knowing that the Golem loved her with a crazy love, a love more than human. Did Rabbi Low foresee love by giving life to the Golem? Or was it god who had added this notion, this option, this perfection (but also this fragility) in the Golem plan? And he, the Golem, he had seen her ten times, twenty times, a hundred times on the side of women, in the corner of the synagogue. He had glimpsed her face, her eyes, her fragile ankles – probably they were painful, sometimes – her black hair covered with Madras cloth, her hands holding an old edition of the Torah. She had not seen him. The Golem could see, observe the whole synagogue through the knots of the wood, the lines of light between the slats of the ceiling (the floor of the enclosed attic, his forever house, his living grave). He could see the souls of men and women: was it another capacity offered by God or Rabbi Low? And he read in Anna as an open book. He read impatience. An impatience so strong, intense, extreme, that at 28 years old she was already dead.

Anna was dead, but what Golem did not know that Anna had been noticing him every day, every moment that she was in the Synagogue and every moment outside, her heart was constantly with this strange creature that she had once glimpsed in the closed attic. She had been in love since then, and each time she was in the synagogue, she went near the attic hoping to finally talk to the man that God had ordained as her one and only love – she knew this for her dreams always foretold her future and revealed the true nature of her soul – but each time, all she heard was silence. An endless series of silences. The Golem, incredibly, was *always* silent, an excessive silence, almost as if he loved silence more than he loved Anna, more than he loved God. Silence, constant, unrelenting, unchangeable. Anna waited – impatiently – for him to at least utter one word, but he never did. Anna died without knowing love because Golem never spoke.

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M & Mrs Hyde are the two tantric and trashy sides of a forgotten soul, with frequent Jungian mood, tiny red spot obsession, Bombay Sapphire passion, frequent insomnia, recurrent headaches, taste for Darjeeling, and fascination for words. Always travelling from East to West, and inversely.