Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

I just gazed at him. I’m sure my jaw had dropped open. Will I call him? Will the day dawn tomorrow and wane at dusk?

“Of course. Even without a phone number I’d shout to you from my rooftop.”

Danny smiled. “Then, here, let me give you my number.” And he patted his pockets, looking for a pen.

I took Jiri’s pen from my shirt pocket.

Danny K took it. “What an elegant pen, or, as they say in the carriage trade“—and here he gave his trademark giggle—”writing instrument.”

Then he did something unusual, something I had never seen before. He brought the pen to his nose and sniffed it.

“Mmm. Smells good. I had a pen just like this when I was a little boy. And I still remember the smell.” He took a little piece of paper out of his wallet, wrote his name and phone number on it, and handed it and the pen back to me.

“Here’s my number.”

I looked at it. “Is that a zero or a six?”

“A zero. Sorry. My hand shakes.”

“That’s okay. Sometimes mine does too.”

“I’m leaving for India for ten days the day after tomorrow on a UNICEF tour. So call me in two weeks. We’ll get together when I come back.”

Where are the words — are they in the heart or the brain — that can describe that surge of soul, that cerulean sensation of happiness?

“Thanks, Danny.”

He mimed the next thought in response to my gratitude. He placed his palm tenderly on his heart and then pointed to me. And then, with a suddenness that surprised me, he embraced me and pressed his face to mine. I smelled his aromatic makeup. Some of it must have rubbed off on my face.

“I have a confession to make,” I said.

“Yes?” And he scanned my face like a newspaper, line by line.

“After I would do one of my imitations of you, girls would come up to me and say I looked so much like Danny K I could pass for Danny K’s son. Sometimes I couldn’t resist saying I am his son.”

“Well,” Danny said. “One never knows…did your mama ever go up to the Borscht Belt?”

And we both laughed.

But Danny never went to India. Within days it was reported that he had fallen seriously ill, some sort of rare blood disease, perhaps contracted from a previous visit to either Africa or India. Two weeks later, just a fortnight before I was about to leave for Prague, Danny K, the man I thought would live forever, Danny, my early lookalike, Danny, my hero, Danny, one of my two spiritual K fathers, Danny K was dead.

On the evening of my flight, at the airport waiting lounge, I had Jiri’s pen in my inside jacket pocket, same place exactly as on the day I took it from Jiri’s hospital night table. It was a fine pen, and I mean pen, not one of those cheap, ubiquitous ballpoint or gel flow pens, but an old-fashioned fountain pen that uses real ink, with a fine golden nib, that beautiful, almost hourglass-shaped and curved golden tip that I remembered seeing in upscale stationery stores. With just the right sort of thickness, it gave an elegant cursive flow to my letters and actually made my calligraphy look more handsome than it was when I wrote with a ballpoint pen. Yes, the pen pleased me; I liked it. Using it, of course, I thought of Jiri — and Betty too (re the latter a wave of anxiety always ran through me like a little pain), but at the same time, I also felt the pen had belonged to me for ages. That’s what happens when you possess something for a while. Even though you aren’t the original owner, the mere fact of possession gives you the feeling not only of ownership but absolute ownership. The item wasn’t just yours; it had never belonged to anyone else.

Waiting to board, I jotted down on a pad a list of things to do in Prague. As I wrote, the list kept growing. Each item grew and I was writing comments and kept expanding on phrases until I was scribbling miniscule letters in the margins and in between lines, even writing in tiny script at the edges around the corners of the pages so that the words snaked around and about and created an upside-down border to the pages.

If I believed in automatic writing, which I don’t, I might even say that once I began writing with Jiri’s pen the thoughts seemed to flow on their own with that beautiful golden-nibbed pen in my hand. For instance, it turned out that I had written down the entire Danny K dinner episode and the entire conversation word for word without even realizing I had written it.

When I finished, I took the top of the pen and pressed it to the body until it clicked shut.

“Don’t forget the shul in Prague.”

I turned to the people sitting next to me. Who had said that?

Then came the call; my flight was boarding. I stood, looked about. A face flashed. No! Impossible. Could that be Betty in a crowd of people back there? And if so, what was she doing here? Then my wild imagination began ticking out a chain of telegraphed messages: No wonder I couldn’t find Jiri and Betty. They had gone off somewhere and were now flying to Prague. But if so, where was Jiri? And how come they were on the very same flight as mine? That whole death scene (for Jiri) and departure (for Betty) was an elaborate ruse staged by the hospital telephone operator and the apartment super.

It was Jiri’s voice telling me not to forget the Altneushul and now, if I wasn’t mistaken, they (at least Betty) would maybe, possibly, be on the same plane. I pressed my hand to my chest to make sure the pen was there, instinctively protecting what belonged to me.

And then again, a moment or two later, in the pen, from the pen, around the periphery of the pen, Jiri’s voice: Someone near and dear to me gave me this pen. That’s why, bruderl , I could not give it to you. Unlike a flame which can be given, transferred, without diminishing its essence, a pen can only be given once. But I am glad you took it. Absently. Inadvertantly. Automatically. Without thinkingly. It was bashert , destined, fated, that it end up with you. Once you land in Prague I will tell you who to see.

As I boarded I looked about but couldn’t spot the face I had momentarily glimpsed before. Once we were airborne and the seatbelt sign was off, I walked up and down the aisles of the plane to see if I could find Betty or Jiri. But no one on board looked like either of them. Perhaps they were in business or first class. But no, I reconsidered, given their modest means, that was hardly likely.

The lights dimmed; the stewardesses sat down in the back of the plane. Time to sleep. But before closing my eyes I made a few more jottings. As I clicked the pen shut again I heard — and this time it seemed to come from the pen itself, “And Yossi in back of the shul…. But most important is to…”

I put the pen to my ear. Was this some kind of high-tech pen qua taperecorder that Jiri had given me — rather, had somehow arranged for me to take? But no more words came. I put the pen back into my pocket, turned off the overhead light, stretched my legs, and closed my eyes. The drone of the plane and my fatigue made me drift off into a pleasant sleep.

Then as if out of a dream, a mystery novel, a suspense film, I feel a hand on my chest and I immediately, instinctively, grab—

The same thing had happened to me once on a night train to Trieste. The train pulled into Milan at 2 a.m. and the predators were waiting to spring. Thinking I was asleep, one dashed into my sleeper to see what he could nab. He was already by my window when I — a light sleeper (my valuables were under my pillow) — bolted up and roared. The surprised thief reeled back and hit his head at the edge of the steel doorframe. I turned him around, grabbed him by the neck, and kicked him out of the doorway which was almost opposite my compartment. He went flying the six-foot drop and sprawled on the concrete pavement face down.