Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

— that hand before it gets into my pocket and I press hard. I sense it’s a woman’s hand and I hear a soft, muted, suppressed cry of pain and I squeeze and twist ever more, and in the dark I do not know who my antagonist is, but I suspect at once, and then, relenting, I let go and let the grey apparition escape back into the darkness. I felt I was like Jacob, wrestling with a creature of the night. And like my forebear, I too prevailed. But like Jacob, I also had my thigh wound, a wound in the hollow of my thigh, which metaphor will be made clear below. Half asleep, perhaps half adream, to protect it from further incursions I put the pen into my shirt pocket.

It was the pen she no doubt wanted. And in wanting it so desperately (maybe not wanting it so much as wanting desperately that I not have it), I reconstructed the words she sent down at me from five stories up through the noise of trucks, din of traffic, cacophony of ambulances. Now I was sure she did not say, “Take my pen”— rather, “Why did you take my pen?”—the uptick of the question and the first three words swallowed up by the traffic.

It goes without saying that I couldn’t find Betty when I got off the plane.

What was it about that pen that drove her to follow me to retrieve it? What secrets did it contain? What mysteries did it possess? Did it have more than the two brief messages I had already heard?

But now the pen was silent, its previous seeming magic muted.

It was only when I discovered to my annoyance and surprise a nickel-sized blob of navy blue just above the pocket of my white shirt — my metaphoric thigh wound — that I realized in the dark of the plane, with me floating in a semi-dream in the drone of the plane, that the grey apparition (although I did not touch it, it seemed to me made of gauzy grey flannel) had absconded with the top of my pen.

My pen was now stripped of its cover, deprived of its top. Although I was able to write with it, when I rubbed my finger on the brand name imprinted on the body I heard only half of Jiri’s voice. Rather, all of Jiri’s voice, but only half his words. It was intelligible discourse, graspable by the senses but not by the mind. Trouble was, my senses were askew. A good thinking cap would have helped, but I had on but a half. The other half was neatly slithered away from me by a swift, unseen, horizontally moving scythe. Jiri’s message, cleaved in two. Jagged were his remarks, truncated the words, and I was left with only the top, or bottom, of the letters.

Imagine a zipper on a seamstress’s work table. Pull the zipper to the end and you have two pieces of cloth, each with a thin line of tiny teeth, of absolutely no use to each other unless they are attached. That’s what my magic pen now resembled. For though I heard the sounds, the letters were detached, unzippered, exactly half of what was whole. The alphabet of speech shorn. Half the letters mown away.

Now that I think of it, the jagged music of this sawed-off language was similar to the sounds of Jiri’s and Betty’s private cant. If only I could provide, or reconstruct, the tops (or bottoms) of the aborted language, I would be able to understand what was being said.

Later, in Prague, whenever I saw a pen in someone’s pocket, my first thought was: there’s the top of my pen, and I had to clench my fists behind my back not to grab the pen, and clench my teeth to avoid asking the stupid question that bubbled in the back of my mouth.

All right, I’m back in Prague, I tell myself as the plane lands, although the words “back in” can be misleading; it gives the impression I’ve just returned after a short absence. Nevertheless, I am back in Prague, and an accurate remark it is, even though — as I informed Betty not too long ago — I left the city forty-two years ago when I was just a few months old.

I could have gone to a thousand different places, but I chose to go to the city I was born in. Chose? Rather chosen. I didn’t choose; someone chose me. Up in space someone held a magnet, waved it once or twice — maybe three times like in fairy tales— until it found my wavelength and drew me to the city. We fool ourselves into thinking we have free will, don’t we? But we are like a rescued swimmer holding on to the robe, “robe” I type by mistake, perhaps unconsciously thinking of King Saul holding on to the prophet Samuel’s robe for safety, to save his life, to save his kingdom, but it’s “rope” I mean, saying we are like a rescued swimmer holding on to the rope tossed from a lifeboat pulling the nearly drowned man to shore. Does he have free will to let go? Thin strands connected to God knows where pull us. We click with unseen magnets.

In short, I was summoned to Prague.

And with Dr. Jiri Krupka-Weisz’s unwritten recommendation in all caps fluttering like a banner in my mind, I’m looking forward to meeting a man named — oh my God, what’s his name? I know Jiri told me. Of course he told me, and now I’ve forgotten it. I should have written it down. I think and strain but a bag of sand stands guard and blocks the rectangle in my mind’s eye where the man’s name is supposed to be.

I know he’s tall; I know he stands in back of the Altneushul near the far corner. I know weekday services begin at 7 a.m. He’s the key, Jiri said. I’ll recognize him even though I’ve never seen him. He has a big face, I remember. Also that he’s a family friend. I remember all that completely without having written it down. But his name, for the life of me, I have no clue to his name. It slipped away from me. In vain I go through all the letters of the alphabet. If only Jiri had given me his full name, first and last, I would have more readily remembered it. (Or maybe forgotten both, snickers a demon within me.)

But there is a way out. When I find him and introduce myself, in the European fashion he’ll obviously state his name, surely with a slight bow or inclined nod of his head, last name first, first name last, again in the central European manner, and that’s how I’ll get to recall the name of the man whose name I forgot.

Then I know what will happen next. The tall man with the big face, narrowing one eye suspiciously, will ask me a question. Maybe to test me. Test my authenticity. To see if I’m the man I claim to be. Now that I think of it, maybe it is better that I forgot his name, because if I went up to him and said, Hi, are you (for instance) Ricardo? anyone could easily say, Yes, I am, on the chance that I had something of value to give him. But this way, once he tells me his name, I’ll recall it, and I can be sure that he’s Jiri’s friend. Or maybe I should even quote “nepa tara glos” at him, to show him I’m a bona fide member of the club. And if he asks me about Jiri, what am I going to say? That I know little about him? In fact, next to nothing? That he showed me K’s first book, Meditation , with K’s signature in it? And if he asks me, What about a letter? Do you have a letter from Jiri? I’ll mumble, What? to stall for time. And he’ll repeat slowly, as if speaking to a golem: A letter. Then with exaggerated clarity he’ll enunciate, “Do…you…have…a… letter?”

Indeed, that’s what I should have gotten from Jiri. Plus that promised list of names and addresses. But he left us — and Betty, friend, wife, ad hoc housekeeper, keeper of secrets, whatever, vanished. Maybe still hidden on the plane; maybe somewhere in Prague. At least I’ll bring the man with the big face regards from Jiri. That’s all I can bring is regards. And if he asks a third time, “Do you have a letter?” I’ll point to the aleph on my forehead.

As I checked into the apartment hotel at 11:15 that pleasant, starfilled end of October night, I knew I wouldn’t be at the Altneushul the next morning at 7, even if it was only a short walk. At the same time, I wanted to be there. But my knowing was more powerful than my will. Even though on the plane, thinking of Jiri and his old friend, I had decided — never mind jet lag, which I don’t recognize, for I consider it a matter of willpower — to get up early and meet his friend at the Altneu.