Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

True, I liked talking to her, but since I had impolitely left Dr. Hruska practically in mid-sentence, I thought it would only be decent to return.

“Maybe I’ll buy one later,” I told her. “I have to rush back to the K Museum. Will you be here in fifteen, twenty minutes?”

“In the vicinity, yes.”

“Okay, I’ll look for you.”

I don’t know why my heart was racing as I entered the museum. Was it delayed excitement from speaking to the girl or guilt that I had rudely broken off talking with Dr. Hruska just as he was answering my question about K’s son?

The receptionist sent me upstairs to his little office.

“Ah, you’re back. Good,” the director said. “I thought I had insulted you when I asked you if you understood international sign language.”

“No, not at all. Please forgive me. I saw someone I knew…if I didn’t catch…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Forgive me for running out so abruptly.”

“Quite all right. So, kindly have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and we shall continue. In response to your declaration that the visits by the so-called or self-styled son of K to our museum are a plus for us, I asked you if you understand international sign language.”

“To which I was going to ask: What do you mean?”

Dr. Hruska tapped his right temple three times, then circled his right index finger clockwise around his ear a few times. I nodded, I understood. Then I took out Karoly Graf’s visit card and showed it to the director. He took it and looked at it. He waved the card several times as he spoke, brought it to his chest, teasingly close to his pocket as though he would take it from me for bringing an illegal or false document into the museum. Perhaps he had worked for the previous regime — lots of people continued in posts they had had under the communists — before the political turnaround and was used to doing just this, confiscating false documents. For a moment I feared he would do just that, for it’s hard to shake off old bureaucratic ways. Lips pressed, Dr. Hruska nodded knowingly.

“Now do you understand?”

“I see,” I said, my heart sinking. “Oh, my. He’s…”

“Yes, absolutely, I regret to say. The poor man, otherwise a decent, knowledgeable fellow, is deluded with this ridiculous idée fixe… He comes here often, and because of his age we give him complimentary admission. I’m sorry to disappoint you…but I must tell you”—here he returned Graf’s visit card—“don’t waste your time.”

“Is he Jewish?”

Dr. Hruska, who very likely was not a Jew, looked at me. I thought he would say, What difference does it make? But he said:

“He claims he is, but I cannot confirm that.”

I saw the director looking quickly at his wrist. He was too polite to lift his hand up and openly glance at his watch. But I got the hint. I shook his hand, thanked him, and said I had to be on my way.

“Come back soon,” Dr. Hruska said.

Maybe I will buy a ticket from the girl in the blue beret, I thought as I walked out of the museum. Then I’ll ask her if she wants to join me, and if she says yes, I’ll buy another ticket. Again I made my way through crowds in the Old Town Square looking for her. The girl in the blue beret was right. She wasn’t in the same spot she was in before.

When she saw me she raised her eyebrows in a gesture I thought was welcoming. As if to say, Ah, hello, you are back. You said you’d come back and you did come back.

“So, then, which part of Georgia,” I said as if there had been no break in our conversation, “do you call home?”

Again she laughed, closed her eyes for a moment, and shook her head.

“Actually, I’m from Gruzinye, the other, the real, Georgia. From Tbilisi.”

As soon as she said she was from Georgia, I had a rush, a high, call it inspiration. That’s what pretty girls can do — in the Middle Ages inspire feats of knightly valor; today, feats of wit in middle age.

I had gone several times to a Georgian restaurant in New York and tasted their vegetarian specialties. I was ready to show off my Russian too. True, she said she was Georgian. But I figured Russian, Georgian, it was all the same. Stalin, a Georgian, spoke Russian. Hitler, an Austrian, spoke German. Dictators’ language was interchangeable. They all spoke the same tongue.

I asked her in Russian, How are you, my dear? “Kak pozhevyitese, moi dorogoi?”

“I don’t understand Russian.”

“But you don’t understand enough of it to realize it’s Russian.”

“True. But I still don’t understand it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then how do you speak it?”

“I speak it but I don’t understand it.”

I thought she would laugh. Even I laughed at my own joke. But she only made a face.

“Do you know Georgian?” she asked.

“No, but”—and this was what I was waiting for—“but I love simiki with willy-nilly takashvilli.”

The girl in the blue beret looked at me blankly. I thought the mention of local Tbilisi delicacies like cottage cheese and raisin latkes would make her smile with joy. I thought she’d be overcome by a wave of nostalgia, her mouth watering. And pleased and impressed by my knowledge.

“Don’t you just love,” I pressed on, “zakuski and khachapouri?”

Now her blank stare had an overlay of concern. Her confusion matched my clarity. I closed my right eye slightly and looked at her.

“You’re not from Georgia, are you?” I said with a smile to take the edge off my accusation. “For if you were, you would melt with happiness, hearing a stranger recite your national dishes.”

But the girl in the blue beret, the girl from alleged Georgia, was not to be outdone. For she came back with:

“Really? Hot dogs. Coke. Big Mac. Rice Krispies,” she said. “I don’t see you melting with tears of joy.”

“Your point,” I conceded, marveling at her riposte. “Do you know the difference, Miss Atlanta, between blini and blinchki, between Petrouchka and petrushka?”

Now she smiled. But it wasn’t a loving smile. It wasn’t the welcoming smile I had seen before. It was the smile that preceded a sharp verbal thrust. I imagined her taking off her placard, grabbing a foil, stepping back and saying, En garde!

“If I were from Kabul, would you recite Afghani national dishes and try to trip me up in your pseudo-Swahili as to the difference between Stravinsky’s ballet and the Russian word for parsley, which we willy-nilly also use in Georgian. My mother tongue, you know, is part of the Slavic family of languages.”

That remark clinched it for me. Now I knew she was fibbing. Georgian is not part of the Slavic family. It is not related to any other family of languages.

I looked her in the eye. “You’re still not from Georgia.”

And she, instead of answering, looked over my shoulder and said through tight lips:

“My boss is coming toward me. Quick, buy a ticket or he’ll think I’m offing goof.”

Suppressing a bellow of laughter, I bought a ticket from her, even though I assumed it was a ruse.

“Is he still headed this way?” I also said through tight lips.

“No. Soon as he saw me making a sale, he turned.”

I examined tomorrow night’s ticket.

“Will you be there?”

“No. The tickets cost too much.”

“The management doesn’t give you guys free tickets?”

“No. There are too many of us advertising. That’s their policy.”

“Here,” I said in a sudden gesture that wasn’t planned. “Take it. You go. I can’t make it tomorrow anyway. I bought it just to save you a problem.”