Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“You did?” she said with regret in her voice. “I’m so sorry I made you buy a ticket. Here. Back your money take.”

“No no, it’s okay. Go. Enjoy.”

“Thank you so much.”

The girl in the blue beret looked at me admiringly. It’s not ego speaking. I can tell by that certain look in the eye, the tilt of the head. I was about to ask her what I really wanted to ask her but remained silent. Why? Why did I remain silent? Maybe I wouldn’t see her again. Why should I lose this opportunity when it was now within my grasp? Nevertheless, I sort of waved to her and turned to go.

“No one has ever given me a ticket before.”

Not even a traffic cop? I thought of saying but didn’t know if the word “ticket” was used here in that sense. But her words seemed like an opening. I considered them a gift.

Now I was about to say what I wanted to say before but some stupid masochism masquerading as a sense of propriety still paralyzed my will.

“Next time, we’ll…” I said, but she cut me off before I had a chance to add, go together to a concert .

“Now I really have to move about. The boss, he’s still somewhere on the square. He will let me go if he sees me talking too much to one customer.”

“I’ll let you go,” I said, letting go slowly, not wanting to go at all. I went around the bend and joined the crowd of tourists looking up at the clock tower.

About ten minutes later I bumped into her again in a different part of the square.

She saw me and said something that sounded like, “Kay.”

“What?”

“You look like Danny K.”

It had been years, and I mean years and years, since I had heard a girl say that.

And I couldn’t resist saying, “I knew him.”

“What?” Her eyes widened. “You did? Really?”

“Yes, I did. In fact, I saw him about a month ago, just two weeks before he died.”

She put her hand under the placard to her heart. “Oh no! He died? Danny K, dead? Oh my God! When?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Wasn’t it on the news here?”

“No. What’s the matter with this country?”

“It was front-page news all over America.”

“I’m so sorry. I loved his films. And you saw Danny K? In person?” She looked at me skeptically. “You really really knew him?”

“I sat right next him at a dinner party in New York. I was heartbroken when he died. It came so suddenly. He hadn’t even been ill. One morning I open the New York Times and there on page one is the sad news of his sudden passing.” I put my hand on my heart too. “I’ve been in love with Danny K since I was a kid.”

“He was my hero too,” said the girl in the blue beret. “He ran all over the world raising money to help poor children.”

I looked over my shoulder surreptiously. “Is your boss coming? Is this chat costing me another ticket?”

Came now a fetching smile, her eyes almost closed. With the opening she’d given me, I almost said I’ll buy another ticket. But I held back. I wanted to, but I couldn’t seem to crash through that barrier. A few minutes earlier I had started to say, Next time we’ll go together, before she interrupted me. Now I could have spoken but restraint — down, away with, false politesse — held my tongue. Although it needed only a few motions of lip and tongue to turn dream into reality, and just as she had given me that A Major Major Discovery message before, now she gave me another message. But I still couldn’t leap the gap from here to there.

Why?

Why why why?

I suppose I wanted to secure my reputation with her. Figured I’d go slow. I didn’t want her to think I was like every other male tourist on the square.

I walked away from the great plaza, frustration orbiting me like a quick moon. The missed opportunity gnawed at me. An empty feeling swirled in my stomach like a vague pain. I’ll see her again on the square, I consoled myself. Next time, I swore to myself, I will, I will, I will articulate what I wanted to say and drive that cavernous emptiness away.

I had a fantasy that my first day in Prague would be K-esque. But as it turned out it was my second.

At 6:45, per Jiri Krupka-Weisz’s instructions, I walked up to the Altneushul. How out of place this nearly one-thousand-year-old structure with its peaked roof looked among the modern office buildings and fashionable shops on Parizska Street. The street was deserted. I was the only person in sight. I walked into the narrow lane where the Jewish Town Hall meets the entrance to the synagogue. I looked up to the top of the Jewish Town Hall, at the famous reverse-running clock with its polished brass Hebrew letters that serve as numbers. Then I noticed the policeman patrolling.

“What time do services begin?” I asked in English.

He stared at me with his simple, Schweik-like face.

I pointed to my watch. Well, actually, I didn’t have a watch. To the place where the watch would have been. And then I pointed to the door of the synagogue and mimed opening it.

The cop waved his hands, crisscrossing one over the other like an umpire signalling “safe.” But here it meant the opposite. No. Closed. Then he turned his fingers and fist as if to lock a door.

“Sinagoga geshpert,” he said in pidgin German.

“How is that possible?” I exploded. “The booklet said the shul is open every day. Offen, offen!” I said, miming an open door.

“Turistika,” he said, pointed to his watch and held out ten fingers.

I didn’t want to join a 10 a.m. tour with hundreds of people traipsing through the shul. I wanted to see the shul as a shul should be seen, when it breathes with worshippers — not when it holds its breath. Of course, I also wanted to meet my contact whose name I had forgotten.

I had risen at six, dead tired, ordered breakfast, and made sure to be here at least ten minutes early. And now the policeman tells me the Altneushul is closed.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a man in motion. He moved in what I call the shul walk, slightly bent forward, in a rush, using a stride that is reserved just for synagogue services. He wouldn’t walk that way to catch a train. He wouldn’t walk that way for exercise. He walked that way to shul because that’s the way he saw his father and grandfather walking to shul. And then under his arm I noticed the telltale tallis bag.

I thought I’d try the international language, Yiddish.

“Sholem aleichem. When does davenning begin?”

“Aleichem sholem. Soon. At seven.”

“The cop told me the shul is closed.”

The man made a disparaging motion with his hand. “What does he know? His job is to protect the shul. So he does it by keeping people he doesn’t know away, the idiot.” The man pulled a rather large, old-fashioned key from his pocket and unlocked the ancient door. He looked at his watch and didn’t relock the door.

I followed him down three stone steps. A thrill ran through me as I entered the fabled shul, where the Maharal, the creator of the golem, had prayed four hundred years ago. I wondered if the people here were similarly in awe of this holy space. Two men were already inside. One, to the right front, was putting on tefillin. The other, on the bimah, was shifting books. So few Jews for the morning service in the oldest synagogue in the world, one of Jewry’s treasured sites? But as my eyes grew accustomed to the chiaroscuro light, other figures appeared. Two men way in front near the Holy Ark. Three to the side of the door in pews perpendicular to the bimah. Three in the back. Exactly ten, a minyan. Wait, I was there too, which made it eleven.

Jiri had told me that his old family friend always prayed by the rear wall in the corner. I looked at the three men standing there and thought I knew which one it was. He stood there in the corner by himself, the tallest of the three. Since he didn’t move, I imagined for a moment he was a statue, something that George Segal might have made, akin to the outdoor statue of Schweik sitting at a café I would see later. But actually the man was just meditating before putting on tefillin. Unlike the others, who were chatting before the start of the service, he spoke to no one. He was about six-two or six-three, vigorous-looking, in his mid-fifties, with a big head and a round, reddish face.