Curt Leviant: Kafka's Son

But then I heard his sunny voice lovingly explaining a verse from Noah to an older man next to him. I closed my eyes to concentrate. Suddenly, I was a little boy, enchanted by the words of a beloved teacher; I floated in a green meadow, craggy peaks before me, unafraid of the winding wanderweg that led down deep into the valley because I knew an older brother was watching over me, and I basked in a happiness that comes only in childhood.

The man’s gentle comments on Noah and the dove mesmerized me; his sweet words washed over me. I hadn’t heard a voice like that before. The music and intonations of his European-accented English sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. Then I opened my eyes to look at him. He was probably in his mid-to-late sixties, with an aristocratic face, a self-prepossessed but not smug look. His round glasses added a touch of élan. Such faces, proclaiming their social status, tend to fence themselves in, if not thrust you away. Not his. His had an openness, a warmth, especially his brown, deepset Jewish eyes.

I have a simpatico for these old European Jewish men, whose numbers, sadly, dwindle from year to year. One look and I know the outline of these Holocaust survivors’ histories. But I want to know details, for they could have been my uncles, grandfathers, had not the enemy murdered them. Perhaps I am drawn to them because of the grandparents I never knew, since both my father and mother were survivors too.

Noticing a newcomer in the congregation, the gabbai approached to give me an aliya. Just then the man in front of me — the man with the sunny voice and aristocratic face — rose and went to the entrance door. I wanted to talk to him. I imagined myself splitting in two. One me went up to the bimah; the other followed him, even though it’s disrespectful to run the other way when one is summoned to the Torah.

“Your name?” said the gabbai.

“Amschl ben Moshe.”

All during the Torah reading I could barely concentrate on the unfolding Noah and the Flood narrative. I wondered if the man with the sunny voice would return, like the dove with an olive leaf, or if he had gone home. Happily, just as I was making my way to my seat, I saw him coming back too.

At the end of the service, he bent forward to the next row and from the little book holders behind the pews pulled out some candy wrappers and crumpled napkins that others had inconsiderately stuffed in there. It wasn’t fitting, he seemed to say, for refuse to share space with the holy books.

As the worshippers were streaming out of the shul, we stood in the Indian summer warmth outside and spoke. By now he had exchanged his yarmulke for a dark blue beret. A few of the congregants wished him, “Gut shabbes, doctor.” I introduced myself and he told me his name: Jiri — Yirmiyahu in Hebrew, after the prophet Jeremiah — Krupka-Weisz.

“When I heard you explaining the Torah verses to that older man next to you with such patience and love, I said to myself: I must speak to him. I must get to know him. Your remarks about Noah and the dove sounded like a loving lullaby, and I felt myself transported to Eden-like, flower-filled fields.”

“You put it very nicely, even poetically, but you’re making a, how shall I express it colloquially, a big deal out of it.”

But I wasn’t making a big deal. I wasn’t exaggerating. He spoke with an edelkeyt one doesn’t encounter very often.

“You must be a wonderful teacher because I remember what you said. The Torah’s verses are eternal truths. What the Torah says, for instance, about the dove and the olive leaf is not something that happened only once. It can happen again. Like the pots of olive oil the prophet Elisha gave the poor woman, as we read in the Bible. These verses, you told the old man, are just models for what happened and can, and did, happen again.”

Jiri looked uncomfortable with my praise.

“I just did what anyone who knows the Torah would do,” he said softly. “Plus a bit of my own insights.”

What impressed me was that Jiri hadn’t made the other man feel inadequate. Ingeniously, he made him feel as if he were teaching Jiri . For after Jiri had asked him to retell in his own words what he had learned, Jiri said: “With your explanation the verses are even clearer to me than ever before.”

He had a magical voice, I told him. “There was a Greek Jewish philosopher, I think it was Aristopholus, who said that a man’s voice is a mirror of his soul.”

Jiri looked down, then back up at me shyly. “If you’ll excuse me, but I think you’re conflating two names: Aristophanes and Aristobulus.”

“Yes, Dr. Krupka-Weisz, you’re right.”

“Still, it’s remarkable you remembered that quote.”

“Well, it’s the only quote of his I know. Not that I read his work. I had read that line somewhere, maybe in a novel, and I was taken by the thought. It’s so right on the mark.”

“There were several kings and their sons during the first two centuries BCE named Aristobulus,” Jiri said. “But you’re probably referring to the Jewish Hellenistic philosopher Aristobulus of Paneas.”

“If you say so.” And I smiled.

He smiled too, then we both broke into a merry laugh.

“I’m trying to place your accent but can’t seem to do it.”

“I’m from Prague.”

“Really? I’ve never met anyone from Prague before. Jews with accents here are either from Poland, Russia, or Germany.”

“It’s my hometown. Why so excited?”

“Because that’s where I was born.”

Now Jiri’s face lit up. “I knew you looked familiar,” he joked. I could have sworn a flush came over his cheeks. He took a step closer to me. “But I hear no accent in your English.”

“Because my parents of blessed memory brought me here as a baby.”

“Did they survive in Prague?”

“Not quite. It’s a long story, which I’ll tell you some other time. But after the war their work brought them for a period of time to Prague… And you, Dr. Krupka-Weisz, how did you survive?”

“Please call me Jiri… My story too is a long one. But I ended up in Theresienstadt, or Terezin.”

“I know an older Czech writer, a filmmaker like me, who also survived in Terezin.”

“Who?”

“Arnošt Lustig. Do you know him?”

Jiri laughed. “What a question. Of course I know Arnošt. But he’s from Prague too.”

“Oh, my goodness. Of course. I just blanked out on that…I knew your accent had a familiar melody.”

“Little Arnošt!” And Jiri’s laughter rolled on. “I remember his mama pushing him in his pram when he was a baby, in 1926 or ’27. I must have been thirteen or fourteen then, but I can still see the scene, even describe the fancy shiny dark blue pram he was in, as though it were happening now.”

“I’ll have to tell him that next time I see him…”

“Well, when you do, give him my regards, and ask him if he’s stopped crying when his mama puts his bonnet on.” And Jiri laughed again. “He was such an adorable baby with big blue eyes… Interestingly enough, we were both in Terezin at the same time and we both ran away from Prague at the height of our professions. But Arnošt left in 1968, many years before me.”

“Excuse me, Jiri, but you said you were thirteen or fourteen in the late 1920s. How is that possible, when you look sixty-four or sixty-five?”

“I’m eighty, my boy. Born in 1913.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Perhaps it’s good genes. Members of our family, if they survived the Germans, live long lives and look younger than their years.”

I looked at him. By no means did he look eighty. There was a vigor in him, even a youthfulness. He had a head of greying hair; he stood erect; his eyes sparkled. Should I now bid him “gut shabbes,” tell him it was a joy to meet him, and say I hope we’ll meet again? For indeed I had decided to come back here next Saturday. I meant what I said. I wanted to get to know him. Something ineffable drew me to him. Meanwhile, as these thoughts tumbled, we looked at each other as though we were conversing. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he too wondering what thoughts ran through my mind? But I realized I didn’t want to leave him just yet, so I asked: