Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

Also, could tara pilus and tara glos — too young and too old— have some relevance here? Was Mr. Klein the one who was too old? And too old for what? Too old to reveal his age to me?

What else did Jiri and Mr. Klein share beside the first letter of their last name? Love of literature and—?

Wait. How about head gear? Jiri, like his putative dad, also wore a beret.

I know I’m groping. But even if you’re up against a smooth wall you still grope. And pray outlandish prayers, like wishing the tips of your fingers were suction cups. If I had a father who was, or even claimed to be, over one hundred, I would stand on a truck with a bullhorn and drive slowly around town blathering the news at the top of my lungs. If Mr. Klein were my father, at one hundred plus, I’d let everyone know. I’d be proud, not secretive, of my healthy old papa.

And could this old man with the brisk walk indeed be over one hundred and defy most laws of nature? Maybe, like Karoly Graf, he was tugging my foot, as the Russians say. If indeed he was one hundred, then his mode of parading with his cane was not copied from films. He was an eyewitness to that fin-de-siècle style of fancy strolling with a walking stick.

Again a wave of surprise surrounded me, palpable as a blast of wind on your face on a freezing day. Another in the series of surprises that began when I entered the Eldridge Street Shul in lower Manhattan. Surprises that have yet to stop. I now had two parts of the puzzle, the words and their meaning and possibly the person involved — but still the pieces didn’t mesh. It just didn’t make sense.

So far my stay here was a deck of cards. Every few days, sometimes every few hours, another card was turned over. It was never a deuce, king, or ace. Never a jack or a ten. It was always a special card, one that didn’t belong, an interloper from an unknown game, a surprise, like words you don’t understand spoken by two people you’d expect to converse in a normal tongue. Each turn of a card from the deck brought odd designs, numbers in an as-yet-uninvented mathematical system, faces that were refugees from a new world of playing cards that had infiltrated a traditional deck.

Still, I felt relaxed, in a mood to get to know Mr. Klein better.

“What did you do all these years, Mr. Klein? Were you a teacher?”

“I was a failed wunderkind.” He laughed.

So did I. It was a marvelous formulation, an elegant turn of self-deprecation.

“But let’s leave it at that.” Then he looked at me with that mild but penetrating glance. “What brings you to Prague?”

“A long story.”

“I have time. You see, the time I saved walking briskly up the hill I can now put to good use.”

“A mystery. I was drawn here.”

“I like mysteries. We are all mysteries, you and I. Enigmas, we.”

I nodded. Maybe you more than me.

“So what indeed”—he gazed into my eyes—“brings you here?”

“Basically, my wish to make a film. But underlying that is something I can’t put my finger on. Something is driving me. Pushing me. To Prague. A huge magnet pulling me. To complete a circle I myself began.”

“How so? Why Prague?”

“I…” I stopped, I stopped, waited to increase suspense. “I…I was born here.”

Mr. Klein’s eyes widened. His lips formed an O. “How fascinating! Now you surprise me. This you must tell me about.”

“My parents were young Holocaust survivors. They met in Italy, then got a job here after the war with a Jewish relief agency. A few years later I was born and soon thereafter they took me to New York. So coming back here for my first visit was like completing a rondo, coming to solve a mystery that like a bubble seems to get bigger every time I look…. And you, are you a native of Prague?”

“That’s not what you wanted to ask.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I know lots of things. I have total recall of conversations that never took place and I never forget anything I want to remember.”

“Still, are you a native of Prague?”

“Yes.”

“And where were you during the war?”

“Here. In Prague.”

How did he do it? I wondered. In hiding? Hidden by a friendly gentile? But I didn’t want to distract him now.

“Then you must know the K legends, the stories about him.”

“What literate person in Prague doesn’t?” He waved a hand toward his book collection. “I have all the Czech writers.”

I told him about Karoly Graf, his claim that he was K’s son.

The old man shook his head, gave a soft, deep-throated chuckle that could have passed as a groan.

“You know,” Mr. Klein said, “even if true, children of K would keep it to themselves, guarding the secret like a precious stone. It’s not a banner to be waved in the public square, rather a very private matter.”

“Really?” I broke in. “If it were me I’d proudly shout it in the village square: ‘I am K’s son!’”

I looked at Mr. Klein. He didn’t react. Then I caught the echo of a word I had missed at first hearing.

“Children? Did you say ‘children’? Plural, you say?”

I felt I had stumbled upon a great secret, as if I were suddenly unraveling the mystery of Jiri and Betty’s language, which I had actually done for a brief, time-compressed three seconds.

But the old man didn’t reply. He didn’t say No. He didn’t utter his ambiguous, slippery Yes. How much did he know, Phishl Klein? Did he, a lifelong resident of Prague, and surely a graduate of the university, know the juicy legends of Prague that circulated privately among its citizens but which outsiders could never be privy to, facts he wasn’t willing to share with a newcomer? Perhaps he had even met, or known, K himself.

“Mr. Klein, do you by any chance know where Graf lives? I haven’t been able to find him.”

“No. I don’t know him. Why do you want him?”

“Well, he’s an interesting character. Who wouldn’t be who is or claims to be the son of K?”

Mr. Klein looked at me. I was afraid he might say something that would upset me. He could have told me to mind my own business. To stop prying. But that wasn’t his nature. His glance was neither stern nor penetrating. It didn’t make my heart flutter. He looked at me mildly. I sought a trace of a smile on his unlined cheeks. I found that smile. Not on his lips but in his eyes.

“Who doesn’t claim to be K’s son? Go to a K convention. Have you gone to any?”

“To one. But only one. I stopped going. All the lecturers seemed to me to be egotistical prigs.”

Mr. Klein nodded. “If the chairman of the event would call out, ‘If anyone here is K’s son, please raise your right hand’—at first people would look around, left and right, regard each other, and then slowly some hands would go up, then other hands would go up, men’s and women’s hands, until everyone in the audience had their hands up.”

And then Mr. Klein burst out laughing. First his lips twitched as if he were holding back a laugh and then he let it go and shook with laughter. He was pleased with his scenario.

“They’re all my children,” he continued. “Even you, who doesn’t go to K conventions.”

“Your children?”

Mr. Klein laughed again. “I was thinking as if I were K. I put myself in his shoes.”

I waited to hear more, but Mr. Klein was silent. As expostulative as was Karoly Graf, so reticent was Philippe Klein. If he wanted me to catch an ever so slight twinkle in his eye, I did.

“Now you will tell me what you wanted to say before.”

I sighed. I couldn’t resist. “All right. It’s about Jiri. He told me lots of things, but one thing he wanted to tell me he didn’t tell me.”

“What is that?”

“What is that?” I don’t know why I said that. Something made me repeat what Mr. Klein had said.