Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“What did he want to tell you?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

Mr. Klein laughed. “Now this is either very comic or very funny. Are you sure he wanted to tell you something?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I’m absolutely sure. When I visited him and he began to speak, his housekeeper interrupted him. They spoke a language I couldn’t piece together. For a while I felt it was impertinent, but gradually their secretive language enthralled me. Maybe because Jiri was speaking. You notice, I keep wanting to talk about Jiri, but I can’t find words to express that special bond created between us during the two or three times we saw each other.” Why I said “two or three” I don’t know. Of course I knew I saw him three times. But the drive to be secretive after Eva’s initial warning persisted.

“I also told Jiri how much I loved the golem legends of Prague and the legendary writer of Prague, K.”

“Ah, golem. Ah, K, the man who published too much.”

“Too much?” I raised my voice in protest. “Not enough. If only there were more.”

Mr. Klein pressed his lips and made a little rocking motion with his head, as if to say, Well, that’s the way it is. For a moment he looked sad. Maybe he was thinking of Jiri; maybe my disbelief that he was Jiri’s father hurt him. But then he brightened.

“I heard you mention K’s Meditation before.”

“You can hear through the wall while playing Bach?”

“Yes.”

Perhaps it wasn’t polite to disbelieve him again but I couldn’t help it. But maybe Eva had quickly mentioned the book to him in Czech as she was introducing me.

“Why were you so excited to see a copy of K’s first book?”

“Because it was his first book. Because so few people know it. Because I saw it at Jiri’s house. And with K’s signature. My God! K’s autograph! I held the book in my hand and literally trembled with excitement.”

“I know.”

There he goes again.

“You know? How do you know?”

But he merely said, “Yes, I too would have trembled with excitement.”

I looked at my watch. It was late. I said it was time to go. I thanked him and bade him goodbye.

“Just a moment.” Mr. Klein went to his desk. “I want to show you something.”

In his hand he held a thin, light blue airmail envelope addressed to Ph. Klein, sent by Jiri Krupka-Weisz. The handwriting was European, elegant, angular, neat. It was the first time I had seen Jiri’s script.

“You don’t read Czech.”

“That’s right.”

“But international words you understand.”

He took out the letter, pointed out the word “Papa” on the first line and Jiri’s name at the bottom.

“It’s his last letter, I’ll translate some of the lines. ‘I am sending you a fine young man I met in shul recently, a man of intellect, a filmmaker. He loves good literature, especially K’s works. When I showed him a signed copy of Meditation —by the way, he knew the book, even the year of its publication — he literally trembled with excitement. He will come to you via Yossi and Eva. I think you will like him.’ That’s what my son wrote to me.”

How could I argue with that — never mind the age conundrum — except to say, “Very interesting, even convincing. But you have two different names.”

“Aha!”

I smiled at him. “You usually say, Yes.”

“Aha is Yes to a higher power.”

“So that’s how you knew my reaction to holding K’s book.”

Mr. Klein smiled. He looked proud, as if he’d won a difficult chess match with me.

“Now tell me whom else you have met in Prague. What other interesting people you have spoken to?”

“Well, besides Eva’s friend, Yossi, I also met the old shamesh of the Altneushul.”

Mr. Klein laughed. “Did he do his mirror routine for you?”

I laughed. “His trick is quite amusing.”

“And he said something about the attic?” Klein asked in a teasing, mocking tone, just waiting to react to my answer.

“He told me everyone wants to see the golem. Show me the golem, bring me to the attic…but there is no attic, the shamesh said.”

Mr. Klein gazed at me for a moment, skeptical. The air hummed. And hummed some more. Like current through high power lines. Then he said, almost in a whisper:

“There is an attic.”

“There is?”

“Yes. There was an attic. There is an attic. There will be an attic.” “But he took me inside the shul, pointed to the ceiling, showed me there is no attic. There can’t be an attic.”

“There is an attic,” Mr. Klein repeated.

“How do you know?”

“I know,” he said crisply. His stubbornness was stone.

But I, wanting to know, pressed on.

“How?”

He sighed, as though about to reveal long-suppressed information.

“I was there.”

A bell rang. A wordless thought moved like a circular staircase through my head.

“When?”

But Mr. Klein merely nodded.

“How did you get there? Tell me. Tell.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“When?”

“Yes,” he said.

That night I couldn’t fall asleep. Time was askew, its rhythms off. The little clock next to my bed didn’t go tick-tock, like normal clocks. It went tickety-tock, tickety-tock, keeping the rhythm of the opening four-note phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The destiny motif. Destiny knocking. Tickety-tock.

Then I slept. I slept and had a dream. I dreamt I was back in Mr. Klein’s room. The room was different, Mr. Klein the same.

In the dream he told me again he was Jiri’s father, age sixty-nine. The illogic was no more acceptable in a dream than during waking. I was still incredulous. But Mr. Klein wasn’t offended by my disbelief.

Since one can be bold in dreams, I said, “I just don’t believe it. Sixty-nine minus eighty is a problem in a world of math not yet discovered. People make all kinds of claims here in Prague.”

“You mean like Karoly Graf, who claims to be my son?”

The old man was slipping. True, it was a dream, my dream, but still it was the second time Mr. Klein had mixed himself up with K.

“Not your son,” I said. “K’s son.”

“Yes.” Mr. Klein laughed. “That’s what I meant. That man who claims to be K’s son.”

“Who disappeared.”

“Never mind him. I want you to know the truth about Jiri and me. Watch.”

Mr. Klein went to a corner of his room. Only now did I notice that the walls of Mr. Klein’s room were not straight but angled out like a rhomboid. I felt we were leaning either forward or backward as we spoke. From the corner he fetched his cane and flung it to the ground. At once it became a serpent. At first it didn’t move, but after lying still for a while, its beady, unpleasant little eyes locked with mine, the snake slithered on the floor, creating “esses” that disappeared and reappeared as it slid forward. But since I come from the Show Me State, I don’t believe what I see. Even in my dream.

I backed into a chair, trying hard not to fall off because of the angles of the walls. I tucked my legs under me.

The serpent headed for the door.

“Now do you believe me?”

I didn’t answer. Just because Mr. Klein could turn a walking stick into a serpent didn’t mean that sixty-nine minus eighty wasn’t a negative integer. Stick plus snake didn’t add up to Jiri plus Klein. Even in a dream.

“Go. Pick it up. By the tail.”

Fat chance, I thought.

“No.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I am afraid.” Even though I didn’t believe what I was seeing, I was still afraid.

“It won’t hurt you.” Mr. Klein seemed to glide on the floor toward me. “Pick it up and give it to me.”