Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

I moved toward it slowly. The snake lay stiff, still as a stick. I bent down, approached it gingerly. With my right hand stretched out, I touched the serpent’s tail, ready to spring back at its slightest move. But it did not budge. It did not hiss. It did not strike. I picked it up. It hung limp. I gave it back to Mr. Klein. One shake and it turned back to wood.

“Are you a magician?” I asked Mr. Klein.

He tilted up his chin, raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes for a moment. Jiri had a similar gesture when I had asked him how he got his signed copy of K’s Meditation . A Middle Eastern gesture. Only Allah knows.

“Now do you believe me?”

I still couldn’t see the connection between this magic trick and the mathematical impossibility.

“All right, then here’s a second sign.”

Mr. Klein put his hand into his pocket and withdrew it. The skin was a dead, leprous white.

“Enough?”

“Enough,” I said. But I still didn’t believe it. He could have had talc in his pocket. There are many magic tricks in this world and many practitioners. Pharaoh’s magicians also turned staves to snakes and snakes to staves. Although these two signs defied rational explanation, Mr. Klein’s claim that he was Jiri’s father was even more irrational. Houdini’s feats — being locked into a box which was then thrown into the sea from which Houdini, Jewish trickster extraordinaire, emerged within minutes — were also seemingly irrational. They defied all credulity.

Until it was revealed — and not too long ago — that prior to each of his death-defying adventures, Houdini’s wife would always kiss her husband. What was in that kiss? A magic potion? Not at all. Nothing more and nothing less than the key to the lock that could also be opened from the inside of the box, the key that Houdini’s wife had in her mouth, which she slipped into his with that loving goodbye kiss.

Here too was something that could be explained. What, I didn’t know.

“I have a third sign,” Mr. Klein said.

“What are you going to do next?” I said, looking at the water pitcher standing atilt on a little table. “Turn that water into blood?”

“No,” he replied rather testily. “You’re not Moses and I’m not God.” Then he added, “And since Pharaoh’s time Jews don’t deal with blood, even for magical purposes. From the Middle Ages on, if you know history, blood, the blood libel, has been very disastrous for Jews. Actually, my third sign is the most incontrovertible of all. I’ll show you some other time. Meanwhile, I’ll let you think of these two. But now it’s time to wake up, my boy.”

NOTE:

For those anxious to learn what happened with the girl in the blue beret, skip to Chapter 12.

But be sure to come back to Chapter 11. If you don’t, you’ll miss a stunning surprise.

And Karoly Graf? Was he gone gone too? Listen. One day I boarded a Metro. As I stood by the door facing the tracks, I looked to my left. There he was, Karoly Graf, on a Metro going the opposite way. He too stood by the door. Two pieces of glass separated us. Had the cars stood still, had the doors opened (on the wrong side), had had had, I would have been standing face to face with him. Had had, would have, could have, I could have spoken to him, could have asked him all the questions I was asking myself as if I were addressing him. Why did you give me an old card with the wrong address? Did you purposely do this or was it a mistake? And how come you didn’t tell anyone where you were moving? And why did you stop coming to the K Museum? What’s wrong with you, Karoly Graf? But all these questions were in vain, for now we were moving slowly, he one way, I the other. Gone gone again, Karoly Graf.

A classic scene from films. Two people who have met, yet lost contact, see each other precisely in this frustrating way. It reminded me of a scene in a novel I’d once read, Partita in Venice , where the hero locks eyes with a lovely blonde in a gondola going one way in a narrow canal while he’s going the other way. They are about to signal each other when one gondola goes round the corner of a palazzo and the romance is lost forever.

A glimmer, I think, of recognition passed between Karoly Graf and me, he with a slightly startled, even guilty look, and I with a puzzled expression: Why did you do this to me, giving me a card with an old address?

As we were parting, Karoly raised an index finger. Wait, was that a finger Karoly Graf held up as both our trains began to move, his one way, mine another? Or was it a pen top* and not an index finger he flashed at me? To tease me, to intentionally vex and hex me, just as he had teased me, hexed and vexed me with that phony visit card. Or was my desire to see a pen prompting my eye to deceive me into seeing a pen when there was only an upraised finger? And if it was an index finger, what was he pointing to? What kind of message was Graf sending me? Was he trying to tell me something? Perhaps to meet him at the top floor of the K Museum tomorrow? Soon as I saw his raised index finger I quickly put my left fist to my left eye and made circular motions with my right fist — the international sign for filming. Hinting that I wanted to film him. Where, I couldn’t tell him. I had no sign for that. His upraised finger could also stand for the number one — to be at the location where we had first met: the first floor of the K Museum. Both signals were one — they pointed the same direction.

Because the whole scene flashed by in an instant, it’s one that is imprinted on my mind and seems much longer than it actually lasted. I guess Karoly Graf made an impression on me, after all. Although I didn’t believe him, I still felt an affection for him and wanted to see him again. And now I had. And now he had disappeared on me once more.

All the way home I had his image in my mind. Standing in the other subway car so close, yet out of reach. Then it struck me. The real hint. The real hint was the reel hint. That I get to doing what I had come here for in the first place.

Begin.

Start filming.

For if I delayed any longer I would never begin.

I began by videoing the statue of the Maharal in the city Town Hall, a statue that neither the Germans during World War II nor the Russians during their decades of post-war occupation had removed. They didn’t even touch it. I zoomed closer and closer to the Maharal’s face, focusing on him from various angles, with a voiceover (added later) of his words, a fine old cinematic trick that gives the impression he’s actually speaking.

As I began filming, I rubbed for good luck the little gold ring studded with two tiny diamonds and two tiny pearls my mother had given me. I had attached it years ago to my camera strap and have never removed it. And it has always brought me the good luck I sought.

Now that I had begun I felt a certain ease and confidence, as if a breath of air from a garden full of flowers had flowed into me. A table of contents appeared: Danny K’s remarks about his idea of filming “Metamorphosis,” Dr. Hruska at the museum, Yossi golem and the shamesh. Then Eva, and perhaps Mr. Klein.

The next day — I knew, I predicted it at once, even in the subway — of course Karoly Graf wasn’t at the museum. But at least he was well, alive, and I was glad of that.

At the little K Museum, Dr. Hruska greeted me like an old friend and beamed with happiness as I stood behind the camera and heard him tell me the story of the Museum. He even insisted I talk to his assistant, the receptionist. I thought that was very considerate of him. Originally, I had him pegged as an officious martinet. But my first impressions were dead wrong.