Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“True.”

“I thought you left to avoid me.”

If she were pert, fresh, European, she could easily have said: Don’t flatter yourself. But the girl in the blue beret said:

“To change jobs just to avoid you? That would be a pretty”— she thought a moment, recalling the word—“drastic thing to do, wouldn’t it, just not to see a man? To give up a job? It so happens this jobs pays better and suits my hours. No no, it wasn’t personal.”

“I’ve looked for you all over the square,” I told the girl in the blue beret.

“Why?”

Now she had me. Now I would have to declare my interest in her. The subtle, mimed, boy-girl ballet could be wordless no longer.

So I came up with, “Because I had nothing else to do.”

I looked at her. She burst into a laugh, an understanding smile.

A vague feeling of discontent hovered in me. I was annoyed that she had said nothing about the concert. I waited for her to say just a word of thanks. Or at least mention the event.

I looked at her. I even put my hands on my hips and assumed an “I’m waiting” stance and look, like a father about to scold his naughty little girl.

“What?” she said, knowing she had to do, say, something.

“Did you like the concert?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for not mentioning it soon as I saw you. Please forgive me. It was wonderful.”

Could it be, I wondered, that she was so excited seeing me it just flew out of her head?

“Turns out I was able to make it after all,” I said. “I looked in vain for you on the square to buy another ticket…to invite myself.”

I thought she would laugh but she looked pensive.

“Where did you sit?”

“Up in the balcony,” I said. “And I saw you down in front, in the orchestra.”

“So you were up in the balcony. Can you imagine, I sensed it. I felt in the back of my neck someone staring at me. I felt a tingling in the roots of my hair. Did that ever happen to you, sensing that someone is looking at you?”

“Was it a good tingle?” I asked the girl in the blue beret.

But she only smiled in reply, a demure smile, a Cheshire Cat smile, a smile that substituted for words.

“How about you and I actually going somewhere together instead of separately?” Finally, I said what I’d been wanting to say for what seemed like years. Having said it, I couldn’t believe I said it.

“Would you mind if I think about it? I made it a principle never to socialize with tourists, for one can get hurt that way. But in this case I want to think it over.”

I’m honored, I didn’t say.

“How much time do you need? Five minutes? I’ll take a walk and come back.”

She shook her head.

“An hour or two. A day? Thirty days?”

“Come back in a few days. Let’s say four.”

A minute later I returned.

“Like in the famous fox fable, I blinked a few times, counted each blink as a new day. And so four days have passed and here I am.”

She laughed.

“Actually, I wanted to buy a little hand puppet. Does your shop sell them?”

“Of course. I’ll show you one.”

She brought out one of Papageno. Perfect, I thought. He’ll love that one.

“Is it a gift?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“For a man or a woman?”

I could swear I heard a little tinge of jealousy in her voice, a little quaver as she said “woman.” Her voice lost its center of gravity when she said that word. I thought of teasing her but decided not to.

“It’s for a man.” I saw that this pleased her too.

“I ask,” she said, “because if it’s for a woman, we have a Papagena doll too.”

“Look. I want to show you something.” I gave the girl in the blue beret a little folded note containing the six words that Katerina Maria had shown me.

“For me?” she said, seemingly delighted. She held her fingers together close to her chest and opened the piece of paper slowly as though she were knitting with miniature needles and read the note as if it were a secret she was keeping to herself.

“How nice! That’s so sweet of you.”

“You understand it?” I asked

“Of course.”

I peered over, wanting to see what she was seeing, but — teasing me — she pressed the note even closer to her chest.

“Why are you doing that?” I burst out. How could she not let me see my own note? “It was I who gave it to you.”

“Exactly. So you should know what’s in it. So why are you so anxious to see it?”

“Because it’s mine. And by hiding it you arouse my curiosity.”

“But, but you wrote it,” she insisted.

“Then why hide it as if it’s a secret note from my rival?”

“Because now that you gave it to me,” came the reply of the girl in the blue beret, “it’s mine.”

“But I may have written something I don’t know and I want to find out what it is.”

She considered the (il)logic of the request, thought a while, then said:

“All right,” and, in one continuous, unbroken gesture, almost musical and balletic in nature, she slid the note across her blouse as she stretched out her hand and gave me the little piece of paper. “I like what you wrote to me.”

I opened the note to reread the faux-Gothic words. I turned the paper this way and that. But the paper was as clear of script, as clean of message, erased and white and empty, as blank as it was before I wrote the words Katerina Maria had given me.

I waited till noon to be sure that Mr. Klein was at home and rested after his morning walk, then I called Eva.

“Hi, Eva.”

“Hello, hello, how are you?”

“You recognized my voice?”

“Of course. And also, not too many Americans call me. So how are you doing?”

“Just fine. And you and Mr. Klein?”

“All is well.”

“May I say hello to him?”

“Just a moment.”

I couldn’t hear the words or understand the Czech, but I’m sure she was telling Mr. Klein who was calling.

I was tempted to tell him about my dream, about the staff that became a snake.

“Ah, my young friend, good to hear from you. When are you coming again?”

“Very soon. You know, I had a dream”—there went my resolve— “and you were in it.”

“A good dream, I hope.”

“Fascinating. Like out of a modernist short story.”

“When you come I will show you the third sign…. So, until then, au revoir.”

“Thank you,” I said without even thinking what I was responding to. When I put down the receiver, only then did shivers spurt over me. Did he say “third sign”? What’s going on here? I ran to the bathroom mirror to make sure I was me. I saw my own reflection, slightly pale, staring back. Had Mr. Klein bridged the gap between dream and real, or had I, despite my promise not to tell him about my dream, blurted out all the details in a kind of mind-relaxing stupor, like the one-second, exhaustion-induced dream I had once described?

But reality has to take hold, even if it is Prague. I’m sure I did not tell him details of my dream. And if so, then how in heaven’s name did he know of the two signs — signs that really didn’t persuade me he was almost seventy with an eighty-year-old son, even though the room was an atilt rhomboid and he was able to turn a walking stick into a snake and withdraw a leprous hand from his pocket? Such magical signs, although they defy reality, still cannot upset mathematics. Applies even in dreams the majestic, inexorable rule of numbers. Even if the world turned upside down and inside out, it couldn’t possibly prove the logicality of a sixty-nine-year-old man with an eighty-year-old son.