Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“He took from me,” she whined, “what I have been guarding zealously for more than twenty-five years.”

The judge turned to the man and ordered him to reply to the complaint.

“I crossed the field outside of town. All of a sudden this woman came out of nowhere and seduced me. I gave her money but now she wants more and has dragged me to this court, sir. She claims that I forced her, but that is a lie.”

“Do you have twenty silver crowns?” asked the judge.

“I do.”

“Give it to her.”

The woman thanked the court profusely, bound the kerchief tightly under her chin, bowed several times, and departed — but not before she had counted the silver crowns carefully.

Now the judge turned to the man again.

“Go after her. Get your twenty silver crowns back and bring them to me.”

I saw the man running after the young woman. He caught up to her and began to struggle with her. She seemed stronger than he. But, locked into each other, both managed to return to the judge.

“This ruffian,” the woman cried, “is trying to take from me the coins Your Honor just ordered him to give to me.”

“Did he succeed?” asked the judge.

“No! I’d sooner give up my life than my silver crowns. Hammers and chisels won’t succeed to get them out of my clutches.”

“She’s right, Your Honor. I don’t have the strength to get them from her.”

“Let me see those silver crowns,” said the judge.

The woman gave him the coins and the judge handed them back to the man. The judge turned to the woman.

“If you had defended your body as you defend your crowns, not even Samson himself could have overcome you…. Off with you— and don’t show your face in Prague anymore.”

As the young woman walked off, she removed her kerchief. It was only then that I recognized her.

The girl in the blue beret! Why was she being expelled from Prague? And how could a sweet girl like that be accused of being a tart?

I leaped over the wooden horse and ran through the crowd.

Behind me, I heard the crowd susurrating antiphonally. Some said this and some said that. Was it “tara pilus” and “tara glos” that they were chanting? I couldn’t tell because the rush of blood in my head confused my hearing. But I caught up to her — she had turned — and shouted:

“Why did you let them do this to you?” I took her hand. “Why?”

She wheeled. “You! You just ruined my scene. My first chance in films and you ruin it. I was supposed to go back to the judge and weep for mercy.”

“Is this a film?” I looked around.

“Yes,” she hissed and burst into tears.

I couldn’t tell if they were genuine or part of her act. Still, I tried to console her. I reached for her hand. “Don’t,” she said, “stop,” I wishing she would continue to say quickly, “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

But just then another man came to her too, and in my haste to get to the girl I tripped over him, pulling him down also. I tried to break my fall by seizing a klieg light I hadn’t noticed before — for had I noticed it I would have known what was happening — and toppled that too. It fell through the papier-mâché courthouse wall the scenic designer had no doubt constructed. That plopped back also with a ripping sound, three segments of carton falling in three waves.

Not only were the sounds proliferating, but I could see my bills growing and my budget for my own film shrinking. Still, I couldn’t help laughing at this silent film comedy I was scripting without a script. I wondered if others were laughing as I tried to pick myself up. I could swear I heard laughter all around me.

The segment I had seen seemed familiar. Then it clicked. It was the famous scene in Don Quixote when Sancho Panza is governor of an “island” and administers justice in a Solomonic way.

Another man ran toward me.

“What’s wrong with you, signore? Where you get the nerve to crash a film?…Bruno, Scarpio, escort this man out of here…. Don’t cry, Katya.”

Two men stood next to me. I looked at the girl without the blue beret — so Katya is her name — admiring her long green eyes. She stood sullen with hands on her hips.

“Why did you jump into my role?” she complained.

“I’m so sorry. I was just passing by and thought you were in trouble. I didn’t realize this was a film shoot. Look, I want to see you. Finally. Will you go out with me?”

The two men began marching alongside me.

I turned, heard sounds in a foreign language. Maybe Georgian. Maybe Gibberish. But one word came through clearly.

“Nevah!” she said, although it could have been, “Nepa!”

* Another approach. One was a dream, the other happened — or vice versa. Or could it be both were dreams, or, even more like a dream, that both happened.

The next morning, I crossed the square into that side lane full of stores and stood in front of the little marionette shop, expecting to see Katya outside demonstrating those cute dolls. But she wasn’t there. A new girl stood there playing with the marionettes, showing off before a group of six or seven people. She didn’t know where Katya was. She didn’t know her, had never met her, was just summoned to work late last night.

Back to the square. But she was not there, nor in any of the side streets that shot off Old Town Square. The placard-holders— Katerina Maria, whom I would have avoided, must have been off today — surely thought me an oddball fixture here, a character out of classic myths, the guy who is doomed to keep on looking for a girl in a blue beret. Every town has its loons. Now I was an added screwball landmark on the great plaza.

I returned to my apartment hotel and asked the manager if he knew what production company had been filming here the day before. He didn’t know. They were here one day, he said, gone the next. Adults don’t cry. But I felt like bawling. “Where would I find another girl like that, with a dimple in one cheek, and one cheek only, when she smiled? I don’t like to play with destiny, use fancy romantic terms, but I felt she was — all right, I’ll confess — I felt there was something between that sweet girl and me. Otherwise, why would I have bumped into her so many times, why was she friendly with me, flirtatious even? Katya, the girl in the blue beret. Katya, now I know her name. Just like I knew I’d get to know Jiri and felt I’d get to know the old man with the cane. I had the same feeling about her.

Did I think she was Jewish? My heart — my prophetic heart— told me she was family. For was I going to give my heart, my life, to a gentile girl, or as the Americans so colloquially phrase it, to a shikse? I, whose entire life and professional career was shaped, molded, stamped, by Yiddishkeyt?

Absolutely not.

She didn’t look like the other young people on the square who had flat cheeks, snub noses, and Tartar eyes, the solidly Slav facial bone structure. There was an otherness, as K says in one of his stories, to her features, those long green eyes, the black hair, the kissable lips, and the arrow she had engaged that sightless little boy to shoot into my heart.

Thinking of Katya brought to mind poor Dora Diamant, K’s love that could not be. I didn’t want Katya to be my Dora. If we weep at films that move us, shed tears while reading, how many more tears should we shed at real life’s dolour? No story moved me more deeply than K and Dora’s romance. She was his true love; with her he would have found fulfillment. The others were false loves, forced loves. The same arrow the blind little boy sent to my heart he had also sent through the hearts of Dora and K. But other powers, some human, some divine, intervened.