Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“How in heaven’s name…?”

The shamesh said a few words to the actor in Czech and then translated them for my benefit.

“Next time, don’t accuse an innocent man. Now go.”

“Go,” I echoed.

The shamesh put his mirror away, an enigmatic smile on his face.

The actor went.

The shamesh assumed I’d ask about the sunglasses, but I knew what the answer would be.

Is Prague.

I woke up in the middle of the night. For a moment I was so disoriented I didn’t know where I was. I thought I was back home in New York. But it was too quiet. A moment later I was fully awake, the question, in two parts no less, perfectly formulated, the question dancing on the English supertitles in my mind. You might even say the question woke before me. Maybe I dreamt the question. Or maybe it bridged the sleeping and waking states, starting in one, leapfrogging into the other.

Why did I meet Danny K so late in life? And why did fate tease me with Karoly Graf, K’s putative son? Danny K I met; my other hero, the other K, I was born too late for. Sometimes we belong to one era but are born in another. One of my professors once hurled an insult at one of his colleagues (behind his back of course) by saying, “He should have been born in 1250; he has a perfect medieval mind.” For a person like me, who knew Maimonides and Chaucer, that put-down wouldn’t have fazed me at all. But that question quickly led to others I’d asked before. Why did Jiri disappear? And Danny too? And Karoly Graf? And, most frustrating of all, the girl in the blue beret? I just hoped, as I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, I hoped that one day I wouldn’t wake up and not find myself in bed.

Then I slept and dreamt again. And again. And again. Three times I had the same dream. Three separate dreams, in chapters. They echoed the A Major Major Discovery message the two placards had sent me on the great square, one of them held by Katya. I hadn’t had a continued dream since I was ten. And I had never met anyone else who dreamt this way. You dream, wake up, fall asleep again and the dream continues, like a bookmark placed in a novel. You go away, return later to the book, and the story continues. But this was basically the same dream. At least the same message in each chapter. Three times. You will find a treasure in Prague.

A dream dreamt once you maybe remember, maybe forget. Twice, it takes you by the shoulders. Three times, shivers run down your back. You start believing in dreams.

So I pondered:

Graf? Was he the treasure? Now out of reach, perhaps irretrievably lost.

The girl in the blue beret? Was it she?

Klein?

Maybe all three. One for each dream.

Or maybe it was the shamesh. Or Yossi. Or Jiri, also gone. Or Eva Langbrot.

Maybe all of them. After all, if you believe in dreams, you give up logic.

A time will come when you can order dreams. They won’t be as haphazard and chancy as today’s dreams. When you order dreams you’ll savor those who are gone and undo errors. I’ll dream of my parents. Talk more to Jiri. Explain to the girl in the blue beret. Find Karoly Graf, the man who claimed to be K’s son.

Oh, there are dozens and dozens of dreams I would dream.

My next visit to Eva’s house, as you will soon see, was crucial. It revealed to me why I had come to Prague, why I was drawn to Prague, what possible treasure I could find in Prague.

Usually, Eva Langbrot opened the door. This time is was Mr. Klein himself. Eva was traveling, the old man said, visiting relatives.

“Anyway, welcome, welcome, how nice to see you,” he echoed Eva’s affability. “Would you like something to drink? No? Then come right into my room. What’s this? A Papageno puppet? Why, thank you. How kind of you. The Magic Flute is my favorite opera.”

“Mine too.”

“I’m putting it right on my writing table and that’s where it’s going to be. And now…”

I started talking about the weather — but I sensed Mr. Klein’s impatience.

“I want to tell you something,” he interrupted me. “Sit down.”

I sat at the edge of the chair and looked up at the tall, slim, white-bearded man.

“I think the time has come,” Mr. Klein said without any drama in his voice.

Were this a suspense film, the camera would focus on his face, and by the light of his eyes, a lift of eyebrow, flare of nostril, crease of lip, we could gauge if the words were ominous or ironical, neutral or enigmatic. But this wasn’t a film and from a glance at his face I could not predict what would follow.

“Yes. The time has come.”

For what? I wondered. Would he show me a magic trick? Open a door, either one of the two in his room, or perhaps the hallway door, behind which — surprise! — like in the old-fashioned early TV shows, This Is Your Life , a long-forgotten beloved friend or relative would appear, and behind this door, yes, indeed, the time has come, he would show me a smiling, shy, eager, waiting-for-me Katya, and we would fall into each other’s arms, and she would never disappear from me again?

“Jiri and Eva and our friend Yossi all like you. And I too. So I won’t delay any longer.”

Mr. Klein went to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a letter.

“My late, beloved son Jiri also wrote that you have an instinctive affection, a simpatico, as you put it, for our family. He liked that. I like that too…. That’s why I’m going to share a secret with you, a secret that few people know.”

He put up his hand as if to stop any questions.

“Jiri was touched”—he looked at the letter—“touched by how sad you were that K never had any children, never married, never had the good fortune of living out his life with his beloved Dora Diamant. Jiri was moved by this sensitivity for another human being so removed from you in time…”

“I was just thinking of Dora Diamant the other day,” I cut in. “It still affects me, that failed, that tragic romance. Every time I think about it I shake my head in sympathy and pain.”

“But I have some good news for you,” said Mr. Klein.

“You do?”

What could he tell me? But then I weighed the words “good news” and “share a secret” and decided that perhaps Mr. Klein would reveal that K indeed had a son and that that son was Karoly Graf and now he could share the secret, the good news, with me and tell me where to find him.

Wait! Maybe Klein would tell me where the golem was. That he had seen him during his stay in the Altneushul attic. That he would short-circuit the shamesh, do an end run around him and, lo, bring me to the golem in the attic. What a coup for my film! Unless, of course, all of this was just an old man’s delusions.

But Mr. Klein surprised me. What he brought me was indeed good news — good but problematic — but it wasn’t about Graf, it wasn’t about the golem.

“I want to tell you who I am,” is what Mr. Klein said.

“But I know who you are.”

“Who am I?”

What an easy quiz! Would I get a prize, and what prize would I get for the right answer?

“You’re Philippe Klein, also known as Phishl, ex-proofreader who corrected so many other writers’ books — Eva told me this — he began to think he wrote them.”

Mr. Klein gave me a genial smile. He closed his eyes slowly, as if savoring his proofreading past, then reopened them. The smile was still on his lips.

“Wrong! I’m not Phishl Klein.”

“Then who are you? Are you going to tell me you’re Phishl Krupka-Weisz, who for some good reason changed his name. Maybe politics, maybe safety, I don’t know.”