Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“That’s right. You don’t know…I’m not Krupka-Weisz.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m—”

And he told me.

I couldn’t help it. I knew it wasn’t polite, and even as I was doing it I knew how wrong it was, how it violated all I’d been taught by my parents about elemental decency, courtesy, respect, especially for elders. But now I couldn’t restrain myself. I burst out laughing at the absurdity. Right, I thought when he told me, and I’m Danny K’s son.

And then I apologized.

Mr. Klein took it well. “It’s all right. I understand. I expected it. You’re not a believer. You come, as Yossi tells me, from the Shawmee State.”

“I didn’t say that to Yossi. I said that to Karoly Graf when he told me he was K’s son.”

“Then how come I heard it from Yossi?” Mr. Klein asked.

I spread my hands in confusion. Perhaps Graf had contact with Yossi or with Mr. Klein, which the old man hadn’t told me about or simply didn’t want to. On the other hand, if both Karoly Graf’s and Mr. Klein’s absurd claims were true, then contact between them wouldn’t be that absurd. It reminded me of what I’d learned in geometry, maybe algebra: multiply two negative numbers and you get a positive. Here too. You add up two absurds and get one truth.

Wait! We’re getting sidetracked. We’ve just — maybe — discovered the Rosetta Stone, and like idiots we’re quarreling about a broken chisel.

“You also didn’t believe I was Jiri’s father.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Well, now I suppose I believe it…. But how can I possibly believe you’re K? True, you may be a K. K was a common name in Prague. I once even met a Jew in New York with that name.”

“But I am he. The one,” he insisted.

Hearing this, I blurted out: “But you died.”

“But I didn’t,” he said, his voice low and unhurried. Still, in his polite reply I sensed a sharpness. “And if you notice, my dear boy, you said ‘you,’ not ‘K.’”

What can one say in the face of such an absurd (pronounce it “ab-soord”)? And I meant it as a noun, not an adjective. In the face of such an outlandish, irrational assertion? Should I play along with him? Humor him? Condescend? Should I make believe I didn’t hear what he said, or should I use a rational response like: But it flies in the face of historical truth?

“Flies in the face of historical truth should be brushed away,” he said. “Facts on the ground sometimes contradict historical truth.”

My breath was captive. I felt dizzy. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.

“So you’re K,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

I resisted the temptation, oh that awful pleasure of sarcastic laughter again, to tilt that seesaw we always ride, to stand up and loom over him, lord it over this poor old simp with derision and whatever other superior airs we can pull from our nasty sleeves.

“The writer.”

“Yes.”

“‘The Metamorphosis.’”

“Yes.”

“What else did you write?”

“Yes.”

Now what in heaven’s name was that supposed to mean? Was he some kind of robot or automaton programmed to say only one word?

“What else?” I repeated.

The old man looked at me, trying to assess if I was testing him. Of course, any literate person could rattle off K’s novels and stories. I, for instance, could do just that, having read every word he wrote. Does that make me K? Or K’s kin?

“America,” he said. Yes, that was one of his books, published by Max Brod after K’s death, and spelled with a “k.” But then he continued and said, “That’s where you come from. The Shawmee State.”

I shook my head. But this time I did not laugh.

“I don’t blame you for not believing. If, for instance, K tried to reveal himself to me I wouldn’t believe it either.”

That was loopy, dead-end reasoning, for if Mr. Klein were really K, how could another person “reveal” himself to K as K? Of course he wouldn’t believe it. It would be like someone approaching me on the Metro to tell me he was me. Would I believe it? Of course not.

“And besides, K died in 1924.”

Mr. Klein smiled. He played with the hairs of his Van Dyke.

“And if he had lived, the Germans would have taken him like they took his sisters,” I said.

“You know about my poor Ottla and Valli and Elli?”

“Yes.”

“Few people know that.”

“Those who love K and know the Holocaust also mourn K’s sisters.”

“It is for this love that I just told you what I told you.”

I looked at Mr. Klein, puzzled, astounded. I wished I had a thesaurus, a dictionary to look up words to express my astonishment, incredulity, disbelief, a fountain of shifting emotions, as if fragments of mirrors were passing before me, I racing past them with barely a glance.

“K’s death in 1924 is a rather big hurdle to overcome for a man who claims to be K. It’s much easier to claim one is K’s son, like Karoly Graf.”

“Didn’t I tell you I didn’t die?”

Still, even assuming the surreal, the absurd, the impossible, the nature-defying — let’s assume K didn’t die — today, in 1993, he would be exactly 110 years old.

I don’t know, but I might have muttered his age aloud, for Mr. Klein exclaimed, “Bravo! How did you guess my exact age?”

“Then why keep this a secret? Why not also share it with the world?”

“You remember I wanted Max Brod, that traitor, my beloved friend, to burn my manuscripts?”

“Yes. Everyone knows that.”

“I wanted to burn everything. Bridges. My budding fame. I wanted to live quietly. In peace.”

“How could you have lived in peace during the war? You hinted last time that you survived in the attic. But even if there is an attic, how could you escape the Germans? They were everywhere, spreading like a cancer.”

“They heard the shamesh’s story. ‘There was no attic. There is no attic. There will be no attic.’ And they believed him,” was Klein’s laughing reply.

I walked around the room, glanced up at the two model aeroplanes that stirred slightly, as if they had just exhaled, leaned my two hands on his desk as though it were my own, and looked out the window.

I stood before Mr. Klein and gazed up into his clear blue eyes.

“All right, presuming all this is so, how can I resolve for myself the question of your age? Last time you told me you’re 69 going on 70 and have—”

“…had.”

“…had an 80-year-old son. Now you tell me you’re 110.”

“Going on 111. Three straight vertical lines. Isn’t that a remarkable number? A magical cipher. An unforgettable integer. Three in a row. One one one. Three magnificent beginnings. One, the perfect number; the one-ness of God. Sh’ma Yisroel , the Lord our God, is one. No more, no less.”

That’s all very nice and mystical, I thought, but:

“You still haven’t explained how you can be both 69 and 110.”

He could have said: I really don’t have to explain anything.

“Yes.”

“So which is it? 69 or 110?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to stamp my foot in frustration but was afraid one or both of those gorgeous two-winged model aeroplanes would fall. I might also damage the arm of his gramophone. Or, worse, it might start to play Bach on its own. That’s all I needed now, music to accompany my frustration.

“I mean, isn’t it either or , even though the either is absurd…and come to think of it, so is the or.”

“Both are true, and you’ll soon see why.”

I stood. I faced the door. Then I wheeled quickly and asked my question in a booming voice, dramatically, like I had seen prosecutors do on TV shows.

“Can you prove you are who you say you are?”