Curt Leviant: Kafka's Son

“Have you read much of K?”

“Every word he’s written.”

“Bravo! So few Americans read him. In that case, I have a treat for you. Come here.” And he led me to a shelf filled with K’s books in the original German.

“Look.” Jiri pointed at a book. “You’ll appreciate this.” He pulled out Meditation . “You know this one?”

“Sure. His first book. 1911.”

“Open to the title page.”

“I don’t believe it… My God, little shivers are running across my face.” I looked at Jiri. “An autographed copy of K’s first book?” I stared at K’s signature. “What a historic document! What a collector’s item! How did they let you out with a treasure like this?” I gave the book back to him.

“As head of the Jewish Museum in 1980, I had a diplomatic passport. They wouldn’t, didn’t, touch my luggage.”

“Please let me see it again.” I carefully opened to the title page and absorbed — drank in — K’s handwritten name.

“Poor K,” I said as I held the book that K had once held in his hands. I thrilled to the touch as if I’d shaken hands with him. “Poor K. Why couldn’t a wonderful man like him have married and had children? I always felt so sorry for him and for that romance that could not be with Dora Diamant. For her too I always had a special simpatico. A lost love is always so sad. Poor Dora. Poor K. Poor us.”

Jiri opened his mouth as if to say something. I saw him inhale prior to speaking. But he held back.

Then he said, “Right. Poor us. Poor us is right.”

I was sorry I spoke. Jiri had lost his wife and child and I was bemoaning a lost love.

“How did you get this book, if I may ask?”

In reply Jiri just ticked his head up in Middle Eastern fashion, raised eyebrows and eyes, as if to say: Only Allah knows. I should have known better than to ask.

As I reverently replaced the book on the shelf, I noticed a little framed snapshot. A sad photo of a woman and a five- or six-year-old boy, both unsmiling in the European fashion. Obviously, Jiri’s murdered wife and young son. She had a demure 1930s hairdo and wore a dark dress with a white collar. Her right hand was around the boy. His head was tilted and his right index finger pressed his cheek.

Now Betty reappeared, drying her hands on a dishcloth.

“Are you married?” she asked, finishing the sentence she had started some minutes earlier.

“Enough, Betty. Please. You’re asking too many personal questions.”

“Let him tell me.” Betty faced me. “You. You tell me, mister. Am I asking you too many personal questions?”

Then, surprising me, she quickly told Jiri something in a language I didn’t understand. How could she possibly know Czech if I couldn’t imagine her speaking anything but English? But before I had a chance to tell her I didn’t mind her questions, she turned and left the room again, sulking.

“It’s all right. It’s okay,” I said loudly so she could hear me in the kitchen. “I’m not married now.”

She stood in the doorway.

“But you were?”

I nodded.

“And you’re not looking, a nice young man like you?”

“I can’t say I’m looking, but I do keep my eyes open, if you know what I mean.”

“Then—”

“Let’s make Kiddush,” Jiri sang out. He asked me to follow him into the tiny kitchen. Here Betty had prepared wine, three glasses, and several small salads.

I listened to Jiri’s beautiful chant, a blend of the typical East European melody with a touch of a Western mode.

“Help yourself,” Jiri said.

“Thank you. Is there any meat in any of them?”

“You don’t eat meat, mister? What are you, some kind of vegetarian or something?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” said Jiri. “So please help yourself, my boy.”

As we ate we spoke about the shul, the neighborhood, its relative tranquility. Betty remained silent. She slowly ate egg salad and hardly looked at us. Then Jiri invited me to lunch. I caught the astonished look on Betty’s face, just like the one I had noticed when Jiri brought me, the surprise guest, into the apartment.

“Sorry, I can’t make it today.”

“Then some other time,” was Jiri’s quick response.

I addressed my “Thank you” to both of them. But before I had a chance to say goodbye, Jiri said he’d accompany me downstairs. My tendency is to run down — even up — flights of stairs, but in deference to Jiri I slowed my pace.

“Since I got to know you,” I told him on the steps, “I’m even more excited about my trip to Prague.”

“When you get there, be sure to seek out Yossi, an old family friend, almost a relative. He’s always in the rear corner of the Alt-neushul weekday mornings, at seven. A tall man with a big face. You can’t miss him. Tell him I sent you and give him my regards.”

Outside, Jiri put his hand on my shoulder. I thought he would begin to apologize for his wife’s behavior — if indeed they were husband and wife, for I had my doubts. Not once did I hear Jiri say the words “my wife”; in fact, he didn’t even introduce Betty that way. And Betty neither called Jiri by name nor referred to him as “my husband.” Between them nothing meshed, nothing matched. Intellectually, they were acres apart. He, Mitteleuropa intelligentsia; she, Bronx fishwife, now in the Lower East Side Diaspora. He, of refined, noble features; she, a graceless face, which didn’t stop her from looking at herself in the mirror each time she came from the kitchen to the living room. His, a softly modulated voice; hers, rather strident.

“I’m so glad we met,” Jiri said, his eyes misting.

“I feel the same.”

Then, like brothers meeting after a long separation, we spontaneously embraced. Like in trick photography, we blended for a moment, maybe even exchanged places. It seemed l had become diaphanous, amorphous, felt myself cloud thin, boneless. I had the mass of a ghost, felt my rib cage swathing through his and sensed him moving through me like a wind with a soul. For a moment I didn’t even know how, when, I was.

I returned to the Eldridge Street shul the following Saturday too — but Jiri wasn’t there. The gabbai told me why.

“Dr. Krupka-Weisz called yesterday from Beth Israel.”

“The hospital? My goodness, what happened?”

“He didn’t tell me. But if you want to see him, he’s in Room 233.”

“Have you seen his wife?”

“Wife? I didn’t know Dr. Krupka-Weisz was married. Are you a personal friend?”

“I just became acquainted with him here a couple of weeks ago. Remember, you gave me an aliya?”

“Of course. Amschl ben Moshe.”

I marveled at his memory.

“That’s a gabbai’s job. To have memory.”

“Room 233? I’ll go see him soon. Probably tomorrow.”

“I will too,” the gabbai said.

That night I dreamt of Jiri, even though I usually dream only of abstract people or close family. I’m in a subway car, locale unknown, and I see him sitting opposite me. He gives me an OK sign. He opens a book by K and from it flies a dove. It flutters around the car until it spots a man holding a bouquet from which the dove pulls a tiny leaf. The dove brings the green leaf to me. Again Jiri gives me the OK sign. Then I notice Betty, stolid Betty, sitting there too, and she, even she, allows me a small smile.

It was a shock to see Jiri in bed. His head was uncovered and his round glasses were on the nightstand. He was pale but wasn’t attached to an IV. I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad sign. Some kind of monitor that looked like a stereo receiver intermittently flashed thin red lines on a small screen.

“Oh,” he said, a happy smile crinkling his wan features. “How did you know I was here?”