Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“It’s this dark energy that helped me get into the attic.”

“But you said the Germans came looking for you.”

“Yes.”

“How did they get there?”

K leaned forward. He brought his face close to mine. His lips became thin. Anger suffused every pore of his face.

“How did they get everywhere? How did they spread like a cancer to every village, every town, every city, street, alley, and lane in Europe? How did they get to every house, cellar, attic? Who taught them such organizational skills? Does water have to be taught to run downhill? Do cows have to be taught to come home from the meadow? In a village in Bohemia, on a trip with Brod, I once saw a cowherd bringing the cows back from a day in the fields. Once he was in the main street, it was like a magic show — each cow, on its own, branched off into a side street, into its own yard, like a worker returning home. If you like, you can call the Germans’ power of searching, sniffing out, finding, instinct. Their penchant for evil. How else did they get to every house, cellar, attic?”

“Not by Jacob’s ladder.”

K moved his head a bit to the left, a bit to the right, hard to say if agreeing or not. Perhaps his gesture said: I do not know.

He took a breath and said, “If you noticed, I spoke Czech to Eva, not German, the language we were all educated in. Since the war I do not let those execrable sounds cross my lips.” He stopped for a moment, then continued: “When they talk of miracles, survivors always say, It was a miracle I came through alive. But you also have to consider anti-miracles, the negative side, events and incidents powered by an infernal machine. Theirs. The anti-miracle. Like death and murder, which for them was ordinary. Usual. While for us, life, survival, was extraordinary.” He nodded and said, “Yes.”

“Then what did you do to avoid them?”

“To repel them I cast at them a spark of impenetrable darkness. In that spark there was enough light energy to drive out those dark, evil forces.”

“And you were able to survive there in the dark? With no windows, no natural light?”

“Yes. No natural light. Do you know the verse in the first chapter of Genesis, where God says: Ye-hee or! Let there be light?”

“I do.”

“It wasn’t the light of the sun, remember. The sun wasn’t created yet. It is a special light, a divine light. A light that was no light. The sort of day that wasn’t day and wasn’t night.”

“Then what made the light?”

“The sheymes . The loose torn pages from prayer books and other holy texts that contain God’s name. Because of their sanctity they cannot be thrown out, so they are either buried or stored. There were hundreds of them up there in the attic. They prompt a strange kind of bioluminescence, like the dying elephants of Africa whose tusks glow in the dark as they go instinctively to their secret burial grounds. The light doesn’t necessarily come directly from the sheymes because they don’t like to reveal themselves, but their light glows elsewhere, in different spots, like a referred pain, which does not come from the place of the hurt but from somewhere else. Do you follow?”

“No.”

“Yes,” said K and nodded, as if saying: I’m glad you’re getting it.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s the cosmic point of view. What about the comic?”

K smiled. “Read my ‘Metamorphosis.’”

Just then the shamesh came in.

“Yes, I’m late. I know. But I told you I would be late, so it’s not too bad, right? Mr. Klein, I’m so glad to see you again.”

“So you do know him?” I said.

“Of course I know him.”

“But when a few days ago I asked you, Do you know Mr. Klein, you said no.”

I wondered if he would again say, Is Prague.

“Why didn’t you say Phishl Klein? You know how many Kleins are in Prague? Some Jews, some not. There are more Kleins in Prague than frogs.” And he laughed. “Phishl Klein of course I know.” The shamesh said a few words in Czech to K, then turned to me and said, “Mr. Klein has been very generous to the shul over the years, and I thank him again for that.”

K bowed his head in appreciation. “Shamesh, do me a favor.”

The shamesh looked quizzically at him, as if about to scold him for something. “So you want to show him the attic, is that it? But I already told the yungerman there is no attic here.”

“But I already told you I was up there. I spent the war years there. There I was saved.”

“I know you told me that. Maybe you were. But now there is no attic there.”

“And it is up there, in your nonexistent attic, that I studied English.” K turned to me. “As you can see, we have had this argument before.”

The shamesh was silent.

“May I go up?”

Who said that? Me or K?

“Of course,” the shamesh said. “Just by yourself.” He shook his head, exasperated. “I don’t understand you. It’s all a myth.” He turned to me. “I showed you there is no attic there first time I met you, right?”

“We live and die for myths,” I said.

“And, anyway,” the shamesh continued, “the holy Maharal forbade anyone from going up there, a prohibition in effect for more than four hundred years.” He stopped for a moment, then added, “Look, I don’t deny myths. I don’t deny the power of words, but they cannot create a ladder to nowhere.”

“Do you have a ladder here?” I asked.

“No.”

“With or without rungs?”

The shamesh said, “Without.”

The vast space of the Al-tnigh hummed as we looked at each other in silence. What would happen next?

K spoke.

“Would you like to hear about miracles? About incredible, unbelievable events?”

“I collect miracles,” the shamesh said. From his jacket he pulled out a little hand-painted wooden box. He lifted the lid. “Speak and I’ll store it here.”

“Only in quantum physics can you encounter something that spins while standing still,” K declared. “Or an object that is both solid and fluid at the same time. Or an atom that can be in two places at the same time.”

At this the shamesh gave me a quick look of complicity — his eyebrows wagged up and down for a moment — as if to say: Remember what I told you about the atoms and quantum physica?

“Seems to contradict laws of nature, right?” K continued. “Miraculous? And only on one planet in a universe composed of 220 billion stars was life formed, and only here is it sustained. Now if these incredible, impossible things are true, why can’t an unnatural event such as occurred with me take place, in an attic that is and isn’t there?”

The shamesh looked down at the floor. He put the lid back on his miracle box and returned it to his pocket. His eyes were moist. Was it his normal weepy look, or had K’s words touched him?

“Do you want to see it?” the shamesh asked laconically.

“Not anymore,” said K.

“Did you see the golem?” the shamesh asked him.

I thought K would pull out a little pocket mirror and hold it before the shamesh’s face.

“Who do you think fed me?” K replied.

Was that a joke? Or was that also true? For I remember K telling me that Elijah’s raven had brought him food.

K stretched out his hand and bade the shamesh goodbye. “Thank you, shamesh. Stay well. Continue your good work for many years to come…. Now come, my boy, I want to show you something you’ve never seen before.”

“That synagogue?”

“No. Not yet.”

From the little alley on the side of the Altneu we turned right into Prague’s Madison Avenue, Parizska Street. A few minutes’ walk away was a statue I had seen before of a seated Good Soldier Schweik, sitting in amiable fellowship at a round metal table with two friends. He had obviously had a mug or two of beer. K stopped in front of Schweik and began softly to speak to him. All I needed now was for Schweik to answer and it would have sealed my membership in Prague’s Theater of the Absurd.