Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

I swallowed. Tried to remain silent. Restrain myself. But I just couldn’t let it pass. The words jumped out of me of their own accord.

“Yossi your father, huh? It was hard enough for me to believe Jiri is your son. How do you expect me to believe Yossi is your father?”

K gave a little smile. “I don’t expect you to believe anything. Yossi is my father…. All right, my son told me.”

It seemed to me I heard “son.” Yes, I did hear “son.” Once more the word “son” echoed in my ears. “Son?”

K bided his time.

“I thought he was dead,” I said.

“My other son.”

So Karoly Graf is right. But Graf wasn’t here.

“Yossi? Your son?”

“My father because he protected me. My son because he cared for me. A relative, metaphorically speaking. But above all my friend. Guardian. Angel. One who helped me. Saved me.”

I thought K would change faces again. Become the golem. Scare me. Hurt me. Punish me. Teach me a lesson. I thought he would spread his wings and become the Maharal.

“Looked out for me in the past as he looks out for me even now. This morning.”

The word “How?” came out of me as if I were an automaton. “By feeding me. In the attic. During the war. When I was in hiding.”

I shivered. No. Impossible. But maybe I had sensed it. With his size, his face, his lumbering movements.

“Yossi?”

“Yes. Yossi. Yes. Yes.”

“The g…”

“Him.”

“But I thought his face. The glass eye. From the 1973 Yom Kippur War.”

“He came to help his people. Was wounded, yes. But he returned to be near me.”

So I was right. By calling him Yossi golem I had inadvertently hit upon it. But there is no inadvertence. Only intuition. But, then again, maybe K was pulling my leg. Teasing me. Trying to frighten me.

“You have sidetracked me, my boy. Let us shift the conversation back to you and what you have done. They called me and I had to run down here with a taxi to stop you.”

“Please forgive me.”

K didn’t say a word. He didn’t look at me. He took Dora’s letter and put it back in its place inside the reader’s desk. That he did this in my presence made me feel better. He trusted me not to take the letter again.

“No one will touch this letter anymore.” Now he turned to me. His blue gaze chilled me. “Except…” and he tapped his chest three times.

I nodded. I closed my eyes in contrition. “Yes.”

Then, without bidding me goodbye, K left the Altneushul.

I ran to the door, then stopped. I wanted to ask K if he had ever contacted Dora Diamant again. If I could see him again. Once more that “if” that creates parallel universes in us.

But I was afraid of his answer.

Trepidatious, my heart higher than it’s ever been, pumping in back of my throat, I rang the bell.

Eva opened the door. We were so happy to see each other, we embraced spontaneously.

“I missed you,” I said. “How was your journey?”

“All right,” she said, but not with her usual upbeat tone.

“Is Mr. Klein in?”

“He went out for a walk.”

For the first time something predictable, rock solid, immutable, a set order, like the old man always at home, had been broken. Come whenever you want, he had once told me. I’m always at home. So why wasn’t he at home now? Or was he at home and didn’t want to see me?

As if reading my thoughts, Eva Langbrot opened the door to K’s room.

What is it with these people that they can hear unvoiced remarks? “How long has he been gone?”

She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was 11:30. I usually came about this time and stayed till it was time for his lunch.

“Since 10:30.”

“Did he tell you where he was going?”

“No.”

“Is he usually gone this long?”

“No.”

“And you’re not worried?”

“No.”

Eva smiled at the mantra of her short answers.

Again I thought: maybe he’s not as old as he says he is. Healthy men in their eighties, even nineties, can and do go out on their own. But someone 110?

Eva walked me into his room.

“Make yourself comfortable. He should be back soon.”

Eva and I stood facing the open door to the hallway. I glanced at her and bemoaned the wasted time. For me time was like oxygen. If I’m stuck in traffic — the worst waste of time — I feel my oxygen depleted and I choke. Now precious minutes were lost. What should I do now? Wait, or go back to town? I was so much looking forward to seeing K today I had even rehearsed an apology and a speech that would make him change his mind about the film. It included letting K preview the video and cut anything he didn’t like.

Eva saw me looking at her. A moue of guilt appeared on her face, as if K’s absence was her fault. She shrugged, as though to say, Sorry, but what can I do?

Just then a girl breezed by in the doorway. Just like last time, I caught only a scant glance of her: back of her head and shoulders, swish of dark skirt. But what I caught was with a camera’s eye. I captured that fleet move and, with neural gear shifts, converted it into slow motion. It was odd. Even though she moved swiftly, the girl’s beauty moved slowly. As if a faint image of her was stripped from her and floated behind her. How shall I describe that sensation that bridged the palpable and the evanescent? Even though she had gone out of view, a transparent replica of herself had settled in my mind. I didn’t see her face, but I caught the aura of her presence, and it was enough to tease and allure me, to make me lose my focus on K for a moment. I dashed to the door but there wasn’t even a hint of her, not a faint click of a door closing, a trail to follow, a rung to a perhaps nonexistent ladder.

But my focus on K returned soon enough. Through a haze I asked Eva, still seeing that girl lighting up the haze:

“Did Mr. Klein tell you where he was going?” even though I was dying to ask another question: Who is she? Likely she was a boarder, a college girl from a small town renting a room whose location I wasn’t yet aware of. But it wasn’t nice to be nosey.

“But you already asked me that.” Eva smiled.

“I did? Sorry…and what was your answer?”

“He didn’t tell me,” is what she said.

I moved to the door, about to say goodbye.

“Where are you going?”

“To look for him.”

“Where?” A look of alarm crossed her face, as if I were intruding on a private domain.

“I don’t know. He’s an old man. He may get lost. He might fall.”

“You would be amazed at his vitality.”

“But that doesn’t make him any younger.”

“It does,” Eva said.

If I hadn’t known Eva was Jewish, I’d have assumed she was a Czech farmer woman, round-faced, well-fed, and genial. She invariably beamed. Even her hair smiled. But as she stood before me now, resolute, her arms folded on her chest, her softness vanished. Despite her affability, I now saw an elemental force in her. It probably served her well in the Resistance during the war.

Then she took my hand and guided me back into the room.

“Sit and wait as long as you wish,” she said. “He will be, he is, fine. Just don’t move anything. He can’t stand if things are moved. It’s as though he has a photographic memory. His toothbrush has to be on the right side of the sink, not the left. And he won’t eat without a tablecloth. If the tablecloth doesn’t cover the entire table, if a part of the table is bare, he won’t eat. And once he couldn’t find his shabbes glasses.”

“What’s that?”

“Glasses he uses only for the Sabbath. A fine pair of glasses with a thin, elegant gold frame. Otherwise, he won’t read. And once I moved his wastepaper basket from here,” she demonstrated, “to here. Just a foot away and he got upset…. Just wait a while longer. He’ll be back soon.”