Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

“Come,” Katya said, “we have to buy a ticket at the tram booth for the Caspa District. It’s only three stops.”

I rushed up to the agent so that she wouldn’t offer to pay.

“Do you speak English?” I asked the sympathetic-looking man.

“I have studied in school.”

“Two tickets to Caspa District.”

The man held the tickets but did not give them to me. “Why do you want to visit there?” he said kindly.

“We want to see the synagogue.”

He lowered the tickets. “Well, hmm, I don’t know…” he muttered, not looking at me. “Are you sure you want to go there?”

“Of course I’m sure…. Why, is it a dangerous place?”

“Oh, nonsense,” Katya, now at my side, interjected. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“Shalom,” the man said. “I am Jewish too…. Be careful.” He handed us the tickets. As we boarded the tram, Katya made a face as if to say: What’s wrong with him?

The synagogue was not a freestanding building but blended into other apartment houses. From the outside one could not discern that it was a shul.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, once we entered the vestibule. “Why isn’t it known?”

“The congregants don’t want tourists. They have an agreement not to list it in the tourist brochures or guidebooks. It’s the only private synagogue in Prague.”

I saw no extra yarmulkes in the stand where they kept the prayer books.

“May I borrow your beret, Katya?”

She took off her beret and placed it on my head, angled it and smoothed it down. I liked those gestures and thanked her.

“I’m going up to the women’s gallery,” she said.

I had forgotten about Jiri’s letter in my pocket. But once inside the shul I became mightily aware of it. On my chest, on my bare skin, I felt its glowing heat, a hot little rectangle burning against my heart. Maybe the letter wasn’t even there anymore, and only the oblong form of heat remained, like the shape of an object stays imprinted on the retina almost photographically in bright sunlight and you still see it after your eyes are closed. I patted my chest. The letter was there, but my hand felt warm.

The men’s section was long and narrow. No windows on the sides because they abutted the walls of other buildings. But from a window above the Holy Ark and from seven skylights light streamed in.

On the bimah, a little four-year-old boy stood singing Yiddish songs. So why the need to be careful?

He had no audience but still he sang. Then I spotted K sitting in the first row behind the bimah. He too wore his beret instead of a yarmulke.

On top of the Aron Kodesh were the two traditional small lions with tiny red bulbs in their mouths — the Lions of Judah — their paws supporting, protecting, the Ten Commandments.

I looked up and saw Katya gazing down at me. She smiled and waved. I watched K and wondered what to say to him. He sat with his head bent. Was he reading from a Siddur or just meditating? Meanwhile, the little boy had finished singing and ran from the bimah down the aisle to the back of the synagogue, where a man picked him up and kissed him.

A low growling sound made me turn my head, left and right. Where could that sound be coming from? Was it the rumbling of the tram? I looked up to Katya. She pointed to the lions atop the Aron Kodesh. The brown color of the plaster lions was fading. They emerged from their sculpted state. Bigger they became. Their fur bristled. They yawned like the MGM lions and their red bulbs dropped. A chill rippled down my spine. After turning their heads this way and that, the lions let out a mighty roar.

The shamesh rushed toward the door. He stopped to say a quick word to K, then continued running.

I tapped him on the shoulder as he ran. “Excuse me, shamesh, but what’s going on up there?”

But he didn’t stop. I followed him.

“Shh,” he said, hurrying along, “those are the Lions of Judah, who protect the Jewish people.”

I realized these lions were the model for K’s story “The Animal in the Synagogue.”

The shamesh returned from the vestibule with two leashes and ran back to the Holy Ark. The lions sprang down from atop the Aron Kodesh and stood immobile as the shamesh leashed them. They dashed forward, pulling the shamesh with them.

K turned and saw me. Then he looked up and nodded to Katya.

Strained forward the lions; the shamesh tried to hold them back. In an MGM film the lion soon vanishes and the film begins. Here the lions remained. They moved down the aisle closer to me. I ran to the rear row and stood in the corner by the wall. The great green eyes of the lions were mild, their great big mild eyes were green, but when I heard their bestial roars their mild green eyes were no consolation. Wide open were their mouths. I had never seen such huge sharp teeth before. Two pink uvulas vibrated deep in their throats as they growled at me.

I was too frightened to cry out, but every part of me was trembling.

When the lions stood before me, their maws open so wide and deep, I saw a new, visceral world. I thought to appease them with the letter they no doubt were after.

But I resisted. If they wanted it, come and get it. I wasn’t going to give it up on my own. Especially with K here. It made me think of the classic line, perhaps the most famous one in radio comedy, when on the Jack Benny Show two holdup men accost Benny and say, “Your money or your life.” The famously cheap Benny does not answer. That alone prompts a swell of laughter. “Well?” the men finally say to him. And then Jack Benny grouches, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” getting one of the biggest laughs in radio history.

My sentiments went one step further than the equivocating Jack Benny. I’d rather they gobble me up than give up the letter, even though it still burned a postcard-sized patch of heat into my heart.

Then the shamesh began to speak to the roaring lions. He spoke in a mixture of Czech and Hebrew, while I thought: I’m also a member of the Jewish people. Why aren’t you protecting me? At that moment, when I thought I’d disappear down the mouth of one or both of them, I promised I wouldn’t bother K anymore with the video. Maybe K had arranged all this to scare me. Otherwise, why did he nod to Katya? Or maybe this was the work of that aggrieved actor, Stacek, who sought to get even with me. I looked up to Katya. She was no longer in the women’s gallery. But the letter, oh no, that I wouldn’t give up.

I felt myself molded to the corner, my heart thumping, a lemony, acidic taste in my mouth. Nevertheless, at that moment, I still wished I had my camera with me to record this scene. I could have made a great documentary from all the scenes I didn’t film, from all the opportunities I had missed. Why is it that at crucial moments I don’t have my camera?

Now K stood by my side. But he said nothing. As the lions drew closer, oblivious to the shouts of the shamesh, K took one step toward them.

“Stop!” I cried, holding him back.

But K wriggled out of my grasp and moved toward the lions.

At the doorway, her face contorted, Katya shouted, “Stop, Grandpa! Down Gur, down Aryeh,” she called to the lions.

But K moved forward. With his right hand he gestured in front of the lions’ faces. I didn’t see what he held in his hand — could it have been a shem? — for at once the beasts ceased roaring, crouched down, then turned and ambled back slowly to the Holy Ark. The shamesh walked alongside them.

Now that I was safe an even greater wave of fear came over me and my heart raced with a fury I had never known before. I sat down. I couldn’t control my palsied legs and shaking hands. I looked at them and willed them still; in vain. The blood pounded in my ears. Although the lions were far away from me, fright and astonishment mingled in my head. I didn’t know which emotion to quash first.