Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

Of course it was a foolish question. Dumb and idiotic. Stupid too. Everything was set for the video, and Katya and I had hit it off. My finding her in K’s house, and related to Eva, was not only a miracle, it also signaled that K and she were mine. So how could such an absurd, unrealistic question come to me? But my unknown interlocutor insisted: choose.

I hesitated.

The question pressed like a migraine. And you know what? I had to answer.

And the atoms running helter-skelter in place made me say, I have to make a triage, and I shouted silently into the void, scattering the demons:

The film.

Then another thought slid in on the slippery coattails of my reply: Who knows? Perhaps for my hubris I’ll get nothing.

Not this, not that. Not her, not him.

The taxi stopped in front of the restaurant.

We entered. Good. The lunch-hour rush was over. Again that sour taste in back of my throat. I couldn’t hear but sensed the buzz of the hidden cameras over the soft hum of conversations at a few tables. The black curtain hung next to the cashier. On the balcony, the wooden partition was in place. As K sat down I patted my jacket pocket where the microcassette recorder was hidden. I scratched my chest to hit the start button.

“How nice,” I said. “They prepared a paper for us.” And I held it to reveal the date. “Do you get the International Herald Tribune?”

“Sometimes I read it in the library.”

K turned to the menu and I put the paper away.

“So many interesting dishes,” he said.

“Have you been here before?”

He shook his head. “I rarely go out to eat.”

“But you do go out? I remember seeing you once at the concert at the Dvořák Hall.”

“Oh, yes. For concerts and plays, yes.”

Then I shifted at once to the topic at hand.

“Didn’t you used to go with Brod to little resorts in the countryside when you were younger, or go out with him to restaurants?”

K’s face blanched. He turned this way and that, afraid that someone may have overheard the question which would somehow compromise his identity.

“Don’t worry,” I said softly, “no one hears us and no one here would know who Brod is.”

K leaned forward. “Then at least say ‘Max,’ if you mention him again.”

I nodded, delighted with this little unexpected interlude. It was a kind of proof that K was who he said he was, that he was still protecting his identity.

“Yes,” K said. “We did go to resorts and, during the years I knew Max, we would go to some vegetarian restaurants.”

“What years was that?”

“From 1903, I would say, when we studied at the university.”

“Was Max a vegetarian?”

K laughed. “He was when he was with me.”

“Do any of those restaurants still exist?”

“I doubt it. But some were around till before World War II.”

The waiter brought our dishes. We ate in silence. K had ordered a lentil soup and stir-fry vegetables and I a lima bean soup, spinach quiche, and salad. K ate with appetite and commented how good, how inventive was the fare. Like old friends, we exchanged little portions from each other’s plates.

While planning this lunch I have the outré idea of inviting Karoly Graf and introducing him to K. This is the man, Mr. Klein, who claims he is K’s son. Tell it to him, Mr. Graf. I imagine this scene so powerfully I convince myself I’m filming it and when Karoly bares his left arm and lifts up his shirt and shows his brown birthmark to the left of his navel, just below the rib cage — I’m watching K’s face while Graf is speaking — I notice that K’s face pales and his hands involuntarily go from the table to his stomach as if to protect that part of his body from a sudden attack, a surprise lifting of his shirt that would show the very same birthmark on his abdomen. And I wonder if nurse Miriam Graf, Karoly’s mother, had intentionally nudged Dora Diamant to leave the sanatorium and return home.

For my film, revealing that Mr. Klein was K wouldn’t come at the outset. The discovery — just like my own — would come slowly. Yes, the film was a documentary, but its structure, its aesthetics, would be like fiction, a gradual revelation.

I didn’t look up once to Luongo or Johnny. I was confident they were doing their job.

As the videos were rolling I started imagining. Then I held myself back. No, I would not imagine. I would not project. I won’t be like that musicology instructor I once read about, who saw himself on page one of the New York Times for discovering the original music of the Hebrew alphabet before he even saw one page of the manuscript. I didn’t want to raise my hopes beyond the fact that two cameras were working and I had K before me.

Until I had the video in my hands, I wouldn’t have the film. And I wouldn’t have the video until I viewed it and saw it was done, finished, the task accomplished, K’s famous life and story imprinted forever in color. Only then would I feel secure, confident, happy, delirious.

I began to talk to K about Jiri. Later, I would interpolate some remarks of my own about him.

“Do you have an extra photo of Jiri that you can spare?”

“I’ll find one for you.”

Super. That meant I’d have Jiri in my film too, and not only my remarks about him.

I was about to ask K how many children he had but some self-censor in me aborted the question. I turned to some crucial events in his life, asking him to describe his feelings during these important turning points. I accented feelings, for I didn’t want him to say, But I already told you these stories. And so K narrated the stories once more for me.

He told me about the magical encounter with the curtain of the Holy Ark in the Altneushul and that electric jolt that he believed cured him. Then I asked him how he felt about staging his own death and how he told the news to his parents and what thoughts ran through his mind at his funeral.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. K’s story was being taped and filmed. I was recording every word he said. He spoke of Max Brod, the sanatorium, an occasional K Conference that amused him. He spoke of artistic drive and the lack of it that swept over him during his second life. He spoke of the joy of keeping his identity secret.

K was telling me stories I had heard before but enjoyed hearing a second time for the video. But one was totally new for me. It balanced out the moral quandary. For that story alone I would have sold my conscience.

Here is how it began.

I was dying to ask K about Dora Diamant. I’ve already noted how much I regretted, for his sake — I felt as if it had happened in my own family — what he had lost: no wife, no children with her, the things he wanted most in this world, even more than writing and publication. And since he couldn’t achieve what he really wanted to achieve, what good was the achievement he had achieved without really wanting it?

How to go about asking K? I wondered. What approach to use? Start subtly? Or proceed circuitously. Then I decided: the direct approach is the best approach. I took a deep breath and said:

“Tell me about Dora Diamant.”

“Yes,” K said.

If his other Yeses were in C major, this one was in C minor. It didn’t have the spectrum of possibilities and infinities of nuance that he usually compressed into that monosyllable.

K did not look surprised. He apparently wanted to talk and was just waiting for the opportunity.

When K began, I felt a shiver rolling over me, a wave of sensation shaped like those crisscrossed long waves we used to draw as kids in penmanship exercises.

“What’s the matter? Are you all right?” K leaned forward. “You look startled.”