Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

And Agnon made sure to put me at my ease by telling me that a K-esque story of his was published in 1908, when he was twenty, and before I ever saw any of my work in print. We spoke the language we both knew, German, with a bit of Yiddish. He marveled how a Central European Jew like me, with no familial tradition of Yiddish, could even speak it haltingly. I told him my Yiddish is basically self-taught and described how I brought a famous Polish Yiddish theater group to Prague.

But when I began to speak Hebrew I really stunned him. I explained that I had had private tutoring in Germany, and added classes as well in an institute for higher Jewish learning. He did not know we had both been in Germany in the early 1920s and remarked, “Too bad I did not know you then.” After discussing writers we had read, I began speaking about music. Agnon said: “Music? Don’t talk to me about music.”

In his novel about Agnon, The Yemenite Girl , which I read in the Crypto-Slovenian translation, author Curt Leviant gets it right on the mark when he has Agnon say, “God gave man eight notes, and look how many noises he can make with them.” Agnon feels music sets a wall around us, almost imprisons us. Separates us from the real world. I said that Freud shared his view, and Nabokov too. Neither had any appreciation nor ear for music. I admitted that despite my love for classical music my skill with tonalities was so bad that, according to Max Brod, I couldn’t tell the difference between the Merry Widow and Papagena, even though music, like language, flows sequentially, not like a painting where there is no sequentiality, where you see everything at once. Then I mentioned the glory of The Magic Flute , which Agnon claimed he had never heard of. But I am sure he was shamming, for right away he asked me, with a twinkle in his surprisingly light blue eyes, if I could tell the difference between Papagena and Papageno.

Agnon was a shrewd, good-humored man, very engaging and hospitable. As he served me cognac and home-baked cookies his wife had made, he told he had read all my works. He would keep my secret, he promised, and added that my miraculous story just confirms the reality of all my fiction and all of his.

But before I ate and drank, he offered me a yarmulke and suggested I make the proper blessing. “This will give me the mitzva,” he said, “of answering Amen.”

NOTE:S.Y. Agnon won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, sharing it with another Jewish writer, the poet Nelly Sachs. It should also be noted that, contrary to their assumption, K and Agnon were not in Germany at the same time, for Agnon returned to Palestine in 1921, while K was there only in 1923. (K.L.)

I stood at Brod’s door, the second-floor apartment on Zamenhof Street, one of the quiet streets of old Tel Aviv. I heard music. Brod was playing the piano, perhaps composing. My heart was racing. I looked at the little brass plate on the door: Dr. Max Brod, underneath which was another metal sign: PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK OR RING BETWEEN 2 AND 4 P.M. I looked at my watch. Four thirty.

I rang. He opened the door; I recognized him at once. Short, slight, oval face, with the intelligent, good-humored mien I remembered from decades ago. Brod has all his hair, no longer black but silver grey.

“Shalom,” said Brod. He said some more words in Hebrew.

“Shalom, I’m from Prague, Dr. Brod,” I said in German. “To quote Shakespeare, I have little Yiddish, less Hebrew.”

Brod’s eyes lit up as he laughed. “Ah, please, please come in. From Prague. And you survived. Who are you?”

I hesitated. Bit my lip. I didn’t realize I was biting my lip until I sensed the pain. A difficult moment in my life. One I had not rehearsed, not thought through. I was so excited about the possibility of seeing Max, how I would negotiate the details of the encounter never entered my mind. I knew it would be difficult but I had no prepared script. Aside from my parents and sisters (and Agnon), I had not revealed my identity to anyone.

I gazed down at Brod.

In retrospect, I should have spoken differently.

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“No. I can’t say I do. I might say there is a vague familiarity in those piercing blue eyes, as if I’ve seen you before, but no, I can’t say I do. Please tell me. Come in. Sit down, please.”

I should have prepared him. I should have gone about it more delicately.

“I’m…it’s me.”

I thought he would rush to embrace me with a cry of joy.

But my words, as if propelled from a wind tunnel, made Brod move back. They seemed to push him toward the wall. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped. I had never seen my friend’s gentle face so white.

“Impossible,” he cried out. “But…but…this is utter nonsense. Do you expect me to believe this? Who are you? I, we, his family and friends attended his funeral.”

“I know,” I said softly. “You tried to speak but you broke down, my poor Maxie. And I had to step in and say a few kind words about myself.”

“Please stop — or leave.”

“Don’t you believe it’s me?”

Brod sat down. “No.” He sighed. “I do not…. Why are you doing this?”

“Am I so unrecognizable? Can’t you see past my white beard and mustache?”

“It has nothing to do with recognizability. Human beings do not return from the dead. Nor do normal people create painful theater for strangers.”

I asked for five more minutes to explain. Brod consented. I told him the entire story from beginning to end, including most of the speech my “cousin” delivered that day. It probably took fifteen minutes but Brod did not interrupt.

Max looked me over. His tone changed. “Well, the height matches my friend’s. And that eulogy — most extraordinary. But that is all. I am sorry.”

“And I, Maxie, am even more sorry…and the voice? Has my voice changed that much, Brod of the fine musical ear?”

He did not reply.

“I liked your biography.” It was a little thick in the prose, I thought, but I did not tell him this. But I did say, “You remember the long passage in your book where you quote an article of mine in a professional insurance magazine outlining the danger to workers from cutting machines? You miss pointing out how similar in style is my precise, analytical, bureaucratic description of the saws to my detailed description of the horrendous machine in ‘The Penal Colony.’”

“You never intended that I totally burn all the manuscripts, right?” Brod said suddenly.

He brought it up, not I. I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, I said, “It was in my will.”

“But I did destroy them,” was Brod’s response.

“But you didn’t.”

“But I did. You commanded that I destroy your unpublished works.”

“But you didn’t, Max. Why do you keep saying you did?”

“But, as you will soon see, I followed the letter of your instructions if not their intent.”

“But how?”

“As soon as I heard you died, I copied out the first page of some of your works into a bundle and at a clearing not far from the gravesite I burned them…”

“The bonfire—”

“…thereby fulfilling…”

“—at the cemetery that day.”

“…your wish.”

“So I was right. I always wondered about that fire. For a while I thought it was indeed you burning my manuscripts.”

“And you wanted to stop me.”

“But I couldn’t…it would have ruined everything.”

“Aha! You see?”

“I couldn’t undo my pose.”

“Just as I thought. You never really wanted me to destroy your work. Otherwise, you would have chosen someone else.”