Curt Leviant: Kafka's Son

Eva put her hand on mine. The five fingers of her right hand crisscrossed my five fingers. I couldn’t help comparing the touch of hands. Just the other day K had held my face. Now another member of his household, his landlady, Eva, was holding my fingers. The touch felt the same; soft, warm, loving. But maybe that’s the link, expressed in touch, palpable, non-metaphysical, of the instant contact Jews have with one another.

“What I wanted to tell you…”

My ears, my hearing, all my auditory faculties went out to the quiet street, to the entrance to the house, to the little garden in front, waiting for footfalls, a bell to ring, key in lock, a door slamming that would interrupt and perhaps postpone again what Eva Langbrot wanted to tell me. But no, there was silence. Total stillness.

The door was open, I mean metaphorically, for her to continue.

“You see, it’s like this…”

And she smiled.

So did I. Still, I silently urged her to speed up her revelation.

Eva’s look seemed to say, You’re clever enough to know what’s coming.

But no, I didn’t. I may have been clever enough, but I did not know what was coming. I was curious, in suspense, yes, ever since last time, when she started telling me but was called away. I could have phoned her and I suppose she would have told me. Then again, maybe not. But I wanted to hear it from her in person.

“Only people within our little family know this. No one else.”

And Eva smiled again.

I smiled too.

Eva held my hand, as if by touch her thoughts would osmose into mine and I would know what she was going to say before she said it.

That Mr. Klein, I imagined her telling me, although he likes to claim he’s nearly 111 years old, is really 82 and her slightly older brother, and not a boarder at all in the house but a member of the family who has an idée fixe, quite a harmless one, that he is K, a fact that he rarely reveals and only to members of the family or very dear friends, which I am, given my close relationship to him, and thank God Mr. Klein doesn’t do this publicly like other madmen in Prague, of whom there is no shortage, like those who think they are K’s son, or the Good Soldier Schweik, or Tomàš Masaryk, or Antonin Dvofàk, making fools of themselves and embarrassing their families to their eternal shame, but oh no, not Mr. Klein, he keeps his idée fixe to himself, thank God.

And then she said, “Ah, here he is. Here comes Mr. Klein.” He entered, nodded to each of us.

“Good morning, Papa,” Eva said. And she smiled at me. “Did you have a pleasant walk, Papa?” She kissed him on the cheek.

“Wonderful. As usual…. And how are you, my boy?”

“Quite well. Astounded. As I usually am in this house.”

And then I said something totally redundant. Still, I had to say it.

“What did you want to tell me, Eva?”

But she only said, “Now you know,” and again she clasped her hands, the hands that played the piano so magically, over mine.

The English version of Journals of K , translated from the Czech, is Katya Langbrot’s first book. She lives in Prague with her husband, a documentary filmmaker, and their son Jiri-Diamant, a grandson of K on his father’s side and, on his mother’s side, a great-great-grandson of the famous writer. The journals, unknown for decades and hidden by the writer, were presented to Katya as a wedding gift by her great-grandfather, who, after the ceremony in the Altneushul, walked over to the Holy Ark and, from a secret panel, removed the notebooks. Katya is now working on Volume Two.

The English version of Journals

is dedicated

to

the memory of

my grand-uncle

Jiri Krupka-Weisz

and

my mother-in-law

Dora Diamant

Curt Leviant is author of nine critically acclaimed works of fiction. He has won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Jerusalem Foundation, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, and the New Jersey Arts Council. His work has been included in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards , and other anthologies, and praised by Nobel laureates Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel.

Leviant’s novels have been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, and other languages, and some of these works in translation have become international bestsellers. Kafka’s Son was published in French in 2009 to considerable acclaim.