“Yes.”
We looked at each other. We should have smiled at this in joke, at this little affinity in our personality, but we didn’t. But maybe there was a hint of smile in our four eyes.
Now it was my turn to lead, to take the steering wheel.
“You kept the ‘K’ in Klein.”
“Yes.”
“Even the ‘f’ sound in Phishl.”
“Yes.”
“But you disguised it a bit so others wouldn’t suspect.”
“Yes.”
“Who would have suspected anyway? Unless they knew your story.”
“Yes.”
As I looked at him, I sensed again I was staring into a mirror. It was not the first time such a phenomenon had swept over me in Prague. It had happened before and I paid scant attention to it, ascribing it to the excitement of being in Prague and listening to gorgeous music in one of Prague’s revered halls. It was a Brahms string quartet, where the first violinist was the legendary Josef Suk, great-grandson of Dvořák. I started looking at the faces of musicians. Odd, a certain face seemed to float from one player to the next, not changing it but superimposed, as though a semi-transparent mask. That face? K’s young face. And yet my own. The face of K. His/my visage. First on Suk’s face, K’s pointy nose, high cheekbones, and slightly protruding ears. Then it moved to the cellist who played with a serious, high-voltage gaze. The musicians took short, insucked, passionate breaths. Then came a magic moment when all four faces were mine. I don’t know if they noticed three clones of the same face. Perhaps, if they did notice, each thought it was a passing mirage, passing strange.
Then K took the parchment out of his mouth and replaced it in the box. The black hair slowly whitened, hair by hair. Some vanished. The bald spot returned. The Van Dyke beard grew back. He became the old man he had been. I don’t know how long this transformation took. It seemed like two or three minutes; perhaps it was a quick dream later. Oh, if only I had had a camera in my eyes to record this scene.
Still stood time.
I had lived through this before, intensely, swiftly. I felt again what I had felt in Jiri’s hospital room, when I hissed to Betty that I understood every word she said. Soon as I said that I broke the code. Felt a surge. A flow. A current. Everything they said in that strange language made sense. I had understood then, for fifteen intense, lifetime-long seconds, what I had witnessed now. And then the dense secret vanished.
K didn’t say a word. He didn’t say, See? He didn’t gloat. I took a deep breath. I had my identity back. A few stray palpitations quieted down. I wanted to sit but realized I was already sitting. Like I had wanted to stand in Jiri’s hospital room but then realized I was already standing.
I waited for K to speak. But he was looking out pensively into the middle distance. Perhaps this sudden change affected him too. What do I mean, perhaps? Of course it had. It had taken his breath away, as it had taken mine. Didn’t he need a glass of water?
“Shall I bring you something to drink?”
K shook his head.
What odd thoughts, images, ran through my head. I thought of the International K Society, the K Quarterly. Even your image is ubiquitous, I thought. Almost as widely disseminated as Einstein’s. And the adjective your name has shaped: K-esque.
“Well?” he said, a proud little gleam in his eyes.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes yes?”
I nodded.
“Then I am satisfied,” he said.
And then, as I realized that one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century stood before me, a warmth — not a bodily heat, but the excitation, heat, of intellectual energy — rose in me.
“And you’ve written over the years.” Not a question. A declaration. Affirmation.
He looked at me.
“You have, haven’t you? I hope you have. Will you show me?”
He still looked at me. He stared into my eyes. The intensity of his gaze increased, sharp, penetrating, ray-like. As if he were warning me to desist. I turned away — and stopped asking.
Then something, a rustle, a swoosh, a presence outside, in the hall, attracted my attention.
I looked to the door.
K’s door was slightly open, perhaps two or three inches. A quick, thin slice of a back of a head I’d seen a number of times in town flashed by. A waitress in a restaurant, receptionist in a museum? Strange, but when a face or the shape of a familiar head is seen away from its usual setting, we have difficulty placing it. Where do I know you from? is the question we usually ask. It’s amazing, even miraculous, to meet someone for a second time in a city where miracles have occurred, just like the miracles in K’s recent past, surviving his illness, surviving the war. It’s like seeing a train running backward or a scene in a film run in reverse. Time recaptured.
I jumped out of my seat, as if ejected from a fighter jet, and while talking with K, I ran to the door and opened it.
In mid-stride, away from the door that was now open, in midstride in the hallway, on her way to another room, the door just shut behind her. I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her. But I was certain it was a girl.
I returned to K’s room, apologized.
“Somehow she looked familiar. Do you know who she is?”
“I think you better ask Eva. That’s her department.”
I could see he didn’t want to tell me any more.
Then, to distract him (and me), I said:
“I once attended a K conference in Montreal some years ago sponsored by the International K Society, which I heard about while doing a film there. A strange thing happened in the auditorium. Actually two. During the first session, in the middle of a lecture on ‘The Metamorphosis’ entitled ‘Angst and Anxiety: Psychological Ramifications of Change,’ an old man in a beret just like yours, holding a walking stick, ambled down the aisle of the lecture hall, stared at the speaker, even raised his cane and called out, ‘Nonsense. It’s a comedy, you fool.’ Then he turned abruptly and walked out of the hall. Was that you, by any chance?”
“What year was it?” K asked.
“I was just out of college then. Probably 1971 or 1972.”
“No, it wasn’t me.”
“Why, what year were you in Montreal?”
“I was never in Montreal.”
“Then what difference does it make what year it was?”
“I just wanted to know what year I wasn’t there.” And K leaned back and laughed. “But I must say, the old chap imitated me quite well…. And he was quite right.”
“Okay. But later, during the afternoon session, something even stranger took place. It was during a break. I was in the hallway. An older woman approached, sort of tentatively, and looked at me. Then she drew closer, almost up to me. She blinked, moved her lips, and uttered a curt, ‘K!’ and slowly buckled. She fell to the floor in a faint. An attendant from the hotel came by and helped revive her. Luckily, a crowd had gathered and I was not the center of unwanted attention. I never attended another K conference again. I didn’t want to be gawked at, nor did I want to be distracted.”
“Did you ever find out who that woman was?” K asked.
“No.”
K looked over my head, nodded slowly, an enigmatic, dreamy smile on his face.
My God! I thought. If he is K, then K had a son. My dream wish for him was fulfilled.
“Wait a minute,” I burst out. “If you’re Jiri’s father, then Jiri is your son. Which makes me very happy that K had a son.”
K nodded. His eyes sparkled as if ironically praising my sentience.
“No wonder he had a signed copy of Meditation in his house.”
“I gave it to him years ago.”
“But the one in the other room is not signed.”
“I don’t autograph every book.”