“He’s my grandfather.”
“Don’t give me that salami. He doesn’t look old enough to be your grandfather. Dad, maybe.” Luongo looked at his watch. “Oof! Late. Got to run. See you soon, eh?”
We shook hands.
“Let me introduce you quickly on your way out…. Mr. Klein, look who I met here? My friend, Michele Luongo, a film director. Meet Mr. Klein.”
“Please to meet you, signore. You have a very talented grandson. Sorry, but I have to rush off to an appointment. Ciao!”
K nodded to him, then looked at me quizzically. I watched Luongo run off, weaving in and around people on the sidewalk as if heading for a train he had to catch.
I shrugged. “Italiano. Loco, but with great imagination…. Done?” I asked K.
“Done,” he said, triumphant, and held up the kroner like a trophy. “Circle closed. Now we can move on.” He slipped his arm into mine as we walked. Do you folks know who is moving among you? I sang to the people passing by. If you knew you’d fall to your knees in obeisance. I smiled but they didn’t know why I was smiling.
K pointed to a bearded man sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a lamppost.
“You see that beggar sitting there. He tugs at me, for my sympathies are with the poor. But at the same time I wonder why an apparently healthy man has to sit there without doing an honest day’s work. Look how many coins he already has in his hat.”
K stopped and observed the beggar.
“Soon he’ll take them and hide them, for it isn’t good policy to show the public how good is a beggar’s treasure. See? He’s putting most of the coins in his pocket, the rascal.”
But as we passed him, K gave him the kroner he had retrieved.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. “Your entire line of reasoning showed you weren’t inclined to give him a penny.”
“Man’s rational thinking and his emotions often run on parallel tracks. And anyway, my mother always said, better to give to a beggar who you think doesn’t need it than not to give to one who might need it. That’s the Jewish way.”
K still hadn’t said a word to me about his past. Was he deliberately doing this to keep me in suspense, or didn’t he think his story was important enough to share with me? I decided to wait a bit more and then ask him to solve for me the riddle of his life.
We turned into a side street and passed a classical three-story building set back on a spacious lawn adorned with flowers and attractive shrubs. On the iron fence I saw a plaque with a Star of David and words in Czech I could not make out.
“I see it’s a Jewish institution. This isn’t the synagogue you had in mind, is it? It doesn’t look like a synagogue.”
“No. It’s the Jewish Children’s Home, the famous old orphanage.”
My heart stopped. I held my hand to my throat.
K fixed his gaze on my face. “What’s the matter with you? You’re white. Are you all right?” He clasped my shoulders. “Come, let’s sit down here on the bench.”
What made him bring me here? I wondered.
“I’m all right.” I sighed, looked at the building. “But now it’s time for me to say to you: It’s time. I have a secret to share with you.”
He looked into my eyes, waiting.
“Remember I told you I was born here?”
“Yes.”
“And that my parents, both young Holocaust survivors, met and married after the war in Italy and then were assigned to work for the Joint Distribution Committee here for several years?”
“Yes, I remember. And then, after a few years, you were born and then all three of you emigrated to America.”
“True. But what I didn’t tell you, and what I wanted to tell Jiri but never did, is this: I was adopted. My parents couldn’t have children and so they adopted a Jewish baby.”
“How fortuitous, then, that we passed here. It is very likely they found you here. Didn’t you ever want to know who your real parents were?”
“Not really. As far as I was concerned, my parents were my real parents. I wasn’t part of that generation that moved heaven and earth and spent years trying to find out who their birth parents were.”
“I can understand that. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that you revealed your secret here. Still, maybe now is an opportune time to go in and make inquiries.”
“Absolutely not. Come, let’s turn away. My usual equilibrium regarding my birth is being tested. Is being upset. Come, please.”
K took my arm — for a moment I felt as if I were the old man and he the younger — and we walked back to the shopping street. Was it here that I was adopted? But no feeling of sentimentality overtook me. The place didn’t tug at my heart. On the contrary, it made me nervous. I didn’t sense that something was pulling me there. Prague pulled me, yes, but not the Jewish Children’s Home. And even if I went in I would likely face martinet bureaucrats who specialize in procrastination and probably in the new privacy laws: I’m sorry, we cannot give you any information without the express permission of the adoptee. But that’s me, I say. That may very well be, but how do we know that? You know you’re you. I know you’re you. But do the authorities know you’re you?
Back on the shopping street I felt better again. I took a deep breath. K, that dear man, noticed and gave my arm an affectionate, sympathetic squeeze.
But when we reached his house, K withdrew the offer to see the synagogue.
“Not now,” he said, taking a deep, slow breath. “I think we have had enough excitement for one day, and I have walked enough. We will visit it another time.”
23. A Message from the Shamesh
When I got back to my hotel a voicemail message waited for me.
“Hello. Hello? Okay, you not there. So I will leave message. This is the shamesh. It is funny speaking one way into the air and nobody answers me. Me talking to a machine and the machine tells you what I said. Nu, we will see if it tells you exactly, word for word, what I said, or just gives you summary. Come to the shul in the morning. I have something for you.”
Typical Prague fashion; no details. What could he have for me? An admission that there was an attic? Special permission to see the golem? Or was it something else to enhance my film? Wait! Don’t tell me he found Katya. But how could the shamesh have found Katya if I didn’t tell him I lost her?
In the morning, I greeted Yossi golem, who said laconically, as though that dry, cheerless tone were studied, well-rehearsed, “I hear you’re really becoming pal of the old man and Eva.” But in his voice I think I heard a trace of plaint, a hint of sarcasm, as though somehow I was taking up too much of their time.
But instead of justifying myself or arguing with him, I reversed the table on him and said:
“I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to Eva and Mr. Klein. It’s been one of the most fortunate encounters I’ve had in Prague, along with meeting you and the shamesh.”
Yossi, the big man with the ruddy cheeks, smiled with both sides of his face. Then the shamesh approached. I wondered what they would have to laugh about now. If I were impudent or bold enough I would have articulated my thought.
“Ah, there you are. So you got my message. It is strange, no?” and he looked down at a note in his hands, maybe a jotting of what he had told me, “talking and no one talking back. It’s like talking to the wall. And someone else hears it later than when you actually said it. Amazing. Come…guess what I have for you.”
He gestured to the Holy Ark. I excused myself from Yossi and followed the shamesh.
“Um…” I said, resisting the temptation to say: a passage to the attic that you finally found. “I can’t guess.”