“No, I’m sorry to say. For then I would have had to include several others in our group and then secrecy would have been impossible. It was a hard decision, but I kept to it.”
“And how did your parents explain your presence at home later?”
“Aha. Good question. I was passed off as a distant cousin from Hamburg who had come to help out at the business. If people marked that I looked a little bit like poor, beloved K, my sisters would say that Philippe Klein had always been known as a K lookalike.”
“Is it possible you did what you did to get back at your father?”
The old man’s face turned white, as if in a backstage dressing room talc had been smeared over his face for some special actorly effect. I thought he would die now. So I hit the nail. It was all done for his father.
K stared at me, anguish in his eyes. The color returned slowly to his face. Behind the retina I detected a faint look of disdain. He said nothing. Not a word. Just gazed at me. After a long period of silence — how discomfiting that angry silence — he declared:
“I loved my father and my mother. And they reluctantly, and not without arguments, complied with my wishes. For me, to go along with my madness, they had to undergo the torments of a sham mourning, my father and mother and sisters, sitting shiva for a ghost. So make no mistake. Don’t be a literary pseudo-psycholog. I loved them. You of all people, you’re a creative artist, you say you make films, so you should know that you can’t read fiction as biography or autobiography.”
I licked my lips, took the rebuke, then said softly:
“And what about the funeral? Tell me. Was Brod there? Did he speak? Were you there?”
“I’ll tell you about the funeral.”
27. An Old Document
As I videoed Graf, and before he gave me the document, he asked:
“How old do you think I am?”
With his cheeks fuller and shaven, he looked younger than last time, perhaps sixty-five.
“Fifty-five,” I said.
“Very kind of you. But I am sixty-eight years old. I was born at the end of December, 1924, several months after K died. Dora Diamant’s departure created a vacuum and so K befriended Miriam, one of the devoted nurses, a very beautiful, tender woman, and when it was time to have the baby, that is, me, she had it in the Jewish Children’s Home. For reasons of privacy she didn’t have the baby in Vienna. And for reasons of sentiment she had the baby in Prague. You see, as a single woman, working full time, she was unable to care for the infant. And the document I’m holding testifies to this point.”
I looked at the paper, filmed it. It stated that the baby boy named Karoly was born to the nurse, Miriam Graf, religion Jewish, of the Vienna Woods Sanatorium, in the Jewish Children’s Home Adoption Center, and placed there for one year, then reclaimed by nurse Graf.
“This is fascinating,” I said.
“See? See? I told you you would be impressed.”
“But nowhere in this document does it state that K is the father.”
Karoly Graf looked at me as if I were a moron.
“But that is obvious! As obvious as you looking into a mirror and seeing yourself.”
“Sometimes I look into a mirror and don’t see myself.”
“I’m talking about normal people. It is obvious because K stayed on at the sanatorium for about a month after Dora Diamant left for Poland. He was ill, lonely, depressed. Within a month he would die. The staff was very kind to him. Everybody loved him, including my mother, with whom K had a special bond. They formed, how shall we say, a union, and nine months later, by this time K was already dead, Karoly came into the world. Think of it. How many people beside K stayed at the sanatorium and lived in Prague?”
“Probably not many.”
“No, not many. No one but K.”
“Interesting,” I said. But I wasn’t convinced. Klopstock could have been his father, or another patient. Or someone else entirely. And the fact that nurse Miriam Graf sought out the Jewish orphan home in Prague proved nothing either.
True, Graf was tall. But he didn’t look like K, or Jiri. And why was he the only one to announce his special relationship to K, whereas Jiri kept silent? Or could it be that Jiri had wanted to tell me but Betty stood in his way? Obviously, Jiri and Karoly Graf were different personalities. And then I recalled that I had once said, and to Mr. Klein no less, that had I discovered I was a son of K, I would have hired an open truck with an amplification system and shouted, “Listen, folks, I’m K’s son.” I wouldn’t keep it still. So if I would have done such a thing, why shouldn’t Karoly Graf? So, why should I criticize Graf for doing something that I would gladly, proudly, have done myself? Never mind the penchant we have for criticizing in others the very fault we ourselves possess.
Of course, criticism aside, the only problem here is veracity. Is Graf telling the truth? Or, if not wittingly lying, then taking facts and extending them like strudel dough to come up with his (now not so fantastic) claim.
“Tell me, Mr. Graf, do you go around telling everyone that you’re K’s son?”
“No. Not everyone. But if I find a K lover, like you, I certainly do not hold back from sharing the news.”
“I mean, are you known in Prague as the man who goes around saying he’s K’s son?”
“I don’t know what reputation I have in this city. I do not have, how do you call it, a relations public consultant. As for the phrase ‘goes around saying,’ I would heartily disagree with it…. Here, let me show you something.”
Graf rolled up the left sleeve of his sweater and then the sleeve of his shirt.
“See? Near where the arm bends, this dark brown birthmark. That’s another sign. And another one just to the left of the navel.”
But I laughed. I couldn’t help laughing. I felt like Yossi golem and the shamesh who laughed at me. But now I was doing the laughing.
“So what does that prove?”
“You know in fairy tales and folk stories, the birthmark proves a baby is prince or princess.”
“I still don’t understand. In the stories the baby has the same birthmark as the king or queen. How is your birthmark connected?”
“K had same birthmark.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
This conversation, although absurd, was being filmed, recorded. What a delicious bonus for my documentary!
“Do you have a photo of K bare-armed? I’ve never seen a photo of K without a suit jacket on.”
“So I was told.”
“Is it documented anywhere?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Where?”
“In oral tradition.”
I shut the camera. I thanked Graf heartily for letting me talk to him. And then I remembered his mother, the nurse Miriam. And I started filming again.
“Did K ever see your mother again? Acknowledge the baby? Take responsibility?”
Graf looked at me, astounded.
“But he died! What are you talking about? Your question would be valid for a man who lived on and did not acknowledge his paternity.”
I shook my head. “Of course, you’re right. I was so engrossed with your fascinating tale that I forgot the facts.”
“When can I see the film?”
“Actually, I’ve just begun. It will take a while, but when it is finished you will surely get a copy.”
28. The Eulogy
“The funeral, you say? Yes, the funeral. At my own funeral, I maintained my stoop. My Van Dyke beard and mustache, of course, were fully grown. I made sure to show my bared, closely cropped head of hair that I covered with a dark blue beret, the one I’ve been wearing for decades, for almost seventy years.”