“‘Yisgadal ve-yiskadash sh’mey rabbo…’
“When I finished, I looked up. People were weeping again. At the end of the service people I did not know, that is, Philippe Klein did not know, came up to me and took my hand in theirs, pressed it warmly, lovingly, put their arms on my shoulders and said, ‘You captured his spirit.’ But how could I capture his spirit if it was of myself that I was speaking? Can a man capture his own spirit? And in any case, in retrospect, it was an uninspiring bundle of banal sentences I put together. Not moving. Not touching. Not spellbinding. Not extraordinary. I hope to do better next time I am called upon to deliver a eulogy for myself. But because it was a funeral, people were moved. The emotion of the moment cloaked rational thinking. Even Maxie shook my hand and thanked me. At that moment I felt again I had betrayed my best friend and I looked down at the ground. People thought it was in sorrow — but it was actually in shame.”
Then K brightened. He looked around his warm, comfortable room as if searching for something. He turned to me and said, “And Franz was there too.”
Was he mixing himself up with himself? Having divested himself of one life and assumed — maybe even arrogated, but that might be too strong a word — another, was he now referring to his former self? Or was he referring to himself now — as a new person — in the third voice?
“Franz?” I said. “But you’re Franz.”
I saw no flicker of anything on his smooth face. An absolutely neutral reaction to my challenge. My God, I thought, and an epiphanous feeling swept over me, a sad spirit, a sad breeze. Maybe he was Phillipe Klein and all his long life he had lived a charade, a pretense, something akin to Karoly Graf pretending to be K’s son, conning his family and few friends that he was K. Klein, having delivered a eulogy in 1924 and convincing himself then that he was K, Klein just kept on with the lifelong pretense.
K waited. He waited until I had puzzled out my suspicion. Then he smiled.
“But there’s another Franz. My good friend, Franz Werfel.” Now he laughed. “Of course, he didn’t recognize me. If Max Brod, whom I would see twice daily, didn’t recognize me, how could Werfel? And anyway, if you’re going to the funeral of K, even if a newcomer from a distant town, some kind of second cousin, somewhat resembles the deceased, what can one say? You look like the lately departed?” Again K rolled a full phrase of laughs. “No one in his right mind would say anything like that. One’s human nature acts as a mask of self-deception. I was, my dear boy, absolutely in the clear.
“One more thing I should tell you. I go to my gravesite every year on my yorzeit. I light a yorzeit candle on the anniversary of my, that is, his, Johann Eck’s, burial, and I say Kaddish for the poor man. He was not a Jew, but I still say Kaddish for him anyway, for the man who was buried instead of me and who has no grave marker of his own. And because of that the light of my own life was temporarily relit for me…. Do you want to see the letter?” K said with almost no pause.
“What letter?”
“The letter. The one that came too late. The letter Dora wrote to me.”
“You have it?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Here?”
“No. It’s in a safe place. Would you like to see it?”
“Oh yes. Absolutely.”
K rose. He got his coat. “Then come. Come with me.”
“Wait,” I said. “Sit down for a minute.”
K laughed again. “Are you like the peasants in a Chekhov story who before they set out on a journey sit down for a moment to avert the evil eye, lest a demon who spoils trips goes into action?”
I laughed too. K seemed in a good mood. He had told me much, in splendidly K-esque precision — not all, but much, of his story.
I was sure he would share many other details with me. Now, when he was so upbeat, was the time for me to ask him a question.
“You know my profession, right? You know what I came to do here. So I want to ask you a favor.”
K’s normally relaxed face tightened. He could feel what was coming. “Yes?”
“Please. I would like to film you. It would be such an important, riveting, even earth-shaking film.”
K started shaking his head as soon as I began. “No, my dear boy. I can’t do it. I must say no.”
“Like the Gerer rebbe said no to Dora’s father.”
That hurt, that comparison. But K didn’t flinch.
“You want the world to know I exist.” He gave me a sad smile of understanding.
“Yes, very muchly, to quote a Prague friend of mine. You would make such a great subject.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t. I won’t.”
“But why?”
“There are too many X’s and Z’s that surround that why. I would have to give you one hundred ten years of history.”
“I’m willing to listen.”
“I have protected my identity for decades. Please don’t spoil it for me. I trust you.”
“I would like to see you get the Nobel Prize.”
K gave a start. As if moving forward to me. A shift in his psyche. Had I hit a sympathetic chord?
“No doubt about it,” I pursued my lead. “You’d get the Nobel Prize.”
“The Nobel Prize is given to living writers.”
“So?”
“But I am considered dead.”
“That’s where my documentary will play a role. K lives.”
“They won’t believe it.”
Was I winning? Was he relenting?
“You can show them what you showed me.”
“They’ll think it’s trick photography. You’ll lose your reputation as a maker of true documentary films.”
“But let’s give it—”
Sharply, he said, “The answer is no.” Then in a more moderate tone: “It would go against the grain of everything I’ve lived and believed in. I am very sorry.”
K went to the hallway, picked up the phone and dialed. He spoke in Czech for a minute or so.
“Come. It’s all set. I’ll show you Dora’s letter.”
29. In the Altneu Again
Once we emerged from the Metro, K took me up Parizska Street, past the Schweik sculpture, to the Altneu. The main door was open.
“Sit down here,” K said.
He walked up the three steps to the bimah, bent down, opened the two doors below the wooden reading table, reached in and moved his hand in the cabinet. He held up an envelope.
Then he approached me, opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. He stood before me like a lecturer reading his notes to his class.
“I will translate Dora’s German.” He smiled. “Her German was never excellent. She grew up with Yiddish and got some education in Polish. Here is what she says:
“‘I’m sorry I have to say goodbye to you this way. But our relationship is doubly doomed. My family, as you know, is against us. And now that you are away, one of the nurses…”‘
At that last word—“nurses”—there was an infinitesimal hesitation. Its duration was no longer than the hesitation a ball makes when it’s thrown up in the air and stops for a fraction of a second before acknowledging gravity. But I caught that hesitation. I caught that fractional stop and it intrigued me. Why did K hesitate? Why did he stop? Was it the memory of one of the nurses that made him pause?
“‘…secretly told me that the laboratory confirms Doctor Klopstock’s diagnosis. I should be with you at this time but I cannot witness the ebbing of your life. I just cannot. The days I spent with you were, are, the happiest in my life. I want to remember the joy, the life, not the departure of life. I do not have the courage to be with you. Forgive me. Please forgive me. All my love. Your Dora.’”