Katya leaned back and laughed. She clapped her hands, kept on laughing.
“Logic is not one of your strong points, is it? It’s not two men, silly. It’s one man. One and the same man.”
The little bits of info tumbled like scattered leaves settling in my brain until they sorted out.
Click. Every day I learn of new relationships.
“Oh, my God, am I thick!.. Your father, her son. Eva Langbrot your grandmother?” So Katya is Jewish. My prophetic heart. “Lucky you, having such a talented, wonderful woman as your grandma. When I got tired of waiting for the old man, Eva told me to stay another fifteen minutes, and then another fifteen minutes. It will be beneficial, she said. And how right she was. Had I left earlier, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Oh yes, you would have. If it is destined that two people meet, neither fire nor flood can stop the meeting. Anyway, you would have seen me on the square or near the square.”
“But that’s not the same as in the house. In the garden. Here. Now. And on the square, as you yourself say, you wouldn’t be so friendly.”
“But with you I was friendly, right?”
“You were, and that made me very happy.”
“What are you doing now?”
I heard the hint in her question, but I was worried about K.
“Do you know where Mr. Klein might be? I want to go look for him. I’m worried he’s been away for so long. Eva doesn’t seem to be worried, but I am.”
“No need to worry. He’ll come back. And where in this huge city will you look for him?”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
“Of course.”
Katya licked her lips, thinking, deciding. Her tongue wet her lips once, briskly. She didn’t move it slowly, provocatively, over her lips.
“When he needs spiritual refreshment, he goes to the synagogue not too far from here, a synagogue that few people know about.”
“I thought I knew all the famous synagogues in Prague.”
“This one you don’t know.”
“Maybe that’s the one he said he would take me to.”
“He did?”
“Where is it? I’d love to see it. One day we almost went there but after our walk he grew tired and said, Another time. Do you know it? Can I ask you to take me there? Do you have the time? I’m not imposing, am I?”
She ticked her head and pursed a smile, the girl in the blue beret. “My my, so many questions.” Katya seemed to repeat them in her mind as she lifted her fingers, one, two, three, four, five. “Five quick questions.”
“Well, do you?”
“Plus one makes six.” She gave out a merry laugh.
So did I.
“So you’ll do it? I mean…” and I dropped the question mark. “So you’ll do it.”
Again Katya laughed. “Seven is a perfect number.”
How lucky I was, spending so much time with her. My mirror monologue had materialized. I listened to every word individually and then to the trope of the phrases and the arc of her little speech, its melody, each note vibrating on a plane of its own. My eyes glowed. I looked at her with admiration. How beautiful, without a drop of paint on her pretty lips, no makeup on her face. Even though I paid attention, I didn’t pay attention to what she was saying, but her words washed over me like a beneficent wave, a benison, until I only heard fragments of words in a language I didn’t understand, a tongue like the strange tongue Jiri and Betty spoke in my presence. Nepa. Tara. Glos.
And I thought, even before I formulated the thought, even before I gave myself permission to fathom the thought, even before I could weigh in my mind’s balance scale if I could, if I should, let this thought fly — I thought I heard myself uttering the words in my mind: If you let me, Katya, you won’t have to lug those concert signs, a sweet, bright, lovely girl like you, and there still will be a smile on your luminous face.
Did I say what I wanted to say? Or were those words only subtitles in my mind? If I did say those words, she didn’t react. And if I did, why should she react? I had overwhelmed her at our first private meeting with an overbearing personal remark. If I did say those words and she heard them, she wisely let them pass and vanish into the air like skywriting smoke.
“So why did you do what you did?” I asked her.
“Do what?”
“Carry those signs?”
“I can’t stand sitting in an office.”
“Can you sit standing in an office?”
Katya thought a while, translated the words into Czech, reflected on the English and then, understanding, smiled.
“You went to college, I imagine…”
“Yes. And specialized in literature. But you can’t make a living from literature.”
And from carrying placards you can? I thought. “Then teach.”
“I will go back to it. But on a university level. In middle school the students get stupider from year to year…. And your field is film and that’s why you are here.”
Katya made a circular motion as if encompassing all of Prague and then pointed emphatically to the ground where she stood. “Here.”
“But why are we chatting so much? We wanted to go and find Mr. Klein.”
“Then let’s go,” said Katya. “The synagogue is not far from here. But it will be quicker by tram.”
33. In the Mystery Shul
“Come,” Katya said, “we have to buy a ticket at the tram booth for the Caspa District. It’s only three stops.”
I rushed up to the agent so that she wouldn’t offer to pay.
“Do you speak English?” I asked the sympathetic-looking man.
“I have studied in school.”
“Two tickets to Caspa District.”
The man held the tickets but did not give them to me. “Why do you want to visit there?” he said kindly.
“We want to see the synagogue.”
He lowered the tickets. “Well, hmm, I don’t know…” he muttered, not looking at me. “Are you sure you want to go there?”
“Of course I’m sure…. Why, is it a dangerous place?”
“Oh, nonsense,” Katya, now at my side, interjected. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Shalom,” the man said. “I am Jewish too…. Be careful.” He handed us the tickets. As we boarded the tram, Katya made a face as if to say: What’s wrong with him?
The synagogue was not a freestanding building but blended into other apartment houses. From the outside one could not discern that it was a shul.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, once we entered the vestibule. “Why isn’t it known?”
“The congregants don’t want tourists. They have an agreement not to list it in the tourist brochures or guidebooks. It’s the only private synagogue in Prague.”
I saw no extra yarmulkes in the stand where they kept the prayer books.
“May I borrow your beret, Katya?”
She took off her beret and placed it on my head, angled it and smoothed it down. I liked those gestures and thanked her.
“I’m going up to the women’s gallery,” she said.
I had forgotten about Jiri’s letter in my pocket. But once inside the shul I became mightily aware of it. On my chest, on my bare skin, I felt its glowing heat, a hot little rectangle burning against my heart. Maybe the letter wasn’t even there anymore, and only the oblong form of heat remained, like the shape of an object stays imprinted on the retina almost photographically in bright sunlight and you still see it after your eyes are closed. I patted my chest. The letter was there, but my hand felt warm.
The men’s section was long and narrow. No windows on the sides because they abutted the walls of other buildings. But from a window above the Holy Ark and from seven skylights light streamed in.