On the bimah, a little four-year-old boy stood singing Yiddish songs. So why the need to be careful?
He had no audience but still he sang. Then I spotted K sitting in the first row behind the bimah. He too wore his beret instead of a yarmulke.
On top of the Aron Kodesh were the two traditional small lions with tiny red bulbs in their mouths — the Lions of Judah — their paws supporting, protecting, the Ten Commandments.
I looked up and saw Katya gazing down at me. She smiled and waved. I watched K and wondered what to say to him. He sat with his head bent. Was he reading from a Siddur or just meditating? Meanwhile, the little boy had finished singing and ran from the bimah down the aisle to the back of the synagogue, where a man picked him up and kissed him.
A low growling sound made me turn my head, left and right. Where could that sound be coming from? Was it the rumbling of the tram? I looked up to Katya. She pointed to the lions atop the Aron Kodesh. The brown color of the plaster lions was fading. They emerged from their sculpted state. Bigger they became. Their fur bristled. They yawned like the MGM lions and their red bulbs dropped. A chill rippled down my spine. After turning their heads this way and that, the lions let out a mighty roar.
The shamesh rushed toward the door. He stopped to say a quick word to K, then continued running.
I tapped him on the shoulder as he ran. “Excuse me, shamesh, but what’s going on up there?”
But he didn’t stop. I followed him.
“Shh,” he said, hurrying along, “those are the Lions of Judah, who protect the Jewish people.”
I realized these lions were the model for K’s story “The Animal in the Synagogue.”
The shamesh returned from the vestibule with two leashes and ran back to the Holy Ark. The lions sprang down from atop the Aron Kodesh and stood immobile as the shamesh leashed them. They dashed forward, pulling the shamesh with them.
K turned and saw me. Then he looked up and nodded to Katya.
Strained forward the lions; the shamesh tried to hold them back. In an MGM film the lion soon vanishes and the film begins. Here the lions remained. They moved down the aisle closer to me. I ran to the rear row and stood in the corner by the wall. The great green eyes of the lions were mild, their great big mild eyes were green, but when I heard their bestial roars their mild green eyes were no consolation. Wide open were their mouths. I had never seen such huge sharp teeth before. Two pink uvulas vibrated deep in their throats as they growled at me.
I was too frightened to cry out, but every part of me was trembling.
When the lions stood before me, their maws open so wide and deep, I saw a new, visceral world. I thought to appease them with the letter they no doubt were after.
But I resisted. If they wanted it, come and get it. I wasn’t going to give it up on my own. Especially with K here. It made me think of the classic line, perhaps the most famous one in radio comedy, when on the Jack Benny Show two holdup men accost Benny and say, “Your money or your life.” The famously cheap Benny does not answer. That alone prompts a swell of laughter. “Well?” the men finally say to him. And then Jack Benny grouches, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” getting one of the biggest laughs in radio history.
My sentiments went one step further than the equivocating Jack Benny. I’d rather they gobble me up than give up the letter, even though it still burned a postcard-sized patch of heat into my heart.
Then the shamesh began to speak to the roaring lions. He spoke in a mixture of Czech and Hebrew, while I thought: I’m also a member of the Jewish people. Why aren’t you protecting me? At that moment, when I thought I’d disappear down the mouth of one or both of them, I promised I wouldn’t bother K anymore with the video. Maybe K had arranged all this to scare me. Otherwise, why did he nod to Katya? Or maybe this was the work of that aggrieved actor, Stacek, who sought to get even with me. I looked up to Katya. She was no longer in the women’s gallery. But the letter, oh no, that I wouldn’t give up.
I felt myself molded to the corner, my heart thumping, a lemony, acidic taste in my mouth. Nevertheless, at that moment, I still wished I had my camera with me to record this scene. I could have made a great documentary from all the scenes I didn’t film, from all the opportunities I had missed. Why is it that at crucial moments I don’t have my camera?
Now K stood by my side. But he said nothing. As the lions drew closer, oblivious to the shouts of the shamesh, K took one step toward them.
“Stop!” I cried, holding him back.
But K wriggled out of my grasp and moved toward the lions.
At the doorway, her face contorted, Katya shouted, “Stop, Grandpa! Down Gur, down Aryeh,” she called to the lions.
But K moved forward. With his right hand he gestured in front of the lions’ faces. I didn’t see what he held in his hand — could it have been a shem? — for at once the beasts ceased roaring, crouched down, then turned and ambled back slowly to the Holy Ark. The shamesh walked alongside them.
Now that I was safe an even greater wave of fear came over me and my heart raced with a fury I had never known before. I sat down. I couldn’t control my palsied legs and shaking hands. I looked at them and willed them still; in vain. The blood pounded in my ears. Although the lions were far away from me, fright and astonishment mingled in my head. I didn’t know which emotion to quash first.
To the front of the synagogue walked the shamesh with the lions. After he removed their leashes they leaped up to the top of the Holy Ark. Now smaller and smaller they grew until they shrank to their former size, brown-painted porcelain lions with red bulbs in their mouths.
For the first time K spoke to me. Or maybe it was to the charged air around me.
“They have never threatened anyone before.”
“Thank you,” I said.
But that was the last thing K said to me. He walked past me and out of the synagogue.
I cried, “Wait!” but he did not turn.
And another Wait! cried out in me. A louder Wait. A Wait that shook the foundations of my being. A word I heard more clearly in echo than in its original sound. “Grandpa.” If K is Katya’s grandfather, and “Grandpa” wasn’t just a term of affection for an older man, much like “Uncle” is for an older family friend, then I was right. Eva was K’s wife. But why were they hiding this relationship from me?
Everything is hidden here. Starting with Jiri, yes, my beloved Jiri, who hid from me that he was K’s son, to Yossi and Eva, even K himself. Every day a new discovery. Surprises never cease in Prague.
I turned to Katya. “Why did those lions threaten me? I thought I was going to die.”
“This has never happened before.”
Then why did that tram ticket clerk warn me to be careful?
The shamesh approached Katya. He spoke in Czech but kept looking at me.
“He wants to apologize for the lions frightening you,” Katya explained. “It is most unusual, he says. They are usually very good creatures.”
He put out his hand. “Shalom. I am very sorry for incident.”
I answered, “Shalom.” But I did tell Katya, “Remember what the ticket agent said? He must know something.”
Katya was silent. A feeling of unease churned in me. I looked up to the Aron Kodesh, but the lions rested there peacefully, holding the Ten Commandments.
“And the shamesh told me they protect the Jewish people. My stomach is still in knots. And what’s more, Mr. Klein is angry with me.”
“Why?”
What should I say now? How could I answer and still be discreet?
“I wanted to include him, as an older man, with many memories of Prague, in my film on Prague.”