“Hi,” he said. “I’m Danny K.”
My heart thumped. All my memories of Danny K coalesced at that moment. Sitting next to him, it was as if a waterfall of photos and scenes had come cascading into my head and they were about to pour out.
I smiled. “Don’t I know it!” I introduced myself. We shook hands.
“Thanks for the rose. Very imaginative.”
“No less than the armada you created as if you wanted to sail away from here.”
Danny looked me in the eye. In his warm glance pain and sadness mingled, but he didn’t respond to my comment.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Sure.”
Danny K studied my face as if wondering where he knew me from. From my resemblance to you, I thought. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. Or maybe he remembered me from that backstage visit years ago.
“What’s your question?”
“I hope this won’t sound strange. But for years I’ve had two heroes. The two K’s. You and K. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever read anything by him.”
He perked up from his seeming slumber. He smiled, shook his head in wonder.
“I can’t believe someone is talking to me about something other than show business.”
“Do you mind?”
“Mind? I’m delighted… Of course I’ve read him.”
“Which is your favorite work?”
“‘The Metamorphosis.’”
I said, “Mine too.”
Now his face lit up. He shifted in his seat as if to drive away the immobility, the almost sculpted freeze position he had had for half an hour. He stood. He was still as tall as I remembered him from years ago.
“Come, let’s sit here on the sofa.”
Now he became animated, the old Danny K. He was plucked out of his somnolence. His chalky complexion vanished. Natural oils overtook his pores. The mask of makeup dissolved. All the other guests stared at us, wondering who was this guy who had pulled Danny K out of his torpor.
“I love that story,” he said. “I’ll tell you something few people know. Once I even proposed to a producer to make a film version in which I would play the lead.”
“A comedy?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good.” I wanted to hug him. “No one thinks of that story as a comedy. Everyone considers it a tragedy. But K himself thought of it as a comedy. When he read it aloud to Max Brod and his other friends, they all laughed, including K. Same thing happened when he read selections from the The Castle.”
“Are you a K scholar?”
“Yes. A Danny K scholar.”
He laughed his delightful high-pitched giggle.
“And what happened to your film proposal?”
“What do you think? They turned it down, of course. It wouldn’t make money. I even proposed that for the scene where the three lodgers see Gregor creeping into the room where his sister is playing the violin, I suggested that for that hilarious scene they get the Marx Brothers for a cameo appearance — but it didn’t come to pass.”
“Too bad.”
“That’s Hollywood… I understand you’re all filmmakers here. Why don’t you make it?”
“Well, I do documentaries.”
“Then focus on K.”
“You read my mind. I’m leaving for Prague in less than a month…”
“Go for it. I’m sure you’ll do well.”
“You know, this is the second time I’ve seen you one on one.”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Danny K was kind enough to say.
“When I was a kid, my beloved Uncle Monia used to take me to see your stage shows in New York. We’d see two of your shows with a film sandwiched in between. And years later, in the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, at a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Just before the intermission, a man onstage announced in Hebrew and in English: We have a surprise guest from America with us tonight. I’m sitting in the balcony and I see someone I think I know, someone who looks so familiar, whizzing past me up the steps of the balcony, probably from row one, and the audience is susurrating, bubbling, whispering, then applause breaks out from the people sitting down in the orchestra as the man dashes to the front, applause mingled with laughter and happy sounds, and then the chant ‘Denny Denny Denny’ fills the air as you leap onstage, snatch the baton from the conductor, and the audience is now on its feet and applauding and still shouting, ‘Denny, Denny, Denny’ and you turn to the audience, raise your baton as a sign for silence, and say to them, ‘Shalom, Yidn. Sholom aleichem. Shalom al Yisrael,’ and then you begin to conduct the IPO.”
“Yes, I remember that. What a thrill! It was the Barber of Seville Overture. My specialty… But when did we meet?”
“On Broadway. I came to see you once after a matinee and gave you a copy of my first documentary, the one I did on Sholom Ale-ichem’s children.”
“Oh yes, of course. Forgive me for not contacting you and thanking you. Then I saw it at least one more time on Public Television. And it surely deserved all the praise it got.”
“Boy, am I glad I came tonight. I almost didn’t accept the invitation.”
“That would have been too bad. To whom would I have told my K story?”
My mind was racing. My idol sitting before me. If I didn’t make a move now, I would never have the opportunity. Should I engage him with more K talk? I wanted to ask him if — it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if I could make a documentary about him. But it would be pretentious. And untrue. Poor Danny was fading. How would he look in a film that would obviously have to focus on him? One of my two K heroes. And here he was chatting with me, no longer the lonely, lost soul at a dinner party, trying to sail away on ships of his own creation, like that jailed Roman philosopher, or was it a poet, whose name escapes me at the moment, drawing ships on his prison wall that would take him to freedom.
“When you whizzed past me on the balcony at the Mann Auditorium, I didn’t know who it was. The man on stage said, We have a surprise for you. But in my skin I felt it was you. It was as if the corner of my eye had a vision that the rest of me couldn’t quite grasp. And then, when from downstairs comes the adoring cry, Denny, Denny, Denny, my joy was complete. I’m seeing my hero again. And the delight was all the greater because it came in a totally unexpected place. Who would have dreamt that you’d be in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in the Mann Auditorium, and in the balcony just rows away from me the very same night I was there?”
“Yes, I remember that evening. It was very special. And you describe it so nicely I wish I could have been there.”
Was he joking? There was no twinkle in his eye as he said this.
Then he burst into his merry laugh.
Again that feeling at the tip of my tongue. Go for it, like Danny said. So what if he’s old. It could add poignancy. As far as I know, no one has done a documentary on him. From a personal angle. With him reminiscing. With him showing photos, posters, memorabilia. Go for it. Now. He’s in the mood. He’ll agree. You’ll get access to stills, to clips from films from his private collection. Perhaps even precious outtakes. He’ll secure permissions for you.
Instead, I said:
“Do you know people used to tell me when I was in high school, and even the first year or two in college, that I looked like you?”
He examined my face. Would he agree or would he say, No way? He nodded slowly. Maybe out of politeness. Maybe so as not to contradict the fellow who sent him a rose, who snapped him out of his sleepwalker’s malaise.