If I believed in automatic writing, which I don’t, I might even say that once I began writing with Jiri’s pen the thoughts seemed to flow on their own with that beautiful golden-nibbed pen in my hand. For instance, it turned out that I had written down the entire Danny K dinner episode and the entire conversation word for word without even realizing I had written it.
When I finished, I took the top of the pen and pressed it to the body until it clicked shut.
“Don’t forget the shul in Prague.”
I turned to the people sitting next to me. Who had said that?
Then came the call; my flight was boarding. I stood, looked about. A face flashed. No! Impossible. Could that be Betty in a crowd of people back there? And if so, what was she doing here? Then my wild imagination began ticking out a chain of telegraphed messages: No wonder I couldn’t find Jiri and Betty. They had gone off somewhere and were now flying to Prague. But if so, where was Jiri? And how come they were on the very same flight as mine? That whole death scene (for Jiri) and departure (for Betty) was an elaborate ruse staged by the hospital telephone operator and the apartment super.
It was Jiri’s voice telling me not to forget the Altneushul and now, if I wasn’t mistaken, they (at least Betty) would maybe, possibly, be on the same plane. I pressed my hand to my chest to make sure the pen was there, instinctively protecting what belonged to me.
And then again, a moment or two later, in the pen, from the pen, around the periphery of the pen, Jiri’s voice: Someone near and dear to me gave me this pen. That’s why, bruderl, I could not give it to you. Unlike a flame which can be given, transferred, without diminishing its essence, a pen can only be given once. But I am glad you took it. Absently. Inadvertantly. Automatically. Without thinkingly. It was bashert, destined, fated, that it end up with you. Once you land in Prague I will tell you who to see.
As I boarded I looked about but couldn’t spot the face I had momentarily glimpsed before. Once we were airborne and the seatbelt sign was off, I walked up and down the aisles of the plane to see if I could find Betty or Jiri. But no one on board looked like either of them. Perhaps they were in business or first class. But no, I reconsidered, given their modest means, that was hardly likely.
The lights dimmed; the stewardesses sat down in the back of the plane. Time to sleep. But before closing my eyes I made a few more jottings. As I clicked the pen shut again I heard — and this time it seemed to come from the pen itself, “And Yossi in back of the shul…. But most important is to…”
I put the pen to my ear. Was this some kind of high-tech pen qua taperecorder that Jiri had given me — rather, had somehow arranged for me to take? But no more words came. I put the pen back into my pocket, turned off the overhead light, stretched my legs, and closed my eyes. The drone of the plane and my fatigue made me drift off into a pleasant sleep.
Then as if out of a dream, a mystery novel, a suspense film, I feel a hand on my chest and I immediately, instinctively, grab—
The same thing had happened to me once on a night train to Trieste. The train pulled into Milan at 2 a.m. and the predators were waiting to spring. Thinking I was asleep, one dashed into my sleeper to see what he could nab. He was already by my window when I — a light sleeper (my valuables were under my pillow) — bolted up and roared. The surprised thief reeled back and hit his head at the edge of the steel doorframe. I turned him around, grabbed him by the neck, and kicked him out of the doorway which was almost opposite my compartment. He went flying the six-foot drop and sprawled on the concrete pavement face down.
— that hand before it gets into my pocket and I press hard. I sense it’s a woman’s hand and I hear a soft, muted, suppressed cry of pain and I squeeze and twist ever more, and in the dark I do not know who my antagonist is, but I suspect at once, and then, relenting, I let go and let the grey apparition escape back into the darkness. I felt I was like Jacob, wrestling with a creature of the night. And like my forebear, I too prevailed. But like Jacob, I also had my thigh wound, a wound in the hollow of my thigh, which metaphor will be made clear below. Half asleep, perhaps half adream, to protect it from further incursions I put the pen into my shirt pocket.
It was the pen she no doubt wanted. And in wanting it so desperately (maybe not wanting it so much as wanting desperately that I not have it), I reconstructed the words she sent down at me from five stories up through the noise of trucks, din of traffic, cacophony of ambulances. Now I was sure she did not say, “Take my pen”— rather, “Why did you take my pen?”—the uptick of the question and the first three words swallowed up by the traffic.
It goes without saying that I couldn’t find Betty when I got off the plane.
What was it about that pen that drove her to follow me to retrieve it? What secrets did it contain? What mysteries did it possess? Did it have more than the two brief messages I had already heard?
But now the pen was silent, its previous seeming magic muted.
It was only when I discovered to my annoyance and surprise a nickel-sized blob of navy blue just above the pocket of my white shirt — my metaphoric thigh wound — that I realized in the dark of the plane, with me floating in a semi-dream in the drone of the plane, that the grey apparition (although I did not touch it, it seemed to me made of gauzy grey flannel) had absconded with the top of my pen.
My pen was now stripped of its cover, deprived of its top. Although I was able to write with it, when I rubbed my finger on the brand name imprinted on the body I heard only half of Jiri’s voice. Rather, all of Jiri’s voice, but only half his words. It was intelligible discourse, graspable by the senses but not by the mind. Trouble was, my senses were askew. A good thinking cap would have helped, but I had on but a half. The other half was neatly slithered away from me by a swift, unseen, horizontally moving scythe. Jiri’s message, cleaved in two. Jagged were his remarks, truncated the words, and I was left with only the top, or bottom, of the letters.
Imagine a zipper on a seamstress’s work table. Pull the zipper to the end and you have two pieces of cloth, each with a thin line of tiny teeth, of absolutely no use to each other unless they are attached. That’s what my magic pen now resembled. For though I heard the sounds, the letters were detached, unzippered, exactly half of what was whole. The alphabet of speech shorn. Half the letters mown away.
Now that I think of it, the jagged music of this sawed-off language was similar to the sounds of Jiri’s and Betty’s private cant. If only I could provide, or reconstruct, the tops (or bottoms) of the aborted language, I would be able to understand what was being said.
Later, in Prague, whenever I saw a pen in someone’s pocket, my first thought was: there’s the top of my pen, and I had to clench my fists behind my back not to grab the pen, and clench my teeth to avoid asking the stupid question that bubbled in the back of my mouth.
1. Back in Prague
All right, I’m back in Prague, I tell myself as the plane lands, although the words “back in” can be misleading; it gives the impression I’ve just returned after a short absence. Nevertheless, I am back in Prague, and an accurate remark it is, even though — as I informed Betty not too long ago — I left the city forty-two years ago when I was just a few months old.
I could have gone to a thousand different places, but I chose to go to the city I was born in. Chose? Rather chosen. I didn’t choose; someone chose me. Up in space someone held a magnet, waved it once or twice — maybe three times like in fairy tales— until it found my wavelength and drew me to the city. We fool ourselves into thinking we have free will, don’t we? But we are like a rescued swimmer holding on to the robe, “robe” I type by mistake, perhaps unconsciously thinking of King Saul holding on to the prophet Samuel’s robe for safety, to save his life, to save his kingdom, but it’s “rope” I mean, saying we are like a rescued swimmer holding on to the rope tossed from a lifeboat pulling the nearly drowned man to shore. Does he have free will to let go? Thin strands connected to God knows where pull us. We click with unseen magnets.