But look down and see the poster she carries for tomorrow night’s Dvořák concert, featuring his Piano Quintet in A major, at the great Dvořák Hall. Perhaps a hidden message to me. A major. A major something awaited me. If only I could find it. First morning on the square. Or maybe it was a message to meet someone at a major location. The box office perhaps. Another poster told of an all-Vivaldi concert. The RV number of the Vivaldi composition might be the first three digits of a phone number I was to call. But what if it was my own hotel? And what if I answered?
I ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant at the edge of the square, then wandered around in the square itself, delighted with the little men moving up in the huge clock as the hour struck. I made my way through the press of people and again I saw the girl in the blue beret. Aside from that little fantasy I was concocting about secret messages — I don’t believe in omens and oppose superstition — seeing such a lovely girl a second time my first day in Prague made me happy. I considered it a blessing. She must have recognized me, for she smiled at me. I noted the place and time of the concert.
Suddenly, another guy wearing a placard for a competing concert for tomorrow night approached her. I thought they would bump into each other — but no, they joined forces and marched toward me as if a mini parade were staged just for me. I looked at the fellow’s sign. It read: MAJOR DISCOVERY: HITHERTO UNKNOWN SYMPHONY BY REICHA.
The two stopped. He stood to the left of the girl in the blue beret. The message was clear. From left to right I read the message directed at me. Now I could no longer doubt it, or think it was chance, coincidence. A chill rolled down my back. The words flashed in black and white, but they could very well have been in color too: A Major, Major Discovery.
Then, their mission accomplished, the two turned, took two steps forward, and parted ways.
I stopped for a moment to absorb what was happening. I took a deep breath. The fresh air of that mild, sunny morning entered my lungs. Next stop, the K Museum. No, I hadn’t forgotten the Altneushul. First of all, it was too late. And anyway, K, you should know by now, was at the top of my list.
First things first. Which you can read any way you like. Forward, backward, or upside down.
2. At the K Museum
I went into the little K Museum, saw what I saw (more on that later), and stepped out of the K Museum. An encounter outside the door was to have more meaning for me than what I had just seen inside.
An elderly gentleman, tall and thin, with slightly hollowed cheeks and a prominent Adam’s apple approached me. He too had just emerged from the museum. At first I thought it might be a beggar. The hair on his unshaven cheeks was two days old. I couldn’t tell an old man’s neglect from a growing beard. On the other hand, his jacket and tie were surely not a beggar’s garb.
“Excuse me,” he said in heavily accented English. “I just saw you upstairs on the second floor, is that not correct?”
I felt my cheeks, my lips, stiffen, the normal reaction when a beggar or other person you want to avoid approaches you. Before I had a chance to speak, he added:
“It is nice to see someone so enamored of K. I was listening to you speaking to your friend—”
“Actually, not really a friend. Just a chance encounter with a fellow American.”
“—is all right, and every other word out of your mouth is K.”
“Well, this is a K museum. It would be odd if we talked about Picasso here.”
I thought he’d laugh. But he did smile. It surprised me that his teeth were straight.
Then I said: “The fact is, I might almost say: Every other word I read is by K.”
The smile he smiled wasn’t just a smile. It was a glow, an aureole of ecstasy that suffused his entire face, as if he were the director of the tiny museum and my remark validated his, and the museum’s, existence.
“You can’t imagine how I am delighted to hear that. Visitors to this museum are not familiar usually with K’s works. They come because in Prague they have to see two things: K and the golem. They come from curiosity and not—” He seemed to search for a word.
“Homage?”
“Precisely. Yes. Exactly. That’s the right word. Not from homage.”
“And I come out of homage.”
He bowed his head. As if acknowledging shyly the compliment directed at him.
“I can see that…” He put out his hand. “With your permission, may I introduce myself? My name is Graf, Karoly.”
I shook his hand.
“I have the honor of informing you that”—and here he looked me straight in the eye, and if not straight then at least at the bridge of my nose, which gives the impression of looking one straight in the eye—“that I am K’s son.”
At first I thought I didn’t hear him. I didn’t exclaim, “What?” or ask him to please repeat what he had just said. I re-heard the echo of his words. No. I had not misheard. The words were the same. He said, “I am K’s son,” and I heard, “I am K’s son.” The words he said were the words I heard. Then little bells tinkled in my brain. A swirl of colors shaped like butterflies flitted before my eyes. Was that a shiver than ran down the bumps of my vertebrae? Music I had not heard in a long while played in my ears, whether folk tunes or gypsy violins or the Slavonic Dances I could not say. But something was happening in me. Then the girl in the blue beret and her fellow marcher appeared before me. I read their message — came again that stream of bubbles — and wondered if this is what they were hinting at. Was this the A Major Major Discovery that awaited me here in Prague?
I had read that some K scholars held that K may have fathered a son. On that there was no unanimity in the scholarly community. And, as usual, one camp belittled, denigrated, even insulted the other. Depending on which side of the controversy you stood, you were either a fool, a scandalmonger, a liar, a naïf, or a cover-up artist.
But that that myth should be standing before me seemed like a rather farfetched possibility. You don’t even look like him, I wanted to say. I wondered if he was looking at me and seeing any resemblance to K, the way others saw it in the USA. You know, I wanted to tell him, if we’re dealing with outré possibilities, I’m probably a better candidate to be K’s son than you.
On the other hand, Prague was a city wrapped in mysticism, even miracles. It was the only major city in Europe that had escaped destruction by the Germans, the Russians, the Allies. So there was a chance, however slim, that the man’s assertion might be true.
“No, I am honored,” I said. “Thank you for coming up to me. Are you the director here—?”
He began shaking his head even before I finished.
“—or affiliated in any way with the museum?”
“No no no. I just come here often to look and remember, remember and recall, and occasionally greet true K lovers like you.” He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head with a questioning look, gazed at me, and nodded slowly. “You know, you look more like him than I do.”
“Who?”
“K.”
“I’m honored. Thank you. But which one?”