“I’d like to meet Mr. Klein,” I said.
Eva looked at her watch. “I think it’s all right now…I shall go and ask him.”
As she left the room I looked at the bookcase. I blinked. Little shivers ran up one arm to my neck and scalp. My hair tingled. The title of the book I saw grew larger and larger as if on a five-story screen. I couldn’t believe it. Another copy of K’s Meditation?
Eva came back nodding.
“I’ll bring you in.”
I pointed out K’s book.
“I see you also have a copy of K’s first book. Jiri showed me the one in his library, signed by K. Did he get it here? Or was his copy mailed back to you? Did you have two copies and give him one? Is this one signed?”
“So many questions.” Eva’s eyes lit up with a smile. “I don’t know. These books are my son’s, who is now living in Brno. But I would think this book can be found in any antiquariat.”
“May I see if it’s signed?”
“Please,” Eva said.
I pulled out the copy and, heart beating, turned to the title page. No signature.
“No. It’s not signed.”
“Come,” Eva said.
“Does Mr. Klein speak English?”
“Yes. Among many other languages.”
Then a strange thing happened. Eva bent forward, brought her face close to mine. I thought she was going to kiss me. Tara pilus, tara glos ran like a bolt of lightning through me. And a dozen thoughts, swift as that electric pulse, tumbled in my brain. So indeed that’s what Jiri and Betty were arguing about. Too old, said one. No, the other. What exactly did they have in mind? Had I known, I too would have fainted in the hospital room along with Betty when I told her I understood every word she and Jiri had said.
Eva bringing her face closer. The skin of her rosy cheeks smelled like freshly picked apples. Why should she want to kiss me? But out of politeness I did not draw back. Was a magical thought, straight out of fairy tales, riding along those neurons and synapses just brushed by lightning, that if she kissed me her enchantment would be undone? Like the kissed green little frog metamorphosed into a young prince, whssht, Eva would become a lovely princess as soon as her lips touched mine — a princess with an engaging smile, dark eyes, a dimple in one cheek and one cheek only, and a blue beret atop her head, a blue beret worn at a fetching angle.
But then, when her face almost touched mine, she drew three short breaths. She sniffed me. Just as I was about to ask why — my lips parting, a slight popping sound — Eva said:
“Mr. Klein is very sensitive to fragrances. He can’t stand perfumes—”
I said indignantly, “I don’t wear perfume or cologne,” then tried to smile to cloak a possible brusqueness.
“—aftershave lotions and so on, so I’m glad you’re not.” Her voice trailed off.
Then she gestured, Let’s go. She put a finger to her lip and whispered, “Remember. About Jiri.” And she waved her forefinger.
I nodded. “I remember. Don’t worry.”
As we entered Mr. Klein’s book-filled room, Eva introduced us. First caught my eye what hung from the ceiling: two beautifully constructed model aeroplanes, double winged, from the pre — World War I era. And there to my left, on a little table, the old gramophone.
“So we meet again,” Mr. Klein said with that Czech accent I recognized by now. He stretched his hand out to me and shook it with a firm clasp. It was the man with the white Van Dyke beard I had passed earlier on the hill. Now, sans his blue beret, I saw that except for a fringe of soft, silky white hair he was bald. Standing next to him, I realized for the first time he was more than six feet tall.
Eva brought the palms of her hands together. She looked happy, satisfied. “Well, enjoy each other’s company. I’m going out now, Mr. Klein. Do you need anything?”
“No, thank you, Eva.”
Like Eva, he too looked me over. His gaze seemed to say, I’ve seen you before. The sort of look you give people you’re seeing again after a long absence.
“Were you at the concert,” I asked him, “in the Dvořák Hall the other night?”
“Yes.”
“And a day or two earlier, strolling in Old Town Square with your cane?”
Mr. Klein laughed. “I’m not the only man with a cane on the square.”
I matched his upbeat tone with one of my own. “But how many wear a blue beret and fashion a unique ballet with their walking stick as they amble along?”
“Not many,” he allowed.
“So it must have been you.”
He pursed his lips and ticked his head, not really admitting but not saying no.
“Why use a cane for level walking but not uphill?”
“I use it for promenading, not as a third leg.”
“On the square you walked dreamily, but briskly up the hill.”
“If you daydream on an uphill cobblestoned street it may turn to nightmare — that is, a nasty fall. And I always walk quickly up a hill. It saves time. You see, I collect time,” Mr. Klein declared.
“You are quite energetic,” for an old man, were the words I censored.
“I am blessed with dark energy,” he replied, looking into my eyes and behind my eyes. “And anti-gravity too.”
Uh-huh, I said to myself. Why was I pursuing this idiotic line of questioning?
I turned to look at the old-fashioned gramophone on the table. Mr. Klein’s room was quite spacious, bright with sunlight streaming in through the window. I saw two other doors, one probably a closet, the other a bathroom. Another wall had floor-to-ceiling books. He had a writing desk and chair by the window, an easy chair, a cot, and some lamps. Maybe one of them was powered by his dark energy.
For a moment we blinked at each other in silence, like two people who have no more to say to each other and strain to fill the space of air with empty words. I looked up at those two marvelous model aeroplanes — had Mr. Klein made them himself? — and wondered if I should fly away on one, just like Danny K had wanted to sail away from that dinner on one of his own napkin ships. Instead of asking about the planes, I said:
“I saw the ‘Ph’ on the door before your family name. What does that stand for?”
“The ‘Ph’ is for Phishl…officially — accidental pun — Philippe.”
Fishl Klein, I thought. Small fish.
“That’s right,” he said. “Small fish. That’s what I am in this world. A small fish.”
I wanted to contradict him, to counteract this self-effacing thought, but I didn’t know what to say.
“Why the ‘Ph’? Why not ‘F’?”
“Yes,” he said with a pensive nod. Then he added, eyes sparkling, “I suppose you spell ‘philosoph’ with two ‘f’’s too.”
It sounded logical; it sounded like a good riposte, but I still couldn’t figure it out.
“Why are we standing? Please sit down.”
He sat in the easy chair and motioned me to the wooden chair next to his writing table.
“What did you want to say?”
I hadn’t wanted to say anything, but hearing his soft question prompted me to remark:
“Up in the balcony of the concert hall the other night, I looked down and spotted you. At once I said to myself, I’d like to speak to that man.”
He spread the palms of his hands as if say, And so you are.
“The same thing also happened to me in a New York synagogue a few weeks ago. I saw a man who sat in front of me explaining a Torah verse to his neighbor. And I said to myself, I have to get to know this man.”
“And did you?”
“I did, and he turned out to be from Prague, the former director of the Jewish Museum, the man who visited you two or three years ago. And it’s because of him that I am here now — Jiri Krupka-Weisz.”