You ask about food? Do you remember the scene in Noah’s Ark where the dove brings back a twig? I have mentioned that dove before. The same dove that fed me. There was a window in the attic of the Altneushul and I opened it one morning and the dove flew in, bringing food. Reread the quote from Psalm 33 above. Yes, He sustained me in hunger and delivered me from death. And, of course, the g…
NOTE: K doesn’t finish the word or the sentence. (K.L.)
??? SEPTEMBER 1945. MILENA
(handwriting unclear as to date)
My darling Milena once wrote that I do not have the capacity for living. She was as worldly as dear Dora was innocent. Poor Milena— though not Jewish, she too, like my sisters, was taken by the Germans and murdered by them in a concentration camp. Milena said of me that I am not of this world. Things like typewriters mystified me, she said. When she remarked that I did not have the capacity for living, she did not mean living the good life, living it up, as the American slang expression has it. She meant living, period. Not having the capacity for living meant I would never get well. That I will die soon.
In my imagination I visited her, let’s say in the mid-thirties, and revealed myself to her, proving her wrong, showing her that not only did I have a capacity for living but for defeating my nemesis, my illness. That I indeed improved. That I would not die, but live, as the Bible declares.
But, of course, although I could have, I did not act out my fantasy. The surprise, the shock, would have killed her. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, do anything like that.
You could have written to her, I hear someone suggest.
Yes.
That “Yes” contains many resonances, like an empty barrel. Yes, I could have. Yes, it was over between us. Yes, but what good would it have accomplished?
My life was my secret and I kept it well.
APRIL 1947. ON GIRLS’ LEGS
In his novel, where I appear briefly, Max Brod has a rather modern view on women’s legs. He says, Nowadays, girls have legs up to their necks. I never thought Brod capable of such an observation, of such an image.
MAY 15, 1948. JEWISH DREAMS
Today, the two-thousand-year-old Jewish dream of return to Zion has been accomplished. Thank God, the State of Israel has been founded. The Jews have a homeland.
But do I?
MAY 1950. WITH S.Y. AGNON IN JERSIJSALEM
When I visited Israel for the first time in 1950, I went to Jerusalem to see S. Y. Agnon, the great Hebrew writer with whom I have often been compared. Born in 1888, he was a few years younger than I. At once we had a commonality of spirit. Agnon, a man of imagination with a penchant for the metaphysical and the surreal (read his great novella, ‘Iddo and ‘Eynam), at once believed who I claimed to be. We embraced and he welcomed me as long-lost kin and told me to call him Shmuel Yosef. I liked at once this friendly, witty, and traditional man with the black velvet yarmulke on his head.
And Agnon made sure to put me at my ease by telling me that a K-esque story of his was published in 1908, when he was twenty, and before I ever saw any of my work in print. We spoke the language we both knew, German, with a bit of Yiddish. He marveled how a Central European Jew like me, with no familial tradition of Yiddish, could even speak it haltingly. I told him my Yiddish is basically self-taught and described how I brought a famous Polish Yiddish theater group to Prague.
But when I began to speak Hebrew I really stunned him. I explained that I had had private tutoring in Germany, and added classes as well in an institute for higher Jewish learning. He did not know we had both been in Germany in the early 1920s and remarked, “Too bad I did not know you then.” After discussing writers we had read, I began speaking about music. Agnon said: “Music? Don’t talk to me about music.”
In his novel about Agnon, The Yemenite Girl, which I read in the Crypto-Slovenian translation, author Curt Leviant gets it right on the mark when he has Agnon say, “God gave man eight notes, and look how many noises he can make with them.” Agnon feels music sets a wall around us, almost imprisons us. Separates us from the real world. I said that Freud shared his view, and Nabokov too. Neither had any appreciation nor ear for music. I admitted that despite my love for classical music my skill with tonalities was so bad that, according to Max Brod, I couldn’t tell the difference between the Merry Widow and Papagena, even though music, like language, flows sequentially, not like a painting where there is no sequentiality, where you see everything at once. Then I mentioned the glory of The Magic Flute, which Agnon claimed he had never heard of. But I am sure he was shamming, for right away he asked me, with a twinkle in his surprisingly light blue eyes, if I could tell the difference between Papagena and Papageno.
Agnon was a shrewd, good-humored man, very engaging and hospitable. As he served me cognac and home-baked cookies his wife had made, he told he had read all my works. He would keep my secret, he promised, and added that my miraculous story just confirms the reality of all my fiction and all of his.
But before I ate and drank, he offered me a yarmulke and suggested I make the proper blessing. “This will give me the mitzva,” he said, “of answering Amen.”
NOTE: S.Y. Agnon won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, sharing it with another Jewish writer, the poet Nelly Sachs. It should also be noted that, contrary to their assumption, K and Agnon were not in Germany at the same time, for Agnon returned to Palestine in 1921, while K was there only in 1923. (K.L.)
JUNE 8, 1950. VISIT TO BROD
I stood at Brod’s door, the second-floor apartment on Zamenhof Street, one of the quiet streets of old Tel Aviv. I heard music. Brod was playing the piano, perhaps composing. My heart was racing. I looked at the little brass plate on the door: Dr. Max Brod, underneath which was another metal sign: PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK OR RING BETWEEN 2 AND 4 P.M. I looked at my watch. Four thirty.
I rang. He opened the door; I recognized him at once. Short, slight, oval face, with the intelligent, good-humored mien I remembered from decades ago. Brod has all his hair, no longer black but silver grey.
“Shalom,” said Brod. He said some more words in Hebrew.
“Shalom, I’m from Prague, Dr. Brod,” I said in German. “To quote Shakespeare, I have little Yiddish, less Hebrew.”
Brod’s eyes lit up as he laughed. “Ah, please, please come in. From Prague. And you survived. Who are you?”
I hesitated. Bit my lip. I didn’t realize I was biting my lip until I sensed the pain. A difficult moment in my life. One I had not rehearsed, not thought through. I was so excited about the possibility of seeing Max, how I would negotiate the details of the encounter never entered my mind. I knew it would be difficult but I had no prepared script. Aside from my parents and sisters (and Agnon), I had not revealed my identity to anyone.
I gazed down at Brod.
In retrospect, I should have spoken differently.
“Don’t you recognize me?”
“No. I can’t say I do. I might say there is a vague familiarity in those piercing blue eyes, as if I’ve seen you before, but no, I can’t say I do. Please tell me. Come in. Sit down, please.”