And soon we were both giggling together like we used to years ago in our youth in Prague.
“But one thing is sure,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Maybe I’m not K and you’re not Brod, but the love between these two idiots staring at each other in consternation and laughter and disbelief, both of us miraculously alive, is as strong as ever.”
And we took one, two steps toward each other and embraced like David and Jonathan.
I don’t know whose tears ran down my cheeks onto my neck, mine or Maxie’s.
NOTE: There are noticeable differences between K’s first journal entry pertaining to his visit with Brod in Tel Aviv and the two others. Perhaps the second or third one is, to use K’s phrase in the above entry, “wishful thinking” on his part, words K wanted to say but didn’t. On the other hand, it is possible that all three took place. But for the sake of accuracy and completion all are included. K refuses to comment. “My journals are what they are. I don’t provide Rashi commentary,” he says. (K.L.)
JANUARY 1952. CLOTHING
I always wore white shirts, winter and summer. I couldn’t imagine myself wearing any other color. Years back the collars were round, as were the brim and shape of my black derbies. With the passing of time the collars became less round and more and more pointy. Colored shirts came into fashion, checked and dotted and striped ones, like the sheep that Jacob bred on Laban’s farm. But these I would never wear; although I tolerated them on others.
And jeans? Never, nevah, nepa.
Jeans were for peasants.
1952 [NO MONTH GIVEN]. DORA
In 1951, D returned for two weeks and then, surprisingly, three months later to inform me she’s pregnant. But she says she wants an abortion. She says she cannot care for the baby. I refuse. Our child, I explained to her, the family I longed for with her decades ago. Another miracle. An unending series of miracles. And you want this miracle scraped with a surgeon’s knife? No. Not. Never. I’ll find a Jewish couple who will adopt the baby.
I want the child to live.
I don’t accept her flimsy excuse that she’s too old to be a mother and care for a baby. That she’s unsuited.
I will not elaborate on our many exchanges, on my feelings and D’s feelings. Suffice to say that through the shamesh at the Altneushul we found a childless couple, now working in Prague, to adopt the baby. I deliberately did not meet the couple, nor did I want to learn their name. The final arrangements were made by the Jewish Children’s Home, Prague’s famous caring Jewish orphanage.
Now all we had to do was wait.
I can’t speak of the tragedy. Maybe it was my fault. Had I listened to her she would still be with us, with me. But like Rachel she gave life while giving up her own.
Eight days later we had a sad, subdued bris for the little boy. Before the baby was born I spoke of a possible name if it would be a boy. D protested, saying that Ashkenazi Jews do not name children after living relatives and certainly not after a father. I told her it wasn’t after me but after my great-grandfather. We then spoke again about the adoption. She said she didn’t want to be present when the baby was given away — and how prophetic, alas, were her words.
Yes, there was a little tweak in my heart as our baby, D’s and mine, was given away. The Jewish Children’s Home did not tell the couple that the mother had died in childbirth. Why spoil their joy? The shamesh and the officials at the Home liked the couple — bright, intelligent, sensitive — and I knew they would make good parents to the infant.
It was good I didn’t have a child with D in the 1920s. I have often stated that I wanted a child with her under normal family circumstances. And anyway, they, them, the evil ones, would have killed the child. But when I met her after the war I was a different man and it was a different world. True, I was old, but after my so-called death I never looked at myself in a mirror again and so in my mind’s eye I was a young man and I felt good. In fact, the older I got the better I felt. My insomnia was gone, I was vital, strong, healthy. I never felt older than mid-thirties. Only one’s outside changes. Within, one is always young.
APRIL 1962. MAX BROD, AGAIN
Twelve years passed since I was in Israel, since I saw Brod. Now I visited him again. This time I brought all the letters he had written to me that I had saved.
His eyes gleamed. He smiled. He hugged me, pressed me close to him. Tears stood in his eyes.
“Fear not, doubt not,” I told him. “It is indeed I.”
“So you lived,” Brod said. “And you let your friend, your brother, mourn for you. You let me suffer that day. I had no tears left.”
“Yes,” I said, and I could not look him in the eye. “And for that inexplicable decision I have not been able to forgive myself. From the bottom of my heart I beg for your forgiveness. I know I betrayed you.”
Brod nodded, closed his eyes as if understanding. But he did not say he forgave me.
“So you died and didn’t die.”
“Yes. Exactly. I died and didn’t die. I died because I never wrote again. Never wanted to. Never, never, never ever had an urge to. Once, I had a passing fancy of writing a memoir that I would call Davka K. But I never got beyond the title. The name of the book, with its delightful rhyme, was so brilliant no text could surpass it. So I stopped while I was ahead. True, I never interfered with you publishing my works. And each time one book came out I had the feeling that I had just written it. But then again, you thought, and so did everyone else, that I was dead. And I did not press my parents or sisters to stop you.”
“A staged death,” Brod said in bewonderment.
“Without Klopstock it would not have been possible. You see this Van Dyke beard? Same one I grew then. A beard, a slight stoop, a limp for a while at the funeral, a French beret and a walking stick— those were the props. The plan was, as discussed with Klopstock, that I would be a deaf, mute cousin. I would be reborn as Ignatz K and work in my father’s warehouse. But I rejected that idea. Suppose I slipped up. Suppose I hurt myself and yelled, ‘Ouch!’ Divesting myself of being K was bad enough. But not being able to talk? An impossible task.
“And besides Klopstock, Nora lifted my spirits. Why did I say Nora? Nora is from A Doll’s House. Of course, I mean Dora. My love. Do you know what a medicine love can be? And what a fateful virus scorn, hate, unlove, neglect can be? Only now, in the middle of the twentieth century, are scientists, doctors, oncologists finally conceding the power of the invisible atoms in love and hope, optimism and faith.”
“Do you have family?” Brod asked very gingerly. “Children?”
“I do.”
And a happy beam of light spread across Brod’s countenance as I told him about my children.
I looked at my friend. Who would believe that Brod and K would be embracing in Tel Aviv, renewing their decades-old friendship? Max Brod: my genius, my savior. It was Brod’s devotion that made K immortal. It was he who brought me worldwide fame. In 1950, when I left him, despite his remarks that he did not believe me, I sensed a modicum of doubt, even regret for his incredulity. Perhaps that is why he asked me to visit him again next time I came to Israel. Perhaps he realized that no impostor would want to play a trick like that on an innocent, decent man — or seek to impersonate his long-dead best friend.
I did not write to Brod between 1950 and 1962, although I later regretted this too. But we did correspond after my second visit, when we parted like brothers. All the love that had flowed between us during our youth was expressed in that parting embrace and exchange of kisses. We loved each other like David and Jonathan. Yet I never thought of moving from Prague and living in Tel Aviv next to Max, even though I was a Zionist, an early supporter of Zionism.