Do I still feel that way, on my hundredth birthday? I can sense a little devilish smirk on my lips.
Yes, up till last year.
JULY 1985. DARK ENERGY
I’m just a speck in the universe. Consider mysteries like dark energy, phantom energy, anti-gravity. These are forces, astrophysicists declare, that are defying the orderly, predictable cosmos and are turning the study of physics upside down. Scientists cannot understand it, but telescopes and calculations are confirming the mysteries. These forces may reverse creation and doom the cosmos in billions of years. The universe may explode or implode. Put that mystery, put dark energy or anti-gravity in the same basket as the mystery of K, and one can conclude how believable, real, not weird at all, is the so-called mystery of the death and life of K.
SEPTEMBER 1989. LOVE OF LEARNING
Max and I, Felix and I, our entire circle, we had an aesthetic. We would read to each other passages from books we liked and analyze them. What can I compare it to? The closest I can come to explaining love of learning is the love of woman. It was exciting, stimulating, satisfying — and it made us yearn for more. We looked forward to reading and discussing like a workman looks forward to a day of rest, like a Jew yearns for the Messiah. Our universities were saturated with people who loved books, ideas, not like students at American universities today, which are a parody of learning, places where great books are no longer important. And how limited are some of the professors who teach there. I read about a big scandal reported in the International Herald Tribune: about a professor in Sydney, Australia, with the improbable name Kaspar Kugel, who specialized in the history of art at Outback College. His wife wrote all his books because he couldn’t put two sentences together without using adhesive tape or glue. And when his school created an Institute for Judaic Studies, this intellectual midget was invited to teach a course called Judaism in Art. Their reasoning: since Kugel was a Jew, he had to know about Jewish art. He didn’t know Hebrew, so he couldn’t discuss Biblical themes; he didn’t know Yiddish or Yiddish folklore, so Chagall and other East European Jewish artists were a mystery to him. Since he didn’t know Judaism, he was the perfect candidate for the job. With no knowledge of the subject he could be perfectly objective. Kugel’s wife would have lectured for him but she couldn’t ventriloquize.
But our universities here are no better. I recently met a professor of the philosophy of gargling. I am not joking. Here in Prague. He has been on many European television shows and even on our own National Comedy Hour, where he was sandwiched in between a talking dog and the Eskimo Sealskin Quartet. His name is Professor Geldman and he is proud of his two first names, Gyorgy Gilbert, which he proudly uses in the articles he never writes. He is a full professor of gargling at the Medical University. You think gargling is simple? he is quoted as saying. There are different types of gargling, with melodies or without. Research has shown you can gargle up and down the scale. There is silent gargling and melody sans sound. Only Geldman knows the difference. He can gargle in Czech, Slovak, Russian, and several Gypsy dialects. He is working on English, which because of its many sibilant sounds is quite difficult, and French, or silent gargling, which is the most difficult of all.
In order to get a professorship Gargles Geldman had to publish a book, with a small demo record of how to gargle in tune. During his thirty-three years of teaching he could only gargle up one book, but it’s the standard in the field: The Philosophy of Gargling. He is now working on a related topic: The History of Hiccups.
NOTE: This must be a joke for there is no such book and no such professor at the Prague Medical University. With a twinkle in his eye, K refuses to comment. It is no doubt a parody on a stupid teacher he once met. (K.L.)
NOVEMBER 1990. MY LIKENESS
When the Soviets and their Czech communist henchmen had the country in their iron grip, reading and selling my works was forbidden.
Today, my likeness, with my blue, brooding eyes and intent stare, appears on mass-produced T-shirts sold by street vendors and tourist shops in Prague, especially during the summer in Old Town Square. I see young men and women wearing them everywhere, almost as if my face has become a national banner.
And how I wish I could show my parents and my sisters the quaint Café K. And my face on coffee mugs. Brod too would have smiled.
DECEMBER 1991. A DREAM OF OLD AGE
I once dreamt that a young angel asked me if I have any problems with old age. A talkative little angel was he. He hadn’t yet learned reticence. Seeing me hesitate to answer quickly, he jumped in with:
It’s probably digestion. Or insomnia. All old people have that. You probably can’t fall asleep for hours. True, I said, that had been a problem of mine during my twenties. Then surely it must be the prostate, said the angel. You have to get up three or four times a night to pee, excuse me, I mean urinate, and then you have to wait for what seems like minutes for the flow to begin.
I shook my head.
Maybe it’s cravings you have, the young angel continued. For sweets. Old men like chocolate.
I nodded. I’m famous for my chocomania. I love especially the European liquor-filled chocolates which I skillfully penetrate ever so slightly with an incisor and then slowly suck out the liquor and then crunch the chocolate and the sugar lace that still has the essence of the brandy, the cherry kirsch or the cognac.
But you can’t enjoy those, alas, said the young angel, because you have diabetes.
Dead wrong.
Do you have any problems with old age?
Yes. Sometimes when I put on my trousers I put my left leg into the right trouser leg.
Then you pull it out?
Pull what out?
Your leg.
Which is where?
In the wrong trouser leg, the angel said, exasperated.
No, I said.
No?
No, I said.
You stay that way?
No.
But it has to be one or the other. Either in or out.
No. I just turn around.
Although it was just a dream, I should have laughed but I didn’t. I kept a straight face. Not a hair moved on my white mustache; no wind of movement disturbed the hairs of my Van Dyke. If “Metamorphosis” was funny, a fortiori that slipping the left leg into the right trouser leg and turning around was hilarious. That was the punch line to the absurdity. But I didn’t even smile.
Then I added: And sometimes I turn the pants around.
But angels do not weep. And they cannot laugh.
APRIL 1992. EINSTEIN
No one knows about this picture. You will not find it in the countless albums on Prague, K in Prague, K here, K there. But in one of my albums is a precious photograph taken many, many years ago where Einstein and I stand next to each other. I with serious mien, in jacket, high collar, shirt and tie, unsmiling, as in all my photos, as in all photos of Europeans at the time. And Albert, in sweater, mustache as usual, a wise Mona Lisa smile hovering in his eyes,
I can hear someone saying, I didn’t know there was a picture of you and Einstein. I didn’t know you met him.
I could say, There’s a lot you don’t know. But the words hang there, unsaid, unread, a white shade drawn over them. All one has to do is pull up the shade or part the curtains if the shade isn’t there. Does this make sense? No? Good. I didn’t want it to.