IT WAS EVENING WHEN WE ARRIVED AT KARLSBAD. WE WERE TO stay at the Hotel Kroh, which was close to the Kurhaus baths. The journey, and Franz’s presence, had exhausted me and I was looking forward to a few moments alone in my room. As we pulled into the long drive of the hotel I had tantalising glimpses of cool gardens and arched windows looking into dim rooms in which yellow lamps glowed. My body, tired and sore, vibrated with anticipation.
Franz had hurried to the hotel desk ahead of me, leaving me to struggle up the staircase in his wake. My body was frozen and rigid and my blood seemed to have stopped flowing. I had to stand there in the yard and make a spectacle of myself chafing each of my legs with my hands before I could even attempt the stairs. A porter in a dirty jacket appeared at my elbow and tried to help me, but I rudely ordered him away, ashamed.
Labouring up the stairs, I realised that my glimpse of the hotel’s opulence must have been a glimpse into the hotel’s past. At close range I could see it was a shabby place, past its prime and gently decomposing. The wide carpets were spotted and crusted with dirt, the brass fittings tarnished and every surface overlaid with a furred layer of dust. A strange smell pervaded the hall, of vinegar and the insides of old books.
By the time I reached the desk Franz had already received his key and was signing himself into the register. I stood to one side until he had finished and had turned to go, saying over his shoulder that he would meet me in the bar later.
The hotel clerk was an elderly man with a face as naked and pink as a baby’s. He searched and searched through his papers and ledgers, but my name did not appear anywhere. There was much fussing. Several other clerks were called for assistance and together they hunted through drawers and the wall of little pigeonholes as though they were conducting a burglary. Then they came back to me, shaking their heads. There was nothing under my name and the rooms of the hotel were completely full. The pink-faced clerk showed me the ledger; Franz’s name was the last one written on the list.
I had propped myself up on the desk with my forearms to take the weight off my cramping legs while they searched, and now I hung there like a shipwrecked man clinging to a piece of flotsam. My head ached and the fumes from the spring, strong even here inside the hotel, were making me nauseous. I could not face another carriage ride to a different hotel. I decided to ask Franz—to beg him if necessary, or pay him—to give me his room while he found accommodation elsewhere. Franz was sent for and I sank into a dusty sofa.
I remained sitting there while Franz came down and had an argument with the clerk. The clerk kept gesturing to me, his pink fingers delicately curled, but Franz never turned his head, although moment by moment the violence of his gestures increased. I closed my eyes.
Theodor, it transpired, had booked us into a shared room, which was the cause of Franz’s ire. Not only was it shared, but it was tiny: barely larger than the train compartment we had arrived in.
‘This is certainly going in my review,’ Franz hissed at me as we climbed the stairs together, as though it were my fault, or the hotel’s. I ignored him and lay down on my tiny bed, fully clothed.
When I woke up it was to the relief of an empty room. I went downstairs and found Franz in the dining room with notes and brochures spread out on the table all around him. It was still early and the dining room was almost empty. I sat down and he handed me a piece of paper covered with complicated ruled columns. He explained that it was a schedule that he had arranged for us, which would specify times for touring the town, writing the travelogue and doing our own writing.
Franz went to see about some food and left me to decipher his schedule. My head was still thick with sleep and I squinted at the rows of sharp numbers in Franz’s handwriting, unable to make sense of them. As I gradually woke up it occurred to me that the schedule, even the very idea that Franz would take it upon himself to write one for me, was totally outrageous. I whipped out my pen to make amendments.
‘Herr Kafka?’
I was still scowling when I looked up into the face of a youngish woman. She was standing bowed slightly towards me, inclining her body forward from her hips, waiting for a response. She reminded me of Uta, although this woman was younger, with her hair too tightly curled, too elaborately arranged, her dress too flounced and her lips too artificially pouted.
‘Yes,’ I said without thinking, while I continued to assess her attractiveness.
She cooed and with fluttering hands started to tell me how much she admired my work, while looking greedily down at the paper-covered table. Her eyes flashed her desire at me, which restored my temper. She was clearly angling for an invitation to sit with me. Despite her affectations, I discerned that her figure was most shapely and her fine-grained skin reflected the light with a pleasing sheen.
‘I mean no,’ I interrupted her monologue, remembering her question and my name. ‘Kafka has just gone out. I am Brod; Max Brod. Please, join me.’ I offered her the chair that Franz had just vacated.
‘Oh,’ she said. Her body sagged in disappointment. ‘Oh, no, I really can’t.’
Her eyes darted around the room as if she were hoping to catch a glimpse of Franz coming back. I too looked towards the frosted glass of the door and thought I could see the outline of Franz’s dark head appear at the other side. I was humiliated at having exposed my interest to her, and the possibility of Franz appearing and finding me with her there waiting to see him was too much. Rudely, I got up and pushed past her out of the room.
16.
ALTHOUGH I DIDN’T KNOW IT THEN, THAT FIRST EVENING AT Karlsbad was to be the model for the rest of our time there. The news that a famous writer from Prague was in residence had apparently spread instantly through the hotel the moment we had arrived. This gossip was a welcome distraction for the bored well-to-do women who populated its rooms, and hunting for Franz must have filled in time between massages, doctors’ visits and comparing ailments, and indeed perhaps formed an invigorating part of their cure.
Any movements that Franz made around the hotel were observed and shadowed by dozens of people who tailed him in the hope of claiming a moment of conversation with the celebrated artist. The resulting encounter was then loudly flaunted by the victor at dining tables and along the spa colonnades for days afterwards.
Maddeningly for me, although news of Franz had rapidly spread, I remained anonymous. People began to take me for Franz’s assistant, and I became drawn into the hotel guests’ hunt for him, as they followed me to discover Franz’s whereabouts or tried to befriend me in the hope of wangling an introduction to Franz or, better still, an invitation to dinner with him.
Although Franz must have been greatly surprised by this behaviour he never said a word about it. I tried as best I could to shield him from the interest that he aroused, and when this was not possible I would trivialise it, putting the fascination down to boredom or the small-minded fads that thrived in spa resorts.
I am sure, of course, that at first Franz enjoyed this unfamiliar attention. Women were constantly employing flimsy ruses to entrap him, their fluting voices teasing and flirting with him; men at the bar offered to buy him schnapps or the town specialty, Karlsbader Becherbitter, and wanted to talk politics. Ignored, I looked on with gritted teeth. Franz began to be engaged in a fury of letter-writing in answer to the endless little notes that were left for him at all hours at the hotel desk or in our room or at our usual table in the dining room. I was used to being on the receiving end of such adulation, and felt bewildered and offended by how quickly Franz had taken my place as the centre of attention. Indeed, if I was honest with myself, I would have to admit that the attentions that I had received even at the height of my popularity could not equal those that Franz enjoyed at Karlsbad. He was treated like a film star, a king.