Prague.
A man in his forties goes to Prague with his 18 year old daughter to finalize a real estate transaction. Whilst there he takes a "Kafka" walking tour of the old city. He shows up at the allotted time and, to his surprise, finds himself alone with a beautiful young guide. They start walking. It’s as if he’s on a first date. She talks about Kafka’s early life, pointing to the house at Karpfensgasse and Maiselgasse where he is said to have been born, mentioning that his mother died when he was very young.
This the man knows to be untrue. Julie Lowy died in 1934, ten years after Franz’s death.
They continue to stroll through narrow side-streets together, stopping at a small church. No one is near. It’s quiet. His body disolves, unsure of where it ends and the skin-temperature air begins. She stares into his eyes and starts talking about herself – her studies at Charles University, her childhood in the surrounding countryside, the corruption of local police, her desire to leave the country.
She says she has her own apartment. He observes her lips.There’s a white fleck on one of her front teeth.
After a time they move on. She points out various buildings, architectural features, a ceramic fish on a yellow wall. Given her error, he isn’t sure he can believe anything she says.
They return to the Old Town Square, where the tour began, to stand facing each other, slightly closer, perhaps, than decorum called for. She gazes again into his eyes and asks if he has anymore questions. He knows what he wants to say – he doesn’t want to leave her – but shakes his head. She turns and slowly walks away. He watches the movement of her shapely back as it disappears into the crowd. A hollow pain fills his stomach as he makes his way over to the restaurant where his daughter awaits.
Copyright Nigel Beale 2006
*****
"Love is like a knife with which we explore ourselves." "The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demonic or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner"
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us…We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
"If I felt in love, I would be in a world in which I could not live." Franz Kafka.
