Forgiving the Angel

by Jay Cantor

  10

  A YEAR LATER, the night Elsa died in that same bed, Max had cried and moaned like a beaten animal. He couldn’t have survived her death if it hadn’t been for the support of his dear secretary, Esther Hoffe, a woman with a pleasant bosom, a fuller figure, but an equally matter-of-fact manner to his wife. She had tended his many manuscripts through to publication, arranged his appointments, and though she was married, had also tended him, had responded to Max as a man (which was, he had to admit, all the sweeter, really, because she was married).

  But after her husband died, he and Esther hadn’t married. He had felt loved by her, but not wanted (or was it the other way round?). Esther, like Elsa, lacked that purity of concentration that Dora had had, that he thought could make him feel he had been seen. So his own eye wandered, looking for another eye to look back at him.

  With dissatisfaction and a wandering eye came the usual scarifying arguments, wounds, calluses, coldness. On the afternoon the very well-known Italian interviewer had called asking for him, he’d been glad for the distraction.

  “I’m Max Brod,” he’d said, but as he did, he’d felt that that wasn’t really his name. Perhaps this unsettling effect on her subjects was part of what made her so successful as a journalist. He’d been intrigued by his unease, and, in return, he wanted to intrigue her, win over this famously beautiful woman. An admiring interview done by her would add his name to her distinguished list of subjects, so that it might become Fidel Castro, Sartre, De Gaulle, Mao, Max Brod.

  Two days later, they met in his study, where he’d carefully placed all seventy of his books on the shelf just behind the chair where he sat—one of two large armchairs he had set in front of his desk, to show that he wasn’t the sort to insist on position.

  The woman who walked into this room, and almost immediately asked for an ashtray, was even better looking than her pictures. She had lustrous black hair that framed piercing eyes, and lovely long legs that she boldly showed off with a short skirt. She was young, yes—but was she really utterly too young for him, or his prostate?

  She set a suitcase-sized tape recorder to work beside her. He was glad for it. Max looked forward to defending his view of Kafka’s themes to her, doing battle against Adorno and Benjamin, who’d said Brod made Kafka too religious a figure; once and for all he’d put on record the amazing spiritual qualities of his friend.

  “Dora Diamant,” the interviewer began, surprisingly enough, “loved Franz Kafka.”

  “Yes, and he loved her.” This made him remember the two of them performing, and Dora saying, “No, fortunately for you, we have no soup today.” Franz had stood stiffly beside her, a white waiter’s towel over his arm, and something innocent and foolish about his grin. If Kafka had recovered and he and Dora had lived together longer, would they have the sort of problems he’d had with Elsa? With Esther? He didn’t rejoice in his friend’s death, but he very much didn’t want him to have had those problems, either.

  “Perhaps Dora Diamant loved Franz Kafka more than anyone else did, even you.”

  “Yes.” Of what might she be accusing him? Not loving Franz enough? That was not a charge that any court would take seriously.

  “And she burnt his work.”

  Did the woman really imagine he hadn’t considered that? The Italian’s beauty was real enough, but her skill as an interrogator was dubious. “Kafka was alive then,” he said, “and he ordered her to do it. What choice did she have? If she hadn’t, he would have dragged his own body out of bed by the scruff of his own neck and done the burning himself.”

  “Dora said Kafka told her to destroy the manuscripts to keep the ghosts from attacking him. Don’t you think that you may have left Kafka defenseless, open to the attack of tormenting demons?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Miss?”

  “No, but Kafka did.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t believe in the afterlife. The demons, he knew, were all here on earth. That’s why—before he met Dora Diamant—he’d longed for the peace of the grave.”

  “But isn’t reputation an afterlife for a writer? Perhaps he didn’t want to be judged by us. Perhaps we’re the demons he feared.”

  Again, old news. “No one else’s opinion mattered to Franz. His no thundered so loudly in his ears that he couldn’t hear another judgment, even if it were shouted by a multitude.”

  “And he had said that no. And you ignored him.”

  “But Franz’s no was for himself, and to himself. If there was an Absolute, then Franz felt he must testify that there was an unbridgeable distance between him and it. To keep God alive for himself, he had to say no to what he could accomplish—he couldn’t finish so many of his things; and he had to say that no against himself all the way to the end, and even beyond it. Anything else would have called the Absolute into question for him, and that would have harmed the very mechanism that produced Kafka’s work. When my friend died, that machine could no longer operate, and I could publish what he left.”

  “That sounds clever,” she said, almost indifferently.

  Max could feel his chest growing damp. He could take off his jacket, but that would reveal what his tailor had worked so hard to hide. “In truth,” he said—

  “Yes, please, let’s have the truth.”

  “In truth, I was never so very sure Franz meant me to burn his work. He would sometimes tell me to destroy something even as he told me to revise the title. Why would he have wanted me to make corrections to things that would be burnt?”

  She dropped her cigarette in the ashtray, breathed in avidly. “You’ve convinced me.”

  For the first time, he saw pleasure in her eyes. Max knew immediately that he’d fallen into a trap.

  “He didn’t want his work burnt. The question then is, why would Franz Kafka give you, Max Brod, this job that he knew you wouldn’t perform? Why would your friend put a knife in your conscience like that?”

  More his stomach than his conscience, Max thought. He often felt like he’d something hard in his belly that he could neither digest or excrete. It rubbed and rubbed against the insides, producing endless amounts of bile.

  Even now, he could taste it. Why had Franz done this to him? Why tell him to do something Max had said he wouldn’t do? He remembered Franz’s description of Kafka Kat tormenting Max Mouse. “I think Franz gave me this task that he knew I wouldn’t perform so I’d always remember him. Only a law one wants to fulfill but can’t because it conflicts with another law one also wants to fulfill keeps God before our eyes.”

  “We aren’t talking about God, Mr. Brod, but a fallible man. And that man couldn’t have thought you much of a friend, if he thought he had to do all that to be remembered by you.”

  At that, Max Mouse’s eyes grew moist. He wiped them like a child with his sleeve, looking to see if her face softened.

  It didn’t. “I think,” she said, “that you’re making yourself ridiculous by avoiding the obvious explanation. Franz Kafka wanted the world to remember him as someone who believed in the Absolute, someone indifferent to audience or reputation, but he also, much more strongly, wanted to have the immortality and fame that would result from his work. So he told you to burn the work, while knowing that he’d prepared you not to do it.”

  Prepared. That was the word Kafka had used. But what she’d said couldn’t possibly be true. He’d never seen Franz be duplicitous or selfish with a friend. Or with anyone.

  But what might a man do at the last moment, to ensure his good name for eternity?

  “No, no, no, no,” Max said. He covered his face with his hands and wept in earnest.

  “Oh, yes, I can certainly see that vanity and meanness would be particularly hard for you to accept in someone that you—as Benjamin and Adorno have written—have spent a lifetime making into a religious writer, even something of a saint.”

  Could it be so simple, so obvious? Had he missed it only because he’d been blinded by his love for Franz, and—like his own wives had been toward his li
es—wouldn’t let himself see how duplicitous one’s beloved could be? That thought gave him cramps so terrible that he wanted to scream. With his head still buried in his hands, he barely noticed when the interviewer packed up her tape recorder and left.

  11

  HE PUT WHAT SHE’D SAID out of mind, not refuting it, not examining it. Six days after the interview, though, and still in some pain, Brod had been looking over some pages in Kafka’s own hand, preparing a new volume of Franz’s letters to friends and family. Pages lay scattered on his desk in piles, edges sticking out like wayward children. Overcome by an annoyance so great that it made the cramps worse, he picked up a handful of this paper, and without looking to see what was in it, he shoved it all into a brown accordion folder.

  As soon as he did it, his stomach quieted, and he knew immediately that the pages must remain forever unread, though now that the world was as avid for anything Kafka as he’d always been (and yes, still was), he’d no idea how to keep them hidden, supposing he didn’t actually burn them—which, even now, he would never do.

  Still, from that moment on, for every thirty pages or so that he prepared for publication, he also put some paper into the folder without looking at it. Not the best things, perhaps—on the other hand, who knows, perhaps some were the best things. It was absolutely necessary that he not know that, and that no one ever knew.

  Of course, sometimes he couldn’t help it; his eye glanced down at what his hands did. Once, he saw some pages that could have been a lost story by Franz Kafka, which he felt particularly virtuous for not examining, and once a note from the sanatorium that he thought said into the depths, in the deep harbors. But he didn’t stop and look further at any of it. These were the destroyed pages, the burnt things, and so not meant for anyone’s eyes. Besides, if he didn’t look, he could also hope that somewhere in the folder there was a strongly worded letter telling him not to burn his stories, perhaps even instructing him to publish them.

  But publish Franz’s diaries? His agonized letters to Felice? No, Franz would never have authorized those. Now that he’d even momentarily doubted Franz’s good faith, though, nothing could stop him from publishing them, and so the world would benefit from Max’s despair.

  The folders worked nicely enough, too. He might occasionally be reminded of the unperformed command, or what the demone italiano had said about Kafka’s motives; but if that soured his stomach, he need only blindly put one or two more pages in the folder, and he’d immediately feel some ease.

  12

  FOR A LONG WHILE, people who had a page of manuscript or letter by Kafka sent them to Max, so there’d always been new things for publication or for the folder. But in the last year, the stream of pages was finally drying up and at the same time the stomach pain and bile had grown much worse. He still treated them by shoveling a letter or two into the folder, but he had to ration the pages. Maybe it was too little; it didn’t seem to help his stomach.

  The last month, he had no appetite. He grew skinny, could trace the lump of thick bone that was his back as if it had only the thinnest covering of parchment. He’d no fecal matter when he defecated, but plenty of dark blood.

  Esther noticed, of course. Max said his problems were caused by his being Kafka’s literary executor. “The ghosts are finally coming after me.” He smiled, though he had also meant it.

  Esther had never heard the piercing conviction with which Kafka talked of these creatures, so she didn’t take the ghosts seriously, which he felt was at once sensible and philistine of her. She made him see a doctor. Within the week, he’d been booked into the hospital for tests, and when they came back, into the operating theater for surgery.

  13

  THE DAY HE WAITED in his room for drugs to take hold so he could be wheeled under the knife, he heard squat, pugnacious Esther demand a private room for him when he returned.

  “Beds are precious this week,” the nurse said.

  “Beds are always precious,” Esther replied. “And so is your patient. He’s Max Brod. He has published more than seventy volumes. He is the director of our national theater.” Even through the haze of the drugs, Brod thought, She hasn’t made Dora’s mistake. Esther knew that sensitivity wasn’t a currency that won protection for anyone.

  The nurse looked down at his chart, as if to check the name. “The man who was Kafka’s friend?”

  Esther smiled. Perhaps, Max thought, Kafka made him his executor not to ensure Franz’s own spurious sanctity, but so Max could get a private room after surgery.

  14

  AND AS THEY wheeled him into his single room after the operation, he was delighted to see what Kafka and Esther had obtained for him while he’d been under the knife. The room was spacious, with freshly painted white walls and a balcony where he might sun himself as he recovered. Esther must have gone somewhere to pick wildflowers. They filled every table and shelf.

  15

  WHEN HE AWOKE AGAIN, the drugs had worn off and he was in terrible pain. The walls of the room had turned sickly yellow, the balcony had evaporated, and the wildflowers had become arrangements ordered from florists, sent to him by well-wishers, theater companies, publishers—organizations more than individuals. They had a lacquered look, like Esther’s hair as she sat by his bed, putting entries in a ledger.

  When she saw he was awake and staring at her, she said he should try to take a little soup, even held a spoonful out for him. Max felt as though he’d swallowed a ball of fire, but to please her he slowly bent forward toward the spoon—until he saw the look of pity in her eyes for a very sick man. That disgusted him. It provided further evidence for the obvious: he wasn’t in Vienna but Tel Aviv, dying of stomach cancer, not tuberculosis, and this woman’s affection for him was in no way like Dora Diamant’s love for Franz Kafka.

  Here, however, morphine was freely available, and the drug allowed him a serenity, almost a shrug to these discoveries. Had the seeming perfection of Dora’s and Franz’s love, he wondered calmly, made him always deprecate what he had? Thus his affairs.

  Don’t be silly. After years of analysis, he knew it was the hump. If a woman accepted him into her bed, he thought he might believe he wasn’t deformed. But no, for some reason, the strategy failed; he couldn’t believe it; and so … on to the next. That meager insight, he thought, had cost him years on the couch, thousands of shekels, and done nothing to change him or to make him feel as good as morphine did.

  His surgeon came through the door, as if pushing against a strong wind. “You’ve clean-shaven cheeks,” Max said, “but I can see from your expression that you are my Gerrer Rebbe.”

  Esther and the doctor looked bewildered.

  “We opened him up,” the doctor said—not to him, though, but to Esther—“and what we found inside … well, we just had to close him up again.”

  “Can I take him home?” Esther said. They spoke as if Max had lost the power of speech. Apparently, to be condemned to death was like being turned into a bug.

  “If you think you can keep him comfortable.”

  16

  SHE DID. She found light cotton blankets, pillows for his bed, and nurses for the day, who came with bedpans, sponges for baths, and all the other necessary equipment involved in modern dying.

  People came to say goodbye, some as individuals, some as representatives of organizations; one or two, also, who had been his lovers. He was annoyed by how little the representatives knew him, and Esther was annoyed by the former lovers, and as she was his sole support now, that made the visits not worth the bother. He asked Esther to put them off.

  A day or two after that, Esther, practical as always, said, “What should I do with the things in the folders?” Esther was like him—one who arranged for publication, who got the best price, who managed to immigrate to Palestine. She was sensible. Still, her attitude gave him a pang. She valued him, but mainly because he was a source of support for her.

  “You mean the burnt things—”

  “What? No, I mean the
brown folders in your study, the ones with Kafka’s papers in them.”

  He felt anxious that she knew about them, but he had the presence of mind to tell her that no one must see those things while either of them were alive. “The world would despise you for revealing them,” he said; and, as he didn’t know what was inside the folders, maybe what he’d said was true. Maybe Kafka had done unspeakable things—besides making Max his executor. He doubted it, though. He probably had saved all his meanness for his supposed best friend, his dupe, his front man for sainthood.

  “Sell the manuscript to The Trial,” Max said. “That will give you plenty to live on. Leave the folders to your children. By that time, they can be sold. But tell them, too, that I’ve stipulated no one can see the material before they bid on it. Tell your daughters they’ll get the best price that way. People might be repelled by what the folders reveal and not make an offer. This way the unknown will lead to a bidding frenzy.” Really, he had in mind that such a ridiculous restriction might stop anyone from bidding at all. It had become desperately important to Max that the burnt things stay hidden forever, yet he couldn’t tell Esther to burn them. No one should ever make that decision. “And remind your children that they’re entitled to sell to the highest bidder, even the murderers.” Surely the government would stop that, put the whole matter in the courts for some long process that would have made Kafka weep and laugh at once until he choked, which would serve him right.

  The stab of anger at someone he still loved made his belly hurt so much he couldn’t talk anymore. He heard a horrid high-pitched sound. In his study, someone was cutting through thick bones while the animal was still alive.