Read More: A Brief Q&A with Barbara Krasner
Amalia rolled up her cardigan sleeves for yet another hot July day in Prague. Today, Monday, was the first day of her thrice weekly, three-hour fiction workshop. Workshop leader, Famous Writer, leaned in over the seminar room’s conference table, playing Hangman on the back of the student manuscript they were discussing. That only meant that Famous Writer was hungover or perhaps even still drunk. On Wednesday, Amalia’s twenty-page submission was up for critique. Based on how the conversation was going so far, she dreaded the thought of it. One of the grad assistants, a good ten years younger than Amalia, had a habit of starting her comments with, “Well, for me,” and ended every sentence in that new millennial way, with the questioning, upward intonation. It drove Amalia nuts.
Famous Writer could and most likely would tear Amalia’s writing apart. That would make her want to physically shred her pages and toss them onto the cobblestone for the tram to trample. When she had seen the ad for the Prague Summer Workshop in Poets & Writers, she applied without giving it much thought. Amalia figured coming to Prague for a month’s fiction workshop at Charles University would help catapult her writing after years of rejections and no representation. But since arriving on Saturday, she just felt alone.
“Let’s declare a victory for today,” Famous Writer mumbled. The poor writer whose manuscript received critique was still dabbing away at her eyes with her sleeves. As class members packed up their belongings, a young woman in the MFA program at George Mason said, “Why don’t we all meet up in the Old Square for dinner? That outdoor place by the jazz festival banners?” Amalia nodded. She might have to have lunch alone, but she’d be with the group for dinner. Maybe Prague would work out all right after all.
She’d only written fifty pages of this story, “Flight,” about a Holocaust survivor visiting his brother for the first time since the brother’s immigration to America in 1910. She played around with time like Dara Horn did in The World to Come. She also liked the notion of alternate universes, that her ancestors were alive and well at the same moment just, somewhere else. She doubted any of her classmates thought of these things.
Ambling on the bumpy cobblestone—no wonder Czech women had such thick ankles—Amalia ventured into Shakespeare & Co. She plucked Kafka’s Amerika from the shelves. There was something imperative about reading Kafka in Prague. The whole city paid homage to the writer, from the Franz Kafka Museum near the Old Market to the Franz Kafka Café on Sirota Street, situated between her fiction workshop at Charles University and her Jewish Studies course at the Jewish Federation in the former Jewish Quarter of Josefov.
Fingering the pages of Kafka’s novel, Amalia could feel the writer’s presence, and not just because it was July 3, his birthday. He left a lingering spirit, as if he were still buzzing around town on his uncle’s motorbike. It must have made quite a racket on the cobblestone.
She was sure she had an old Schocken edition at home, but that was in English. This was in German. At least now maybe her undergrad major might become useful. She checked the copyright page and had to laugh. Sure, this edition was in German, but it was published in New York by Schocken in 1940. It made sense, she guessed, since the book was about an immigrant arriving in New York.
She flipped through the pages, half-expecting the type to be in old German Fraktur. Here in Prague, below the red-and-white Czech street signs, remnants of long-ago Fraktur, such as Fünfkirchen Gasse, peeked out from under the whitewashed exteriors. In the Old Town Square, the pharmacy sign, Apotheke zum weißen Adler. German-speaking Habsburg Empire apparitions showed everywhere like the Jerusalem Synagogue plaque celebrating the fiftieth anniversary jubilee of Franz Joseph I. Then in the same synagogue, the plaque pulled from the Zigeuner Synagogue, which this structure replaced in 1905.
While perusing titles on other shelves, her fingertips tracing hardcover spines, she planned her evening. After the group dinner, she would settle into her hotel room with a bag of Lay’s Roast Chicken–flavored potato chips she’d scored at Tesco’s. Why couldn’t Lay’s offer these in the United States? She brought the book to the counter and paid her crowns.
She placed Amerika into her large purse and headed to the Franz Kafka Café. She took a seat outside, away from the Czechs smoking cigarettes, and ordered a schnitzel and Coca-Cola Lite. An American in Prague reading a story about a Czech immigrant in America. It felt bashert, meant to be.
Wanting to take every opportunity available in the program to see more of Prague and Czech lands, Amalia had signed up for the afternoon’s optional tour of “Kafka’s Prague.” Their group numbered about ten, and their Czech literary scholar-turned-guide was so into his spiel that he closed his eyes as if he were summoning Kafka’s spirit. Amalia knew she could summon him better through the tribal connection. And if she had to, she was willing to lay on her back with her legs in the air, unable to turn herself over just like Gregor Samsa, to call Kafka to her. She imagined herself feeling this way in tomorrow’s workshop.
“Do you ever think you’ll come back to Prague?” one of the psychotherapists from the Prague Summer Program poetry workshop asked. She was tall and lean, sporting her Fendi backpack. Amalia could only tell it was a Fendi because the psychotherapist, whose name Amalia could never remember, lifted it constantly to ensure all around her knew it was a Fendi. Of course, the question was not directed at Amalia exactly. The two of them and two other psychotherapists, all from Manhattan and all in the poetry group, had formed a circle in front of the Kafka Museum.
“No,” said another psychotherapist, this one petite, dark-haired, wearing slim jeans and sandals. Like that was practical on ages-old cobblestone.
They’d been standing there for maybe fifteen minutes. Amalia said, “My legs are getting numb. I can barely move them.”
Petite Psychotherapist said, “Well, that’s too bad for you. We’re all fine.”
Amalia was tempted to smell her breath and her armpits. Her past crashed down on her. In her MFA program in Vermont, sometimes she’d be in mid-sentence, and the others would simply walk away or engage in another conversation. Was she annoying, or worse still, boring, old, irrelevant? Or was there something just wrong with her? She had done nothing offensive, as far as she could tell.
Kafka understood what it meant to be odd and insignificant. He couldn’t have come up with his characters—Karl Rossman, Joseph K., or Gregor Samsa—without that kind of personal experience.
The entourage moved toward the Old Market Square. The instructor pointed out all the places Kafka had lived—his birthplace, the Dům u Minuty house where he once lived, his father’s wholesale haberdashery, now a bookstore, on the ground floor of Kinsky Palace. He lived his whole life essentially in the vicinity of Old Town Square. Amalia couldn’t imagine moving several times within such a short distance. Oh, wait, maybe she could.
Amalia brought out her hot pink Canon point-and-shoot. Everyone else used their iPhones. Way too sophisticated. Amalia preferred the feel of the camera. She panned the square and took photos of Kafka’s places in chronological order as if she were telling his life’s story with images. His presence was so strong, palpable. But she also took candid shots of the psychotherapists. They reminded her of the evil stepsisters in Cinderella. Grimm Brothers’ version. Why did people have to be so nasty?
She followed the tour group, a step or two behind. No one interacted with her. She came to Prague to workshop her story. She came to get a new perspective. But if she were going to continue to be alone, she could have done without the extra expense in New Jersey. Yet she knew she had to come to Prague, as if Kafka himself were saying, “You must leave your life behind and come join mine.”
Maybe it’s as Gertrude Stein once said: “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” Maybe that was what happened to these psychotherapists, although there must be another Gertrude Stein quote about simply being bitchy.
After the literary walk ended, Amalia took a seat by the jazz festival banners at the outdoor restaurant in the Old Market Square. She didn’t see anyone from workshop then or even an hour later, but she could hear them in her head, laughing at how gullible that older student, Amalia, had been, thinking she’d been included. She’d been on trial, and the verdict came in against her. Someone had lied. Amalia H. had done nothing wrong. Now she sat, alone, in a cage without bars. She finally ordered a chopped salad and pulled out Amerika.
“May I sit here?” a man asked. Amalia glanced around. It was early yet, and there were plenty of seats. Why here? Why her? Then she examined the man. Chestnut curly hair. Maybe like her, around thirty-two. He was dressed in a spandex biking outfit, and he had that rugged, chiseled look about him—an athlete. His accent, though, stymied her. English was not his first language, but she couldn’t place his origin. He sounded a bit like Audrey Hepburn.
She nodded, and he sat across from her, pulling his sunglasses over his forehead and letting them nestle into the crown of his hair.
“I know, but I hate eating alone. Don’t you?” He was smiling now and his teeth dazzled. That could be due to whitening strips, clean living, or a new set of teeth altogether.
“I’m Amalia, from America”—she found herself holding up the book—“but you probably knew that from my accent.”
He smiled again. “I’m Jean-Pierre from Belgium, but I don’t know if you knew that from my accent. My father’s an exporter, so we moved around a bit … Holland … England. I’m told my accent is like—”
“Audrey Hepburn,” Amalia said.
“I was going to say King Charles, but I think Hepburn is actually a better match, thanks!”
Amalia blushed. “What are you doing in Prague?”
“We have a race here. My final appearance on the Belgian national cycling team. This is a lovely country, and Prague is a work of art. Have you seen much of it?”
“No,” she said. “I just arrived two days ago. I’m here to write.”
The waiter set down her salad.
“I’ll have a Pilsner and”—he opened the menu and scanned the list of items—“beef steak tartare.”
The waiter replaced the menu to its grooved holder on the table and scurried off.
“That’s an odd choice,” Amalia said. “Wouldn’t you need carbohydrates for your biking?”
“That’s what the beer is for,” he said.
The sun dipped behind a building. They talked about Audrey Hepburn movies. Her favorite was Love in the Afternoon. His, Roman Holiday.
He devoured his meal. “Where will you go after dinner?”
“Back to my hotel in Prague 6.”
“You’re in Prague, young lady, City of Spires!” He gestured around the square.
“Well, I was planning on going to New Town tomorrow, the movies at Cinema Svĕtozor. Our program shows movies for free every Tuesday.”
He wiped his mouth with his serviette. “Maybe I’ll see you there. Adieu for now.” He disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
The movie had already started when Amalia slipped into the theater on Vodičkova Street in New Town. The sausage she’d bought at the kiosk outside the theater was still making its way through her digestive system. Maybe she should have ordered a beer to wash it down. She smiled, thinking about beer as Jean-Pierre’s preferred carb. Most athletes, she imagined, ate bowls of pasta. The Prague program’s theme was music, and the program director chose four music-related Czech films, one each week. She quickly grabbed an aisle seat. This week’s feature, 1963 Audition, was directed by Milos Forman before he became known in Hollywood. It was like watching American Bandstand behind the scenes, or one of those B movies she’d seen on TCM using the movie format to showcase musical talent—like an Alan Freed show on the silver screen.
Amalia looked around the theater. There in the back row—lucky her!—sat the psychotherapists like klobásy links, not enough space for an individual thought between them. It was stiflingly hot in here. This was Europe, and that meant no air conditioning. If only she could have a day when she did not turn into a sweatball. Not the best look for her. The door at the back of the theater opened.
“Close that door,” someone yelled out in English.
Amalia turned. Sunlight backlit a silhouette, a man’s shadowy outline like out of film noir. His footsteps came closer. Then his voice. “May I sit here?” Jean-Pierre said as he slipped past Amalia into the adjoining seat. She caught a whiff of liquor and sweat and began to breathe only through her mouth.
“So, you did decide to come,” she whispered, measuring each word.
“Of course.”
She kept her arms tucked within the arms of her seat. Flashes of light from the screen blurred her vision. She knew this would trigger a migraine. If only she had brought her Advil. She thought she heard her name coming from the direction of the psychotherapists. She couldn’t breathe. Sounds reverberated in her eardrums until she wanted to scream. She shot up and bolted toward the back. She ran right onto the cobblestone street and leaned against a lamppost. She was hyperventilating, no question about it.
Then she heard it, the rumbling. Off in the distance at first, then growing closer and louder. A motorbike on the cobblestone created such a disturbance. She looked at the rider. He nodded at her. He had dark hair, pomaded, and parted down the middle. His ears stuck out like pot handles. He was slender, with high cheekbones, and didn’t at all look like the type of young man who would be on a motorbike. He coughed a little. There across Wenceslas Square stood the terra-cotta Assicurazioni Generali, the Italian insurance company where Kafka had worked. Because there was no mistake in Amalia’s mind. This man on the bike was Franz Kafka. She was losing all her cups in her cupboard, as he might have said to her in German.
Someone on the tram back to Old Town carried a book by Milan Kundera. Amalia’s Czech wasn’t good enough to make out the title, but she recognized the name. She had read one of his novels in preparation for the summer program. It was very literary, in the best sense of the word. Kundera once wrote, “Happiness is the longing for repetition.” There was hardly anything she wanted to repeat in Prague.
Was there anything worth repeating in Prague? Truth be told, her best moments were spent alone. Like this morning’s visit to the Alfred Mucha museum. Too bad the umbrella she bought there with those wistful images of hourglass women broke the first time she opened it. She didn’t know what to say to the George Mason woman in class tomorrow. She’d probably say nothing, as usual. She never understood why other students didn’t like her, not here, not in her MFA program. Her mother would say it’s because she was Jewish or because she was smarter. Maybe she was right on both counts.
She made her way to yet another Kafka café, the Café Arco, in Nové Město, the New Town District, on Hybernská Street. She tried to imagine Kafka and his buddies in this space—they belonged to a Czech chapter of PEN and met here. Kafka was peculiar, yet he had friends, even a fiancée, although he did memorialize his engagement as a form of arrest in The Trial. Still, maybe some Kafka vibes would rub off on her.
Amalia sat now at a large table and marveled at the art nouveau ambience. The engraved glass lighting fixtures reminded her of her mother’s Fortuni lamps, purchased and imported from one of her parents’ many trips to Italy. The walls were painted a kind of coral-red, and patrons in jeans appeared out of place—anyone from the twenty-first century appeared out of place. The café made it well known that it was established in 1902. She opened the menu—gourmet fare in any language. She opted for one of the Czech national dishes, svičková na smetaně, roast beef in cream sauce with dumplings. At least it wasn’t the usual pork on top of pork with a side of pork she found on Czech menus. What she could really use was a hot corned beef sandwich on fresh rye with Russian dressing. Maybe a little pastrami, too, a can of Dr. Brown’s Diet Black Cherry soda, and some sour pickles.
Although Kafka never traveled to America, Amalia wondered what he would have thought about the American way of life. Too spoiled? Too greedy? Too bureaucratic? Would he have eaten in a kosher deli on Second Avenue on the Lower East Side of New York City? She vowed to read more of Amerika that night, because clearly what he thought he’d have put into words on each page.
Amalia sipped her beer, trying not to think about her swelling ankles, the skin oozing out of her Mephisto Mary Janes as she sat. Already she was tiring of Prague—the heat, the sun, the sweating, the walking, the abundance of pork. She needed air conditioning and large diet sodas with lots of ice cubes and a decent bed, a shower she didn’t need to climb up to. What was the point of taking a shower anyway? Within ten minutes, her hair would be matted against her head, the ends dripping like melted candles.
A ruckus arose near the café entrance. Amalia had to blink a few times. Four men wearing celluloid collars and sporting split-down-the-middle, pomaded hair entered the café. Had she seen Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris too many times? Because the appearance of these patrons was definitely not twenty-first century. Then she recognized one man by his small wireframe eyeglasses, the pronounced cleft in the chin, the thin, unshaped mustache. Max Brod. She’d seen his photo on the flap of a Kafka biography. But where was Kafka himself? Then the door swung open, and there he was, injecting his own bon vivant energy into the place.
And she was, entering an alternate universe that put her back in Kafka’s time. But the most important question: Would she have the nerve to speak to him? Then she laughed to herself. She could maybe get him to autograph her copy of Amerika, which, of course, Brod published after Kafka’s death, deliberately violating his friend’s wishes.
Instead of the squish of rubber soles on the café floor, Amalia heard the tapping of Cuban heels, the swish of tasseled dresses, and guttural German mixed with softer Czech. The air hung heavy with unfiltered cigarette smoke. The café equipped each table with at least one ashtray, something she hadn’t noticed before. The waiter arrived with Amalia’s food, served on exquisite bone china. Even he now sported a Max Brod mustache and a bleached white napkin over his left forearm.
She lifted Amerika out of her bag, which no longer looked like a backpack but instead a velvet satchel like the kind her immigrant grandmother carried in her I-just-arrived-in-America photos. Amalia gripped the book cover. Why hadn’t this book disappeared? Kafka was still alive. This book shouldn’t exist. Just look at him over there by the windows, whooping it up, hollering at the waiter to bring beer every ten minutes.
She pushed the table away and rose from her seat. She no longer wore her Mephistos. Instead her 10.5-wide feet were crunched into leather shoes. Still Mary Janes of a sort, they had small bows just below the toes and 1.5-inch heels. They were quite pretty, actually. Why couldn’t shoe manufacturers make something like this in the twenty-first century? With book in hand, she maneuvered past busy waitstaff with full trays to Kafka’s table. Pitchers of beer stood at each end. Kafka filled the mostly empty glasses of his friends.
“Another round!” Kafka said, raising his glass in the air.
The waiter worked his way around the table, satisfying Kafka’s demand. Could they see Amalia? She cleared her throat.
“Herr Kafka,” she began. She cleared her throat again. No one turned toward her. “Herr Kafka?” she said again.
Now he turned and everything and everyone but the two of them seemed to have disappeared. Amalia. Kafka. Amalia and Kafka. The Kafka. He peered into her eyes, and she reflexively crossed her arms.
“Fräulein Heller,” he said. “I’m glad you could join us. Tell us about your new book.”
Brod pulled out a seat for her between him and Kafka.
“New book?” The letters, the words caught between her teeth.
“Yes, yes. The manuscript you promised to send me. About two brothers reuniting after so many years, then flashing back to how they survived the cholera epidemic in their village.
I want to read that!” Kafka said, his eyes lighting up. “I love the idea of playing with time. Bouncing it around.”
This made no sense. The novel was incomplete, barely started, at most 12,500 words. And how could they have known this was the story—an excerpt—for tomorrow’s workshop? She stood there dumbfounded. She finally took her seat, and Brod, ever the gentleman, pushed in her chair.
“What have you got there? Kafka reached for the book in her hands. Amalia hesitated and pulled back.
But then she placed the novel in Kafka’s hands. There, she’d done it.
A vein in Kafka’s forehead throbbed. “I told you not to show this to anyone,” he said to Brod, his mouth tight.
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” Brod said. He rifled through the pages. “I didn’t publish it, I swear.” He studied the copyright page. “This was published in New York.” He looked up, his eyes wide open. “In the future.”
Kafka snatched the book from him. “New York, originally published in 1940. That’s twenty years from now.” He gave the book back to Brod. “A book called Amerika published in America. Brilliant! I referred to it as Der Verschollene, the Missing One.” He let out a hearty laugh, the depth of which Amalia hadn’t expected from someone she knew would die of tuberculosis in four years. Indeed, he began to convulse with coughing. “Everything’s all right,” he assured his friends, Amalia among them now.
When they walked out into the street a few hours later, a motorbike’s rumbling grew closer. She found herself suddenly alone. But she felt fortified, even uplifted. It was time for Amalia Heller to upright herself, turn herself over . . . and move on.
“There she goes, die Verschollene,” one of the psychotherapists said. Amalia’s throat clenched, but just for a moment. The motorbike pulled up.
“May I give you a lift?” Jean-Pierre, now in jeans and a leather jacket, asked. Amalia accepted his offer of a helmet, got on the bike. She waved with a single finger to the gawking psychotherapists.
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Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author of fiction and her short story, “The Newcomer,” won the 2024 Folio Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Folio Literary Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Vassar Review, and elsewhere. A former German major, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Holocaust & Genocide Studies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Read More: A Brief Q&A with Barbara Krasner