Letters to Kafka: A Novel

1

The Obergruppenführer

Prague

1939

Milena was locked in a cell with a bare wooden floor, a latrine in the corner, and a small high window. She shared it with a dozen women. Pankrác Prison—Prague’s main jail—was built only a few years before she was born. Formerly a banking institution, it was now used for Gestapo interrogations. Women were dragged from their cells to sessions; some returned with a split lip or a black eye. Some of their screams echoed throughout the lower levels. Some were never heard from again.

Milena was dragged to her session and forced into a chair. The lower-level chambers stank of septic damp, the ripped moulding along the walls showing this was surely where the bank safes had once been. The brick walls were cold, but the flooring was warm, like bodies had been lying on it all night. There was no window. Gales whistled through the cracks around the door and all along the exterior corridor. She could have sworn she heard his voice—the voice she had missed for fifteen years—saying her name.

Two men entered the room then turned the key in the lock before turning to her. One was tall and fair. His quotation-mark eyes were the colour of French chartreuse, his cheeks were flushed with salmon-toned blotches, and he had a long aquiline nose. His hair was slicked to the right in a deep left part, and he sported fat lips, big ears like two open car doors, wide forehead, strong jaw and chin, a bulbous head. He looked like a goose-stepping chump.

He wore a suit. The other wore a tweed cap and suspenders. He was short, with a flat nose and a flabby jawline. Milena was sure she had seen him in Wenceslas Square on occasion, buying roasted chestnuts from one of the hot carts and talking about the latest picture showing at the movie house. Yet, he also looked like a milkman she once employed when she lived in Malá Strana with Jaromír. He would deliver milk bottles with either brass or chrome caps, depending on how much cream she wanted. Whoever he was, if he also recognized Milena, his expression, perfectly controlled, revealed nothing. He spoke first.

What were you burning when you were taken into custody?

When the SS detectives had burst into Milena’s home, she had been waiting for them. The pan in the fireplace was smoking. The letters were burning too slowly; she tossed them in by the bundle, her eyes seething red, like she was swimming through sand.

The telephone call to her Resistance contact had raised her suspicions. The voice at the other end was not one she recognized. It sounded like the thick, viscous drip of honey, rather than the abrasive coffee grinder she had grown used to. She needed to pick up the latest copies of V boj. Into the Fight. The Resistance paper she was editing and distributing clandestinely to all Czech patriots. Sending her eleven-year-old daughter, Honza, to do the distribution might have seemed like a shrewd idea at the time, but when Honza didn’t return an hour later, Milena estimated she had an hour, maybe two, before the men in suits came for her.

She could have fled, but she was stubborn, always stubborn; Kafka had accused her of this several times. It was her worst fault.

Stubborn when she watched her newspaper Přítomnost—for which she was the first female editor-in-chief in its history—abolished. Stubborn when she watched her neighbours fling themselves from their balconies as the Brownshirts paraded up Wenceslas Square. Stubborn when she sent Honza to distribute V boj—what a thing to make a child do! Honza would be all right, of that she was certain. Why, that girl could sell rotten eggs to hens. Milena knew her father, Dr. Jesenský, would take charge of his granddaughter.

Milena had grabbed the V boj carbon copies and thrown them into the blaze. Letters from Jochi; from Schaffgotsch; from her first husband, Ernst; from her second husband, Jaromír. Forgive me, my dears. She winced as their words turned to ash.

The letters from Kafka. They must burn. She had turned her head in the direction of the hollowed-out spinet piano. The false backing held every letter, telegram, and handwritten note Franz had ever sent her. She was reaching for the piano when a pair of hands grasped her arms. They began to lead her out, but she knew what fate awaited a woman imprisoned by the fascists. Halt! one of them shouted as she wrenched off his hands. She ran toward the open window. A long way down. They lunged at her feet. She screamed like a thornbird that had pierced its own heart as it fell in a death spiral. Legs grabbed, body lifted before she could start her own death spiral. The defenestration was stopped before it could begin. Instead, she was dragged down the stairwell.

Now, Milena looked at the interpreter, and then at the fair man in the suit walking the length of the room and back again without meeting her gaze.

Badly written drafts.

The interpreter immediately translated her words from Czech to German for the fair man, who looked at her for the first time and said in German, "She writes for the underground subversive paper V boj. Ask her about that. But what the interpreter relayed in Czech was, You managed to slip some coded language into your newspaper past the censors. Why?"

As the editor of the Přítomnost newspaper, Milena had cued her readers to how they could operate in this newly occupied state. But her passport had been confiscated and her paper banned entirely by the Nazi censor when she wrote, Czech soldiers pass by under a window and the pavement rings a little. Only one German soldier has to pass by a café for the glasses to shake and the plaster to fall from the ceiling.

Milena looked from one to the other narrowing her eyes. I have never heard of this underground paper.

The Czech translated that she said the accusation was a lie. The German officer looked closely at Milena’s face. Hands folded behind his back, he bent at the waist so his eyes were level with hers. She jutted out her chin defiantly. No man had ever made her blush or look away. The German let out a snort and shook his head in amusement.

He turned to the interpreter and said, Sie versteht Deutsch. She understands German.

The interpreter straightened his back, and then began to fumble out some kind of explanation—that direct translations between Czech and German were impossible. Milena snorted loudly at that, which caught the two men off guard. The German paced the length of the room again, hands neatly clasped behind his waistcoat, and then back once more for what seemed to Milena the duration of a Bible.

Then he came face to face with the Czech and said, with the same honey-dripping voice Milena had heard over the telephone before her arrest, Raus. Out.

The interpreter bowed his head, tipped his tweed cap, and disappeared on the other side of the locked door.

Milena and the German looked at each other; she with eyes of bone.

Shall I speak to you in Czech or in German? he asked in German.

Milena, mindful of being tricked, remained silent. German had been made the official language of Czechoslovakia since the Munich Agreement, which annexed the Sudetenland. White socks were once again seen in Sudeten villages, and black paper covered every window. Czech street signs were changed to German, Czech social clubs were forced to close, and the Germans even insisted on everyone driving on the right side of the road. The First Czechoslovak Republic had, like Britain, driven on the left. The streets became dangerous with traffic collisions. Then, in late summer the following year, troops had marched into Poland. Britain and France declared war. Occupied Czechoslovakia was now a Reich protectorate.

No answer is wrong, I promise you, he added.

Milena shook her head. In Czech, I’m sentimental, sad, and truthful. In German, I’m sober, brief, and good-humoured. Which person would you like best?

The fair man cracked a momentary smile before catching himself. He smoothed his suit and tugged at his vest. He pulled out a folded document from his breast pocket. It was a carbon copy, so Milena could see through the limp paper and noticed it was probably typed on a Rheinmetall, a Kolibri, or an Olivetti. He read through the document, taking his time, before finally breaking the silence.

It says here you fancy yourself a descendant of the seventeenth-century Catholic dissident Jan Jesenius.

Milena pursed her lips.

You might be the equivalent of Prague royalty, as it were. He smirked, and then barely took a breath before asking, You like to sing?

Pardon me, Herr Hauptmann, I—

—Obergruppenführer.

—am not a songstress.

No, but our guards have reported hearing you singing in your cell at night.

I know I’m no cabaret singer, but—

Singing is forbidden.

But it’s Lotte Lenya.

He paused. He knew that name. How could he not? As in, Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill?

"I have always thought the tunes from The Threepenny Opera were the prettiest German songs, wouldn’t you agree?"

They are classed by the Reich as degenerates.

Oh, come now. Milena cleared her throat. ‘Gentlemen, the smiles will leave your faces when the walls come tumbling in! The towwwwwn will be razed to the grouuuuuund.’

The Obergruppenführer folded his arms.

‘Oh, show us! The way! To the next! Whisky bar! Ohhhh don’t ask why. Ohhhh don’t ask why …’

He drew back and slapped her across the face, splitting her lip open. She blinked in shock for a moment, before sucking in her lip. If she bled on him, he might deal her another blow. He leaned forward at the waist again, drawing her gaze into his. Forbidden. Degenerate. Music. Understood?

She blinked again and nodded.

He tilted his head and surveyed her features from ear to ear. Most women become hysterical right about now.

I’ve been hit before.

He narrowed his eyes. You’re not afraid of me.

Her lip pulsed like the tap of Morse code. She tasted her blood to prevent him from taking pleasure in his handiwork. You’re not very frightening. Violence is a lack of self-control. You should be pitied, not feared.

He snorted once again. God will be my judge. And I will be yours.

She gritted her teeth. If you’re asking to be crucified, Herr Obergruppenführer, I know where to procure two planks and some nails.

He grabbed her by her Peter Pan collar and yanked her face toward his. Don’t forget, Frau Jesenská, you are a prisoner here.

And when I get out, I will write about the conditions of this prison and my treatment.

"If. Not when."

Milena straightened her back. "Herr Obergruppen­führer, I am forty-three years old. My brother died in infancy and my mother died not long after. I survived the lash of my father, an unjust confinement in an asylum, the Great War, the Great Depression, two unfaithful husbands, and a criminal conviction for theft. To earn my keep, I ported suitcases for rich people and taught their bratty children languages, all while thanklessly writing articles for the Národní listy, the Tribuna, and the Přítomnost, working my way up to editor-in-chief only to see the paper banned by your fragile censors. Almost everyone I know has fled the country, been deported, or died before my eyes, yet I’m still here. Do not for one minute assume you can break me. I wouldn’t even blink if my hair was on fire."

His eyes flashed brilliant for a moment, and he released his grip from her collar. He straightened and walked the length of the room again. She wiped her lip with the back of her hand and lightly touched her cheek, hot and raw from his hand.

He read from the document as though it were an indictment: Frau Jesenská has smuggled Jews out of Czechoslovakia and into Poland. He looked up at her and she quickly folded her hands. Much good that did, as Poland is now our territory. Back to the indictment: She has a history of writing articles in support of Jewry. Is a Bolshevik and a Communist. He slapped the papers in his palm. My, my, haven’t you been busy.

I am no Bolshevik, she replied.

Is that so?

The movement at its core is pure and true, but there are no true believers to be found in Prague anymore.

He read aloud, Has a slight limp. He looked at her feet turned inward. Another lame Czech whore.

Do you know of any little girl who dreams of being a whore when she grows up?

Frau Jesenská, you answer the questions, you do not ask them—

You’re so beholden to these rules. Why is that?

—And you certainly cannot do both at the same time!

My knee was injured when I was pregnant with my daughter, and because of the strain on my body during childbirth, it never healed properly.

A daughter out of wedlock, no doubt.

I was married.

Ah, yes, your marriages. Let’s read more about those blessed unions. It says here your first husband, Ernst Pollak, was a Jew, was he not?

Pollak is no longer in Czechoslovakia.

I’m not interested in locating him, not as much as you were in defiling yourself with him. He shook his head and tsked.

At the time of my first marriage, there were no Rassenschande laws in Czecho—

Ah, yes, well, you’re in luck then! Speaking of your first marriage, you were also a known consort of Franz Kafka at that time, were you not?

Milena’s lip throbbed and swelled.

He shook his head. One Jew wasn’t enough, you had to find another. Milena noticed one small strand of hair release itself from his carefully styled fop of pomade and flip down his forehead. He ran his fingers through his hair and settled it back in line like a truant child. "You wrote in Cesta, the weekly cultural paper that we mercifully killed, that Kafka was ‘tall and emaciated, his face angular, pointed, beautiful, fierce, and good.’ Is that so?"

Milena said nothing. She looked down at her lap, where she was folding and unfolding her fingers as if they were caught in a Chinese finger trap. A woman’s muffled scream was carried on the gales that whistled through the lower levels. But then her voice was stolen as though suffocated by a handful of golden-throated dandelions.

He bent at the waist, his fair and freckled nose inches from hers. She could smell his pomade mingling with his eau de cologne, his breath like black tea from Café Union. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? He smiled for the first time, and she took stock of his gold-capped incisor. Couldn’t show a modicum of gentile restraint, could you, Milena?

Her name on his lips felt like a swift kick to her torso, one that could break her clavicle. It was his voice that had been calling her name on the wind, not Kafka’s. She felt like she was falling to the concrete floor, certain she would end up as one of the bodies that kept it warm and stinking.

Meeting his eyes, she replied, Maybe I’ll show some restraint at your funeral.

He tightened his jaw. Without another word, he exited the session room and closed the door behind him.

The thought of eternal

rest seemed decisively attractive to Milena as she lightly touched her swollen cheek and raw lip. Before she was arrested, she had been walking in the New Jewish Cemetery to exercise her weak knee. Her flat on Kouřimskà Street was less than a five-minute walk from the cemetery, and she often went there for quiet reflection, for air, for a stroll through the tree-lined promenades or a rest on the benches curiously tucked against the outer red brick wall that kept the bustling, toxic traffic at bay. But if anyone was paying attention—and they never were—they would know that she came here to say hello to Kafka. He was buried about 250 metres from the main entrance, his grey obelisk standing like a solitary sentry over the cemetery gates. On days when her mind was a terrible place, she would sit with him and tell him about her day. He had always been a great listener. And she had always appreciated a captive audience. Since his death in 1924, his grave had become more crowded, with his father joining him in ’31, and then his mother in ’34. Milena remembered them fondly, how they welcomed her into their Oppelt apartment in the Old Town Square with ginger mint tea and rock candy. His epitaph was in Hebrew; she once had a friend translate it for her, yet she only remembered bits and pieces: the magnificent, unmarried man … of blessed memory … may his light shine … may his soul be bound in the union of life.

Looking down upon his stone-peppered plot, she saw fountain pens, lead pencils, quills of varying size and plumage. The tradition of leaving behind a pen in deference to and reverence for the great Czech author continued. She smiled to see other acolytes had paid homage. It was a tradition she had started the day they buried him. The Jewish tradition was to leave a stone upon the grave, but she was not Jewish. Leaving her fountain pen seemed the best way to mark it. To mark him as a writer worthy of tribute.

Now Milena sucked up the blood from her lip the moment she heard the Obergruppenführer enter behind her. She straightened her back.

Let us begin again, he said, as he stood before her, and from the beginning. What is your full name and date of birth, for the record?

Milena rolled her eyes. What are the charges against me?

This habit you have of answering a question with another question—how long do you think I will tolerate it?

I have a right to know with what I have been charged so I may mount a defence.

How proactive of you.

When I get out of here—

Frau Jesenská, I am not one of your husbands who you can leave.

Why am I here? Why did your men turn my home upside down? What were you hoping to find?

The Obergruppenführer shook his head.

Full name. Date of birth. If you please.

Milena met his gaze and didn’t give him the pleasure of looking away this time. Milena Jesenská. Daughter of Jan Jesenský and Milena Hejzlarová. Born on the tenth day of August 1896, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which no longer exists as per the Treaty of Versailles, which you no doubt will remember.

Watch yourself, Frau Jesenská.

My apologies, I was simply unsure whether Your Excellency remembers the 1918 Armistice that put an end to the war your men started, and signed freely, admitting culpability for the deaths of ten million people and the unlawful annexation of the western and eastern territories. I’m glad to hear I’m wrong. Surely the Treaty of Versailles has nothing to do with your presence in Czechoslovakia today. That would just be ludicrous.

Hold your tongue, Frau Jesenská. I have half a mind to— he stopped himself, tilting his head to analyze the theatre of expressions gracing her face. Ah, I see. He sighed with a shake of his head. What a clever girl you are.

Don’t you want to strike me?

I will not play this game, Frau Jesenská.

You were willing to play it not a moment ago.

I won’t allow you to take the topic at hand three times around the dance floor until we’ve lost all sense of it.

I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

You and Kafka.

What about him?

We have arrested Kafka’s three sisters already.

On what grounds?!

You will tell me everything.

There’s nothing to tell.

You are forgetting yourself, Frau Jesenská. And Honza.

Milena’s soft eyes grew to the size of harvest moons.

You should think about Honza, he repeated, as he neared her face.

Milena’s hands began to fold and unfold again and again in her lap. The tear in her lip seemed to widen, as if she were now vivisectioned from stem to stern. What do you want with my daughter? She has nothing to do with Kafka.

Then you have nothing to lose by telling me what I want to know.

Milena shrugged and looked about the cold room as if the answers lay in the cracks and creases of the concrete. What can I tell you? I don’t know where to begin.

The Obergruppenführer grabbed a second wooden chair from where it leaned against the back brick wall and dragged it, screeching, across the floor until it was directly in front of Milena. He jerked it into place, unbuttoned his waistcoat, lifted his trouser legs, and sat, heaving one leg over the other as if he were taking his front-row seat at the Paris Opera for Stravinsky’s Firebird suite.

You know exactly what I want to know.

There was no point in feigning ignorance or playing coy. Not anymore. Hesitantly, Milena nodded.

He folded his arms over his lap. Begin.

2

Café Central

Vienna

1918

By the light of oil lamps, I drink tea and wash my hair. I dip each tress in sugar water and roll it up in tissue paper to curl it overnight, but in the morning, my hair stands on end like unruly sprigs of mint. Ernst will notice, and so will Werfel. They will, as always, laugh about it among themselves at the café. I would never let them see it, but the pain they cause me has no equivalent. It is a spider with infinite legs, spinning a web around every waking moment.

My husband, Ernst, and I live in a four-room flat on Lerchenfelderstraße in Josefstadt, which borders the seventh and eighth districts. My sitting room overlooks the number 46 tram that rumbles across the avenue and shakes our walls. I wish it reminded me of the spacious trams in Prague, highlighted with mahogany accents, that ascend like the North Star to the St Nicholas Church’s Staromĕstská stop. But Vienna has neither the charm nor the beauty of my Bohemian days. Vienna is a broken city that stinks of rotting sauerkraut.

Everywhere I look, from the seventh district to the fourth, men are returning home without their legs. Beggars line the Ringstraße, especially at night outside the Burgtheater or the Rathaus, hoping that the rich and powerful—the very people who shipped them off to war—will take pity on their infirmities now. They have ghost limbs, faces hastily patched together with parts missing, and all are suffering from shell shock. Food shortages have crippled the city, and even the black market is too expensive. Ernst spent my dowry within weeks of our marriage, a fact my father will no doubt hold over my head until his last breath. So now we only get one loaf of bread per person per week from the state. It is the yellow, hard, mouldy body of Christ.

When I arrived in Vienna eight months ago, I spoke not a word of German. To my surprise, Ernst, who was fluent in both German and Czech, did not help me. Instead he left me standing there, porting my own luggage at the Westbahnhof, and went straight to his lover. Shock gave way to acute misery, and I stood there sobbing until he finally sent our housekeeper, Paní Kohler, to fetch me. One can get used to almost anything in time. But at that precise moment, I seemed so far from happiness, it was almost as foreign as the British.

Ernst doesn’t share his wages from the bank with me, beyond covering the basic necessities, so every day I go to the communal kitchen and eat a poor man’s meal made with cheap grease for 6.50 crowns. The soup, comprised of boiled barley, beans, and of course, sauerkraut, is made with unclean water. The meat is fermented salami coated in breadcrumbs. The cheese pastry is made with black flour and a lot of yeast so it rises quickly. How embarrassing it is to be forced to eat here among the laundry and factory workers while my taciturn husband dines on credit at the best establishments. He did not fight in the war. He doesn’t know what war is and, therefore, what hell is. Everyone and everything—my clothes, my humidity-curled hair, the communal kitchen, every rooftop, and every cellar—stinks of nauseating sauerkraut. It’s in all of our bellies and there is no escape.

We are just thankful that we have a coal-burning stove. We previously lived on Florianigasse in the eighth district, and then Nußdorferstraße in the ungodly ninth, where the city had cut off electricity for domestic use and we had to use candles, which were impossible to buy. No fuel, no coal, not even wood—nothing to heat with, nothing to cook with. Every day I had to go into the woods near the Meidling district to collect damp bits of wood and bark that would bake in the stove but give off no heat. Beyond the canopy of trees, I could see quite clearly the ornate Schönbrunn Palace, which was blessed by protections and fortifications during the war. If only the proletariat had been afforded such dignities.

All around us in the eighth district, people are dying every day of the Spanish influenza that has killed a good half of Europe—those who managed to survive the bombings and the gas attacks. I wish I were one of them. Twenty thousand Austrians, the papers say, have been lost to the pandemic. Hospitals are overcrowded, schools, theatres, and cinemas are closed, and train and tram services are limited.

The door clicks behind me and it is Paní Kohler, who pushes me to get dressed. As a young girl in an affluent household, I was weaned and raised by the housekeeper, who would dress me in the morning. Now, due to Ernst’s tight purse strings, Paní Kohler only stays for a half-day and I have to dress myself. I am twenty-two years old and I have no idea how to lace and knot all these layers.

Paní Kohler has the kindness to at least lay out my clothes on the bed for me. I have no new clothes. The fashions of the day are changing, new styles and modern fabrics are in the shop windows of the Graben and the Kartnerstraße, but I wear my old dresses with the dated empire waists. How is a woman supposed to stay in her husband’s good graces like this?

Paní Kohler watches me as I scan today’s outfit with a disapproving eye. I meet her gaze. Did he come home last night?

She shakes her head.

I push past her down the hall and burst into Ernst’s private bedchamber. The Egyptian cotton sheets and bed linen are undisturbed. The room is stale and stuffy, as the curtains haven’t been drawn for some time. I jiggle the handle to his large burnt oak wardrobe, but I find it locked. Of course it is. It’s where he keeps his coffers. I would grab one of his brass-studded highbacked chairs and smash the wardrobe to smithereens, but Paní Kohler’s eyes bore into my back, searing my skin like a hot brand.

Apologizing to Paní Kohler for my shameful display, I return to my room to dress quickly as the bells of the Alt Lerchenfelder parish next door ring out quarter-to. Paní Kohler sits me down for my morning tea and sticky bun and hands me today’s Neue Freie Presse. The garish front-page headline says Mayor Richard Weiskirchner, a follower of intolerant former Mayor Karl Lueger, disapproves of the press Jews, the ink Jews, and the money and stock market Jews. He promises to liberate the Viennese from the shameful shackles of servitude to the Jews.

Have you seen this, Paní Kohler? I hold