The Lost Pages

by Marija Pericic

  ‘They are becoming very popular,’ he said. ‘A travelogue written by a well-known author would be even more of a success. However, I think we could do one better than even that.’

  I hoped he was not going to ask me to travel to some inhospitable, far-flung place. Images came to me of my crooked form toiling across narrow jungle paths crowded with wild animals, over jagged snow-covered mountain peaks, through windy deserts.

  ‘Africa?’ I asked.

  He ignored me. ‘What is better than a travelogue written by one well-known author?’ He paused and bared his teeth in a smile. Then he answered his own question. ‘A travelogue written by two well-known authors.’ His teeth flashed.

  He was going to ask me to write a travelogue together with Franz. The problems with this scenario came rushing into my head one after the other. I was by this time so weary of the double dealings and trickery in which I had been engaged. And the cost! It would be ruinous. There was no way that I could afford to pay for Gustav or Alexandr to accompany me on a tour that might last weeks. There was, I thought, always the possibility of going with the real Franz, but the thought of seeing Franz for a few hours, let alone spending weeks with him confined in train compartments, restaurants and museum exhibits, was too terrible to contemplate. And then there was Anja. I could not bear to be separated from her. I pictured her again as she stood there laughing on the landing, her face pale with cold. To go away from Prague now would be a mistake, of that I was sure. I desperately cast about for possible excuses.

  Theodor took my silence for assent. ‘Well then, that’s settled. I thought a tour of the spa towns of Bohemia would be popular. You’ll begin with Karlsbad and then go from there. I will arrange the tickets and bookings.’

  He began to shuffle his papers around on his desk in an attitude of dismissal.

  ‘Oh, one more thing—I will, of course, need to ask you to sign an agreement committing to the completion of Schopenhauer by the revised deadline. And also for the travelogue.’

  He pushed a sheet of paper across at me. He had never before insisted on such formalities and the request was like an official withdrawal of his affection. I was much too agitated to read the agreement and only scanned the page mechanically, taking nothing in. My hand was numb as I signed.

  ‘Good,’ he said as he took the paper back from me. He gave me a carbon copy and also a sealed envelope, very thick. ‘This is also for you: some information about Karlsbad and Marienbad.’

  He then opened one of his desk drawers and took out another envelope. He sat weighing it in his hands for a moment while he looked out of the window, before turning and fixing me with a narrowed gaze.

  ‘And I wonder if you might also pass this on to Franz for me?’ he said. He handed me the envelope. ‘It’s a cheque.’ He seemed to be watching me closely, no doubt looking for any signs of murderous envy. I wondered if he had given me the envelope with the purpose of provoking me. But I gave him no satisfaction on that quarter. I accepted it with a smile and politely took my leave of him, keeping my smiling mask intact until I was well away from the building.

  __________________

  * A copy of the 1905 Austria–Hungary Baedeker guidebook was also found among the manuscripts.

  14.

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, FRANZ—THE REAL FRANZ—AND I WERE sitting side by side in a train compartment bound for Karlsbad. I had visited Karlsbad before, long ago in my childhood. My mother had taken me there, and on to Marienbad, and any other spring or well that promised miracle cures for those who took its waters, in the vain hope that my crooked spine might be cured. She had approached each new place with shining optimism, completely convinced that it held the power to cure me. She patiently held me in the various pools and under the springs, she consulted a variety of doctors, and fed me foul-tasting water from cups and bottles of numerous designs, but each time the treatments failed to have any effect.

  Somehow this failure never seemed to deter her or diminish her certainty, so when she met an old woman in a restaurant in the town who told her of an even more beneficial and healthful spring just over the hills she simply transferred her conviction and we set off to this new location. As a child I found this very confusing. I had always interpreted her certainty as absolute—if she were certain about something then it was sure to be a fact, beyond question—so I was perplexed when my body remained exactly the same as we went from town to town, spring to spring. It seemed to me to be an inexplicable failure in the mechanism of the universe, as though the constellations had suddenly begun to turn on a new axis or the seasons had reversed. I could not understand her continuing composure in the face of such chaos. At the same time it had also seemed like my personal failure: a failure to control my own body. Other people had no trouble mastering their own bodies, but I was mysteriously powerless to do this and was held instead within my body’s rigid walls like a prisoner.

  Only vague memories remained to me of Karlsbad: mostly of the damp and grey atmosphere and that feeling of guilt, a vague panic of things going wrong and it perhaps being my fault, all of which was connected to that penetrating, sulphurous smell that lingers like mildew in the streets and houses of all bath towns. I could recall that oppressive odour with remarkable clarity, as though clouds of it were blowing into the train compartment through the slit of the opened window.

  Sitting there next to Franz was a strange experience. I had to keep reminding myself that he was not Alexandr or Gustav, and I took care not to say anything which might give me away. Fortunately, he was not much disposed to talking, and after greeting me he had settled into silence behind a newspaper. He was acting towards me with neutral politeness, as though our last angry encounter had not occurred, which puzzled me. Perhaps he felt that he had triumphed over me with his publication of Die Verwandlung.

  The thought of that book still smarted, but I sat and soothed the pain by gloating over my successful deception of Theodor. I imagined how much worse it would be for me now had Franz known about the scope of his success. Of course he knew that his book had been successfully published, and this was bad enough, but, if I continued to carefully manage the situation, hopefully this would be all that he would ever achieve. Franz was on his way out. I still had his cheque in my pocket.

  I sat and looked out of the window, not making any conversation. I had put a notebook in my jacket pocket with the idea that I would take notes about the landscapes that we encountered on the journey. I took it out and sat with pen poised, ready to note down my impressions. I assumed that Theodor was expecting us to produce a travelogue illuminated with golden scraps of poetry, but I could find nothing to say about the unremarkable springtime hills and trees as they sped past, beautiful though they were, so my page remained blank.

  I saw Franz take out his own notebook and begin to write. He sat over it for a long time, his head lowered with the effort of concentration, jotting down small amounts at a time, but very consistently. Soon he had filled several pages. My page was still an empty space. When he saw me watching him he slid his notebook back into his pocket and looked studiously out of the window. I wanted to ask him what he was writing, but I didn’t know how to without sounding jealous and peevish. I shuffled around in my seat and leafed through the empty pages of my own notebook. Franz gave a sudden laugh, turning to me and holding out his notebook. ‘Never mind, Max, it’s not my magnum opus.’

  He snapped the book shut and stowed it in his pocket. I sat staring straight ahead. We both remained silent for the rest of the journey.

  15.

  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.

  However, to my surprise, after a few days of this I found that, following the initial sting, Franz’s eclipse of my own popularity became easier to bear. I found that I was even quite grateful to slip into the restful role of anonymous spectator. A great and unexpected sense of freedom and lightness came over me, as though I were only arbitrarily connected with the world and floated through it like a ghost, completely free and invisible.

  Franz also treated me as if I did not really exist. Aside from discussing places to visit for the travelogue, he completely disregarded me and went about the routines of his day as if he were alone. I had never lived in such close proximity to another person for such a length of time and I obser
ved Franz’s habits with all the interest of an anthropologist. Franz to me had always been a model of the urbane gentleman: supremely elegant of figure and dress, fluid of movement, immaculate at all times. From our first meeting and every time I had seen him after that I had always been struck by his physical presence. I had often imagined the lives of others, of those not plagued by defects such as mine, and had dreamed that they lived lives of easy simplicity and naturalness, but I was surprised to find that there was a great deal of stage-managing that went on behind the scenes, even for Franz.

  Every morning on waking he would embark upon a series of physical exercises performed on the bare boards of our room. My wake-up call of those mornings at the Kroh were invariably the thumpings and groanings that Franz made as he jumped and stretched and pushed and pulled his own body about. I would lie under my bedclothes and watch the proceedings with interest. He would perform the sequences in his underwear and they would conclude with a series of noisy breathing exercises performed at the open window. After this, Franz would pull out a small tape measure and take note of his statistics—the circumference of his thighs, his waist and his chest—and jot them down in his notebook.

  He was completely heedless of my presence in the room: a lack of delicacy of which I was quite envious. He followed his exercise schedule regardless of circumstance; the cold did not deter him, and if the rain blew in the open window and soaked him as he breathed aggressively at the air, he seemed oblivious. The exercises took precedence over all other things; breakfast and any morning appointments were all postponed until Franz had completed his circuit. I now saw his perfect physical form in a different light and being made aware of the work that went into it was strangely comforting to me, bound as I was in my own imperfection.

  Franz had another habit in which he engaged less regularly, one that I was not privy to until we had cohabited for more than a few weeks. One afternoon I came back into our room to find it empty. I noticed that the wardrobe door was ajar, and a second later realised that Franz was there in the room after all, crouched next to the wardrobe and obscured by the open door. He was so engrossed in something that he had not noticed me come in. He was standing in the beam of sunlight that came through the window in front of the long mirror that was fixed to the wardrobe door. He was fully dressed and looked ready to go out. He was peering anxiously into the mirror, his face inches from the glass, his breath making white clouds upon it. Then he held something up to his face and began angling his head and his body awkwardly around, turning in a slow circle. He kept pitching his head at odd angles, his eyes on the object in his hand. I saw that it was a tiny hand mirror, which he was using to view himself from all angles. He turned to look at himself in profile and tested out various expressions, smiling and looking serious, tilting his head up and down. He turned and viewed himself from the back.