PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Outside, the fog and mist hover, making the lights of this old city shimmer wetly over the cobblestones, turrets and rooftops in the night.
I’m inside a small pub in Prague’s Old Town, sipping a dry Czech red wine while I read from a slender volume of Franz Kafka’s short stories, “A Country Doctor.” The wine chases the chill from the night and the book focuses the mind.
I picked the book up at a little shop in the Golden Lane, the tight little alleyway lodged within the arms of the great castle that overlooks from high on a hill the Vltava River that bisects Prague.
The shop once provided a home for Kafka. It was where he wrote several of the stories, including the title one, in the book I hold.
The young woman managing the shop was of a literary bent. She asks me if I’ve read any Kafka.
I had, I said, but it had been years. I knew something about Kafka — that he died young, just a month shy of his 41st birthday, that he was only sparsely published in his lifetime and that his literary reputation had grown almost exponentially in the little more than a century since his passing in 1924.
The young shopkeeper filled in blanks. She said the writer lived in this small space, courtesy of a beloved sister, when he was in his early 30s. She also talked about how Kafka spoke to her.
After the shopkeeper rang up my purchase, she asked me to write down American writers she should read, which I did. I asked her to do the same with Czech authors I should know, which she did.
God love bookish people.
In fact, I was 18 the last time I dove with any determination into Kafka. I read “The Trial” and “Metamorphosis” and came away from the experience not entirely satisfied.
Kafka’s themes of absurdity and oppression didn’t speak then to a young buck on fire to burn his way through life. In those days of my early manhood—let’s not do the math on how long ago it was, shall we? — I believed I could make my mark in the world without having the world make marks on me.
A few decades and more than a few griefs and stumbles have taught me otherwise. Life is large. Sorrow and defeat are just as much a part of the ride as joy and triumph.
Now, as I sip my dry Czech wine, Kafka speaks differently to me. The world he sketches, in which some sights, events and forces elude understanding, makes sense now, as do his rueful explorations of the realms of absurdity.
When the waiter, a young man several decades my junior, asks me if I need anything more, he notices the book in my hand. He starts to talk — this city seems heavily peopled with bookish sorts — about the impact reading Kafka made on his life.
That resonates.
Just before I settled in this little pub, I walked the three miles from my lodging to Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery, where Kafka is buried. The headstones there nestle closely together.
The writer’s is a dignified stone structure. Time and weather have left their marks on its surface.
Many visitors have left pens and pencils in tribute to a writer who touched them. I stood there pondering the power of literature, the mysterious way words on a page can reach across generations and affect us.
After I’d walked the miles back to the Old Town, I was ready for a drink, a respite from the nip of the gathering night and a chance to read. The pub provided a welcome refuge.
Now, though, it is time to leave. I signal for the check and pay it.
As I begin to slip my book back into my bag, the waiter approaches and pours me another glass of wine.
“On the house,” he says. “We like readers here.”
God love bookish sorts.
Soon, I step back outside. I take in the lights glowing in the moist, dark air, making every sight seem dreamy and ethereal.
I try for an instant to strip away the years and picture a slight, intense young Kafka striding these same cobblestones, but the sight refuses my summons.
So, I continue my journey through the mist and mystery of this great deep dark world.