6 the Kafka stone

They used to say that 'the air swirled with the molecules of suspicion.'

I had climbed the steps to Castle Square for the first time a year previously and then, as now, it lay empty but for a single uniformed figure standing in front of a sentry box on the far side, in front of the building. On that first occasion, struck by the novelty of being alone but for a communist soldier facing me with a gun at his side, a hundred meters or so away, I had walked steadily towards him. The response had been no more than to see him pull to attention, snapping his weapon to his side, before I was halfway across, while he continued to look at me impassively. I admit, the pace of my heart as well as the rhythm of my step, changed momentarily. I stopped a few yards in front of him and nodded. Come on, it's just us two, I thought, here alone on the square on a pleasant evening, you might as well acknowledge a fellow solitary, duty or not.  But evidently satisfied that I was a mere wanderer with no apparent intent to storm the castle, his gaze moved away from mine to somewhere beyond the square. He remained firmly, unflinchingly, at attention. Your commanding officer would be proud, I thought.

This time I walked towards the side of the square, around to the far side, the sentry's eyes following me until he too lost interest. A different face, indifferent to me. I wanted to say to him something about a young man, blonde hair, green jacket over shoulder - to 'let him have a couple of rounds'.  I passed by the castle and headed towards the tree-lined avenues beyond and the cathedral precincts.

For all I knew, young green-jacket was no more interested in my perambulations than anyone else would have been, if they'd been a visitor to the city. In any case he had a Scandinavian look about him, his blondness rendering him fairly noticeable. In the shadowed avenues beyond the cathedral he would, possibly, glow like a torch. But below the castle square had been the last I saw of him. In the late evening the trees offered an oasis of cool at the end of a stifling day and I lingered, indulging my sense of assurance before moving on, driven back towards the city by hunger and the need for a number 24 tram.

Situated within the castle and cathedral precincts, Golden Lane was originally built to house the Castle's marksmen, and later, it's craftsmen. Between 1916 and 1917 number 22 was rented by Franz Kafka's sister Ottla for him to work in.


I had done my own Kafka tour of Prague on a previous occasion, searching out views of his various apartments, the insurance building where he worked, taking walks through the same vaulted archways and twisting alleys that he, man and boy, would have taken. On a building in Maiselova Street in the Old Town there is a black bronze plaque commemorating Kafka's birthplace, a three dimensional portrait, rather too gaunt. In the entrance to Strašnice cemetery, a large board indicates, black letters on white, the way to the grave of 'DR FRANZ KAFKA'. It came as a surprise to find this obvious, tangible evidence of a writer who's work was yet still banned.

There is a small plaque, too, on the wall of 22 Golden Lane. Close to the house, work had been done on setting drains and several discarded cobblestones lay nearby. I knelt and picked up one of the small black granite cubes so typical of Prague's old roads and pavements and thought how likely it was that Kafka himself would have stepped on it, to and from the house. I slipped it into my pocket. I would, I thought, take something away with me, if not a filmed acceptance speech by the newly appointed Nobel Laureate for Literature, then at least a small part of Prague upon which his illustrious but proscribed forbear might very well have trodden.

And then, with my hand in my pocket,  I remembered the Irish whisky. Seifert's whisky.