have never been there. But Trnava exists in the Atlas. At the time the border floated in
the wind and you were one day Czech one day Austrian and every day Bohemian. An
inhabitant of Turnau of Trnava. One day Dr Franz Kafka of Prague came to stay at
Turnau, at the hotel where my grandfather Michael Klein had come to deliver fresh
produce from the farm yesterday. I lived all of this. It is like the day Dr Freud had just
left the Berggasse to go to Gmund when Dr Kafka passed in front of Dr Freud’s house his
head lowered, because it was a dream of a missed encounter.
I did not go to Turnau where I will never go, but my life passed close by. Fields of
poppies and of blue flax spread between us the blue and red sheet of separation.
For centuries my desire has been haunted by a being called sometimes die
Altneusynagoge sometimes Staronova Synagoga and that I call the Oldyoung Synagogue.
And always I roam outside the Old Jewish Cemetery, Alt Jüdischen Friedhof, absolute
desire without commentary blind confident. What do I want? I will see. I am expected. I
am expecting it. I am waiting for myself there.
In dreams I have often gone there. The cemetery there is immense and sweet like an
ocean. Squirrels dance around pine trees, merry reincarnations of the dead. I search. I
want to see the tomb that is my cradle. I want to see my cradle, the cradle of my tombs,
the tomb of my childhood, the source of my dreams and of my worries.
Everyone has gone to the Old Jewish Cemetery except me. My children my friends my
loves everyone has gone without me before me for me beyond me to lean over my
cradles. My mother too, except me.
Nevertheless I was waiting for the possibility. I cannot go lightly to see the tomb of
my cradles. I was waiting for the person who would accompany me, the being who would
be necessary enough delicate enough to break with me the bread of awaiting. The
messiah of the Oldyoung synagogue. But if he did not come, ever?
But on the other hand, we cannot never have gone to our tomb-cradle; it is an
obligation. We must go to the sources before the hour of death. It’s that all human
destinies are launched from a tomb. We do not always know it, but in the end we return
to port.
One day I thought everything started from there, enough backing away since in the
end I will go let’s go there now so I went there as a lone woman as a silent woman as a
widow, as a person and on the exterior of all dream.
No sooner inside—there I was pushed back like an attack. How to take it? I look
everywhere for the door, the entrance, the defect. Passing by the Charles Bridge and its
squads of statues planted like impassive saints coming off on the side of Mala Strana, by
the alley of the Saxons, then by Velkoprevorske Square by Prokopka Alley up to
Malostravske Namesti at a brisk pace passing in front of the Schönborn Palace then going
up by Bretislavova until the Nerudova and there you go back down the slope until Mala
Strana without ever managing to penetrate.
The next day, second try: on the quays up to the National Theatre, then coming back
up to Starometske, passing by Miners’ Road, it was fleeing just in front of me. Ten times
I asked directions in German, they stared at me as a false ghost, no one spoke the tongue
of my parents any more. Effacement effacement thy name is City.
Thirdly by Celetna Road passing in front of the house at the Golden Angel up to
Ovocny Square, the fruit market, from there up to the Tyl Theatre the flowered balconies
of which had thrown themselves out of the interior stage of the Opera by the window on
Rethinking Architecture 288