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gathering of friends, but collapsing into such laughter on the first page that he had to abandon the reading. The 'joke'
     in the parable of the law, however, is, as Mark Twain said of German humour, no laughing matter. A few years ago, not long
     before his death, the great Germanist and Kafka scholar, Eduard Goldstiicker, described to me how he and other loyal communists
     in Prague were rounded up in December 1951 at the beginning of a new wave of Stalinist show trials. When he asked to know
     why he had been arrested, the answer came with an ironic smile: 'That is what you must tell us.' I immediately thought of the prison chaplain speaking to Josef K. of the door-keeper's friendliness and humour, and even compassion.
     I thought as well of the two gentlemen in frock coats, with the air of broken-down actors, pale and fat and wearing top hats,
     'apparently the non-collapsible kind', who come to K.'s apartment on the eve of his thirty-first birthday to fetch him away
     to his execution in the little quarry in what is most likely the Strahov district of the city. 'There was nothing heroic in
     resisting, in making difficulties for the gentlemen now, in putting up a defence at this point in an effort to enjoy a final
     glimmer of life.' . . .
    All at once I was cold; an empty cathedral is a chilly place. The Professor was standing a little way off with J. and G.,
     pointing upward to one of the stained-glass windows and explaining some fine detail of the depicted scene. Now, suddenly,
     and at no particular prompting, it was my turn to feel embarrassed. As I looked at him there, in his shabby raincoat, with
     his pale, thin hair, the high, Slavic cheekbones, those touchingly inoffensive spectacles, I asked myself what did I know
     of the difficulties of this man's life, of the stratagems he had been compelled to engage in over the years in order to preserve
     dignity and self-respect, or in order simply to feed and clothe himself and his wife and son. My friendhad made a Czech version of Hamlet before the war which was very popular and continued to be put on even after 1968. Although his name as the translator was
     suppressed, he did receive a small royalty from these productions. T would walk past the theatre in the first snow of the
     season,' he said, 'shivering in my thin jacket, and see Hamlet announced as a coming attraction, and I would think, good, Vll have an overcoat by Christmas!' That was how they lived, in those days, he said, 'hand to mouth' whatever you say, say nothing - and then covered his lips
     with his fingers and laughed, enjoying his own wordplay.for all his regrets - 'It was too late for me,' he would cry, 'the Havel revolution, too late!' - is a great laugher. One
     day, when we were in his car and I had been pressing him for details of his life in 'those days', he began to chuckle, and
     waved a hand at me, saying, 'Stop, stop! You are like the ones who used to interrogate me then, the nameless ones!' But then
     his smile faded and he turned a grim face to the windscreen again. What do I know?
    The day was dying when we got back to the hotel. The Professor left us, promising to pick us up later and take us to his home.
     In the lobby the two black-eyed beauties were at their post again under the potted palm, fingering their coffee cups and appraising
     the passing men, potential trade. Such beautiful creatures, I wondered aloud as we entered the lift, why did they take up
     such a profession? T suppose,' J. said, 'they do it for kecks' We were too tired to laugh.
    It is a peculiarly affecting, regressive sensation to wake up from an involuntary sleep at evening in a strange hotel room,
     the daylight all gone from the window, and a lamp, an impassive sentinel, burning on the bedside table. The unfamiliar furniture
     crouches in the shadows, looking as if it had been engaged in a furtive passacaglia and had stopped in its paces an instant
     before one opened one's eyes. The noises from outside are