KAFKA'S UKULELE

Kafka's Ukelele was a strange instrument, an item foreign even to the Czech Repulblic's largest metropolis, Prague. The instrument was constructed out of mahogany, brass and four gut strings. Initially, it was thought that the instrument was a cavaquinho, but the G-C-E-A tuning order differed from that of the traditional portuguese instrument which most commonly touts a tuning order of D-G-B-D. This arrangement suggests the string instrument was indeed an ukulele, the version of the cavaquinho that Portugal began exporting to the Hawaiian Islands along with migrating field workers beginning in the 1880's.

It is not known how Kafka had come into possession of such an instrument. Nor is it known why of all plucked instruments found within closer geographic proximity — the harp, guitar, lute, bladder fiddle, zymbal, and mandolin — he had chosen the ukulele as his stringed instrument of choice. The ukulele was found under Kafka's cot in Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna, where he succumbed to starvation via tuberculosis, June 3, 1924. The disease had caused his throat to constrict, making swallowing painful and unbearable. He had lost the ability to speak, and in his later days, lost the desire to write. With medical practices of that time predating any intravenous method of nourishment, Kafka was doomed to die as a hungry, emaciated artist strumming the ukulele gently into the night.

As the author most notable for writing of The Metamorphosis, a novella in which his protagonist, Gregor awakens transformed unexpectedly into a large grotesque insect, and The Trial, in which the main character, K. is found guilty of a crime that is neither disclosed to him or to the reader, it will be surprising to most academics that his forays into existentialism and hopelessness — of working class individuals facing surrealist, somewhat supernatural quandaries in a universe indifferent to their plights — could have formed an artistic allegiance to the light, playful notes of the Ukelele, which when translated means jumping fleas. That every living creature lives and dies by the unsympathetic, unforgiving currents of a larger godless universe could have been forgotten by an employer of sadness and dread when plucking away is a mystery. Had his posthumous collection of musical compositions, along with his ukulele (strangely it had not been incinerated along with his bedding) not been confiscated by the Gestapo from Dora Diamont, his last and final lover, Berlin 1933, his musical legacy would have exceed his literary accomplishments. There was Mozart. There was Beethoven. There was Kafka. With words, he delved into the deepest darkest corners of humanity. With music, he reinstated the light.

It is my contention that such a collection exists. And if it were found, all human sadness would end. But that is a strange thing to hang my hopes on, Kafka's Ukulele. Still, in this world of nonsense, of one absurd, nightmarish atrocity after another, I feel very strongly, that its existence and eventual discovery is all we have going for us. It is said that within the ukulele's base was a crumpled note. It read "My love. Take this Accomplice and Companion to my Demise. Take this and play it. It will save you. It will save you all."

* * *

"My stomach hurts worse," she tells me. "It hurts" she says to me on the way to the hospital. Her fine brown-streaked hair is covering her face and she doesn't bother to brush it aside behind her ears. The ukulele she had begun to learn to play sits in the back seat. It had been sitting there for days after her fourth ukulele lesson this past Friday, March 11, 2011. It is the same day the earthquake and tsunami rocks Japan's north-east coast.

I park the car and help her onto her feet. One foot, then the other unfolding onto the concrete from the passenger seat. She stands up gingerly. I can't see her face. She is trying to keep her hips square so as not to upset any unreleased pockets of pain. She straightens slowly. I close the door and she takes my arm. An SUV passes us by. We begin to walk — one small step at a time. Then I stop in the middle of the parking lot lane as a red honda rounds the corner. The driver stops and waits, watching us with impatience and confusion as another white van rounds the corner and is held up.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"The uke," I say. The driver, with his rounded ruddy face and rectangular-rimmed glasses honks his horn and starts inching forward. His engine idles and revs. "The ukulele. Do you want me to bring it?" I ask. The air is growing hotter.

She looks at me as if I'm crazy. She tugs weakly toward the elevator but I resist. I want her to say yes. Please, I'm thinking. Say "yes, bring it for me".