An Afternoon with Franz Kafka in Prague - Late Summer 1917

It was a warm August day, and the Vltava River was bathed in that metallic light so characteristic of Prague in late summer—as if the city itself had stored the light and was only reluctantly releasing it. I had walked up Niklas Street, past Old Town Square, where the astronomical clock was performing its tired, old charade, and then turned into the narrow lanes of the Jewish Quarter, of which little remained after the redevelopment. He had written to me to meet him at the corner of the Oppelt House, down by the entrance to the courtyard. He lived there, on the top floor, with his parents.