The Great Wall of China

by Franz Kafka

  PRINCE [to Chamberlain]: If we want him to talk I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.

  CHAMBERLAIN: But look, your Highness, he’s foaming at the mouth. He’s seriously ill.

  PRINCE [absent-mindedly]: Please go, it won’t take long.

  [Exit CHAMBERLAIN, PRINCE sits on edge of divan. Pause.]

  PRINCE: Why were you afraid of him?

  WARDEN [surprisingly composed]: I wasn’t afraid. Me afraid of a servant?

  PRINCE: He’s not a servant. He’s a Count, free and rich.

  WARDEN: A servant all the same, you are the master.

  PRINCE: If you like it that way. But you said yourself that you were afraid.

  WARDEN: Afraid of saying things in front of him which are meant only for you. Haven’t I already said too much in front of him?

  PRINCE: So we’re on terms of intimacy, and yet today is the first time I’ve seen you.

  WARDEN: Seen for the first time, but you’ve always known that I [raising his forefinger] hold the most important position at Court. You even acknowledged it publicly by awarding me the medal ‘Red-as-Fire’. Here! [Holds up the medal on his coat.]

  PRINCE: No, that’s the medal for twenty-five years’ service at Court. My grandfather gave you that. But I’ll decorate you, too.

  WARDEN: Do as you please and grant me whatever you think I deserve. I’ve acted as your tomb Warden for thirty years.

  PRINCE: Not mine. My reign has lasted hardly a year.

  WARDEN [lost in thought]: Thirty years.

  [Pause.]

  WARDEN [remembering only half of the Prince’s remark]: Nights last years there.

  PRINCE: I haven’t yet had a report from your office. What’s your work like?

  WARDEN: Every night the same. Every night till the heart beats as if it were about to burst.

  PRINCE: Is it only night duty, then? Night duty for an old man like you?

  WARDEN: That’s just it, your Highness. It’s day duty. A loafer’s job. There one sits, at the front door, with one’s mouth open in the sunshine. Sometimes the watchdog pats one on the knee with its paws, and then lies down again. That’s all that ever happens.

  PRINCE: Well?

  WARDEN [nodding]: But it has been changed to night duty.

  PRINCE: By whom?

  WARDEN: By the lords of the tomb.

  PRINCE: You know them?

  WARDEN: Yes.

  PRINCE: They come to see you?

  WARDEN: Yes.

  PRINCE: Last night, too?

  WARDEN: Last night, too.

  PRINCE: What was it like?

  WARDEN [sitting up straight]: Same as usual.

  [PRINCE stands up.]

  WARDEN: Same as usual. Quiet till midnight. I’m lying in bed – excuse me – smoking my pipe. My granddaughter is asleep in the next bed. At midnight comes the first knock at the window. I look at the clock. Always to the minute. Two more knocks, they mingle with the striking of the tower clock, but I can still hear them. These are no human knuckles. But I know all that and don’t budge. Then it clears its throat outside, it’s surprised that in spite of all that knocking I haven’t opened the window. Let his princely Highness be surprised! The old Warden is still there! [Shows his fist.]

  PRINCE: You’re threatening me?

  WARDEN [doesn’t immediately understand]: Not you. The one at the window!

  PRINCE: Who is it?

  WARDEN: He shows himself at once. All of a sudden window and shutters are opened. I just have time to throw the blanket over my grandchild’s face. The storm blows in, promptly puts the light out. Duke Friedrich! His face with beard and hair completely fills my poor window. How he has grown throughout the centuries! When he opens his mouth to speak the wind blows his old beard between his teeth and he bites on it.

  PRINCE: Just a moment. You say Duke Friedrich? Which Friedrich?

  WARDEN: Duke Friedrich, just Duke Friedrich.

  PRINCE: Is that the name he gives?

  WARDEN [anxiously]: No, he doesn’t give it.

  PRINCE: And yet you know – [breaking off] – Go on!

  WARDEN: Shall I go on?

  PRINCE: Of course. All this very much concerns me. There must be an error in the distribution of labour. You’re overworked.

  WARDEN [kneeling]: Don’t take my job away, your Highness. Having lived for you all these years, let me also die for you! Don’t wall up the grave I’m struggling towards. I serve willingly and am still strong enough to serve. To be granted an audience like today’s, to take a rest with my master – this gives me strength for ten years.

  PRINCE [putting Warden back on divan]: No one’s going to take your job from you. How could I get along without your experience? But I’ll appoint another Warden, then you’ll become Head Warden.

  WARDEN: Am I not good enough? Have I ever let anyone pass?

  PRINCE: Into the Friedrichspark?

  WARDEN: No, out of the park. Who’d want to come in? If ever anyone stops at the railing I beckon to him from the window and he runs away. But out! Everyone wants to get out. After midnight you can see all the voices from the grave assembled round my house. I think it’s only because they are so closely packed together that the whole lot of them don’t burst through my narrow window. If it gets too bad, however, I grab the lantern from under my bed, swing it high, and with laughter and moaning these incredible creatures scatter in all directions. Then I can hear them rustling even in the furthest bush at the end of the park. But they soon gather together again.

  PRINCE: And do they tell you what they want?

  WARDEN: First they give orders. Especially Duke Friedrich. No living being could be so confident. Every night for thirty years he has been expecting me to give in.

  PRINCE: If he has been coming for thirty years it can’t be Duke Friedrich, for he has been dead only fifteen years. On the other hand, he is the only one of that name in the tomb.

  WARDEN [too carried away by his story]: That I don’t know, your Highness, I never went to school. I only know how he begins. ‘Old dog,’ he begins at the window, ‘the gentlemen are knocking and you just stay in your filthy bed.’ They have a particular grudge against beds, by the way. And now every night we have the same conversation, he outside, I opposite him, my back against the door. I say: ‘I’m only on day duty.’ The Duke turns and shouts into the park: ‘He’s only on day duty.’ Whereupon all the assembled aristocracy burst out laughing. Then the Duke says to me again: ‘But it is day.’ I say curtly: ‘You’re wrong.’ The Duke: ‘Night or day, open the door.’ I: ‘That’s against my orders.’ And with my pipe I point at a notice on the door. The Duke: ‘But you’re our Warden.’ I: ‘Your Warden, but employed by the reigning Prince.’ He: ‘Our Warden, that’s the main thing. So open up, and be quick about it.’ I: ‘No.’ He: ‘Idiot, you’ll lose your job. Prince Leo has invited us for today.’

  PRINCE [quickly]: I?

  WARDEN: You. [Pause.] When I hear your name I lose my firmness. That’s why I took the precaution of leaning against the door in the first place. Outside, everyone’s singing your name. ‘Where’s the invitation?’ I ask weakly. ‘Bedbug!’ he shouts, and really wakes me up without meaning to, ‘you doubt my ducal word?’ I say: ‘I have no orders, so I won’t open, I won’t open, I won’t open!’ – ‘He won’t open!’ shouts the Duke outside. ‘So come on, all of you, the whole dynasty! At the door! We’ll open it ourselves.’ And a moment later there’s nothing under my window.

  [Pause.]

  PRINCE: Is that all?

  WARDEN: All? My real service begins only now. I rush out of the door, round the house, and promptly run into the Duke and there we are, locked in combat. He so big, I so small, he so broad, I so thin, I can fight only with his feet, but now and again he lifts me up in the air and then I fight up there, too. All his comrades stand round in a circle and make fun of me. One, for instance, cuts open my trousers behind and they all play with the tail of my shirt while I’m fighting. Can’t understand why they laugh,
as until now I’ve always won.

  PRINCE: How is it possible for you to win? Have you any weapons?

  WARDEN: I carried weapons only during the first years. What good could they be against him? They only hampered me. We just fight with our fists, or rather with the strength of our breath. And you’re in my thoughts all the time. [Pause.] But I never doubt my victory. Only sometimes I’m afraid the Duke will let me slip through his fingers and forget that he’s fighting.

  PRINCE: And when do you win?

  WARDEN: At dawn. Then he throws me down and spits at me. That’s his confession of defeat. But I have to go on lying there for an hour before I can get my breath back properly.

  [Pause.]

  PRINCE [standing up]: But tell me, don’t you know what they really want?

  WARDEN: To get out of the park.

  PRINCE: But why?

  WARDEN: That I don’t know.

  PRINCE: Haven’t you asked?

  WARDEN: No.

  PRINCE: Why not?

  WARDEN: It would embarrass me. But if you wish, I’ll ask them today.

  PRINCE [shocked, loud]: Today!

  WARDEN [authoritatively]: Yes, today.

  PRINCE: And you can’t even guess what they want?

  WARDEN [thoughtfully]: No. [Pause.] Perhaps I ought to add that sometimes in the early mornings while I’m lying there trying to get my breath and even too weak to open my eyes, there comes a delicate moist creature, rather hairy to the touch, a latecomer, the Countess Isabella. She runs her hand all over me, catches hold of my beard, her whole body glides along my neck, under my chin, and she’s in the habit of saying: ‘Not the others, but me – let me out.’ I shake my head as much as I can. ‘I want to go to Prince Leo, to offer him my hand.’ I keep on shaking my head. ‘But me, me!’ I can still hear her crying, then she’s gone. And my grand-daughter appears with blankets, wraps me up in them, and waits with me till I can walk on my own. An exceptionally good girl.

  PRINCE: Isabella? The name’s unknown to me. [Pause.] To offer me her hand! [Goes to window, looks out. Back to table, rings.]

  [Enter servant.]

  PRINCE: The Chamberlain.

  [CHAMBERLAIN enters, at same time WARDEN falls off divan with a little cry.]

  PRINCE [leaps to his side]: Eternal improvidence! I ought to have foreseen this! The doctor! The servants!

  [Exit CHAMBERLAIN, returns at once with servants, remains by open door.]

  PRINCE [kneeling by Warden]: Water! Prepare a bed for him! Wherever you like. Next to my bedroom. Bring a stretcher! Is the doctor coming? What a time he takes! The pulse is so weak. I can’t feel his heart! These pathetic ribs! How worn out everything is. But wait, now he’s breathing better. Healthy stock, still keeps going even in the last extremity. But the doctor! Will he never come? [Looks towards door.]

  [WARDEN raises his hand, LORD HIGH STEWARD enters slowly, remains by door.]

  LORD HIGH STEWARD [youngish man, officer’s uniform, coolly observant gaze, loudly]: The doctor can’t be here for a quarter of an hour. He’s gone out. A rider has been sent after him.

  PRINCE [more controlled, with a glance at Warden]: We can wait. He’s more peaceful.

  [Enter servant with stretcher.]

  PRINCE [stands up; to LORD HIGH STEWARD]: So you’ve come along too.

  LORD HIGH STEWARD: I saw all the excitement in the corridors. I was forced to conclude that there had been an accident.

  PRINCE [without replying, by the stretcher-bearers, helps with loading]: Handle him gently. Go gently with your great paws! Lift his head a little. Nearer the stretcher. The pillow further down the back. His arm! His arm! You’re wretched, wretched orderlies. Will you ever be so exhausted as this man on the stretcher? – There. – And now the very, very slowest step. And above all steadily. I’m keeping behind you.

  THE BRIDGE

  I WAS stiff and cold, I was a bridge, I lay over an abyss; my toes buried deep on one side, my hands on the other, I had fastened my teeth in crumbling clay. The tails of my coat fluttered at my sides. Far below brawled the icy trout stream. No tourist strayed to this impassable height, the bridge was not yet marked on the maps. Thus I lay and waited; I had to wait; without falling no bridge, once erected, can cease to be a bridge. One day towards evening, whether it was the first, whether it was the thousandth, I cannot tell – my thoughts were always in confusion, and always, always moving in a circle – towards evening in summer, the roar of the stream grown deeper, I heard the footstep of a man! Towards me, towards me. Stretch yourself, bridge, make yourself ready, beam without rail, hold up the one who is entrusted to you. If his steps are uncertain steady them unobtrusively, but if he staggers then make yourself known and like a mountain god hurl him to the bank. He came, he tapped me with the iron spike of his stick, then with it he lifted my coat-tails and folded them upon me; he plunged his spike into my bushy hair, and for a good while he let it rest there, no doubt as he gazed far round him into the distance. But then – I was just following him in thought over mountain and valley – he leapt with both feet on to the middle of my body. I shuddered with wild pain, quite uncomprehending. Who was it? A child? A gymnast? A dare-devil? A suicide? A tempter? A destroyer? And I turned over to look at him. A bridge turns over! And before I had fully turned I was already falling, I fell, and in a moment I was ripped apart and impaled on the sharp stones that had always gazed up at me so peacefully out of the rushing waters.

  THE HUNTER GRACCHUS

  FOUR FRAGMENTS

  I

  TWO boys were sitting on the harbour wall playing dice. On the steps of a monument a man was reading a newspaper, in the shadow of the sword-wielding hero. A girl was filling her tub at the fountain. A fruit-seller was lying beside his wares, looking out across the lake. Through the empty window and door openings of a tavern two men could be seen drinking their wine in the depths. Out in front the proprietor was sitting at a table dozing. A bark glided silently into the little harbour, as if borne over the water. A man in a blue overall climbed ashore and drew the ropes through the rings. Two other men, wearing dark coats with silver buttons, carried out past the boatman a bier draped with a great tasselled cloth of flower-patterned silk, beneath which there evidently lay a man. Nobody on the quay troubled about the newcomers; even when they lowered the bier to wait for the boatman, who was still busy with the ropes, nobody approached, nobody asked them a question, nobody gave them a closer look.

  The boatman was delayed a little longer by a woman who now appeared on deck with a child at her breast and her hair falling loose. Then he came up and indicated a yellowish two-storeyed house that rose abruptly on the left close to the water; the bearers took up their burden and carried it through the low but gracefully pillared door-way. A little boy opened the window just in time to see the party vanishing into the house, then hastily shut the window again. Now the door was shut too; it was of black oak, carefully joined. A flock of doves which had been flying round the bell-tower alighted in front of the house. As if their food were stored within, the doves gathered before the door. One of them flew up to the first floor and pecked at the window-pane. They were bright-hued, well cared-for, lively birds. The woman on the boat flung grain across to them in a great arc; they pecked it up and flew over to the woman.

  An old man in a top-hat with a mourning-band came down one of the narrow, steep little alleyways that led to the harbour. He looked round attentively, everything disturbed him; the sight of some rubbish in a corner made him grimace, fruit skins were lying on the steps of the monument and he swept them off in passing with a stick. He rapped at the pillared door, at the same time taking his top-hat in his black-gloved right hand. The door was opened at once; some fifty little boys formed a lane in the long entrance-hall and bowed.

  The boatman came down the stairs, greeted the gentleman in black and led him up; on the first floor he escorted him round the delicate loggia that framed the courtyard, and while the boys crowded after them at a respectful distance t
hey both entered a cool, spacious room at the rear side of the building, from which no other house, but only a bare grey-black wall of rock was to be seen. The bearers were busy setting up and lighting several long candles at the head of the bier; but these gave no light to the room, it was just as if the shadows had been merely startled from their rest and sent flickering over the walls. The cloth covering the bier had been thrown back. Lying there was a man with wildly matted hair and beard, his skin sunburned, rather like a hunter in appearance. He lay there with his eyes closed, motionless and apparently without breathing, yet only the surroundings indicated that perhaps this man was dead.

  The gentleman stepped up to the bier, laid his hand on the brow of the recumbent figure, then knelt down and prayed. The boatman made a sign to the bearers to leave the room; they went out, drove away the boys who had gathered outside, and shut the door. But even that did not seem to make it quiet enough for the gentleman; he looked at the boatman, who understood and went out through a side door into the next room. At once the man on the bier opened his eyes, turned his face towards the gentleman with a painful smile and said: ‘Who are you?’ Without visible surprise the gentleman rose from his kneeling position and replied: ‘The burgomaster of Riva.’

  The man on the bier nodded, feebly stretched out his arms to indicate a chair, and said, after the burgomaster had accepted the invitation: ‘I knew that of course, Mr Burgomaster, but for the first few moments I always find that I have forgotten everything, everything is in a whirl, and it is better for me to ask even if I do know the answers. Probably you also know that I am the hunter Gracchus.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the burgomaster. ‘Your arrival was announced to me during the night. We had been asleep for some time. Then towards midnight my wife cried: “Salvatore” – that’s my name – “look at that dove on the window-ledge!” It really was a dove, but as big as a cock. It flew over to my ear and said: “Tomorrow the dead hunter Gracchus is coming, receive him in the name of the town.”’