The Great Wall of China

by Franz Kafka

  Moreover these apparent laws are really no more than a matter of conjecture. There is a tradition that they exist and are entrusted as a secret to the nobility, but this is not and cannot be more than an ancient tradition to which age lends authority, for the character of these laws requires that their very existence be kept secret as well. But if we common people have been following the actions of the nobles since the earliest times, and possess records of them made by our forefathers which we have conscientiously continued, and if among the myriad facts we think we can detect certain tendencies which permit us to conclude this or that about our historical destiny, and if we then, on the basis of these most carefully sifted and sorted conclusions, try to put our lives into some kind of order for the present and the future – then all that is in the highest degree uncertain, and perhaps no more than an intellectual game, for perhaps these laws which we are trying to guess at in this way do not exist at all. There is a small party which really is of this opinion, and which seeks to prove that if any law exists, it can only run thus: What the nobility does is the law. This party sees nothing but arbitrary acts on the part of the nobility, and it rejects the popular tradition, which according to them is only beneficial in minor and incidental ways, while being for the most part seriously harmful, since it gives the people a false and deceptive sense of security and disposes them to recklessness in the face of coming events. This harmful effect cannot be denied, but it is attributed by the overwhelming majority of our people to the fact that the tradition is still far from being sufficient, that it needs to be much more fully studied, and indeed that even the material available, immense though it appears to us, is still far too meagre, and that centuries must yet pass before it will be adequate. This prospect, so gloomy as far as the present is concerned, is lightened only by the belief that one day the time will come when both the tradition and our study of it will arrive, almost with a sigh of relief, at their conclusion, when all will have become clear, when the law will at last belong to the people, and the nobility will vanish. This is not said with any hatred for the nobility; not at all, not by anyone; rather are we inclined to hate ourselves because we cannot yet be judged worthy of the law. And that is the real reason why the party which believes that there is no law – in some ways such an attractive party – has remained so small, for it too fully recognizes the nobility and its right to existence.

  One can really only express the matter in a kind of paradox: Any party which would repudiate, not only belief in the laws, but the nobility as well, would instantly have the whole people behind it; but such a party cannot arise, for no one dares repudiate the nobility. It is on this razor’s edge that we live. A writer once summed it up in this way: The one visible and indubitable law that is imposed upon us is the nobility, and could it really be our wish to deprive ourselves of this solitary law?

  THE CONSCRIPTION OF TROOPS

  THE compulsory enlistments that are so often necessary because of the never-ending frontier wars take place in the following manner:

  The order goes out that on a certain day in a certain quarter of the town all the inhabitants – men, women and children without exception – have to remain in their own houses. It is usually not until about midday that the young nobleman in charge of the enlistment appears at the entrance to the quarter, where a detachment of foot soldiers and cavalry has been waiting since dawn. He is a slim young man, not very tall, frail-looking, carelessly dressed, with weary eyes; tremors of disquiet keep passing through him like the shivers of a fever. Without looking at anyone he makes a sign with the whip that forms his sole equipment; a number of soldiers join him and he enters the first house. One soldier who knows all the inhabitants of this quarter reads out the list of the occupants. As a rule they are all present, lined up there in the room with their eyes fixed on the nobleman, as if they were soldiers already. It can happen, however, that here or there someone, it’s invariably a man, is missing. In this case no one will dare to produce an excuse, let alone a lie; everyone just keeps quiet, all eyes are lowered, the pressure of the command which someone in this house has disobeyed becomes almost unbearable, but the silent presence of the nobleman keeps everyone in his place. The nobleman makes a sign, it’s not so much as a nod, it has to be read in his eyes, and two soldiers begin the search for the missing man. This causes no trouble at all. He is never outside the house, he never really intends to evade military service, it is only fear that has prevented him from turning up; yet it is not the fear of serving that holds him back, it is just that he is too nervous to show himself at all; the grandeur of the command is simply too much for him, it terrifies him, he has not the strength to appear of his own accord. But that does not make him run away, he merely hides, and when he hears that the nobleman is in the house he may even creep out of his hiding-place, creep up to the door of the room, there to be promptly seized by the soldiers as they come out to look for him. He is brought before the nobleman, who grasps his whip with both hands – he is so feeble that he could do nothing with one hand – and gives the man a thrashing. The pain he inflicts can hardly amount to much; then half from exhaustion, half in disgust he drops the whip, and the man who has been beaten has to pick it up and hand it to him. Only then may he join the rank with the others; incidentally, it is almost certain that he will not be recruited. But it can also happen, and this is more frequent, that the number of people present exceeds the number on the list. There may be an unknown girl there, for instance, who stares at the nobleman; she is from out of town, from the provinces perhaps, and has been lured here by the conscription; there are many women for whom a conscription in another town – conscription at home means something quite different – presents an irresistible temptation. And strangely enough it is not considered disgraceful for a woman to surrender to this temptation; on the contrary, in the opinion of many this is something that women have to go through, it is a debt which they pay to their sex. Moreover, things invariably take the same course. The girl or the woman learns that somewhere, perhaps a long way away, there is to be an enlistment at some relatives or friends of hers; she requests her family’s permission for the journey; this is granted, it is not something that one can refuse; she puts on her best clothes, is gayer than usual, at the same time calm and friendly, no matter what she may be like at other times; and yet behind all the calm and friendliness she is inaccessible, like an utter stranger who is setting out for home and can now think of nothing else. In the family where the enlistment is to take place she is received quite differently from an ordinary guest; she is surrounded with attention, pressed to inspect all the rooms in the house, to lean out of all the windows, and if she lays her hand on someone’s head it means more than a father’s blessing. When the family is preparing for the conscription she is given the best place, which is close to the door, and where she can best see the nobleman and best be seen by him. But she only enjoys these honours until the nobleman enters; after that she positively begins to fade. He looks at her as little as at the others, and even when his eye does rest on someone, that person is not aware of being looked at. This is something that she has not expected, or rather she must certainly have expected it, for it cannot be otherwise; but neither was it the expectation of the opposite that has forced her to come here, it was just something that is now, whatever it was, definitely over. She feels shame to a degree which perhaps our women feel at no other time; only now is she fully aware that she has forced her way into a conscription where she doesn’t belong; and when the soldier has read out the list and her name has not appeared on it and there comes a moment of silence, she flees cowering and trembling out of the door, and receives a blow in the back from a soldier’s fist into the bargain.

  If it should be a man who is not on the list, his only desire, despite the fact that he does not belong to this house, is to be conscripted along with the others. But this too is utterly out of the question; no such superfluous person has ever been conscripted and nothing of the kind will ever happen.


  THE TEST

  I AM a servant, but there is no work available for me. I am timid and don’t push myself to the fore, indeed I don’t even push myself into line with the others, but that is only one reason for my non-employment, it’s even possible that it has nothing to do with my non-employment, in any case the main reason is that I am not called upon to serve; others have been called yet they have not tried harder than I, indeed perhaps they have not even felt the desire to be called, whereas I, at least sometimes, feel it very strongly.

  So I lie on the pallet in the servants’ hall, stare at the beams in the ceiling, fall asleep, wake up and promptly fall asleep again. Occasionally I walk over to the tavern where they sell a sour beer, occasionally I have even poured away a glass in disgust, but then I go back to it again. I like sitting there because from behind the closed little window, without the possibility of being discovered, I can see across to the windows of our house. Not that one sees very much there, to my knowledge only the windows of the corridors look out on the street, and moreover not even those of the corridors leading to the master apartments. It is possible that I may be mistaken, but someone, without my having asked him, once said so, and the general impression of this house front confirms it. Only rarely are the windows opened, and when this does occur it is done by a servant who may well then lean against the balustrade to look down for a while. It follows therefore that these are corridors where he cannot be taken by surprise. As a matter of fact I am not personally acquainted with these servants; those who are permanently employed upstairs sleep elsewhere, not in my room.

  Once when I arrived at the tavern, a guest was sitting at my observation post. I did not dare look at him closely and was about to turn round in the door and leave. The guest, however, called me over, and it turned out that he too was a servant, whom I had once seen somewhere before but without having spoken to him. ‘Why do you want to run away? Sit down and have a drink. I’ll pay.’ So I sat down. He asked me several things, but I couldn’t answer, indeed I didn’t even understand his questions. So I said: ‘Perhaps you are sorry now that you invited me, so I’d better go,’ and I was about to get up. But he stretched his hand out over the table and pressed me down. ‘Stay,’ he said, ‘that was only a test. He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.’

  THE VULTURE

  A vulture was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and stockings to shreds, now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly round me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by, looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture. ‘I’m helpless,’ I said. ‘When it came and began to attack me, I of course tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very strong, it was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice my feet. Now they are almost torn to bits.’ ‘Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!’ said the gentleman. ‘One shot and that’s the end of the vulture.’ ‘Really?’ I said. ‘And would you do that?’ ‘With pleasure,’ said the gentleman, ‘I’ve only got to go home and get my gun. Could you wait another half hour?’ ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said I, and stood for a moment rigid with pain. Then I said: ‘Do try it in any case, please.’ ‘Very well,’ said the gentleman, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ During this conversation the vulture had been calmly listening, letting its eye rove between me and the gentleman. Now I realized that it had understood everything; it took wing, leaned far back to gain impetus, and then, like a javelin thrower, thrust its beak through my mouth, deep into me. Falling back, I was relieved to feel him drowning irretrievably in my blood, which was filling every depth, flooding every shore.

  THE HELMSMAN

  ‘AM I not the helmsman here?’ I called out. ‘You?’ asked a tall dark man and passed his hands over his eyes as though to banish a dream. I had been standing at the helm in the dark night, a feeble lantern burning over my head, and now this man had come and was trying to push me aside. And as I would not give way, he put his foot on my chest and slowly forced me to the deck while I still clung to the spokes of the wheel, wrenching it round in falling. But then the man seized the wheel and righted it, at the same time pushing me away. I soon collected myself, however, ran to the hatchway which gave on to the mess quarters, and cried out: ‘Men! Comrades! Come here, quick! A stranger has driven me away from the helm!’ Slowly they came up, climbing the companion ladder, tired, swaying, powerful figures. ‘Am I the helmsman?’ I asked. They nodded, but they had eyes only for the stranger, stood round him in a semicircle, and when, in a commanding voice, he said: ‘Don’t disturb me!’ they gathered together, nodded at me, and withdrew down the companion ladder. What folk these are! Do they ever think, or do they only shuffle pointlessly over the earth?

  THE TOP

  A certain philosopher used to hang about wherever children were at play. And whenever he saw a boy with a top, he would lie in wait. As soon as the top began to spin the philosopher went in pursuit and tried to catch it. He was not perturbed when the children noisily protested and tried to keep him away from their toy; so long as he could catch the top while it was still spinning he was happy, but only for a moment; then he threw it to the ground and walked away. For he believed that the understanding of any detail, that of a spinning-top, for instance, was sufficient for the understanding of all things. For this reason he did not busy himself with great problems, it seemed to him uneconomical; once the smallest detail was properly understood, then everything was understood, which was why he busied himself only with the spinning-top. And whenever preparations were being made for the spinning of the top, he hoped that this time he would succeed; as soon as the top began to spin and he was running breathlessly after it, the hope would turn to certainty; but when he held the silly piece of wood in his hand, he felt nauseated, and the screaming of the children, which hitherto he had not heard and which now suddenly pierced his ears, chased him away; he reeled off like a top under a clumsy whip.

  A LITTLE FABLE

  ‘ALAS,’ said the mouse, ‘the world is growing smaller every day. At first it was so big that I was afraid, I ran on and I was glad when at last I saw walls to left and right of me in the distance, but these long walls are closing in on each other so fast that I have already reached the end room, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am heading for.’ ‘You only have to change direction,’ said the cat, and ate it up.

  HOMECOMING

  I HAVE returned, I have crossed the front yard and I look round me. It is my father’s old farmstead. The puddle in the middle. Old, useless implements, jumbled together, block the stairs to the store loft. The cat lurks on the banister. A torn piece of cloth, once wound round a stick in some game, lifts in the breeze. I have arrived. Who shall receive me? Who waits behind the kitchen door? Smoke is coming from the chimney, coffee is being made for supper. Do you feel you belong, do you feel at home? I don’t know, I feel most uncertain. Yes, it is my father’s house, but each object stands cold beside the next, as if each was preoccupied with its own affairs, which I have partly forgotten, partly never known. What use can I be to them, what do I mean to them, even though I am my father’s son, the old farmer’s son. And I dare not knock at the kitchen door, I only listen from a distance, I only listen standing at a distance, so as not to be surprised as an eavesdropper. And since I am listening from a distance, I can catch nothing; all I hear, or perhaps just imagine I hear, is the faint chiming of a clock that floats across to me from my childhood. Whatever else is going on in the kitchen is the secret of those sitting there, and they are keeping it from me. The longer one hesitates before the door, the more of a stranger one becomes. What would happen now if someone were to open the door and ask me something? Would not I myself be like a man who wishes to keep his secret?

  THE DEPARTURE

  I ORDERED my horse to be fetched from the stable. The servant did not understand me. I went into the stable myself, saddled my horse, and mo
unted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet; I asked him what that meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked: ‘Where are you riding to, master?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘just away from here, just away from here. On and on away from here, that’s the only way I can reach my goal.’ ‘So you know your goal?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I’ve just told you. Away-from-here –that is my goal.’ ‘You have no provisions with you,’ he said. ‘I need none,’ said I, ‘the journey is so long that I must die of starvation if I get nothing on the way. No provisions can save me. It is, fortunately enough, a truly immense journey.’