The Great Wall of China

by Franz Kafka

  K. sat there, his eyes wide open, glassy, bulging, only momentarily serviceable; he was bent forward and quivering, as if someone were seizing or striking the back of his neck; his lower lip, indeed the whole lower jaw with the gums fully exposed, hung down helplessly; his whole face had gone to pieces; he still breathed, though with difficulty; but then, as if delivered, he collapsed against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, an expression of some severe strain passed over his face, and all was over. Quickly I sprang to his side and grasped the hand that hung there, lifeless, cold and chilling; no pulse beat there now. So it was all over. Ah well, an old man. Let us hope we all have such a peaceful end. But now how much was to be done! And what was the most urgent? I looked round for help; but the son had drawn the bedclothes over his head, one could hear his interminable sobbing; the agent, cold as a fish, sat tight in his chair, two paces away from K., and was plainly resolved to do nothing save await developments; so that left me, and me only, to do something, and the first thing was the hardest of all, namely to break the news somehow, in some bearable form, that is in some form that did not exist, to his wife. And already I could hear the approach of her eager, shuffling steps from the next room.

  Still wearing her outdoor clothes – she had not had time to change – she brought in a nightshirt that she had been warming on the stove and now wanted to put on her husband. ‘He’s fallen asleep,’ she said, smiling and shaking her head, when she found us sitting so still. And with the infinite trustfulness of the innocent she took up the same hand that I had just held in mine with such repugnance and awe, kissed it with a touch of wifely playfulness, and – imagine the faces of us three others! – K. moved, yawned loudly, allowed his nightshirt to be put on, suffered with a half-annoyed, half-ironical expression the tender reproaches of his wife for having over-exerted himself with such a long walk, and said in reply, no doubt to give a different explanation for his having fallen asleep, strangely enough something about boredom. Then, so as not to catch cold on the way to another room, he lay down for the time being in his son’s bed; with two cushions hastily brought by his wife, a pillow was made for him alongside the feet of his son. After all that had gone before I no longer found that odd. Then he asked for the evening paper, opened it without regard for his visitors, did not settle down to read it however, but merely looked into it here and there, making several very unpleasant observations on our offers as he did so, observations that showed astonishing shrewdness, while all the time he made disparaging gestures with his free hand and indicated by clicking his tongue that our business methods had left a bad taste in his mouth. The agent could not restrain himself from making one or two untimely remarks; no doubt he felt, even in his own insensitive way, that some kind of amends was needed for what had occurred, but of course he was the last person to know how to set about it. I now took my leave rapidly, I was almost grateful to the agent; if he had not been there I should not have had the resolution to leave so soon.

  In the hall I met Frau K. again. At the sight of that pathetic figure I said impulsively that she reminded me a little of my mother. And as she remained silent I added: ‘Whatever one may say, she could do wonders. Anything we destroyed she could make whole again. I lost her when I was still a child.’ I had deliberately spoken with exaggerated slowness and distinctness, for I suspected that the old lady was hard of hearing. But she must have been deaf, for she asked without transition: ‘And how does my husband look?’ From a few parting words I noticed moreover that she confused me with the agent; I should like to think that otherwise she would have been more forthcoming.

  Then I went down the stairs. The descent was more wearisome than the ascent had been in the first place, and not even that had been easy. Oh, how many business calls come to nothing, and one has to struggle on somehow under the load.

  A COMMENT

  IT was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was going to the station. As I compared my watch with the clock on a tower I saw that it was much later than I had thought, I had to make great haste; in my alarm at this discovery I became unsure of the way, I was still something of a stranger in this town; luckily there was a policeman at hand, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: ‘Do you expect to discover the way from me?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘since I cannot find it myself.’ ‘Give it up, give it up,’ said he, and he turned away with a great flourish, like a man who wants to be alone with his laughter.

  ON PARABLES

  THERE were many who complained that the words of the wise are always mere parables, and of no use in daily life, which is the only life that we have. When the wise man says: ‘Go across‘, he does not mean that one should cross over to the other side of the street, which is at least something that one could manage if the result were worth the effort; he means some fabulous yonder, something that is unknown to us and that even he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore something that cannot help us down here in the very least. All these parables mean really no more than that the inconceivable is inconceivable, and that we knew already. But the cares that we actually have to struggle with each day are a different matter.

  One man then said: ‘Why do you resist? If you followed the parables, then you would become parables yourselves, and thus free of your daily cares.’

  Another said: ‘I bet that is also a parable.’

  The first said: ‘You have won.’

  The second said: ‘But unfortunately only in parable.’

  The first said: ‘No, in reality; in parable you have lost.’

  THE BURROW

  I HAVE laid out the burrow and it appears to be successful. All that can really be seen from the outside is a big hole, but in fact this does not lead anywhere; after just a few steps you come up against natural firm rock. I can make no boast of having contrived this ruse intentionally; it is simply the remains of one of my many abortive building attempts, but finally it seemed to me advisable to leave this one hole without filling it in. True, some ruses are so subtle that they defeat themselves, I know that better than anyone, and it is certainly bold to let this hole draw attention to the fact that there may be something in the vicinity worth investigating. But you do not know me if you suppose that I am a coward or that it is out of mere cowardice that I build my burrow. At a distance of some thousand paces from this hole, covered by a detachable layer of moss, lies the real entrance to the burrow; it is as well secured as anything in this world can be secured, admittedly someone could tread on the moss or poke through it, and then my burrow would lie open, and anybody who had the wish to do so – let it be noted, however, that certain none too common abilities would be needed as well – could force his way in and destroy everything for good. I know that very well, and even now at the summit of my career I can scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquillity; at that one point in the dark moss I am vulnerable, and in my dreams a greedy muzzle often goes sniffing round it persistently. It will be objected that I could have filled in this real entrance too, with a thin layer of hard earth on top and with loose soil further down, so that it would not have cost me much trouble to dig myself out again as often as I wished. But that is just not possible, prudence itself demands that I should have the opportunity of immediate flight, prudence itself demands, as alas! so often, that one should risk one’s life; these are all most wearisome calculations, and it is often only the delight in one’s own sharp-wittedness that makes one keep on calculating. I must have the opportunity of immediate flight, for despite all my vigilance may I not be attacked from the most unexpected quarter? I live in peace in the heart of my burrow, and meanwhile from somewhere or other the enemy is boring his way slowly towards me. I do not say that he has a better scent than I, perhaps he knows as little of me as I of him, but there are some insatiable robbers who plough their way blindly through the ground, and in view of the vast extent of my burrow even they have some hope of hitting eventually on one of my passages. I certainly have the advantage of being
in my own house, and knowing exactly where all the routes are and how they run; a robber may very easily become my victim, and a succulent one too; but I am growing old, there are many who are stronger than I, and my enemies are countless; it could well happen that in fleeing from one enemy I might run into the jaws of another. Alas! so many things might happen, but in any case I must have the reassurance of knowing that there is an exit somewhere that is easy to reach and quite unobstructed, where I can get out without any further labour at all, so that there is no fear that while I am burrowing away there desperately, even if it is only in loose soil, I might suddenly feel – Heaven protect me! – the teeth of the pursuer in my flanks. And it is not only by external enemies that I am threatened, there are also some in the bowels of the earth; I have never yet seen them, but legend tells of them and I believe in them firmly. They are creatures of the inner earth, not even legend can describe them, even those who have become their victims have scarcely seen them; they come, you hear the scratching of their claws just beneath you in the earth, which is their element, and already you are lost. Here it can no longer be said that you are in your own house, you are rather in theirs. From such enemies not even that exit of mine can save me, indeed it will probably not save me in any case, but more likely destroy me; yet it is a hope, and I cannot live without it.

  Apart from this main exit I am connected with the outside world by quite narrow, reasonably safe passages which provide me with good fresh air; they are the work of the field mice, and I have managed to incorporate them successfully into my burrow; they also permit me to get wind of things from the distance, thus affording me protection, and all sorts of small fry come running through them as well which I can devour, so that I get a certain amount of hunting, enough for a modest subsistence, without leaving my burrow at all; that is naturally a great advantage.

  But the most beautiful thing about my burrow is its stillness; admittedly this is deceptive, at any moment it may be shattered and all will be over, but for the present it is still there; I can steal for hours along my passages and hear nothing but the occasional rustling of some little creature, which I then immediately reduce to silence between my jaws, or the pattering of soil which indicates to me the need for some repair; otherwise all is still. The air from the woods floats in, I have at the same time warmth and a cooling breeze, sometimes I stretch out and roll over in the passage for sheer contentment. It is a fine thing to have a burrow like mine as old age approaches, to have brought oneself under cover as autumn sets in.

  Every hundred yards or so I have widened the passages into little circular chambers; there I can curl myself up comfortably in the warmth of my own body and rest. There I sleep the sweet sleep of peace, of satisfied desire, of achieved ambition, the sweet sleep of the householder. I do not know whether it is a habit that persists from former days, or whether even in this house the perils are great enough to awaken me, but regularly from time to time I start up out of a deep sleep and listen, listen into the stillness which reigns here unchanged by day and night, smile with relief and sink back, my limbs relaxed, into still deeper sleep. Poor wanderers without a home, on the roads, in the woods, huddled at best in a heap of leaves or in a herd of their comrades, exposed to all the perils of heaven and earth! I lie here in a chamber that is secured on every side – there are more than fifty such chambers in my burrow – and pass whatever time I choose between dozing and unconscious sleep.

  Not quite in the middle of the burrow, carefully planned to withstand the worst danger short of direct pursuit, namely siege, lies the central stronghold. While all the rest of the burrow is probably more the product of intense intellectual work than of physical exertion, this castle keep was fashioned by the most arduous labour of my whole body in every limb. Several times, in the despair of physical exhaustion, I was on the point of abandoning everything; I rolled about on my back and cursed the burrow, I dragged myself outside and left it exposed to all the world; I could afford to do that, for I had no more wish to return; until at last, after some hours or days, I came repentantly back, could almost have raised a hymn of praise at finding the burrow unharmed, and in the best of spirits started on the work again. My work on the castle keep was made unnecessarily more difficult (unnecessarily in the sense that the burrow derived no real benefit from the additional work) by the fact that precisely at the spot where the keep was planned to be the earth was very loose and sandy; it had to be literally hammered firm in order to make the great rounded and beautifully vaulted chamber. But for such a task I have nothing but my brow. So with my brow I battered against the earth, thousands and thousands of times, for days and nights on end; I was glad when my brow ran with blood, for that was a proof that the wall was beginning to harden; and in this way, as may perhaps be granted, I richly earned my castle keep.

  In this castle keep I assemble my provisions; everything that I hunt down within the burrow over and above my immediate needs, and everything that I bring back with me from my hunting expeditions outside, I pile up here. The keep is so large that provisions for half a year cannot fill it. Consequently I can spread them well out, move about among them, play with them, enjoy their plenty and their various smells, and always see at a glance exactly what is available. I can then always undertake rearrangements, and make the necessary advance calculations and hunting plans, taking into account the season of the year. There are times when I am so well provided for that in my indifference to food I never even touch the smaller fry that go scurrying about, though that is perhaps imprudent of me from another point of view. My constant preoccupation with defensive measures means that my views on how the burrow can best be exploited for this purpose are always changing and developing, at least within certain limits. Thus it often seems to me dangerous to base my defence solely on the castle keep; after all, the ramifications of the burrow allow me a wide range of possibilities, and it seems more in accordance with prudence to divide up my stores somewhat, and put a supply in several of the smaller chambers; so I then allocate, let us say, every third chamber as a reserve storeroom, or every fourth chamber as a main and every second as an auxiliary storeroom, and so forth. Or I exclude certain passageways altogether as far as piling up provisions is concerned, so as to throw the enemy off the scent, or I choose just a few chambers at random, being guided solely by their distance from the main exit. Each of these new plans involves of course heavy transport work; I have to make my calculations and carry the loads to and fro. True, I can do that at my leisure and without any hurry, and it is not at all unpleasant to carry these tasty things in one’s jaws, to lie down and rest wherever one likes, and to have a nibble at whatever happens to take one’s fancy. But it is not so pleasant when it sometimes strikes me, usually when I have just started up out of my sleep, that my present distribution of stores is totally misguided, liable to bring great dangers in its train, and must be set right immediately with all speed, no matter how tired or sleepy I may be; then I rush, then I fly, then I have no time for calculation; although my intention is to put a new and most exact plan into operation, I find myself wildly seizing the first thing I happen to get my teeth into, dragging and heaving, panting and groaning, stumbling about, and any change of any sort in the present state of affairs, that now seems so excessively dangerous, is enough to satisfy me. Until gradually, as I become fully awake, soberness returns and I can hardly understand my panic haste; I breathe in deeply the tranquillity of my house which I have myself disturbed, return to my resting-place, fall asleep at once in new-won exhaustion, and wake again to find, as it might be, a rat still dangling from my jaws, as incontrovertible evidence of the night’s labours which seem by now almost like a dream. Then again there are times when it seems to me the very best plan to gather all my stores together in one place. What use can the stores in the smaller chambers be to me, and how little can be accommodated there in any case; besides, whatever I put there blocks the passageway and is more likely to be a hindrance to me one day, when I have to defend myself, when I
have to run. And furthermore it may be foolish, but is none the less true, that one suffers a loss of self-confidence if one cannot see all one’s stores assembled together, and so know at a single glance how much one possesses. And may one not lose a good deal in the course of all these redistributions? I can‘t be always galloping up and down my criss-cross passageways to make sure that everything is in good order. The basic idea of distributing my stores is indeed a sound one, but really only if one had several chambers similar to my castle keep. Several such chambers! Yes indeed! But who is to achieve that? In any case they cannot be worked into the general plan of my burrow at this late stage. But I will admit that that is a fault of my burrow; it is always a mistake to have only a single specimen of anything. And I confess too that during the entire building operations I felt a vague awareness – yet it was clear enough if I had been willing to respond to it – that a number of castle keeps were required; I did not yield to it, I felt too weak for the enormous labour involved, I even felt too weak to face up to the necessity of that labour; somehow or other I managed to console myself with an equally vague feeling, which suggested to me that what would be inadequate in all other cases would suffice just this once in my own, by way of exception, as a gift of grace, probably because providence had a special interest in the preservation of that stamp-hammer, my brow. So now I have only one castle keep, but the vague feeling that in this case the one would suffice has gone. However that may be, I must content myself with just the one, the smaller chambers are no possible use as a substitute, and so, when this conviction has grown on me, I begin once again to drag everything out of the small chambers and back to the castle keep. For some time after that it is a great comfort to me to have all the chambers and passageways clear, to see the quantities of meat piling up in the central chamber, and sending the rich mixture of their various smells, each one of which I find delightful in its own way and can distinguish accurately from the distance, out into the furthest corridors. Then there usually follow times of particular tranquillity, in which I slowly and gradually transfer my sleeping-places from the outer circles towards the centre, steeping myself ever more profoundly in the smells, until I can stand it no longer and one night charge into the castle keep, taking a mighty toll of the provisions and filling myself to the point of complete stupor with the best things I have. Happy, but dangerous hours; if someone knew how to take advantage of them, he could destroy me easily and without risk to himself. Here too the absence of a second or third main chamber has a damaging effect; it is the single great accumulation of food that seduces me. I try to guard myself against this in various ways, indeed the distribution of food among the smaller chambers is also a measure of this kind, but unfortunately, like other similar measures, it leads through privation to still greater greed, which then overturns all reason and changes my defence plans arbitrarily to suit its own ends.