The Great Wall of China

by Franz Kafka

  But none of these beautiful dreams has materialized, and I must set to work; I ought almost to be glad that my work has now a direct connection with the castle keep, since that spurs me on. Certainly it becomes more and more obvious that I need all my energies for this task, which at first seemed quite a trifling one. I now set about sounding the surface of the castle keep, and wherever I listen, high or low, at the walls or on the floor, at the entrances or in the centre of the chamber, everywhere, everywhere I hear the same noise. And how much time, how much effort is required for this protracted listening to the steady coming and going of the noise. One can, if one wishes, provide oneself with a little illusory consolation by observing that here in the castle keep, as opposed to the passageways, one hears nothing at all if one removes one’s ear far enough from the surface, owing to the sheer size of the chamber. Simply for a rest, simply to regain my composure, I make this experiment quite frequently; I listen intently, and am delighted not to hear anything. But the question remains: what on earth can have happened? Confronted with this phenomenon my original explanations fall to the ground completely. But other explanations which suggest themselves I soon have to reject as well. One might conceive, for instance, that what I hear is simply the noise of the small fry themselves at their work. But that would fly in the face of all experience: I cannot suddenly begin to hear something that has always been going on but that I have never heard before. During the years I may perhaps have grown more sensitive to disturbances in the burrow, but my hearing has certainly not grown any keener. It is of the very nature of small fry not to be heard. Would I have ever tolerated them otherwise? Even at the risk of starvation I would have rooted them out. But perhaps – this thought also insinuates itself into my mind – what I am concerned with here is some beast as yet unknown to me. It is not impossible. True, I have observed the life down here long and carefully enough, but the world is full of variety and there is never a lack of unpleasant surprises. But of course it could not be a single animal, it would have to be a whole horde that has suddenly invaded my territory, a whole horde of little creatures, which being audible must be superior to the small fry, but only slightly superior, for the sound of their workings is really quite faint. So what it may be is a troop of unknown creatures on their wanderings, who are just passing this way, who disturb me, but whose procession will soon be over. So I could really just wait, and refrain from doing work that will prove in the end to be superfluous. But if these strange creatures are responsible, why is it that I never see any of them? By now I have made a number of diggings in the hope of catching one of them, but not one do I find. It occurs to me that they might be quite diminutive creatures, much smaller than any I am acquainted with, and that it is only the noise which they make that is greater. Accordingly I examine the earth I have dug out, I throw the lumps in the air so that they break up into the tiniest pieces, but the noise-makers are not among them. I slowly come to recognize that I can achieve nothing by small random diggings of this kind; in the process I am merely ploughing up the walls of my burrow; I scrabble here and there in haste, have no time to fill in the holes again, at a number of points there are by now heaps of earth which obstruct my way and my view; but all that is merely an incidental worry, for I can now no longer wander about, nor take stock, nor rest; already I have often fallen asleep for a while at my work, in some hole or other, one paw stuck fast in the patch of earth above me, from which I was still trying to claw a piece down when I dropped off. From now on I shall change my method. I shall dig a regular full-size tunnel in the direction of the noise and I shall not stop digging until, independently of all theories, I find the true cause of the noise. Then I shall eradicate it, if that lies within my power, or if not I shall at least have certainty about it. This certainty will bring me either comfort or despair, but whichever it may be, the one or the other, it will be justified and unquestionable. This decision gives me new strength. All that I have done so far seems to me far too hasty; in the excitement of my return, not yet free of the cares of the upper world, not yet fully wrapped in the peace of the burrow, rendered hypersensitive by having had to do without it for so long, I allowed what is admittedly a curious phenomenon to deprive me of my senses completely. What is it after all? A faint whistling, audible only at long intervals, a mere nothing, that I won‘t say one could actually get used to – no, one could not get used to it – but that one could just observe for a while without taking any positive steps about it for the time being, that is, listen out occasionally every few hours and patiently register the results, instead of crawling about with one’s ear to the wall as I had been doing, and tearing up the earth practically every time the noise became audible, not so much in the hope of finding anything as to be doing something to satisfy one’s inner disquiet. All that will now be changed, I hope. And yet again I hope it will not – as in fury at myself, with my eyes tight shut, I have to admit – for my disquiet is still quivering within me exactly as it has been doing for hours, and if my reason did not restrain me I would probably like nothing better than to start digging away somewhere or other, irrespective of whether I could hear anything there or not, stolidly and defiantly, simply for the sake of digging, almost like the small fry who burrow either without any object at all or simply because they eat the soil. I find this new, rational plan of mine both attractive and unattractive. There is no objection to it, at least I know of no objection; it is bound, so far as I can see, to achieve my aim. And yet at bottom I do not believe in it, I believe in it so little that I don‘t even fear the terrors that its results may bring, I don‘t even believe that there will be any terrible result; indeed it seems to me that I have had this idea of digging a methodical tunnel in mind ever since the noise first appeared, and have only refrained from starting on it yet because I had no faith in it. None the less I shall of course start the tunnel; I have no other alternative; but I shall not start it at once, I shall postpone the work for a little; if reason is to be reinstated it must be reinstated fully; I shall not rush into the task. At all events I shall first repair the damage that I have done to the burrow by my wild ploughing-up of the surfaces; that will take a good long time, but it is essential; if the new tunnel is really to reach its goal it will probably have to be a long one, and if it should fail to reach its goal it will be endless; in any case this task will mean a protracted period of absence from the burrow, not indeed so painful an absence as that in the upper world, for I shall be able to break off my work when I like and return home, and even if I don‘t do that the air from the castle keep will be wafted along to me and surround me at my labour – but it does mean that I shall be departing from the burrow all the same, and surrendering myself to an uncertain fate, so for that reason I want to leave the burrow in good order behind me; it shall not be said that I, who am fighting for its peace, disturbed that peace myself without restoring it immediately. So I begin by shovelling the earth back into the holes, a job of work that I am quite familiar with, that I have done countless times almost without regarding it as work, and that particularly as regards the final pressing and smoothing down – this is no empty boast, but the simple truth – I can perform with unequalled skill. But this time I find it difficult, I am too distracted; every now and then, in the middle of my work, I press my ear to the wall and listen, without even caring that the earth which I have just lifted is trickling back into the passage again beneath me. The final embellishments, which demand a stricter attention, I can hardly carry out at all. Hideous protuberances, disturbing cracks remain, quite apart from the general fact that it is impossible to restore the original flourish to a wall that has been patched up in this way. I try to comfort myself with the reflection that my present work is only temporary. When I return, when peace has been established once more, I shall repair everything finally; all will go smoothly then. Oh yes, in fairy tales all goes smoothly, and this comfort of mine belongs to the realm of fairy tale too. It would be better to complete the work thoroughly now, right away; that would
be far more to the point than constantly interrupting it and wandering off down the passageways to discover new sources of noise, which is easy enough in all conscience, for all that is required is to stop at any point one likes and listen. And that is not the end of my useless discoveries. Sometimes I fancy that the noise has stopped: it does make long pauses, and one can miss the occasional whistling because of one’s own blood pounding all too loudly in one’s ears, so then two pauses run together and for a while one thinks that the whistling has stopped for ever. One listens no longer, one leaps up, one’s whole life is transformed; it is as if the source from which the silence of the burrow flows were opened. One refrains from verifying this discovery at once, one wants first to find someone to pass it on to while it is still unquestioned, so one gallops to the castle keep; there one is reminded that one has awakened to new life with all one’s being and that it is a long time since one has eaten anything, one tugs out something from among the supplies that are half-buried in soil, and before one has finished swallowing it down one is running back to the site of the incredible discovery, one would just like to reassure oneself fleetingly about it during the meal, one listens, but the most fleeting attention shows at once that one has been ignominiously mistaken: away there in the distance the whistling continues unperturbed. And one spits out the food and would like to trample it into the ground, one goes back to one’s job, no longer knowing which it is; at some spot where it seems necessary, and there is no shortage of such spots, one mechanically starts on something or other, just as if the overseer had arrived and one had to put on a show for his benefit. But hardly has one been working for a while like that when it can happen that one makes a fresh discovery. The noise seems to have become louder, not much louder of course – here it is always only a matter of the finest distinctions – but a little bit louder all the same, enough for the ear to detect quite clearly. And this growing-louder seems to be a coming-nearer; still more distinctly than one hears the increase of sound, one can positively see the steps with which it is approaching. One leaps back from the wall, one tries to grasp at once all the possible consequences that this discovery will entail. One has the feeling that one had never really organized the burrow for defence against an assault; one had intended to do so, but despite all one’s experience of life the danger of an assault, and consequently the need to make arrangements for defence, had seemed remote – or rather not remote (how could that be!) but of far less importance than the arrangements for a peaceful life, which had therefore been accorded priority in the burrow throughout. Many things in this direction might have been done without affecting the basic plan; in a really most incomprehensible manner they have been neglected. I have had a great deal of good fortune during all these years, good fortune has spoilt me; I have had my anxieties, but anxiety can lead nowhere when things are going well.

  The first thing to do now would really be to carry out a careful inspection of the burrow from the point of view of defence, taking every conceivable eventuality into account, to work out a plan of defence and a corresponding building plan, and then with youthful vigour to start on the work at once. That would be the essential job to do, for which, incidentally, it is now far too late, but that is what it would be, and not the digging of some grand exploratory tunnel, the real effect of which would simply be to divert me with all my energies, defenceless as I am, into seeking out the danger that threatens me, all because of a foolish notion that it might not arrive quickly enough of its own accord. Suddenly I cannot comprehend my former plan; in what had seemed so reasonable I can find no slightest trace of reason; once again I abandon my work, and abandon my listening too, I have no wish to discover any further increase of noise, I have had enough of discoveries, I abandon everything, I should be content if I could merely quieten the turbulence within me. Once more I let my passages lead me off where they will, I come into ever more outlying ones that I have not yet seen since my return, that are still untouched by my scratching paws, and whose stillness is stirred up by my approach and descends to enclose me. I do not surrender to it, I hurry on, I do not even know what I am looking for, probably I just want to gain time, and I stray so far that I find myself at the labyrinth: I am tempted by the idea of listening at the moss covering; such remote things, at present so remote, claim my interest. I push my way up there and listen. Deep stillness; how lovely it is here, nobody outside troubles about my burrow, everybody is engaged in his own affairs which have no connection with me; how have I managed to achieve that? Here at the moss covering is perhaps the only place in my burrow where I can now listen for hours and hear nothing. A complete reversal of the situation in the burrow; the former place of danger has become a place of tranquillity, while the castle keep has been caught up in the clamour and the perils of the world. Still worse, even here there is no real state of peace, here nothing has changed; whether silently or noisily, danger still lurks as before above the moss, but I have grown insensitive to it, I am far too preoccupied with the whistling in my walls. Am I really preoccupied with it? It grows louder, it comes nearer, but I wriggle my way through the labyrinth and choose my resting-place up here beneath the moss; it is almost as if I were abandoning the house to the whistler, content if I can only have a little peace up here. To the whistler? Have I then some new considered opinion about the origin of the noise? But surely the noise is caused by the channels bored by the small fry? Is not that my considered opinion? I do not appear to have departed from it so far. And if the noise is not caused by the channels directly, then in some indirect way. And if it should have no connection with them whatsoever, then it is probably impossible to frame any kind of hypothesis and one must just wait until one eventually finds the cause, or until it reveals itself. One could of course play with hypotheses even at this late stage; one might hold, for example, that somewhere in the distance water had flooded in, in which case what seems to me like a whistling or a piping would really be a rushing. But apart from the fact that I have no experience at all in this respect – the groundwater that I found at first I diverted immediately, and in this sandy soil it has never returned – apart from that, it just is a whistling, and cannot be reinterpreted as a rushing. But what is the use of all the exhortations to remain calm; my imagination will not rest, and I have actually reached the stage of believing – it is pointless not to admit this to myself – that the whistling is made by some creature, and what is more not by a number of small ones, but by a single great one. There is much to be said against this: that the noise can be heard everywhere and always at the same strength, and moreover regularly both by day and night. Certainly, one would first of all rather incline to the hypothesis of a number of small beasts, but since I would have been bound to find these in the course of my diggings, and I found nothing, the assumption of one great beast is all that remains to me; especially since all the things that seem to contradict this assumption are not things that make the beast impossible, they merely mean that it is quite inconceivably dangerous. That is the only reason why I have resisted this hypothesis. I shall cease from such self-deception. For some time now I have played with the idea that the beast can be heard at such a great distance because it works so furiously; it burrows through the ground as fast as a walker stepping out freely; the earth surrounding its tunnel trembles even after it has passed; this reverberation and the noise of its actual burrowing fuse in the far distance, and it is just the final dispersed ebbing of that combined sound that I hear, so that it comes to me at the same strength everywhere. A contributory factor is that the beast is not heading towards me; that is why the noise does not change; there is rather a plan in operation, whose purpose I cannot fathom: I merely assume that the beast, though I have no wish to assert that it knows of my existence, is encircling me; it has probably described several circles round my burrow already since I have been observing it. And now the noise is becoming louder after all, which means that the circles are narrowing. The nature of the noise, its whistling or piping, gives me much food for th
ought. When I scratch and scrape at the earth in my own fashion the sound is quite different. The only explanation I can find for the whistling is that the beast’s chief tool for digging is not its claws, which it probably just uses in support, but its muzzle or snout, which must of course, apart from its obviously enormous strength, have some kind of sharpness to it. It probably bores its snout into the earth with a single mighty thrust and tears out a great lump; during that time I hear nothing, that is the pause; but then it draws breath again for a new thrust, and this drawing-in of breath, which must be an earth-shaking noise, not only because of the beast’s strength but also because of its haste, its appetite for work, this noise reaches me then as a faint whistling. But what is totally incomprehensible to me is its ability to work without ceasing; perhaps during the short pauses there is just time for it to snatch a moment’s rest, but never yet does it appear to have taken really proper rest; day and night it digs away, always with the same freshness and vigour, fixedly pursuing its plan, which is so very urgent and which it has all the requisite abilities to put into practice. Well, I could not have anticipated an opponent like that. But apart from the peculiarities of the beast, what is happening now is no more than what I should really have feared all along, what I should have been constantly preparing against: somebody is on the advance. However did it happen that for so long everything went on so quietly and happily? Who can have guided the ways of my enemies, so that they gave a wide berth to my domain? Why have I been protected for so long, only to be terror-stricken now? What were all the many petty dangers, that I spent my time reflecting on, compared with this present single one? Was it my hope that I, as owner of the burrow, would have the upper hand of anyone who came? But it is obvious that precisely as the owner of this vast, vulnerable work I am defenceless against any serious attack; the joys of ownership have spoilt me, the vulnerability of the burrow has made me vulnerable; the injuries done to it hurt me as if they were mine. This is just what I should have foreseen; instead of thinking only of my own defence – and how perfunctorily and vainly I have done even that – I should have thought of the defence of the burrow. Above all, provision should have been made, in case of attack, for cutting off individual sections of the burrow – and as many individual sections as possible – from the sections in less immediate danger, by means of landslides that could be engineered at a moment’s notice, and moreover by such massive landslides, forming such effective barriers, that the attacker would not even guess that the real burrow only began on the other side. Furthermore, these landslides should have been so devised that they not only concealed the burrow but buried the attacker as well. Not the slightest attempt have I made to achieve anything of the sort; nothing, nothing at all has been done in this direction; I have been as careless as a child, the years of my manhood have been spent in childish games, I have done no more than play even with the thoughts of danger, and I have failed really to think about the dangers that really threaten. And there has been no lack of warnings.