by Franz Kafka
This is how our people deals with its past, but the present can also get mixed in with the dead. If once, once in a lifetime, an imperial official calls in on the village on his tour of the province, makes some demands on behalf of whoever is ruling, checks the tax-rolls, visits the school, questions the priest about our moral conduct, and then puts everything, just before he gets into his litter, into one long exhortation to the assembled community, then a smile will pass over our faces, sly looks are exchanged and we bend down to the children, so as not to be spotted by the official. How is it possible, we think, he speaks of one of the dead as though he were alive, this particular Emperor has died long ago, the dynasty has become extinct, the official is pulling our leg, but we pretend not to notice, we don’t want to give offence. But serious obedience is due only to our current master: anything else would be sinful. And behind the quickly vanishing litter of the official, someone climbs out of a long crumbled urn and starts to throw his weight about as master of the village.
If someone concluded from such episodes that basically we have no Emperor, then that would not be too far from the truth. I must repeat: there is perhaps no more loyal people than ours in the south, but our loyalty is of no benefit to the Emperor. The little pillar at the entrance to the village may have the holy dragon on it, blowing in reverence its fiery breath in exactly the direction of Peking ever since anyone can remember, but Peking is as remote to the people in the village as the afterlife. Is there really such a village where the houses are packed together, covering the fields, further away than the view from our hill can stretch, and between these houses day and night nothing but people, one head by another? It is easier to imagine a city like that than it is to believe Peking and its Emperor were one single thing, perhaps a cloud, calmly wandering under the sun with the passing of the ages.
The consequence of such beliefs is a sort of chaotic, ungoverned life. Not at all immoral; rarely in the course of my travels have I met with such moral purity as here at home. But it is a life that is subject to none of the current laws and obeys only the instructions and warnings issued to us from the olden days.
I am wary of generalizations, and won’t claim that the situation is the same in all ten thousand villages in our province, let alone in all five hundred provinces of China. But perhaps on the basis of the many documents I have read on this subject, and on the basis of my own observations – particularly during the building of the Wall, the human material gave the sensitive observer a chance to understand the souls of almost every province – on the basis of all this I may perhaps be allowed to say that the prevailing view of the Emperor inevitably shows similarities with the view taken by my home village. I don’t want to claim that such a view is correct, on the contrary. For the most part it is conditioned by the government, which, in the oldest empire in the world has thus far proved unable – or from pressure of other business has neglected – to establish the institution of the Empire in a sufficiently clear form that it might directly and uninterruptedly hold sway as far as its furthest frontiers. On the other hand, it does show a weakness of the popular imagination or perhaps a lack of faith, if it does not succeed in raising the Empire from its sunkenness in Peking in all its life and presence and pressing it to the breasts of its subjects, who desire nothing more than once to feel this embrace and die in its bliss.
Such a state of affairs cannot be for the good. All the more striking, then, that this weakness, this flaw, seems to be one of the most important sources of unity in our people; yes, if you will allow me to risk the expression, positively the ground on which we have our being. To set out a blemish in such detail here is not to shake our consciences, but, more importantly, our national structures. Therefore allow me for the moment not to pursue my exploration of this question any more at this stage.
This then was the world into which news of the Wall broke. It too was delayed by some thirty years after its original announcement. It happened one summer evening. I was ten years old, standing with my father on the river bank. In accordance with the significance of this often-discussed moment, I remember the circumstances in the most minute detail. He was holding me by the hand, as he liked to do into his advanced old age, while running the other along the length of his very long thin pipe as though it were a flute. His long thin beard stuck out into the air, because in the enjoyment of his pipe he tended to gaze off into the distance across the river. And his pigtail, object of reverence among the children, rustling softly against the gold-embroidered silk of his festive garment, dangled accordingly low. Just then a barque stopped in front of us; the boatman waved to my father to come down the bank, as he himself set off up towards him. They met in the middle, the boatman whispered something into my father’s ear; to get very close to him, he had even thrown his arm around him. I didn’t manage to hear what was said – I only saw my father appear not to believe it, the boatman insist, my father still unable to believe it, the boatman with the passion of seafaring men everywhere trying to prove its truth by practically ripping the tunic across his chest, my father growing stiller and then the boatman clattering noisily back down to his barque and sailing away. Pensively my father turned towards me, knocked out his pipe, and stuck it in his belt, pinched my cheek and pulled my head closer to him. That was what I liked best of all, it made me very happy, and so we walked home together. The rice was already steaming on the table and the wine was just being poured into cups. Without seeming to notice these preparations, my father began to report from the threshold what he had been told. I do not remember any of the actual words, but the strangeness of the details communicated itself to me so strongly, even as a child, that I will try and reproduce them here. I will do so because it was very indicative of the popular comprehension. What my father said was this:
It Was One Summer …
It was one summer, a warm day. On the way home with my sister, we happened to pass the gate of a manor-house. I don’t know whether it was from pure mischievousness, or in a fit of absent-mindedness that she struck the gate, or perhaps merely shook her fist at it and didn’t strike it at all. A hundred paces further on, down the left-bearing road, a village began. It wasn’t one we knew, but people came out of the first house, waving to us in a friendly way, but warning us at the same time, alarmed themselves, cringing with fear. They pointed to the manor we had passed, and referred us to the blow against the gate. The owners of the manor would bring charges against us, inquiries would begin straight away. I felt perfectly relaxed, and tried to calm my sister. She probably hadn’t struck the gate at all, and even if she had, there was nowhere in the world where that would mean a trial. I tried to make the people around us see it that way, and they heard me but didn’t give an opinion. Later on, they said that not only my sister but I too as her brother stood to be accused. I nodded and smiled. We were all of us looking back in the direction of the manor, the way you might look at a distant puff of smoke and wait for a flame to appear. And lo, before long we saw horsemen ride into the wide open gate, dust rise up, covering everything, and only the sharp points of lances flashing. No sooner had the troop disappeared into the courtyard than they seemed to have turned the horses and were on their way to us. I pushed my sister away, I would see that everything was cleared up; she refused to leave me. I told her she should at least change so as to appear in front of the gentlemen in a better dress. Finally she listened, and set off on the long way home. Already the riders were upon us, down from their horses they asked for my sister. She wasn’t there just then, came the timid reply, but she would be along later. The answer was received almost with indifference; what seemed to matter was that I had been found. It was principally two gentlemen, the judge, lively young fellow, and his silent assistant whom he addressed as Assmann. I was asked to step into the front parlour of the inn. Slowly, moving my head from side to side, playing with my braces, I set off under the sharp eyes of the gentlemen. I almost thought a word might be enough to release me, a city boy, free and almost honourable, from t
hese farm people. But as soon as I crossed the threshold, the judge who had gone on ahead, and was waiting for me, said: ‘I feel sorry for this man!’ It was beyond doubt that he meant not my current state, but whatever lay in store for me. The parlour resembled a prison cell more than any rustic parlour. Large flagstones, dark grey bare walls, somewhere set in them an iron ring, in the middle something that looked half-pallet, half operating-table.
My Business …
My business rests entirely on my shoulders. Two secretaries with typewriters and ledgers in the anteroom, then my office with desk, cashbox, coffee table, armchair and telephone – that’s the whole set-up. Simple to run the eye over, easy to run. I am young, and the business trundles along ahead of me, I don’t complain. I don’t complain. Just after New Year, a young man moved into the empty premises next to mine that I had foolishly refused for a very long time to rent myself. Another room and anteroom, and a little kitchenette as well. I could surely have used the two offices – my two secretaries occasionally feel a little cramped – but then what would I have done with the kitchenette? That was the silly anxiety that kept me from taking it. Now I’ve got the young man sitting there. Harras, his name is. I don’t know what he does. All it says on the door is ‘Harras, Office’. I’ve made inquiries, and people told me he has a business along the much same lines as mine, there was no reason to advise against giving him a loan, he’s an ambitious young man, whose business may be on an upward path; on the other hand, they wouldn’t go so far as to recommend investing in him, because by all appearances he had no capital. The usual advice you give when you don’t know anything. Sometimes I run into Harras on the stairs: he always seems to be in a tearing rush, he shoots past me, so I’ve not really ever had a proper look at him. He has his office key ready in his hand, and in a trice he’s opened the door and slipped in like the tail of a rat, and I’m standing in front of that nameplate again, ‘Harras, Office’, which I’ve clapped eyes on much more often than I’d like to have done. The wretched plywood walls that betray the honest man of business and shield the dishonest one. My telephone is mounted on the party wall, but I mention that mostly in a spirit of irony, because even if it was on the other side of the room, you would still be able to hear everything that goes on. I’ve given up using the names of my clients on the telephone, but of course it doesn’t take much to establish them from certain characteristic but unavoidable turns of phrase. Sometimes, with the earpiece at my ear, a martyr to my restlessness, I dance around the machine on tiptoe, but still can’t keep from betraying my secrets. Of course that causes my business decisions to be more uncertain, and my voice shaky. What is Harras up to while I’m telephoning? I might stretch a point, as I’m bound to do, and say: Harras doesn’t need a telephone, he uses mine, he has slid his sofa against the wall and is listening, meanwhile I have to run to the telephone when it rings, take onerous decisions, perform great feats of persuasion, but above all, throughout the whole process, I am involuntarily reporting to Harras through the wall. Perhaps he doesn’t even need to wait for the conversation to end, but gets up when he’s heard enough, scurries through the city in his typical fashion, and before I’ve hung up the earpiece, he’s already busy thwarting my plan.
A Cross-Breed
I have an unusual animal, half pussy-cat, half lamb. It’s an heirloom that belonged to my father, though it has grown up mostly in my own lifetime: once it used to be much more lamb than cat, now it’s an equal blend of both. It has a cat’s head and claws, and the size and form of a lamb; the flickering, gentle eyes partake of both; the fur, which is soft and close-lying, the movements that combine skipping and creeping; it likes to curl up on the windowsill in the sun, and purr; it gambols about the meadow like mad, and can barely be caught; it runs away from cats and tries to attack lambs; on moonlit nights the eaves are its preferred route; it can’t miaow and is frightened of rats; it is capable of lurking by the chicken coop for hours on end, though it has never yet killed anything; I feed it fresh milk, that’s what best agrees with it, it laps it up in long draughts through its tigerish teeth. Of course the children love it. Sunday mornings they are allowed to visit. I have the animal on my lap and the local children stand around and watch. They ask the most extraordinary questions, which no one can answer. Nor do I make any attempt to; I am content simply to show the animal off. Sometimes the children bring cats of their own, once they even turned up with a pair of lambs; but contrary to their expectations, there were no great scenes of recognition, the animals looked at each other calmly through their animal eyes, and evidently took the other’s existence as a divinely ordained fact.
On my lap the animal knows neither fear nor persecution. It feels happiest when pressed against me; it is loyal to the family that has nurtured it. This is probably not unusual, just the correct instinct of an animal that has plenty of in-laws all over the planet, but maybe not one close blood relation, and to whom the protection it has found among us is something sacred. Sometimes I laugh when it sniffs at me, or twists between my legs and is inseparable from me. Not content with being lamb and cat, it almost wants to be a dog as well! I am quite serious about this. It has in itself both forms of nervousness, that of the cat and the lamb, quite different though they are. That’s why it is almost bursting out of its skin. Perhaps the butcher’s knife would come as a relief for the animal, but heirloom that it is, I am unable to oblige it.
K. was a Great Juggler …
K. was a great juggler. His act was perhaps a little monotonous, but there was no doubting its virtuosity, and so it remained a great draw. I well remember the first time I saw him perform, even though it was fully twenty years ago, and I was a small boy at the time. He arrived in our little town without any prior announcement and put on the show on the evening of his arrival. In the great dining hall of our hotel, a little space had been cleared around one table in the middle – that was all it took by way of preparation. In my memory, the hall was packed, but every child will think a room is packed if there are a few lights, a hubbub of grown-ups’ voices, a waiter running back and forth and so on. I don’t know why so many people should have turned out for this obviously rushed event, but in my memory the packed hall forms a major part of my impression of the performance.
New Lamps
Yesterday I visited company HQ for the first time. Our night shift had elected me as their spokesman and since the design and filling of our oil lamps both leave something to be desired, I was to go there to demand that these grievances be addressed. I was shown to the relevant office, knocked and entered. A delicate young man, very pale, smiled at me from behind a big desk. He nodded liberally, excessively. I wasn’t sure whether to sit down or not – there was a chair there, but I thought that on the occasion of my first visit I perhaps shouldn’t sit, and so I made my case standing up. It turns out this modesty of mine created difficulties for the young gentleman, because he had to crane his neck and turn his face up to me if he wasn’t to move his chair back, which he didn’t want to do. Then again, try as he might, he was unable to incline his head sufficiently and so, all the time I was talking, he was squinting up at the ceiling, where I couldn’t help but follow. When I was finished, he slowly got to his feet, patted me on the back, said: I see, I see, and pushed me into the adjacent office where a gentleman with a wild growth of beard had evidently been waiting for us, because there was no sign on his desk of any work, while an open glass door led out to a little garden clustered with flowers and shrubs. A brief whispered aside of not many words from the young man was enough to apprise the gentleman of our grievances. He stood up right away and said: Well now, my dear – I think he wanted to say my name, and I was already opening my mouth to introduce myself all over again, but he cut me off: There, that’s all right, I know you very well – well, your petition or complaint is certainly justified, I and the gentlemen on the board would be the last people not to see that. The welfare of the workforce means more to us – believe me – than the health of the factory. An
d why not, indeed? The factory can be rebuilt any time, it’s just money, who cares about money, whereas if a human being loses his life, then a human being loses his life, and there is a widow and orphans. Dear Lord, yes. So every proposal to bring in new safety measures, new relief, new comfort, new luxuries, is most welcome to us. Whoever comes to us with such is our man. So just you leave your suggestions here, we will pore over them in detail; should some other dazzling innovation be attached to them, I’m sure we won’t omit it, and at the end of the process you’ll get your new lamps. Now go and tell your people downstairs: we won’t rest until we’ve converted your mineshaft into a drawing room, and if you don’t end up dying in patent-leather slippers, then you won’t die at all. Now, good day!
An Everyday Confusion
An everyday incident, and the bearing of it an instance of everyday heroism: A. is concluding an important piece of business with B. in the neighbouring village of H. He goes to H. for the preliminary discussion, gets there and back in ten minutes each way, and at home glories in his particular swiftness. The following day his presence is required in H. again, this time for the final sealing of the deal; since this is likely to take several hours, A. sets off early in the morning; even though all external conditions, at least inasmuch as A. is aware of them, are unchanged, this time it takes him ten hours to get to H. When he gets there in the evening, totally exhausted, he is told that B., in annoyance at A.’s failure to show up, had set off to A.’s village half an hour ago; they should have met each other on the road. A. is advised to wait; B. will surely be back very soon. But A., in a panic now about the deal, sets off for home right away. This time, without especially thinking about it, he covers the distance in a flash. At home he learns that B. had arrived early in the morning, before A.’s departure – yes, he had even seen A. in the gateway and reminded him of their business – but A. had said he was in a hurry and had no time. In spite of this baffling behaviour on the part of A., B. had settled down to wait for A. He had asked repeatedly whether A. was back yet, but was still up in A.’s room. Happy to learn that he could still see B. and explain everything to him, A. runs up the stairs. He is almost at the top when he stumbles, ruptures a tendon and, almost beside himself with pain, incapable even of screaming, only whimpering in the dark, he hears and looks on as B. – it is unclear whether it is at a great distance or right next to him – stomps down the stairs in a towering rage and is never seen again.