by Franz Kafka
“Then we reach my room and generally what they do is push me in while they stay outside and shut the door on me. It’s a game, because now they start fighting over which of them is allowed in first. This isn’t jealousy, though, not a real fight, it’s just a game. I listen to the loud gentle blows they exchange, the snorts that now signify actual shortage of breath, the occasional word. Finally, I open the door myself and they plunge in, heated, with torn shifts and the acrid smell of their breathing. We fall down onto the carpet and gradually quiet down.”
“But why are you quiet now?”
“I’ve lost the thread. What was it now? You were asking me about the source of my alleged power, and I told you it was these women. Well, that’s the way it is, these women are the source of my power.”
“Your merely living with them?”
“My merely living with them.”
“You’ve become monosyllabic.”
“You see, my power has limits. Something is telling me to be quiet. Goodbye.”
Some people approached me and asked me to build them a city. I said there were not nearly enough of them, they could fit into a single house, why should I build them a city. They replied that others would come after them, and there were married couples among them who would be having children, also the city didn’t have to be built all at once, but perhaps just sketched, and then it could be built by and by. I asked them where they wanted their city built, and they offered to show me the place. We walked along the river till we came to a sufficiently elevated plane, steeply shelving down toward the river but wide and flat in all other directions. They said they wanted their city built up there. There was nothing growing but sparse grass, no trees, which I liked, but the slope down to the river struck me as too steep, and I pointed this out to them. They replied that this didn’t matter, the city could spread out in other directions and have sufficient access to fresh water, also over the course of time ways might be found to reduce the angle of the decline, at any rate, that wasn’t to be an impediment to the founding of the city on this spot. Also, they were young and strong and could easily scramble up and down the incline, as they proceeded to show me. Like lizards they beetled up through the rocks, and they were up at the top in no time. I walked up after them and asked what made them want their city precisely here. The place didn’t seem particularly defensible, the only natural boundary was on the river side, where one needed it least, what would have been preferable at that point was an easy access; whereas from every other side their plateau was easily reached, and for that reason, and for its wide extension, difficult to defend. Moreover, they had not had the soil tested for its richness, and to be so dependent on lower ground and vehicular traffic was always a risky thing for a city, especially in these turbulent times. Nor had it been proven that there was any source of drinking water up here, the one stream they showed me hardly seemed adequate to that purpose.
“You’re tired,” one of them said, “you don’t want to build our city.” “I am indeed tired,” I said and sat down on a rock beside the stream. They dipped a cloth in the water and I thanked them and refreshed my face with it. Then I said I wanted to take a walk around the plateau by myself and left them: it turned out to be a long way; by the time I returned it was already dark, and they were lying by the stream sleeping; a mild rain was falling.
I decided to leave them and climbed down the slope back to the river. But one of them awoke and he awakened the others and then they were all clustered around the edge, and I was only halfway down, and they begged me and called out to me. So I turned back, and they helped me and pulled me up. That was when I promised to build them their city. They were very grateful, gave speeches in my honor, kissed me, [. . .]
We were walking on smooth ground, sometimes one of us would stumble and fall, sometimes one would almost fall over sideways, then the other had to help, but carefully because his own footing wasn’t the best. Finally we came to a hill called the Knee, but even though it’s not a big hill we couldn’t climb it, we kept slipping off, we were at our wit’s end, so now we had to go around it since we couldn’t climb over it, which might be just as impossible, but much more dangerous, because failure here meant a fall and the end. We decided, so as not to hamper each other, to make the attempt from different sides. I threw myself down on the ground and slowly pushed myself to the edge; I could see no semblance of a path, no possibility of a hold anywhere, everything fell straight down into the depths. I was certain I wouldn’t make it, perhaps conditions on the other side were a little easier, but I’d have to try it to find out, and then we’d both be finished. But we had to take the chance, we couldn’t stay here, and behind us bleakly and inaccessibly soared the five sharp peaks called the Toes. I surveyed the scene once more, the stretch, not really all that long, but impassible, and shut my eyes — keeping them open would only have hurt me here — firmly resolved not to open them unless the impossible happened and I did get across to the other side after all. And then I let myself slowly sink to the side, almost as in sleep, stopped, and began to advance. I had extended my arms far ahead and to both sides, this covering and so to speak containing as much area as possible around me seemed to give me a little balance, or more correctly, a little comfort. But then to my own surprise I noticed that this ground was somehow helpful to me. Yes, it was smooth and there was nothing to hold on to, but it wasn’t cold, some sort of warmth flowed from it to me, there was a connection that didn’t come through my hands and feet but that persisted and held.
“It is not a barren wall, it’s living sweetness pressed into a wall, bunches of grapes pressed together.” — “I don’t believe it.” — “Taste it.” — “I’m too incredulous to lift a hand.” — “I’ll put a grape to your mouth, then.” — “I won’t be able to taste it from incredulity.” — “Then drop!” — “Didn’t I tell you the barrenness of this wall is enough to lay a man out?”
“You never draw water from the depths of this well.”
“What water? What well?”
“Who is asking?”
Silence.
“What silence?”
No one slept, there was no sleeping in the caravansary; but if no one slept, why did anyone even come here? To rest the animals. It was just a small place, a tiny oasis, but it was completely full of the caravansary, which, one has to say, was enormous. For a stranger, such was my impression, it must be impossible to orient oneself. The type of the construction was partly responsible. You entered the outer courtyard, and from there two arches roughly ten yards apart led into a second courtyard, you passed through an archway, and then, far from being, as expected, in a further large expanse, you found yourself in a dark little space with walls reaching up into the heavens, it was only way up that you saw some illuminated balconies. So you thought you had taken a wrong turn and wanted to return to the first courtyard, and chanced not to go back through the arch you had entered by but the one next to it. Only to find you weren’t in the original courtyard at all, but in a different one, much larger, full of music and noise, and the lowing and bleating of animals. You had made a mistake, so you went back into the dark little courtyard and then through the first archway. It was no use, again you were in the second courtyard, and you had to ask for directions through a whole series of other courtyards before you were back in the original courtyard, which it had taken you just a few steps to leave. What was unpleasant was that the first courtyard was always crowded, it was almost impossible to find a place to rest. It almost looked as though the apartments in the first courtyard were full of regular long-term guests, though this couldn’t actually be the case, for it was only caravans that put up here, who else could or should have wanted to stay here, the little oasis had nothing but water to offer, and it was many miles from other, bigger oases. No one could live or want to live here unless it might be the owner of the caravansary and his employees, but, though I’ve stayed there several times, I have yet to see or hear anything of them
. It would have been difficult to imagine, had there been a proprietor there, such disorder, yes, including actual violence, being tolerated, as happened here day and night. Rather, I had the impression that the most numerous caravan on any given occasion prevailed, and then the others in order. Even this doesn’t explain everything, though. For instance, the large front gate was usually kept locked, opening it for caravans to enter or leave was an elaborate process that took considerable organization. Often the caravans were kept waiting outside for many hours in the burning sun before they were admitted. This was nothing but the most blatant chicanery; however, there seemed to be no solution to it. So they stood outside and had plenty of time to inspect the setting of the ancient gate. Around the gate in two or three rows were angels in relief blowing fanfares, at the apex of the gate one such instrument hung down far into the gateway. The pack animals had to be carefully led around this on each occasion so that they didn’t collide with it, given the run-down condition of the building as a whole, it was noticeable that this rather beautiful piece of work had not suffered any damage. Perhaps it was a question of [. . .]
“You are forever speaking of death, and not dying.”
“And yet die I shall. I am just intoning my swan song. One person’s song is longer, another’s shorter. The only difference is a few words.”
It was no prison cell, because the fourth wall was completely open. The notion that this wall would be or might be bricked up was appalling, because then, given the dimensions of the space, which was a yard deep and only just above head height, I would be in a sort of vertical stone coffin. Well, for now it wasn’t, I could stretch out my hands, and when I gripped an iron bracket that hung down from the ceiling, I could even cautiously put my head out, but cautiously, because I didn’t know the elevation of my cell over the ground. It seemed to be very high up, at any rate I could see only a gray haze in the depths, the same as on either side, only it seemed to thin out a little higher up. It was the sort of perspective you might have from a tower on an overcast day.
I was tired, and sat down on the edge, letting my feet dangle. What was annoying was that I was completely naked, otherwise I might have knotted together some garments, fastened them to the ceiling bracket, and let myself down from my cell as far as I could, to see what I could see. On the other hand, it was probably just as well that I couldn’t, because in my restlessness I might have done it, with possibly catastrophic results. Much better to have nothing and do nothing.
In the cell, which was otherwise completely empty and had bare walls, there were two holes in the floor at the back. The hole in one corner seemed to be a sort of lavatory, the hole in the other corner had in it a piece of bread and a small, sealed wooden barrel of water, so that was where I was being fed.
People are individuals, and fully entitled to their individuality, though they must first be brought to an acceptance of it. It was my experience, though, that every effort was made, at school and at home, to expunge any individuality. This made it easier to educate the child, and made its life easier for it, though it meant acquainting it early with pain and duress. An example: no one will ever be able to reason a child into putting down his book and going to bed. When I was told that it was late and I was ruining my eyes, and I would be tired and unable to get up in the morning, and that the silly story wasn’t worth the trouble, then I couldn’t refute such an argument point by point — mostly because it wasn’t even worth considering. Every one of the terms here was endless or so divided and subdivided that it might as well be: time was endless, so it couldn’t be too late; my eyesight was endless, so that I couldn’t ruin it; even night was endless, so there was no need to worry about getting up; and anyway my criterion for books wasn’t whether they were sensible or silly but whether they gripped me or failed to grip me, and this one, whatever it was, gripped me. Of course, I had no way of saying all this, and the upshot was either that I made trouble for myself by pleading to be allowed to go on anyway, or else I decided to go on without permission. So much for my own individuality. It was suppressed by turning off the gaslight and leaving me in the dark. All I was told by way of explanation was: everyone needs to go to sleep, and it’s time for you to go to sleep. I saw it and had to believe it, even though it made no sense to me. No one has as much reforming zeal as children. But quite apart from the somehow remarkable degree of oppression, in almost every case there remained a thorn whose sharp prick could not be blunted by any appeal to principle. I was left in the belief that on that particular evening no one in the world had such a desire to read as I did. No appeal to general rules could convince me otherwise, the less so because I saw that my insuperable desire to read was not even credited. Only gradually and much later, maybe as the wish was already waning, did I begin to believe that many others might have a similar desire, and they got over it. At the time, though, I only felt the injustice done to me. I went sadly to sleep, and there began to develop in me the hatred that has determined my life within the family and the whole of my life subsequently. Forbidden reading is just one instance, but it is indicative, because I was deeply touched by it. My individuality was not respected; but because I could sense it in myself, I was forced to see — and I was very sensitive in this, and always on the qui vive — a form of condemnation in this behavior to me. If my publicly displayed form of individuality was condemned, then how much worse was it with the other forms that I kept concealed because I could see that there was some element of wrongness in them. For instance, if I had been reading without first having done my homework. This might be very bad as a form of dereliction of duty, but then I wasn’t concerned with such absolute judgments, I was only interested in comparative judgments. Faced with such judgment, this dereliction was probably not worse than the long time spent reading, especially as it was so limited in its consequences by my great fear of school and authorities; whatever I might on occasion have skimped through reading, I was easily able to make up for the next morning and in school, thanks to my memory, which at the time was excellent. The main thing, though, was that I was now prosecuting the condemnation of my habit of lengthy reading by myself through the further, concealed habit of dereliction of duty, which led me to the most crushing result. It was as though someone is to be grazed with a rod that is said not to cause any pain, instead of which he takes the woven ends apart, pulls the individual ends into himself, and following his own plan starts to scratch and stab his flesh, all the while he continues to hold the rod steady in his other hand. If I wasn’t yet inflicting grave punishment on myself in these situations, it is nevertheless a certainty that I never accepted any real gain from my individuality that would ultimately express itself in the form of self-confidence. Rather, the consequence of a display of willfulness was that I either ended up hating the oppressor or failed to acknowledge the willfulness, two consequences that might go on to be associated in mendacious fashion. If I kept my wilfulness hidden, then the consequence was that I hated either myself or my fate and took myself for wicked or damned. The relationship of these clusters of wilfulness has undergone changes over the years. Public displays of wilfulness became increasingly evident, as my life opened out before me. But they didn’t bring me any relief, just as the quantity of what remained hidden from sight was not diminished, rather, it turned out on closer inspection that it was impossible to admit everything; even the seemingly full confessions of earlier times showed the roots of the evil still embedded inside me. Even if it had been otherwise — with the relaxing of the entire inner economy that I have gone through without any decisive interventions, one concealed bit of wilfulness could so shake me that, for all my conformity in other respects, I was unable to grab a hold anywhere. Things got worse. Even if I had kept nothing secret, but had thrown everything as far from me as I could, and was standing there all pure again, the very next moment I would be convulsed with the old confusion because to my way of thinking the secret would not have been fully seen and assessed but returned, given back to me by the gene
rality. This was no deception, but a special form of understanding that says that at least among the living it is not possible for anyone to reject his entire being. If, for instance, someone owns up to his friend that he is a miser, then in that instant he has apparently detached himself from his miserliness for the friend, who is a representative observer. For that instant the friend’s reaction is a matter of indifference, whether he denies the existence of the miserliness, or offers advice on how to get free of it, or even seeks to defend it. It might not even matter terribly if the friend in consequence ends the friendship. All that matters is that one has opened oneself up to the generality as an honest, if not a guilty, sinner and thereby hopes to have reacquired the goodness and — this is the part that matters — the freedom of childhood. But all that one has acquired is a brief moment of folly and much subsequent bitterness. Because somewhere on the table, between the miser and the friend, lies the money that the miser must have, and toward which he moves his hand ever more quickly. Halfway there, his admission is weaker but still enough to absolve him; any time after it is not. On the contrary, it merely illuminates the rapidly moving hand. Effective confession is only possible before or after the deed, the deed will not tolerate anything but itself; for the hand clawing at coins and notes there is no absolution by word or feeling, either the act, and in this case the hand, must be destroyed or one persists in miserliness.