by Franz Kafka
“How did I get here?” I exclaimed. It was an averagely large hall softly lit by electric light whose walls I was pacing off. The room had doors, but if you opened them, you found yourself facing a dark wall of sheer rock barely a hand’s breadth from the threshold, and running straight up and to either side, as far as one could see. There was no way out there. One door opened into another room, where prospects were perhaps a little more encouraging, but just as strange. You could see into a princely chamber dominated by red and gold, with several tall mirrors and a large crystal chandelier. Nor was that all.
I arrived out of breath. There was a pole jammed into the ground, a little askew, bearing a sign with the legend hollow. I had arrived, I said to myself, and I looked around. A few steps away was a discreet and rather overgrown arbor, from where I could hear a sound of clattering plates. I went there, poked my head through the low opening, saw next to nothing in the dark interior, but said hello anyway and inquired: “Would you happen know who is looking after the hollow?” “At your service, I am,” came the friendly reply, “I’ll be along in a moment.” Gradually I was able to make out the small group within, there was a young couple, three small children who were barely the height of the table, and a babe in arms. The man, who was sitting at the back of the arbor, was on the point of getting up and going out, but his wife told him sweetly to finish his dinner first, at which he gestured in my direction, and she remarked that I would surely have the goodness to wait a little and do them the honor of sharing their frugal lunch with them, till finally, very annoyed with myself for having disturbed their Sunday quiet, I felt compelled to say: “Sadly, sadly, madam, I am unable to comply, because I must immediately, and I mean immediately, have myself lowered into the hollow.” “Oh, dear,” said the woman, “on a Sunday of all days, and at lunchtime too. People and their whims. They are such slave drivers.” “Don’t be cross with me,” I said, “I’m not asking your husband just for the sake of it, and if I knew how it was done, I would long since have done it by myself.” “Don’t listen to her,” said the man, now standing at my side and drawing me away. “Don’t expect a woman to understand anything.”
“Remarkable!” said the dog, passing his hand over his brow. “All the many places I’ve been, first across the market square, taking the logging road up the hill, then crisscrossing the plateau, down the defile, along the paved road for a bit, left down to the stream and along the line of poplars, past the church, and now here. Why did I do it? I’m at my wit’s end. Just as well I’m back here now. I do so dread this pointless running around, these vast empty spaces, what a poor, helpless, lost dog I am there. It’s not even that I’m tempted to run away, this yard is my place, here is my kennel, here is my chain for the odd time I’ve bitten someone, I have everything here and plenty to eat. So then. I would never run away from here of my own free will, I feel well looked after here, I’m proud of my job, a pleasant sensation of seniority passes through me when I see the other animals. But does any one of them run off as foolishly as I do? Not one, except maybe the cat, that soft, scratchy thing that no one needs and no one misses, she has her secrets that leave me cold, and she runs around in the performance of some duty, but only within the confines of the house. So I am the only one who occasionally goes AWOL, and it’s a habit that might one day cost me my senior position. Luckily, no one seems to have noticed today, though only recently Richard, the master’s son, passed a remark. It was a Sunday, Richard was sitting on the bench smoking, I was lying at his feet, with my jowl pressed to the ground. ‘Caesar,’ he said, ‘you bad dog, where were you this morning? I went looking for you at five o’clock, a time when you’re still supposed to be on guard, and I couldn’t find you anywhere, it wasn’t till a quarter to seven that you got in. That’s a serious dereliction of duty, you know that?’ So I’d been caught out that time. I got up, sat by him, put my arm around him, and said: ‘Dear Richard, let me off just this once, and don’t tell anyone. It won’t happen again if I have anything to do with it.’ And for all sorts of reasons — despair at my own nature, fear of punishment, emotion at Richard’s kindly expression, joy at the momentary absence of any implement of chastisement — I wept so much that I wet Richard’s jacket, and he shook me off, telling me: Lie down! So then I’d promised betterment yet today the exact same thing happens, and I was gone for even longer. Admittedly, I only promised I would better myself if it had anything to do with me. And it’s not my fault [. . .]
A friend I hadn’t seen for many years now, more than twenty, and from whom I heard only occasional news, sometimes nothing for years on end, was returning to our city, his father’s city. Since he had no living relatives, and of his friends I was by far the closest to him, I had offered him the use of a room in my apartment and was happy that he had accepted my invitation. I was careful to furnish the room in my friend’s taste, trying to remember his particularities, the special wishes he had occasionally expressed, especially during holidays we’d taken together, tried to remember what he had particularly liked and disliked in his surroundings, tried to picture in detail what his boyhood room had looked like, but, of all of that, I succeeded in finding nothing that I could do to my apartment to make him feel any more welcome there. He came from a large poor family: hunger and din and argument had characterized that apartment. In my mind’s eye I could exactly see the room off the kitchen where sometimes — on rare occasions — we were able to retreat while the rest of the family squabbled in the kitchen as usual. A small dark room with the permanent pungent smell of coffee, because the door to the even darker kitchen stood open night and day. There we would sit by the window that opened onto a sort of enclosed winter garden that ran around the yard, playing games of chess. There were two pieces missing in our set, and we were forced to replace them with trouser buttons, which caused occasional confusion when we disagreed about their value, but on the whole we had grown accustomed to the substitution and kept faith with it. The neighbor along the passage was a seller of liturgical clothing, a merry but restless man with long drooping mustaches he would finger like a flute. When this man came home in the evening, he had to pass our window, where he would usually stop, lean into the room, and watch us play. He was almost invariably critical of our play, both mine and my friend’s, and gave us tips, and he ended up picking up the pieces and moving them, which we had to accept, because if we made to take them back, he would bat away our hands; for a long time, we endured his interventions because he was a better player than either of us, not much better, but sufficiently so that we could learn from him, but on one occasion, when it was already dark, and he was leaning over us, and took the entire board away and set it down on the windowsill to inspect the state of the game, then I got up, having been enjoying a significant advantage in this game and seeing it set at risk by his coarse intervention, and said, with the unthinking rage of the small boy who suffered an evident injustice, that he was disturbing our game. He looked at us briefly, picked up the board, and with an ironic display of care set it down in its former place, walked off, and from that day forth would have nothing to do with us. Only, each time he passed the window, no longer bothering to look inside, he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. To begin with, we celebrated the episode as a huge triumph, but after a while we started to miss him with his instruction, his humor, his willingness to participate, and not knowing why, we started to neglect our games, and before long our interest turned to different things altogether. We began collecting stamps, and it was, as I only understood later, the sign of our almost mystifyingly close friendship that we shared an album. One night I would keep it, the next it was his. The difficulties that resulted from this shared ownership were exacerbated by the fact that my friend was banned from our apartment, my parents would not allow him in. This ban was not originally directed against him — my parents hardly knew him — but against his parents and the rest of his family. In that general way it was probably not unjustified, but in the form it took it wasn’t very sensible, as
it led directly to my going around to my friend’s every day and being drawn far more deeply into the web of that family than if my friend had been permitted to visit us. Often in place of sense my parents offered tyranny, not just toward me but toward the whole of the world. In this case it was enough for them — and here my mother was more deeply involved than my father — that the family of my friend was being punished and degraded. That I was thereby caused to suffer, yes, that in a natural countermeasure my friend’s parents treated me with mockery and contempt, this my parents did not know, but then they weren’t interested in me in that way, and even if they had gotten to hear of it, they wouldn’t have been greatly affected. This is my view of it after the events, at the time we two friends were reasonably content with how things stood and the grief at the imperfection of earthly arrangements did not pierce us, yes, carting the album back and forth daily was irksome, but [. . .]
From a bar came the sound of singing, a window was open, it wasn’t fastened and was swaying back and forth. It was a little single-story hut, and there was nothing around about, it was a long way outside of town. A late customer came slinking along, on tiptoe, in a tight-fitting suit, feeling his way as though in the dark, even though there was a moon. Listened in at the window, shook his head, didn’t understand how such beautiful singing could be coming out of such a bar, swung himself in backward over the windowsill, probably a little recklessly, because he lost his balance and fell into the building, but not a long way, because there was a table by the window. The wineglasses fell to the ground, the two men who had been sitting at the table leapt up and swiftly chucked the new customer — whose feet were still outside — back through the window, he landed in soft grass, got up and listened, but by then the singing had stopped.
I was stuck in an impenetrable thicket of thorns and called out to a park warden. He came right away but was unable to reach me. “How did you wind up in the middle of a thicket?” he called to me. “Couldn’t you find the same way back?” “Not possible,” I called, “I’ll never find the way. I went for a walk and was lost in thought, and suddenly found myself here, it’s as though the bushes only grew after I got here. I’ll never make it out, I’m lost.” “You’re like a child,” said the warden, “first you follow some forbidden path through the worst sort of tangle, and then you start wailing. You’re in a public park, not some jungle, and we’ll get you out all right.” “A thicket like this has no business in a park,” I said, “and how do you mean to rescue me, no one can get in here. But if they want to try, then they should do it soon, it’s evening now, I’ll never survive the night, I’m already scratched up by thorns, and I’ve lost my pince-nez and I can’t find it, I’m half-blind without it.” “That’s all well and good,” said the warden, “but you’ll have to show a little patience, I’ll have to find some workmen who will hack their way through, and before that I’ll need to get the agreement of the park director. So, let’s have a little patience and a little manliness, if you please.”
We had a visitor whom I had often seen before without endowing him with any particular significance. He went into the bedroom with my parents, they were quite captivated by his conversation and absentmindedly closed the door after them; when I made to follow, Frieda the cook held me back, I of course lashed out and cried, but Frieda was the strongest of the cooks that I can remember, and she was able to press my hands together in an unbreakable grip, at the same time holding me a long way from her, so that I couldn’t kick her. After that I was helpless and could only scold. “You’re like a dragoon,” I screamed. “You should be ashamed of yourself, you’re a girl and you’re just like a dragoon.” But there was no way I could get her excited, she was a placid, almost melancholy thing. She let me go when Mother came out of the bedroom to fetch something from the kitchen. I grabbed hold of Mother’s skirts. “What does the man want?” I asked. “Oh,” she said, and kissed me, “nothing much, he just wants us to go away together somewhere.” That made me very happy, because it was much nicer in the village where we always spent the holidays than it was in the city. But then Mother explained to me that I couldn’t come along, I had to go to school, winter was coming and there weren’t any more holidays, also they weren’t going up to the village at all, but to another city, much farther away, and then she corrected herself, no, not much farther, actually much closer than the village. When I refused to believe her, she took me over to the window and said this other city was so close you could almost see it from the window, but that wasn’t true, certainly not on this overcast day, when we couldn’t see any more than we could normally: the little alley below, and the church opposite. Then she let me go, went into the kitchen, came back with a glass of water, motioned to Frieda, who was about to launch herself at me again, not to, and pushed me into the bedroom ahead of her. There was Father, tired, sitting in the comfy chair, putting out his hand for the water. On seeing me, he smiled and asked what I would say if they went away somewhere. I said I would love to go with them. He said that I was still too small, and that it was a very strenuous journey. I asked why they had to go at all. My father pointed to the gentleman. The gentleman had golden buttons on his jacket that he was just burnishing with his handkerchief. I asked him to leave my parents here, because if they went away I’d have to stay behind on my own with Frieda, and that was impossible [. . .]
I was allowed to set foot in a strange garden. There were a few obstacles to be negotiated, but finally a man half arose behind a small table and pinned a dark green token in my buttonhole. Our eyes met, and it was agreed that I could now go in. But after a few steps, I remembered that I hadn’t paid yet. I wanted to turn back, when I saw a large lady in a traveling coat in some coarse-woven yellow-gray material also standing by the table and counting out a number of tiny coins on the table. “That’s for you,” called the man, who had probably noticed my disquiet, over the head of the woman, who was bending far down. “For me?” I said disbelievingly, and turned around to see if someone else wasn’t meant instead. “Always so persnickety,” said a gentleman crossing a piece of lawn, slowly fording the path in front of me, and proceeding onto another bit of lawn. “For you. Who else? People here pay for one another.” I was grateful for this albeit unwillingly communicated bit of information but pointed out to the gentleman that I had yet to pay for anyone myself. “Who could you ever pay for?” asked the gentleman, turning to go. I wanted to wait for the lady and attempt to come to an agreement with her, but she went a different way, rustling along in her coat, a blueish veil fluttering behind her powerful form. “That’s Isabella you’re admiring” said a walker at my side, also watching her pass. And a moment later again: “Isabella.”
It is Isabella, the old dapple-gray horse, I hadn’t recognized her in the crowd, she’s a lady now, the last time we met was at a charity fete in a garden. There is a small copse, a little to one side, that lends its shade to a cool patch of grass, several paths cross it, it can be a very pleasant spot. I know the garden from long ago, and when I was a little tired of the fete, I made for the little copse of trees. No sooner had I set foot under them than I saw a large lady coming toward me from the other direction; her size almost alarmed me, there was no one else around at all for me to compare her, but I was still convinced that I didn’t know any women she wasn’t taller than by a head and shoulders — in my initial consternation, I thought by several. But as I neared her, I was relieved. Isabella, my old friend! “How did you get out of your stables?” “Oh, it wasn’t so difficult, they only keep me on out of kindness, my time is past, I tell my gentleman that instead of standing around uselessly in the stable I’d like to see a bit of the world while I have the strength, and if I say that to my gentleman, he understands, he fishes out some garments belonging to the late lamented, helps me slip them on, and lets me go with his blessings.” “How lovely you look!” I said, not quite truthfully, nor quite mendaciously either [. . .]
Scenes from the Defense of a Farm
There was a simple woode
n fence, almost head height, and with no gaps in it. Behind it stood three men whose faces one could see over the top of the fence, the one in the middle was the tallest, the two flanking him were both more than a head shorter. Pressed up against him, they made a solid group. These three men were defending the fence, or rather the whole farmyard it enclosed. There were other men present as well, but they were not directly involved in the defense. One was sitting at a little table in the middle of the yard; it being a warm day, he had taken off his tunic and hung it over the arm of the chair. He had in front of him a number of small pieces of paper and in large expansive characters that used up a lot of ink was writing on them. From time to time he looked at a small plan that was tacked onto the table farther up, it was a drawing of the courtyard, and the man — the commander — was drawing up orders for the defense on the basis of the plan. Sometimes he would half stand up to look to the three defenders and across the fence into the open country. What he saw there also played into the orders he was writing. He was working hastily, as the tense situation demanded. A small barefooted boy who was playing in the sand nearby would deliver the little notes when they were finished and when the commander called him. But each time the commander first had to clean the boy’s hands, dirty as they were from the wet sand, on his own tunic before giving him the notes. The sand was wet from water from a large tub in which a man was washing the soldiers’ shirts, he had also strung up a clothesline that ran from a lath in the fence to a spindly linden tree that stood in the middle of the yard. Some laundry had been hung up to dry on this, and when the commander suddenly took off the shirt that had been sticking to his sweaty body, pulled it over his head and with a curt shout tossed it to the man by the tub, the latter took one of the dry shirts off the line and handed it to him. In the shade of a tree not far from the tub sat a young man rocking on a chair, unconcerned with everything going on around him, his gaze drifting around to the sky and the flights of birds, practicing military signals on a bugle. It was as needful now as anything else, but sometimes it got to be too much for the commander, who, without looking up from his task, motioned to the bugler to desist, and when that didn’t help he turned and shouted at him, and then there was silence for a while, till the bugler experimentally began to blow again and, getting carried away, gradually increased his volume to the previous level. The curtains of the gable window were drawn, nothing unusual about that, since all the windows on that side of the house were somehow covered to protect them from the sight and the attack of the enemy, only behind that particular curtain there cowered the daughter of the farmer, looking down at the bugler, and the sounds of his playing so enraptured her that sometimes the only way she could take them in was with her eyes closed and her hand on her breast. Her rightful place was actually in the hall of the back building supervising the maids who were plucking lint for bandages, but she hadn’t been able to endure it there, where the sounds reached her only dimly, never satisfactorily, only arousing her yearning, and she had crept through the dead abandoned house up here. Sometimes she leaned out a little to see that her father was still at his work and hadn’t by chance gone off to inspect the domestics, because then she would not have been able to stay up here a moment longer. No, he was still there, smoking his pipe, on the stone steps to the house, carving wooden shingles, a great pile of which, finished and half-finished, as well as the pieces of wood from which they were carved, lay about him. The house and the roof would unfortunately suffer from the impending battle, and it was necessary to plan ahead. From the window beside the front door, which, apart from a small chink, had been boarded up, there came noise and smoke, that was the kitchen, and the farmer’s wife was just putting the finishing touches to lunch with the army cooks. The great range was not enough for this, two further cauldrons had been set up, but, as it turned out, they were not enough either: it being very important to the commander to have his troops plentifully fed. Therefore, the decision had been taken to set up a third cauldron as well, but as this one was slightly damaged, a man on the garden side of the house had been set to solder it. He had originally begun doing this in front of the house, but the commander had been unable to tolerate the noise of the hammering, and the cauldron had had to be trundled away. The cooks were terribly impatient, they kept sending someone along to check whether the cauldron had been finished yet, but it wasn’t, and wouldn’t be in time for today’s lunch, and they would have to tighten their belts a little. The commander was served first. Even though he had repeatedly and insistently said that he wanted no special arrangements, the lady of the house had been unwilling to give him the same as everyone else, nor did she want to entrust serving him to anyone else, so she pulled on a fine white apron, set a plate of strong chicken broth on a silver tray, and took it out to the commander in the yard, since it could hardly be expected of him that he would interrupt his work to go into the house and eat. He rose straightaway, impeccably polite when he saw the farmer’s wife approach, but had to tell her he had no time to eat, nor peace of mind neither, but she pleaded with him with head inclined, tears welling up in her upward gazing eyes, and so succeeded in getting the commander, still standing, with a smile to take a spoonful of soup from the bowl she was yet holding in her hands. But, with that, politeness had had its due, the commander bowed and sat down to work, he probably barely sensed that the woman remained standing next to him a while, and then, sighing, returned to the kitchen. It was a different story with the appetite of the troops. No sooner had the wildly bearded face of one of the cooks appeared at the kitchen window to give the signal with a whistle that lunch was served, than everything sprang to life, much more than was welcome to the commander. From a wooden barn two men towed a handcart that was basically a glorified tub on wheels, into which the soup was poured in a broad stream from the kitchen window for the men who were not able to leave their places, and who therefore had to have their lunch brought to them. First the little wagon was trundled across to the defenders by the fence, as would probably have happened even without the commander pointing with his finger for this to be done, for those three men were presently the most exposed to the enemy, and even common soldiers knew enough to respect that, perhaps in fact more even than an officer, but above all the commander was interested in expediting the serving and keeping the disruption to his military preparations to a minimum, seeing for himself how the three, in other respects model soldiers, now concerned themselves more with the little wagon and the yard than with the scene beyond the fence. They were quickly supplied from the barrel, which was then towed along the length of the fence, because every twenty yards or so there were groups of three hunkered at the foot of the fence, ready, if required, to stand up like our first three and face the enemy. In the meantime, from inside the house, the reservists came out to the kitchen window in a long line, each man with his bowl in his hand. The bugler too approached, to the regret of the farmer’s daughter, who now returned to her maids, pulling out his bowl from under his chair and stowing away his bugle in its place. And at the top of the linden tree a rustling set up, because a soldier was perched there to observe the enemy with field glasses and who in spite of his essential, indispensable work had been forgotten by the driver of the soup wagon, at least temporarily. This was the bitterer for him as a few of the men, idlers of reservists, the better to enjoy their lunch, had clustered around the foot of his tree, and the savory steam from their soup was tickling his nostrils. He didn’t dare raise a shout but laid about him up in the crown of the tree, and several times jabbed down through the foliage with his telescope to draw attention to himself. All in vain. He was one of the clients of the little wagon and had to wait for it to come to him at the end of its tour. This took a long time, because the yard was extensive, with probably forty sets of three sentries to feed, and by the time the little wagon, drawn by the overtired soldiers, finally reached the linden tree there was little left in the barrel, and almost no pieces of meat. Now the lookout took what there was willingly enough when it was
passed up to him in a bowl on the end of a billhook, but then he lost his footing on the trunk, and — some thanks — landed a kick right in the face of the man who had served him. He, in turn, understandably furious, had himself hoisted up by a comrade, and in no time he was up in the tree and now began a fight, invisible from below, that found expression in the swaying of the branches, dull groans, and flying handfuls of leaves, till finally the glass fell to the ground and there was immediate quiet. The commander, somewhat distracted by other events — there were developments afoot out in the field — happily had remarked nothing when the soldier clambered down, amicably the glass was passed back up to the lookout, and everything was quiet again, even the soup was not greatly depleted, as the lookout had taken the trouble before the fight broke out to secure the bowl in a windproof position in the topmost twigs.