by Franz Kafka
View from the window of the river. At many points in the conversation, in spite of the fact that she never allows it to flag, my complete failure, vacant gaze, incomprehension of what she is saying; I mechanically drop the silliest remarks at the same time that I am forced to see how closely she attends to them; I stupidly pet her little child.
Dreams: In Berlin, through the streets to her house, calm and happy in the knowledge that, though I haven’t arrived at her house yet, a slight possibility of doing so exists; I shall certainly arrive there. I see the streets, on a white house a sign, something like ‘The Splendours of the North’ (saw it in the paper yesterday); in my dream ‘Berlin W’ has been added to it. Ask the way of an affable, red-nosed old policeman who in this instance is stuffed into a sort of butler’s livery. Am given excessively detailed directions, he even points out the railing of a small park in the distance which I must keep hold of for safety’s sake when I go past. Then advice about the tram-car, the U-Bahn, etc. I can’t follow him any longer and ask in a fright, knowing full well that I am underestimating the distance: ‘That’s about half an hour away?’ But the old man answers, ‘I can make it in six minutes.’ What joy! Some man, a shadow, a companion, is always at my side, I don’t know who it is. Really have no time to turn around, to turn sideways.
Live in Berlin in some pension or other apparently filled with young Polish Jews; very small rooms. I spill a bottle of water. One of them is tapping incessantly on a small typewriter, barely turns his head when he is asked for something. Impossible to lay hands on a map of Berlin. In the hand of one of them I continually notice a book that looks like a map. But it always proves to be something entirely different, a list of the Berlin schools, tax statistics, or something of the sort I don’t want to believe it, but, smiling, they prove it to me beyond any doubt.
14 February. There will certainly be no one to blame if I should kill myself, even if the immediate cause should for instance appear to be F.’s behaviour. Once, half asleep, I pictured the scene that would ensue if, in anticipation of the end, the letter of farewell in my pocket, I should come to her house, should be rejected as a suitor, lay the letter on the table, go to the balcony, break away from all those who run up to hold me back, and, forcing one hand after another to let go its grip, jump over the ledge. The letter, however, would say that I was jumping off because of F., but that even if my proposal had been accepted nothing essential would have been changed for me. My place is down below, I can find no other solution, F. simply happens to be the one through whom my fate is made manifest; I can’t live without her and must jump, yet – and this F. suspects – I couldn’t live with her either. Why not use tonight for the purpose, I can already see before me the people talking at the parents’ gathering this evening, talking of life and the conditions that have to be created for it – but I cling to abstractions, I live completely entangled in life, I won’t do it, I am cold, am sad that a shirt collar is pinching my neck, am damned, gasp for breath in the mist.
15 February. How long this Saturday and Sunday seem in retrospect. Yesterday afternoon I had my hair cut, then wrote the letter to Bl., then was over at Max’s new place for a moment, then the parents’ gathering, sat next to L.W., then Baum (met Kr. in the tram), then on the way home Max’s complaints about my silence, then my longing for suicide, then my sister returned from the parents’ gathering unable to report the least thing. In bed until ten, sleepless, sorrow after sorrow. No letter, not here, not in the office, mailed a letter to Bl. at the Franz-Josef station, saw G. in the afternoon, walked along the Moldau, read aloud at his house; his queer mother who ate sandwiches and played solitaire; walked around alone for two hours; decided to leave Berlin Friday, met Kohl,66 at home with my brothers-in-law and sisters, then the discussion of his engagement at Weltsch’s (J. K.’s putting out the candles), then at home attempted by my silence to elicit aid and sympathy from my mother; now my sister tells me about her meeting, the clock strikes a quarter to twelve.
At Weltsch’s, in order to comfort his mother who was upset, I said: ‘I too am losing Felix by this marriage. A friend who is married is none.’ Felix said nothing, naturally couldn’t say anything, but he didn’t even want to.
The notebook begins with F., who on 2 May 1913 made me feel uncertain; this same beginning can serve as conclusion too, if in place of ‘uncertain’ I use a worse word.67
16 February. Wasted day. My only joy was the hope that last night has given me of sleeping better.
I was going home in my usual fashion in the evening after work, when, as though I had been watched for, they excitedly waved to me from all three windows of the Genzmer house to come up.
22 February. In spite of my drowsy head, whose upper left side is near aching with restlessness, perhaps I am still able quietly to build up some greater whole wherein I might forget everything and be conscious only of the good in one.
Director at his table. Servant brings in a card.
DIRECTOR: Witte again, this is a nuisance, the man is a nuisance.
23 February. I am on my way. Letter from Musil.68 Pleases me and depresses me, for I have nothing.
A young man on a beautiful horse rides out of the gate of a villa.
8 March. A prince can wed the Sleeping Beauty, or someone even harder to win too, but the Sleeping Beauty can be no prince.
It happened that when Grandmother died only the nurse was with her. She said that just before Grandmother died she lifted herself up a little from the pillow so that she seemed to be looking for someone, and then peacefully lay back again and died.
There is no doubt that I am hemmed in all around, though by something that has certainly not yet fixed itself in my flesh, that I occasionally feel slackening, and that could be burst asunder. There are two remedies, marriage or Berlin; the second is surer, the first more immediately attractive.
I dived down and soon everything felt fine. A small shoal floated by in an upwards-mounting chain and disappeared in the green. Bells borne back and forth by the drifting of the tide – wrong.
9 March. Rense walked a few steps down the dim passageway, opened the little papered door of the dining-room, and said to the noisy company, almost without regarding them: ‘Please be a little more quiet I have a guest. Have some consideration.’
As he was returning to his room and heard the noise continuing unabated, he halted a moment, was on the verge of going back again, but thought better of it and returned to his room.
A boy of eighteen was standing at the window, looking down into the yard. ‘It is quieter now,’ he said when Rense entered, and lifted his long nose and deep-set eyes to him.
‘It isn’t quieter at all,’ said Rense, taking a swallow from the bottle of beer standing on the table. ‘It’s impossible ever to have any quiet here. You’ll have to get used to that, boy.’
I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require the expenditure of so much strength.
The general argument: I am completely lost in F.
Rense, a student, sat studying in his small back room. The maid came in and announced that a young man wished to speak to him. ‘What is his name?’ Rense asked. The maid did not know.
I shall never forget F. in this place, therefore shan’t marry. Is that definite?
Yes, that much I can judge of: I am almost thirty-one years old, have known F. for almost two years, must therefore have some perspective by now. Besides, my way of life here is such that I can’t forget, even if F. didn’t have such significance for me. The uniformity, regularity, comfort, and dependence of my way of life keep me unresistingly fixed wherever I happen to be. Moreover, I have a more than ordinary inclination toward a comfortable and dependent life, and so even strengthen everything that is pernicious to me. Finally, I am getting older, any change becomes more and more difficult. But in all this I foresee a great misfortune for myself, one without end and without hope; I should be dra
gging through the years up the ladder of my job, growing ever sadder and more alone as long as I could endure it at all.
But you wanted that sort of life for yourself, didn’t you?
An official’s life could benefit me if I were married. It would in every way be a support to me against society, against my wife, against writing, without demanding too many sacrifices, and without on the other hand degenerating into indolence and dependence, for as a married man I should not have to fear that. But I cannot live out such a life as a bachelor.
But you could have married, couldn’t you?
I couldn’t marry then; everything in me revolted against it, much as I always loved F. It was chiefly concern over my literary work that prevented me, for I thought marriage would jeopardize it. I may have been right, but in any case it is destroyed by my present bachelor’s life. I have written nothing for a year, nor shall I be able to write anything in the future; in my head there is and remains the one single thought, and I am devoured by it. I wasn’t able to consider it all at the time. Moreover, as a result of my dependence, which is at least encouraged by this way of life, I approach everything hesitantly and complete nothing at the first stroke. That was what happened here too.
Why do you give up all hope eventually of having F.?
I have already tried every kind of self-humiliation. In the Tiergarten I once said: ‘Say “yes”; even if you consider your feeling for me insufficient to warrant marriage, my love for you is great enough to make up the insufficiency, and strong enough in general to take everything on itself.’ In the course of a long correspondence I had alarmed F. by my peculiarities, and these now seemed to make her uneasy. I said: ‘I love you enough to rid myself of anything that might trouble you. I will become another person.’ Now, when everything must be cleared up, I can confess that even at the time when our relationship was at its most affectionate, I often had forebodings and fears, founded on trifling occurrences, that F. did not love me very much, not with all the force of the love she was capable of. F. has now realized this too, though not without my assistance. I am almost afraid that after my last two visits F. even feels a certain disgust for me, despite the fact that outwardly we are friendly, call each other ‘Du’, walk arm in arm together. The last thing I remember of her is the quite hostile grimace she made in the entrance hall of her house when I was not satisfied to kiss her glove but pulled it open and kissed her hand. Added to this there is the fact that, despite her promise to be punctual in the future in her correspondence, she hasn’t answered two of my letters, merely telegraphed to promise letters but hasn’t kept her promise; indeed, she hasn’t even so much as answered my mother. There can be no doubt of the hopelessness in all this.
One should really never say that. Didn’t your previous behaviour likewise seem hopeless from F.’s point of view?
That was something else. I always freely confessed my love for her, even during what appeared to be our final farewell in the summer; I was never so cruelly silent; I had reasons for my behaviour which, if they could not be approved, could yet be discussed. F.’s only reason is the complete insufficiency of her love. Nevertheless, it is true that I could wait. But I cannot wait in double hopelessness: I cannot see F. more and more slipping from my grasp, and myself more and more unable to escape. It would be the greatest gamble I could take with myself, although – or because – it would best suit all the overpowering evil forces within me. ‘You never know what will happen’ is no argument against the intolerableness of an existing state of affairs.
Then what do you want to do?
Leave Prague. Counter the greatest personal injury that has ever befallen me with the strongest antidote at my disposal.
Leave your job?
In light of the above, my job is only a part of the general intolerableness. I should be losing only what is intolerable in any case. The security, the lifelong provision, the good salary, the fact that it doesn’t demand all my strength – after all, so long as I am a bachelor all these things mean nothing to me and are transformed into torments.
Then what do you want to do?
I could answer all such questions at once by saying: I have nothing to lose; every day, each tiniest success, is a gift; whatever I do is all to the good. But I can also give a more precise answer: as an Austrian lawyer, which, speaking seriously, I of course am not, I have no prospects; the best thing I might achieve for myself in this direction I already possess in my present post, and it is of no use to me. Moreover, in the quite impossible event I should want to make some money out of my legal training, there are only two cities that could be considered: Prague, which I must leave, and Vienna, which I hate and where I should inevitably grow unhappy because I should go there with the deepest conviction of that inevitability. I therefore have to leave Austria and – since I have no talent for languages and would do poorly at physical labour or at a business job – go to Germany, at least at first, and in Germany to Berlin, where the chances of earning a living are best. Also, there, in journalism, I can make best and directest use of my ability to write, and so find a means of livelihood at least partially suited to me. Whether in addition I shall be capable of inspired work, that I cannot say at present with any degree of certainty. But I think I know definitely that from the independence and freedom I should have in Berlin (however miserable I otherwise would be) I should derive the only feeling of happiness I am still able to experience.
But you are spoiled.
No, I need a room and a vegetarian diet, almost nothing more.
Aren’t you going there because of F.?
No, I choose Berlin only for the above reasons, although I love it and perhaps I love it because of F. and because of the aura of thoughts that surrounds F.; but that I can’t help. It is also probable that I shall meet F. in Berlin. If our being together will help me to get F. out of my blood, so much the better, it is an additional advantage Berlin has.
Are you healthy?
No – heart, sleep, digestion.
[A small furnished room. Dawn. Disorder. The student is in bed asleep,’ his face to the wall. There is a knock at the door. Silence. A louder knock. The student sits up in fright, looks at the door.]
STUDENT: Come in.
MAID [a frail girl]: Good morning.
STUDENT: What do you want? It’s still night.
MAID : Excuse me, but a gentleman is asking for you.
STUDENT: For me? [Hesitates.] Nonsense! Where is he?
MAID : He is waiting in the kitchen.
STUDENT : What does he look like?
MAID [smiling]: Well, he’s still a boy, he’s not very handsome; I think he’s a Yid.
STUDENT : And that wants to see me in the middle of the night? But I don’t need your opinion of my guests, do you hear? Send him in. Be quick about it.
[The student fills the small pipe lying on the chair beside his bed and smokes it.
KLEIPE stands at the door and looks at the student, who calmly smokes on with his eyes turned towards the ceiling. Short, erect, a large, long, somewhat crooked, pointed nose, dark complexion, deep-set eyes, long arms.]
STUDENT: How much longer? Come over here to the bed and say what you want. Who are you? What do you want? Quick! Quick!
KLEIPE [walks very slowly towards the bed and at the same time attempts to gesture something in explanation. He stretches his neck and raises and lowers his eyebrows to assist his speech]: What I mean to say is, I am from Wulfenshausen too.
STUDENT: Really? That’s nice, that’s very nice. Then why didn’t you stay there?
KLEIPE: Only think! It is the home town of both of us, a beautiful place, but still a miserable hole.
It was Sunday afternoon, they lay in bed in one another’s arms. It was winter, the room was unheated, they lay beneath a heavy feather quilt.
15 March. The students wanted to carry Dostoyevsky’s chains behind his coffin. He died in the workers’ quarter, on the fifth floor of a tenement house.
Once, during the wi
nter, at about five o’clock in the morning, the half-clothed maid announced a visitor to the student. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’ the student, still half asleep, was asking, when a young man entered, carrying a lighted candle that he had borrowed from the maid. He raised the candle in one hand the better to see the student and lowered his hat in his other hand almost to the floor, so long was his arm.
Only this everlasting waiting, eternal helplessness.
17 March. Sat in the room with my parents, leafed through magazines for two hours, on and off simply stared before me; in general simply waited for ten o’clock to arrive and for me to be able to go to bed.
27 March. On the whole passed in much the same way.
Hass hurried to get aboard the ship, ran across the gangplank, climbed up on deck, sat down in a corner, pressed his hands to his face and from then on no longer concerned himself with anyone. The ship’s bell sounded, people were running along, far off, as though at the other end of the ship someone were singing with full voice.
They were just about to pull in the gangplank when a small black carriage came along, the coachman shouted from the distance, he had to exert all his strength to hold back the rearing horse; a young man sprang out of the carriage, kissed an old, white-bearded gentleman bending forward under the roof of the carriage, and with a small valise in his hand ran aboard the ship, which at once pushed off from the shore.
It was about three o’clock in the morning, but in the summer, and already half light. Herr von Irmenhof’s five horses Famos, Grasaffe, Tournemento, Rosina and Brabant – rose up in the stable. Because of the sultry night the stable door had been left ajar; the two grooms slept on their backs in the straw, flies hovered up and down above their open mouths, there was nothing to hinder them. Grasaffe stood up so that he straddled the two men under him, and, watching their faces, was ready to strike down at them with his hoofs at their slightest sign of awakening. Meanwhile the four others sprang out of the stable in two easy leaps, one behind the other; Grasaffe followed them.