by Franz Kafka
Dostoyevsky’s letter to his brother on life in prison.
6 June. Back from Berlin. Was tied hand and foot like a criminal. Had they sat me down in a corner bound in real chains, placed policemen in front of me, and let me look on simply like that, it could not have been worse. And that was my engagement; everybody made an effort to bring me to life, and when they couldn’t, to put up with me as I was. F. least of all, of course, with complete justification, for she suffered the most. What was merely a passing occurrence to the others, to her was a threat.
We couldn’t bear it at home even a moment. We knew that they would look for us. But despite its being evening we ran away. Hills encircled our city; we clambered up them. We set all the trees to shaking as we swung down the slope from one end to the other.
The posture of the clerks in the store shortly before closing time in the evening: hands in trouser pockets, a trifle stooped, looking from the vaulted interior past the open door on to the square. Their tired movements behind the counters. Weakly tie up a package, distractedly dust a few boxes, pile up used wrapping paper.
An acquaintance comes and speaks to me. He makes the following statement: Some say this, but I say exactly the opposite. He cites the reasons for his opinion. I wonder. My hands lie in my trouser pockets as if they had been dropped there, and yet as relaxed as if I had only to turn my pockets inside out and they would quickly drop out again.
I had closed the store, employees and customers departed carrying their hats in hand. It was a June evening, eight o’clock already but still light. I had no desire to take a walk, I never feel an inclination to go walking; but neither did I want to go home. When my last apprentice had turned the corner I sat down on the ground in front of the closed store.
An acquaintance and his young wife came by and saw me sitting on the ground. ‘Why, look who is sitting here,’ he said. They stopped, and the man shook me a little, despite the fact that I had been calmly regarding him from the very first.
‘My God, why are you sitting here like this?’ his young wife asked.
‘I am going to give up my store,’ I said. ‘It isn’t going too badly, and I can meet all my obligations, even if only just about. But I can’t stand the worries, I can’t control the clerks, I can’t talk to the customers. From tomorrow on I won’t even open the store. I’ve thought it all over carefully.’ I saw how the man sought to calm his wife by taking her hand between both of his.
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘you want to give up your store; you aren’t the first to do it. We too’ – he looked across at his wife – ‘as soon as we have enough to take care of ourselves (may it be soon), won’t hesitate to give up our store any more than you have done. Business is as little a pleasure to us as it is to you, believe me. But why do you sit on the ground?’
‘Where shall I go?’ I said. Of course, I knew why they were questioning me. It was sympathy and astonishment as well as embarrassment that they felt, but I was in no position whatsoever to help them too.
‘Don’t you want to join us?’ I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffee-house that was already almost deserted. ‘No, I don’t,’ I said.
It was already past midnight. I sat in my room writing a letter on which a lot depended for me, for with the letter I hoped to secure an excellent post abroad. I sought to remind the acquaintance to whom I was writing – by chance, after a ten-year interval, I had been put in touch with him again by a common friend – of past times, and at the same time make him understand that all my circumstances pressed me to leave the country and that in the absence of good and far-reaching connexions of my own, I was placing my greatest hopes in him.
It was getting on towards nine o’clock in the evening before
Bruder, a city official, came home from his office. It was already quite dark. His wife was waiting for him in front of the gate, clutching her little girl to her. ‘How is it going?’ she asked.
‘Very badly,’ said Bruder. ‘Come into the house and I’ll tell you everything.’ The moment they set foot in the house, Bruder locked the front door. ‘Where is the maid?’ he asked.
‘In the kitchen,’ his wife replied.
‘Good; come!’
The table lamp was lit in the large, low living-room, they all sat down, and Bruder said: ‘Well, this is how things stand. Our men are in full retreat. As I understand it from unimpeachable reports that have been received at City Hall, the fighting at Rumdorf has gone entirely against us. Moreover, the greater part of the troops have already withdrawn from the city. They are still keeping it secret so as not to add enormously to the panic in the city; I don’t consider that altogether wise, it would be better to tell the truth frankly. However, my duty demands that I be silent. But of course there is no one to prevent me from telling you the truth. Besides, everybody suspects the real situation, you can see that everywhere. Everybody is shutting up his house, hiding whatever can be hidden.’69
It was about ten o’clock in the evening before Bruder, a city official, came home from his office; nevertheless he at once knocked on the door that separated his room from Rumford’s, the furniture dealer, from whom he rented the room. Though he could hear only an indistinct response, he went in. Rumford was seated at the table with a newspaper; his fat was troubling him this hot July evening, he had thrown his coat and vest on the sofa; his shirt –
Several city officials were standing by the stone ledge of a window in City Hall, looking down into the square. The last of the rearguard was waiting below for the command to retreat. They were young, tall, red-cheeked fellows who held their quivering horses tightly reined. Two officers rode slowly back and forth in front of them. They were apparently waiting for a report. They sent out numerous riders who disappeared at a gallop up a steeply ascending side-street opening off the square. None had yet returned.
The city official Bruder, still a young man but wearing a full beard, had joined the group at the window. Since he enjoyed higher rank and was held in particular esteem because of his abilities, they all bowed courteously and made way for him at the window ledge. ‘This must be the end,’ he said, looking down on the square. ‘It is only too apparent.’
‘Then it is your opinion, Councillor,’ said an arrogant young man who in spite of Bruder’s approach had not stirred from his place and now stood close to him in such a way that it was impossible for them to look at each other; ‘then it is your opinion that the battle has been lost?’
‘Certainly. There can be no doubt of it. Speaking in confidence, our leadership is bad. We must pay for all sorts of old sins. This of course is not the time to talk of it, everybody must look out for himself now. We are indeed face to face with final collapse. Our visitors may be here by this evening. It may be that they won’t even wait until evening but will arrive here in half an hour.’
I step out of the house for a short stroll. The weather is beautiful but the street is startlingly empty, except for a municipal employee in the distance who is holding a hose and playing a huge arc of water along the street. ‘Unheard of,’ I say, and test the tension of the arc. ‘An insignificant municipal employee,’ I say, and again look at the man in the distance.
At the corner of the next intersection two men are fighting; they collide, fly far apart, guardedly approach one another and are at once locked together in struggle again. ‘Stop fighting, gentlemen,’ I say.
The student Kosel was studying at his table. He was so deeply engrossed in his work that he failed to notice it getting dark; in spite of the brightness of the May day, dusk began to descend at about four o’clock in the afternoon in this ill-situated back room. He read with pursed lips, his eyes, without his being aware of it, bent close to the book. Occasionally he paused in his reading, wrote short excerpts from what he had read into a little notebook, and then, closing his eyes, whispered from memory what he had written down. Across from his window, not five yards away, was a kitchen and in it a girl ironing clothes who would oft
en look across at Karl.
Suddenly Kosel put his pencil down and listened. Someone was pacing back and forth in the room above, apparently barefooted, making one round after another. At every step there was a loud splashing noise, of the kind one makes when one steps into water. Kosel shook his head. These walks which he had had to endure for perhaps a week now, ever since a new roomer had moved in, meant the end, not only of his studying for today, but of his studying altogether, unless he did something in his own defence.
There are certain relationships which I can feel distinctly but which I am unable to perceive. It would be sufficient to plunge down a little deeper; but just at this point the upward pressure is so strong that I should think myself at the very bottom if I did not feel the currents moving below me. In any event, I look upward to the surface whence the thousand-times-refracted brilliance of the light falls upon me. I float up and splash around on the surface, in spite of the fact that I loathe everything up there and –
‘Herr Direktor, a new actor has arrived,’ the servant was heard distinctly to announce, for the door to the ante-room was wide open. ‘I merely wish to become an actor,’ said Karl in an undertone, and in this way corrected the servant’s announcement. ‘Where is he?’ the director asked, craning his neck.
The old bachelor with the altered cut to his beard.
The woman dressed in white in the centre of the Kinsky Palace courtyard. Distinct shadow under the high arch of her bosom in spite of the distance. Stiffly seated.
11 June.
TEMPTATION IN THE VILLAGE70
One summer, towards evening, I arrived in a village where I had never been before. It struck me how broad and open were the paths. Everywhere one saw tall old trees in front of the farmhouses. It had been raining, the air was fresh, everything pleased me. I tried to indicate this by the manner in which I greeted the people standing in front of the gates; their replies were friendly even if somewhat aloof. I thought it would be nice to spend the night here if I could find an inn.
I was just walking past the high ivy-covered wall of a farm when a small door opened in the wall, three faces peered out, vanished, and the door closed again. ‘Strange,’ I said aloud, turning to one side as if I had someone with me. And, as if to embarrass me, there in fact stood a tall man next to me with neither hat nor coat, wearing a black knitted vest and smoking a pipe. I quickly recovered myself and said, as though I had already known that he was there: ‘The door! Did you see the way that little door opened?’
‘Yes,’ the man said, ‘but what’s strange in that? It was the tenant farmer’s children. They heard your footsteps and looked out to see who was walking by here so late in the evening.’
‘The explanation is a simple one, of course,’ I said with a smile. ‘It’s easy for things to seem queer to a stranger. Thank you.’ And I went on.
But the man followed me. I wasn’t really surprised by that, the man could be going the same way; yet there was no reason for us to walk one behind the other and not side by side. I turned and said, ‘Is this the right way to the inn?’
The man stopped and said, ‘We don’t have an inn, or rather we have one but it can’t be lived in. It belongs to the community and, years ago now, after no one had applied for the management of it, it was turned over to an old cripple whom the community already had to provide for. With his wife he now manages the inn, but in such a way that you can hardly pass by the door, the smell coming out of it is so strong. The floor of the parlour is slippery with dirt. A wretched way of doing things, a disgrace to the village, a disgrace to the community.’
I wanted to contradict the man; his appearance provoked me to it, this thin face with yellowish, leathery, bony cheeks and black wrinkles spreading over all of it at every movement of his jaws. ‘Well,’ I said, expressing no further surprise at this state of affairs, and then went on: ‘I’ll stop there anyway, since I have made up my mind to spend the night here.’
‘Very well,’ the man quickly said, ‘but this is the path you must take to reach the inn,’ and he pointed in the direction I had come from. ‘Walk to the next corner and then turn right. You’ll see the inn sign at once. That’s it.’
I thanked him for the information and now walked past him again while he regarded me very closely. I had no way of guarding against the possibility that he had given me wrong directions, but was determined not to be put out of countenance either by his forcing me to march past him now, or by the fact that he had with such remarkable abruptness abandoned his attempts to warn me against the inn. Somebody else could direct me to the inn as well, and if it were dirty, why then for once I would simply sleep in dirt, if only to satisfy my stubbornness. Moreover, I did not have much of a choice; it was already dark, the roads were muddy from the rain, and it was a long way to the next village.
By now the man was behind me and I intended not to trouble myself with him any further when I heard a woman’s voice speak to him. I turned. Out of the darkness under a group of plane trees stepped a tall, erect woman. Her skirts shone a yellowish-brown colour, over her head and shoulders was a black coarse-knit shawl. ‘Come home now, won’t you?’ she said to the man; ‘why aren’t you coming?’
‘I’m coming,’ he said; ‘only wait a little while. I want to see what that man is going to do. He’s a stranger. He’s hanging around here for no reason at all. Look at him.’
He spoke of me as if I were deaf or did not understand his language. Now to be sure it did not much matter to me what he said, but it would naturally be unpleasant for me were he to spread false reports about me in the village, no matter of what kind. For this reason I said to the woman: ‘I’m looking for the inn, that’s all. Your husband has no right to speak of me that way and perhaps give you a wrong impression of me.’
But the woman hardly looked at me and went over to her husband (I had been correct in thinking him her husband; there was such a direct, self-evident relationship between the two), and put her hand on his shoulder: ‘If there is anything you want, speak to my husband, not to me.’
‘But I don’t want anything,’ I said, irritated by the manner in which I was being treated; ‘I mind my business, you mind yours. That’s all I ask.’ The woman tossed her head; that much I was able to make out in the dark, but not the expression in her eyes. Apparently she wanted to say something in reply, but her husband said, ‘Keep still!’ and she was silent.
Our encounter now seemed definitely at an end; I turned, about to go on, when someone called out,’ Sir!’ It was probably addressed to me. For a moment I could not tell where the voice came from, but then I saw a young man sitting above me on the farmyard wall, his legs dangling down and knees bumping together, who insolently said to me: ‘I have just heard that you want to spend the night in the village. You won’t find liveable quarters anywhere except here on this farm.’
‘On this farm?’ I asked, and involuntarily – I was furious about it later – cast a questioning glance at the man and wife, who still stood there pressed against each other watching me.
‘That’s right,’ he said, with the same arrogance in his reply that there was in all his behaviour.
‘Are there beds to be had here?’ I asked again, to make sure and to force the man back into his role of landlord.
‘Yes,’ he said, already averting his glance from me a little, ‘beds for the night are furnished here, not to everyone, but only to those to whom they are offered.’
‘I accept,’ I said, ‘but will naturally pay for the bed, just as I would at the inn.’
‘Please,’ said the man, who had already been looking over my head for a long time, ‘we shall not take advantage of you.’
He sat above like a master, I stood down below like a petty servant; I had a great desire to stir him up a little by throwing a stone up at him. Instead I said, ‘Then please open the door for me.’
‘It’s not locked,’ he said.
‘It’s not locked,’ I grumbled in reply, almost without knowing it, opened the d
oor, and walked in. I happened to look up at the top of the wall immediately afterwards; the man was no longer there, in spite of its height he had apparently jumped down from the wall and was perhaps discussing something with the man and wife. Let them discuss it, what could happen ito me, a young man with barely three gulden in cash and the rest of whose property consisted of not much more than a clean shirt in his rucksack and a revolver in his trouser pocket. Besides, the people did not look at all as if they would rob anyone. But what else could they want of me?
It was the usual sort of neglected garden found on large farms, though the solid stone wall would have led one to expect more. In the tall grass, at regular intervals, stood cherry trees with fallen blossoms. In the distance one could see the farmhouse, a one-storey rambling structure. It was already growing quite dark; I was a late guest; if the man on the wall had lied to me in any way, I might find myself in an unpleasant situation. On my way to the house I met no one, but when a few steps away from the house I saw, in the room into which the open door gave, two tall old people side by side, a man and wife, their faces towards the door, eating some sort of porridge out of a bowl. I could not make anything out very clearly in the darkness but now and then something on the man’s coat sparkled like gold, it was probably his buttons or perhaps his watch chain.
I greeted them and then said, not crossing the threshold for the moment: ‘I happened to be looking in the village for a place to spend the night when a young man sitting on your garden wall told me it was possible to rent a room for the night here on the farm.’ The two old people had put their spoons into the porridge, leaned back on their bench, and looked at me in silence. There was none too great hospitality in their demeanour. I therefore added, ‘I hope the information given me was correct and that I haven’t needlessly disturbed you.’ I said this very loudly, for they might perhaps have been hard of hearing.