He complains about the office, that pit of pain, that tedious paper mill tearing at his flesh. He complains about the asbestos factory his father bought with his son-in-law but wants his son to manage instead of writing inanities. He complains about everything that keeps him from writing. “My life consists and has always consisted of attempts to write, usually unsuccessful. But when I don’t write, I am on the floor and fit only to be swept up.” He adds this statement, the first of many of its kind: “My strength being very limited, I was forced to give up a little bit on every side, so that I would have just enough energy for what strikes me as my main goal. My nights can never be long enough for the business of writing, which, incidentally, is highly voluptuous.”
When he meets Felice in August, he has been lazing around for months and has done nothing but sprawl on his couch. He has even been neglecting his Diaries, barely writing an occasional sentence: “My left hand embraced the fingers of my right hand out of pity. I was on bad terms with myself because I had gone too long without writing.”
Then on the night of September 22–23, two days after he sends his first letter to Berlin, the wave sweeps in again and lifts him up. He writes “The Judgment” in a single sitting from ten at night to six in the morning. When he puts his pen down, the sky is just starting to lighten. He is so happy that he takes the time to write down his impressions in his Diaries at length: “I advanced parting the waters in front of me. Only in this way can writing be done, only with this continuity, with this complete opening of the body and the soul. Everything can be expressed, even the strangest ideas.”
As he is stretching afterward, the maid, Ruzenka, crosses the entrance hall, her eyes swollen with sleep. He calls on her to witness the moment: “I’ve been writing all night!”
Then, like an athlete taking a victory lap around the stadium, he turns off his lamp and goes hammering on the doors of his sisters.
This story, “The Judgment,” makes tears come to his eyes when, on the following day, he reads it to his friends at Oskar Baum’s house.2 Until the day of his death, he continued to believe this story, which he owed to Felice, could “stand,” whereas so much else of what he wrote he ordered to be burnt.
The text is dedicated to Fräulein Felice B., to the young lady he saw one night for barely an hour.
1 This hairbrush, the only personal possession of Kafka’s still in existence, is in Israel at the Kibbutz En Sharod, the gift of Dora, his fourth fiancée.
2 Oskar Baum, who was blinded as a schoolboy, was nonetheless an excellent pianist, poet, and writer. He died in Prague in 1941 during the Occupation.
Berlin, Seven Months Later
From September 1912 to March 1913, Franz and Felice write letters back and forth without interruption and without major developments. Except for one critical thing: Franz keeps writing at the same feverish pitch. He pushes out “The Metamorphosis” in a period of twenty days (from November 17 to December 7) “like an actual delivery, covered in filth and mucus.” The paternity of this story, which Elias Canetti called one of the major masterpieces of the twentieth century, Franz attributes to Felice.
He writes after nightfall. He waits for his parents, whose apartment he lives in, to finish their noisy card parties and for the household to fall asleep. He shuts himself in his room, which he describes in his Diaries inch by inch as though filming it. A small room, narrow, with a sofa, and a bed covered in a red quilt. His desk is littered with a thousand objects, a shaving mirror, a clothes brush, an open coin purse, a solitary key, a necktie half wrapped around a detachable collar, pencils, an empty matchbox, a paperweight, a ruler, many collar studs, some razor blades, and several tie clips. From the open drawer spill brochures, old newspapers, catalogs, postcards, and half-torn letters.
On his walls he has hung two works of art that he sees whenever he raises his head: a print of The Plowman by the painter Hans Thoma, and a cast of a headless maenad, her body draped in flowing robes and brandishing a leg of beef.
When his own legs grow numb, Franz gets up from his desk and stands at the window looking out on the street. His head back, his cheek pressed against the window catch, he watches the river stream by in front of him, the banks where the grass is starting to turn yellow or turn green, the sky starting to change colors, and the cars parading past, drawing him back into the world of men.
Franz is an insatiable reader and lives surrounded by books. We know just how much he valued his library: one night when he was out, his mother entered his room and took a novel by Oskar Baum that Franz had intended to lend his sister Elli. When Franz found out, he flew into an absolute rage, almost swearing at his mother: “Leave me my books! I have nothing else.”
He reads biographies, memoirs, novels, essays, and poetry collections, rereading the works he particularly admires two or three times or more. He asks Felice what she is reading, deplores her choices, and recommends that she read Flaubert (he dreams of reading Sentimental Education3 out loud to an audience in a single sitting, taking as many days and nights as necessary, in French of course), Dostoyevsky, Strindberg, Grillparzer, Kropotkin, Gogol, Kleist, Dickens, Jammes, Berlioz’s autobiography … the list is endless. “We should read only books that bite and sting, a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.”
He writes down an anecdote he can’t bring himself to tell Felice: it is unlawful to think of the Torah in the bathroom, and for that reason you can read profane books there. A certain K. had a great deal of profane knowledge, he had learned everything he knew in the bathroom. No detail is trivial, Franz adds, as long as it is accurate.
On December 11, 1912, he sends Felice Meditation, which has just been published. He waits feverishly for her comments, avidly reading the letters he receives from her almost every morning. Nothing, not a word about the book. Days go by. Still nothing. On December 18 he injects a slight nudge: “I am so happy to think that my book is in your possession.” He waits. Still nothing. Felice prattles on about everything except his book. She is not interested in what is best in me, he thinks. Her indifference humiliates him, tortures him. On December 23 he brings the issue into the open: “You have not said anything yet about my book.”
Felice says nothing, she has not had the curiosity to open it, though she reads voraciously and waxes enthusiastic about dozens of books. Franz finds the names of so many writers in her letters that he is jealous and would like to pick a quarrel with them, all of them. One day she praises Schnitzler to the skies, and Franz is furious. He writes her in the middle of the night. His tone is icy: “I don’t like him at all and don’t hold him in respect. He can never drop low enough in the public’s opinion.”
On Sunday, December 29, he explodes: “Why don’t you tell me in two words that you don’t like my little book? It would be understandable that you don’t know what to make of it, and I might still hope that it would some day appeal to you. A hesitant opinion on your part would seem quite natural to me, but you have said nothing. Twice you announced something, but then said nothing. You don’t like my book as such, but since I wrote it you must like it all the same—in which case a person gets around to reading it.”
He spends that Sunday in misery.
After this humiliating exchange, Franz no longer speaks of his work to Felice, or says very little. Before, he would give her a full daily account, detailed, enthusiastic, and funny. He had hoped for praise, a little admiration. He receives nothing but stinging silence.
He writes her every day but makes no plans to see her. Instead, he voices vague regrets: “You flew into the elevator, the night we met, instead of whispering in my ear despite the presence of Herr Brod: ‘Come with me to Berlin, leave everything and come.’ ” At times he accuses himself of inertia: “Why, fool that I am, did I stay at the office or at home, instead of jumping on the train with my eyes shut, to open them only when I am near you?”
Most likely prompted by Felice, he hints at the beginning of December that he might visit Berlin at Christmastime. Howev
er, nothing is less certain. The trip starts to seem even more doubtful. “But,” he pleads, “you too, Felice, will have relatives visiting who might bar me from Berlin.”
In January there is no longer any question of seeing each other. On February 5 he is evasive: “At Easter, would you have an hour free for me on Sunday or on Monday and, if so, do you think it would be a good idea for me to come?”
Two days later he writes: “Dearest, I don’t want to see your relatives, I am not strong enough for that. So think about it carefully, Felice. Your parents, your father, your brother, and your sister from Dresden will surely be at home, and I can therefore easily imagine that you wouldn’t have the time.”
Do these seem like the words of a lover? Or a thinly disguised attempt to avoid a meeting that he does not look forward to? He confesses: “You are right, Felice, I have often had to force myself to write you in the last few days.”
The reason for this change?
“My American novel.4 The story I am writing takes place entirely in the United States of America. It is my first somewhat longer work after fifteen years of frustrated effort. It must be completed, and so, with your blessing I plan to spend the brief moments I might otherwise employ writing inaccurate, alarmingly incomplete, imprudent, dangerous letters to you, on this task where everything has grown calm and is headed along the right path. But don’t abandon me, Felice, to my terrible loneliness.”
In choosing between Berlin and New York, between the pleasure of seeing the woman he loves and bringing a character into the world, naming him (“Karl Rossmann”), giving him a life in a bustling city on the other side of the planet (to which he knows he will never go), Franz does not hesitate for a second. Felice has supplied him the strength, the exaltation that he needs. She produced the spark, and the motor has caught and started to run. She performed magnificently the task that he set for her on the night they met. He loves her all the more for it. Or rather, he needs the passion that he feels for her.
A passion without love.
Exhilarated by his writing, he jokes: “Dearest, I beg you with my hands raised in supplication not to be jealous. If the people in my novel notice your jealousy, they will abandon me. And consider a bit that if they leave me, I will be obliged to follow them, even if it means going all the way to hell, where they are at home. No, I will not sever myself from my novel even when you are here. Surely not.”
A few days later he crows: “Cry, dearest, cry, the time to cry has come! The hero of my little story has just died. It may comfort you to know that he died quite peacefully and reconciled to all.”
Then in March, Franz collapses. He is working too much. The office, the asbestos factory, his reading, his correspondence with Felice, Max, Oskar Baum, Felix Weltsch, Ernst Weiss, and his sisters leave him no peace, his insomnia is worsening, his health is failing. His novel is stalled.
He confesses his crushing doubts to Max. But his old friend has married Elsa, and a married friend is no longer a true friend. Franz misses seeing Max every night, going on trips with him.
On January 12, his second sister, Valli, also marries. He feels more and more alone. A man without a wife is not a human being, the Talmud’s imprecation haunts him.
Felice is his only port in the storm. If he wants to stay attached to her, he has to do more than write, he cannot go on avoiding her. In March the trip to Berlin becomes a necessity.
Franz’s first visit to Berlin, more than seven months after their original meeting, can be told in a few words. A lightning visit, announced as problematic, which Franz cancels and then reinstates as a possibility: “Still undecided.” And which he then confirms on Friday night by express letter.
On Saturday, March 22, 1913, he leaps into the train with his eyes closed. When he opens them again in Berlin, it is 10:30 at night and Felice is not on the platform. Reeling with fatigue, for as usual he has traveled third class, Franz goes to the Hotel Askanischer Hof. No word of welcome awaits him there. Anxious at the thought of actually seeing the woman he has been writing for seven months, he is unable to sleep.
The next morning at 8:30, he sends her a note: “What has happened, Felice? Here I am in Berlin, but I will have to leave again this afternoon at 4 or 5. The hours are passing, and I hear nothing from you. Please send me an answer back with the boy.” The bicycle messenger returns with the words: “I will telephone you in a quarter of an hour.”
By the time they meet, strained and excited, it is almost eleven o’clock. He gives her a hug and a furtive kiss on the cheek. They walk in the Tiergarten, it is chilly, the trees have hardly opened their buds. Felice has a funeral to attend at noon. She doesn’t want to be late, they run like lunatics, it’s the best moment of their meeting, they laugh, their movements are unhampered, they hold hands. At the cemetery, they part company. Franz watches the young lady walk off between two strange men as the procession gets under way. He doesn’t consider following her, staying at her side. They have agreed to talk by telephone at three o’clock, and Felice has made a promise: she will accompany Franz to the station. He has lunch, visits his good friend, the surgeon and writer Ernst Weiss, and returns to the hotel well before three. There he waits. From the lobby, he looks out at a cold, persistent rain that will continue falling until dusk. He considers going out to buy a newspaper, the Berliner Tagenblatt, but he is afraid to come across a news item that would upset him. He has not yet forgotten the report of a recent trial: a certain Marie Abraham, twenty-three, driven by hunger and poverty, strangled her daughter Barbara, nine months old, with the man’s necktie that she used as a garter. The image of this young mother breaking her baby’s neck haunts him. Though Franz prides himself on never crying, he sobbed over this news brief.
He could go to a cafe and read or write. But no, he stays in his chair by the telephone, like a soldier in his sentry box.
Berlin is a city that Franz knows. He would like to live there if he could ever get away from Prague and the clutches of his family. In 1910 he saw a production of Hamlet with Bassermann in the title role. In his mind he sees him again, alone on the stage. He tries to imagine why an actor of such great talent would accept a role in The Other One, a very mediocre film that he saw with Max.
Perhaps he nods off in his chair, perhaps Karl Rossmann comes and sits beside him, perhaps he flits around himself like a bird chased from its nest.
At four o’clock he runs to the station, walks the length of the platform in both directions. The train starts, Felice has not come. The rain that is still pattering down might have prevented her, he tells himself, but no one could have stopped her from calling me on the telephone.
He has traveled sixteen hours to catch a glimpse of her. And he didn’t bring himself to say what he had to say. Several times he has hinted at it in his letters, but to no effect. Felice has not wanted to understand or even to suspect. Face to face with her, he said nothing.
Once back in Prague, he dithers for several days, unable to come out with his “great confession.” On April 1, he finds the strength to write. The letter starts abruptly, without any form of address, as though he were not speaking to Felice but to himself, as though he needed to cough up the words that were choking him: “My real fear—nothing worse could be said or heard—is that I will never be able to possess you. At best, like an endlessly faithful dog, I would go only so far as to kiss your limply surrendered hand, which will not be an act of love, but a sign of the despair felt by an animal condemned to silence and eternal separation. I would feel the breath and life of your body at my side, yet be further from you than I am now, here in this room. I would be excluded from you forever.”
He signs, then rereads, what he believes to be his death sentence.
He is preparing for bed and starting to get undressed when his mother gives a little knock on the door: “May I come in?”
He smiles at her. “You aren’t bothering me.”
This late and unaccustomed visit seems to offer a plot development.
�
�Have you written your Uncle Alfred?”
Franz reassures his mother: “I mailed my letter to him yesterday.”
Emboldened by his thoughtfulness, she goes to him and plants a good-night kiss on his cheek, which she hasn’t done for years.
“That’s good,” says Franz, and pats his mother’s hand.
“I never dared,” says his mother. “I thought you didn’t like it. But if you do like it, I like it very much, too.”
Touched, she slips out the door. Once alone, Franz sits again at his desk, pulls the letter from its envelope, and adds a postscript. He tells Felice about his mother’s unexpected visit, the words they exchanged, her kiss. Setting down a fragment of life has the effect of changing his mood, restoring his freedom as a writer.
The next day, proud of his courage, he writes to Max: “Yesterday, I sent my great confession to Berlin. She is truly a martyr!”
And Felice’s reaction? “You are drifting away from me, at a time when you are critically necessary to me.”
“I am critically necessary to you?”
Franz is elated, he has no cause for fear, he did not receive the answer that his letter deserved. He sighs with relief: “I, dearest, drift away? I, who breathe only through you? I look for you everywhere. In the street, the gestures of all sorts of people remind me of you. I, drift away, I who die of longing for you?”
He confesses that when he was washing his hands in the dark passage that very morning, he felt such a strong desire from thinking about her that he had to step across to the window … to seek comfort from the gray sky.
Felice must have been shocked by this image: Franz masturbating as he looked out at the clouds. Next she must have wondered, if he gets an erection thinking about me, why does he keep repeating with such humiliating obstinacy that he will never be able to possess me?
She doesn’t quite dare ask him the question. She is unable to speak about sexuality, or to hear it mentioned. Her upbringing, her social class, forbid it. When Franz had spoken, that night at the Brods’, about his vacation at Jungborn with the nudists, she had felt gooseflesh: completely naked people, he had said, strolled through the trees, stretched, ran, scratched themselves, stroked their naked bodies. The picture still made her sick, even these many months later. Franz, to his eternal credit, made a point of saying that he always wore his bathing suit.
Kafka in Love Page 3