by Franz Kafka
Karl had little time to gaze at everything, for before long an attendant approached them, looked at the stoker as though he did not belong there, and asked him what he wanted. Responding as softly as he had been asked, the stoker said that he wished to speak to the chief bursar. The attendant dismissed this request with a wave of his hand, but nonetheless, tiptoeing in a wide arc around the circular table, he approached the gentleman beside the folios. At last that gentleman, who, as one could see quite clearly, almost froze on hearing the attendant’s words, looked around at the man who wished to speak to him, dismissed the stoker with a vehement gesture and, just to be sure, the attendant likewise. The latter returned to the stoker and, as if imparting a confidence, said: “Get out at once!”
Upon hearing these words, the stoker gazed down at Karl, as though Karl were a sweetheart to whom he was silently pouring out his woes. Without further reflection Karl broke free, ran straight across the room, and even brushed up against the officer’s chair; the servant ran after him, bent low, arms ready to make a catch, as though chasing vermin, but Karl reached the chief bursar’s table first and clung to it in case the servant should try to pull him away.
All of a sudden the entire room became animated. The ship’s officer jumped up from the table; the gentlemen from the port authority watched, calmly but alertly; the two gentlemen at the window now stood side by side; the attendant, believing his presence was no longer required since even the distinguished gentlemen were now taking an interest in the matter, stepped aside. By the door the stoker waited intently for the moment when his help should be needed again. And finally the chief bursar in his armchair swiveled sharply to the right.
Karl rummaged through his secret pocket, which he had no hesitation in showing to these people, took out his passport, and rather than saying a few words by way of introduction, simply laid it down open on the table. The chief bursar seemed to attach little significance to the passport, for he flicked it aside with two fingers, whereupon Karl put it away, as though the formality had been satisfactorily resolved. “If I may say so,” he began, “I believe that the stoker has been treated unjustly. There’s a certain Schubal on board, who’s been giving him trouble. He’s served in a most satisfactory manner on many ships—he can give you their names—is diligent, does his work in good faith, and so it’s rather difficult to understand how he could possibly be ill suited for a job on this particular ship, where the work is not so exceedingly difficult as, say, on merchant vessels. So those slanderous allegations are all that stands between him and the advancement and recognition that would otherwise be his due. I’ve addressed this matter only in the most general terms, he himself will inform you about his specific complaints.” Karl had directed his remarks at all of the gentlemen, since everybody was indeed listening, and it seemed much more likely that there should be a fair-minded person in their midst than that the fair-minded one should happen to be the chief bursar. Karl had, to be sure, neglected to mention that he had not known the stoker long. Also, he would have come up with an even better speech had he not been distracted by the red face of that gentleman with the little bamboo stick, and indeed it was only now from this new vantage point that he had first noticed him.
“It’s all true, word for word,” said the stoker, before anyone had asked him a question, let alone glanced in his direction. The impulsiveness of the stoker would have been a grave mistake if the gentleman with the decorations—who, as Karl now realized, was indeed the captain—had not already decided to hear out the stoker. The captain reached out his hand and called to the stoker: “Come here!” in a voice so firm that one could have almost hit it with a hammer. And now everything depended on how the stoker conducted himself, for Karl had no doubt about the justice of his case.
Fortunately, it soon became clear that the stoker was a man who had seen a great deal of the world. With exemplary composure he reached into his little suitcase and on his first attempt pulled out a little bundle of papers and a notebook, and then, as if this were the most obvious course of action, completely ignoring the chief bursar, he went over to the captain and spread out his evidence on the windowsill. The chief bursar had no alternative but to join them. “That fellow is a notorious crank,” he said by way of explanation, “he spends more time in the bursar’s office than in the machine room and has driven even Schubal, who’s such a calm man, to despair. Now listen to me once and for all!” he said, addressing the stoker, “you’ve been far too intrusive. How often have you been justifiably thrown out of the disbursement rooms for continually making such demands, which always turn out to be completely unreasonable! How often have you run over from those rooms to the main cash office! How often were you politely informed that Schubal is your immediate superior and that you, as his subordinate, must learn to live with him! And you even come in here when the captain is present; you’re not ashamed to disturb him and dare to bring along this little fellow, whom you’ve taught to reel off your fatuous accusations and whom I’m now seeing for the first time on board.”
Karl had to restrain himself from intervening. However, the captain had already approached them and said: “But let’s listen to what the man has to say. In any case I think Schubal has become much too independent of late, though this doesn’t necessarily speak in your favor.” Those last words were directed at the stoker; of course, it was only natural that the captain could not take his side right away, but otherwise everything seemed to be going well. The stoker launched into his explanations, and, overcoming his reluctance, began by addressing Schubal as “Mister.” This greatly pleased Karl, who stood by the chief bursar’s deserted desk, pressing the letter scales repeatedly in sheer delight: Mr. Schubal is unfair. Mr. Schubal gives preferential treatment to foreigners. Mr. Schubal banished the stoker from the engine room and made him clean toilets, which was certainly not his responsibility. At one point the stoker even questioned the competence of Mr. Schubal, which was, he claimed, more apparent than real. Whereupon Karl directed a most intent look at the captain, assuming an engagingly collegial expression merely so as to prevent such an awkward manner of speaking from disposing the captain unfavorably toward the stoker. There was indeed little enough to be gleaned from the latter’s many speeches, and although the captain continued to stare into space with eyes that showed his determination to hear out the stoker, the other gentlemen were becoming impatient, and ominously enough, the stoker’s voice no longer held sway in the room. The gentleman in civilian clothes was the first to move, stirring his little bamboo stick and tapping the parquet floor with it, if ever so lightly. Every now and then the other gentlemen glanced over; clearly in a hurry, the gentlemen from the harbor authority returned to their files and began to peruse them, if still rather absently; the ship’s officer returned to his position beside his table, and believing that he had carried the day, the chief bursar heaved a great ironic sigh. The only person who was evidently immune from this general distraction was the attendant, who could at least partially sympathize with the sorrows of a poor man who had suddenly been set down amid the mighty, and who nodded gravely at Karl, as though wishing to explain something.
Meanwhile, beyond the windows, the life of the harbor went on: a flat cargo ship transporting a huge pile of barrels, which must have been marvelously well stacked to prevent their rolling about, passed by, plunging the room into almost complete darkness; little motorboats, which Karl could have observed more closely if only he had had the time, rushed straight ahead, guided by the jerking hand of a man who stood erect at the steering wheel; now and then peculiar floating objects bobbed up from the choppy waters of their own accord, only to be quickly covered and to sink before one’s startled eyes; perspiring sailors rowed away from ocean steamers in boats filled with passengers who remained seated expectantly, mostly in silence, in the same seats into which they had been pressed, although some could not refrain from turning their heads to gaze at the changing scenery. There was endless motion, and unrest borne from the restless element t
o helpless men and their works.
But although everything cried out for haste, clarity, and the most precise description, what did the stoker do? He had certainly talked himself into a sweat and was no longer able to hold the papers on the windowsill in his trembling hands; he kept thinking of new complaints about Schubal from every conceivable angle, each of which would, he believed, have sufficed to demolish Schubal, although he had managed to give the captain only a pathetic mishmash of all that. For some time now the gentleman with the little bamboo stick had been whistling softly at the ceiling; the gentlemen from the harbor authority had detained the officer at their table and gave no sign that they were about to release him; only the composure shown by the captain made the chief bursar refrain from bursting in, as he longed to do. The attendant, who stood at attention, awaited an imminent order from his captain with regard to the stoker.
Karl could no longer remain idle. So he walked slowly toward the group, considering all the more quickly as he approached how best to tackle the matter. It was truly high time—any moment both could be sent flying from the office. The captain might indeed be a good man and might especially now, Karl thought, have a particular reason for wishing to show himself a just superior, but in the end he was not merely an instrument one could go on playing until it fell apart—and that was precisely how the stoker was treating him, though of course only out of the boundless indignation of his heart.
So Karl said to the stoker: “You must speak more simply, and more clearly too; the captain cannot understand your story because of the way you’re telling it. Can he really be so utterly familiar with all of the family names, let alone the first names, of the machinists and the messengers that you need only give somebody’s name and he will know at once whom you mean? Organize your complaints, start off with the most important followed by the rest, and then you may never have to mention the greater part of them. After all, you’ve always given me such clear explanations of everything.” If one can steal trunks in America, one can also tell a lie every now and then, he thought to himself by way of excuse.
If only it had helped! Might it be too late? On hearing that familiar voice, the stoker broke off in spite of the fact that he could hardly even recognize Karl, for his eyes were filled with tears, tears of wounded male honor, of dreadful memories, and of his extreme current distress. But how—the thought occurred to Karl, who had fallen silent, as he stood facing the now equally silent stoker—but how was he all of a sudden supposed to change the way he spoke, especially since he believed he had already brought up everything that needed to be said without obtaining even the slightest acknowledgment, and as if on the other hand he had still not said anything and could hardly expect the gentlemen to listen to everything all over again? And at that very moment along comes Karl.
“If only I had come sooner instead of gazing out that window,” Karl said to himself, and, lowering his head in front of the stoker, he slapped the seams of his trousers to signal the end of all hope.
However, possibly sensing that Karl harbored furtive reproaches against him, the stoker misunderstood the gesture and, with the praiseworthy intention of getting Karl to change his mind, crowned his deeds by picking a fight. And did so just now, when the gentlemen at the round table had become annoyed at the useless noise distracting them from their important work, when the chief bursar had finally found the captain’s patience incomprehensible and was tempted to erupt there and then, when the servant, now back in his masters’ sphere, was sizing up the stoker with wild looks, and finally, when the gentleman holding the little bamboo stick—even the captain cast friendly glances at him every now and then—having become completely deadened to the stoker and even disgusted by him, took out a small notebook, and, evidently preoccupied with entirely different matters, let his eyes wander back and forth between his notebook and Karl.
“Yes, I know, I know,” said Karl, who had difficulty warding off the torrent of words that the stoker now directed at him; yet amid all the strife he still managed to spare a smile for him. “You’re right, quite right, I never had the slightest doubt about it.” Anxious about blows, Karl would have liked to catch the stoker’s flailing hands or, better still, push him into a corner so as to whisper in his ear a few soft, soothing words, which no one else needed to hear. But the stoker had already gone berserk. Karl even began to draw a certain comfort from the thought that the stoker could in a pinch overpower all seven men in this room through the sheer force of his despair. In any case, as a quick glance at the desk showed, it had a panel for the electric current with far too many buttons on it, and a single hand pressing down on them could make the entire ship, and all its passageways filled with hostile people, rise up in rebellion.
The seemingly indifferent gentleman with the little bamboo stick then approached Karl, and asked quite softly, though loudly enough to be clearly overheard over the shouting from the stoker: “So what’s your name?” At that moment, as if someone had waited behind the door until the gentleman uttered those words, there was a knock. In response the servant looked at the captain; the latter nodded. Whereupon the servant went to the door and opened it. In an old imperial frock coat stood a man of medium build, who judging by his appearance was not especially cut out for working with machines, yet it was indeed Schubal. Had Karl not been able to gather as much from the hint of satisfaction in everyone’s eyes, to which not even the captain was immune, he would inevitably, and much to his dismay, have recognized it in the posture of the stoker, who had clenched his fists at the end of his stiffened arms, as if this clenching were paramount, and as if he were prepared to sacrifice his entire life for its sake. All of his strength was concentrated there, even that which held him erect.
And so there stood the enemy, looking sovereign and fresh in his fancy suit, with an account book under his arm, probably the stoker’s pay dockets and work records, and—without making the slightest effort to conceal that his foremost desire was to gauge everyone’s mood—he looked each person in the eye, one by one. All seven were his friends, for even if the captain had had reservations about him earlier or had perhaps merely feigned to have had, after all the trouble the stoker had caused him, he would surely no longer have the slightest objection to Schubal. One could not be sufficiently severe with a man such as the stoker, and if Schubal could be reproached in any way it was for not having succeeded over time in reining in the stoker’s obstinacy well enough to ensure that he would not have the audacity to appear before the captain as he had just done.
Well, perhaps one could still assume that the effect that this juxtaposition of the stoker and Schubal would have on a higher forum would not be lost on human beings, for even if Schubal managed to put on a sham, he could not necessarily keep it up indefinitely. His vileness need only peek through for a moment, and the gentlemen would notice it; Karl would make sure that would happen. After all, he had more than a passing acquaintance with the shrewdness, weaknesses, and moods of the various gentlemen, and so at least from that point of view, the time he had spent here had not been wasted. If the stoker had only stood his ground, but he seemed absolutely unable to fight. Had they dangled Schubal before him, he might have taken his fist and split that hated skull, like a thin-shelled nut. But even those few steps toward Schubal would probably be beyond him. Why had Karl not foreseen something so easily foreseen, namely, that Schubal would finally be obliged to come, if not on his own initiative then on a summons from the captain? Why hadn’t he devised a precise battle plan as he walked over with the stoker instead of entering mercilessly unprepared simply because there was a door there? Could the stoker still speak, say yes and no, as he would be required to do in the cross-examination that would take place only if everything turned out for the best. The stoker stood there, legs apart, knees slightly bowed, head raised slightly, and the air went in and out of his open mouth as if he had no lungs left inside to handle his breathing.
Still, Karl felt stronger and more alert than he had perhaps ever felt at home.
If only his parents could have seen him defending a good cause before respected figures in a foreign land, and even if he had still not achieved victory, he was fully prepared to embark on the final conquest. Would they change their mind about him? Set him down between them and praise him? And then once, only once, take a look into these eyes, eyes that were so devoted to them? What uncertain questions, and what an inappropriate moment to be asking them!
“I’ve come because I think the stoker is accusing me of some kind of dishonesty. A girl from the kitchen told me she had seen him heading this way. Captain, all you gentlemen, I’m ready to refute each such accusation by drawing on my papers and, if necessary, on statements from independent and impartial witnesses, who are standing outside.” Those were Schubal’s words. He had certainly given a clear, manly speech, and one might have assumed from the changed expressions on his audience’s faces that it had been quite some time since they had last heard a human voice. So of course they failed to notice that this fine speech had a few holes in it. Why was “dishonesty” the first pertinent word he came up with? Wouldn’t it have been better to start off with that accusation rather than with his nationalistic prejudices? A girl from the kitchen had seen the stoker going toward the office, and Schubal had immediately understood what was going on? Mustn’t his wits have been sharpened by guilt? And hadn’t he brought along witnesses and even called them unprejudiced and impartial. It was a scam, nothing but a scam, and weren’t the gentlemen not only tolerating it but even recognizing it as proper conduct? Why had he let so much time slip by after being told by the kitchen girl, if not simply to let the stoker wear down the gentlemen and thereby ensure that they would slowly lose their ability to make clear judgments, from which Schubal had most to fear? After standing outside the door, no doubt for some time, had he not waited to knock until after the gentleman had asked that trivial question and he could with good reason hope that the stoker had already been dispatched?