by Franz Kafka
He feels sad, though he doesn’t know what the balls could do to harm him at night. His sleep is extremely sound; he will easily manage to ignore their slight noise. To be sure of this, as experience has already taught him, he pushes a couple of rugs under the bed. It’s as though he had a small dog there, and wanted to make sure it’s comfortable; and as though the balls were getting tired and sleepy too, their jumps becoming lower and slower than up until now. As Blumfeld kneels down by the bedside and shines a torch under the bed, he sometimes has a sense that the balls will stay forever on the carpets, that’s how feebly they’re falling, how slowly they’re rolling a few inches this way or that. Then, admittedly, they get a grip on themselves and perform. Still, Blumfeld thinks it perfectly possible that when he looks under the bed in the morning, he will find just two harmless and motionless toys.
But they don’t seem to be able to keep bouncing until the morning, because no sooner is Blumfeld lying in bed than he can’t hear them anymore. He strains to pick up a sound, leans right out of his bed – nothing at all. It’s not possible for that all to be because of the rugs; no, the only explanation is that the balls have stopped jumping. Either they can’t lift themselves off the soft rugs and have for the moment given up, or – and this strikes Blumfeld as the likelier of the two – they will never jump again. Blumfeld could of course get up and check, but in his satisfaction that quiet has returned, he remains lying where he is, he won’t even send a look the way of those pacified balls. He doesn’t even miss his evening smoke; he rolls over onto his side and is asleep immediately.
But he is not undisturbed; his sleep is dreamless, as it always is, just very restless. Innumerable times he is woken by the fancy that someone is knocking on his door. Of course he knows there is no one; who could possibly come knocking on his lonely bachelor’s door at night. Even though he knows it, he still can’t help leaping up and looking tensely in the direction of the door, his mouth agape, his eyes starting, strands of hair shaking on his damp brow. He tries to keep count of the number of times he is woken, but driven demented by the vast numbers that come up, he falls back to sleep. He thinks he has an idea where the knocking is coming from, it’s not the door at all, but somewhere else, but in the muzziness of sleep he can’t remember what this assumption of his is grounded on. All he knows is that many tiny disgusting little taps, put together, make a big powerful knock. He thinks he would tolerate all the disgustingness of the little taps if he could avoid the knocks, but for some reason it’s too late, he is unable to intervene, he’s missed his moment, he doesn’t even have words, his mouth opens only for a mute yawn and, in fury, he mashes his face down in the pillow. This is his night.
In the morning he is woken by the knocking of the cleaner and with a sigh of relief he greets her gentle knocking – it always annoyed him that it was inaudible. And he is on the point of calling out ‘Come in’ when he hears another lively knocking, still muted, but positively warlike. It is the balls under the bed. Have they woken up – have they, unlike him, gathered fresh strength over night? ‘One moment,’ Blumfeld calls to the charlady, jumps out of bed, but taking care to keep his back to the balls, throws himself to the floor with his back to them, then twists his head in the direction of the balls – and – he almost swears. Like children pushing their unwanted blankets away, the balls, presumably through a sequence of nudgings kept up all night, the balls have managed to push the rugs so far under the bed that they have gained access to the parquet and are able to make a noise. ‘Get back on the rug!’ says Blumfeld with an angry expression. When the balls are quiet again, thanks to the rugs, he calls the charlady in. While she, a fat, obtuse woman with a stiff upright gait, sets out his breakfast on the table and does a few other essential things, Blumfeld stands motionless in his dressing gown beside his bed to keep the balls in place. He watches her to check whether she has noticed anything. Hard of hearing as she is, it’s very unlikely, and Blumfeld puts it down to irritability brought on by his bad night’s sleep when he thinks he sees her stop from time to time, grab hold of some piece of furniture and listen with raised eyebrows. He wishes she would get a move on, but if anything she’s even slower than usual. Clumsily she loads herself up with Blumfeld’s clothes and boots, and goes out into the corridor with them. She stays gone a long time and there are very occasional thumps as she brushes them. And all this time Blumfeld has to wait by the bed, unable to move, so as not to bring the balls out behind him; has to let his coffee (which he likes to drink hot) go cold, and do nothing but stare at the drawn curtains, behind which the new day is murkily brightening. Finally the charlady is finished, bids him a good morning, and is on her way out. But before she finally takes her leave, she stops by the door muttering and giving Blumfeld a long stare. Blumfeld is on the point of asking her a question when she finally goes. He feels like yanking the door open and yelling at her for being such a stupid old woman. But when he thinks about what he actually has against her, he sees only the contradiction that she certainly hasn’t noticed anything but wanted to give the impression that she had. Such bewildering thoughts he has! And after only one single bad night’s sleep! He finds a little explanation for this in the departure from his habits – he didn’t smoke or drink. ‘If I ever,’ is the conclusion of his thinking, ‘don’t smoke and don’t drink, I know I’m in for a bad night.’
From now on he means to pay more attention to his physical well-being, and to make a start he takes the cotton wool from the home pharmacy kit which hangs over the bedside table and shoves two cotton-wool balls in his ears. Then he gets up and takes a trial step. The balls set off after him, but he almost can’t hear them, and a little more cotton wool is enough to render them completely inaudible. Blumfeld executes a few more steps: there is no particular unpleasantness. Each party is on its own, Blumfeld and the balls, they are connected to each other, but they don’t interfere with each other. Only when Blumfeld happens to turn round a little quickly and one of the balls doesn’t get out of his way in time, he strikes it with his knee. That’s the only incident to report, otherwise Blumfeld drinks his coffee in peace – he is ravenously hungry, it’s as though he hadn’t slept at all, but been on a long walk – washes in cold, incredibly refreshing water, and gets dressed. Up until now, he hasn’t drawn the curtains, having taken the road of caution and preferring to remain in the half-dark; he doesn’t need any snoops to watch him and the balls. But now that he’s ready to go, he needs to make arrangements for the balls in case – though he doesn’t think it likely – they should try to follow him out onto the street. At this point he has a good idea. He opens the large wardrobe and stands there with his back to it. It’s as though they could read his intentions, because they avoid the inside of the wardrobe and use every bit of available space between Blumfeld and the wardrobe, jumping momentarily, if nothing else is possible, inside the wardrobe, but then coming speeding out of its darkness. It seems it’s not possible to drive them any further inside; they would rather violate their duty and stand laterally to Blumfeld. But their little cunning is unavailing, because now Blumfeld backs right into the wardrobe, and they are compelled to follow him. And with that their fate is sealed, because the floor of the wardrobe is littered with various little items, such as boots, boxes, little cases, that are all – Blumfeld regrets it now – tidily arranged, but that make things quite a bit harder for the balls. And when Blumfeld now, having almost drawn shut the door of the wardrobe, suddenly, with a leap the likes of which he has not performed for several years, leaves the wardrobe, shuts the door and turns the key in the lock, the balls are locked away. ‘So much for you,’ thinks Blumfeld and wipes the sweat from his face. How the balls racket in the wardrobe! They give every impression of feeling desperate. Blumfeld, on the other hand, is mightily pleased. He leaves his room and even the drabness of the common parts feels like a boon to him. He frees his ears of their cotton wool, and the myriad sounds of the awakening house enchant him. There are few people around; it is still very early.
Downstairs, in the passage outside the low door to the charlady’s basement apartment, stands her ten-year-old son. The spit and image of his mother, not one of the old woman’s upsetting features has been omitted from the child’s countenance. Bandy-legged, his hands in his trouser pockets, he stands there rasping, because he has croup and finds it difficult to breathe. But whereas Blumfeld normally speeds his step when he sees the boy in his path, to keep their encounters to a minimum, today he is moved to almost stop. Even if the boy was born of that woman, and shows every sign of his origins, he is just a child, and that misshapen head is full of childish ideas. If one were to speak to him gently and ask him something, he would probably reply in a treble voice, innocent and respectful, and one might get over one’s revulsion in the end and give him a pat on the cheek. So thinks Blumfeld, but walks on by anyway. Once on the street, he notices the weather is milder than it appeared in his room. The overnight fog is dispersing, swept away by a powerful wind, and there are patches of blue in the sky. Blumfeld feels some gratitude to the balls that he is out of his room much earlier than usual; he’s even left the newspaper unread on his table. At any rate he has gained a lot of time, and can now afford to walk slowly. It is strange how little the balls concern him since he has parted from them. As long as they were after him, it might have been possible to take them for something belonging to him, something that would influence people’s opinion of him, but now they are shut up in the wardrobe, like a toy. And this causes Blumfeld to think that the best way of rendering the balls harmless might be to return them to their original intended function. The boy will still be standing in the landing; Blumfeld will take him the balls, not on any temporary basis but as an outright gift, which will certainly be tantamount to an order for their destruction. And even if they should remain intact, in the hands of the boy they will still amount to less than in his wardrobe; the whole house will watch the boy playing with them, other children will join in, the general view that what is at issue here is some plaything and not Blumfeld’s life-companions will harden and finally become irresistible.
Blumfeld runs back inside. The boy has just gone down the cellar steps and is about to open the door. Blumfeld is obliged to call the boy, and use his ridiculous name, ridiculous like everything connected with this boy. He does so. ‘Alfred,’ he calls, ‘er, Alfred.’ The boy hesitates a long time. ‘Oh, come along,’ calls Blumfeld, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ The janitor’s two little daughters have come out of the door opposite and take up positions nosily right and left of Blumfeld. They are much quicker on the uptake than the boy, and can’t understand why he won’t come up straight away. They beckon to him to come, not letting Blumfeld out of sight, but are unable to guess what sort of present is waiting for Alfred. They are consumed with curiosity, shifting from one foot to the other. Blumfeld is amused by them as much as by the boy. The boy seems at last to have made sense of everything in his mind, and begins stiffly and awkwardly to climb up the stairs. Not even in his gait does he diverge from his mother, who chooses this moment to appear in the doorway. Blumfeld calls out with excessive volume, so that the woman will understand and can supervise the putting into effect of his instructions, should it be required. ‘Up in my room,’ says Blumfeld, ‘I have two lovely balls. Would you like them?’ The boy just pulls a face, he has no idea what to do. He turns round and looks questioningly at his mother. But the girls right away start to hop around behind Blumfeld, begging him for the balls. ‘You’ll be able to play with them as well,’ Blumfeld tells them, but he’s waiting for a reply from the boy. He could of course just give the balls to the girls, but they strike him as being a little irresponsible and he feels he can trust the boy more. He, in the meantime, has applied to his mother for advice, and without a word having been exchanged between them, now nods in agreement when Blumfeld repeats his question. ‘Then listen carefully,’ says Blumfeld, who is perfectly happy not to be thanked for his generosity, ‘your mother has a key to my room, you’ll have to borrow it from her. Here is the key to my wardrobe, and the balls are in the wardrobe. Be sure to lock the wardrobe and the room behind you. But you can do whatever you like with the balls, and you don’t need to give them back to me. You got that?’ Unfortunately the boy hasn’t. Blumfeld wanted to make everything particularly clear to this endlessly dim creature, but as a result he has said everything too many times, brought up the keys to the wardrobe and the room confusingly and too often, and as a result the boy isn’t gazing at him as his benefactor, but scowling at him as a tempter. The girls, of course, have straightaway understood everything. They press up against Blumfeld and put out their hands for his key. ‘Wait,’ says Blumfeld, getting annoyed about everything. Also time is passing, and he can’t hang around here forever. If only the charwoman would say she had understood him and will help the boy as needed. Instead of which she’s still standing in the doorway, smirking like someone hard of hearing, and maybe thinking that Blumfeld from upstairs has suddenly come over all soft about her son, and will ask to hear him recite his times table next. For his part, Blumfeld can hardly go down the stairs again and shout his plea into the charwoman’s ears, that her son should for the love of God free him of those two balls. He has violated his natural inclinations enough already in leaving the key to his wardrobe in the possession of such a family for a whole day. It’s really not to spare himself that he’s handing the key to the boy, instead of taking him upstairs and giving him the balls there. He can hardly give the balls to him upstairs and then, as would presumably happen, remove them again right away, by drawing them away with him as his retinue. ‘So you don’t understand me?’ asks Blumfeld almost mournfully, after he’s girded himself up for a fresh explanation, but then, seeing the vacant gaze of the boy, broken off again immediately. A vacant look like that leaves one helpless. It could lead one to say more than one meant to say, merely in the hope of pouring a little sense into the vacancy.
‘What if we get the balls for him,’ call the girls. They are clever, they have understood that they can only get at the balls by the mediation of the boy, and that they need to help with the mediation. A clock in the janitor’s flat strikes and gives Blumfeld a gee-up. ‘Then you take the key,’ says Blumfeld, and the key is more taken from him than given by him. The confidence he would have felt if he’d managed to hand the key to the boy would have been incomparably greater. ‘Get the room key from your mother,’ Blumfeld manages to add, ‘and when you come back with the balls, I want you to leave her both the keys.’ ‘All right,’ call the girls, and go spilling down the stairs. They have grasped everything, absolutely everything, and as though Blumfeld was infected by the slow-wittedness of the boy, he is briefly at a loss to know how they managed to follow his explanations so quickly.
Now they are downstairs, tugging at the skirts of the charwoman, but however much he’d like to stay and watch them perform their task, Blumfeld can’t, and it’s not just because time is getting on; it’s also because he doesn’t want to be present when the balls escape into the open. He would even like to put several streets between them when the girls open the door to his room. There is no knowing what else the balls are capable of. And so for the second time this morning, he steps outside the front door. He just manages to catch the charlady pushing the girls away, and the boy moving his bandy legs to come to her help. Blumfeld doesn’t understand how such people as the charwoman manage to prosper in this world and multiply.
On Blumfeld’s way to the linen factory where he works, thoughts of work gradually gain the upper hand over everything else. He speeds up his steps and in spite of the delay for which the boy was entirely responsible, he is still the first one in the office. This office is a small room walled with glass: it contains a desk for Blumfeld and two standing desks for a couple of juniors who work under him. Even though these standing desks are as small and narrow as though they’d been designed for schoolchildren, they do make space in the office very tight, and the juniors are unable to sit anywhere, be
cause then there would be no room for Blumfeld to have a chair. So they spend all day pressed against their desks. This is certainly very uncomfortable for them, and it also has the effect of making it harder for Blumfeld to keep an eye on them. Often they press themselves eagerly against their desks, not to work at all, oh no, but to whisper to each other or even to nap. Blumfeld has no end of trouble with them and the support they give him in his gigantic work is anything but adequate. What this work consists of is nothing less than the organization of the entire flow of materials and money to the home-workers from whom the factory buys certain hand-stitched articles. In order to appreciate the scale of this work, one would need to have a minute insight into the totality of all the relationships involved. But, since the death of Blumfeld’s immediate superior a few years ago, there is no one who has had such an insight, for which reason Blumfeld cannot concede anyone a right to be the judge of his work. The manager Herr Ottomar, for instance, quite clearly underestimates Blumfeld’s work. Of course he acknowledges the credit that Blumfeld has earned in the course of his twenty years at the factory – acknowledging it not merely because he has to, but because he respects Blumfeld as a loyal and trustworthy human being; but he nevertheless underestimates his work because he thinks it could be arranged more simply and thus in every respect more advantageously than the way Blumfeld does it. It is said, and this is not implausible, that the reason Ottomar puts in so few appearances in Blumfeld’s department is to spare himself the irritation that the sight of Blumfeld’s working methods causes him. Being thus underappreciated is of course sad for Blumfeld, but there is nothing to be done about it; he can hardly compel Ottomar’s attendance for a month in his, Blumfeld’s, department, in order to study the various tasks requiring to be done there, and apply his own, allegedly superior methods to them, and allowing himself, through the collapse of the department that would be an inevitable consequence of their application, to be persuaded by Blumfeld. Therefore Blumfeld merely goes about his work as he has always done, is alarmed each time Ottomar puts in one of his rare appearances, then with the subordinate’s sense of duty makes some feeble attempt to demonstrate this or that facility, whereupon the other, nodding silently, walks on with lowered eyes; and in a way he suffers less from this underestimation than from the thought that when he one day comes to leave his job, the immediate consequence will be a great and insoluble confusion, because he knows no one in the factory who can fill in for him and take over his job in such a way that even the direst blockages could be avoided over a period of several months in the business. And if the boss underestimates someone, then of course the employees merely try and outdo him in this. Therefore everyone underestimates Blumfeld’s work; no one thinks it a necessary part of his training to spend any time working in Blumfeld’s department, and when employees are taken on, no one is automatically assigned to Blumfeld’s section either. The result is that Blumfeld’s section is chronically short on young blood. It took weeks of dogged infighting for Blumfeld, who thus far had been assisted merely by a single servant, to claim the assigning of a junior. On an almost daily basis Blumfeld would appear in Ottomar’s office and explain to him calmly and in detail why he needed a junior in his section. It wasn’t because Blumfeld wanted to take things easy – Blumfeld had no intention of taking things easy, he was working feverishly at his own excessive tasks and had no thought of stopping – but if Herr Ottomar would just think how the business had developed over time, every section had been allowed to grow accordingly, and only his, Blumfeld’s, had been overlooked. And yet it was precisely here that the work had increased! At the time when Blumfeld had started, which Herr Ottomar would surely not be able to remember, they had had to deal with about a dozen seamstresses, while today the number was somewhere between fifty and sixty. Such work demands strength. Blumfeld could vouch for the fact that he exhausted himself at his work, but that he could successfully accomplish it was something he was no longer able to guarantee. Herr Ottomar never turned down Blumfeld’s petitions flat, he couldn’t do that to an employee of such long standing, but his way of barely listening, for instance talking past the pleading Blumfeld to other employees, giving him half-assurances, forgetting them completely in a day or two – that was really pretty offensive. Not so much for Blumfeld, as Blumfeld is no fantasist – Blumfeld is a realist. Honour and appreciation are all very well, but Blumfeld can do without them: in spite of everything he will remain at his post for as long as he humanly can. One thing is certain, he has right on his side, and in the end, though it may take a long time, what is right is sure to prevail. And lo! Blumfeld did eventually get himself assigned a couple of juniors, but what juniors. One might have supposed Ottomar thought he could express his contempt for Blumfeld’s section even more clearly than by denying him juniors – by the assigning of them. It was even possible that the only reason Ottomar had for so long put off Blumfeld was because he had been looking for two such juniors, and, not unnaturally, it had taken him a long time to find them. And now Blumfeld could no longer complain, as the reply was all too predictable: he had asked for a junior and been given two; that was how cannily Ottomar had arranged everything. Of course Blumfeld did continue to complain, but only because he was driven to do so by the extremity of his need, not because he had any thought he would find relief. Nor did he complain emphatically, only a little on the side, if there happened to be an opportunity to do so. In spite of that the rumour spread among his ill-intentioned colleagues that someone had asked Ottomar whether it was possible that Blumfeld, who had been given such extraordinary assistance, was still complaining. To which Ottomar had replied, it was true, Blumfeld continued to complain, and with good reason. He, Ottomar, had finally understood, and he intended over time to allow Blumfeld one junior for every seamstress, coming to an eventual total of sixty. And if that turned out to be insufficient, he would send more and would not stop until the madhouse that for some years now was Blumfeld’s section was completely full up.