by Franz Kafka
Through the glass door Anna saw the lodger’s room was dark; she went in and turned on the electric light to make the bed ready for the night. But the student was sitting half reclined upon the sofa, smiling at her. She excused herself and turned to leave. But the student asked her to stay and to pay no attention to him. She did stay, in fact, and did her work, casting an occasional sidelong glance at the student.
5 April. If only it were possible to go to Berlin, to become independent, to live from one day to the next, even to go hungry, but to let all one’s strength pour forth instead of husbanding it here, or rather – instead of one’s turning aside into nothingness! If only F. wanted it, would help me!
8 April. Yesterday incapable of writing even one word. Today no better. Who will save me? And the turmoil in me, deep down, scarcely visible; I am like a living lattice-work, a lattice that is solidly planted and would like to tumble down.
Today in the coffee-house with Werfel. How he looked from the distance, seated at the coffee-house table. Stooped, half reclining even in the wooden chair, the beautiful profile of his face pressed against his chest, his face almost wheezing in its fullness (not really fat); entirely indifferent to the surroundings, impudent, and without flaw. His dangling glasses by contrast make it easier to trace the delicate outlines of his face.
6 May. My parents seem to have found a beautiful apartment for F. and me; I ran around for nothing one entire beautiful afternoon. I wonder whether they will lay me in my grave too, after a life made happy by their solicitude.
A nobleman, Herr von Griesenau by name, had a coachman, Joseph, whom no other employer would have put up with. He lived in a ground-floor room near the gate-keeper’s lodge, for he was too fat and short of breath to climb stairs. All he had to do was drive a coach, but even for this he was employed only on special occasions, to honour a visitor perhaps; otherwise, for days on end, for weeks on end, he lay on a couch near the window, with remarkable rapidity blinking his small eyes deep-sunken in fat as he looked out of the window at the trees which –
Joseph the coachman lay on his couch, sat up only in order to take a slice of bread and butter and herring from a little table, then sank back again and stared vacantly around as he chewed. He laboriously sucked in the air through his large round nostrils; sometimes, in order to breathe in enough air, he had to stop chewing and open his mouth; his large belly trembled without stop under the many folds of his thin, dark blue suit.
The window was open, an acacia tree and an empty square were visible through it. It was a low ground-floor window. Joseph saw everything from his couch and everybody on the outside could see him. It was annoying, but he hadn’t been able to climb stairs for the last six months at least, ever since he had got so fat, and thus was obliged to live on a lower storey. When he had first been given this room near the park-keeper’s lodge, he had pressed and kissed the hands of his employer, Herr von Griesenau, with tears in his eyes, but now he knew its disadvantages: the eternal observation he was subjected to, the proximity of the unpleasant gate-keeper, all the commotion at the entrance gate and on the square, the great distance from the rest of the servants and the consequent estrangement and neglect that he suffered – he was now thoroughly acquainted with all these disadvantages and in fact intended to petition the Master to permit him to move back to his old room. What after all were all these newly hired fellows standing uselessly around for, especially since the Master’s engagement? Let them simply carry him up and down the stairs, rare and deserving man that he was.
An engagement was being celebrated. The banquet was at an end, the company got up from the table; all the windows were open, it was a warm and beautiful evening in June. The fiancée stood in a circle of friends and acquaintances, the others were gathered in small groups; now and then there was an outburst of laughter. The man to whom she was engaged stood apart, leaning in the doorway to the balcony and looking out.
After some time the mother of the fiancée noticed him, went over to him and said: ‘Why are you standing here all alone? Aren’t you joining Olga? Have you quarrelled?’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘we haven’t quarrelled.’
‘Very well,’ the mother said, ‘then join your fiancée! Your behaviour is beginning to attract attention.’
The horror in the merely schematic.
The landlady of the rooming house, a decrepit widow dressed in black and wearing a straight skirt, stood in the middle room of her empty house. It was still perfectly quiet, the bell did not stir. The street, too, was quiet; the woman had purposely chosen so quiet a street because she wanted good roomers, and those who insist on quiet are the best.
27 May. Mother and sister in Berlin. I shall be alone with my father in the evening. I think he is afraid to come up. Should I play cards [Karten] with him? (I find the letter K offensive, almost disgusting, and yet I use it; it must be very characteristic of me.) How Father acted when I touched F.
The first appearance of the white horse was on an autumn afternoon, in a large but not very busy street in the city of A. It passed through the entrance-way of a house in whose yard a trucking company had extensive storerooms; thus it would often happen that teams of horses, now and then a single horse as well, had to be led out through the entrance-way, and for this reason the white horse attracted little attention. It was not, however, one of the horses belonging to the trucking company. A workman tightening the cords around a bale of goods in front of the gate noticed the horse, looked up from his work, and then into the yard to see whether the coachman was following after. No one came. The horse had hardly stepped into the road when it reared up mightily, struck several sparks from the pavement, for a moment was on the point of falling, but at once regained its balance, and then trotted neither rapidly nor slowly up the street, which was almost deserted at this twilight hour. The workman cursed what he thought had been the carelessness of the coachmen, shouted several names into the yard; some men came out in response, but when they immediately perceived that the horse was not one of theirs, simply stopped short together in the entrance-way, somewhat astonished. A short interval elapsed before some of them thought what to do; they ran after the horse for a distance, but, failing to catch sight of it again, soon returned.
In the meantime the horse had already reached the outermost streets of the suburbs without being halted. It accommodated itself to the life of the streets better than horses running alone usually do. Its slow pace could frighten no one, it never strayed out of the roadway or from its own side of the street; when it was obliged to stop for a vehicle coming out of a cross-street, it stopped; had the most careful driver been leading it by the halter it could not have behaved more perfectly. Still, of course, it was a conspicuous sight; here and there someone stopped and looked after it with a smile, a coachman in a passing beer wagon jokingly struck down at the horse with his whip; it was frightened, of course, and reared, but did not quicken its pace.
It was just this incident, however, that a policeman saw; he went over to the horse, who at the very last moment had tried to turn off in another direction, took hold of the reins (despite its light frame it wore the harness of a dray horse) and said, though in a friendly way: ‘Whoa! Now where do you think you are running off to?’ He held on to it for some time in the middle of the road, thinking that the animal’s owner would soon be along after the runaway.
It has meaning but is weak; its blood flows thin, too far from the heart. There are still some pretty scenes in my head but I will stop regardless. Yesterday the white horse appeared to me for the first time before I fell asleep; I have an impression of its first stepping out of my head, which was turned to the wall, jumping across me and down from the bed, and then disappearing. The last is unfortunately not refuted by the fact of my having begun the story.
If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer. It is as though the spiritual battle were taking place in a clearing somewhere in the woods. I make my way into the woods, find nothing, and out of weakness imme
diately hasten out again; often as I leave the woods I hear, or I think I hear, the clashing weapons of that battle. Perhaps the eyes of the warriors are seeking me through the darkness of the woods, but I know so little of them, and that little is deceptive.
A heavy downpour. Stand and face the rain, let its iron rays pierce you; drift with the water that wants to sweep you away but yet stand fast, and upright in this way abide the sudden and endless shining of the sun.
The landlady dropped her skirts and hurried through the rooms. A cold, haughty woman. Her projecting lower jaw frightened roomers away. They ran down the steps, and when she looked after them through the window they covered their faces as they ran. Once a gentleman came for a room, a solid, thickset young man who constantly kept his hands in his coat pockets. It was a habit, perhaps, but it was also possible that he wanted to conceal the trembling of his hands.
‘Young man,’ said the woman, and her lower jaw jutted forward, ‘you want to live here?’
‘Yes,’ the young man said, tossing his head upward.
‘You will like it here,’ the woman said, leading him to a chair on which she sat him down. In doing this she noticed a stain on his trousers, kneeled down beside him and began to scrape at the stain with her fingernails.
‘You’re a dirty fellow,’ she said.
‘It’s an old stain.’
‘Then you are an old dirty fellow.’
‘Take your hand away,’ he said suddenly, and actually pushed her away. ‘What horrible hands you have.’ He caught her hand and turned it over. ‘All black on top, whitish below, but still black enough and’ – he ran his fingers inside her wide sleeve– ‘there is even some hair on your arm.’
‘You’re tickling me,’ she said.
‘Because I like you. I don’t understand how they can say that you are ugly. Because they did say it. But now I see that it isn’t true at all.’
And he stood up and walked up and down the room. She remained on her knees and looked at her hand.
For some reason this made him furious; he sprang to her side and caught her hand again.
‘You’re quite a woman,’ he then said, and clapped her long thin cheek. ‘It would really add to my comfort to live here. But it would have to be cheap. And you would not be allowed to take in other roomers. And you would have to be faithful to me. I am really much younger than you and can after all insist on faithfulness. And you would have to cook well. I am used to good food and never intend to disaccustom myself.’
Dance on, you pigs; what concern is it of mine?
But it has more reality than anything I have written this past year. Perhaps after all it is a matter of loosening the joint. I shall once more be able to write.
Every evening for the past week my neighbour in the adjoining room has come to wrestle with me. He was a stranger to me, even now I haven’t yet spoken to him. We merely shout a few exclamations at one another, you can’t call that ‘speaking’. With a ‘well then’ the struggle is begun; ‘scoundrel!’ one of us sometimes groans under the grip of the other; ‘there’ accompanies a surprise thrust; ‘stop!’ means the end, yet the struggle always goes on a little while longer. As a rule, even when he is already at the door he leaps back again and gives me a push that sends me to the ground. From his room he then calls good night to me through the wall. If I wanted to give up this acquaintance once and for all I should have to give up my room, for bolting the door is of no avail. Once I had the door bolted because I wanted to read, but my neighbour hacked the door in two with an axe, and, since he can part with something only with the greatest difficulty once he has taken hold of it, I was even in danger of the axe.
I know how to accommodate myself to circumstances. Since he always comes to me at a certain hour, I take up some easy work beforehand which I can interrupt at once, should it be necessary. I straighten out a chest, for example, or copy something, or read some unimportant book. I have to arrange matters in this way – no sooner has he appeared in the door than I must drop everything, slam the chest to at once, drop the penholder, throw the book away, for it is only fighting that he wants, nothing else. If I feel particularly strong I tease him a little by first attempting to elude him. I crawl under the table, throw chairs under his feet, wink at him from the distance, though it is of course in bad taste to joke in this very one-sided way with a stranger. But usually our bodies close in battle at once. Apparently he is a student, studies all day, and wants some hasty exercise in the evening before he goes to bed. Well, in me he has a good opponent; accidents aside, I perhaps am the stronger and more skilful of the two. He, however, has more endurance.
28 May. Day after tomorrow I leave for Berlin. In spite of insomnia, headaches, and worries, perhaps in a better state than ever before.
Once he brought a girl along. While I say hello to her, not watching him, he springs upon me and jerks me into the air. ‘I protest,’ I cried, and raised my hand.
‘Keep quiet,’ he whispered in my ear. I saw that he was determined to win at all costs, even by resorting to unfair holds, so that he might shine before the girl.
‘He said “Keep quiet” to me,’ I cried, turning my head to the girl.
‘Wretch!’ the man gasped in a low voice, exerting all his strength against me. In spite of everything he was able to drag me to the sofa, put me down on it, knelt on my back, paused to regain his breath, and said: ‘Well, there he lies.’
‘Just let him try it again,’ I intended to say, but after the very first word he pressed my face so hard into the upholstery that I was forced to be silent.
‘Well then,’ said the girl, who had sat down at my table and was reading a half-finished letter lying there, ‘shouldn’t we leave now? He has just begun to write a letter.’
‘He won’t go on with it if we leave. Come over here, will you? Touch him, here on his thigh, for instance; he’s trembling just like a sick animal.’
‘I say leave him alone and come along.’ Very reluctantly the man crawled off me. I could have thrashed him soundly then, for I was rested while all his muscles had been tensed in the effort to hold me down. He was the one who had been trembling and had thought that it was me. I was still trembling even now. But I let him alone because the girl was present.
‘You will probably have drawn your own conclusions as to this battle,’ I said to the girl, walked by him with a bow and sat down at the table to go on with the letter. ‘And who is trembling?’ I asked, before beginning to write, and held the penholder rigid in the air in proof that it was not me. I was already in the midst of my writing when I called out a short adieu to them in the distance, but kicked out my foot a little to indicate, at least to myself, the farewell that they both probably deserved.
29 May. Tomorrow to Berlin. Is it a nervous or a real, trustworthy security that I feel? How is that possible? Is it true that if one once acquires a confidence in one’s ability to write, nothing can miscarry, nothing is wholly lost, while at the same time only seldom will something rise up to a more than ordinary height? Is this because of my approaching marriage to F.? Strange condition, though not entirely unknown to me when I think back.
Stood a long time before the gate with Pick. Thought only of how I might quickly make my escape, for my supper of strawberries was ready for me upstairs. Everything that I shall now note down about him is simply a piece of shabbiness on my part, for I won’t let him see any of it, or am content that he won’t see it. But I am really an accessory to his behaviour so long as I go about in his company, and therefore what I say of him applies as well to me, even if one discounts the pretended subtlety that lies in such a remark.
I make plans. I stare rigidly ahead lest my eyes lose the imaginary peepholes of the imaginary kaleidoscope into which I am looking. I mix noble and selfish intentions in confusion; the colour of the noble ones is washed away, in recompense passing off on to the merely selfish ones. I invite heaven and earth to take part in my schemes, at the same time I am careful not to forget the insignificant
little people one can draw out of every side-street and who for the time being are more useful to my schemes. It is of course only the beginning, always only the beginning. But as I stand here in my misery, already the huge wagon of my schemes comes driving up behind me, I feel underfoot the first small step up, naked girls, like those on the carnival floats of happier countries, lead me backwards up the steps; I float because the girls float, and raise my hand to command silence. Rose bushes stand at my side, incense burns, laurel wreaths are let down, flowers are strewn before and over me; two trumpeters, as if hewn out of stone, blow fanfares, throngs of little people come running up, in ranks behind leaders; the bright, empty, open squares become dark, tempestuous, and crowded; I feel myself at the farthest edge of human endeavour, and, high up where I am, with suddenly acquired skill spontaneously execute a trick I had admired in a contortionist years ago – I bend slowly backwards (at that very moment the heavens strain to open to disclose a vision of me, but then stop), draw my head and trunk through my legs, and gradually stand erect again. Was this the ultimate given to mankind? It would seem so, for already I see the small horned devils leaping out of all the gates of the land, which lies broad and deep beneath me, overrunning the countryside; everything gives way in the centre under their feet, their little tails expunge everything, fifty devils’ tails are already scouring my face; the ground begins to yield, first one of my feet sinks in and then the other; the screams of the girls pursue me into the depths into which I plummet, down a shaft precisely the width of my body but infinitely deep. This infinity tempts one to no extraordinary accomplishments, anything that I should do would be insignificant; I fall insensibly and that is best.