by Franz Kafka
The Helmsman
Am I not the helmsman?” I called out. “You?” asked a tall dark man, rubbing his eyes as though to dispel a dream. I had stood by the wheel in the dark night, with the feebly burning lantern over my head, and now this fellow had turned up and was trying to push me aside. And since I wouldn’t yield, he put his foot on my chest and slowly pushed me down, while I clung to the spokes of the wheel and, as I slid to the ground, pulled the wheel right round. Then the man grabbed hold of it, straightened the course, and pushed me away. But I thought quickly, ran to the passageway that led down to the mess room and called out: “Shipmates! Comrades! Quick! A stranger has got me away from the wheel!” Slowly they came, climbing the steps — staggering, tired, mighty forms. “Am I not the helmsman?” I asked. They nodded, but only had eyes for the stranger. They stood around him in a half circle, and when he ordered “Get out of my way,” they grouped together, nodded to me and went back down the stairs. Those people! Do they ever think, or do they just shuffle stupidly across the planet?
Consolidation
There were five of us in the business: the bookkeeper, who was a shortsighted melancholy man spread out across the ledger like a frog, quiet, but rising and falling feebly with his labored breathing; then the clerk, a little man with a gymnast’s broad chest, who could set one hand down on the desk and vault over it in a light and elegant arc, only his face remaining serious as he looked around. Then we had a sales assistant, an old maid, slender and delicate, in a close-fitting dress; generally she kept her head to one side and smiled with her thin, wide lips. I, the trainee, who had little to do but hang around the desk with my duster, often felt like taking her hand — a long, weak, desiccated, wood-colored hand — as it lay casually or absentmindedly on her desk, and stroking it or kissing it or even — and this would have been the summit of bliss — resting my face where it felt so good, and only now and again changing my position, so that there might be justice and each cheek could get its turn. But this never happened; instead, as I approached, she would stretch out her hand and point me to some new task, somewhere in some distant corner, or at the top of the ladder. This last was particularly unwelcome to me, because the top of the room was terribly hot from the open gas flames which we used for lighting; nor was I free from vertigo, and I often felt sick up there. Sometimes, under the pretext of especially thorough cleaning, I would rest my head on a shelf and briefly cry, or, if nobody was watching, I would complain silently to the old maid down below. I knew that she didn’t have any executive power, here or elsewhere, but I somehow thought she could have such power if she wanted, and use it for my advantage. But she didn’t want, she didn’t even use such power as she did have. She was, for instance, the only one of us whom the undermanager would occasionally obey. Apart from her, he was the most stiff-necked among us, of course he was the oldest as well, he had worked for the previous boss, he had done a lot of things here that we others had no idea of, but from all that he drew the wrong conclusion, which was that he had a better grasp of the business than anyone else, that not only could he keep the books much better than the bookkeeper, for example, or serve the customers better than the clerk, and so on and so forth, and that he had taken on the position of dogsbody freely, because no one else, not even an incapable person, could have been found to fill it. And so he tormented himself, though he was probably never very strong to begin with; and now had become a certified wreck, having been lumbered for the past forty years with the hand cart, the boxes, and the parcels. He had taken on the role voluntarily, but people had forgotten that: times had changed, he was no longer recognized, and while all around him in the business the most grotesque mistakes were made, he was not allowed to jump in, but had to choke down his despair, and remain chained to his arduous tasks.
The Test
I am a servant, but there is no work for me. I am timid and unpushy, I don’t even cut in line, but that’s just one cause of my idleness, quite possibly it has nothing whatever to do with my idleness, the main cause of which is that I feel no vocation to serve. Others have a calling and haven’t applied any harder than I did; yes, perhaps they didn’t even have the desire to have a calling, whereas I sometimes have it very strongly.
So I lie on my pallet in the servants’ quarters, looking up at the beams, fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep again. Sometimes I cross the road to the pub where they serve you sour beer; it’s so disgusting sometimes that I’ve poured it down the drain, but then I go back to drinking it later. I like being there because I can sit at the little closed window and look across at the windows of our house without anyone seeing me. There’s not much to see on the street side, I think, only the corridor windows, and not even the corridors in the master’s apartments. I may be wrong, but someone once claimed that was the case, without my even asking him, and my general sense of the layout seems to bear it out. It’s rare for a window to be opened, and when it does happen, it’s one of the servants doing it, and then he leans on the sill and looks out for a while. So there are corridors where you’re safe from surprise. By the way, I don’t know any of those servants — the servants who work upstairs sleep somewhere else, not in my quarters.
One time, when I came to the pub, I found someone sitting in my place. I didn’t dare look closely at him, and felt like turning round and leaving. But he called me over, and it turned out he was a servant too, whom I had seen somewhere once, though we had never spoken. “Why are you running away? Sit down and have a drink. My treat.” So I sat down. He asked me this and that, but I couldn’t give him any answers; I couldn’t even understand his questions. So I said: “Maybe you’re regretting having asked me to sit with you. I’d better go,” and stood up. But he put out his hand across the table, and pulled me down: “Stay here,” he said, “that was just a test. Whoever doesn’t answer the questions has passed the test.”
The Vulture
There was a vulture that hacked at my feet. He had already shredded my boots and my socks, now he was attacking my feet. He picked away at them, then he flew around me a couple of times skittishly, before resuming his work. A gentleman came along and watched for a while, then he asked me why I tolerated the vulture. “I’m helpless,” I said. “He came and started hacking at me, and of course I wanted to drive him away, I even tried to throttle him, but a beast like that has a lot of strength in him, and he was about to leap at my face, so I thought it was better to sacrifice my feet. Now they’re almost shredded.” “How can you stand to be tormented like that,” said the gentleman, “a single bullet, and that vulture is history.” “Is that right?” I asked, “and would you oblige me?” “Willingly,” said the gentleman, “I just have to go home and get my gun. Can you wait another half an hour?” “I don’t know,” I said, and I stood for a while, rigid with pain. Then I said: “Well, will you try anyway?” “Very well,” said the gentleman, “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
The vulture had been listening to our conversation, and kept looking back and forth between me and the gentleman. Now I saw that he had understood everything. He flew up, leaning right back to get plenty of momentum, and then, like a javelin thrower, he thrust his beak through my mouth deep into me. As I fell back, I could feel a sense of deliverance as he wallowed and drowned in the blood that now filled all my vessels and burst its banks.
Little Fable
Oh,” said the mouse, “the world gets narrower with each passing day. It used to be so wide that I was terrified, and I ran on and felt happy when at last I could see walls in the distance to either side of me — but these long walls are converging so quickly that already I’m in the last room and there in the corner is the trap I’m running into.” “You only have to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.
The Spinning Top
A philosopher liked to be among children who were playing. When he saw a boy with a spinning top, it would set him on edge. No sooner was the top spinning than the philosopher would set off after it to catch it. He didn�
�t care that the children shouted and tried to keep him away from their toy; if he managed to catch the top while it was still spinning, he was happy — though only for a moment — then he would throw it down on the ground and walk off. He believed that the understanding of any little thing, for instance of a spinning top, enabled one to understand everything. Therefore he never worried his head about big problems — that struck him as inefficient; if the least triviality was thoroughly explored, then everything was understood, and so he occupied himself only with the spinning top. And each time preparations had been made for spinning the top, he hoped this time he would be successful, and then the top started spinning and in his breathless pursuit of it his hope became a certainty, but then when he held the stupid piece of wood in his hand, he felt ill, and the shouting of the children which he hadn’t been aware of thus far, chased him off, and he went reeling on his way like a top himself, being lashed by a clumsy whip.
The Departure
I gave orders for my horse to be fetched. The servant didn’t understand me. I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and got on it. In the distance I could hear a trumpet. I asked him what that meant. He didn’t know, and hadn’t heard it. At the gate he stopped me and asked: “And where are you going, sir?” “I don’t know,” I said, “away from here, away from here. Only if I keep going away from here, can I reach my destination.” “So you know your destination?” he asked. “Yes,” I said. “I told you already, it’s ‘away-from-here,’ that’s where I’m going.” “You don’t have any provisions with you,” he said. “I don’t need any,” I said, “the journey is so long that I will certainly starve if I don’t find something to eat on the way. No provisions can save me. Luckily, this is a truly enormous journey.”
Advocates
It was very doubtful whether I had any advocates. I was unable to discover any exact information, the faces all looked discouraging, most of the people who came up to me and whom I saw repeatedly in the corridors looked like fat old women — they were wearing large blue-and-white-striped aprons that covered their entire body, they stroked their bellies, and turned cumbersomely this way and that. I couldn’t even establish if we were in a court building or not. Some things suggested yes; many others no. More than any details, there was a kind of far-off droning noise all the time that reminded me most strongly of a court. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it filled all the rooms to such a degree that you could assume it came from everywhere, or perhaps the place where I happened to be was the site of this droning sound, but that was certainly not the case, because it also seemed to be coming from far away. These corridors, narrow, arched and slowly turning, with austerely decorated lintels, seemed to have been constructed for profound silence — these were corridors fit for a museum or a library.
But if it wasn’t a court, what was I doing looking for an advocate here? Because I was looking for an advocate everywhere, I need one everywhere, if anything you need one less in a court of law than elsewhere, because the court will speak its judgment according to the law. If you thought it did so without regard to justice or responsibility, then life would be impossible. You need to trust the court to give free play to the majesty of the law, because that is its only function, but in the law, everything is accusation, plea, and judgment — the gratuitous involvement of an individual here would be a desecration. It’s a different matter with the facts of a judgment, these are based on inquiries — inquiries here and there — with family and strangers, with friends and enemies, with relatives and coram publico, in the city and the village — in a word, everywhere. Here it is urgently necessary to have advocates — advocates in numbers, ideally advocates in serried ranks, a living wall of them, because by their nature advocates are unwieldy, whereas the prosecutors, those wily foxes, those nippy weasels, those invisible voles slip through the smallest crannies and whisk through between the feet of the advocates. So be careful! That’s why I’m here, I’m collecting advocates. But I haven’t found any yet, just these old women who keep coming and going; if I weren’t here looking, it would put me to sleep. I am not in the right place, and unfortunately I can’t resist the conclusion that I am not in the right place. I should be in a place where people come together from all strata, from all professions, various ages. I should have the chance to pick out from the crowd the kindliest, best qualified ones who will keep an eye out for me. The best place to recruit might be a large fairground. Instead, I drift up and down these corridors, where there are just these old women and not too many of them either, and always the same ones. Even those few, in spite of their slowness, won’t permit themselves to be confronted by me, they slip away from me, they float like rain clouds, they are wholly taken up with unknown occupations. Why do I so blindly rush into a building, not reading the inscription over the gate, am straightaway in the corridors, sitting here so obstinately that I can’t remember ever having been outside, ever having run up a flight of stairs.
But I can’t go back — the waste of time, the acknowledgement of a mistake, would be unendurable. How in this short, hasty life, accompanied by an impatient droning sound, can I run down a flight of stairs? Not possible. The time allotted you is so short that if you lose a second, you have lost the whole of your life, because there is no more of it than that; it’s only as long as the time you’re wasting. So when you’ve set out on your way, pursue it, come what may, you can only win, you don’t run any risk. Maybe you will fall down in the end, but if you had retraced your steps after the first few paces, and had gone back down the stairs, then you would have fallen right at the outset, and not as a possibility, but as a certainty. So if you don’t find anything in the corridors, open the doors; if you find nothing behind the doors, there are more stories; if you find nothing upstairs, never mind, swing yourself up more flights of stairs — as long as you don’t stop climbing, the steps won’t stop; under your climbing feet they grow upward.
In Our Synagogue . . .
In our synagogue lives an animal about the size of a marten. There have been many sightings of it, as it will allow a human being to approach to within five feet. Its color is a pale turquoise. No one has yet touched its fur, so there is nothing to be said about that, although one would like to insist that its true color is unknown and that the color one sees is as a result of the dust and mortar that have caught in its fur, the color bearing some resemblance to the inside of the synagogue, only a little lighter. Aside from its timidity, it is an unusually calm and sessile animal; if it weren’t scared so often, it would probably move around less. Its preferred spot is the grille overlooking the women’s section. There, with visible glee, it hooks itself fast to the metalwork, stretches out and looks down into the prayer room; its exposed position seems to give it pleasure, but the temple servant is under instructions not to permit the animal by the grille, otherwise it would get used to the spot, and that can’t be allowed to happen because the women are afraid of the animal. Why they should be afraid of it is a little unclear. At first sight it can look fearsome — the long neck, the triangular face, the almost horizontally protuberant teeth, on the upper lip a line of long — longer than the teeth — evidently very spiny pale bristles, all of which can indeed give one a turn, but soon one will understand how harmless this apparent terror actually is. Above all, it steers clear of people, it’s shyer than a forest animal, its ties are exclusively to the building, and its tragedy lies in the fact that the building it has chosen is a synagogue, which at times can be a very animated place. If communication with the animal had been possible, then we would have been able to offer it the assurance that the community in our little highland town is shrinking by the year, and is already having difficulties finding the funds to keep up the building. It is quite possible that in a while our synagogue will have become a granary or something of the sort, and that the animal will find the peace it so painfully lacks now.
It is only our women who are afraid of the animal — the men have long since become indifferent to i
t — one generation has shown it to the next, it has been seen time and time again; in the end we don’t even raise our eyes to look at it, and even the children, seeing it for the first time, no longer remark on it. It has become the synagogue pet, and why should the synagogue not have a special pet that doesn’t appear anywhere else? If it weren’t for the women, we should hardly be aware of the existence of the beast. But even the women are not really afraid of it: it would be too odd as well, to fear an animal like that, day in, day out, for years, for decades. They say in their defense that the animal is usually closer to them than it is to the men, and this is true. The animal doesn’t dare go down to the men, and no one has ever seen it on the floor. If it is banished from the grille to the women’s section, then it tries to keep the same elevation on the opposite wall. There is a very narrow ledge there, barely two fingers’ breadth; it runs around three sides of the synagogue, and on this ledge the animal sometimes dashes back and forth; usually, though, it sits quietly in a particular spot overlooking the women. It’s almost inexplicable how it can use this narrow path so easily, and the way it turns, having reached the end, is quite remarkable. It is already a very old animal, but it never hesitates to perform the most daring somersault, which never fails either: it turns around in midair, and there it is doubling back again the same way. Admittedly, if you’ve seen it a few times, you’ve probably seen it enough and you’ve no need to see it again. It’s neither fear nor curiosity that keeps the women agitated; if they worked harder at their praying, they could forget all about the animal, as the devout women do, if only the others who are in the majority would allow it, but they like to draw attention to themselves, and the animal is a welcome pretext for doing so. If they could, and if they dared, they would have lured the animal even closer to themselves, in order to show still more fear of it. But in reality, it’s not their proximity that the animal seeks; as long as it’s not being attacked, it’s every bit as indifferent to them as it is to the men; ideally it would probably remain in the obscurity in which it lives when there are no prayers — evidently in some hole in the wall that we have yet to discover. It’s only when we start to pray that it appears; alarmed by the noise, it wants to see what’s going on, it wants to remain alert, to be free, capable of flight; fear causes it to emerge, fear causes it to perform its somersaults, and then it doesn’t dare retreat until the service is over. It quite naturally prefers its elevation because there it has security and the best possibilities of running on grille or ledge, but it’s not always there by any means, sometimes it climbs down toward the men — the curtain of the Ark is held by a gleaming brass rail that seems to tempt the animal, often it has been seen creeping toward it, but then it always sits there quietly. Even when it’s sitting just behind the Ark, you couldn’t say it was being disruptive, with its shiny, always open, possibly lidless eyes that seem to gaze at the congregation, without regarding anyone in particular, just looking in the direction of the dangers from which it may feel threatened.