I protested feebly that I couldn’t go, that I had too much work to do, that I was behind in my writing and would not meet my deadline. She looked pointedly at my empty writing table and the copy of Scheherazade that lay face down next to her on the sofa.
‘Max, you need some rest. You need some rest and you need some fun. You need society. You can’t just stay locked up here in your study your whole life, ignoring everyone.’
I knew that what she said was true. She took my hand and slowly raised it to her lips. I concentrated very hard on breathing. How many times I had dreamed of this. I felt the pillowy pressure of her mouth for only a moment, before she took my hand and pressed my palm to the skin of her face. I hoped that she could not feel how my hand trembled. I held her face, and it was so small. The heel of my palm rested under her chin and my fingertips brushed her temple.
‘Please, Max?’ she was whispering now, and I could feel the warm puffs of her breath against the inside of my wrist. ‘Can I come with you?’
I could not find my voice so all I could do was nod.
She left soon after this, and when I had recovered slightly I felt a great surge of strength. I took the hand that she had kissed and held it to my lips, breathing in the traces of her. Now everything looked completely altered. With that one gesture Anja had remade the world for me. I saw myself as Anja might see me: intelligent, misunderstood perhaps, but powerful and mysterious.
I imagined walking into the party with Anja on my arm and my breast swelled. Perhaps I could go. With Anja by my side, surely I could. If people thought that I was the model for Gregor, so what? To hell with them. Even if someone asked me about Gregor, what of it? And at least if I did go the horror of seeing everyone would be conquered in a few short hours. I would not die of shame. And Theodor, well, I could not run from him forever. He would have to be faced sometime. At least on that night he was sure to be in good spirits.
I sat and considered the situation. I could not control people’s reaction to me, that was true, but perhaps I could take some measures to avoid my act of deception being uncovered. I could always use Alexandr again. The thought edged its way slyly forward. It would be easy to arrange for him to arrive early at the party, before Franz could get there. If he ever did get there: there was always the chance that he would not even come. But I could not hope for that a second time. In any case, I had the upper hand: Theodor had already met Alexandr once; why would he believe some late-coming stranger who claimed to be Kafka, when the man he knew to be Kafka was already standing there in front of him? And, even better, the real Kafka was unlikely to react in a calm manner if faced with this scenario: in all likelihood he would rage and appear as an unhinged lunatic. I remembered his mad laughter when he had last visited me.
I wasted no time, and the next evening I went to the Karlshofergasse again in search of Alexandr. I found the little, dingy pub where we had first met, and I now saw that it was called the Three Boots. This time the place was crowded with after-work drinkers, but Alexandr was not among them. I asked the bargirl, the same pale-faced slattern I remembered from last time, if she knew when he would be in. She shrugged and told me that he had been there earlier and would probably be back soon. I decided to wait. I stood at the bar and drank a glass of schnapps. I felt even more conspicuous than usual among this crowd of working men in their dirty cloth caps and ragged trousers.
After only a short time Alexandr came in. He saw me and came to stand beside me at the bar. I bought him a schnapps.
‘Is your friend having another dinner?’ he asked.
I told him about the party.
‘This one will be easier because you will be in a crowd,’ I said. Although, when I considered it, this was not necessarily true. The evening would no doubt be full of people wanting to discuss the book with him. Could I ask him to read it? But perhaps this was not necessary: in my experience, people love nothing more than giving their own opinion and rarely take in what anyone else is saying.
‘My rate is a hundred and twenty crowns for the evening,’ he said. It was more than I had expected, but we both knew that I had no choice but to pay it. I had come prepared, and handed him half of the required sum with the other half to come afterwards. I arranged to meet him at the St Wenceslas monument in the Wenzelsplatz.
By the day of the party my confidence had flagged somewhat. I became sick with dread. I tried to buoy myself up by thinking of Anja and remembering the touch of her lips, the warmth of her breath, but even that could not entirely dispel the heavy foreboding that lay over me. I sat in my office at work and tried to distract myself with mundane tasks. The hours crawled past. After my lunch break a postcard came for me from Anja. She was writing to say that she could no longer come to the party with me because she was ill.
What was left of my newly acquired energy seeped out of me. I screwed up the card and threw it across the room. Without Anja, there was no longer any reason for me to go to the party either. Except that I had already given Alexandr sixty crowns and there was little hope of recovering the cash. My old apathy returned. Perhaps it did not much matter what I did. People were always going to regard me as a freak, and at well past twenty years of age, this was something that I would have to accept. There was nothing I could do about it. As for Franz, well, either I would be found out or not. I had no control over the situation. I decided to go ahead as planned. I might as well get my money’s worth.
At seven o’clock I made my way to the Wenzelsplatz. Alexandr was to be there at half past, in plenty of time for the party at eight. I arrived early and waited.
Now I was terrified of the party, envisioning the array of horrors the evening might contain. I began to walk up the length of the square to distract myself. ‘If I walk once up and down,’ I told myself, ‘Alexandr will be there when I get back.’ I forced myself to walk slowly and concentrate on each step, but my thoughts would not be quieted. When I got back to the monument Alexandr was still not there. I walked all around the monument in case he was standing on the other side. It was twenty to eight. Everything was very quiet. Above me the figure of St Ludmila was only a black shape that rose up and blotted out the stars. I glanced at my watch, which was now showing a quarter to eight. I was in agonies at the thought of Franz arriving at the party before us.
There came the sound of hurrying feet and ragged breath.
‘Herr Brod?’ came a voice, and a man was beside me. I could not see him clearly in the gloom cast by the monument.
‘Alexandr?’
‘No,’ said the man, ‘my name is Gustav. Alexandr could not come tonight. I will take his place.’
I felt the muscles on my face slacken with shock and the buildings around the square reeled before my eyes. It could not be true. I cursed Alexandr, and myself for trusting him.
Even in the dark Gustav must have seen the look on my face, for he quickly began to assure me of the similarity between him and Alexandr. He stepped away from the statue and removed his hat to let the light shine better on his face. I noticed that he was wearing what looked like the same grey suit that Alexandr had worn to the dinner. It was true that he did resemble Alexandr. He was dark and had the same upright, martial way of holding himself. But, even if I tried to imagine that it was Alexandr, it was clear to me that it was a different man. However, I had spent more time with him than Theodor, who had only seen him for an hour at the most. There was a chance, I thought, that he would not notice. If I was very lucky. By now it was almost eight o’clock.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
The weather had turned and a light rain had begun. The lights from the lamps were reflected on the stones of the street, making starry patches under our feet that flashed up at us as we walked. The party was being held at the Hotel Europa, which was only a short walk from the monument—too short, I now felt.
With every step I cursed Franz, who was the cause of all of this mess. I felt like a man walking to his own certain death, but I could not turn away. I was propelled forwa
rd, as though swept up in an avalanche, and the weight of all my shame and anger roared at my heels. I heard my footsteps clatter along, and saw my dim shadow swinging back and forth like a pendulum beside Gustav’s gliding one. I imagined all the faces at the party turned towards me, looking with disgust at my hulking body, which revealed the true ugliness of my innermost self.
Gustav did not try to speak with me. He just walked along, quietly humming a tune, and though the rain increased he let the light raindrop beads encrust his hat and shoulders instead of putting up his umbrella. The rain had made the cobblestones slippery and my left foot kept sliding sideways on them. I was using my umbrella as a walking stick to steady myself. I was becoming soaked but I knew that if I put up my umbrella it would be difficult for me to keep my balance.
I wanted to ask Gustav to hold my umbrella over me. I formulated the question in my head: Would you mind covering me with an umbrella? Or could I take your arm? It’s difficult for me to walk in the rain. My lips mouthed the questions. Were they reasonable requests? Or were they irksome? Making another person responsible for my own inability to walk. The more I considered it, the less I was able to determine which it was.*
I slowed down to put up my umbrella, which had a mechanism that often jammed. Gustav walked on ahead of me. I succeeded in getting the umbrella up and immediately felt better. Gustav had proceeded quite far up the road. I could see the raindrops sparkling on his head and shoulders as he passed beneath the streetlamps.
I quickened my pace to catch up with him, holding out my left arm as a counterweight to the umbrella, but of course I had only proceeded a short way before I missed my step. My foot slid away from me and I came down heavily on the stones. My umbrella tumbled away down the street. There was nothing to hold on to and I scrabbled around trying to stand up. An image came to me of myself as Gregor, grovelling on the floor of his house.
Gustav had run away down the street to retrieve my umbrella. By the time I was standing again he was back at my side, holding out my umbrella for me to take. I wanted to cry with self-pity. My right wrist ached from where I had fallen on it and the skin had scraped away. I was too ashamed to tell Gustav that I could not walk while holding the umbrella, and the rain was now too heavy for me to do without it, so I took it from him and we walked on. He put his umbrella up also, and kept pace with me.
I desperately wanted to take his arm to steady myself. I could see it in the corner of my eye, temptingly solid and reassuring, bent in a crook like a purpose-built handle. I even reached out my fingers and brushed them against the fabric of his sleeve, but could not bring myself to grasp it and lean on him.
Instead I concentrated on my feet. Since my illness I had not been much among company and as a consequence I had lost the ability to easily control my gait and posture in the way that I could when I practised it daily. I concentrated on balancing my weight and strained to make an even rhythm of my footfalls.
I tapped my forefinger against my thigh as I walked to help me keep my steps to an even time and counted the number of steps that I could match to this rhythm. I only managed six on the first try before I started to lurch from one side to the other and throw my weight forward from my hip. I concentrated and the wet cobblestones flashed past under my shoes, and this time I made it to eleven.
Gustav gave a tug on my arm and I saw that we had arrived. I stood there dumbly, still counting in my head. Theodor must have been keeping watch for us as he rushed out with his hand extended to shake the hand of ‘Franz’. I watched Theodor’s face closely for any sign that he had noticed the difference between the two men, but his expression did not seem to flicker when he saw Gustav. In fact, he was beaming, his face pink and satisfied. He greeted me with only a brief nod and then ignored me. He drew Gustav inside and I followed.
The little private room of the Hotel Europa was much brighter than it had looked from outside, and it was hot and full of people. I looked around for Franz, in case he was somewhere there in the crowd, but I did not see him. Theodor had clasped Gustav’s arm and was propelling him inside. They were set upon by a loudly talking crowd, some of whom were holding copies of the book. They gathered around Gustav in a little knot and swept him and Theodor away to the other side of the room.
I was left alone, standing exposed in an empty space by the door. I tried not to notice the looks that strangers in the crowd were giving me, or the fact that Felix and Kurt, who were standing by the window, seemed to be ignoring me. In the light of the room I saw that my trouser leg and the sleeve of my jacket were streaked with mud from my fall, and I retreated back to the entrance hall to try to remove it with my handkerchief.
The mud was still damp and all I succeeded in doing was rubbing the stain up and down the lengths of my arms and legs. My heart began to hammer with panic at the thought that someone entering the hall—Franz worst of all—would see me crouched there, cleaning my clothes. I could see how I would appear to others as I stood there: a hunchbacked animal in a dirty jacket, furtively trying to clean itself. For a moment, with my arms and upper back restricted in their movements by my jacket, my limp legs, my weak arms, I felt myself to be the insect Gregor: I was him. Despite myself, I had to commend Franz for the keenness of his perception of me.
No matter how hard I brushed I could not remove the traces of mud from my clothes. I no longer wanted to be at that party, covered in the dirt that was like a badge of my own ineptitude. I stood hovering at the door, uncertain. All the eyes in that room terrified me and I could hear the name ‘Gregor’ again and again, bobbing like a cork on the sea of talk.
‘What are you doing, hiding away in here?’
Kurt and Felix stood in the doorway. Kurt held a tray of schnapps. I let them hustle me into the room and they drank and toasted each other and me. Gustav was lost from view, the invisible centre of a small crowd.
I heard the door open and close, and my muscles tensed like a boxer’s. I was standing facing the door, but the view was blocked by Kurt’s head. I shifted around, trying to see who had come in, not listening at all to the conversation of my friends. But it was only a man, not Franz, and I could relax again. Felix and Kurt were looking at me expectantly and I realised that someone had asked me a question.
‘So, was it you?’ Felix said, repeating his question. I was stunned by the barefaced way he asked me, not lowering his voice at all.
‘What?’ I asked, and then began to stammer that I didn’t know what he was talking about, that I hadn’t read it yet.
He interrupted me. ‘I mean, I’d heard that Franz sent you the manuscript. Was it you who edited it?’
When I realised that I had misunderstood him I felt even more ashamed.
Felix’s expression shifted and he exchanged a look with Kurt, only for a fraction of a second, but I knew that I had only succeeded in bringing the comparison of Gregor and myself to his attention. Or had I imagined that too? I took another schnapps from the tray and drank it in a gulp. I didn’t know. I had forgotten for a moment about Franz, but suddenly no longer cared whether he arrived or not. I began to drink steadily and dreaded the moment that I would be left alone in the crowd, at the mercy of all those eyes.
Some time later Theodor came over to join us. By this stage I had drunk a great deal and the world had retreated behind a pleasant, rosy mist. Theodor had left Gustav in the grip of a crowd of people whom I could see huddled around him, each talking at him louder than the other. I had a nagging sense that I should somehow be worried about this, but could not recall the reason why. Theodor clapped me on the back, hard, and put an arm around my shoulders.
‘Congratulations, Max,’ he said. His face was very close to mine and I could see all the details and imperfections of his skin. I gazed at him in wonder. ‘You have done a great thing for literature. You have brought us Gregor. He would not exist without you.’
Gregor. It all came back to me. Had Franz told Theodor as much? Or was it so obvious to everyone? Kurt and Felix were standing there, smiling
at me. Their lips seemed uncannily rubbery and large, stretched wide like the pink insides of shellfish. Theodor too seemed to have grown and the three men loomed over me, huge and distorted, their heads rising up like the tops of tall trees, bent slightly towards one another to form a canopy over my head, enclosing me. I fought my way free of them. Gregor, Gregor. I could hear the name issuing from a hundred lips like a murmured chorus.
I struggled hard to get to the other side of the crowded room, but there was no escape. Bodies pressed in on me from all sides and seemed deliberately to hinder my way. Shards of other people’s conversations broke into my awareness, and everywhere I heard my name together with Gregor’s. Every laugh, every whisper, was directed at me. I shrunk within my mud-encrusted clothing. I seemed to have become very small, or perhaps it was the room that had grown. It suddenly seemed to be of an immense size, large enough to contain all the inhabitants of Prague. The ceiling was lost from my view, unimaginably high up, wreathed in clouds. I struggled to breathe. Raised voices and laughter rained down on me like physical blows. The lights were suddenly too bright and dazzled me. They were reflected from a million points in the room: from the glasses held in warm hands, from jewels on the necks of the women, from shining eyes. The bright points burned into my eyes and left a cloud of black spots in their wake.
I was still holding a glass of schnapps, of which only the dregs remained, and I stared at it to steady myself. The glass was cut with a bevelled edge that reflected colours from the room in its sharp lines. I gripped it in my fist and watched the skin of my palms and fingers turn white where the wall of the glass pressed into it. I tried to breathe regularly. The walls of the glass were cooler than the air in the room and I pressed the glass to my face and rolled it over my cheeks and forehead. I began to feel calmer. The scale of the room returned to normal.
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