by Franz Kafka
My eighth son is my child of sorrow, and I really know no reason for it. He looks at me as though I am a stranger, although I feel a strong fatherly bond to him. Time has healed many things; but before, a shiver used to overcome me at the mere thought of him. He has gone his own way, has broken all ties to me; and with his hard head, his small, athletic body—only his legs were rather weak as a boy, but this may have already righted itself in the meantime—he will certainly make his way wherever he chooses. I often felt the urge to call him back, to ask him how he is faring, why he has cut himself off from his father, and essentially what his intentions are, but now he is so far away and so much time has already passed, now it can stay as it is. I hear that he’s the only one of my sons to wear a full beard; that is not so attractive, of course, on such a short man.
My ninth son is very elegant and has that sweet look that is intended for women. So sweet that he can even seduce me on occasion, although I know that literally a wet sponge would suffice to wipe away all that unearthly radiance. But the curious thing about this boy is that he is not out to seduce; he would be satisfied spending his whole life lying on the sofa and wasting his eyesight looking at the ceiling, or, better still, letting it rest beneath his eyelids. If he is in this favorite position of his, then he likes to talk and is not bad at it; concise and vivid; but only within narrow boundaries. If he exceeds them, which is unavoidable considering their narrowness, his talking becomes entirely empty. One would wave for him to stop, if there were any reason to hope that those sleep-filled eyes would take any notice.
My tenth son is considered to have an insincere character. I will not fully dispute this flaw, nor fully confirm it. What is certain is that he who sees him approaching with a solemnity far beyond his years, in a frock-coat that is always tightly buttoned up, in an old but over-carefully cleaned black hat, with his unmoved face, the slightly protruding chin, the lids bulging heavily above his eyes, the two fingers held sometimes against his mouth—he who sees him like this thinks: he is a boundless hypocrite. But just listen to him speak! Sensible; with caution; short-spoken; crossing off questions with malicious vitality; in astonishing, obvious, and joyful compliance with the universe, a compliance that inevitably straightens the neck and elevates the body. Many, who consider themselves very clever and who, for this reason, so they thought, felt repelled by his outward appearance, have been strongly attracted by his words. Then again there are also people who feel indifferent about his appearance but to whom his words seem hypocritical. I, as his father, do not wish to decide here, but I must admit that the latter judges are certainly more worthy of attention than the first.
My eleventh son is frail, probably the weakest of my sons, but deceptive in his weakness; for at times he can be strong and decisive, although even then the weakness is somehow underlying. It is not a shameful weakness, but rather something that only appears to be weakness on this earth. Is, for example, the willingness to fly not weakness? After all, it consists of fluctuation and uncertainty and fluttering. Something of this sort can be seen in my son. Such characteristics do not please a father, of course; they will obviously end up destroying the family. Sometimes he looks at me as though he wanted to tell me: “I will take you with me, Father.” Then I think: “You would be the last one that I’d entrust myself to.” And his eyes seemed to say again: “Well at least I’ll be the last then.”
These are my eleven sons.
A FRATRICIDE
It has been proven that the murder occurred in the following way:
Schmar, the murderer, positioned himself at nine in the evening on a moonlit night on the street corner that Wese, the victim, was certain to pass as he turned from the street where his office was located into the street in which he lived.
Cold night air chilled everyone to the bone. Schmar, however, had only put on a thin blue suit; and furthermore, his jacket was unbuttoned. He felt no coldness; he was also constantly in motion. He kept his murder weapon, half bayonet, half kitchen knife, firmly in his hand and fully exposed. He held the knife against the moonlight; the blade flashed, but not enough for Schmar. He struck it against the bricks of the pavement so that it made sparks, then regretted it perhaps, and to make up for the damage, he stroked it like a violin bow across his boot sole, as he, standing on one leg and leaning forward, simultaneously listened to the sound of the knife against his boot and any sounds from the fateful side street.
Why did Pallas, the man of independent means who was observing everything from his second-floor window nearby, tolerate all this? Try and comprehend human nature! With his turned-up collar, his dressing gown girded around his ample waist, he looked down shaking his head.
And five houses further, diagonally across from him, Frau Wese, with her fox fur over her nightdress, was looking out for her husband, who was lingering for a particularly long time today.
At last the doorbell before Wese’s office rings out—too loud for a doorbell—above the town and up into the sky, and Wese, the diligent night-worker, still unseen in this street, walks out of the building, only announced by the ring of the bell; the pavement soon begins to announce his steady steps.
Pallas leans out far; he mustn’t miss a thing. Frau Wese, reassured by the bell, closes her window with a clatter. But Schmar kneels down; because no other parts of him were bare at the moment, he presses only his face and hands against the stones; where everything else freezes, Schmar glows.
Just at the border separating the two streets, Wese stops, with only his walking stick to lean on for support. A whim. The night sky has allured him, the dark blue and the golden. Unaware, he gazes at it; unaware, he smoothes the hair under his raised hat; nothing moves together up there to reveal the immediate future to him; everything remains in its nonsensical, unexplorable place. In and of itself it is quite sensible that Wese walks further, but he walks into Schmar’s knife.
“Wese!” shouts Schmar, standing on his toes, his arm stretched out, the knife descending sharply. “Wese! Julia is waiting in vain!” And to the right of the throat and the left of the throat and thirdly deep into his stomach, Schmar stabs. Water rats, slit open, make a sound similar to Wese’s.
“Done,” said Schmar, and throws the knife, the superfluous bloody burden, at the next house front. “The bliss of murder! Relief, invigoration from the flowing of someone else’s blood! Wese, you old nightshade, friend, beer-bench comrade, are seeping away into the dark depths of the street. Why are you not simply a blister full of blood so that I can sit on you to make you disappear altogether? Everything is not fulfilled, all dreams are not blossoms that ripen, your heavy remains lie here, already dead to every kick. What is the point of the silent question you are asking?”
Pallas, choking on all the poisons confusedly coursing through his body, is standing in the double-leaved doorway as it flies open. “Schmar! Schmar! I saw everything, missed nothing.” Pallas and Schmar eye each other. Pallas is satisfied; Schmar finds no end. Frau Wese, with a crowd of people on each side, rushes over, her face aged with horror. Her fur opens, she falls upon Wese, her body in its nightdress belongs to him, the fur enclosing the couple like the grass of a grave belongs to the crowd.
Schmar struggles to stifle the last bout of nausea, with his mouth pressed against the shoulder of the policeman, who light-footedly leads him away.
FIRST SORROW
A trapeze artist—this art, performed high in the domes of the great variety theaters, is acknowledged as one of the most difficult of all that are humanly attainable—had arranged his life, initially only due to his striving toward perfection, later also due to a habit that had become tyrannical, so that as long as he worked for the same company, he would remain on the trapeze day and night. All his needs, which were incidentally quite modest, were fulfilled by attendants who took over from one another, watching from below and sending everything that was needed above up and down in specially constructed containers. Particular difficulties for the world around did not ensue from this way of life;
it was only slightly distracting that he remained up there during the other program acts, which was impossible to conceal, and that, although he usually remained still at such times, glances from the audience would now and again wander over to him. But the management excused this because he was an extraordinary, irreplaceable artist. They also perceived, of course, that he was not living in this way out of willfulness, and that this was really the only way for him to remain in constant practice; only in this way could he preserve his art in all its perfection.
It was healthy up there as well, and, during the warmer seasons, when the side windows all around the arched roof were opened, and the sun forced its way along with the fresh air into the dimly lit room, it was even quite beautiful. True, his human interaction was limited; once in a while a fellow acrobat would climb up to him on the rope ladder, and they would both sit on the trapeze, leaning to the right and left on the tethers and chat; or builders repairing the roof would exchange a few words with him through an open window; or a fireman inspecting the emergency lighting in the uppermost gallery would call out something to him that was respectful, but hardly comprehensible. Otherwise everything around him was still; once in a while some employee, who had strayed into the empty theater in the afternoon for instance, would gaze pensively up into the heights almost beyond visibility, where the trapeze artist, without knowing that someone was watching him, practiced his acts or rested.
The trapeze artist could have gone on living peacefully in this way, had it not been for the unavoidable journeys from place to place, which were a great inconvenience to him. True, the impresario ensured that the trapeze artist was spared anything that unnecessarily prolonged his suffering; for travels in the cities, racing automobiles could be used, at night or in the earliest morning hours if possible, to chase through the empty streets at the highest speed, however too slowly for the trapeze artist’s longing; in the railway train, they would reserve an entire compartment, in which the trapeze artist could, as a miserable substitute for his usual way of life, at least spend the journey up in the luggage net. In the next venue for their guest performance, the trapeze was already in place in the theater long before the trapeze artist’s arrival, all the doors leading to the theater were opened wide, all aisles were kept free—but the best moments of the impresario’s life were still those when the trapeze artist set his foot on the rope ladder and, in a heartbeat, was finally hanging up high in his trapeze.
Although the impresario had already managed many journeys successfully, each new one was still distressing, for apart from everything else, these journeys were certainly destructive to the trapeze artist’s nerves.
Once, when they were on such a journey together, the trapeze artist was lying in the luggage net and dreaming. The impresario was leaning in the corner by the window opposite him reading a book when the trapeze artist addressed him quietly. The impresario was at his service at once. The trapeze artist said, biting his lip, that instead of the single trapeze he had used for his exercises up to now, he now must have two, two trapezes facing one another. The impresario approved immediately. But the trapeze artist, as if intending to demonstrate that the impresario’s approval was just as inconsequential as his objection would have been, said that from now on he would never and under no circumstances ever perform on only one trapeze again. He seemed to shudder at the thought that this might happen one day after all. Hesitantly and observantly, the impresario declared his full approval once again, two trapezes were better than one, and besides, this new arrangement was favorable, it would give the production more variety. At that the trapeze artist suddenly burst into tears. Deeply startled, the impresario leapt to his feet and asked what had happened, and when he received no answer, he climbed onto the bench, stroked him, and pressed his face to his own so that it also overflowed with the trapeze artist’s tears. But only after many questions and words of flattery did the trapeze artist say with a sob: “Only that one bar in my hands—how can I go on living!” Now it was easier for the impresario to comfort the trapeze artist; he promised to telegraph the next guest venue from the very next station regarding the second trapeze. He reproached himself for letting the trapeze artist work on only one trapeze for such a long time, and thanked him and praised him for finally bringing this mistake to his attention. In this way, the impresario managed to reassure the trapeze artist, and he was able to go back to his corner. But he himself was not reassured; he observed the trapeze artist secretly over his book with deep concern. Once such thoughts had begun to torment him, would they ever completely cease? Were they not bound to keep growing? Did they not threaten their livelihood? And indeed, the impresario thought he saw how, at this moment, in the seemingly peaceful sleep in which the weeping had ended, the first wrinkles began to engrave themselves on the trapeze artist’s smooth, childlike brow.
A DREAM
Josef K. was dreaming:
It was a beautiful day, and K. wanted to go for a stroll. Hardly had he taken two steps, however, when he had already arrived at the cemetery. The paths there were quite artificial and impractically winding, but he glided above such a path as though atop torrential waters, hovering unwaveringly. Already from a distance, his eye caught sight of a freshly dug grave mound that he wished to stop at. This grave mound seemed almost to lure him, and he thought he could hardly get there fast enough. But sometimes he barely saw the grave; it was obscured by flags, whose cloths twisted and flapped against one another with great force; the flag-bearers were not to be seen, but great jubilation seemed to prevail.
While his gaze was still directed into the distance, he suddenly saw the same grave mound next to him on the path, indeed almost behind him already. He jumped quickly into the grass. Because the path continued to race beneath his jumping feet, he stumbled and fell to his knees directly before the grave. Two men were standing behind it and holding a gravestone up in the air between them; no sooner had K. appeared, than they drove the stone into the earth and it stood there as though cemented in. Immediately a third man emerged from the bushes that K. recognized at once as an artist. He was dressed only in trousers and a poorly buttoned shirt; on his head he had a velvet cap; in his hand he held an ordinary pencil, with which he was already depicting figures in the air as he approached. With this pencil, he now positioned himself at the top of the stone; the stone was very tall, he didn’t need to bend down at all, but he did need to bend forward, for the grave mound, on which he did not wish to tread, was separating him from the stone. So he stood there on his toes and supported himself with his left hand on the stone’s surface. With particularly skillful handling, he managed to produce golden letters with his ordinary pencil; he wrote: “Here rests——,” each letter appeared clean and beautiful, deeply engraved, and in flawless gold. When he had written the two words, he looked back at K.; K., who was very eagerly following the inscription’s progress, was hardly concerned with the man, but looked only at the stone. The man actually did prepare to continue writing, but he couldn’t; there was some hindrance; he lowered the pencil and turned around to K. again. Now K. also saw the artist and noticed that he was having great trouble, but couldn’t name the cause. All his previous vivacity had disappeared. This also troubled K.; they exchanged helpless glances; an ugly misunderstanding was present that neither could resolve. At this untimely moment, a little bell also began to ring from the cemetery chapel, but the artist waved his raised hand, and it stopped. After a little while, it began again, this time very quietly, and, without specific orders, immediately stopped again; it was as though it only wished to test its sound. K. was inconsolable about the artist’s predicament; he began to cry and sobbed for a long time, covering his face with his hands. The artist waited until K. had calmed down, and then decided, as he could find no other alternative, to keep writing anyway. The first little stroke that he made was a relief for K., although the artist had obviously only drawn it with the utmost reluctance; the script was no longer beautiful, either; above all, the gold seemed to be missing;
pale and uncertain was the line; the letter was only very large. It was a J; it was almost finished when the artist stomped angrily with one foot into the grave mound, so that the earth flew into the air all around. Finally K. had understood him; there was no more time to beg his pardon; he dug with all his fingers in the earth, which offered hardly any resistance; everything seemed to have been prepared; a thin crust of earth had been constructed only for show; just behind it, a great hole with sloping walls opened up, into which K., turned onto his back by a gentle current, sank. While he was down below, however, with his head still raised upwards, already being absorbed by the impenetrable depths, his name was driven with mighty flourishes across the stone.
Delighted by this sight, he awoke.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The translator would like to thank Marylou and Jürgen Pelzer for their advice and attention to detail; Utz Tayert for his insight and reflection; Luis, once again, for his patience; and Harda, for guidance.