by Franz Kafka
Agonizing misunderstandings are the result. Milena, you complain about some letters that you turn them in all directions and nothing falls out, but if I’m not mistaken those are precisely the ones where I was so close to you, my blood so restrained, restraining your own, so deep in the forest, so resting in rest, that nothing needed to be said, except perhaps that you can see the sky through the trees, that’s all. And these words are repeated an hour later and there really is ‘not a single word which hasn’t been well weighed.’35 But this only lasts for a moment at the longest, the trumpets of sleepless night will soon sound again.
Consider too, Milena, how I have come to you, the 38-year journey I have traveled (and because I’m Jewish, another, much longer one as well) and if, at what appears to be an accidental bend in the road, I see you, whom I never expected to see, especially now, so late, then, Milena, I cannot cry out, nor does anything inside me cry out, nor will I utter 1000 foolish words, they are not inside me (I am excluding a different foolishness which I have in abundance) and I only realize I am kneeling because I see your feet right before my eyes and I am caressing them.
And do not demand sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it more than I do myself, and even so, I’m sure that many things escape me, maybe even everything. But cheering me on during this hunt does not cheer me up; on the contrary, it paralyzes me, everything suddenly becomes a lie and the pursued become the hunters. I am on such a dangerous road, Milena. You are standing fast by a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes are subduing the sorrows of the world with their brightness. We’re playing škatule škatule hejbejte se,fn3 I’m creeping in the shade from one tree to the next, I’m halfway there, you call to me, pointing out the dangers, wanting to encourage me, you’re scared by my faltering step, you remind me (me!) how serious the game is—I can’t make it, I fall down, already prostrate. I can’t listen both to the terrible inner voices and to you simultaneously, but I can listen to what the voices are saying and confide this in you, trusting you like no other person in the world.
F
[Meran, June 3, 1920]
Now that I’ve read this terrible letter—which isn’t at all terrible deep inside—it isn’t easy to thank you for the joy I felt upon its arrival. Today’s a holiday, regular mail would no longer have arrived, it was also doubtful whether anything from you would have come tomorrow, Friday, so as far as you were concerned there was a kind of oppressed quiet, though not at all sad; you were so strong in your last letter that I was watching you as I might watch mountain climbers from my chair, if I could make them out, up in the snow, from down here. And then it arrived after all, right before dinner, I was able to take it along, remove it from my pocket, lay it on the table, put it back in my pocket, just the way hands like to play with letters; you simply watch and enjoy the children. All this time, I didn’t recognize the general and the engineer sitting across from me (excellent, friendly people), and heard them even less, the food I resumed eating today (yesterday I didn’t eat anything) didn’t upset me much either, and of the arithmetic tricks performed after dinner, the short problems were much clearer to me than the long solutions, during which, however, I did have a clear view through the open window: fir trees, sun, mountains, village, and above all an intimation of Vienna.
But then of course I read the letter carefully, that is, I read the Sunday letter carefully; I’m postponing a similar reading of Monday’s until your next one arrives, because it contains things I can’t bear to read more thoroughly, apparently I’m not yet fully recovered, moreover the letter is out of date, according to my calculation 5 letters should be on the way, at least 3 of which must be in your hands by now, even if another letter may have been lost or if registered letters do take longer. The only thing left for me to do is request that you answer me here immediately, one word is sufficient, but it must be a word capable of taking the bite out of all the reproaches contained in Monday’s letter and making them readable. Incidentally, that Monday was precisely when I was giving my own reason such a shaking here (and not without consequence).
And now the other letter.—But it’s late, after several indefinite promises I told the engineer that today I would definitely go and see the portraits of his children, which are too large to bring here. He is hardly older than I am, a Bavarian, a manufacturer, very scientific, but also insightful and great fun, he had 5 children, only 2 are alive (but because of his wife he won’t have any more), the boy is already 13, the girl 11 years old. What a world! And he bears it with balance.
No, Milena, you shouldn’t say a thing against balance.
F
More tomorrow. But if it should be the day after, don’t ‘hate’ again, please, not that.
I reread the Sunday letter, it’s even more frightening than I thought at first. One ought, Milena, to take your face in both hands and look you square in the eye, so that you would see yourself in the eyes of the other person, then you could not even think the kinds of things you wrote there.
[Meran, June 4, 1920]
Friday
To begin with, Milena: What’s the apartment you wrote from on Sunday like? Full of space and empty? Are you all by yourself? Day and night?
In any case it must be sad to sit there alone on a beautiful Sunday afternoon opposite a ‘stranger’ whose face is nothing but ‘stationery which has been written on.’ I am so much better off! Although my own room is small, the true Milena is here, the one who ran away from you on Sunday, and believe me, being with her is wonderful.
You complain about uselessness. It was different on other days and it will be different. The one sentence (on what occasion was it uttered?) shocks you, and yet it really is so clear and has already been spoken or thought with this meaning countless times. A man plagued by his own devils takes revenge on his fellow man without giving it a thought. At such moments you wanted to be the redeemer, and you called yourself useless if you didn’t succeed entirely. But who is permitted such blasphemy? No one has ever succeeded in this, not even Jesus, for example. He could only say: ‘Follow me’ and then this great line (which I’m quoting completely incorrectly, unfortunately): act according to my word and you will see that it is not the word of man but the word of God. And he cast devils only out of those who followed him. And even that didn’t last forever, for once they forsook him then even he became ineffectual and ‘useless.’ True—and this is the only point I’ll grant you—he, too, succumbed to the temptation.
[Meran, June 4, 1920]
Friday
Toward evening today I took a rather long walk alone, for the first time actually, otherwise I’ve always gone with other people or mostly just stayed at home resting. What countryside! Good heavens, Milena, if you were here, and my pitiful, unthinking mind! And still I would be lying if I said I missed you: it’s the most perfect, most painful magic, you are here, just as I am and even more so; wherever I am, there you are too, and even more intensely. This is not a joke; I occasionally imagine that you, who really are here, are missing me here and asking: ‘Where can he be? Didn’t he write that he’s in Meran?’
F
Did you receive my two letters in answer to yours?
[Meran, June 5, 1920]
Saturday
I keep asking myself whether you understood that my answer had to be the way it was, considering my state of mind; in fact it was actually much too gentle, much too deceptive, much too over-glossed. Day and night I keep asking myself this, trembling before your reply, I keep asking myself, futilely, as if I had been commissioned to hammer a nail into a stone for a whole week, without resting at night, and I must be both hammerer and nail in one. Milena!
According to rumor—I can’t believe it—all rail traffic with the Tyrol will stop tonight as a result of strikes.
[Meran, June 5, 1920]
Saturday
Your letter came, the joy of your letter. Beyond everything else, it contains one central item: that you might not be able to write me anymore once I’m in Prague.
First of all, I’m singling that out for emphasis, for all the world to see—including you, Milena. So this is how one human being threatens another, and even while knowing that person’s motives, at least from afar. And on top of that one pretends to treat this other human well.
But perhaps you’d be right to stop writing me, several passages in your letter point to such a necessity. There’s nothing I can plead against them. Those are exactly the passages where I know perfectly well and acknowledge with the utmost seriousness that I am at a great height, but precisely because of that the air is too thin for my lungs and I have to rest—
F
I’ll write tomorrow
[Meran, June 6, 1920]
Sunday
This speech on 2 pages of your letter, Milena, comes from the depths of your wounded heart (‘that hurt me’ is what you wrote, and I have done this, to you),36 and it rings out as clearly and proudly as if I had hit steel and not your heart, demanding the most obvious things and moreover misunderstanding me (for my ‘ridiculous’ people are really none other than your own, and incidentally: when did I ever take sides between the two of you? Where is the sentence? Where would I have come up with this infamous idea? And who am I to condemn, I who am so far below both of you in every essential aspect—marriage, work, courage, devotion, purity, freedom, independence, truthfulness—that it disgusts me to even talk about it. And when would I have dared offer active assistance, and if I had dared, then how could I have actually assisted? Enough questions; they were sleeping soundly in the underworld, why call them up into the daylight? They are gray and sad and affect one the same way. Don’t be so certain that two hours of life are more than two pages of writing, the writing is poorer but clearer)—and so your speech misunderstands me, nevertheless: it is directed at me and I am not guiltless, but oddly enough precisely because the above questions must be answered with no and nowhere.
Then your lovely lovely telegram came, to comfort me against the night, my old enemy (if the comfort doesn’t last it really isn’t your fault, but the fault of the nights. These short earthly nights are almost enough to make one fear the eternal night)—of course the letter contains just as much wonderful solace, but on the whole it must be treated as one unit tyrannized by the 2 pages, the telegram on the other hand is independent and knows nothing about that. However, Milena, I can say this against the telegram: if, disregarding everything else, I had gone to Vienna and if you had given me the same lecture (which as I said doesn’t pass right by me, but hits me, and justly so, not a full hit, but strong enough) face to face—and if it weren’t said then it would have had to be thought in some way, glanced, twitched, or at least presumed—then with one blow I would have fallen prostrate and no matter how good a nurse you are, you could not have helped put me on my feet again. And if that hadn’t happened, then something worse would have. You see, Milena:
F
[Meran, June 10, 1920]
Thursday
Right now I only want to say this: (moreover I still haven’t read your letters thoroughly; just flown around them the way a fly circles a lamp, burning my head several times. By the way they are two separate letters, as I have already discovered, one to be completely imbibed, the other designed to horrify, the latter is probably the later).
If you run into an acquaintance and urgently ask how much 2 × 2 is, the question will seem lunatic, on the other hand it’s very appropriate in elementary school. With my question to you, Milena, both elements are present, both the asylum and the school—fortunately, the school is there too. I never could understand it when someone got mixed up with me, and there are many relationships (for example, the one with Weiss)37 which I destroyed with my logical disposition, my tendency to believe more and more the other person had erred, and less and less in miracles (at least in regard to myself). I thought: Why use such things to stir up the waters of life even more than they already are. I can see a stretch of the road ahead, the road which is possible for me, and I know how far—probably unattainably far—I would have to be from my current position to deserve even a casual glance (from myself, not to mention from others! This is not modesty but arrogance if you think it over) even a casual glance and now I receive—your letters, Milena. How shall I describe the difference? A man is lying in the filth and stench of his death bed and the Angel of Death, the most blessed of all angels, arrives and beholds him. May this man even dare to die? He rolls over, burying himself deeper and deeper in his bed, he is incapable of dying. In short: I don’t believe what you write, Milena, and there’s no way it could be proven to me (nor could anyone have proven it to Dostoyevsky on that night, and my life consists of one night). Only I could prove it to myself, and I can imagine being able to do so (just as you once imagined the man on the deck chair) but I wouldn’t be able to believe myself either. Thus this question was a ridiculous device—as you noticed right away of course—the kind a teacher sometimes uses when, out of exhaustion and yearning, he deliberately lets himself be deceived by one correct answer into believing that the pupil thoroughly understands the subject, whereas in reality the pupil only knows it for some irrelevant reason, and is in fact incapable of more thorough understanding, for only the teacher could teach him that. But not by whining, complaining, caressing, pleading, dreaming (do you have the last 5, 6 letters? You should look at them, they’re all part of the whole) but only by—let’s leave that open.
On glancing through your letter I see that you also mention the girl. So that there won’t be any doubt: Beyond the momentary pain, you have done the best thing possible for this girl. I can’t think of any other way she might have freed herself from me. Of course she did have a certain painful foreboding, but not the faintest idea where the place beside me acquired its warmth (uncanny, though not to her). I remember: we were sitting next to each other on the sofa in a one-room apartment in Wrschowitz (it was probably in November, the apartment was supposed to become ours a week later); she was happy to have acquired at least this apartment after so much trouble, her future husband was sitting next to her (I repeat: getting married was solely my own idea, I alone was pushing toward this end, she was merely scared and compliant against her will, but then naturally the idea began to grow on her). When I think about this scene with all its details, more numerous than heartbeats in a fever, then I believe myself capable of understanding every human delusion (in this case I myself was deluded for months as well, although it wasn’t just delusion; I also had other motives—evidently it would have been a marriage of reason in the best sense of the word), capable of understanding every delusion to its core, and I am afraid to raise the glass of milk to my lips since it easily might burst right before my eyes, driving the splinters into my face—not by accident, but on purpose.
One question: What exactly are you being reproached with? Yes, I have made people unhappy before, but certainly they don’t go on and on reproaching me, they simply turn silent and I believe they don’t even reproach me inwardly. This is the exceptional status I have among people.
But all this is unimportant compared to an idea I had while getting out of bed this morning, an idea which so enthralled me that I found myself washed and dressed without knowing how, and I would have shaved the same way had a guest not awakened me (it was the lawyer who considers meat a necessary diet).
Briefly it’s like this: You leave your husband for a while, that’s nothing new, it’s already happened before. The reasons are: your illness, his nervousness (you are also bringing him relief), and finally the conditions in Vienna. I don’t know where you’d like to go, the best place for you might be some peaceful part of Bohemia. It will probably also be best if I don’t interfere or even show myself in person. Whatever money you need you temporarily borrow from me (we’ll agree on the terms of repayment). (To mention only one of the additional benefits that this would give me: I would become enraptured by my work—my job by the way is ridiculous and lamentably easy, you can’t even imagine, I don’t know what they pay
me for.) If now and then there are months when this proves insufficient, you should easily be able to raise the difference yourself; I’m sure it wouldn’t be much. For the moment I won’t say anything more in praise of the idea, however, this does give you an opportunity to show me with your reaction whether I can trust your judgment concerning other ideas of mine (since I know what this one is worth).
Kafka
Now that I have written that, I am reading your comment on eating; yes, I’m sure in that case it could even be arranged for me, since I would have then become such an important man.—I am reading the two letters the way the sparrow is pecking up the crumbs in my room: in trepidation, attentively, on the lookout, feathers all puffed up.
[Meran, June 11, 1920]
Friday
When will this crazy world finally be straightened out a little? I wander around with a burned-out head by day—there are such beautiful ruins everywhere in the mountains here, they make me think I have to become that beautiful myself—but once in bed instead of sleep I have the best ideas. Today for instance a thought occurred to me to add to yesterday’s proposal, namely that you could spend the summer at Staša’s, who, as you wrote, is in the country. Yesterday I made the stupid suggestion that the money might not hold out through every month; that’s nonsense, there will always be enough.
The letter written Tuesday morning and evening only confirms that my suggestion is a good one; this is hardly a coincidence, since anything and everything would have to confirm it. If there happens to be any cunning in my proposal—and where is it not, that enormous beast, which can shrink according to need—I will keep it in bounds, even your husband can count on that. I begin to exaggerate. Nevertheless: I can be trusted. I won’t see you at all, not now, not then. You will live in the country, which you love. (In this we are similar, rolling countryside is my favorite, not too mountainous, with forests and lakes.)