by Franz Kafka
Franz
IN THE MARGIN: Another reason I allowed her to write. She wanted to see some of your letters to me. But I can’t show them to her.
[Prague, July 6, 1920]
Tuesday morning
6)
A slight blow for me: a telegram from Paris, informing me that an old uncle of mine—whom I am really very fond of, who lives in Madrid, and who hasn’t been here for many years—is arriving tomorrow evening.69 It is a blow because it will take time and I need all the time I have and a thousand times more than all the time I have and most of all I’d like to have all the time there is just for you, for thinking about you, for breathing in you. My apartment is making me restless, the evenings are making me restless, I’d like to be some place different. I’d like many things to be different and I’d prefer it if the office didn’t exist at all; but then I think that I deserve to be hit in the face for speaking beyond the present moment, this moment, which belongs to you.
So may I go to Laurin? He knows Pick, for example. Won’t it be easy for word to get out this way that I was in Vienna? Please write me about this.70
Max is very upset over your news from the sanatorium concerning Přibram, he is reproaching himself for having thoughtlessly broken off what he had begun to arrange for Přibram.71 Moreover his relations with the authorities are now such that he might be able to obtain everything necessary without great difficulties. He urgently asks you to kindly summarize what there is to say concerning the injustice being done Přibram. If you can, send me this short summary when you get a chance. (The Russian’s name was: Sprach.)
Somehow I can’t write about anything but what concerns us and us alone, in the middle of the crowded world. Everything else is foreign to me. Wrong! Wrong! But my lips are babbling and my face is lying in your lap.
Vienna did leave behind one bitter aftertaste, may I say it? Up in the woods—I believe it was the second day—you said something like: “The battle over the front hall can’t last long.” And now in the next to last letter to Meran you write about your illness. How am I supposed to find my way out from between these two things. I’m not saying this out of jealousy, Milena, I’m not jealous. Either the world is so tiny or else we are so gigantic; in any case we fill it completely. Of whom should I be jealous?
[Prague, July 6, 1920]
Tuesday evening
7)
You see, Milena, now I’m sending you the letter myself and have no idea what it contains. It happened like this: I had promised her that I’d be waiting in front of her house this afternoon at 3:30. We were supposed to go on a steamboat ride, but last night I got to bed very late and hardly slept; so this morning I sent her a pneumatic letter saying that I had to sleep this afternoon and could not come until 6:00. In my uneasiness, which would not be assuaged by all the safeguards of letters and telegrams, I added: ‘Do not send the letter to Vienna until we have discussed it.’ But she had already written it early this morning, half out of her senses—she can’t even say what she wrote—and thrown it in the mailbox right away. Upon receiving my letter, the poor girl runs to the main post office, absolutely horrified, manages to intercept the letter somewhere, and is so happy that she gives the official all the money she has—only later is she shocked at the amount—and in the evening brings me the letter. What am I to do now? After all, my hope for a prompt and completely happy solution rests on this letter and on the effect of your reply: I admit it is an irrational hope but it’s the only one I have. If I now open the letter and read it, in the first place I will anger her and in the second it would then be impossible for me to send it. I therefore place it sealed in your hands, wholly, utterly—just as I have already placed myself in them.
It’s a little gloomy in Prague, I haven’t received any letters, my heart is a little heavy. Of course it’s impossible that a letter could be here already, but explain that to my heart.
F
Her address: Julie Wohryzek
Prague II
Na Smečkách 6
[Prague, July 6, 1920]
Tuesday, even later
8)
No sooner had I mailed the letter than it occurred to me: How could I have asked you to do this? Apart from the fact that it’s really just up to me to do what should and must be done, it’s probably impossible for you to write and entrust such a reply to a stranger. So now, Milena, forgive the letters and the telegrams, attribute them to my reason made weak by parting from you; it doesn’t matter if you don’t reply, I’ll just have to find another solution. Don’t worry about this. It’s only that I’m so exhausted from all the walks, today up on the Vyšehrader Escarpment. On top of this my uncle is arriving tomorrow, and I won’t have much time for myself.
But on a better subject: Do you know when you were most beautifully dressed in Vienna, absolutely, absurdly beautifully dressed?
There can’t be any argument about it: on Sunday.
[Prague, July 7, 1920]
Wednesday evening
9)
Just a few words to consecrate my new apartment,72 written in the utmost haste because my parents are arriving from Franzensbad at 10:00 and my uncle at 12:00 from Paris and both want to be met; new apartment because in order to give my uncle some room I’ve moved into my sister’s apartment, which is empty while she is in Marienbad. An empty large apartment, how wonderful; the street, however, is noisier—even so it’s not too bad a trade. And I have to write you, Milena, because you might conclude from my last lamenting letters (I tore up the worst one this morning out of shame; think, I still don’t have any news from you, but it’s stupid to complain about the mail—what do I have to do with the postal service) that I’m unsure of you, that I’m afraid of losing you: no, I’m not unsure. Could you be what you are to me if I weren’t sure? I feel this way because of our brief physical closeness and sudden physical separation. (Why did it have to be Sunday? Why 7 o’clock? Why happen at all?) The whole thing can be a little confusing. Forgive me! And when you go to bed tonight, as a good night wish from me, take in—all in one stream—everything I am and have: all of which is blissfully happy to rest in you.
F
[Prague, July 8, 1920]
early Thursday morning
10)
The street is noisy, moreover there’s construction going on diagonally opposite; directly opposite is not the Russian church but apartments full of people.73 Nonetheless, while being alone in a room may be a prerequisite for life, being alone in an apartment is a—to be exact: temporary—prerequisite for happiness (one prerequisite, because what use would the apartment be if I weren’t alive, if I didn’t have a home where I could rest—something like two bright, blue eyes, brought to life by some inconceivable grace). But as it is, the apartment is part of my happiness; everything is quiet: the bathroom, the kitchen, the front hall, the 3 additional rooms—not like those communal apartments: the noise, the lechery, the incest of dissolute bodies, thoughts and desires long uncontrolled, where improper, haphazard things take place, where illicit affairs occur, where illegitimate children are conceived, in every corner, behind every piece of furniture, and where it keeps going on and on, different from your quiet empty Sunday suburbs, more like the wild overcrowded suffocating suburbs on a relentless, unending Saturday night.
My sister has come the whole long way to bring me breakfast (which wasn’t necessary, since I would have gone home myself) and had to ring several minutes before I finally awoke from this letter and my isolation.
F
The apartment does not belong to me, of course; my brother-in-law will also be staying here, off and on during the summer
[Prague, July 8, 1920]
Thursday morning
11)
At last your letter. Just a few hasty words on the main subject, even though the haste may cause a few inaccuracies I will later regret: because we all three know each other independently, this case is unlike any other I know; so there’s no need to make it bleaker than it is by citing exp
eriences from other cases (corpses—torment for three; for two—some way to disappear). I am not his friend; I have not betrayed a friend—but I’m not merely his acquaintance either; rather I am bound to him, in some respects maybe more than to a friend. Nor have you betrayed him, since you love him—whatever you may say—and if and when we unite (I thank you, my shoulders!) it will be on a different level, outside his domain. Consequently this is not simply our exclusive affair to be kept secret, nor is it just torment anxiety pain worry—your letter has shocked me out of the relatively calm state I was still enjoying from our being together and which may now be reverting to the turmoil of Meran, although there are powerful obstacles standing in the way of such a reversion. It is much more an open—and clear-cut in its openness—matter of the three of us, even if you should keep silent for a while. I, too, am very much against brooding over all the various possibilities (I am against this because I have you; if I were alone, nothing could stop me from such ruminations) since doing so transforms one in the present into a battleground of the future—and how is such devastated ground to bear the house of the future.
At the moment I don’t know anything anymore, I’ve been back at work for three days and haven’t written a line; maybe I’ll be able to now. Incidentally, Max dropped by as I was writing this; it goes without saying that his silence is reliable; for everyone except sisters parents girl and him, I came back via Linz.
F
May I send you some money? Perhaps through Laurin, to whom I’ll explain you lent me money in Vienna which he can send you along with your honorarium? I’m also a little frightened by what you promised to write concerning fear.
[Prague, July 9, 1920]
Friday
All writing seems futile to me, and it really is. The best would probably be for me to go to Vienna and take you away; I may even do it, although you don’t want me to. Actually there are only two possibilities, each more beautiful than the other, either you come to Prague or you come to Libešic. I crept up to Jílovský yesterday—mistrustful in the old Jewish tradition—and caught him just before he left for Libešic; he had your letter to Staša.74 He is an excellent person: happy, open, intelligent, takes you by the arm, talks up a storm, is ready for anything, understands everything and a little more. Together with his wife he was intending to go see Florian, who lives near Brno, and from there on to Vienna to see you.75 He’s coming back to Prague this afternoon and will bring Staša’s reply; I’ll speak with him at 3:00, then send you a telegram. Forgive the babble contained in the 11 letters, throw them out, now reality is on its way, bigger and better. At the moment the only thing to be afraid of—I think—is your love for your husband. The new task you write about certainly is difficult, but don’t underestimate the strength I derive from being close to you. Of course for the time being I’m not sleeping, but I am much calmer than I thought yesterday evening when I was confronted with your two letters (by chance Max was there, which wasn’t necessarily good, since it was, after all, too much my own affair—oh, poor Milena, the jealousy of the nonjealous man is already beginning). The telegram you sent today is also somewhat reassuring. I’m worried about your husband now—at least for the moment—but not too much, not unbearably. He had taken on a huge task, which he has in part (perhaps entirely) carried out with honor; I don’t think he could carry it any further, and not at all because he lacks the strength to do so (what is my strength compared to his?) but because he is much too burdened with everything that has gone on before, much too oppressed, too deprived of the concentration such a task would require. Compared to this, it may actually come as a relief to him. Why shouldn’t I write him?
F
[Prague, July 9, 1920]
Friday
Just a few words concerning Staša’s letter: my uncle, who is otherwise very kind but right now a little bit of a nuisance, is waiting for me. Well, Staša’s letter is indeed very warm and friendly, except it does have some slight defect, perhaps only a formal one (which is not to say that letters without this defect are more heartfelt, probably the opposite is true), still either it is missing something or else it contains too much. Maybe it’s her capacity to think things over, which she seems to get from her husband, incidentally; he spoke with me yesterday in exactly the same way; today, on the other hand, when I wanted to apologize for yesterday’s mistrust (‘he dragged it out of Kafka’)76 and pour my heart out a little, he virtually sent me on my way—as cordially as could be—with Staša’s letter and the details concerning the rendezvous Staša is promising for Monday. But why should I speak this way about these really kind people? Jealousy, it really is jealousy, but I promise you, Milena, that I’ll never plague you with it, only me, only myself. Nevertheless, the letter does appear to contain one misunderstanding since what you really wanted was neither Staša’s advice nor for her to speak to your husband; nothing could substitute for what you most desired, that is, her presence. So it seemed to me. And the issue of money is unimportant, I already explained that to her husband yesterday. So Monday I’ll talk to Staša (besides, Jílovský has a very good excuse today, he was in the middle of a business meeting; Pittermann and Ferenc Futurista were sitting at the same table, waiting impatiently to begin their conference concerning a new cabaret).77 Really, if my uncle weren’t waiting I’d tear this letter up and write a new one, particularly because there just happens to be a phrase in Staša’s letter which makes everything else acceptable, as far as I’m concerned: ‘to live with Kafka.’78
I hope to receive more news from you today. It turns out I’m a capitalist who doesn’t even know the extent of his possessions. This afternoon at work, as I was asking for news in vain, they brought me a letter of yours which had arrived in Meran shortly after I had left (incidentally along with a card from Přibram)—reading it was strange.
Yours
[Prague, July 10, 1920]
Saturday
14)
This is bad: the day before yesterday your two unhappy letters arrived, yesterday nothing but the telegram (even though it was indeed reassuring it still seemed a little patched together—the way telegrams are) and today nothing at all. And those letters weren’t exactly very comforting for me—far from it—and in them you said you’d write again right away and you haven’t written. And two evenings ago I sent you an urgent telegram with prepaid urgent reply, which also should have arrived long ago. I repeat the text: ‘It was the only right thing to do, be calm, your home is here, Jílovský and wife probably arriving in Vienna in one week. How shall I send money?’ But there hasn’t been an answer—‘Go to Vienna’ I tell myself. ‘But Milena doesn’t want you to, very decidedly not. You would mean a decision, she doesn’t want you, she has worries and doubts, that’s why she wants Staša.’ Despite this I should go, but I’m not well. However, I am calm, relatively calm, calmer than I had never hoped to be again during these last years, although I do have a bad cough during the day and for fifteen minutes at a stretch during the night. It’s probably only a matter of reacclimating to Prague and the consequence of the chaotic time in Meran, the time before I knew you and had looked into your eyes.
How dark Vienna has become and yet for 4 days it was so bright. What is being concocted for me there while I sit here, cease my writing, and lay my face in my hands?
F
Then I looked out of my chair through the open window into the rain, and various possibilities occurred to me: that you might be sick, tired, in bed, that Frau Kohler might act as a go-between and then—strangely enough the most obvious, natural possibility—that the door will open and there you are.79
[Prague, July 12, 1920]
Monday
15)
The past two days have been horrible, to say the least. But now I realize it wasn’t your fault at all; some malicious devil was holding back all your letters from Thursday on. Friday I received only your telegram, nothing on Saturday, nothing on Sunday, today 4 letters—from Thursday Friday Saturday. I’m too tired to really write,
too tired to sort out what remains for me from these 4 letters, from this mountain of despair, suffering, and love; one is so selfish when one is tired and has spent two nights and days consumed by the most awful imaginings. But nevertheless—and again this is part of your life-giving force, Mother Milena—nevertheless I am essentially less shaken now than I have been during the past 7 years, perhaps, excluding the one spent in the country.
Be that as it may, I still don’t understand why I didn’t receive any answer to my urgent telegram of Thursday evening. I then wired Frau Kohler, still no answer. Don’t be afraid that I might write to your husband, I really don’t have much desire to do that. The only thing I do desire is to go to Vienna, but I won’t do that either—even if there weren’t such obstacles as your opposition to my coming, passport problems, work, cough, exhaustion, my sister’s wedding (Thursday). In any case, going to Vienna would be better than spending afternoons the way I did Saturday or Sunday. On Saturday: I wandered around a little with my uncle, a little with Max, and every two hours I’d run to the office to ask for mail. Things were better in the evening; I went to Laurin’s, he hadn’t heard of anything bad happening to you, he also mentioned your letter—which made me happy—and telephoned Kisch at the Neue Freie Presse.80 He hadn’t heard anything either, but said he would ask—not your husband—about you and call back this evening. So I was sitting at Laurin’s, heard your name mentioned several times and was grateful to him. Even so, talking to him is neither easy nor pleasant. He really is like a child, like a not-too-bright child—he boasts, lies, puts on a show just like a child and one feels exaggeratedly sneaky and repulsively insincere sitting there listening to him. Especially since he’s not just a child, but a big and serious grown-up when it comes to kindness, sympathy and readiness to help. There’s no way out of this dichotomy and if I hadn’t kept saying to myself ‘one more time, I want to hear your name just one more time,’ I would have left long before I did. He also talked about his wedding (Tuesday) in the same tone.