by Franz Kafka
Karl for his part felt stronger and more alert than he had ever done at home. If only his parents could see him, fighting for a good cause in a strange land before distinguished people, and while he hadn’t won yet, he was absolutely ready for the final push. Would they change their minds about him? Sit him down between them and praise him? For once look into his eyes that shone with devotion to them? Doubtful questions, and hardly the time to start asking them now!
‘I have come because I believe the stoker is accusing me of some dishonesty or other. One of the Kitchen maids told me she had seen him on his way here. Captain, gentlemen, I’m prepared to refute any accusation against me with the help of these written records, and, if need be, by the evidence of some impartial and unprejudiced witnesses, who are waiting outside the door.’ Thus Schubal. It was the clear speech of a man, and to judge by the change in the expressions of the listeners, it was as though they had heard human sounds for the first time in a long while. What they failed to realize was that even that fine speech was full of holes. Why was ‘dishonesty’ the first important word to occur to him? Perhaps the charges against him should have begun with that, rather than with national bias? A Kitchen maid had seen the stoker on his way to the office, and straightaway drawn the right conclusion? Was it not guilt sharpening his understanding? And he had come with witnesses, and impartial and unprejudiced witnesses at that? It was a swindle, one big swindle, and the gentlemen stood for it and thought it was a proper way to behave? Why had he almost certainly allowed so much time to elapse between the maid’s report and his arrival here, if not for the purpose of letting the stoker so tire everybody out that they lost their power of judgement, which was what Schubal would have good reason to fear? Had he not been loitering behind the door for a long time, and only knocked when that one gentleman’s irrelevant question suggested to him that the stoker was finished?
It was all so clear, and in spite of himself Schubal only confirmed it, but the gentlemen still needed to have it put to them even more unambiguously. They needed shaking up. So, Karl, hurry up and use the time before the witnesses appear and muddy everything.
Just at that moment, though, the captain motioned to Schubal ‘enough’ and he – his affair for the moment put back a little – promptly walked off and began a quiet conversation with the servant, who had straightaway allied himself with him, a conversation not without its share of sidelong glances at the stoker and Karl, and gestures of great conviction. It seemed that Schubal was rehearsing his next big speech.
‘Didn’t you want to ask the young man here a question, Mr Jakob?’ said the captain to the man with the bamboo cane, breaking the silence.
‘Indeed I did,’ he replied, thanking him for the courtesy with a little bow. And he asked Karl again: ‘What is your name please?’
Karl, believing it was in the interest of the principal cause to get the stubborn questioner over with quickly, replied curtly and without, as was his habit, producing his passport, which he would have had to look for first, ‘Karl Rossmann’.
‘But,’ said the man addressed as Jakob, taking a step backwards with a smile of near-disbelief. The captain too, the chief cashier, the ship’s officer, even the servant clearly displayed an excessive degree of surprise on hearing Karl’s name. Only the gentlemen from the port authority remained indifferent.
‘But,’ repeated Mr Jakob and rather stiffly walked up to Karl, ‘then I’m your Uncle Jakob, and you’re my dear nephew. Didn’t I know it all along,’ he said to the captain, before hugging and kissing Karl, who submitted quietly.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Karl, once he felt he had been released, very politely but quite unmoved, and trying to see what consequences this new turn of events might have for the stoker. For the moment there was at least no suggestion that Schubal could draw any advantage from it.
‘Don’t you see you’re a very lucky young man,’ said the captain, who thought the question might have hurt the dignity of Mr Jakob who had gone over to the window, obviously in order to keep the others from seeing the emotion on his face, which he kept dabbing at with a handkerchief. ‘The man who has presented himself to you as your uncle is the state councillor Edward Jakob. You now have a glittering career ahead of you, which you surely cannot have expected. Try to understand that, though it isn’t easy, and pull yourself together.’
‘I do indeed have an Uncle Jakob in America,’ said Karl to the captain, ‘but if I understood you correctly, it was the state councillor’s surname that was Jakob.’
‘That’s correct,’ said the captain expectantly.
‘Well, my Uncle Jakob, who is my mother’s brother, is Jakob by his first name, while his surname is of course the same as my mother’s maiden name which is Bendelmayer.’
‘Gentlemen, I ask you,’ cried the state councillor, returning from his restorative visit to the window, with reference to Karl’s explanation. Everyone, with the exception of the port officials, burst out laughing, some as though moved, others more inscrutably.
But what I said wasn’t so foolish, thought Karl.
‘Gentlemen,’ reiterated the state councillor, ‘without your meaning to, or my meaning you to, you are here witnessing a little family scene, and I feel I owe you some explanation, seeing as only the captain here’ – an exchange of bows took place at this point – ‘is completely in the picture.’
Now I really must pay attention to every word, Karl said to himself, and he was glad when he saw out of the corner of his eye that animation was beginning to return to the figure of the stoker.
‘In the long years of my stay in America – although the word stay hardly does justice to the American citizen I have so wholeheartedly become – in all those years I have lived completely cut off from my relatives in Europe, for reasons that are firstly not relevant here, and secondly would distress me too much in the telling. I even dread the moment when I shall be compelled to relate them to my nephew, when a few home truths about his parents and their ilk will become unavoidable.’
‘He really is my uncle, no question,’ Karl said to himself, as he listened. ‘I expect he’s just had his name changed.’
‘My dear nephew has simply been got rid of by his parents – yes, let’s just use the phrase, as it describes what happened – simply got rid of, the way you put the cat out if it’s making a nuisance of itself. It’s not my intention to gloss over what my nephew did to deserve such treatment – glossing over isn’t the American way – but his transgression is such that the mere naming of it provides an excuse.’
‘That sounds all right,’ thought Karl, ‘but I don’t want him to tell them all. How does he know about it anyway? Who would have told him? But let’s see, maybe he does know everything.’
‘What happened,’ the uncle went on, resting his weight on the little bamboo cane and rocking back and forth a little, which robbed the matter of some of the unnecessary solemnity it would certainly have otherwise had – ‘what happened is that he was seduced by a maidservant, one Johanna Brummer, a woman of some thirty-five years of age. In using the word seduced, I have no wish to insult my nephew, but it’s difficult to think of another word that would be applicable.’
Karl, who had already moved quite close to his uncle, turned round at this point to see what impact the story was having on the faces of the listeners. There was no laughter from any of them, they were all listening quietly and gravely: it’s not done to laugh at the nephew of a state councillor at the first opportunity that comes along. If anything, one might have said that the stoker was smiling very faintly at Karl, but, in the first place, that was encouraging as a further sign of life on his part, and, in the second place, it was excusable since back in the cabin Karl had tried to keep secret a matter that was now being so openly aired.
‘Well, this Brummer woman,’ the uncle continued, ‘went on to have a child by my nephew, a healthy boy who was christened Jakob, I suppose with my humble self in mind, because even my nephew’s no doubt passing references to m
e seem to have made a great impression on the girl. Just as well too, let me say. For the parents, to avoid paying for the child’s upkeep or to avoid being touched by the scandal themselves – I must state that I am not acquainted either with the laws of the place, or with the circumstances of the parents, of whom all I have are two begging letters that they sent me a long time ago, to which I never replied, but which I was careful to keep and which now constitute the only, one-sided, written communications between us in all these years – to resume then, the parents, to avoid scandal and paying maintenance, had their son, my dear nephew, transported to America with, as you may see, lamentably inadequate provision – thus leaving the boy, saving those miracles that still happen from time to time and particularly here in America, entirely to his own devices, so that he might easily have met his death in some dockside alleyway on his arrival, had not the maid written to me, which letter, after lengthy detours, came into my possession only the day before yesterday, and acquainted me with the whole story, together with a personal description of my nephew, and, very sensibly, also with the name of the ship on which he was travelling. Now, if it were my purpose at this point to entertain you, gentlemen, I might well read out some choice passages from this letter’ – he pulled from his pocket two enormous, closely written pages, and waved them around – ‘It would certainly make a hit, written as it is with a certain low, but always well-intentioned, cunning and with a good deal of affection for the father of her child. But neither do I want to amuse you more than is necessary, nor do I want to injure any tender feelings possibly still entertained by my nephew, who may, if he cares to, read the letter for himself in the privacy of his own room, which already awaits him.’
Actually, Karl had no feelings for the girl. In the crush of an ever-receding past, she was sitting in the Kitchen, with one elbow propped on the Kitchen dresser. She would look at him when he went into the Kitchen for a glass of water for his father, or to do an errand for his mother. Sometimes she would be sitting in her strange position by the dresser, writing a letter, and drawing inspiration from Karl’s face. Sometimes she would be covering her eyes with her hand, then it was impossible to speak to her. Sometimes she would be kneeling in her little room off the Kitchen, praying to a wooden cross, and Karl would shyly watch her through the open door as he passed. Sometimes she would be rushing about the Kitchen, and spin round, laughing like a witch whenever Karl got in her way. Sometimes she would shut the Kitchen door when Karl came in, and hold the doorknob in her hand until he asked her to let him out. Sometimes she would bring him things he hadn’t asked for, and silently press them into his hands. Once, though, she said ‘Karl!’ and led him – still astonished at the unexpected address – sighing and grimacing into her little room, and bolted it. Then she almost throttled him in an embrace, and, while asking him to undress her she actually undressed him, and laid him in her bed, as though she wanted to keep him all to herself from now on, and stroke him and look after him until the end of the world. ‘Karl, O my Karl!’ she said as if she could see him and wanted to confirm her possession of him, whereas he couldn’t see anything at all, and felt uncomfortable in all the warm bedding which she seemed to have piled up expressly for his sake. Then she lay down beside him, and asked to hear some secret or other, but he was unable to tell her any, then she was angry with him or pretended to be angry, he wasn’t sure which, and shook him, then she listened to the beating of his heart and offered him her breast for him to listen to, but Karl couldn’t bring himself to do that, she pressed her naked belly against his, reached her hand down, it felt so disgusting that Karl’s head and neck leapt out of the pillows, down between his legs, pushed her belly against his a few times, he felt as though she were a part of him, and perhaps for that reason he felt seized by a shocking helplessness. He finally got to his own bed in tears, and after many fond goodnights from her. That had been all, and yet the uncle had managed to turn it into a big deal. So the cook had thought of him, and informed his uncle that he was arriving. That was nice of her, and one day he would like to pay her back.
‘And now,’ said the Senator, ‘I want to hear from you loud and clear, whether I am your uncle or not.’
‘You are my uncle,’ said Karl and kissed his hand, and was kissed on the forehead in return. ‘I’m very glad I’ve met you, but you’re mistaken if you think my parents only say bad things about you. But there were a few other mistakes in what you said, I mean, not everything happened the way you described it. But it’s difficult for you to tell from such a distance and anyway I don’t think it matters if the gentlemen here have been given an account that’s inaccurate in a few points of detail, about something that doesn’t really concern them.’
‘Well spoken,’ said the Senator, and took Karl over to the visibly emotional captain, and said, ‘Haven’t I got a splendid fellow for a nephew?’
The captain said, with a bow of the kind that only comes with military training, ‘I am delighted to have met your nephew, Senator. I am particularly honoured that my ship afforded the setting for such a reunion. But the crossing in the steerage must have been very uncomfortable, you never know who you’ve got down there. Once, for instance, the first-born son of the highest Hungarian magnate, I forget his name and the purpose of his voyage, travelled in our steerage. I only got to hear about it much later. Now, we do everything in our power to make the voyage as pleasant as possible for steerage passengers, far more than our American counterparts, for example, do, but we still haven’t been able to make a voyage in those conditions a pleasure.’
‘It did me no harm,’ said Karl.
‘It did him no harm!’ repeated the Senator, with a loud laugh.
‘Only I’m afraid I may have lost my suitcase –’ and with that he suddenly remembered all that had taken place, and all that still remained to be done, and looked around at all those present, standing in silent respect and astonishment. None of them had moved and all were looking at him. Only in the port officials, inasmuch as their stern and self-satisfied faces told one anything, could one see regret that they had come at such an unsuitable time; the wristwatch they had laid out in front of them was probably more important to them than anything that had happened, and that might yet happen, in the room.
The first man, after the captain, to express his pleasure was, extraordinarily, the stoker. ‘Hearty congratulations,’ he said and shook Karl by the hand, also wanting to show something like admiration. But when he approached the Senator with the same words, the latter took a step back, as though the stoker had taken things too far, and he stopped right away.
But the others saw what had to be done, and they crowded round Karl and the Senator. Even Schubal offered Karl his congratulations in the confusion, which he accepted with thanks. When things had settled down again, the last to appear were the port officials who said two words in English, and made a ridiculous impression.
To make the most of such a pleasant occasion, the Senator went on to describe, for the benefit of himself and everyone else present, various other, lesser moments, which weren’t only tolerated but listened to with interest. He pointed out, for instance, that he had copied down in his notebook some of Karl’s distinguishing features as they were described in the cook’s letter, in case they should prove useful to him. During the stoker’s intolerable tirade he had taken out the notebook for no other purpose than to amuse himself, and for fun tried to match the cook’s less than forensically accurate descriptions with Karl’s actual appearance. ‘And so a man finds his nephew,’ he concluded, as though expecting a further round of congratulations.
‘What’s going to happen to the stoker now?’ asked Karl, ignoring his uncle’s latest story. It seemed to him that in his new position he was entitled to say whatever was on his mind.
‘The stoker will get whatever he deserves,’ said the Senator, ‘and whatever the captain determines. But I’m sure the company will agree we’ve had enough and more than enough of the stoker.’
‘But that’s
not the point, it’s a question of justice,’ said Karl. He was standing between the captain and his uncle, and perhaps influenced by that position, he thought the decision lay in his hands.
But the stoker seemed to have given up hope. He kept his hands half tucked into his belt, which his excited movements had brought into full view along with a striped shirt. That didn’t trouble him in the least, he had made his complaint, let them see what rags he wore on his back, and then let them carry him off. He thought the servant and Schubal, the two lowliest persons present, should do him that final service. Then Schubal would have peace and quiet, no one to drive him to the brink of despair, as the chief cashier had said. The captain would be able to engage a crew of Rumanians, everyone would speak Rumanian, and maybe everything would go better. There would be no more stoker to speechify in the office, only his last tirade might live on fondly in their memories because, as the Senator had stated, it had led indirectly to the recognition of his nephew. That very nephew had tried to help him several times before that, and so he didn’t owe him anything for his help in having made him recognized; it never occurred to the stoker to ask anything more of him now. Anyway, Senator’s nephew he might be, but he wasn’t a captain, and it was the captain who would be having the final say in the affair – So the stoker wasn’t really trying to catch Karl’s eye, only, in a room filled with his enemies, there was nowhere else for him to look.
‘Don’t misunderstand the situation,’ said the Senator to Karl, ‘it may be a question of justice, but at the same it’s a matter of discipline. In either case, and especially the latter, it’s for the captain to decide.’
‘That’s right,’ muttered the stoker. Anyone who heard him and understood smiled tightly.
‘Moreover, we have kept the captain from his business for long enough, which must be particularly onerous at the moment of arrival in New York. It’s high time we left the ship, lest our completely unnecessary intervention may turn this trifling squabble between a couple of engineers into a major incident. I fully understand your behaviour, dear nephew, but that’s precisely what gives me the right to lead you swiftly from this place.’