by Franz Kafka
‘I’ll have them get a boat ready for you right away,’ said the captain, astonishing Karl by not offering the slightest objection to the uncle’s self-deprecating words. The chief cashier hurried over to the desk and telephoned the captain’s order to the boatswain.
‘Time is pressing,’ Karl said to himself, ‘but without offending them all there is nothing I can do. I can’t leave my uncle who’s only just found me. The captain is being polite, but really nothing more. When it’s a matter of discipline, his kindness will come to an end, I’m sure uncle was right about that. I don’t want to talk to Schubal, I’m even sorry I shook hands with him. And everyone else here is just chaff.’
So thinking, he walked slowly over to the stoker, pulled his right hand out of his belt, and held it playfully in his own. ‘Why don’t you say anything?’ he asked. ‘Why do you let them get away with it?’
The stoker furrowed his brow, as though looking for words for what he wanted to say. He looked down at his hand and Karl’s.
‘You’ve suffered an injustice, more than anyone else on the ship, I’m convinced of that.’ And Karl slipped his fingers back and forth between those of the stoker, whose eyes were shining and looking around as though feeling inexpressible bliss and at the same time daring anyone to take it away from him.
‘You must stand up for yourself, say yes and no, otherwise people will never learn the truth. I want you to promise me to do that, because I’m very much afraid that soon I won’t be able to help you any more.’ Karl was crying as he kissed the stoker’s cracked and almost lifeless hand, holding it and pressing it to his cheek, like some dear thing from which he had to be parted. His uncle the Senator appeared at his side, and, ever so gently, pulled him away. ‘The stoker seems to have put you under his spell,’ he said, and looked knowingly across to the captain over Karl’s head. ‘You felt abandoned, then you found the stoker, and you’re showing your gratitude to him, it’s all very laudable. But please for my sake don’t overdo it, and learn to come to terms with your position.’
Outside the door, there was a commotion, shouting, and it even seemed as though someone was being viciously pushed against it. A rather wild-looking sailor came in, wearing a girl’s apron. ‘There’s people outside,’ he said, pumping his elbows as though still in the crowd. Finally he came to his senses, and was about to salute the captain, when he noticed his girl’s apron, tore it off, threw it on the ground, and said: ‘That’s disgusting, they’ve tied a girl’s apron on me.’ Then he clicked his heels together and saluted. Someone stifled a laugh, but the captain said sternly: ‘Enough of these high jinks. Who is it who’s outside?’ ‘They are my witnesses,’ said Schubal stepping forward, ‘I’d like to apologize for their behaviour. At the end of a long sea voyage, they sometimes get a little unruly.’ ‘Call them in right away,’ ordered the captain, and turning quickly to the Senator, he said kindly but briskly: ‘Would you be so kind now, my dear Senator, as to take your nephew and follow the sailor who will escort you to your boat? I can’t say what happiness and honour your personal acquaintance has brought me. I only wish I may have another opportunity soon of resuming our discussion of the American Navy, and then perhaps to be interrupted as pleasantly as we were today.’ ‘One nephew’s enough for me for the moment,’ said the uncle laughing. ‘And now please accept my thanks for your kindness, and farewell. It’s by no means out of the question that we’ – he pressed Karl affectionately to himself – ‘might spend a little longer in your company on the occasion of our next visit to Europe.’ ‘I should be delighted,’ said the captain. The two gentlemen shook hands, Karl took the captain’s hand quickly and silently because he was then distracted by about fifteen people who had come into the office, a little chastened but very noisily still, under Schubal’s leadership. The sailor asked the Senator to let him go first, and cleared a way for him and Karl, who passed quite easily through the crowd of bowing people. It seemed these cheerful souls thought the quarrel between Schubal and the stoker was a joke that even the captain was being permitted to share. Among them Karl spotted Line the Kitchen maid, who winked merrily at him as she tied on the apron which the sailor had thrown down, because it was hers.
With the sailor leading the way, they left the office and went out into a little passage, which after a few steps took them to a small door, after which a short flight of steps led them down to the boat which had been prepared for them. The sailors in the boat – into which their escort leapt with a single bound – rose to salute them. The Senator was just telling Karl to be careful as he climbed down, when Karl started sobbing violently on the top step. The Senator took Karl’s chin in his right hand, hugged him tight, and stroked him with his left hand. They went down together, one step at a time, and in a tight embrace got into the boat where the Senator found Karl a good seat directly facing him. At a signal from the Senator, the sailors pushed off from the ship, and straightaway were rowing hard. Barely a few metres from the ship, Karl discovered to his surprise that they were facing the side of the ship where the head office looked out. All three windows were occupied by Schubal’s witnesses, shouting goodbye and waving cheerfully, the uncle even waved back and one sailor managed to blow a kiss without interrupting the rhythm of his rowing. It really was as though there was no stoker. Karl examined his uncle a little more closely – their knees were almost touching – and he wondered whether this man would ever be able to replace the stoker for him. The uncle avoided his eye, and looked out at the waves, which were bobbing around the boat.
2
THE UNCLE
Karl soon got used to his new circumstances in his uncle’s house, and his uncle was also very kind to him in every little matter, so Karl never had to learn from bitter experience, which is the lot of so many when they begin a new life in a new country.
Karl’s room was on the sixth floor of a building, whose five lower floors, and three more which were subterranean, were taken up by his uncle’s business concern. The light that came into his room through two windows and a balcony door never ceased to astound Karl when he emerged from his little bedroom in the morning. Think of where he might have had to live, if he’d climbed ashore as a poor little immigrant! His uncle, from his knowledge of the immigration laws, even thought it highly probable that he might not have been admitted into the United States at all, but would have been sent straight back again, never mind the fact that he no longer had a home. Because one couldn’t look for pity here, and what Karl had read about America was perfectly correct in this regard; here the fortunate few seemed quite content to enjoy their good fortune with only the pampered faces of their friends for company.
A narrow balcony ran along the entire length of the room. But what would probably have been the highest vantage point in Karl’s hometown here did not afford much more than a view of a single street, which ran in a dead straight line between two rows of lopped-off houses until it vanished in the distance where the massive forms of a cathedral loomed out of the haze. In the morning and evening, and in his dreams at night, that street was always full of swarming traffic. Seen from above, it appeared to be a swirling kaleidoscope of distorted human figures and the roofs of vehicles of all kinds, from which a new and amplified and wilder mixture of noise, dust and smells arose, and all this was held and penetrated by a mighty light, that was forever being scattered, carried off and eagerly returned by the multitudes of objects, and that seemed so palpable to the confused eye that it was like a sheet of glass spread out over the street that was being continually and violently smashed.
Cautious as the uncle was in all things, he urged Karl for the moment, in all seriousness, to avoid all manner of commitments. He was to absorb and examine everything, but not allow himself to be captured by it. The first days of a European in America were like a new birth, and while Karl shouldn’t be afraid, one did get used to things here faster than when entering the human world from beyond, he should bear in mind that his own initial impression did stand on rather shaky feet, and he
shouldn’t allow them any undue influence over subsequent judgements, with the help of which, after all, he meant to live his life. He himself had known new arrivals, who, instead of sticking by these useful guidelines, would for instance stand on the balcony for days on end, staring down into the street like lost sheep. That was certain disorientation! Such solitary inactivity, gazing down on an industrious New York day, might be permitted to a visitor, and perhaps even, with reservations, recommended to him, but for someone who would be staying here it was catastrophic, one could safely say, even if it was a slight exaggeration. And the uncle actually pulled a face each time when, in the course of one of his visits, which he made at unpredictable times but always once a day, he happened to find Karl on the balcony. Karl soon realized this, and so he denied himself, as far as possible, the pleasure of standing out on the balcony.
After all, it was far from being the only pleasure in his life. In his room there was an American writing desk of the very finest sort, one of the kind his father had been longing for for years, and had tried to find at an affordably cheap price at various auctions, without ever having been able to afford one with his small means. Of course his desk was nothing like those so-called American desks that turn up at European auctions. For instance the top part of it had a hundred different compartments of all sizes, so that even the President of the Union would have found room for each of his files in it, but even better than that, it had an adjuster at the side, so that by turning a handle one could rearrange and adjust the compartments in whatever way one wanted or needed. Thin lateral partitions slowly descended to form the floors of newly created compartments or the ceilings of enlarged ones; with just one turn of the handle, the appearance of the top would be completely transformed, and one could do it either slowly or at incredible speed, depending on how one turned the handle. It was a very modern invention, but it reminded Karl vividly of the nativity scenes that were demonstrated to astonished children at the Christmas Fairs at home. Karl himself, warmly dressed, had often stood in front of these nativities, and had incessantly compared the turning of the handle, which an old man performed, with the effect it had on the scene, the halting progress of the three Kings, the shining star of Bethlehem and the shy life in the holy stable. And always it had seemed to him as though his mother standing behind him wasn’t following the events closely enough and he had pulled her to him, until he felt her against his back, and he had drawn her attention to various more subtle manifestations by loud shouts, say a rabbit that was alternately sitting up and making to run in the long grass at the front, until his mother put her hand over his mouth and presumably reverted to her previous dullness. Of course the desk hadn’t been designed to recall such things, but the history of inventions was probably full of such vague connections as Karl’s memory. Unlike Karl, the uncle was not at all pleased with the desk, but he had wanted to buy Karl a proper desk, and all desks were now fitted with this contraption, which had the added advantage of being inexpensive to mount on older desks. Still, the uncle kept urging Karl preferably to avoid using the adjuster at all; to back up his advice the uncle claimed that the machinery was very delicate, easily broken and very expensive to repair. It wasn’t hard to see that such claims were mere excuses if one reminded oneself that it was very easy to immobilize the adjuster, which the uncle never did.
In the first few days, there were of course frequent conversations between Karl and his uncle, and Karl had mentioned that he had played the piano at home, not much but with enjoyment, although he only knew the basics, which his mother had taught him. Karl was well aware that to mention this was tantamount to asking for a piano, but he had already seen enough to know that his uncle didn’t need to economize. Even so, his wish was not immediately fulfilled, and it wasn’t till a week later that the uncle said, and it sounded like a reluctant admission, that the piano had arrived and if Karl wanted to he could supervise its move up to his room. It was an undemanding job, but really no more demanding than the moving itself, because the building had its very own service lift, in which a whole removal van might have fitted with ease, and this lift carried the piano up to Karl’s room. Karl could have gone on the same lift as the piano and the removal men, but since there was an ordinary lift just next to the other, standing empty, he took that, using a lever to remain constantly at the same level as the other lift, and looking through the glass walls at the beautiful instrument that was now his own. When it was installed in his room, and he played a few notes on it, he was seized with such a crazy joy that instead of continuing to play he leaped up and gazed at it from a distance, standing with his hands on his hips. The acoustics of the room were excellent, and that helped to take away his initial unease at living in an iron house. In fact, though the building might look very iron from outside, inside it one had not the slightest sense of its iron construction, and no one could have pointed to any features of the decor that were anything other than completely cosy. In the early days, Karl had high hopes of his piano playing, and while lying in bed, at any rate, he thought it might have a direct effect upon his American environment. But it did sound very peculiar when, with the windows letting in the noisy air from outside, he played an old ballad from his homeland, which the soldiers sing to each other in the evenings as they lean out through the barrack windows gazing at the dark square outside – but then, when he looked out on to the street, it was just the same, a tiny piece, no more, of a gigantic circulatory system that couldn’t be arrested without understanding all the forces operating on its totality. The uncle put up with his piano playing and made no objection to it, especially as, quite unprompted, Karl only rarely allowed himself the pleasure of it. Yes, he even brought Karl the scores of American marches and of course of the national anthem, too, but it couldn’t just have been love of music that made him one day ask Karl perfectly seriously if he wouldn’t care to learn the violin or the French horn as well.
But naturally Karl’s first and most important task was learning English. A young teacher from a trade school would appear in Karl’s room at seven in the morning, to find him already seated at his desk, among his notebooks, or else walking up and down the room, committing something to memory. Karl understood that he couldn’t learn English quickly enough, and that his rapid progress at it was also his best way of pleasing his uncle. At first the English content of his early conversations with his uncle had been confined to hello and goodbye, but he was soon able to increase the English portion of their conversations, and also to move on to more personal subjects. The first time Karl recited an American poem to his uncle one evening – the subject of it was a conflagration – it made him quite sombre with satisfaction. They both stood by a window in Karl’s room, the uncle looked out into the darkened sky, and in sympathy with the verse, he slowly and rhythmically clapped his hands, while Karl stood beside him with expressionless eyes and struggled with the difficult poem.
The more Karl’s English improved, the more inclined the uncle was to introduce him to his circle of acquaintances, decreeing that his English teacher should always accompany Karl. The very first acquaintance to whom Karl was introduced was a slim young man of astounding suppleness, whom the uncle ushered into Karl’s room with a whole shower of compliments. He was obviously one of those millionaire’s sons who from their parents’ point of view have gone wrong, and whose life was such that no normal person could have followed so much as a single day of it without pain. As though in recognition of this, there was about his lips and eyes a continual smile for the good fortune that seemed to have been granted to him, to those he met and indeed to the whole world.
The young man, one Mr Mak, suggested, with the uncle’s express approval, that they go out riding together at half past five in the morning, either in a riding school, or in the open air. Karl was a little loath to agree to this as he had never in his life sat on a horse, and wanted to learn to ride a little first, but in the face of the urgings of his uncle and Mack, both of whom said it was just for pleasure and a healthy
form of exercise, nothing artistic, he finally agreed. It meant, unfortunately, that he had to get out of bed by half past four, and he often regretted that, because he seemed to be afflicted by a veritable sleeping sickness here, probably a consequence of having to be on his toes all day – but once in his bathroom, he quickly got over his regret. The sieve of a shower extended over the whole length and breadth of the bathtub – which of his former schoolmates, however rich, had anything like that, still less all to himself – and Karl would lie stretched out, he could even spread his arms in the tub, and let streams of warm, hot, warm and finally ice-cold water descend on him, all or part, just as he liked. As he lay there in a kind of half-sleep, what he liked best was to feel the last few drops falling on his closed eyelids, and then open them, and let the water run down his face.
Waiting for him at the riding school, where the lofty automobile of his uncle dropped him, would be his English teacher, while Mak invariably only turned up later. He could afford to, because the truly animated riding would only begin once he was there. Didn’t the horses leap out of their doze on his entry, didn’t the whip crack more percussively through the arena, while the surrounding gallery was suddenly populated by various spectators, grooms, riding pupils, or whoever they were? Karl used the time before Mack’s arrival for some very basic riding exercises. There was a long tall man who could reach the highest horseback almost without raising his arm, and he always gave Karl that fifteen-minute preparation. Karl was not overly successful with him, a pretext for learning English lamentations, which he kept uttering in a breathless way during this tuition to his English teacher, who was always leaning on the same doorpost, generally dog-tired. But almost all his frustration with riding would disappear when Mak arrived. The tall man was dismissed, and soon nothing would be heard in the still half-dark hall except the sound of galloping horses, and little was seen except Mak’s raised arm as he gave Karl some order. After a delightful half an hour of this had passed almost like sleep they called a halt, Mak was in a tearing rush, he said goodbye to Karl patting him on the cheek if he were particularly pleased with his performance, and disappeared, in too much of a hurry even to go out through the door with Karl. Karl then took the teacher in his car, and they drove to their English lesson, usually by some roundabout way, because the big street, which actually led straight from the uncle’s house to the riding school, was so choked with traffic that they would have lost too much time. He didn’t have the company of the English teacher for very much longer, because Karl reproached himself for dragging the tired man along to riding school to no purpose, as the English communication with Mak was on a very simple level, and so he asked his uncle to relieve the teacher of this duty. After some thought, the uncle agreed.