Amerika

by Franz Kafka

  ‘I am glad you decided to come after all,’ said the Head Cook. ‘What about your companions?’ ‘I didn’t bring them,’ said Karl. ‘They probably have to make a very early start,’ said the Head Cook, as though to explain it to herself. ‘Won’t she suppose that I’ll be setting off with them?’ Karl wondered, and therefore, to settle any doubts, he added: ‘We had a falling out.’ The Head Cook seemed to treat this as good news. ‘So you’re at liberty?’ she asked. ‘Yes, I’m at liberty,’ said Karl, and it seemed the most worthless condition. ‘Listen, wouldn’t you like to get a job here in the hotel?’ asked the Head Cook. ‘Very much,’ said Karl, ‘but I am shockingly unqualified. I don’t even know how to type, for example.’ ‘That’s not the point,’ said the Head Cook. ‘For the time being you would start off in a very small job, and then it will be up to you to try and work your way up by industry and application. To say the least, though, I think it would be better for you to settle somewhere than to go tramping through the world. You don’t seem to me to be cut out for that.’ ‘My uncle would agree with that,’ Karl said to himself, and he nodded his consent. At the same time, he remembered that he – the object of such concern – had yet to introduce himself. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘I haven’t introduced myself, my name is Karl Rossmann.’ ‘You’re German, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ said Karl, ‘I’ve only been in America for a little while.’ ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘From Prague in Bohemia,’ said Karl. ‘Well I never,’ exclaimed the Head Cook in German with a very strong English accent, and almost threw up her arms, ‘then we’re compatriots, my name is Grete Mitzelbach, and I come from Vienna. I know Prague extremely well, for half a year I worked at the Golden Goose on Wenceslas Square. Just imagine!’ ‘When was that?’ asked Karl. ‘It’s many, many years ago now.’ ‘Because the old Golden Goose,’ said Karl, ‘was torn down two years ago.’ ‘Oh really,’ said the Head Cook, lost in memories of bygone times.

  Then suddenly becoming animated again, she seized Karl’s hands and cried: ‘Now that it has emerged that you are my fellow countryman, you mustn’t leave here at any price. I won’t let you do that to me. How would you like to be lift-boy, for example? You only have to say the word. If you’ve been around a bit, you will know that it’s not particularly easy to get jobs like that, because they are really the best openings imaginable. You get to meet all the guests, you’re always on view, you keep getting little jobs to do, in short, every day you get a chance to better your status. Leave all the rest to me!’ ‘I wouldn’t mind being a lift-boy,’ said Karl, after a short pause. It would have been very foolish of him to hold out against the job of lift-boy on the strength of his five years in secondary school. Here in America it would be more appropriate to be ashamed of those five years of school. And in point of fact, Karl had always liked lift-boys, he thought of them as an ornament of hotels. ‘Don’t you need languages?’ he asked. ‘You speak German and good English, that’s perfectly adequate.’ ‘But all my English I’ve learned in just two and a half months in America,’ said Karl, thinking he shouldn’t hide his one light under a bushel. ‘That says everything about you,’ said the Head Cook. ‘When I think of the trouble I had learning English. Admittedly that was thirty years ago now. I was talking about it only yesterday. Yesterday was my fiftieth birthday.’ And with a smile she turned to see what impression such a great age made on Karl. ‘I wish you many happy returns,’ said Karl. ‘That would always come in useful,’ she said, shook Karl’s hand, and was once again half melancholy at the old phrase from home, which had come to her as she spoke German.

  ‘But you mustn’t let me detain you,’ she cried. ‘I expect you’re very tired, and we can talk about everything much better in the daytime. My delight at meeting a fellow countryman has made me quite inconsiderate. Come on, I’ll take you to your room.’ ‘I have another favour I’d like to ask you, cook,’ said Karl, looking at the telephone apparatus on the table. ‘It is possible that tomorrow, perhaps very early, my former companions may bring in a photograph that I need urgently. Would you be so kind and telephone the porter to send them up to me, or have me brought down to them.’ ‘Of course,’ said the Head Cook, ‘but wouldn’t it do if he just took receipt of the photograph? What is the photograph of, if I may ask?’ ‘It’s a photograph of my parents,’ said Karl, ‘but no, I need to talk to them myself. The cook made no reply, and telephoned the porter’s lodge with the instructions, giving Karl’s room number as 536.

  They went out through a door opposite the one he had come in at, on to a little passage where a little lift-boy was asleep on his feet, leaning against the railing of a lift. ‘We can help ourselves,’ said the cook quietly, and ushered Karl into the lift. ‘A ten or twelve hour day is just a bit much for a boy like that,’ she said, as they rode up. ‘But America’s odd like that. Take that little boy, for instance, he only arrived here with his parents six months ago, he’s Italian. At the moment, it looks as though he couldn’t possibly stand up to his work, his face is gaunt, he falls asleep on his shift, even though he’s a very willing lad by nature – but give him another six months of working here or somewhere else in America, and he’ll take it with ease, and in five years’ time he’ll be a strong man. I could regale you for hours with cases like that. I’m not even considering you, because you’re a strong lad. You’re seventeen, aren’t you?’ ‘Sixteen next month,’ replied Karl. ‘Only sixteen!’ said the cook. ‘Well, courage!’

  Upstairs, she took Karl to an attic room with a sloping ceiling that looked very cosy in the light of two electric lamps. ‘Don’t be put off by the furnishings,’ said the cook, ‘it’s not a regular hotel room, but one of the rooms in my apartment, which consists of three rooms, so you won’t be bothering me in the least. I’ll lock the connecting door, so you’ll have absolute privacy. When you join the hotel staff tomorrow you will of course be given a little room of your own. If you had brought your companions, I would have had beds made up for all of you in the staff dormitory, but as you’ve come on your own, I think you will be better off here, even though you’ll be sleeping on the sofa. And now I hope you sleep well, so you’ll be refreshed for work tomorrow. It won’t be too tough to begin with.’ ‘Thank you for all your kindness.’ ‘Wait,’ she said, stopping on her way out, ‘you would almost have been woken up.’ And she went over to one of the side doors of the room, knocked and called: ‘Therese!’ ‘Yes, Head Cook,’ the voice of the little typist replied. ‘When you come to wake me tomorrow morning, will you go via the corridor, I have a guest sleeping in this room. He’s terribly tired.’ She smiled at Karl as she said this. ‘Do you understand?’ ‘Yes, Head Cook’. ‘Good night, then!’ ‘Good night.’

  ‘You see,’ said the Head Cook, by way of explanation, ‘for the past few years I’ve been sleeping extremely badly. I am happy in my job, and don’t really have anything to worry about. So my sleeplessness must be caused by the worries I had earlier. I count myself lucky if I fall asleep by three in the morning. But seeing as I need to be back on the job by five or half past at the latest, I have to be woken up, and very carefully at that, so that I don’t become even more nervous than I am already. And so I have Therese wake me. But now you’re fully informed, and I’m holding you up. Goodnight!’ And in spite of her bulk, she positively skipped out of the room.

  Karl was looking forward to his sleep, because it had been a long day. And he couldn’t wish for any cosier place in which to have a long and untroubled sleep. His room wasn’t intended as a bedroom, it was more of a living-room, or really a salon for the Head Cook, and a washstand had kindly been provided especially for that one evening but in spite of that, Karl didn’t feel like an intruder, but all the better cared for. His suitcase was in order, and it probably hadn’t been so secure for some time. There was a low chest of drawers with a loosely woven woollen rug thrown over it, with various framed photographs standing on it, Karl stopped to study them as he was inspecting the room. For the most part they were old photographs, and they were
mainly of girls in uncomfortable old-fashioned clothes, with little hats perched on their heads, their right hands resting on parasols, facing the viewer but still somehow avoiding his glance. Among the male portraits, Karl was particularly struck by the picture of a young soldier who had set his cap down on a little table, standing there stiffly with his wild black hair, and a proud and repressed humour. The buttons on his uniform had been retouched in gold on the photograph. All these pictures probably came from Europe, you could probably read on the back just where, but Karl didn’t want to pick them up. He would have liked to display the picture of his parents in his own room in just the same way as these photographs were displayed here.

  He was just stretching out on the sofa, looking forward to his sleep after thoroughly washing himself all over, as quietly as possible on account of his neighbour, when he thought he heard a quiet knocking on the door. He wasn’t quite sure which door it was, and it might also have been just a noise. There was no immediate repetition of it, and Karl was on the point of sleep when it happened again. This time there could be no question but that it was a knock, coming from the door of the typist’s room. Karl went over to the door on tiptoe and asked, in a voice so quiet that it wouldn’t have woken his neighbour if she had happened to be asleep: ‘What can I do for you?’ Straightaway, and just as quietly, came the reply: ‘Won’t you open the door? The key is on your side.’ ‘Of course,’ said Karl. ‘Just let me get dressed first.’ There was a slight pause, and then: ‘You don’t have to. Open the door and go and lie down in your bed again, I’ll wait a moment.’ ‘Very well,’ said Karl, and did as she suggested, only he turned the electric light on as well. ‘I’m ready,’ he said, a little louder. And at that the little typist emerged from her dark room, wearing exactly the same clothes she had had on downstairs in the office, she probably hadn’t thought about going to bed in all that time.

  ‘Do please excuse me,’ she said, standing at Karl’s bedside, leaning over him a little, ‘and please don’t give me away. I won’t keep you long, I know you’re dead tired.’ ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Karl, ‘but perhaps it would have been better if I had got dressed after all.’ He was forced to lie flat, in order to remain covered up to the neck, as he didn’t have a nightshirt. ‘I’ll just stay for a moment,’ she said, and reached for a chair, ‘or can I sit down on your sofa?’ Karl nodded. And then she sat down on the sofa, so close to him that Karl had to move right back against the wall in order to be able to look up at her. She had a round face, and regular features, only her forehead was unusually high, but that might just be on account of her hairstyle, which didn’t quite suit her. Her dress was very clean and tidy. In her left hand she was squeezing a handkerchief.

  ‘Are you going to be staying here for long?’ she asked. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ replied Karl, ‘but I think I’d like to stay.’ ‘That would be a very good thing,’ she said, and passed her handkerchief over her face, ‘because I’m so lonely here.’ ‘You surprise me,’ said Karl, ‘the Head Cook is very nice to you. She doesn’t treat you like an employee at all. I thought you might be a relation.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘my name is Therese Berchtold, I come from Pomerania.’ Karl introduced himself too. Thereupon for the first time, she looked him full in the face, as though by telling her his name he’d become a little stranger to her. For a while neither spoke. Then she said, ‘You’re not to think of me as ungrateful. But for the Head Cook, I’d be in a far worse position than I am. I used to be a kitchen maid here in the hotel, and I was in grave danger of being sacked, because I couldn’t do the heavy work. They ask an awful lot of you here. Last month a kitchen maid fainted through sheer over exertion, and spent two weeks in hospital. And I’m not very strong, I had a difficult childhood and I’m a bit underdeveloped as a result, you’d never guess I’m eighteen now would you. But I’m getting stronger now.’ ‘The work here must be very demanding,’ said Karl. ‘Just now I saw the lift-boy downstairs asleep on his feet.’ ‘But it’s the lift-boys who have the best of it,’ she said, ‘they get a pretty penny from tips, and don’t need to slave away nearly as much as the people down in the kitchen. But I was really lucky, the Head Cook needed a girl once to fold the napkins for a banquet, and she sent down to the kitchen where there are about fifty of us girls, and I just happened to be available and she was very pleased with me because I’ve always been good at folding napkins. And from that time on she kept me at her side and gradually trained me to be her secretary. I’ve learned a great deal.’ ‘Is there such a lot of writing to do?’ asked Karl. ‘Oh, a great deal,’ she replied, ‘you probably can’t imagine it. You saw how I was working up until half past eleven, and today’s just an ordinary day. Admittedly I don’t spend all my time writing, I also have a lot of errands to run in the town.’ ‘What town is that?’ asked Karl. ‘Don’t you know?’ she said, ‘Ramses.’ ‘Is it a big town?’ asked Karl. ‘Very big,’ she replied, ‘I don’t like going there. But are you sure you don’t want to sleep now?’ ‘No, no,’ said Karl. ‘You haven’t told me why you came in yet.’ ‘It’s because I don’t have anyone to talk to. I don’t feel sorry for myself, but if you don’t have anyone, it makes you happy to find someone who will listen to you. I saw you when you were in the dining-room downstairs, I was just on my way to collect the Head Cook, when she led you off to the storerooms.’ ‘That dining-room is an awful place,’ said Karl. ‘I hardly notice it any more,’ she replied. ‘But I wanted to say that the Head Cook is as good to me as my dear departed mother. Only the difference between our ranks is too great for me to be able to talk to her freely. I used to have some good friends among the kitchen maids, but they’ve all moved on, and I don’t really know the new girls. Sometimes I think my new job is even more demanding than my old one, and I’m even less up to it, and that the Head Cook only keeps me in it because she feels sorry for me. You really need a better education than mine to be a secretary. It’s a sin to say so, but very often I’m afraid I may go mad. For God’s sake,’ she suddenly said much faster, and clutched Karl’s shoulder, as his hands were under the bedclothes, ‘you mustn’t breathe a word of this to the Head Cook, because otherwise I really would be done for. It would be unpardonable if, on top of the dissatisfaction she must feel with my work, I were to hurt her feelings as well.’ ‘You may rest assured that I won’t say anything to her,’ replied Karl. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘and I hope you do stay. I’d be pleased if you stayed, and if you like, we could be friends. The first time I saw you, I felt I could trust you. But at the same time – honestly, this is how bad I am – I was afraid that the Head Cook might make you her secretary in my stead, and get rid of me. Only when I was alone for a long time when you were downstairs in the office, I thought it over, and it seemed to me it would be just as well if you did take my job, because you’d be much better at it than I am. If you didn’t want to run errands in the city, I could go on doing those. Apart from that I’m sure I’d be far more useful in the kitchen, especially as I’m a bit stronger now.’ ‘The matter’s taken care of,’ said Karl, ‘I’m going to be a lift-boy, and you’ll go on being a secretary. But if you so much as hint of your plans to the cook, then I will go and tell her all that you’ve told me today, even though it would make me very upset.’ Therese was so shaken by his tone that she threw herself down on his bed, pressed her face against the sheets and sobbed. ‘I won’t give anything away,’ said Karl, ‘but you’re not to say anything either.’ Now he couldn’t remain completely hidden under the bedclothes any more, he stroked her arm a little, and could think of nothing comforting he could say to her, and only thought how bitter life here must be. Eventually she calmed down enough to be ashamed of her tears, and she looked gratefully at Karl, told him to sleep in tomorrow morning, and promised him, if she got a chance, to come up at around eight and wake him. ‘You’re famous for waking people up, I’ve heard,’ said Karl. ‘Yes, there are one or two things I’m good at,’ she said, ran her hand gently over the blanket in farewell, and scurried back to h
er room.

  The next day Karl insisted on beginning work right away, even though the Head Cook wanted to give him the day off for sightseeing in Ramses. But Karl replied frankly that there would be opportunities for that later, and the most important thing for him now was to start work, because he had already once had to break off a career in Europe without anything to show for it, and he was starting as a lift-boy at an age in which the more advanced boys at any rate were almost ready to move on to better jobs. It was perfectly right and proper that he should be starting off as lift-boy, but by the same token he was in a hurry. Under the circumstances, sightseeing in the city would be no pleasure to him at all. He wasn’t even prepared to go for a short walk with Therese. Always at the back of his mind was the thought that, if he didn’t apply himself, he might finish up like Delamarche and Robinson.

  At the hotel tailor’s, he tried on the lift-boy’s livery, which looked very splendid, with gold braid and gilt buttons, but Karl shuddered a little as he put it on, because the little jacket was cold and stiff and at the same time chronically damp under the arms from the sweat of the lift-boy who had worn it before him. The uniform had to be altered for Karl, particularly across the chest, because not one of the ten available jackets was anything like wide enough. In spite of the sewing that was necessary – and the tailor seemed very pernickety, twice sending the finished article back to the workshop – it all took barely five minutes, and Karl left the workshop already looking like a lift-boy, dressed in tight trousers, and, the tailor’s firm assurances to the contrary, a constricting little jacket, which kept making Karl do breathing exercises as he wanted to ascertain whether it was possible to breathe in it at all.

  Then he reported to the Head Waiter under whom he was to serve, a slim, handsome man with a big nose, who was probably already in his forties. He had no time for any conversation whatsoever, and merely rang for a lift-boy, it happened to be the very one Karl had seen the day before. The Head Waiter called him by his christian name, Giacomo, as Karl only learned later, because the name in its English pronunciation was unrecognizable. That boy was given the task of showing Karl the essentials of lift work but he was so bashful and so hasty, that, though there was little to learn, Karl didn’t even learn that. Giacomo was probably annoyed besides at having to leave the lift service to make way for Karl, and to be assigned to helping the chambermaids, which seemed to him, on the basis of some experiences he didn’t care to divulge, dishonourable. It came as a particular disappointment to Karl that the lift-boy’s only contact with the machinery was the simple pressing of a button, whereas for any repairs to the mechanism, the hotel’s team of engineers were exclusively responsible, so that Giacomo for instance, after six months on the lifts, had not seen the motor in the basement or the machinery inside the lift with his own eyes, even though he would have liked to very much, as he stressed. All in all the work was monotonous, and because of the twelve-hour shifts that alternated between day and night, it was so exhausting that according to Giacomo’s reports it was completely unendurable without the odd catnap on one’s feet. Karl said nothing to this, but it was clear to him that it was this skill of Giacomo’s that had cost him his job.