Amerika

by Franz Kafka

  Soon, though, Karl had no more hope of getting help from the lobby, for the Head Porter pulled a string and instantly half the porter’s lodge was screened right to the very top by black curtains. There were people in this part of the porter’s lodge too, but they were all hard at work, and had no eyes or ears for anything that wasn’t to do with their work. Besides, they were completely dependent upon the Head Porter, and, sooner than helping Karl, they would rather have helped to conceal whatever it was the Head Porter might have it in mind to do to him. For instance there were six under-porters manning six telephones. The principle, you could see at a glance, was that one would jot down conversations, while from his notes, the man next to him would pass on the orders by telephone. They were the very latest type of telephone that needed no telephone cubicles, for the ringing was no louder than a cheep, you could whisper into the mouthpiece, and, thanks to special electrical amplification, your words would boom out at the other end. And so one could barely hear the three speakers on their telephones, and might have supposed they were murmuringly observing some process in the telephone mouthpiece, while the other three drooped their heads over the paper it was their job to cover, as though stunned by the deafening volume in their ears that was inaudible to everyone else in the room. Once again there was a boy standing by each of the three speakers; these three boys did nothing but crane their necks to listen to their masters, and then hurriedly, as though stung, look up telephone numbers in enormous yellow books – the rustling of the volumes of paper easily drowning out all the noise of the telephones.

  Karl simply couldn’t resist observing it all closely, even though the Head Porter had sat down, holding him in front of him in a kind of embrace. ‘It is my duty,’ said the Head Porter, and shook Karl, as though to get him to face him, ‘in the name of hotel management, at least to some extent, to catch up on what the Head Waiter, for whatever reason, has failed to do. We always stand in for each other here. Otherwise such a great enterprise would be impossible. You may say that I’m not your immediate superior, but that only makes it more creditable of me to interest myself in this otherwise neglected business. Besides, as Head Porter, I am in a certain sense put in charge of everything, because I am in charge of all the hotel entrances, this main entrance here, the three central and ten side entrances, not to mention the innumerable little doors and other exits. Of course all the service teams concerned have a duty of unconditional obedience to me. In return for these signal honours, I am charged by the management not to let anyone out who is in the slightest degree suspicious to me. You, I would say, are strongly suspicious.’ And delighted with that he lifted his hands off Karl and let them fall again, which made a smacking noise and hurt. ‘It is possible’, he went on, enjoying himself hugely, ‘that you might have managed to slip out unobserved at one of the other gates, because it’s not worth my while issuing special instructions just for you. But seeing as you’re here now, I’d like to make the most of you. In fact I never had any doubt in my mind that you would keep our appointment at the main entrance, because it is a rule that a cheeky and insubordinate party will only forsake his vices where it will do him the most damage. You will be able to observe this in yourself many times yet.’

  ‘Don’t imagine,’ said Karl, and breathed in the strangely musty smell that emanated from the Head Porter, and only noticed for the first time now that he had been standing so close to him for so long, ‘don’t imagine’, he said, ‘that I am completely in your power, I can scream.’ ‘And I can gag you,’ said the Head Porter, as calmly and quietly as he would gag him, if it ever came to that. ‘And do you really think, if anyone should come in on your account, that he would back your version against the Head Porter’s. You must concede your hopes are nonsensical. You know, when you were still in uniform, you had something vaguely impressive about you, but in this suit, which has Europe written all over it.’ And he tugged at various bits of the suit, which indeed, although it had been almost new five months ago, was now worn, creased, and above all stained, which was largely to be attributed to the ruthlessness of the lift-boys, who every day, under instruction to keep the floor of the dormitory clean and free of dust, undertook no proper cleaning out of laziness, but merely squirted a kind of oil over the floor, which did terrible damage to all the clothes in the clothes stands. You could keep your clothes wherever you liked, there would always be someone who happened not to have his own to hand, but was easily able to find those that someone else had hidden, and borrow them for himself. And he might be one of the very ones who had to clean the room that day, and so the clothes wouldn’t just get the odd squirt of oil on them, but a veritable dunking from top to bottom. Only Renell had managed to keep his exquisite wardrobe in some secret place where hardly anyone had managed to find them, especially as it appeared people didn’t borrow out of malice or greed, but just helped themselves from haste and negligence. But even Renell’s jacket had a perfectly round reddish oil stain in the middle of the back, by which an expert in the town might have identified even that elegant young man as a lift-boy.

  Remembering all this, Karl told himself he had suffered enough as a lift-boy, and it had still all been in vain, because his lift-boy work hadn’t, as he’d hoped, turned out to be a prelude to some higher position, rather he had been pushed out of it into something still lower, and was even very close to going to prison. On top of that he was in the grip of the Head Porter, who was probably thinking how he might further humiliate Karl. And completely forgetting that the Head Porter was certainly not a man who was open to persuasion, Karl shouted, hitting his brow with his momentarily relinquished hand as he did: ‘And if I really did forget to greet you, how can a grown man get so vengeful over an omitted greeting!’

  ‘I’m not vengeful,’ said the Head Porter. ‘I just want to look through your pockets. Of course I won’t find anything in them, because I am sure you will have taken the precaution of letting your friend remove a little every day. But searched you must be.’ And he reached into Karl’s jacket pocket with such force that the stitching split at the side. ‘Well, nothing there,’ he said, as he picked over the contents of the pocket in his hand, a calendar advertising the hotel, a sheet of paper with an exercise in business correspondence on it, a few jacket and trouser buttons, the Head Cook’s visiting card, a nail-file that a guest had tossed him while packing his suitcase, an old pocket mirror that Renell had given him in return for the dozen or so times he’d stood in for him, and a few more bits and pieces besides. ‘Nothing there,’ repeated the Head Porter, and threw everything under the seat, as though it were self-evident that any property of Karl’s that hadn’t been stolen belonged there. ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Karl to himself – his face must be scarlet – and when the Head Porter, incautious in his greed, started digging around in Karl’s other pocket, Karl quickly slid out of his sleeves, leaped aside, knocking an under-porter quite hard against his telephone, ran rather more slowly through the humid air than he’d meant to, to the door, but was happily outside before the Head Porter had even been able to pick himself up in his heavy coat. The organization of the hotel security couldn’t have been that exemplary after all, he heard bells ringing from several quarters, but God knows what they were ringing for, hotel employees were swarming around the entrance in such numbers that one could almost imagine they were unobtrusively making it impassable, because he really couldn’t see much purpose in all their toing and froing – anyway, Karl quickly got outside, but was then forced to walk along the pavement in front of the hotel, he couldn’t get to the public street, as an unbroken line of cars was driving haltingly past the entrance. These cars, trying to get as quickly as possible to their passengers waiting for them, had practically driven into one another, each one was being pushed along by the one behind. Pedestrians who were in a particular hurry to get to the street did occasionally walk through an individual car here and there, as though it were some public thoroughfare, and they were quite indifferent as to whether the car contained just
chauffeur and servants or the most distinguished people. Such behaviour seemed overdone to Karl, and you probably had to be familiar with the conditions to try it, it would be very easy to try it with a car whose occupants might object, throw him out and cause a scandal, and there was nothing he had to fear more than that as a runaway, suspicious hotel employee in shirtsleeves. After all, this line of cars couldn’t go on for ever, and for as long as he stuck close to the hotel it was actually the least obtrusive place for him. Finally Karl came to a place where the line of cars, though not actually broken, did loosen a little as it converged with the street. He was just about to slip into the traffic, which contained far more suspicious-looking persons than himself, running around without a care in the world, when he heard his name being called. He turned round and saw two lift-boys he knew well, at a low doorway that looked like the entrance to a tomb, with immense effort pulling out a litter, on which, as Karl could now determine, lay Robinson, indeed, head, face and arms all swathed in bandages. It was horrid to see him rubbing at his eyes bringing his arms up to his face in order to wipe away with the bandage the tears he was shedding out of pain or some other suffering, or even possibly joy at seeing Karl once more. ‘Rossmann,’ he called out reproachfully, ‘why have you kept me waiting so long. I’ve spent the last hour trying to keep them from shipping me off before you arrived. These fellows’ – and he nodded in the direction of one of the lift-boys, as though guaranteed immunity by his bandages from further blows – ‘are devils incarnate. Oh Rossmann, how my visit to you has cost me.’ ‘What happened to you?’ asked Karl, and stepped up to the litter which the lift boys laughingly put down for a rest. ‘How can you ask,’ sighed Robinson, ‘just look at me. Consider! In all probability I’ve been crippled for life. I’m in excruciating pain from here to here’ – and he indicated first his head then his toes – ‘I only wish you could have seen my nose bleed. My waistcoat is completely ruined, I had to leave it behind, my trousers are ripped, I’m in my underpants’ – and he raised the blanket a little so that Karl could take a look. ‘What’s going to become of me? I’ll have to spend several months recuperating minimum, and I can tell you this right now, I have no one but you who can look after me, Delamarche is far too impatient. Rossmann, little Rossmann!’ And Robinson stretched out his hand to Karl, who had stepped back a little, to win him over by stroking him. ‘Why did I have to go and visit you!’ he said repeatedly, lest Karl forget his part in his misfortune. Karl recognized at once that Robinson’s lamentations stemmed not from his wounds, but from the incredible hangover he must be suffering, as one who had barely dropped off, heavily drunk, had been awoken straight afterwards, to his amazement beaten to a pulp, and was now completely disorientated in the waking world. The trivial nature of his injuries was already evident from his unsightly bandages of old rags which the lift-boys had completely swaddled him in, evidently for a lark. The two lift-boys at either end of the litter burst out giggling from time to time too. But this wasn’t the place to bring Robinson round, pedestrians rushed past without paying any attention to the little group around the litter, people regularly hurdled athletically over Robinson’s body, the driver paid with Karl’s money was calling: ‘Come on, come on,’ the lift-boys, at the end of their strength, hoisted up the litter once more, Robinson took Karl’s hand and said wheedlingly, ‘Oh come on, come on,’ and wasn’t the darkness of an automobile the best place for Karl in his present predicament? And so he sat down next to Robinson, who rested his head against him, the lift-boys staying behind, heartily shook his hand through the window, as their former colleague, and the car turned sharply into the road, it seemed as though an accident were bound to happen, but then the all-encompassing traffic calmly accommodated the arrowy thrust of their car into itself.

  The automobile came to a stop in what appeared to be a remote suburban street, because all around there was silence, children squatted on the edge of the pavement playing, a man with a lot of old clothes over his shoulders called up watchfully to the windows of the houses, Karl felt uncomfortably tired as he climbed out of the car on to the asphalt, on which the morning sun was shining warmly and brightly. ‘Do you really live here?’ he called into the car. Robinson, having slept peacefully for the whole drive, grunted unclearly in the affirmative, and seemed to be waiting for Karl to lift him out of the car. ‘Well, I’ve done all I need to do here. Goodbye,’ said Karl, and he set off down the street which sloped gently downhill. ‘Karl, what are you doing?’ cried Robinson, and in his alarm practically stood straight up in the car, although his knees were still a little trembly. ‘I have to go,’ said Karl, witnessing the sudden improvement in Robinson’s condition. ‘In your shirtsleeves?’ he asked. ‘I should think I’ll earn enough for a jacket,’ replied Karl, nodded confidently at Robinson, waved goodbye and would really have left him, if the driver hadn’t called: ‘One moment please, sir.’ Unpleasantly, it turned out that the driver was claiming some further payment, because the wait in front of the hotel hadn’t been included. ‘That’s right,’ called Robinson from the car, in corroboration, ‘you kept me waiting for such a long time. You’ll have to give him a bit extra.’ ‘Quite so,’ said the driver. ‘If I had anything,’ said Karl, reaching into his trouser pockets, even though he knew it was pointless. ‘I’m going to have to stick by you,’ said the driver and stood up, feet apart, ‘I can’t expect anything from the invalid in the back.’ A young fellow with a chewed-up nose came over from the doorway and stopped to listen a few feet away. A policeman who was just doing his rounds in the street, took in the shirtsleeved man with lowered gaze, and stopped. Robinson, also spotting the policeman, was foolish enough to call to him out of the other window: ‘It’s nothing, nothing at all,’ as though it were possible to shoo away a policeman like a fly. The children, observing the policeman and seeing him stop, transferred their attention to Karl and the driver, and trotted over to have a look. In the gate opposite stood an old woman, watching stiffly.

  Then a voice from above called out: ‘Rossmann.’ It was Delamarche, calling down from the top-floor balcony. He was hard to make out against the blueish-white sky, but was evidently wearing a dressing-gown, and surveying the street with opera glasses. Next to him was a red parasol under which a woman appeared to be seated. ‘Hallo,’ he cried at the top of his voice, in order to make himself heard, ‘have you brought Robinson?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Karl, powerfully seconded by another, far louder ‘Yes,’ from Robinson in the car. ‘Hallo,’ came the reply, ‘I’m coming down.’ Robinson leaned out of the car. ‘What a man,’ he said, and his praise for Delamarche was directed at Karl, at the driver, at the policeman, and at anyone else who cared to hear it. Up on the balcony, which everyone was still looking up at in distrait fashion, even though Delamarche had already left it, there was indeed a strongly built woman in a red dress under the parasol, who now got up, took the opera glasses off the parapet, and looked through them at the people below, who gradually turned their attention away. In expectation of Delamarche, Karl looked at the gateway and beyond it the yard, which was being crossed by an almost uninterrupted stream of commercial porters, each of whom was carrying on his shoulder a small, but evidently very heavy chest. The chauffeur had gone back to his car, and, making the most of the delay was polishing his lamps with a rag. Robinson palped his limbs, seemingly astonished at the small degree of discomfort he felt, in spite of paying very close attention, and gingerly bending down began to undo one of the thick bandages round his leg. The policeman held his black truncheon horizontally in front of him, and with the great patience required of policemen, whether on normal duty or undercover, waited quietly. The fellow with the chewed-up nose sat down on a bollard by the gate and stretched his legs. The children gradually tiptoed up to Karl, because even though he was paying them no attention, he seemed to them to be the most important of everyone on account of his blue shirtsleeves.

  One gained a sense of the enormous height of the building from the length of time it took for Delamarc
he to appear. And when he did come, it was at a great pace, with his dressing-gown barely done up. ‘So there you are!’ he cried, at once pleased and severe. At each of his long strides, there was a flash of colourful underclothing. Karl didn’t quite understand how Delamarche could walk around here in the city, in the enormous tenement block and on the public street, as comfortably clad as though he were in his private villa. Like Robinson, Delamarche too was greatly changed. His dark, clean-shaven, scrupulously clean face with its raw musculature looked proud and respectable. The harsh glint of his rather narrowed eyes was surprising. His violet dressing-gown was old and stained and rather too big for him, but out of that ugly garment sprouted a mighty dark cravat of heavy silk. ‘Well?’ he inquired, looking round. The policeman advanced a little, and leaned against the car bonnet. Karl gave a little explanation. ‘Robinson is a little decrepit, but if he makes an effort he’ll be able to walk up the stairs all right; the driver here wants a supplement to the fare which I’ve already paid him. And now I’m going. Good day.’ ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Delamarche. ‘That’s what I told him too,’ piped up Robinson from the car. ‘Oh yes I am going,’ said Karl, and began to walk off. But Delamarche was after him already, and held him back forcibly. ‘And I say you’re staying,’ he cried. ‘Leave me alone,’ said Karl, and got ready to fight his way out with his fists if need be, however little prospect of success that might have against a man of Delamarche’s stamp. But there stood the policeman, there was the driver, here and there groups of workers passed through the otherwise peaceful street, would they permit him to be treated unfairly by Delamarche? He wouldn’t like to have been shut up in a room with him, but what about here? Delamarche was now calmly paying off the driver, who, with many bows, pocketed the undeservedly large sum, and out of gratitude went over to Robinson, obviously to advise him on how best to get out of the car. Karl felt unobserved, perhaps Delamarche would be more disposed to accept a quiet departure, if a quarrel could be avoided that would of course be better, and so Karl simply walked out on to the road in order to get away as quickly as he could. The children flocked over to Delamarche to draw his attention to Karl’s flight, but he didn’t even have to intervene in person, because the policeman extended his truncheon and said: ‘Stop!’