by Franz Kafka
‘Didn’t I tell you what you had to do,’ said Brunelda, ‘hurry up. I’m tired,’ she added, and stretched her arms up in the air, so that her breasts arced even more pronouncedly than they did otherwise. Delamarche, who was still holding her in his embrace, pulled her across to a corner of the balcony. Robinson went after them, to remove the last traces of his meal, which he had left there.
Karl had to make the most of this favourable opportunity, this was not the time to go on looking down, he would see enough of the goings-on in the street when he got there himself, far more than from up here. In a couple of bounds he hurried through the reddish illuminated room, but the door was locked and the key had been removed. That had to be found now, but how could anyone find a key in all this mess, still less in whatever precious little time Karl had at his disposal. He should have been on the stairs by now, running for all he was worth. But instead he was looking for the key! He looked in all the drawers he could find, rummaged around on the table where various items of cutlery, napkins and a half-completed piece of embroidery were all lying around, was attracted by an easy chair on which was a balled-up pile of old clothes, where the key might perhaps be lurking, but could never be found, finally throwing himself on the sofa – which did indeed have an awful smell – to grope in all its corners and crannies for the key. Then he stopped his search and stood still in the middle of the room. Brunelda must have the key attached to her belt, he told himself, she had so many things hanging there, all his searching was in vain.
And blindly Karl grabbed a couple of knives and pushed them in between the two wings of the door, one at the top, one at the bottom, so that he might have two separate points of attack. No sooner had he begun to lever on the knives, than of course their blades snapped off. He could have wished for nothing better, their stumps, which he would be able to drive in deeper, would hold more securely. And then with all his strength he pulled, arms and legs wide apart, groaning and watching the door like a hawk. It wouldn’t be able to withstand him forever, he realized that with delight from the audible loosening of the lock, but the more slowly it happened, the better for him, the lock mustn’t burst open, because then they would hear it from the balcony, rather he had to loosen the lock very slowly, and Karl was working towards that end with immense care, his eyes closer and closer to the lock.
‘Will you look at that,’ he heard the voice of Delamarche saying. All three of them were in the room, the curtains had been drawn behind them already, Karl must have failed to hear them come in, and at the sight his hands let go of the knives. He had no time to offer a word of explanation or apology, because in a fit of rage that went far beyond the immediate situation, Delamarche – his loose dressing-gown cord describing a great arc in the air – flew at Karl. Karl was able to get out of the way of the attack at the last moment, he might have pulled the knives out of the door, but he didn’t, instead crouching and leaping up in the air, he snatched the broad collar of Delamarche’s dressing-gown, pulled it up and then pulled it higher – the dressing-gown was far too big for Delamarche after all – and now happily he had Delamarche’s head in his grip, who, completely taken by surprise, first groped about blindly with his hands, and after a little while but still not very effectively began to batter Karl’s back with his fists, who, to protect his face, had thrown himself at Delamarche’s chest. Karl could stand the buffeting, though he was squirming with pain, and the blows were getting stronger all the time, but then how could he not have done, he had victory in his sights. With his hands on Delamarche’s head, his thumbs probably directly over his eyes, he pulled him along in front of him into the worst of the furniture chaos, at the same time trying with his feet to loop the dressing cord round Delamarche’s ankles, and so bring him to a fall.
Thus entirely preoccupied with Delamarche, especially as he could feel his resistance growing stronger by the minute, felt his sinewy enemy body pressing against his more powerfully all the time, he quite forgot he wasn’t alone with Delamarche. But all too soon he was reminded of the fact, because all at once he felt his feet going from under him, Robinson, throwing himself to the ground behind him, was pushing them apart and shouting. With a sigh, Karl let go of Delamarche, who took a further step back, Brunelda was standing there, feet apart, knees bent, in all her breadth in the middle of the room, observing the goings-on with shining eyes. As though participating in the fight herself, she was panting, moving her fists and glowering. Delamarche folded his collar down, now he could see again, and now the fight as such was over, and what followed was merely punishment. He grabbed Karl by his shirt front, almost lifted him off his feet, and hurled him, not even deigning to look at him as he did, with such force against a cupboard just a couple of paces away, that at first Karl thought that the piercing pains in his head and back from his impact against the closet were caused directly by Delamarche’s hand. ‘You rotter!’ he heard Delamarche call out as it grew dark in front of his eyes. And collapsing in exhaustion in front of the closet he heard the words ‘just you wait’ like a distant echo in his ears.
When he regained consciousness, everything was in darkness, it was probably deep in the night, from the balcony a pale glimmer of moonlight crept into the room under the curtain. You could hear the calm breathing of the three sleepers, the loudest of whom by far was Brunelda, she snorted in her sleep, as she did occasionally while speaking; but it wasn’t easy to tell where each of the three was, as the whole room was filled with the sounds of their breathing. Only after examining his surroundings a little did Karl think of himself, and then he got a great shock, because though he felt quite crooked and stiff with pain, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might have sustained a serious and bloody injury. But now he had the feeling of a weight on his head, and his whole face, his throat, his chest under his shirt felt moist with blood. He had to get to the light, to find out the extent of his injuries, perhaps he had been crippled for life, then Delamarche would probably let him go, but what would he do, there were really no prospects for him then. The fellow in the gateway with the chewed-up nose came to mind, and for a moment he buried his face in his hands.
Automatically he first turned towards the door, and groped his way there on all fours. Before long, he came upon a boot with his fingertips, and then a leg. That had to be Robinson, who else would sleep in his boots? He had been ordered to lie across the doorway to prevent Karl from escaping. But did they not know what condition he was in? What he wanted now wasn’t to escape, but to get at the light. If he couldn’t get out by the door, he would have to go out on the balcony.
The dining-table was obviously somewhere completely different from where it had been in the evening, the sofa, which Karl of course approached with extreme caution was surprisingly enough unoccupied, but instead, in the middle of the room he encountered a high pile of albeit crushed clothes, blankets, curtains, pillows and rugs. To begin with he thought it was just a little pile like the one he had found on the sofa in the evening, and that had maybe rolled down on to the floor, but to his amazement, as he crept on, he realized it was a whole cartload of such stuff that had probably been taken out of the boxes for the night, where it was kept in the daytime. He crawled round the pile and soon recognized that the whole thing was a kind of bed, high on top of which, as his most cautious probing told him, Delamarche and Brunelda were resting.
So now he knew where everyone was sleeping, and he made haste to get out on the balcony. It was a completely different world in which, once past the curtain, he quickly got to his feet. In the cool night air, by the full light of the moon, he paced up and down the balcony a few times. He looked down at the street, it was completely quiet, music still sounded from the bar, but only quietly, outside the door a man was sweeping the pavement, in the street where in the evening amidst the confused general babble the shouting of an election candidate couldn’t be told from a thousand other voices, you could now hear the scratching of a broom on the paving stones.
The sound of a table being moved on t
he neighbouring balcony alerted Karl to the fact that there was someone sitting there, studying. It was a young man with a goatee beard which he kept twirling as he read, with rapid lip movements. He sat, facing Karl, at a small table covered with books, he had taken the lamp off the wall, and jammed it between two large books, and was bathed in its harsh light.
‘Good evening,’ said Karl, thinking he had seen the young man looking across at him.
But he must have been mistaken, because the young man seemed not to have noticed him at all, shielded his eyes with his hand to avoid the glare of the light and see who had suddenly greeted him, and then, still not seeing anything, picked the lamp up to shed a little of its light on the balcony next door.
At length he replied ‘Good evening,’ glowered for an instant, and added: ‘Will that be all?’
‘Am I disturbing you?’ asked Karl.
‘Absolutely, absolutely,’ said the man, returning the lamp to its former spot.
With those words any attempt at contact had been rejected, but still Karl didn’t leave the corner of the balcony nearest to the man. He looked silently across as the man read his book, turned the pages, occasionally looked something up in another book which he always took down with lightning speed, and several times jotted something down in a notebook, bending surprisingly low over it as he did.
Could this man be a student? He gave every appearance of studying. In much the same way – a long time ago now – Karl had sat at the table in his parents’ home, doing his homework, while his father read the paper or did the bookkeeping and correspondence for a club, and his mother busied herself with some sewing, pulling the thread high up into the air. In order not to impede his father, Karl kept only his notebook and his pens on the table, and his other books on chairs to either side of him. How quiet it had been there! How rarely strangers had set foot in that room! Even as a little boy, Karl had always liked it in the evening when his mother locked the front door with her key. What would she say if she knew that her Karl was now reduced to trying to prise open strange doors with knives.
And what had been the point of all his studying! He had forgotten everything; if he’d had to take up his studies again here, he would have found it very hard. He remembered how once he had been ill at home for a month – and how hard it had been then to make up for the lost time. And now, apart from his English business correspondence textbook, it was such a long time since he’d read a book.
‘You, young man,’ Karl suddenly heard himself being addressed, ‘couldn’t you go somewhere else? You’re bothering me no end, the way you’re standing and staring at me. It’s two in the morning: surely it’s not too much to ask, to be allowed to study in peace on my own balcony. Is there something you want from me?’
‘You’re studying?’ asked Karl.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the man, and used these few moments that were lost for studying to rearrange his books.
‘Then I won’t trouble you,’ said Karl. ‘I was going to go back inside anyway. Good night.’
The man didn’t even reply, with a sudden resolve after the removal of the distraction, he had returned to his studies, and propped his forehead on his right hand.
Then, just by the curtain, Karl remembered why he had come outside in the first place, he didn’t even know yet about his state of health. What was it pressing down on his head? He put up his hand, and was surprised, there was no bloody wound as he had feared in the dark room, it was nothing more than a still damp turban-like bandage. To judge from the odd scraps of lace still dangling from it, it must have been torn from some old undergarment of Brunelda’s, that Robinson had quickly wound round Karl’s head. Only he’d forgotten to wring it dry, and so, while Karl had lain unconscious, all the water had run down his face and under his shirt, and so given Karl such a fright.
‘You’re not still there?’ asked the man, blinking at him.
‘I’m just on my way,’ said Karl, ‘I just wanted to look at something, it’s pitch dark in the room.’
‘Who are you anyway?’ said the man, and laid his pen down on his open book, and walked up to the railing. ‘What’s your name? How did you come to be with those people? Have you been here long? What did you want to look at? Turn your lamp on, so that I can have a look at you.’
Karl did so, but before he replied, he pulled the curtain across a little more, so that they wouldn’t notice anything indoors. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in a whisper, ‘for talking so quietly. If they hear me in there, I’ll be in trouble again.’
‘Again?’ asked the man.
‘Yes,’ said Karl, ‘earlier this evening I had a great fight with them. I must have a terrible bump there.’ And he felt the back of his head.
‘What kind of argument?’ asked the man, and, as Karl didn’t answer immediately he added, ‘It’s all right, you can tell me everything you have against those people. I hate all three of them, and especially your Señora. I would be surprised if they hadn’t already tried to poison you against me. My name’s Josef Mendel, and I’m a student.’
‘Yes,’ said Karl, ‘they did talk about you, but nothing bad. It was you who treated Miss Brunelda once, isn’t that so?’
‘That’s right,’ said the student, with a laugh, ‘does the sofa still smell of it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Karl.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said the student, and ran his hand through his hair. ‘And why are they taking lumps out of you?’
‘There was an argument,’ said Karl, thinking about how he could explain it to the student. But then he interrupted himself, and said: ‘Are you sure I’m not bothering you?’
‘In the first place,’ said the student, ‘you’ve already bothered me, and unfortunately I’m so nervous that it takes me a long time to get back into it. I haven’t done a stroke of work since you’ve started strolling about on your balcony. Secondly, I always have a break at about three o’clock. So go on, tell me about it. I’m interested.’
‘It’s very straightforward,’ said Karl, ‘Delamarche wants me to be his servant. But I don’t want to. I wanted to leave right away last night. But he didn’t want to let me go, and locked the door, I tried to break it open, and then we had our fight. I’m sorry I’m still here.’
‘Have you another job to go to?’ asked the student.
‘No,’ said Karl, ‘but I don’t care about that, so long as I can get away from here.’
‘Well now,’ said the student, ‘you don’t care about that?’ And they were both silent for a while.
‘Why don’t you want to stay with those people?’ the student finally asked.
‘Delamarche is a bad lot,’ said Karl, ‘I’ve had dealings with him before. Once I walked with him for a day, and I was glad when we parted company. And now I’m to be his servant?’
‘If all servants were as pernickety as you are when it comes to choosing a master!’ said the student, seemingly amused. ‘You see, in the daytime, I’m a salesman, the lowest grade of salesman, more of an errand-boy really, in Monthly’s department store. That Monthly is most certainly a crook, but I’m not bothered about that, I’m just furious I’m paid so badly. So take an example from me.’
‘What?’ said Karl, ‘you’re a salesman in the daytime, and you study at night?’
‘Yes,’ said the student, ‘it’s the only way. I’ve tried everything, but this way is still the best. Years ago I was only a student, day and night you know, and I almost starved doing it, I slept in a pigsty, and I didn’t dare enter the lecture halls in the suit I was wearing. But that’s over.’
‘So when do you sleep?’ asked Karl, and looked at the student in astonishment.
‘Aye, aye, sleep!’ said the student, ‘I’ll sleep when I’ve finished my studies. For now I drink black coffee.’ And he turned round, pulled out a large flask from under his studying table, poured some black coffee from it into a little cup, and knocked it back, as you swallow medicine as quickly as possible, to get the least taste of it.
‘Wonderful stuff, black coffee,’ said the student, ‘I’m sorry you’re so far away that I can’t give you some to try.’
‘I don’t like black coffee,’ said Karl.
‘Nor do I,’ said the student and laughed. ‘But where would I be without it. Without black coffee, I wouldn’t last five minutes with Monthly. I keep saying Monthly, even though he wouldn’t know me from Adam. I can’t positively say how I would fare at work if I didn’t keep a flask of coffee just as big as this one ready prepared at my desk, because I’ve never yet dared to stop drinking coffee, but believe me, I’d soon be curled up on my desk, asleep. Unfortunately they half suspect that anyway, they call me “Black coffee”, which is a stupid joke, and has I’m sure already damaged my career prospects there.’
‘And when will you be finished with studying?’ asked Karl.
‘It’s going very slowly,’ said the student with lowered head. He left the railing and sat down at the table again; with his elbows resting on his open book, running his hands through his hair he said: ‘It could take another year or two.’
‘I wanted to study too,’ said Karl, as though that fact entitled him to more confidence than the now more taciturn student had already shown him.