Kafka in Love (2 page)

He rises and leaves the room.

“There is nothing more revolting than the telephone ringing,” says Max.

Felice describes the first scene of the operetta she has just seen at the Residenz Theater,
The Auto Sweetheart
.

“The telephone rings fifteen times in a row. Somebody, using the same patter, calls each of the fifteen characters on the stage to the phone, one after another.”

“Luckily, we aren’t so many,” says Max.

Felice continues looking through the photographs, while Franz offers a running commentary.

“Here is Liszt’s house. He only worked, apparently, from five to eight in the morning. Then he went to
church, then back to bed, and at eleven he received visitors. This photograph shows Schiller’s house. The waiting room, the parlor, the study, the sleeping alcoves. Well laid out for a writer’s house.”

Max snatches a picture that Franz was trying to hide.

“Look at this one of Franz swimming. Traveling with him is pure hell. At every town, often after hours of wandering, we would have to find a hotel with no other guests, no dogs nearby, absolute quiet, and within easy distance of a vegetarian restaurant and an outdoor swimming pool. If he doesn’t swim, row, or walk every day, he becomes impossible.”

“Do you often travel together?”

“Yes. We’ve been to Italy together, Brescia, to see the airplanes, Milan, Riva, Lugano, Zurich. And twice to Paris. Otto was with us. He helped me deal with the demands of our nudist.”

“You’re a nudist?”

“Not really … I’m the man in the bathing suit. It is true that this summer, at the Jungborn colony, it made me a little sick to see people all naked and unconcerned. When they run, it doesn’t help things. And I’m not crazy about old men jumping over haystacks.”

They all three laugh.

“So why do you go there?”

“The people are quiet, they live close to nature. You sleep under the open sky, walk barefoot through the grass in the early morning. It’s very pleasant.”

Max holds up another photograph for Felice.

“Look at Franz in front of Werther’s garden with Grete. They’re eating cherries.”

“Who is Grete?”

“The caretaker’s lovely daughter. Franz followed her day and night. Admit it, you were in love with her. You gave her chocolates, bunches of carnations, a little heart with a chain, who knows what else? You’d have asked her to marry you if she’d responded.”

Max looks at his watch.

“It’s already eleven o’clock and we haven’t decided on the sequence for your stories. You have to send them off first thing in the morning. Let’s sit in the next room while Felice finishes dinner.”

He rises, picks up the red envelope from the table in front of Franz, and pulls out a manuscript. Felice looks at Franz in surprise.

“Are you a writer too?”

Max answers in his place: “Especially Franz! Writing is his reason for being. His head is crammed with unbelievable stories. He goes crazy if he doesn’t write them down. He is made of literature. You’ve never read anything by him?”

Felice pages through the tome of Goethe left by Herr Brod on his armchair.

“No, but I’ve read all your books, Max. Except for your first novel,
Nornepygge Castle
. I couldn’t get through it. I tried several times.”

Franz looks at her, appalled. There is a silence, which Felice breaks in a calm voice.

“I’m more surprised than anybody. I intend to pick it up again when I have the chance.”

Max leads Franz to a pedestal table with three stiff, slender feet.

“Let’s get to work. It will only take us a few minutes. I have a proposal for you, which I’ve written down somewhere. Where did I put it?”

He searches through his pockets, looks all around him, and finally notices it on the mantelpiece.

“There it is! I’ve put ‘Children on the Road’ first, followed by ‘The Excursion into the Mountains’ and ‘Desire to Be a Red Indian.’ For the last story, I’ve chosen ‘Being Unhappy.’ As far as all the others, I agree with the order you suggested.”

Felice approaches them.

“I love to transcribe manuscripts. I do it in Berlin occasionally. I’d be very grateful, Max, if you would send me some.”

Franz looks at her. “To read the text, or just to transcribe it?”

“Just to transcribe it.”

Franz smacks his hand down on the pedestal table. All three jump.

“Franz, do you agree with the sequence I proposed? Can I put your stories away?”

“I won’t mail out anything tomorrow.”

“You’re not starting that again! Every time you get a chance to publish I have to fight with you. Why this last-minute refusal?”

“Because there’s no reason to publish a text that isn’t perfect. I’m in no hurry. Man was expelled from paradise because of his impatience. And it’s his impatience that keeps him from returning. Anyway, I don’t want to disappoint your editor again.”

“But he’s the one who keeps asking me for your text. He called on the telephone again yesterday! I gave him my solemn word that you would mail the manuscript to him tomorrow morning. You can’t do this to me.”

“I asked him how many copies of my first collection he had sold. Eleven. As I’d bought ten of them, I want to know who owns the eleventh
Meditation
. And why does your editor publish texts that don’t sell?”

“Because he knows that one day he’ll sell hundreds
of them. Do you want me to remind you of all the things that Rilke, Werfel, and Musil have said about you? You’re not leaving here until you promise to send out the text tomorrow.”

“At the central post office, go to the young woman at window 14, she’s the prettiest,” Otto interjects.

“Send it as a registered letter,” says Max.

“I have never sent a letter, or even a postcard, except as registered mail.”

Otto has closed the piano lid. He kneels in front of the wood stove. Franz looks at him and laughs, saying to Felice: “Otto likes to go to bed early. Every time I visit, he makes a great show of fussing with the fire screen. It’s his way of reminding me that it’s time to go. He calls me the professional disturber of sleep. Sometimes it takes the combined forces of the whole Brod family to shoo me from the apartment. I’m afraid that tonight I’ve kept you up late too. What time do you leave tomorrow morning?”

“Six-thirty. I haven’t packed my bag yet. And I want to finish my book before closing my eyes.”

Franz smiles. “Do you like staying up late with a book?”

“Sometimes until dawn.”

“Are you returning to Berlin?”

“No, I’m off to Budapest. To attend my sister’s wedding. Do you really want to know everything?”

Frau Brod joins the conversation: “At her hotel, Felice showed me the batiste gown she plans to wear at the ceremony. Lovely!”

Felice stands up. Franz, not taking his eyes off her, says, “Are you really wearing Frau Brod’s slippers?”

“Yes. The weather was terrible all day, and my boots needed drying. But I’m used to wearing high-heeled mules.”

“High-heeled mules! What a novelty!”

She flies off down the hallway leading to the bathroom. A door slams. Frau Brod says, “Felice is such a gazelle!”

Franz makes a face. Max sidles over to him and asks quietly, “How do you like our Berliner?”

“No charm, no appeal. When I arrived, she was having dinner at the dining room table, but I took her for the maid. Her face is bony, empty. Her nose almost seems broken, her hair is blond, quite straight. She is dressed like a housewife, although she isn’t one at all, as I quickly realized. She is decisive, self-confident, strong. As might …”

Steps sound in the hallway. He stops in midsentence, hurries to intercept Felice, pulling a magazine from his envelope to show her: “Fräulein Felice, I happen to have brought an issue of
Palästina
.”

Felice holds out a hand and Franz takes it, pressing it to him.

“Do you know this magazine? Max and I plan to go to Palestine next year. Would you like to join us?”

“What a strange idea … Are you joking?”

She frees her hand.

“Not in the slightest, I’ve never been more serious.”

“It’s not a trip that you decide on at the drop of a hat! Do you speak Hebrew?”

“No, not really. But my great-grandfather on my mother’s side, who gave me my Hebrew name, Amschel, was a famous Talmud scholar, and I’m studying modern Hebrew. Will you come? I’d like it if you made a promise. A formal promise.”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it. And bid my hosts good night.”

Having followed her into the hallway, Franz watches as Felice puts on a wide-brimmed beige-and-white hat, which she anchors in place with three long pins. Herr Brod offers to accompany her back to the hotel.

“May I join you?” asks Franz.

In the narrow street with its uneven cobbles, Herr Brod and Felice walk side by side. Franz follows them, strangely tongue-tied. Halfway to the hotel, he wonders if he might be able to bring this young woman flowers at the station. But where is he to find flowers at the crack of dawn? Gripped by anxiety, desire, and confusion, he trips
on the sidewalk several times for no reason and steps out into the street. As they start down Perlgasse, Felice turns to him.

“Where do you live?”

“You want my address?”

He feels a burst of joy, she is going to write him, agree to join his trip to Palestine.

“Your address? No, I’d like to make sure that I’m not taking you too far out of your way in going to my hotel. And keeping you up too late.”

“I’m never in a hurry to go home. I sleep very little. My nights consist of two parts: one wakeful, the other sleepless.”

Felice resumes her conversation with Herr Brod. Franz hears them wasting time comparing the traffic in Prague to the traffic in Berlin. Herr Brod then offers the young woman travel advice, naming several train stations where she can find a bite to eat. Felice announces that she plans to have breakfast in the dining car. She is hoping to find her umbrella, which she left in the train several days before.

They enter the lobby of a luxury hotel, The Blue Star. Franz is so absorbed that he slips into the same compartment of the revolving door as Felice and steps all over her feet. He babbles his apology. They say good-bye in
front of the open door of the elevator. Franz reminds her of their travel plans. Felice catches sight of the doorman and arranges for a car to bring her to the station in the morning. They make their good-byes a second time. Felice says, “You are going to remind me again …”

Franz interrupts her. “No, no, I have just one last question: How long can you keep chocolate before it goes bad?”

A Passion Without Love
 

O
n September 20, 1912, he writes his first letter to Felice Bauer. On letterhead of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, where he holds an important post. A letter that is two pages long, typed on a typewriter he is unfamiliar with, and started after his sixth hour at the office. He reminds her of his name, Franz Kafka, their meeting at the Brods’, and their plan to travel to Palestine together. In case she sees no reason to accept him as her traveling companion and as a guide, burden, tyrant, or whatever else he might become, he suggests that in the meantime she accept him provisionally as her
correspondent. He adds that he is not punctual and that, in exchange, he does not expect to receive regular letters.

He signs: “Yours very sincerely, Dr. Franz Kafka.” (He is a doctor of law.)

This first letter remains unanswered.

Franz writes a second one, in longhand. He has much to say: it is a warm, sunny day, the window is open, he is humming a tune. He explains to Felice Bauer that for five weeks he begged high and low for her office address in Berlin, that anxieties rain down on him continuously, that he composed his first letter over the course of ten nights, so difficult did he find transcribing what he had in his head before going to sleep. He signs the letter: “Yours, Franz Kafka.”

Felice does not answer these five handwritten pages. But she keeps both letters.

Determined to break through the silence erected by the young woman against him, Franz seeks the help of his friends. Both Max and his sister, Sophie Friedmann, who is married to a cousin of the Bauers, write to Felice to vaunt their friend’s merits and suggest the high consideration in which he is held. After three weeks and a second letter from Sophie, Felice finally relents. Franz is elated. Her letter, he says, makes him feel absurdly happy, and he puts his hand on it to feel that it really belongs to him.

He then embarks on a frenetic correspondence. From October 23, when he receives her first reply, to December 31, he sends Felice one hundred letters, often two or three a day.

The first ones are delicious: “I tremble like a lunatic when I receive your letters, my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you.”

“Dear Fräulein Felice, it is one-thirty in the morning. There is hardly a quarter of an hour of my waking day when I don’t think of you, and many when I do nothing else. Since the evening when we met, I’ve felt as though I have a hole in my chest through which everything flows into me and is sucked out of me. You are intimately associated with my writing.”