The Diaries of Franz Kafka (57 page)

7 August.

The explorer felt too tired to give commands or to do anything. He merely took a handkerchief from his pocket, gestured as if he were
dipping it in the distant bucket, pressed it to his brow, and lay down beside the pit. He was found in this position by the two men the Commandant had sent out to fetch him. He jumped up when they spoke to him as if revived. With his hand on his heart he said, ‘I am a cur if I allow that to happen.’ But then he took his own words literally and began to run around on all fours. From time to time, however, he leaped erect, shook the fit off, so to speak, threw his arms around the neck of one of the men, and tearfully exclaimed, ‘Why does all this happen to me!’ and then hurried to his post.
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8 August. And even if everything remained unchanged, the spike was still there, crookedly protruding from his shattered forehead as if it bore witness to some truth.
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As though all this were making the explorer aware that what was still to follow was solely his and the dead man’s affair, he dismissed the soldier and the condemned man with a gesture of his hand; they hesitated, he threw a stone at them, and when they still deliberated, he ran up to them and struck them with his fists.

‘What?’ the explorer suddenly said. Had something been forgotten. A last word? A turn? An adjustment? Who can penetrate the confusion? Damned, miasmal tropical air, what are you doing to me? I don’t know what is happening. My judgement has been left back at home in the north.

‘What?’ the explorer suddenly said. Had something been forgotten? A word? A turn? An adjustment? Very likely. Very probably. A gross error in the calculation, a fundamental misconception, the whole thing is going wrong. But who will set it right? Where is the man who will set it right? Where is the good old miller back home in the north who would stick these two grinning fellows between his millstones?

‘Prepare the way for the snake!’ came the shout. ‘Prepare the way for the great Madame!’

‘We are ready,’ came the answering shout, ‘we are ready!’ And we who were to prepare the way, renowned stone-crushers all, marched out of the woods. ‘Now!’ our Commandant called out, blithely as always, ‘go to it, you snake-fodder!’ Immediately we raised our
hammers and for miles around the busiest hammering began. No pause was allowed, only a change from one hand to the other. The arrival of our snake was promised for the evening, by then everything had to be crushed to dust, our snake could not stand even the tiniest of stones. Where is there another snake so fastidious? She is a snake without peer, she has been thoroughly pampered by our labour, and by now there is no one to compare with her. We do not understand, we deplore the fact that she still calls herself a snake. She should call herself Madame at least – though as Madame she is of course without peer too. But that is no concern of ours; our job is to make dust.

Hold the lamp up high, you up front there! The rest of you without a sound behind me! All in single file! And quiet! That was nothing. Don’t be afraid, I’m responsible. I’ll lead you out.

9 August. The explorer made a vague movement of his hand, abandoned his efforts, again thrust the two men away from the corpse and pointed to the colony where they were to go at once. Their gurgling laughter indicated their gradual comprehension of his command; the condemned man pressed his face, which had been repeatedly smeared with grease, against the explorer’s hand, the soldier slapped the explorer on the shoulder with his right hand – in his left hand he waved his gun – all three now belonged together.

The explorer had forcibly to ward off the feeling coming over him that in this case a perfect solution had been effected. He was stricken with fatigue and abandoned his intention of burying the corpse now. The heat, which was still on the increase – the explorer was unwilling to raise his head towards the sun only lest he grow dizzy – the sudden, final silence of the officer, the sight of the two men opposite staring strangely at him, and with whom every connexion had been severed by the death of the officer, and lastly, the smooth, automatic refutation which the officer’s contention had found here, all this – the explorer could no longer stand erect and sat down in the cane chair.

If his ship had slithered to him across this trackless sand to take him aboard – that he would have preferred to everything. He would have climbed aboard, except that from the ladder he would have once more
denounced the officer for the horrible execution of the condemned man. ‘I’ll tell them of it at home,’ he would have said, raising his voice so that the captain and the sailors bending in curiosity over the rail might hear him. ‘Executed?’ the officer would have asked, with reason. ‘But here he is,’ he would have said, pointing to the man carrying the explorer’s baggage. And in fact it was the condemned man, as the explorer proved to himself by looking sharply at him and scrutinizing his features.

‘My compliments,’ the explorer was obliged to say, and said it gladly. ‘A conjuring trick?’ he asked.

‘No,’ the officer said, ‘a mistake on your part; I was executed, as you commanded.’ The captain and the sailors now listened even more attentively. And all saw together how the officer passed his hand across his brow to disclose a spike crookedly protruding from his shattered forehead.

It was during the period of the last great battles that the American government had to wage against the Indians. The fort deepest in Indian territory – it was also the best fortified – was commanded by General Samson, who had often distinguished himself in this place and possessed the unswerving confidence of the population and his soldiers. The shout, ‘General Samson!’ was almost as good as a rifle against a single Indian.

One morning a scouting party out in the woods captured a young man, and in accordance with the standing order of the General – he took a personal interest even in the most trivial matters – brought him to headquarters. As the General was in conference at that moment with several farmers from the border district, the stranger was first brought before the adjutant, Lieutenant-Colonel Otway.

‘General Samson!’ I cried, and staggered back a step. It was he who stepped out of the tall thicket. ‘Be quiet!’ he said, pointing behind him. An escort of about ten men stumbled after him.

10 August. I was standing with my father in the lobby of a building; outside it was raining very hard. A man was about to hurry into the lobby from the street when he noticed my father. That made him
stop. ‘Georg,’ he said slowly, as though he had gradually to bring old memories to the surface, and, holding but his hand, approached my father from the side.

‘No, let me alone! No, let me alone!’ I shouted without pause all the way along the streets, and again and again she laid hold of me, again and again the clawed hands of the siren struck at my breast from the side or across my shoulder.

15 September.
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You have the chance, as far as it is at all possible, to make a new beginning. Don’t throw it away. If you insist on digging deep into yourself, you won’t be able to avoid the muck that will well up. But don’t wallow in it. If the infection in your lungs is only a symbol, as you say, a symbol of the infection whose inflammation is called F. and whose depth is its deep justification; if this is so then the medical advice (light, air, sun, rest) is also a symbol. Lay hold of this symbol.

O wonderful moment, masterful version, garden gone to seed. You turn the corner as you leave the house and the goddess of luck rushes towards you down the garden path.

Majestic presence, prince of the realm.

The village square abandoned to the night. The wisdom of the children. The primacy of the animals. The women. Cows moving across the square in the most matter-of-fact way.

18 September. Tear everything up.

19 September. Instead of the telegram – Very Welcome Michelob Station Feel Splendid Franz Ottla – which Mařenka twice took to Flöhau claiming not to have been able to send it because the post office had closed shortly before she arrived, I wrote a farewell letter and once again, at one blow, suppressed the violent beginnings of torment. Though the farewell letter is ambiguous, like my feelings.

It is the age of the infection rather than its depth and festering
which makes it painful. To have it repeatedly ripped open in the same spot, though it has been operated on countless times, to have to see it taken under treatment again – that is what is bad.

The frail, uncertain, ineffectual being – a telegram knocks it over, a letter sets it on its feet, reanimates it, the silence that follows the letter plunges it into a stupor.

The cat’s playing with the goats. The goats resemble: Polish Jews, Uncle S., I., E.W.

The manservant H. (who today left without dinner or saying goodbye; it is doubtful whether he will come tomorrow), the young woman and Mařenka are unapproachable in different but equally severe ways. I really feel constrained in their presence, as in the presence of animals in stalls when you tell them to do something and, surprisingly, they do it. Their case is the more difficult only because they so often seem approachable and understandable for a moment.

Have never understood how it is possible for almost everyone who writes to objectify his sufferings in the very midst of undergoing them; thus I, for example, in the midst of my unhappiness, in all likelihood with my head still smarting from unhappiness, sit down and write to someone: I am unhappy. Yes, I can even go beyond that and with as many flourishes as I have the talent for, all of which seem to have nothing to do with my unhappiness, ring simple, or contrapuntal, or a whole orchestration of changes on my theme. And it is not a lie, and it does not still my pain; it is simply a merciful surplus of strength at a moment when suffering has raked me to the bottom of my being and plainly exhausted all my strength. But then what kind of surplus is it?

Yesterday’s letter to Max. Lying, vain, theatrical. A week in Zürau.

In peacetime you don’t get anywhere, in wartime you bleed to death.

Dreamed of Werfel: He was saying that in Lower Austria, where he is stopping at present, by accident he lightly jostled against a man on
the street, whereupon the latter swore at him shamefully. I have forgotten the precise words, I remember only that one of them was ‘barbarian’ (from the World War), and that it ended with ‘you proletarian Turch’. An interesting combination: ‘Turch’ is a dialect word for ‘Turk’; ‘Turk’ is a curse word apparently still part of a tradition deriving from the old wars against the Turks and the sieges of Vienna, and added to that the new epithet, ‘proletarian’. Excellently characterizes the simplicity and backwardness of his insulter, for today neither ‘proletarian’ nor ‘Turk’ is a real curse word.

21 September. F. was here, travelled thirty hours to see me; I should have prevented her. As I see it, she is suffering the utmost misery and the guilt is essentially mine. I myself am unable to take hold of myself, am as helpless as I am unfeeling, think of the disturbance of a few of my comforts, and, as my only concession, condescend to act my part. In single details she is wrong, wrong in defending what she calls – or what are really – her rights, but taken all together, she is an innocent person condemned to extreme torture; I am guilty of the wrong for which she is being tortured, and am in addition the torturer – With her departure (the carriage in which she and Ottla are riding goes around the pond, I cut across and am close to her once more) and a headache (the last trace in me of my acting), the day ends.

A dream about my father: There was a small audience (to characterize it, Mrs Fanta was there) before which my father was making public for the first time a scheme of his for social reform. He was anxious to have this select audience, an especially select one in his opinion, undertake to make propaganda for his scheme. On the surface he expressed this much more modestly, merely requesting the audience, after they should have heard his views, to let him have the address of interested people who might be invited to a large public meeting soon to take place. My father had never yet had any dealings with these people, consequently took them much too seriously, had even put on a black frock coat, and described his scheme with that extreme solicitude which is the mark of an amateur. The company, in spite of the fact that they weren’t at all prepared for a lecture, recognized at once that he was offering them, with all the pride of originality, what was nothing
more than an old, outworn idea that had been thoroughly debated long ago. They let my father feel this. He had anticipated the objection, however, and, with magnificent conviction of its rutility (though it often appeared to tempt even him), with a faint bitter smile, put his case even more emphatically. When he had finished, one could perceive from the general murmur of annoyance that he had convinced them neither of the originality nor the practicability of his scheme. Not many were interested in it. Still, here and there someone was to be found who, out of kindness, and perhaps because he knew me, offered him a few addresses. My father, completely unruffled by the general mood, had cleared away his lecture notes and picked up the piles of white slips that he had ready for writing down the few addresses. I could hear only the name of a certain Privy Councillor Střižanowski, or something similar.