The Diaries of Franz Kafka (6 page)

For the rest, I shall certainly be myself again by tomorrow and come to the office where the first thing I hear will be that you want to have me out of your department.

The special nature of my inspiration in which I, the most fortunate and unfortunate of men, now go to sleep at 2 a.m. (perhaps, if I can only bear the thought of it, it will remain, for it is loftier than all before), is such that I can do everything, and not only what is directed to a definite piece of work. When I arbitrarily write a single sentence, for instance, ‘He looked out of the window’, it already has perfection.

‘Will you stay here for a long time?’ I asked. At my sudden utterance some saliva flew from my mouth as an evil omen.

‘Does it disturb you? If it disturbs you or perhaps keeps you from going up, I will go away at once, but otherwise I should still like to remain, because I’m tired.’

But finally he had every right to be satisfied too, and to become continually more satisfied the better I knew him. For he continually knew me even better, apparently, and could certainly stick me, with all my perceptions, in his pocket. For how otherwise could it be explained that I still remained on the street as though no house but rather a fire were before me. When one is invited into society, one simply steps into the house, climbs the stairs, and scarcely notices it, so engrossed is one in thought. Only so does one act correctly towards oneself and towards society.
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20 February. Mella Mars in the Cabaret Lucerna. A witty tragedienne who, so to speak, appears on a stage turned wrong side out in the way tragediennes sometimes show themselves behind the scenes. When she makes her appearance she has a tired, indeed even flat, empty, old face, which constitutes for all famous actors a natural beginning. She speaks very sharply, her movements are sharp too, beginning with the thumb bent backwards, which instead of bone seems to be made of stiff fibre. Unusual changeability of her nose through the shifting highlights and hollows of the playing muscles around it. Despite the eternal flashing of her movements and words she makes her points delicately.

Small cities also have small places to stroll about in.

The young, clean, well-dressed youths near me on the promenade reminded me of my youth and therefore made an unappetizing impression on me.

Kleist’s early letters, twenty-two years old. Gives up soldiering. They ask him at home: Well, how are you going to earn a living, for that was something they considered a matter of course. You have a choice of jurisprudence or political economy. But then do you have connexions at court? ‘I denied it at first in some embarrassment, but then declared so much the more proudly that I, even if I had connexions, should be ashamed, with my present ideas, to count on them. They smiled, I felt that I had been too hasty. One must be wary of expressing such truths.’

21 February. My life here is just as if I were quite certain of a second life, in the same way, for example, I got over the pain of my unsuccessful visit to Paris with the thought that I would try to go there again very soon. With this, the sight of the sharply divided light and shadows on the pavement of the street.
¹⁰

For the length of a moment I felt myself clad in steel.

How far from me are – for example – my arm muscles.

Marc Henry – Delvard. The tragic feeling bred in the audience by the empty hall increases the effect of the serious songs, detracts from
that of the merry ones. Henry does the prologue, while Delvard, behind a curtain that she doesn’t know is translucent, fixes her hair. At poorly attended performances, W., the producer, seems to wear his Assyrian beard – which is otherwise deep black – streaked with grey. Good to have oneself blown upon by such a temperament, it lasts for twenty-four hours, no, not so long. Much display of costumes, Breton costumes, the undermost petticoat is the longest, so that one can count the wealth from a distance – Because they want to save an accompanist, Delvard does the accompaniment first, in a very low-cut green dress, and freezes – Parisian street cries. Newsboys are omitted – Someone speaks to me; before I draw a breath I have been dismissed – Delvard is ridiculous, she has the smile of an old maid, an old maid of the German cabaret. With a red shawl that she fetches from behind the curtain, she plays revolution. Poems by Dauthendey in the same tough, unbreakable voice. She was charming only at the start, when she sat in a feminine way at the piano. At the song ‘À Batignolles’ I felt Paris in my throat. Batignolles is supposed to live on its annuities, even its Apaches. Bruant wrote a song for every section of the city.

Oscar M., an older student – if one looked at him closely one was frightened by his eyes – stopped short in the middle of a snowstorm on an empty square one winter afternoon, in his winter clothes with his winter coat, over it a shawl around his neck and a fur cap on his head. His eyes blinked reflectively. He was so lost in thought that once he took off his cap and stroked his face with its curly fur. Finally he seemed to have come to a conclusion and turned with a dancing movement on to his homeward path.

When he opened the door to his parental living-room he saw his father, a smooth-shaven man with a heavy, fleshy face, seated at an empty table facing the door.

‘At last,’ said the latter, when Oscar had barely set foot in the room. ‘Please stay by the door, I am so furious with you that I don’t know what I might do.’

‘But father,’ said Oscar, and became aware only when he spoke how he had been running.

‘Silence,’ shouted the father and stood up, blocking a window. ‘Silence, I say. And keep your “buts” to yourself, do you understand?’ At the same time he took the table in both hands and carried it a step nearer to Oscar. ‘I simply won’t put up with your good-for-nothing existence any longer. I’m an old man. I hoped you would be the comfort of my old age, instead you are worse than all my illnesses. Shame on such a son, who through laziness, extravagance, wickedness, and – why shouldn’t I say so to your face – stupidity, drives his old father to his grave!’ Here the father fell silent, but moved his face as though he were still speaking.

‘Dear Father,’ said Oscar, and cautiously approached the table, ‘calm yourself, everything will be all right. Today I have had an idea that will make an industrious person out of me, beyond all your expectations.’

‘How is that?’ the father asked, and gazed towards a corner of the room.

‘Just trust me, I’ll explain everything to you at supper. Inwardly I was always a good son, but the fact that I could not show it outwardly embittered me so, that I preferred to vex you if I couldn’t make you happy. But now let me go for another short walk so that my thoughts may unfold more clearly.’

The father, who, becoming attentive at first, had sat down on the edge of the table, stood up. ‘I do not believe that what you just said makes much sense, I consider it only idle talk. But after all you are my son. Come back early, we will have supper at home and you can tell me all about this matter then.’

‘This small confidence is enough for me, I am grateful to you from my heart for it. But isn’t it evident in my very appearance that I am completely occupied with a serious matter?’

‘At the moment, no, I can’t see a thing,’ said the father. ‘But that could be my fault too, for I have got out of the habit of looking at you at all.’ With this, as was his custom, he called attention to the passage of time by regularly tapping on the surface of the table. ‘The chief thing, however, is that I no longer have any confidence at all in you, Oscar. If I sometimes yell at you – when you came in I really did yell at you, didn’t I? – then I do it not in the hope that it will improve you, I do it only for the sake of your poor, good mother who perhaps
doesn’t yet feel any immediate sorrow on your account, but is already slowly going to pieces under the strain of keep off such sorrow, for she thinks she can help you in some way by this. But after all, these are really things which you know very well, and out of consideration for myself alone I should not have mentioned them again if you had not provoked me into it by your promises.’

During these last words the maid entered to look after the fire in the stove. She had barely left the room when Oscar cried out, ‘But Father! I would never have expected that. If in the past I had had only one little idea, an idea for my dissertation, let’s say, which has been lying in my trunk now for ten years and needs ideas like salt, then it is possible, even if not probable, that, as happened today, I would have come running from my walk and said: “Father, by good fortune I have such-and-such an idea.” If with your venerable voice you had then thrown into my face the reproaches you did, my idea would simply have been blown away and I should have had to march off at once with some sort of apology or without one. Now just the contrary! Everything you say against me helps my ideas, they do not stop, becoming stronger, they fill my head. I’ll go, because only when I am alone can I bring them into order.’ He gulped his breath in the warm room.

‘It may be only a piece of rascality that you have in your head,’ said the father with his eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘In that case I am ready to believe that it has got hold of you. But if something good has lost its way into you, it will make its escape overnight. I know you.’

Oscar turned his head as though someone had him by the throat. ‘Leave me alone now. You are worrying me more than is necessary. The bare possibility that you can correctly predict my end should really not induce you to disturb me in my reflections. Perhaps my past gives you the right to do so, but you should not make use of it.’

‘There you see best how great your uncertainty must be when it forces you to speak to me so.’

‘Nothing forces me,’ said Oscar, and his neck twitched. He also stepped up very close to the table so that one could no longer tell to whom it belonged. ‘What I said, I said with respect and even out of love for you, as you will see later, too, for consideration for you and Mama plays the greatest part in my decisions.’

‘Then I must thank you right now,’ the father said, ‘as it is indeed
very improbable that your mother and I will still be capable of it when the time comes.’

‘Please, Father, just let tomorrow sleep on as it deserves. If you awaken it before its time, then you will have a sleepy day. But that your son must say this to you! Besides, I really didn’t intend to convince you yet, but only to break the news to you. And in that, at least, as you yourself must admit, I have succeeded.’

‘Now, Oscar, there is only one thing more that really makes me wonder: why haven’t you been coming to me often with something like this business of today. It corresponds so well with your character up to now. No, really, I am being serious.’

‘Yes, wouldn’t you have thrashed me, then, instead of listening to me? I ran home, God knows, in a hurry to give you a little pleasure. But I can’t tell you a thing as long as my plan is not complete. Then why do you punish me for my good intentions and demand explanations from me that at this time might still injure the execution of my plan?’

‘Keep quiet, I don’t want to know a thing. But I have to answer you very quickly because you are retreating towards the door and apparently have something very urgent in hand: You have calmed my first anger with your trick, but now I am even sadder in spirit than before and therefore I beg you – if you insist, I can even fold my hands – at least say nothing to your mother of your ideas. Be satisfied with me.’

‘This can’t be my father speaking to me,’ cried Oscar, who already had his arm on the door latch. ‘Something has happened to you since noon, or I’m meeting a stranger now for the first time in my father’s room. My real father’ – Oscar was silent for a moment with his mouth open – ‘he would certainly have had to embrace me, he would have called my mother. What is wrong with you, Father?’

‘Then you ought to have supper with your real father, I think. It would be more fun.’

‘He will come, you can be sure of that. In the end he can’t stay away. And my mother must be there. And Franz, whom I am now going to fetch. All.’ Thereupon Oscar pressed his shoulder against the door – it opened easily – as though he were trying to break it down.

Having arrived in Franz’s home, he bowed to the little landlady and said, ‘The Herr Engineer is asleep, I know, it doesn’t matter.’ And
without bothering about the woman, who because she was displeased by the visit walked aimlessly up and down in the ante-room, he opened the glass door – it quivered under his hand as though it had been touched in a sensitive spot – and called, paying no heed to the interior of the room into which he could scarcely see, ‘Franz, get up. I need your expert advice. But I can’t stand it here in the room, we must go for a little walk, you must also have supper with us. Quick, then.’

‘Gladly,’ said the engineer from his leather sofa, ‘but which first? Get up, have supper, go for a walk, give advice? And some of it I probably haven’t caught.’

‘Most important, Franz, don’t joke. That’s the most important thing, I forgot that.’

‘I’ll do you that favour at once. But to get up! I would rather have supper for you twice than get up once.’

‘Get up now! No arguments.’ Oscar grabbed the weak man by the front of his coat and sat him up.

‘You’re mad, you know. With all due respect. Have I ever pulled you off a sofa like that?’ He wiped his closed eyes with his two little fingers.

‘But Franz,’ said Oscar with a grimace. ‘Get dressed now. After all, I’m not a fool, to have waked you without a reason.’

‘Just as I wasn’t sleeping without a reason, either. Yesterday I worked the night shift, after that I’m done out of my afternoon nap, also because of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, well, it annoys me how little consideration you have for me. It isn’t the first time. Naturally, you are a free student and can do whatever you want. Not everyone is so fortunate. So you really must have some consideration, damn it! Of course, I’m your friend, but they haven’t taken my profession away yet because of that.’ This he indicated by shaking his hands up and down, palm to palm.