The Diaries of Franz Kafka (64 page)

I had noticed the
Literarischen Ratgeber
of the Dürer Society in the window of the bookshop. Decided to buy it, but changed my mind, then once again returned to my original decision; while this went on I kept halting in front of the shop window at every hour of the day. The bookshop seemed so forlorn to me, the books so forlorn. It was only here that I felt a connexion between Friedland and the world, and it was such a tenuous one. But since all forlornness begets in me a feeling of warmth in return, I at once felt what must be this bookshop’s joy, and once I even went in to see the inside. Because there is no need for scientific works in Friedland, there was almost more fiction on its
shelves than on those of metropolitan bookshops. An old lady sat under a green-shaded electric light. Four or five copies of
Kunstwart
, just unpacked, reminded me that it was the first of the month. The woman, refusing my help, took the book, of whose existence she was hardly aware, out of the display, put it into my hand, was surprised that I had noticed it behind the frosted pane (I had in fact already noticed it before), and began to look up its price in the ledgers, for she didn’t know it and her husband was out. I’ll return later on in the evening, I said (it was 4 p.m.), but did not keep my promise.

Reichenberg.

One is completely in the dark as to what real object people have in hurrying through a small town in the evening. If they live outside the town, then they surely have to use the tram, because the distances are too great. But if they live in the town itself, there are really no great distances to go and thus no reason to hurry. And yet people hurry with lengthened strides across this square which would not be too large for a village and which is made to seem even smaller by the unexpected size of the town hall (its shadow can more than cover the square). At the same time, because the square is so small, one can’t quite believe that the town hall is as large as it is, and would like to attribute his first impression of its size to the smallness of the square.

One policeman did not know the address of the workmen’s compensation office, another where its exhibition was taking place, a third did not even know where Johannesgasse was. This they explained by their having been in the force only a short time. For directions I was obliged to go to the police station, where there were a great many policemen lounging about, all in uniforms whose beauty, newness, and colour surprised one, for otherwise one saw nothing but dark winter coats on the street.

The narrow streets allowed for the laying of only a single line of track. This is why the tram going to the railway station ran on different streets than the one coming from the railway station. From the railway station through Wiener Strasse (where I was living in the Hotel Eiche); to the railway station through Stückerstrasse.

Went to the theatre three times.
Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen
. I sat in the balcony, an actor who was much too good made too much
noise in the part of Naukleros; I had tears in my eyes several times, as at the end of the first act when Hero and Leander could not take their eyes away from one another. Hero stepped out of the temple doorway through which you saw something that could have been nothing else but an ice-box. In the second act, forests of the kind you see pictured in old de luxe editions, it was very affecting, creepers twined from tree to tree. Everything mossy and dark green. The backdrop of the wall of the tower chamber turned up again in
Miss Dudelsack
a few evenings later. From the third act on, the play fell off, as though an enemy had been after it.

D
EPARTED
28 August 1911. Noon. Our idea is a poor one: to describe the trip and at the same time our feelings towards each other during the trip.
¹³⁵
How impossible it is, proved when a wagon full of peasant women passed by. The heroic peasant woman (Delphic Sibyl). One of them was laughing and another, who had been sleeping in her lap, woke up and waved. If I should describe the way Max waved to them a false enmity would enter the description.

A girl (who later turned out to be Alice R.
¹³⁶
) got on at Pilsen. (During the trip you ordered coffee from the steward by putting a little green sticker up on the window. However, you didn’t have to take the coffee even if there was a sticker on your window, and could get it even if there was none.) At first I couldn’t see her because she was sitting next to me. Our first social contact: her hat, which had been put away on the rack above, fell down on Max. Thus do hats come in with difficulty through the carriage doors and fly out with ease through the large windows.

Max probably made it impossible to give a true description of the scene later; he is a married man and had to say something that would deprive the incident of all its risk, and in doing so passed over what was important, emphasized what was didactic and made it all a little ugly.

‘Perfect aim!’ ‘Fire away!’ ‘Rate of fall zero point five’; our joking about the card she’d write in Munich, we agreed to post it for her, but from Zürich, and it will read: ‘The expected, alas, has happened … wrong train … now in Zürich … two days of the trip lost.’ Her delight. But she expected that as gentlemen we should add nothing to it. Motor-car in Munich. Rain, fast ride (twenty minutes), a view as if from a basement apartment, the driver called out the names of the invisible sights, the tyres hummed on the wet asphalt like a film projector. My clearest recollection: of the uncurtained window of
the Vier Jahreszeiten, the reflection of the lights on the asphalt as if in a river.

Washing hands and face in the men’s room in the station in Munich.

Baggage left on the train. A place provided for Alice in a car where a lady (who was more to be feared than we) offered to take her under her protection. Offer enthusiastically accepted. Suspicious.

Max asleep in the compartment. The two Frenchmen, the dark one laughed continually; once because Max left him hardly enough room in which to sit (he was so sprawled out), and then because he seized his opportunity and Max could no longer stretch out. Max under the hood of his ulster. Eating at night. An invasion by three Swiss. One of them was smoking. One, who stayed on after the other two got off, was at first inconspicuous, grew expansive only towards morning. Bodensee.

Switzerland left to itself in the first hours of the morning. I woke Max when I caught sight of such a bridge
¹³⁷
and then got from it my first impression of Switzerland, despite the fact that I had been peering out into the grey daybreak at it for a long time from the inner obscurity of the train – The impression the houses in St Gallen give one of standing boldly upright in defiance of any arrangement into streets – Winterthur – The man leaning over the porch railing of the lighted villa in Württemberg at two o’clock in the morning. Door to the study open – The cattle already awake in sleeping Switzerland – Telegraph poles: cross-sections of clothes-hooks – The meadows paling under the rising sun – My recollection of the prison-like station at Cham, with its name inscribed on it with biblical solemnity. The window decorations, despite their meagreness, seemed to be contrary to regulations.

Tramp in the station at Winterthur with cane, song, and one hand in his trouser pocket.

Business carried on in villas.

A lot of singing in the station at Lindau during the night.

Patriotic statistics: the area of Switzerland, were it spread out level on a plain.

Foreign chocolate companies.

Zürich. The station loomed up before us like a composite of several stations recently seen – Max took possession of it for A + x.
¹³⁸

The impression foreign soldiers made on one of being out of the past. The absence of it in one’s own. Anti-militarist argument.

Marksmen in the station at Zürich. Our fear lest their guns go off when they ran.

Bought a map of Zürich.

Back and forth on a bridge in indecision as to the order in which to have a cold bath, a warm bath, and breakfast.

In the direction of Limmat, Urania Observatory.

Main business artery, empty tram, pyramids of cuffs in the foreground of an Italian haberdasher’s window.

Only fancy posters (spas, festival performance of
Marignano
by Wiegand, music by Jermoli).

Enlargement of the premises of a department store. Best advertisement. Watched for years by all the townspeople. (Dufayel.)

Postmen, looked as though they were wearing night-shirts. Carried small boxes in front, in which they sorted their letters like the ‘planets’
¹³⁹
at the Christmas Fair. Lake view. If you imagine you live here, a strong sense of its being Sunday. Horseman. Frightened horse. Pedagogic inscription, possibly a relief of Rebecca at the well. The inscription’s serenity above the flowing water.

Altstadt: Narrow, steep street which a man in a blue blouse was laboriously descending. Down steps.

I remember the traffic-menaced lavatory in front of Saint Roche in Paris.

Breakfast in the temperance restaurant. Butter like egg yolk.
Zürcher Zeitung
.

Large cathedral, old or new? Men are supposed to sit at the sides. The sexton pointed out some better seats to us. We walked after him in that direction, since it was on our way to the door. When we were already at the exit, he apparently thought we couldn’t find the seats and came diagonally across the church towards us. We pushed each other out. Much laughter.

Max: Scrambling languages together as the solution for national difficulties; the chauvinist would be at his wits’ end.

Swimming-pool in Zürich: For men only. One man next to the
other. Swiss: German poured out like lead. There weren’t enough lockers for everyone; republican freedom of undressing in front of your own clothes-hook, as well as the swimming master’s freedom to clear the crowded solarium with a fire hose. Moreover, clearing the solarium in this way would be no more senseless than the language was incomprehensible. Diver: his feet outspread on the railing, he jumped down on the springboard, thus adding to his spring – It’s only possible to judge the conveniences of a bathing establishment after long use. No swimming lessons. A long-haired nature-healer looking lonesome. Low banks of the lake.

Free concert by the Officers’ Tourist Club. A writer in the audience, surrounded by companions, was noting something down in a closely written notebook; after one number on the programme was finished, he was pulled away by his companions.

No Jews. Max: The Jews have let this big business slip from their hands. Began with the
Bersaglieri March
. Ended with the
Pro Patria March
. In Prague there are no free concerts for the sake of the music alone (Jardin de Luxembourg); republican, according to Max.

Keller’s room closed. Travel Bureau. Bright house behind a dark street. Houses with terraces on the right bank of the Limmat. Window shutters a brilliant blue-white. The soldiers walking slowly along serve as policemen. Concert hall. Polytechnic institute not looked for and not found. City Hall. Lunch on the first floor. Meilen wine. (Sterilized wine made of fresh grapes.) A waitress from Lucerne told us what trains run there. Pea soup with sago, beans with baked potatoes, lemon crême – Decent-looking buildings in Arts-and-Crafts style.

Left about three o’clock for Lucerne, going around the lake. The empty, dark, hilly, wooded shore of the Lake of Zug with its many peninsulas. Had an American look. During the trip, my distaste for making comparisons with countries not yet seen. To the right of the railway station a skating rink. We walked into the midst of the hotel employees and called out: Rebstock. A bridge (so Max said) divides the lake from the river, as in Zürich.

Where is the German population that warrants the German signs? Casino. The [German] Swiss you see everywhere in Zürich don’t seem to have any aptitude for hotel-keeping; here, where they do run hotels,
they have disappeared from view, the hotel-keepers may even be French.

The empty balloon hangar opposite. Hard to imagine how the airship glides in. Roller-skating rink, Berlin-like appearance. Fruit. The dark outlines of the Strand Promenade still clearly apparent under the tree-tops in the evening. Men with their daughters or prostitutes. Boats rocking so steeply their undermost ribs were visible.

Ridiculous lady receptionist in the hotel; a laughing girl showed people to their rooms; a serious, red-cheeked chambermaid. Small staircase. Bolted, walled-in chest in the room. Happy to be out of the room. Would have liked to dine on fruit. Gotthard Hotel, girls in Swiss costume. Apricot compote, Meilen wine. Two elderly ladies and a gentleman talking about growing old.

Discovered the gambling house in Lucerne. Admission one franc. Two long tables. It is unpleasant to describe anything really worth seeing, people impatiently expect, as it were, to see the thing before them. At each table a croupier in the middle with an observer on either side. Betting limit five francs. ‘The Swiss are requested to give precedence to foreigners as the game is intended for the entertainment of our visitors.’ One table with balls, one with toy horses. Croupiers in Prince Alberts. ‘
Messieurs faites votre jeu’ – ‘Marquez le jeu’ – ‘Les jeux sont faits’ – ‘Sont marqués’ – ‘Rien ne va plus.
’ Croupiers with nickelled rakes at the end of wooden sticks. The things they can do with them: rake the money on to the right squares, sort it, draw money to them, catch the money they toss on the winning squares. The influence the different croupiers have on your chances, or rather: you like the croupier with whom you win. Our excitement when we both of us decided to play; you feel entirely alone in the room. The money (ten francs) disappeared down a gently sloping incline. The loss of ten francs was not enough temptation to go on playing, but still, a temptation. Rage at everything. The day prolonged by the gambling.

Monday, 28 August. Man in high boots breakfasting against the wall. Second-class steamer. Lucerne in the morning. Poorer appearance of the hotels. A married couple reading letters from home with newspaper clippings about cholera in Italy. The beautiful homes that you could only see from a boat on the lake. Changing shapes of the
mountains. Vitznau. Rigi railways. Lake seen through leaves. Feeling of the south. Your surprise when you suddenly catch sight of the broad surface of the Lake of Zug. Woods like at home. Railway built in ’75; look it up in the old copy of
Über Land und Meer
. Old stamping-ground for the English. They still wear checks and sideburns here. Telescope. Jungfrau in the distance, rotunda of the Monk, shimmering heat waves lent movement to the picture. The outstretched palm of the Titli. A snow field sliced through life a loaf of bread. False estimates of the altitudes from above as well as from below. Unsettled dispute as to whether the railway station at Arth-Goldau rested on slanting or on level ground.
Table d’hôte
. Dark woman, serious, sharp mouth – had already seen her below near the carriage – sat in the hall. English girl at the departure, her teeth even all round. A short Frenchwoman got into the next compartment, with outstretched arm announced that our full compartment was not ‘
complet
’, and pushed in her father and her older, shorter sister, who looked at once innocent and lewd and who tickled my hips with her elbow. Some more English, toothily spoken by the old lady at Max’s right. We tried to guess what part of England. Route from Vitznau to Flüelen – Gersau, Beckenried, Brunnen (nothing but hotels), Schillerstein, Tellplatte, Rütli, two loggias on Axenstrasse (Max imagined there were several of them, because in photographs you always see these two), Urnser Becken, Flüelen. Hotel Sternen.