The Diaries of Franz Kafka (40 page)

It was Sunday afternoon, they lay in bed in one another’s arms. It was winter, the room was unheated, they lay beneath a heavy feather quilt.

15 March. The students wanted to carry Dostoyevsky’s chains behind
his coffin. He died in the workers’ quarter, on the fifth floor of a tenement house.

Once, during the winter, at about five o’clock in the morning, the half-clothed maid announced a visitor to the student. ‘What’s that? What did you say?’ the student, still half asleep, was asking, when a young man entered, carrying a lighted candle that he had borrowed from the maid. He raised the candle in one hand the better to see the student and lowered his hat in his other hand almost to the floor, so long was his arm.

Only this everlasting waiting, eternal helplessness.

17 March. Sat in the room with my parents, leafed through magazines for two hours, on and off simply stared before me; in general simply waited for ten o’clock to arrive and for me to be able to go to bed.

27 March. On the whole passed in much the same way.

Hass hurried to get aboard the ship, ran across the gangplank, climbed up on deck, sat down in a corner, pressed his hands to his face and from then on no longer concerned himself with anyone. The ship’s bell sounded, people were running along, far off, as though at the other end of the ship someone were singing with full voice.

They were just about to pull in the gangplank when a small black carriage came along, the coachman shouted from the distance, he had to exert all his strength to hold back the rearing horse; a young man sprang out of the carriage, kissed an old, white-bearded gentleman bending forward under the roof of the carriage, and with a small valise in his hand ran aboard the ship, which at once pushed off from the shore.

It was about three o’clock in the morning, but in the summer, and already half light. Herr von Irmenhof’s five horses Famos, Grasaffe, Tournemento, Rosina and Brabant – rose up in the stable. Because of the sultry night the stable door had been left ajar; the two grooms slept
on their backs in the straw, flies hovered up and down above their open mouths, there was nothing to hinder them. Grasaffe stood up so that he straddled the two men under him, and, watching their faces, was ready to strike down at them with his hoofs at their slightest sign of awakening. Meanwhile the four others sprang out of the stable in two easy leaps, one behind the other; Grasaffe followed them.

Through the glass door Anna saw the lodger’s room was dark; she went in and turned on the electric light to make the bed ready for the night. But the student was sitting half reclined upon the sofa, smiling at her. She excused herself and turned to leave. But the student asked her to stay and to pay no attention to him. She did stay, in fact, and did her work, casting an occasional sidelong glance at the student.

5 April. If only it were possible to go to Berlin, to become independent, to live from one day to the next, even to go hungry, but to let all one’s strength pour forth instead of husbanding it here, or rather – instead of one’s turning aside into nothingness! If only F. wanted it, would help me!

8 April. Yesterday incapable of writing even one word. Today no better. Who will save me? And the turmoil in me, deep down, scarcely visible; I am like a living lattice-work, a lattice that is solidly planted and would like to tumble down.

Today in the coffee-house with Werfel. How he looked from the distance, seated at the coffee-house table. Stooped, half reclining even in the wooden chair, the beautiful profile of his face pressed against his chest, his face almost wheezing in its fullness (not really fat); entirely indifferent to the surroundings, impudent, and without flaw. His dangling glasses by contrast make it easier to trace the delicate outlines of his face.

6 May. My parents seem to have found a beautiful apartment for F. and me; I ran around for nothing one entire beautiful afternoon. I wonder whether they will lay me in my grave too, after a life made happy by their solicitude.

A nobleman, Herr von Griesenau by name, had a coachman, Joseph, whom no other employer would have put up with. He lived in a ground-floor room near the gate-keeper’s lodge, for he was too fat and short of breath to climb stairs. All he had to do was drive a coach, but even for this he was employed only on special occasions, to honour a visitor perhaps; otherwise, for days on end, for weeks on end, he lay on a couch near the window, with remarkable rapidity blinking his small eyes deep-sunken in fat as he looked out of the window at the trees which –

Joseph the coachman lay on his couch, sat up only in order to take a slice of bread and butter and herring from a little table, then sank back again and stared vacantly around as he chewed. He laboriously sucked in the air through his large round nostrils; sometimes, in order to breathe in enough air, he had to stop chewing and open his mouth; his large belly trembled without stop under the many folds of his thin, dark blue suit.

The window was open, an acacia tree and an empty square were visible through it. It was a low ground-floor window. Joseph saw everything from his couch and everybody on the outside could see him. It was annoying, but he hadn’t been able to climb stairs for the last six months at least, ever since he had got so fat, and thus was obliged to live on a lower storey. When he had first been given this room near the park-keeper’s lodge, he had pressed and kissed the hands of his employer, Herr von Griesenau, with tears in his eyes, but now he knew its disadvantages: the eternal observation he was subjected to, the proximity of the unpleasant gate-keeper, all the commotion at the entrance gate and on the square, the great distance from the rest of the servants and the consequent estrangement and neglect that he suffered – he was now thoroughly acquainted with all these disadvantages and in fact intended to petition the Master to permit him to move back to his old room. What after all were all these newly hired fellows standing uselessly around for, especially since the Master’s engagement? Let them simply carry him up and down the stairs, rare and deserving man that he was.

An engagement was being celebrated. The banquet was at an end, the
company got up from the table; all the windows were open, it was a warm and beautiful evening in June. The fiancée stood in a circle of friends and acquaintances, the others were gathered in small groups; now and then there was an outburst of laughter. The man to whom she was engaged stood apart, leaning in the doorway to the balcony and looking out.

After some time the mother of the fiancée noticed him, went over to him and said: ‘Why are you standing here all alone? Aren’t you joining Olga? Have you quarrelled?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘we haven’t quarrelled.’

‘Very well,’ the mother said, ‘then join your fiancée! Your behaviour is beginning to attract attention.’

The horror in the merely schematic.

The landlady of the rooming house, a decrepit widow dressed in black and wearing a straight skirt, stood in the middle room of her empty house. It was still perfectly quiet, the bell did not stir. The street, too, was quiet; the woman had purposely chosen so quiet a street because she wanted good roomers, and those who insist on quiet are the best.

27 May. Mother and sister in Berlin. I shall be alone with my father in the evening. I think he is afraid to come up. Should I play cards [
Karten
] with him? (I find the letter
K
offensive, almost disgusting, and yet I use it; it must be very characteristic of me.) How Father acted when I touched F.

The first appearance of the white horse was on an autumn afternoon, in a large but not very busy street in the city of A. It passed through the entrance-way of a house in whose yard a trucking company had extensive storerooms; thus it would often happen that teams of horses, now and then a single horse as well, had to be led out through the entrance-way, and for this reason the white horse attracted little attention. It was not, however, one of the horses belonging to the trucking company. A workman tightening the cords around a bale of goods in front of the gate noticed the horse, looked up from his work, and then into the yard to see whether the coachman was following after. No one
came. The horse had hardly stepped into the road when it reared up mightily, struck several sparks from the pavement, for a moment was on the point of falling, but at once regained its balance, and then trotted neither rapidly nor slowly up the street, which was almost deserted at this twilight hour. The workman cursed what he thought had been the carelessness of the coachmen, shouted several names into the yard; some men came out in response, but when they immediately perceived that the horse was not one of theirs, simply stopped short together in the entrance-way, somewhat astonished. A short interval elapsed before some of them thought what to do; they ran after the horse for a distance, but, failing to catch sight of it again, soon returned.

In the meantime the horse had already reached the outermost streets of the suburbs without being halted. It accommodated itself to the life of the streets better than horses running alone usually do. Its slow pace could frighten no one, it never strayed out of the roadway or from its own side of the street; when it was obliged to stop for a vehicle coming out of a cross-street, it stopped; had the most careful driver been leading it by the halter it could not have behaved more perfectly. Still, of course, it was a conspicuous sight; here and there someone stopped and looked after it with a smile, a coachman in a passing beer wagon jokingly struck down at the horse with his whip; it was frightened, of course, and reared, but did not quicken its pace.

It was just this incident, however, that a policeman saw; he went over to the horse, who at the very last moment had tried to turn off in another direction, took hold of the reins (despite its light frame it wore the harness of a dray horse) and said, though in a friendly way: ‘Whoa! Now where do you think you are running off to?’ He held on to it for some time in the middle of the road, thinking that the animal’s owner would soon be along after the runaway.

It has meaning but is weak; its blood flows thin, too far from the heart. There are still some pretty scenes in my head but I will stop regardless. Yesterday the white horse appeared to me for the first time before I fell asleep; I have an impression of its first stepping out of my head, which was turned to the wall, jumping across me and down from the bed, and then disappearing. The last is unfortunately not refuted by the fact of my having begun the story.

If I am not very much mistaken, I am coming closer. It is as though the spiritual battle were taking place in a clearing somewhere in the woods. I make my way into the woods, find nothing, and out of weakness immediately hasten out again; often as I leave the woods I hear, or I think I hear, the clashing weapons of that battle. Perhaps the eyes of the warriors are seeking me through the darkness of the woods, but I know so little of them, and that little is deceptive.

A heavy downpour. Stand and face the rain, let its iron rays pierce you; drift with the water that wants to sweep you away but yet stand fast, and upright in this way abide the sudden and endless shining of the sun.

The landlady dropped her skirts and hurried through the rooms. A cold, haughty woman. Her projecting lower jaw frightened roomers away. They ran down the steps, and when she looked after them through the window they covered their faces as they ran. Once a gentleman came for a room, a solid, thickset young man who constantly kept his hands in his coat pockets. It was a habit, perhaps, but it was also possible that he wanted to conceal the trembling of his hands.

‘Young man,’ said the woman, and her lower jaw jutted forward, ‘you want to live here?’

‘Yes,’ the young man said, tossing his head upward.

‘You will like it here,’ the woman said, leading him to a chair on which she sat him down. In doing this she noticed a stain on his trousers, kneeled down beside him and began to scrape at the stain with her fingernails.

‘You’re a dirty fellow,’ she said.

‘It’s an old stain.’

‘Then you are an old dirty fellow.’

‘Take your hand away,’ he said suddenly, and actually pushed her away. ‘What horrible hands you have.’ He caught her hand and turned it over. ‘All black on top, whitish below, but still black enough and’ – he ran his fingers inside her wide sleeve– ‘there is even some hair on your arm.’