Sons

by Franz Kafka

  “So high!” he said to himself, and since he was not thinking at all of getting off the ship, was gradually pushed to the railing by the swelling throng of porters shoving past.

  A young man with whom he had struck up a slight acquaintance on the voyage called out in passing: “Not very eager to go ashore, are you?”—“Oh, I’m quite ready,” said Karl with a laugh, and being both strong and in high spirits he heaved his trunk onto his shoulder. But as his eye followed his acquaintance, who was already moving on with the others, casually swinging a cane, he realized with dismay that he had forgotten his umbrella down below. He hastily begged his acquaintance, who did not seem particularly pleased, to do him the favor of keeping an eye on the trunk for a minute, made a quick survey of the situation to be sure he could find his way back, and hurried away. Below decks he was distressed to find that a gangway that would have made a handy shortcut had been barred for the first time in his experience, probably to facilitate the disembarkation of so many passengers, and he had to find his way painfully down an endless series of little stairways, through corridors with countless turnings, through an empty room with a deserted writing table, until in the end, since he had taken this route no more than once or twice and always among a crowd of other people, he got completely lost. In his bewilderment, meeting no one and hearing nothing but the ceaseless shuffling of thousands of feet above him and in the distance, like faint breathing, the last throbbings of the engines, which had already been shut down, he began without any hesitation to pound on a little door before which he had chanced to stop in his wanderings.

  “It isn’t locked,” a voice shouted from inside, and Karl opened the door with genuine relief. “What are you hammering at the door for, like a madman?” asked a huge man, scarcely even glancing at Karl. Through an opening of some kind in the ceiling a feeble glimmer of daylight, all that was left after the upper decks had used most of it up, fell into the wretched cubbyhole in which a bunk, a cupboard, a chair, and the man stood packed together, as if they had been stored there. “I’ve lost my way,” said Karl. “I never noticed it during the voyage, but this is a terribly big ship.”—“Yes, you’re right there,” said the man with a certain pride, fiddling all the time with the lock of a little sea chest and pressing down its lid with both hands in the hope of hearing the bolt snap shut. “But come inside,” he went on, “what do you want to stand out there for!”—“I’m not disturbing you?” asked Karl. “Now, how could you disturb me?”—“Are you a German?” Karl asked to reassure himself further, for he had heard a great deal about the perils that threatened newcomers to America, particularly from the Irish. “That’s what I am, all right,” said the man. Karl still hesitated. Then the man suddenly seized the door handle, and, pulling the door shut with a swift movement, swept Karl into the cabin.

  “I can’t stand being stared at from the passage,” he said, beginning to fiddle with his chest again, “people keep passing and staring in, it’s more than a man can stand.”—“But there’s no one out there,” said Karl, who was standing squeezed uncomfortably against the end of the bunk. “Yes, not now,” said the man. “But it’s now we’re speaking about,” thought Karl, “it’s hard work talking to this man.”—“Lie down on the bunk, you’ll have more room there,” said the man. Karl scrambled in as well as he could, and laughed aloud at his first unsuccessful attempt to swing himself over. But scarcely was he in the bunk when he cried: “Oh, my God, I’ve completely forgotten about my trunk!”—“Well, where is it?”—“Up on deck. Someone I know is looking after it. What’s his name again?” And he fished a calling card from a secret pocket that his mother had made in the lining of his jacket for the voyage. “Butterbaum, Franz Butterbaum.”—“Is your trunk really all that important?”—“Of course it is.”—“Well then, why did you leave it in the hands of a stranger?”—“I forgot my umbrella down below and ran off to get it; I didn’t want to drag my trunk with me. Then on top of that I got lost.”—“You’re all alone? Without anyone to look after you?”—“Yes, all alone.”—“Maybe I should join up with this man,” the thought came into Karl’s head, “where am I likely to find a better friend?”—“And now you’ve lost your trunk as well. Not to mention the umbrella.” And the man sat down on the chair as if Karl’s situation had at last acquired some interest for him. “But I don’t think my trunk is lost yet.”—“You can think whatever you like,” said the man, vigorously scratching his dark, short, thick hair. “But morals change every time you come to a new port. Maybe in Hamburg your friend Butterbaum might have looked after your trunk; here it’s almost a sure thing that they’ve both disappeared.”—“Then I have to go up and see about it right away,” said Karl, looking around for the way out. “You just stay where you are,” said the man, shoving him quite roughly with one hand against his chest, so that he fell back on the bunk again. “Why should I?” asked Karl in exasperation. “Because there’s no point in it,” said the man, “I’m leaving very soon myself, and we can go together. Either your trunk has been stolen and there’s nothing you can do about it, or else the man has left it standing where it was, and then we’ll find it all the more easily when the ship is empty. And the same with your umbrella.”—“Do you know your way around the ship?” asked Karl suspiciously, and it seemed to him that the idea, otherwise plausible, that his things would be easier to find when the ship was unloaded must have a catch to it somewhere. “Well, I’m the ship’s stoker,” said the man. “You’re the stoker!” cried Karl overjoyed, as if this revelation surpassed all his expectations, and he rose up on his elbow to look at the man more closely. “Just outside the cabin I shared with the Slovak there was a little window through which we could see into the engine-room.”—“Yes, that’s where I worked,” said the stoker. “I’ve always been so interested in machinery,” said Karl, following his own train of thought, “and I would have become an engineer in time, that’s certain, if I hadn’t had to go to America.”—“Well, why did you have to go?”—“Oh, that!” said Karl, dismissing the whole story with a wave of the hand. He looked with a smile at the stoker, as if begging his indulgence even for what he was not ready to admit. “There was some reason for it, I’m sure,” said the stoker, and it was hard to tell whether in saying that he wanted to encourage or discourage Karl to tell him about it. “I could become a stoker now too,” said Karl, “it doesn’t matter to my father and mother what happens to me now.”—“My job’s going to be free,” said the stoker, and, as if to emphasize the point, he stuck both hands into his trouser pockets and flung his legs in their wrinkled, leathery, iron-gray trousers on the bunk to stretch them. Karl had to move closer to the wall. “Are you leaving the ship?”—“Yes, we’re packing up today.”—“But why? Don’t you like it?”—“Oh, that’s just the way things are; it doesn’t always depend on whether a man likes it or not. But you’re quite right, I don’t like it. I don’t suppose you’re thinking seriously of being a stoker, are you, because that’s just the time you can most easily turn into one. I strongly advise you against it. If you wanted to study engineering in Europe, why don’t you study it here? The American universities are really a lot better than the European ones.”—“That’s possible,” said Karl, “but I have hardly any money to study on. I once read about someone who worked all day in a shop and studied at night until he got his doctorate, and became a mayor, too, I think, but that calls for a lot of perseverance, doesn’t it? I’m afraid I haven’t got that in me. Besides, I wasn’t a particularly good student; it really didn’t bother me to leave school. And maybe the schools here are even more difficult. I can hardly speak any English at all. Anyhow, people here have a prejudice against foreigners, I think.”—“So you’ve learned about that already, too, have you? Well, that’s all to the good. You’re the man for me, then. Listen here, this is a German ship we’re on, it belongs to the Hamburg-American Line; so why aren’t the crew all Germans, I ask you? Why is the Chief Engineer a Rumanian? A man called Schubal. It’s hard to believe it. A measl
y dog like that slave-driving us Germans on a German ship! You mustn’t think”—here he ran out of breath and he gesticulated with one hand—“that I’m complaining just for the sake of complaining. I know you have no influence and that you’re only a poor young kid yourself. But it’s too much!” And he slammed the table several times with his fist, never once taking his eyes from it. “I’ve served on so many ships already”—and he reeled off twenty names one after the other as if they were one word, it made Karl’s head spin—“and I’ve done great work on all of them, I’ve been praised, I’ve pleased every captain I ever had, actually stuck to the same cargo-boat for several years, I did”—he rose to his feet as if that had been the high point of his life—“and here on this tub, where everything’s done by rule and you don’t need any brains at all, here I’m no good, here I’m just in Schubal’s way, they say I’m a slacker who doesn’t begin to earn his pay and should be kicked out. Can you understand that? I can’t.”—“You shouldn’t put up with it!” said Karl excitedly. He had almost lost the feeling that he was on the uncertain boards of a ship, beside the coast of an unknown continent, so much at home did he feel here in the stoker’s bunk. “Have you seen the Captain about it? Have you asked him to give you your rights?”—“Oh, go on, get out of here, I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I say, and then you give me advice. How am I supposed to get to see the Captain?” Wearily the stoker sat down again and hid his face in his hands.

  “I can’t give him any better advice,” Karl told himself. And he realized that it would have been better all along for him to go and get his trunk instead of handing out advice that was only regarded as stupid. When his father had given him the trunk for good he had said in jest: “How long will you hang on to it?” and now that faithful trunk had perhaps really been lost after all. His only consolation was that his father could hardly learn of his present situation, even if he were to make inquiries. All that the shipping company could tell him was that he had safely reached New York. But Karl felt sorry to think that he had hardly begun to use the things in the trunk, although, to take just one example, he should long since have changed his shirt. So his economies had started at the wrong point, it seemed; now, at the very beginning of his career, when it would be essential to present himself in clean clothes, he would have to appear in a dirty shirt. Otherwise the loss of the trunk would not have been so serious, for the suit he was now wearing was actually better than the one still packed away, which was in fact merely an emergency suit that his mother had hastily mended just before he left. Then he remembered that in the trunk there was a piece of Verona salami that his mother had packed as an extra tid-bit, only he had not been able to eat more than a bite of it, for during the voyage he had been quite without any appetite, and the soup that was dished out in steerage had been more than sufficient for him. But now he would have liked to have the salami on hand, so he could present it to the stoker. For such people were easily won over by the gift of some trifle or other; Karl had learned that from his father, who slipped cigars into the pockets of the subordinate functionaries with whom he did business, and so won them over. Yet all that Karl now had in the way of possible gifts was his money, and he did not want to touch that for the time being, in the event that he really had lost his trunk. Again his thoughts turned back to the trunk, and he simply could not understand why he should have watched it so vigilantly during the voyage that he had practically lost sleep over it, only to let that same trunk be filched from him so easily now. He remembered the five nights during which he had kept a suspicious eye on a little Slovak, whose bunk was two places away from him on the left, and who had designs, he was sure, on the trunk. This Slovak was merely waiting for Karl to be overcome by sleep and doze off for a minute, so that he could maneuver the box away with a long, pointed stick which he was always playing or practicing with during the day. By day the Slovak looked innocent enough, but hardly did night come on than he kept rising up from his bunk to cast melancholy glances at Karl’s trunk. Karl had seen this quite clearly, for every now and then someone would light a little candle, though it was forbidden by the ship’s regulations, and with the anxiety of the emigrant would strain to decipher the incomprehensible prospectus of some emigration agency or other. If one of these candles was burning near him, Karl could doze off for a little, but if it was farther away or if the place was quite dark, he had to keep his eyes open. The strain of this task had quite exhausted him, and now perhaps it had all been in vain. Oh, that Butterbaum, if ever he met him again!

  At that moment the unbroken silence was disturbed by a series of small, short taps in the distance, like the tapping of children’s feet; they came nearer, growing louder, until they sounded like the tread of quietly marching men. They were evidently proceeding in single file, as was natural in the narrow passage; and a clatter, as of weapons, could be heard. Karl, who had been on the point of relaxing into a sleep free of all worries about trunks and Slovaks, started up and nudged the stoker to draw his attention, for the head of the procession seemed just to have reached the door. “That’s the ship’s band,” said the stoker, “they’ve been playing up above and have come back to pack up. All’s clear now, and we can go. Come on!” He took Karl by the hand, at the last moment snatched a framed picture of the Madonna from the wall above his bed, stuck it into his breast pocket, grabbed his sea chest, and hastily left the cabin with Karl.

  “I’m going up to the office now to give them a piece of my mind. All the passengers are gone; I don’t have to worry about what I do.” The stoker kept repeating this theme with variations, and as he walked he kicked out sideways at a rat that crossed his path, but only succeeded in driving it more quickly into its hole, which it reached just in time. He was slow in all his movements, for though his legs were long they were massive.

  They went through part of the kitchen where some girls in dirty aprons—which they seemed to splash deliberately—were washing dishes in large tubs. The stoker hailed a girl called Lina, put his arm around her waist, and, as she snuggled up against him coquettishly, led her part of the way with him. “It’s pay day; aren’t you coming along?” he asked. “Why bother; you can bring me the money here,” she replied, squirming out from under his arm and running away. “Where did you pick up that pretty boy?” she cried after him, but without waiting for an answer. They could hear the laughter of the other girls, who had all stopped working.

  But they went on and came to a door above which there was a little pediment, supported by small, gilded caryatids. For a ship’s fitting it looked extravagantly sumptuous. Karl realized that he had never been in this part of the ship, which during the voyage had probably been reserved for passengers of the first and second class; but the doors that cut it off had now been thrown open to prepare for the cleaning of the ship. Indeed, they had already met some men with brooms on their shoulders, who had greeted the stoker. Karl was amazed at the extent of activity on the ship; as a steerage passenger he had seen very little of it. Along the corridors ran electrical wires, and a little bell kept ringing continuously.

  The stoker knocked respectfully at the door, and when someone cried “Come in!” he urged Karl with a wave of his hand to enter boldly. Karl stepped in, but remained standing just inside the door. The three windows of this room framed a view of the sea, and gazing at the cheerful motion of the waves his heart beat faster, as if he had not been looking at the sea without interruption for five long days. Great ships crossed each other’s courses in all directions, yielding to the assault of the waves only as far as their ponderous weight permitted. If one squinted, these ships seemed to be staggering under their own weight. From their masts flew long, narrow pennants which, though kept taut by the speed of their going, at the same time fluttered a little. Salvos could be heard, probably from some battleship, and a warship of some kind passed at no great distance; the barrels of its guns, gleaming with the reflection of sunlight on steel, seemed to be nursed along by the sure, smooth, not quite even-keeled m
otion. Only a distant view of the smaller ships and boats could be had, at least from the door, as they darted about in swarms through the gaps between the great ships. And behind them all rose New York, and its skyscrapers stared at Karl with their hundred thousand eyes. Yes, in this room one realized where one was.

  At a round table three gentlemen were sitting, one a ship’s officer in the blue ship’s uniform, the two others harbor officials in black American uniforms. On the table lay piles of various papers, which the officer first glanced over, pen in hand, and then handed to the two others, who read them, made excerpts, and filed them away in portfolios, except when one of them, who was constantly making an odd little noise with his teeth, dictated something or other to his colleague.

  By the first window a little man was sitting at a desk with his back to the door; he was busy with some huge ledgers lined up on a sturdy book-shelf on a level with his head. Beside him stood an open safe which, at first glance at least, seemed to be empty.

  The second window was not obscured and offered the best view. But near the third, two gentlemen were standing conversing in low tones. One of them was leaning against the window; he also wore the ship’s uniform and was playing with the hilt of his sword. The man to whom he was speaking faced the window, and now and then a movement of his disclosed part of a row of decorations on the chest of his interlocutor. He was in civilian clothes and carried a thin bamboo cane which, as both his hands were resting on his hips, also stood out like a sword.

  Karl did not have much time to study all this, for almost at once an attendant came up to them and asked the stoker, with a glance that seemed to indicate that he had no business here, what he wanted. The stoker replied as softly as he had been asked that he wished to speak to the Head Purser. The attendant made a gesture of refusal with his hand, but all the same tiptoed toward the man with the ledgers, avoiding the round table by a wide detour. The ledger official—this could clearly be seen—stiffened immediately at the words of the attendant, but at last turned toward this man who wished to speak to him and waved him away violently, repudiating the attendant too, just in order to make everything quite plain. The attendant then sidled back to the stoker and said in a confidential tone, “Clear out of here at once!”