by Franz Kafka
During the first days, when I was still eagerly taking in everything, I spitted one of these rats on the point of my knife and held it before me at eye level against the wall. You can see small animals clearly only if you hold them before you at eye level; if you stoop down to them on the ground and look at them there, you acquire a false, imperfect notion of them. The most striking feature of these rats was their claws – large, somewhat hollow, and yet pointed at the ends, they were well suited to dig with. Hanging against the wall in front of me in its final agony, it rigidly stretched out its claws in what seemed to be an unnatural way; they were like small hands reaching out to you.
In general these animals bothered me little, only sometimes woke me up at night when they hurried by the hut in a patter of running feet on the hard ground. If I then sat up and perhaps lit a small wax candle, I could see a rat’s claws sticking in from the outside and working feverishly at some hole it was digging under the boards. This work was all in vain, for to dig a hole big enough for itself it would have had to work days on end, and yet it fled with the first brightening of the day; despite this it laboured on like a workman who knew what he was doing. And it did good work; the particles it threw up as it dug were imperceptible indeed, on the other hand its claw was probably never used without result. At night I often watched this at length, until the calm and regularity of it put me to sleep. Then I would no longer have the energy to put out the little candle, and for a short while it would shine down for the rat at its work.
Once, on a warm night, when I had again heard these claws at work, I cautiously went outside without lighting a candle in order to see the animal itself. Its head, with its sharp snout, was bowed very low, pushed down almost between its forelegs in the effort to crowd as close as possible to the wood and dig its claws as deep as possible under it. You might have thought there was someone inside the hut holding it by the claws and trying bodily to pull the animal in, so taut was every muscle. And yet everything was ended with one kick, by which I killed the beast. Once fully awake, I could not tolerate any attack on my only possession, the hut.
To safeguard the hut against these rats I stopped all the holes with straw and tow and every morning examined the floor all around. I also intended to cover the hard-packed earthen floor of the hut with planks; such a flooring would also be useful for the winter. A peasant from the next village, Jekoz by name, long ago had promised to bring me some well-seasoned planks for this purpose, and I had often entertained him hospitably in return for this promise, nor did he stay very long away from me but came every fortnight, occasionally bringing shipments to send by the railway; but he never brought the planks. He had all sorts of excuses for this, usually that he himself was too old to carry such a load, and his son, who would be the one to bring the planks, was just then hard at work in the fields. Now according to his own account, which seemed correct enough, Jekoz was considerably more than seventy years old; but he was a tall man and still very strong. Besides, his excuses varied, and on another occasion he spoke of the difficulties of obtaining planks as long as those I needed. I did not press him, had no urgent need for the planks, it was Jekoz himself who had given me the idea of a plank flooring in the first place; perhaps a flooring would do no good at all; in short, I was able to listen calmly to the old man’s lies. My customary greeting was: ‘The planks, Jekoz!’ At once the apologies began in a half-stammer, I was called inspector or captain or even just telegrapher, which had a particular meaning for him; he promised me not only to bring the planks very shortly, but also, with the help of his son and several neighbours, to tear down my whole hut and build me a solid house in its stead. I listened until I grew tired, then pushed him out. While yet in the doorway, in apology he raised his supposedly feeble arms, with which he could in reality have throttled a grown man to death. I knew why he did not bring the planks; he supposed that when the winter was closer at hand I should have a more pressing need for them and would pay a better price; besides, as long as the boards were not delivered he himself would be more important to me. Now he was of course not stupid and knew that I was aware of what was in the back of his mind, but in the fact that I did not exploit this knowledge he saw his advantage, and this he preserved.
But all the preparations I had been making to secure the hut against the animals and protect myself against the winter had to be interrupted when (the first three months of my service were coming to an end) I became seriously ill. For years I had been spared any illness, even the slightest indisposition, but now I became indisputably sick. It began with a heavy cough. About two hours up-country from the station there was a little brook, where I used to go to fetch my supply of water in a barrel on a wheelbarrow. I often bathed there too, and this cough was the result. The fits of coughing were so severe that I had to double up when I coughed, I imagined I should not be able to survive the coughing unless I doubled up and so gathered together all my strength. I thought my coughing would terrify the train crew, but they knew all about it, called it the wolf’s cough. After that I began to hear the howl in the cough. I sat on the little bench in front of the hut and greeted the train with a howl, with a howl I accompanied it on its way when it departed. At night, instead of lying down, I knelt on the bunk and pressed my face into the skins at least to spare myself hearing my howls. I waited tensely until the bursting of some vital blood vessel should put an end to everything. But nothing of the kind happened and the coughing even abated after a few days. There is a tea that cures it, and one of the locomotive engineers promised to bring me some, but explained that it must be drunk only on the eighth day after the coughing began, otherwise it was of no use. On the eighth day he did in fact bring it, and I remember how not only the train crew but the passengers as well, two young peasants, came into my hut, for it was accounted lucky to hear the first cough after the drinking of the tea. I drank, coughed the first mouthful into the faces of my guests, but then immediately felt a real relief, though indeed the coughing had already been easier during the last two days. But a fever remained and did not go down.
This fever tired me a great deal, I lost all my resistance; sometimes, quite unexpectedly, sweat would break out on my forehead, my whole body would tremble, and regardless of where I was I had to lie down and wait until I came to my senses again. I clearly perceived that I was not getting better, but worse, and that it was essential that I go to Kalda and stay there a few days until my condition improved.
21 August. Began with such hope and was then repulsed by all three stories; today more so than ever. It may be true that the Russian story ought to be worked on only after The Trial. In this ridiculous hope, which apparently has only some mechanical notion behind it of how things work, I start The Trial again – The effort wasn’t entirely without result.
29 August. The end of one chapter a failure; another chapter, which began beautifully, I shall hardly – or rather certainly not – be able to continue as beautifully, while at the time, during the night, I should certainly have succeeded with it. But I must not forsake myself, I am entirely alone.
30 August. Cold and empty. I feel only too strongly the limits of my abilities, narrow limits, doubtless, unless I am completely inspired. And I believe that even in the grip of inspiration I am swept along only within these narrow limits, which, however, I then no longer feel because I am being swept along. Nevertheless, within these limits there is room to live, and for this reason I shall probably exploit them to a despicable degree.
A quarter to two at night. Across the street a child is crying. Suddenly a man in the same room, as near to me as if he were just outside the window, speaks. ‘I’d rather jump out of the window than listen to any more of that.’ He nervously growls something else, his wife, silent except for her shushing, tries to put the child to sleep again.
1 September. In complete helplessness barely wrote two pages. I fell back a great deal today, though I slept well. Yet if I wish to transcend the initial pangs of writing (as well as the inhibiting effect of my
way of life) and rise up into the freedom that perhaps awaits me, I know that I must not yield. My old apathy hasn’t completely deserted me yet, as I can see, and my coldness of heart perhaps never. That I recoil from no ignominy can as well indicate hopelessness as give hope.
13 September. Again barely two pages. At first I thought my sorrow over the Austrian defeats and my anxiety for the future (anxiety that appears ridiculous to me at bottom, and base too) would prevent me from doing any writing. But that wasn’t it, it was only an apathy that forever comes back and forever has to be put down again. There is time enough for sorrow when I am not writing. The thoughts provoked in me by the war resemble my old worries over F. in the tormenting way in which they devour me from every direction. I can’t endure worry, and perhaps have been created expressly in order to die of it. When I shall have grown weak enough – it won’t take very long – the most trifling worry will perhaps suffice to rout me. In this prospect I can also see a possibility of postponing the disaster as long as possible. It is true that, with the greatest effort on the part of a nature then comparatively unweakened, there was little I was able to do against my worries over F.; but I had had the great support of my writing in the first days of that period; henceforth I will never allow it to be taken from me.
7 October. I have taken a week’s vacation to push the novel on. Until today – it is Wednesday night, my vacation ends Monday – it has been a failure. I have written little and feebly. Even last week I was on the decline, but could not foresee that it would prove so bad. Are these three days enough to warrant the conclusion that I am unworthy of living without the office?
15 October. Two weeks of good work; full insight into my situation occasionally. Today, Thursday (Monday my holiday is over, I have taken an additional week), a letter from Miss Bl. I don’t know what to do about it, I know it is certain that I shall live on alone (if I live at all – which is not certain), I also don’t know whether I love F. (I remember the aversion I felt at the sight of her dancing with her severe eyes lowered, or when she ran her hand over her nose and hair in the Askanischer Hof shortly before she left, and the numberless moments of complete estrangement); but in spite of everything the enormous temptation returns again. I played with the letter all through the evening; I don’t work though I could (even if I’ve had excruciating headaches this whole past week). I’m noting down from memory the letter I wrote to Miss Bl.:
What a strange coincidence, Grete, that it was just today I received your letter. I will not say with what it coincided, that concerns only me and the things that were troubling me tonight as I went to bed, about three. (Suicide; letter full of instructions to Max.)
Your letter was a great surprise to me. Not because you wrote to me. Why shouldn’t you write to me? Though you do say that I hate you; but it isn’t true. Were the whole world to hate you, I still shouldn’t, and not only because I have no right to do so. You sat as a judge over me in the Askanischer Hof – it was awful for you, for me, for everyone – but it only seemed so; in reality all the time I was sitting in your place and sit there to this day.
You are completely mistaken about F. I don’t say this to worm details from you. I can think of no detail – and my imagination has so often gone back and forth across this ground that I can trust it – I say I can think of no detail that could persuade me you are not mistaken. What you suggest is completely impossible; it makes me unhappy to think that F. should perhaps be deceiving herself for some undiscoverable reason. But that is also impossible.
I have always believed your interest to be honest and free from any personal consideration. Nor was your last letter an easy one to write. I warmly thank you for it.
What did this accomplish? The letter sounds unyielding, but only because I was ashamed, because I considered it irresponsible, because I was afraid to be yielding; by no means because I did not want to yield. That was the only thing I did want. It would be best for all of us if she would not answer, but she will answer and I shall wait for her answer.
…82 I have now lived calmly for two months without any real contact with F. (except through the correspondence with E.), have dreamed of F. as though of someone who was dead and could never live again, and now, when I am offered a chance to come near her, she is at once the centre of everything again. She is probably also interfering with my work. How very much a stranger she has sometimes seemed to me these latter days when I would think of her, of all the people I had ever met the most remote; though at the same time I told myself that this was simply because F. had been closer to me than any other person, or at least had been thrust so close to me by other people.
Leafed through the diary a little. Got a kind of inkling of the way a life like this is constituted.
21 October. For four days almost no work at all, only an hour or so all the time and only a few lines, but slept better; as a result almost got rid of my headaches. No reply from Bl.; tomorrow is the last possible day.
25 October. My work almost completely at a standstill. What I write seems to lack independence, seems only the pale reflection of earlier work. Reply from Bl. arrived; I am completely undecided as to how to answer it. Thoughts so base that I cannot even write them down. Yesterday’s sadness …
1 November. Yesterday, after a long time, made a great deal of progress; today again virtually nothing; the two weeks since my holiday have been almost a complete loss – Part of the day – it’s Sunday – has been beautiful. In Chotek Park read Dostoyevsky’s pamphlet in his own defence. The guard at the castle and the corps headquarters. The fountain in the Thun palace – Much self-satisfaction all day. And now I completely balk at any work. Yet it isn’t balking; I see the task and the way to it, I simply have to push past small obstacles but cannot do it – Toying with thoughts of F.
3 November. In the afternoon a letter to E., looked through a story by Pick, ‘Der blinde Gast’, and made some corrections, read a little Strindberg, then didn’t sleep, home at half past eight, back at ten in fear of headaches which had already begun; and because I had slept very little during the night, did not work any more, partly too because I was afraid to spoil a fair passage I had written yesterday. Since August, the fourth day on which I have written nothing. The letters are the cause of it; I’ll try to write none at all or only very short ones. How embarrassed I now am, and how it agitates me. Yesterday evening my excessive happiness after having read several lines by Jammes, whom otherwise I don’t care for, but whose French (it is a description of a visit to a poet who was a friend of his) had so strong an effect on me.
4 November. P. back.83 Shouting excited past all bounds. Story about the mole burrowing under him in the trenches which he looked upon as a warning from heaven to leave that spot. He had just got away when a bullet struck a soldier crawling after him at the moment he was over the mole – His captain. They distinctly saw him taken prisoner. But the next day found him naked in the woods, pierced through by bayonets. He probably had had money on him, they wanted to search him and rob him of it, but he – ‘the way officers are’ – wouldn’t voluntarily submit to being touched – P. almost wept with rage and excitement when he met his boss (whom in the past he had admired ridiculously, out of all measure) on the train, elegantly dressed, perfumed, his opera glass dangling from his neck, on his way to the theatre. (A month later he himself did the same with a ticket given him by this boss. He went to see Der ungetreue Eckehart, a comedy.)84 Slept one night in the castle of Princess Sapieha; one night, while his unit was in reserve, right in front of the Austrian batteries; one night in a peasant cottage, where two women were sleeping in each of the two beds standing right and left against each wall, a girl behind the stove, and eight soldiers on the floor – Punishment given soldiers. Stand bound to a tree until they turn blue.
12 November. Parents who expect gratitude from their children (there are even some who insist on it) are like usurers who gladly risk their capital if only they receive interest.
24 November. Yesterday on Tuchmac
hergasse, where they distribute old clothing to the refugees from Galicia. Max, his mother, Mr Chaim Nagel. The intelligence, the patience, the friendliness, the industry, the affability, the wit, the dependability of Mr Nagel. People who, within their sphere, do their work so thoroughly that you believe they could succeed in anything on earth – yet it is part of their perfection too that they don’t reach out for anything beyond their sphere.
The clever, lively, proud, and unassuming Mrs Kannegiesser from Tarnow, who wanted only two blankets, but nice ones, and who nevertheless, in spite of Max’s influence, got only old, dirty ones, while the new blankets were put aside for the better people in another room, together with all the best things. Then, they didn’t want to give her good ones because she needed them for only two days until her linen arrived from Vienna; they aren’t permitted to take back used articles because of the danger of cholera.
