Amerika

by Franz Kafka

  ‘It’s impossible to mount a defence of oneself without a certain amount of good will,’ said Karl to himself, and didn’t reply to the Head Waiter, however much Therese might suffer as a result. He knew that whatever he said would look quite different in retrospect from the way he had meant it to sound, and that whether it was good or bad depended solely on the way it was judged.

  ‘He’s not answering,’ said the Head Cook.

  ‘It’s the most sensible thing he can do,’ said the Head Waiter.

  ‘He’ll think of something,’ said the Head Porter, and with his lately violent hand, gently stroked his beard.

  ‘Stop it,’ said the Head Cook to Therese, who had started sobbing beside her. ‘You can see he’s not answering, so how can I do anything for him. Remember I’m the one who’s been proved wrong by the Head Waiter. Tell me, Therese, is there anything, do you think, that I haven’t tried on his behalf?’ How was Therese to know that, and what did it help, openly asking such a question of the little girl and thereby surely losing face in front of the two men?

  ‘Madam,’ said Karl, making one last effort, but for the sole purpose of saving Therese from having to make some reply, ‘I don’t think I have disgraced you in any way, and on closer inspection I don’t think anyone would claim that I had.’

  ‘Anyone,’ said the Head Porter, and pointed at the Head Waiter, ‘that’s a dig at you, Mr Isbary.’

  ‘Well now, Head Cook,’ said the latter, ‘it’s half past six, time to move on. I think you’d better leave me the last word in this affair on which we have expended too much patience already.’

  Little Giacomo had come in and wanted to go over to Karl, but was frightened off by the general silence, so he stood back and waited.

  Since Karl’s last words, the Head Cook had not taken her eyes off him, and there was nothing to suggest that she had heard the Head Waiter’s words. She levelled her eyes at him, they were large and blue, if a little dimmed by age and so much work. To see her standing there, feebly rocking the chair in front of her, one might have expected her to go on to say: ‘Well, Karl, the thing isn’t quite clear to me yet; on reflection, and as you quite rightly said, it calls for closer investigation. So let’s set that in motion now, whether we all agree to it or not, because that’s what justice demands.’

  Instead of which, after a short silence which no one dared to break – only the clock supplied confirmation of the Head Waiter’s words by striking the half hour, and at the same time, as everyone knew, all the other clocks in the whole hotel also struck, an audible and an imagined chime, like the twofold twitching of a single great impatience, the Head Cook said: ‘No, Karl, no, no! Don’t let’s get involved in all that. Just causes have a certain distinctive aspect, and yours, I must confess, doesn’t. I say so and I am bound to say so as I came here most predisposed in your favour. You see, even Therese is silent.’ (But she wasn’t silent at all, she was crying.)

  Taken by a sudden impulse, the Head Cook stopped and said: ‘Karl, will you come here a minute,’ and when he had gone to her – straight away the Head Waiter and Head Porter conferred animatedly behind his back – she put her left arm round him, and followed quite helplessly by Therese, went with him to the other end of the room, and walked to and fro for a while with both of them, and said: ‘It is possible, Karl, and this is what you have put your trust in, otherwise I couldn’t understand you at all, that an investigation may show you to be right in one or two details. And why not? Perhaps you did greet the Head Porter. I even believe you did, I have my own opinion of the Head Porter, you see, I’m even now being quite open with you. But these vindications are no use to you really. The Head Waiter, whose judgement I have learned to respect in the course of many years, and who is the most reliable man I know anywhere, has clearly found you culpable, and that seems to me irrefutably the case. Perhaps you merely acted rashly, but then again, perhaps I was deceived in you. And yet,’ she said, virtually contradicting herself, and glancing across at the two men, ‘I can’t help thinking you’re still a good boy at heart.’

  ‘Head Cook! Head Cook! Come along now,’ called the Head Waiter, who had caught her glance.

  ‘We’re just finishing,’ said the Head Cook, and addressed Karl with greater urgency now: ‘Listen, Karl, as I see it, I’m glad the Head Waiter isn’t going to launch an investigation, because if he did, I’d have to try and stop him for your sake. No one must learn how and with what you entertained the man, who, incidentally, can’t have been one of your former companions as you claim, because you had such a falling out with them when you broke up, so you would hardly have been looking after him now. So it can only be some acquaintance you foolishly made in some bar in the city. How could you keep all these things from me, Karl? If you found the dormitory so unbearable, and for that innocent reason you took to your nightlife, you had only to tell me, you know I wanted to get you a room of your own, and only desisted at your request. It now appears that you preferred the general dormitory because you could feel less constrained there. And you kept your money in my chest, and brought me your tips every week, where in God’s name did you get the money to pay for your amusements, and where were you going to get the money for your friend from? All these are of course things I daren’t even suggest to the Head Waiter, for the moment, because then an investigation might become unavoidable. So you must leave the hotel, and as quickly as possible. Go straight to the Pension Brenner – you’ve been there several times with Therese – they’ll take you in for free on my recommendation’ – and taking a golden crayon from her blouse, the Head Cook scribbled a few lines on a visiting card, but carried on speaking at the same time – ‘I’ll have your suitcase sent on after you, Therese, go to the lift-boys’ cloakroom and pack his suitcase’ (but Therese still refused to move, having endured so much misery, she now wanted to witness this sudden turn for the better in Karl’s affairs, thanks to the kindness of the Head Cook).

  Someone opened the door a crack, without showing himself, and then shut it again. It must have been for Giacomo, because he now stepped forward and said: ‘Rossmann, I have something for you.’ ‘In a minute,’ said the Head Cook, and pushed the visiting card into Karl’s pocket as he stood and listened with bowed head, ‘I’ll keep your money for the moment, you know it’s safe with me. Stay in today and think about everything, and tomorrow – I’ve no time today, I’ve spent far too long here already – I’ll visit you at the Brenner, and we’ll see what we can do for you then. I’m not abandoning you, I’m telling you right now. You’re not to worry about the future, just about the recent past.’ Thereupon she patted him on the back and went over to the Head Waiter, Karl raised his head and watched the large stately woman walking calmly and easily away from him.

  ‘Aren’t you even a bit pleased’, said Therese, who had stayed behind with him, ‘that everything has turned out so well?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Karl, and smiled at her, but he didn’t know why he should be pleased to be called a thief and be sent packing. But joy gleamed in Therese’s eyes, it was as though she was completely indifferent as to whether Karl had done wrong or not, whether he had been correctly judged or not, so long as he was allowed to get away somehow, with honour or in disgrace. And this was Therese, who was so scrupulous in her own affairs, turning over and inspecting some just slightly unclear sentence of the Head Cook’s in her head for weeks. He asked her deliberately: ‘Will you pack my suitcase and send it on promptly?’ He had to shake his head in disbelief at the way Therese grasped the question and how her conviction that there were items in the suitcase that needed to be kept concealed from view meant that she didn’t even look at Karl or shake hands, but merely whispered: ‘Of course, Karl, right away, I’ll pack it right now.’ And she was gone.

  Now there was no more stopping Giacomo, and excited after his long wait he called out: ‘Rossmann, the man is rolling about in the corridor downstairs and refuses to be taken away. They wanted to have him taken to hospital but he wouldn’t go and says you’d n
ever let him be sent to a hospital. He wants to be driven home in a car, and says you’ll pay for the car. Will you?’

  ‘There’s a trusting fellow,’ said the Head Waiter. Karl shrugged his shoulders and handed his money over to Giacomo: ‘It’s all I’ve got,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m to ask you if you want to go in the car with him,’ Giacomo asked, jingling the money.

  ‘He won’t be going in the car with him,’ said the Head Cook.

  ‘Now Rossmann,’ said the Head Waiter quickly, without even waiting for Giacomo to leave the room, ‘you’re dismissed with immediate effect.’

  The Head Porter nodded several times, as though these were his words, which the Head Waiter was merely repeating.

  ‘I am not able to state the grounds for your dismissal, because if I did I would have to have you locked up.’

  The Head Porter looked across at the Head Cook with notable severity, because it had not escaped him that she was the cause of this unduly mild treatment.

  ‘Go to Bess now, get changed, give Bess your livery, and leave the premises at once, and I mean at once.’

  The Head Cook closed her eyes, she did it to soothe Karl. As he bowed in farewell, he just caught a glimpse of the Head Waiter’s hand discreetly taking the Head Cook’s hand and playing with it. The Head Porter, with heavy tread, accompanied Karl to the door, which he wouldn’t let him close, but kept open in order to be able to call after him: ‘In a quarter of a minute I want to see you going past my office at the main gate, just remember that.’

  Karl hurried as much as he could, to avoid a scene at the main entrance, but everything took much longer than he meant it to. To begin with, Bess couldn’t be met with right away, and as it was now breakfast time there were people everywhere, and then it turned out that another boy had borrowed Karl’s old trousers, and Karl was forced to look through most of the clothes stands next to the beds before he could find them, so that five minutes must have elapsed before Karl reached the main entrance. In front of him was a lady, accompanied by four gentlemen. They all went up to a large automobile which was waiting for them, and whose rear doors were being held open by a lackey who had his left arm extended stiffly behind him, which looked terribly impressive. But Karl’s hope to slip out unobserved with this posh group was a vain one. The Head Porter had him by the hand and pulled him out between two of the gentlemen, begging their pardon as he did. ‘That was never a quarter of a minute,’ he said and looked askance at Karl, like a man inspecting a faulty watch. ‘Come in here will you,’ he said, and led him into the large porter’s lodge, which Karl had been longing to see for ages, but which he now entered, propelled by the porter, full only of suspicion. He was already in the doorway when he turned round and tried to push the porter aside and get away. ‘Oh no you don’t, this is the way in,’ said the Head Porter, spinning Karl round again. ‘But I’ve already been dismissed,’ said Karl, implying that no one in the hotel could order him about any longer. ‘As long as I’ve got you in my grip, you’re not dismissed,’ said the porter, which was indeed the case.

  Karl finally could think of no reason why he should defend himself against the porter. What worse thing could befall him? Besides, the walls of the porter’s lodge were entirely made up of enormous glass panels, through which you could see the crowds of people flowing into one another in the lobby, just as clearly as if one were in their midst. Yes, there seemed to be no corner in the whole porter’s lodge where one could be concealed from the eyes of those outside. And in however much of a hurry they all seemed to be as they made their way in or out, with outstretched arms, lowered heads and darting eyes, and luggage held aloft, yet hardly one of them failed to throw a glance into the porter’s lodge, for behind its glass panels there were always announcements and messages hanging that were of importance to the guests as well as the hotel staff. In addition, there was direct commerce between the porter’s lodge and the lobby, because of the two sliding windows which were manned by two under-porters, who were uninterruptedly engaged in giving out information on all kinds of subjects. These men were really overburdened, and Karl could have sworn that the Head Porter, as he knew him, must have got around doing this job in his past career. These two information dispensers had – you really couldn’t get a sense of it from outside – at least ten inquiring faces at the windows in front of them. These ten questioners, who were continually changing, spoke in a babel of different languages, as though each one of them had been sent from a different country. There were always some asking their questions at the same time, while some others were talking amongst themselves. For the most part, they wanted to collect something from the porter’s lodge or leave something there, and so you could always see hands waving impatiently out of the mass of people. Now someone wanted some newspaper, which was abruptly unfolded from above and briefly covered everyone’s faces. And the two under-porters had to stand up to all this. Mere speaking would not have been enough, they had to babble, and one of them especially, a gloomy man with a beard that surrounded his whole face, gave information without the slightest break. He looked neither at the desk in front of him, where he had various things to do too, nor at the faces of any of his inquisitors, but just in front of him, obviously to save his strength. His beard must have impeded the clarity of his speech, and in the few moments Karl stood beside him, he could understand very little of what he said, although perhaps, for all that it still sounded like English, he might just have been replying in some foreign language. Besides, it was confusing, the way one piece of information followed on the heels of another, and merged with it, so that a questioner was often listening with a tense expression on his face in the belief that he was still hearing something intended for himself, only to realize a while later that he had been taken care of already. You also had to get used to the fact that the under-porter never asked for a question to be repeated, even if it was generally comprehensible and only asked in some slightly unclear way, a barely perceptible shake of the head would indicate that he didn’t intend to reply to the question, and it was up to the questioner to realize his own shortcoming and reformulate his question in some better way. This kept some people at the counter for a very long time. To assist the under-porters, they each had an errand-boy, who had to run and get whatever the under-porter happened to need from a bookshelf and various files. These were the best-paid, if also the most exhausting, jobs for young people in the hotel, in a certain sense they were even worse off than the under-porters, who merely had to think and speak, whereas these young people had to think and run. If they happened to bring something inappropriate, the under-porter in his haste of course couldn’t take the time to give them a long lecture, he would just sweep. what they had laid in front of him on to the floor. Very interesting was the change-over of under-porters, which took place just after Karl’s entry. Such change-overs must take place fairly frequently during the day at least, because the person probably didn’t exist who could stand behind the counter for more than an hour. At the change-over time a bell sounded, and from two side doors the two under-porters whose turn it now was, emerged, each followed by his errand-boy. They stood for a while impassively by the counter to determine the current state of the answering process. When the right moment seemed to them to have come, they tapped on the shoulder of the under-porter they were relieving, who, though he had paid no attention to what had been going on behind his back, straightaway understood, and vacated his place. The whole thing happened so quickly that the people outside were often taken by surprise and almost shrank back from the new face that had so suddenly appeared in front of them. The men who had been relieved stretched, and from two basins that stood ready they poured water over their hot heads, the relieved errand-boys though were not yet permitted to stretch, they were still busy a while longer with picking up items that had been thrown on the floor during their hours of duty, and putting them back in their rightful places.

  Karl had taken in all this in a few moments of the raptest attention, and h
e felt a slight headache as he quietly followed the Head Porter onward. Evidently the Head Porter had noticed how greatly impressed Karl was by this style of information-giving, and he suddenly tugged at Karl’s hand, and said: ‘You see, that’s how people work here.’ Karl himself hadn’t actually been idle in the hotel, but he had had no notion of work such as this, and almost forgetting that the Head Porter was his sworn enemy, he looked up at him, and nodded in silent recognition. But that in turn struck the Head Porter as an overestimation of the under-porters and an implicit slight against his own person, because, as though he had been kidding Karl, he called out, without worrying about being overheard: ‘Of course this is the most stupid work in the whole hotel; if you listen for an hour, you know pretty well all the questions that are asked, and the rest you don’t need to answer. If you hadn’t been so cheeky and impertinent, if you hadn’t lied and tricked and boozed and stolen, I might have put you at one of these windows, because it’s only numbskulls I can use there.’ Karl quite failed to hear the abuse directed at himself, such was his indignation at the way the honest and difficult work of the under-porters, far from being recognized, was mocked, and mocked at that by a man who if he had dared to sit at one of those counters would surely have been forced to quit within a matter of minutes, to the derision of all the questioners. ‘Let me go,’ said Karl, his curiosity about the porter’s lodge now more than satisfied, ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you.’ ‘That’s not going to get you out of here,’ said the Head Porter, and pinned Karl’s arms so that he couldn’t even move them, and carried him bodily up to the other end of the porter’s lodge. Could the people outside not see this violence by the Head Porter? And if they saw it, how on earth did they interpret it, because no one seemed at all exercised by it, no one so much as knocked on the window to let the Head Porter know he was under observation, and couldn’t treat Karl as he pleased.