The Diaries of Franz Kafka (45 page)

‘ Get out!’ the boss shouted.’ Thief! Get out! Get out, I say!’

‘It’s not true,’ I shouted for the hundredth time; ‘I didn’t steal! It’s a mistake or a slander! Don’t you touch me! I’ll sue you! There are still courts here! I won’t go! For five years I slaved for you like a son and now you treat me like a thief. I didn’t steal; for God’s sake, listen to me, I didn’t steal.’

‘Not another word,’ said the boss, ‘you’re fired!’

We were already at the glass door, an apprentice darted out in front of us and quickly opened it; the din coming in from what was indeed an out-of-the-way street brought me back to reality; I halted in the doorway, arms akimbo, and, as calmly as I could despite my breathlessness, merely said, ‘I want my hat.’

‘You’ll get it,’ the boss said, walked back a few steps, took the hat from Grassmann, one of the clerks, who had jumped over the counter, tried to throw it to me but missed his aim, and anyway threw it too hard, so that the hat flew past me into the street.

‘You can keep the hat now,’ I said, and went out into the street. And now I was in a quandary. I had stolen, had slipped a five-gulden bill out of the till to take Sophie to the theatre that evening. But she didn’t even want to go to the theatre; payday was three days off, at that time I should have had my own money; besides, I had committed the theft stupidly, in broad daylight, near the glass window of the office in which the boss sat looking at me. ‘Thief!’ he shouted, and sprang out of the office. ‘I didn’t steal,’ was the first thing I said, but the five-gulden bill was in my hand and the till open.

Made jottings on the trip in another notebook. Began things that went wrong. But I will not give up in spite of insomnia, headaches, a general incapacity. I’ve summoned up my last resources to this end. I made the remark that ‘I don’t avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly’. But now I will defend myself. For a month, during the absence of my boss, I’ll have the time.

30 July. Tired of working in other people’s stores, I had opened up a little stationery store of my own. Since my means were limited and I had to pay cash for almost everything –

I sought advice, I wasn’t stubborn. It was not stubbornness when I silently laughed with contorted face and feverishly shining cheeks at someone who had unwittingly proffered me advice. It was suspense, a readiness on my part to be instructed, an unhealthy lack of stubbornness.

The director of the Progress Insurance Company was always greatly dissatisfied with his employees. Now every director is dissatisfied with his employees; the difference between employees and directors is too vast to be bridged by means of mere commands on the part of the director and mere obedience on the part of the employees. Only mutual hatred can bridge the gap and give the whole enterprise its perfection.

Bauz, the director of the Progress Insurance Company, looked doubtfully at the man standing in front of his desk applying for a job as attendant with the company. Now and then he also glanced at the man’s papers lying before him on the desk.

‘You’re tall enough,’ he said, ‘I can see that; but what can you do? Our attendants must be able to do more than lick stamps; in fact, that’s the one thing they don’t have to be able to do, because we have machines to do that kind of thing. Our attendants are part officials, they have responsible work to do; do you feel you are qualified for that? Your head is shaped peculiarly. Your forehead recedes so. Remarkable. Now, what was your last position? What? You haven’t worked for a year? Why was that? You had pneumonia? Really? Well, that isn’t much of a recommendation, is it? Naturally, we can employ only people who are in good health. Before you are taken on you will have to be examined by the doctor. You are quite well now? Really? Of course, that could be. Speak up a little! Your whispering makes me nervous. I see here that you’re also married, have four children. And you haven’t worked for a year! Really, man! Your wife takes in washing? I see. Well, all right. As long as you’re already here, get the doctor to examine you
now; the attendant will show you the way. But that doesn’t mean that you will be hired, even if the doctor’s opinion is favourable. By no means. In any event, you’ll receive our decision in writing. To be frank, I may as well tell you at once: I’m not at all impressed with you. We need an entirely different kind of attendant. But have yourself examined in any case. And now go, go. Trembling like that won’t do you any good. I have no authority to hand out favours. You’re willing to do any kind of work? Certainly. Everyone is. That’s no special distinction. It merely indicates the low opinion you have of yourself. And now I’m telling you for the last time: Go along and don’t take up any more of my time. This is really enough.’

Bauz had to strike the desk with his hand before the man let himself be led out of the director’s office by the attendant.

I mounted my horse and settled myself firmly in the saddle. The maid came running to me from the gate and announced that my wife still wanted to speak to me on an urgent matter; would I wait just a moment, she hadn’t quite finished dressing yet. I nodded and sat quietly on my horse, who now and then gently raised his forelegs and reared a little. We lived on the outskirts of the village; before me, in the sun, the highway mounted a slope whose opposite side a small wagon had just ascended, which now came driving down into the village at a rapid pace. The driver brandished his whip, a woman in a provincial yellow dress sat in the dark and dusty interior of the wagon.

I was not at all surprised that the wagon stopped in front of my house.

31 July. I have no time.
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General mobilization. K. and P. have been called up. Now I receive the reward for living alone. But it is hardly a reward; living alone ends only with punishment. Still, as a consequence, I am little affected by all the misery and am firmer in my resolve than ever. I shall have to spend my afternoons in the factory; I won’t live at home, for Elli and the two children are moving in with us. But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.

1 August. Went to the train to see K. off. Relatives everywhere-in the office. Would like to go to Valli’s.

2 August. Germany has declared war on Russia – Swimming in the afternoon.

3 August. Alone in my sister’s apartment. It is lower down than my room, it is also on a side street, hence the neighbours’ loud talking below, in front of their doors. Whistling too. Otherwise complete solitude. No longed-for wife to open the door. In one month I was to have been married. The saying hurts: You’ve made your bed, now lie in it. You find yourself painfully pushed against the wall, apprehensively lower your eyes to see whose hand it is that pushes you, and, with a new pain in which the old is forgotten, recognize your own contorted hand holding you with a strength it never had for good work. You raise your head, again feel the first pain, again lower your gaze; this up-and-down motion of your head goes on without pause.

4 August. When I rented the place for myself I probably signed something for the landlord by which I bound myself to a two- or even six-year lease. Now he is basing his demand on this agreement. My stupidity, or rather, my general and utter helplessness. Drop quietly into the river. Dropping probably seems so desirable to me because it reminds me of ‘being pushed’.

5 August. The business almost settled, by the expenditure of the last of my strength. Was there twice with Malek as witness, at Felix’s to draft the lease, at the lawyers’ (6 kr), and all of it unnecessary; I could and should have done it all myself.

6 August. The artillery that marched across the Graben. Flowers, shouts of hurrah! and
nazdar!
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The rigidly silent, astonished, attentive black face with black eyes.

I am more broken down than recovered. An empty vessel, still intact yet already in the dust among the broken fragments; or already in fragments yet still ranged among those that are intact. Full of lies, hate, and envy. Full of incompetence, stupidity, thickheadedness. Full of laziness, weakness, and helplessness. Thirty-one years old. I saw the two agriculturists in Ottla’s picture. Young, fresh people possessed of some knowledge and strong enough to put it to use among people who in the
nature of things resist their efforts somewhat. One of them leading beautiful horses; the other lies in the grass, the tip of his tongue playing between his lips in his otherwise unmoving and absolutely trustworthy face.

I discover in myself nothing but pettiness, indecision, envy, and hatred against those who are fighting and whom I passionately wish everything evil.

What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me. But the strength I can muster for that portrayal is not to be counted upon: perhaps it has already vanished forever, perhaps it will come back to me again, although the circumstances of my life don’t favour its return. Thus I waver, continually fly to the summit of the mountain, but then fall back in a moment. Others waver too, but in lower regions, with greater strength; if they are in danger of falling, they are caught up by the kinsman who walks beside them for that very purpose. But I waver on the heights; it is not death, alas, but the eternal torments of dying.

Patriotic parade. Speech by the mayor. Disappears, then reappears, and a shout in German: ‘Long live our beloved monarch, hurrah!’ I stand there with my malignant look. These parades are one of the most disgusting accompaniments of the war. Originated by Jewish businessmen who are German one day, Czech the next; admit this to themselves, it is true, but were never permitted to shout it out as loudly as they do now. Naturally they carry many others along with them. It was well organized. It is supposed to be repeated every evening, twice tomorrow and Sunday.

7 August. Even if you have not the slightest sensitivity to individual differences, you still treat everyone in his own way. L. of Binz, in order to attract attention, poked his stick at me and frightened me.

Yesterday and today wrote four pages, trivialities difficult to surpass.

Strindberg is tremendous. This rage, these pages won by fist-fighting.

Chorus from the tavern across the way. I just went to the window.
Sleep seems impossible. The song is coming through the open door of the tavern. A girl’s voice is leading them. They are singing simple love songs. I hope a policeman comes along. There he comes. He stops in front of the door for a moment and listens. Then calls out: ‘Landlord!’ The girl’s voice: ‘Vojtíšku.’
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A man in trousers and shirt jumps forward out of a corner. ‘Close the door! You’re making too much noise.’ ‘Oh sorry, sorry,’ says the landlord, and with delicate and obliging gestures, as if he were dealing with a lady, first closes the door behind him, then opens it to slip out, and closes it again. The policeman (whose behaviour, especially his anger, is incomprehensible, for the singing can’t disturb him but must rather sweeten his monotonous round) marches off; the singers have lost all desire to sing.

11 August. I imagine that I have remained in Paris, walk through it arm in arm with my uncle, pressed close to his side.

12 August. Didn’t sleep at all. Lay three hours in the afternoon on the sofa, sleepless and apathetic; the same at night. But it mustn’t thwart me.

15 August. I have been writing these past few days, may it continue. Today I am not so completely protected by and enclosed in my work as I was two years ago,
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nevertheless have the feeling that my monotonous, empty, mad bachelor’s life has some justification. I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don’t stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.

During one period of my life – it is many years ago now – I had a post with a small railway in the interior of Russia. I have never been so forsaken as I was there. For various reasons that do not matter now, I had been looking for just such a place at the time; the more solitude ringing in my ears the better I liked it, and I don’t mean now to make any complaint. At first I had only missed a little activity. The little railway may originally have been built with some commercial purpose
in view, but the capital had been insufficient, construction came to a halt, and instead of terminating at Kalda, the nearest village of any size, a five-days journey from us by wagon, the railway came to an end at a small settlement right in the wilderness, still a full day’s journey from Kalda.

Kafka Sketch.

Now even if the railway had extended to Kalda it would perforce have remained an unprofitable venture for an indefinite period, for the whole notion of it was wrong; the country needed roads, not railways, nor could the railway manage at all in its present state; the two trains running daily carried freight a light wagon could have hauled, and its only passengers were a few farm hands during the summer. But still they did not want to shut down the railway altogether, for they went on hoping that if it were kept in operation they could attract the necessary capital for furthering the construction work. Even this hope was, in my opinion, not so much hope as despair and laziness. They kept the railway in operation so long as there were still supplies of coal available, the wages of their few workers they paid irregularly and not in full, as though they were gifts of charity; as for the rest, they waited for the whole thing to collapse.