The Diaries of Franz Kafka (46 page)

It was by this railway, then, that I was employed, living in a wooden shed left standing from the time of the railway’s construction, and now serving at the same time as a station. There was only one room, in which a bunk had been set up for me – and a desk for any writing I might have to do. Above it was installed the telegraphic apparatus. In the spring, when I arrived, one train would pass the station very early in the day – later this was changed – and it sometimes happened that a passenger would alight at the station while I was still asleep. In that case, of course – the nights there were very cool until midsummer – he did not remain outside in the open but knocked, I would unbolt the door, and then we would often pass hours in chatting. I lay on my bunk, my guest squatted on the floor or, following my instructions, brewed tea which we then drank together sociably. All these village people were distinguished by a great sociability. Moreover, I perceived that I was not particularly suited to stand a condition of utter solitude, admit as I had to that my self-imposed solitude had already, after a short time, begun to dissipate my past sorrows. I have in general found that it is extremely difficult for a misfortune to dominate a solitary person
for any length of time. Solitude is powerful beyond everything else, and drives one back to people. Naturally, you then attempt to find new ways, ways seemingly less painful but in reality simply not yet known.

I became more attached to the people there than I should have thought possible. It was naturally not a regular contact with them that I had. All the five villages with which I had to do were several hours distant from the station as well as from each other. I dared not venture too far from the station, lest I lose my job. And under no circumstances did I want that, at least not in the beginning. For this reason I could not go to the villages themselves, and had to depend on the passengers or on people not deterred by the long journey that had to be made to visit me. During the very first month such people dropped in; but no matter how friendly they were, it was easy to see that they came only on the chance of transacting some business with me, nor did they make any attempt to conceal their purpose. They brought butter, meat, corn, all sorts of things; at first, so long as I had any money, I habitually bought everything almost sight unseen, so welcome were these people to me, some of them especially. Later, though, I limited my purchases, among other reasons because I thought I noticed a certain contempt on their part for the manner in which I bought things. Besides, the train also brought me food, food, however, that was very bad and even more expensive than that which the peasants brought.

Originally I had intended to plant a small vegetable garden, to buy a cow, and in this way make myself as self-sufficient as I could. I had even brought along gardening tools and seed; there was a great deal of uncultivated ground around my hut stretching away on one level without the slightest rise as far as the eye could see. But I was too weak to conquer the soil. A stubborn soil that was frozen solid until spring and that even resisted the sharp edge of my new pick. Whatever seed one sowed in it was lost. I had attacks of despair during this labour. I lay in my bunk for days, not coming out even when the trains arrived. I would simply put my head through the window, which was right above my bunk, and report that I was sick. Then the train crew, which consisted of three men, came in to get warm, though they found very little warmth – whenever possible I avoided using the old iron stove that so easily blew up. I preferred to lie there wrapped in an old warm coat and covered by the various skins I had bought from the peasants over
a period of time. ‘You’re often sick,’ they said to me. ‘You’re a sickly person. You won’t leave this place alive.’ They did not say this to depress me, but rather strove straightforwardly to speak the truth whenever possible. Their eyes usually goggled peculiarly at such times.

Once a month, but always on a different day of the month, an inspector came to examine my record book, to collect the money I had taken in and – but not always – to pay me my salary. I was always warned of his arrival a day in advance by the people who had dropped him at the last station. They considered this warning the greatest favour they could do me in spite of the fact that I naturally always had everything in good order. Nor was the slightest effort needed for this. And the inspector too always came into the station with an air as if to say, this time I shall unquestionably uncover the evidence of your mismanagement. He always opened the door of the hut with a push of his knee, giving me a look at the same time. Hardly had he opened my book when he found a mistake. It took me a long time to prove to him, by recomputing it before his eyes, that the mistake had been made not by me but by him. He was always dissatisfied with the amount I had taken in, then clapped his hand on the book and gave me a sharp look again. ‘We’ll have to shut down the railway,’ he would say each time. ‘It will come to that,’ I usually replied.

After the inspection had been concluded, our relationship would change. I always had brandy ready and, whenever possible, some sort of delicacy. We drank to each other; he sang in a tolerable voice, but always the same two songs. One was sad and began: ‘Where are you going, O child in the forest?’ The other was gay and began like this: ‘Merry comrades, I am yours!’ – It depended on the mood I was able to put him in, how large an instalment I got on my salary. But it was only at the beginning of these entertainments that I watched him with any purpose in mind; later we were quite at one, cursed the company shamelessly, he whispered secret promises into my ear about the career he would help me to achieve, and finally we fell together on the bunk in an embrace that often lasted ten hours unbroken. The next morning he went on his way, again my superior. I stood beside the train and saluted; often as not he turned to me while getting aboard and said, ‘Well, my little friend, we’ll meet again in a month. You know what you have at stake.’ I can still see the bloated face he turned to me with
an effort, every feature in his face stood prominently forth, cheeks, nose, lips.

This was the one great diversion during the month when I let myself go; if inadvertently some brandy had been left over, I guzzled it down immediately after the inspector left. I could generally hear the parting whistle of the train while it gurgled into me. The thirst that followed a night of this sort was terrible; it was as if another person were within me, sticking his head and throat out of my mouth and screaming for something to drink. The inspector was provided for, he always carried a large supply of liquor on his train; but I had to depend on whatever was left over.

But then the whole month thereafter I did not drink, did not smoke either; I did my work and wanted nothing more. There was, as I have said, not very much to do, but what there was I did thoroughly. It was my duty every day, for instance, to clean and inspect the track a kilometre on either side of the station. But I did not limit myself to what was required and often went much farther, so far that I was barely able to make out the station. In clear weather the station could be seen at a distance of perhaps five kilometres, for the country was quite flat. And then, if I had gone so far off that the hut in the distance only glimmered before my eyes, I sometimes saw – it was an optical illusion – many black dots moving towards the hut. There were whole companies, whole troops. But sometimes someone really came; then, swinging my pick, I ran all the long way back.

I finished my work towards evening and finally could retreat into my hut. Generally no visitors came at this hour, for the journey back to the villages was not entirely safe at night. All sorts of shiftless fellows drifted about in the neighbourhood; they were not natives, however, and others would take their place from time to time, but then the original ones would come back again. I got to see most of them, they were attracted by the lonely station; they were not really dangerous, but you had to deal firmly with them.

They were the only ones who disturbed me during the long twilight hours. Otherwise I lay on my bunk, gave no thought to the past, no thought to the railway, the next train did not come through till between ten and eleven at night; in short, I gave no thought to anything. Now and then I read an old newspaper thrown to me from the train; it contained
the gossip of Kalda, which would have interested me but which I could not understand from disconnected issues. Moreover, in every issue there was an instalment of a novel called
The Commander’s Revenge
. I once dreamed of this commander, who always wore a dagger at his side, on one particular occasion even held it between his teeth. Besides, I could not read much, for it got dark early and paraffin or a tallow candle was prohibitively expensive. Every month the railway gave me only half a litre of paraffin, which I used up long before the end of the month merely in keeping the signal light lit half an hour for the train every evening. But this light wasn’t at all necessary, and later on, at least on moonlit nights, I would neglect to light it. I correctly foresaw that with the passing of summer I should stand in great need of paraffin. I therefore dug a hole in one corner of the hut, put an old tarred beer keg in it, and every month poured in the paraffin I had saved. It was covered with straw and could attract no attention. The more the hut stank of paraffin, the happier I was; the smell got so strong because the old and rotten staves of the keg had soaked up the paraffin. Later, as a precaution, I buried the keg outside the hut; for once the inspector had boasted to me of a box of wax matches, and when I had asked to see them, threw them one after the other blazing into the air. Both of us, and especially the paraffin, were in real danger; I saved everything by throttling him until he dropped all the matches.

In my leisure hours I often considered how I might prepare for winter. If I was freezing even now, during the warm part of the year – and they said it was warmer than it had been for many years – it would fare very badly with me during the winter. That I was hoarding paraffin was only a whim; if I had been acting sensibly, I should have had to lay up many things for the winter; there was little doubt that the company would not be especially solicitous of my welfare; but I was too heedless, or rather, I was not heedless but I cared too little about myself to want to make much of an effort. Now, during the warm season, things were going tolerably, I left it at that and did nothing further.

One of the attractions that had drawn me to this station had been the prospect of hunting. I had been told that the country was extraordinarily rich in game, and I had already put down a deposit on a gun I wanted sent to me when I had saved up a little money. Now it turned out that there was no trace of game animals here, only wolves and bears were
reported, though during the first few months I had failed to see any; otherwise there were only unusually large rats which I had immediately caught sight of running in packs across the steppe as if driven by the wind. But the game I had been looking forward to was not to be found. The people hadn’t misinformed me; a region rich in game did exist, but it was a three-days journey away – I had not considered that directions for reaching a place in this country, with its hundreds of kilometres of uninhabited areas, must necessarily be uncertain. In any event, for the time being I had no need of the gun and could use the money for other purposes; still, I had to provide myself with a gun for the winter and I regularly laid money aside for that purpose. As for the rats that sometimes attacked my provisions, my long knife sufficed to deal with them.

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.