The Diaries of Franz Kafka (71 page)

My two friends disturb me; their path goes past my cabin and they always pause a moment at my door for a short chat or an invitation to take a walk. But I am also grateful to them for it.

In the
Evangelischen Missionzeitung
, July 1912, about missions in Java: ‘Much as may justly be urged against the amateur medical activities extensively engaged in by missionaries, it is nevertheless the principal resource of their missionary work and cannot be dispensed with.’

When I see these stark-naked people moving slowly past among the trees (though they are usually at a distance), I now and then get light, superficial attacks of nausea. Their running doesn’t make things any better. A naked man, a complete stranger to me, just now stopped at my door and asked me in a deliberate and friendly way whether I lived here in my house, something there couldn’t be much doubt of, after all. They come upon you so silently. Suddenly one of them is standing there, you don’t know where he came from. Old men who leap naked over haystacks are no particular delight to me, either.

Walked to Stapelburg in the evening. With two people I introduced and recommended to one another. Ruins. Back at ten. Some nudists prowling about among the haystacks on the meadow in front of my cabin, disappeared into the distance. At night, when I walked across the meadow to the toilet, there were three of them sleeping in the grass.

12 July. Dr Sch.’s stories. Travelled for one year. Then a long debate in the grass on Christianity. Old, blue-eyed Adolf Just who cures everything with clay and warns me against the doctor who had forbidden me fruit. The defence of God and the Bible by a member of the ‘Christian Community’; as the proof he needed at the moment, he read a Psalm. My Dr Sch. made a fool of himself with his atheism. Foreign words – illusion, auto-suggestion – didn’t help him a bit. Someone we didn’t know asked how it was that everything goes so well with the Americans, though they swear at every second word. With most of them it was impossible to discover what their real opinions were, though they all took a lively part in the discussion. The one who spoke so passionately of Flower Day and how it was just the Methodists who held back. The one from the ‘Christian Community’ who lunches with his pretty little boy on cherries and dry bread wrapped in a small paper bag; otherwise he lies in the grass all day, three Bibles open before him, and takes notes. It has only been three years
that he has been on the right path. Dr Sch.’s oil sketches from Holland. Pont Neuf.

Two sisters, little girls. One with a narrow face, easy posture, nose coming delicately to a point, clear, not entirely candid eyes. Her face shone with so much intelligence that I found myself looking excitedly at her for several minutes. Something moved me when I looked at her. Her more womanly little sister intercepted my glances – A newly arrived prim miss with a bluish look. The blonde with short, dishevelled hair. Supple and lean as a leather strap. Coat, blouse, and skirt, nothing else. Her stride!

With Dr Sch. (forty-three years old) on the meadow in the evening. Going for a walk, stretching, rubbing, slapping, and scratching. Stark naked. Shameless – The fragrance when I stepped out of the writing-room in the evening.

13 July. Picked cherries. Lutz read Kinkel’s
Die Seele
to me. After eating I always read a chapter from the Bible, a copy of which is in every room. Evening, the children at play. Little Susanne von Puttkammer, nine years old, in pink drawers.

14 July. Picked cherries on the ladder with a little basket. Was high up in the tree. Religious services in the morning on Eckarplätzen. Ambrosian chant. In the afternoon sent the two friends to Ilsenburg.

I was lying in the grass when the man from the ‘Christian Community’ (tall, handsome body, sunburned, pointed beard, happy appearance) walked from the place where he reads to the dressing-cabin; I followed him unsuspectingly with my eyes, but instead of returning to his place he came in my direction, I closed my eyes, but he was already introducing himself: H., land surveyor, and gave me four pamphlets as reading matter for Sunday. When he left he was still speaking about ‘pearls’ and ‘casting’, by which he meant to indicate that I was not to show the pamphlets to Dr Sch. They are: ‘The Prodigal Son’, ‘Bought, or No Longer Mine (for Unbelieving Believers)’, ‘Why Can’t the Educated Man Believe in the Bible?’ and ‘Three Cheers for Freedom: But What Is True Freedom?’ I read a little in them and then went back to him and, hesitant because of the respect in which I held him, tried to make it clear why there was no prospect of grace for me at present. Exercising a beautiful mastery over every word, something that only sincerity makes possible, he discussed this with me for an hour
and a half (towards the end an old, thin, white-haired, red-nosed man in linen joined in with several indistinct remarks). Unhappy Goethe, who made so many other people unhappy. A great many stories. How he, H., forbade his father to speak when he blasphemed God in his house. ‘Oh, Father, may you be stricken with horror, by your own words and be too terrified to speak further, I wouldn’t care one bit.’ How his father heard God’s voice on his deathbed. He saw that I was close to grace. I interrupted all his arguments and referred him to the inner voice. Successfully.

15 July. Read Kühnemann’s
Schiller
– The man who always carries a, card in his pocket to his wife in case of accident – The Book of Ruth – I read Schiller. Not far away a naked old man was lying in the grass, an umbrella open over his head.

Plato’s
Republic
– Posed for Dr Sch. – The page in Flaubert on prostitution – The large part the naked body plays in the total impression an individual gives.

A dream: The sunbathers destroyed one another in a brawl. After the two groups into which they were divided had joked with one another, someone stepped out in front of one group and shouted to the others: ‘Lustron and Kastron!’ The others: ‘What? Lustron and Kastron?’ He: ‘Right.’ Beginning of the brawl.

16 July. Kühnemann – Herr Guido von Gillshausen, captain, retired, writes poetry and music. A handsome man. Out of respect for his noble birth didn’t dare look up at him; broke out in a sweat (we were naked) and spoke too softly. His seal ring – The bowing of the Swedish boys – Talked in the park with my clothes on to a man with his clothes on. Missed the group excursion to Harzburg.

Evening. Rifle meet in Stapelburg. With Dr Sch. and a Berlin hairdresser. The wide plain rising gently to the Burgberg, bordered by ancient linden trees, incongruously traversed by a railway embankment. The platform from which they shot. Old peasants made the entries in the scorebook. The three fife players with women’s kerchiefs hanging down their backs. Old, inexplicable custom. Several of them in old, simple blue smocks, heirlooms made of the finest linen and costing fifteen marks. Almost everyone had his gun. Muzzle-loaders. You had
the impression that they were all somehow bent from work in the fields, especially when they lined up in double file. Several former meet-masters in top hats with sabres buckled round them. Horses’ tails and other old emblems were carried past; excitement; then the band played, greater excitement; then silence and drumming and fife playing, still greater excitement; finally, as the drums and fifes sounded for the last time, three flags were brought out, climax of the excitement. Forward march and off they went. Old man with a black suit, black cap, a somewhat pinched face, and a not too long, thick, silky, unsurpassable white beard encircling his face. The former champion shot, also in a top hat and a sash like a curtain around his body; the sash had little metal shields sewn all over it on each of which was engraved the name of the champion of a given year together with the symbol of his trade. (The master baker had a loaf of bread, etc.) Marching off in the dust to music under the changing light of the thickly clouded sky. Doll-like appearance of a soldier marching with them (a rifleman now in the army) and his hopping step. People’s armies and peasant wars. We followed them through the streets. Sometimes they were closer, sometimes farther away, since they stopped at the houses of the various champion shots; played, and were given some refreshments. The dust cleared towards the end of the column. The last pair could be seen most distinctly. From time to time we lost sight of them entirely. Tall peasant with somewhat sunken chest, eternal face, top boots, clothes that seemed made of leather; how ceremoniously he detached himself from the gatepost. The three women who were standing one behind the other in front of him. The one in the centre dark and beautiful. The two women at the gate of the farmyard opposite. In each of the two farmyards there was a giant tree that united with the other above the wide road. The large targets on the houses of the former champions.

The dance floor, in two parts, divided down the middle, the band in a fenced-off section having two rows of seats. Empty as yet, little girls slide across the smooth boards. (Chess players, relaxing from their play and talking, disturb me as I write.) I offer them my soda, they drink, the oldest first. Lack of a really common language. I ask whether they have already eaten dinner [
genachtmahlt
], complete lack of understanding; Dr Sch. asks whether they have already had supper [
Abendbrot
], they begin to have a vague understanding (he doesn’t
speak clearly, breathes too hard); they are able to give an answer only when the hairdresser asks whether they have had their grub [
gefuttert
]. They didn’t want the second soda I ordered for them, but they wanted to ride on the merry-go-round; I, with the six girls (from six to thirteen) around me, flew to the merry-go-round. On the way the girl who suggested the ride boasted that the merry-go-round belonged to her parents. We sat down and went around in a coach. Her friends around me, one on my knees. Girls crowding about who wanted to have some fun out of my money too, but my girls pushed them away against my will. The proprietor’s daughter superintended the reckoning so that I shouldn’t have to pay for strangers. If they wished, I was ready to go for another ride, but the proprietor’s daughter herself said that it was enough; instead, she wanted to go to the sweet tent. In my stupidity and curiosity I led the way to the wheel of fortune. As far as it was possible, they were very sparing of my money. Then off for the sweets. The tent had a large stock, and was as clean and neat as a store on the main street of a city. At the same time the prices were low, just as they are at our fairs. Then we went back to the dance floor. In all this I was more sensible of the girls than of my own bounty. Now they were ready for soda again, and thanked me prettily, the oldest for all of them and each for herself. When the dance began we had to leave, it was already a quarter to ten.

The hairdresser talking incessantly. Thirty years old, with a square beard and pointed moustache. Ran after girls but loved his wife, who was at home running the business and couldn’t travel because she was fat and couldn’t stand riding. Even when they once went to Rixdorf, she twice got out of the tram to walk for a while and recover. She didn’t need a holiday, she was satisfied just to sleep late once in a while. He was faithful to her, she provided him with everything he needed. The temptations to which a hairdresser is exposed. The young wife of a restaurateur. The Swedish woman who had to pay more for everything. He bought hair from a Bohemian Jew named Puderbeutel. When a delegation from the Social Democrats came to him and demanded that he take in the
Vorwärts
too, he said: ‘If that’s what you’re here for, then I didn’t send for you.’ But finally gave in. When he was a ‘junior’ (assistant) he was in Görlitz. He was an organized bowler. Was at the big bowlers’ convention in Braunschweig a week ago. There
are some 20,000 organized German bowlers. They bowled for three days until far into the night on four championship alleys. But you couldn’t say that any one person was the best German bowler.

When I entered my cabin in the evening I couldn’t find the matches, borrowed some in the next cabin and made a light under the table to see if they might have fallen down there. They hadn’t, but the water tumbler was standing there. Gradually I discovered that my sandals were behind the wall mirror, the matches on a window sill, the hand mirror was hanging on a projecting corner. The chamber pot rested on top of the closet, my
Éducation sentimentale
was in the pillow, a clothes-hook under the sheet, my traveller’s inkwell and a wet washcloth in the bed, etc. All this as a punishment for my not having gone to Harzburg.

19 July. Rainy day. You lie in bed and the loud thrumming of the rain on the cabin roof is as if it were beating against one’s own breast. Drops appear at the edge of the eaves as mechanically as a row of lights lit along a street. Then they fall. An old man suddenly charges across the meadow like a wild animal, taking a rain bath. The drumming of the drops in the night. As though one were sitting in a violin case. Running in the morning, the soft earth underfoot.

20 July. Morning in the woods with Dr Sch. The red earth and the light diffused from it. The upward soar of the trunks. The broad, overhanging, flat-leaved limbs of the beeches.

In the afternoon a group of maskers arrived from Stapelburg. The giant with the man dressed up as a dancing bear. The swing of his thighs and back. March through the garden behind the music. Spectators running over the turf, through the shrubbery. Little Hans Eppe when he saw them. Walter Eppe on the mail-box. The men dressed as women, with curtains as veils. An indecent sight when they danced with the kitchenmaids, who yielded seemingly without knowing that they were men in disguise.

In the morning read the first chapter of
L’Éducation sentimentale
to Dr Sch. A walk with him in the afternoon. Stories about his lady friend. He is a friend of Morgenstern, Baluschek, Brandenburg, Poppenberg. His horrid complaining in the cabin in the evening, on the
bed with his clothes on. Talked to Miss Pollinger for the first time, but she already knew all there was to know about me. Prague she knew from
Die Zwölf aus der Steiermark
. An ash-blonde, twenty-two years old, looks like a seventeen-year-old, always worrying about her deaf mother; engaged and a flirt.