Франц Кафка - The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man - Essential Stories

As I said earlier, I felt no longing to be like the humans; I imitated them because I was looking for a way out, and for no other reason. And even that victory didn’t help me much. My voice immediately gave out again and only came back after months; my resistance to the rum bottle actually grew stronger; but my course had been set once and for all.

When I was handed over to my first trainer, in Hamburg, I soon recognized that there were two possibilities for me: the zoo or the variety shows. I didn’t hesitate. I said to myself: strain every nerve to get into the variety shows; that’s the way out; the zoo is just a different cage; if you end up in there, you’re lost.

And I learnt, gentlemen. Oh, how you can learn when you have to; you learn because you want a way out; you learn ruthlessly. You hold the whip over your own head; you lacerate yourself at the slightest reluctance. My simian self, tumbling over itself in haste, rushed out of me so quickly that my first teacher became almost monkeyish in turn, soon having to give up the lessons and move into a psychiatric hospital. I’m glad to say he was quickly released again.

But I used up very many teachers, sometimes more than one teacher at once. As I became more confident in my abilities and the public began to follow my progress, when my future started to glitter, I took on my own teachers, had them set up in five connecting rooms, and learnt from all of them at once by leaping uninterruptedly from one room into the next.

What progress I made! Enlightenment broke into my awakening mind from every angle! I can’t deny that it was a joy. But I can also admit that I never overestimated it, not even then and certainly not today. Through an effort that has never yet been paralleled anywhere in the world, I’ve reached the educational level of the average European. In itself, that’s nothing at all, but it meant something insofar as it helped me get out of the cage and gave me this particular way out, the human way out. There’s a wonderful idiom I love: to make yourself scarce. That’s what I’ve done. I’ve made myself scarce. I had no other way open to me, since grand freedom wasn’t on offer.

When I look back over my development and what I’ve achieved so far, I neither criticize myself nor am I content. Hands in my pockets, a bottle of wine on the table, I half sit, half lie in a rocking chair and look out of the window. If someone visits, I welcome them in politely. My manager sits in the front room; if I call, he comes in and listens to what I have to say. In the evenings, I almost always have a show, and my successes there probably won’t be surpassed. When I come home late from a banquet, from a learned society, from some cosy get-together, I have a little half-trained chimp waiting for me, and I let her look after me in the simian style. I never see her during the day; she has the bewilderment of a trained animal in her eye; only I can see it and I can’t bear to look at it.

Overall, I’ve certainly achieved what I wanted to achieve. I would never say that it hasn’t been worth the effort. Nor am I looking for anyone’s approval; I just want to spread what I’ve learnt. All I do is report on what I’ve experienced; even for you, gentlemen, members of the academy, all I’ve done is report.

I’VE COME BACK, come in through the gate, and I take a look around. It’s my father’s old farmyard. The puddle in the middle. Old, useless machinery, gathered into a heap, blocks the trapdoor into the cellar. The cat lurks on the railing. A torn piece of cloth, once wrapped around a pole in a game, lifts in the wind. I’ve arrived. Who’ll be the one to greet me? Who’s waiting behind the door to the kitchen? There’s smoke rising out of the chimney, they’re making coffee for their supper. Is it cosy, do you feel at home? I don’t know, I’m not sure. It’s my father’s house, but each brick lies cold against the next, as if occupied with its own affairs, which I’ve partly forgotten, partly never knew. What use am I to them, even if I am my father’s, the old farmer’s, son. And I don’t dare to knock at the kitchen door, I just listen from a distance, I listen standing at a distance, not so that I could be caught listening. And because I’m listening from a distance, I hear nothing, all I hear is a quiet clock chime, or I think I’ve heard it, chiming out of my childhood. What else is happening in the kitchen is a secret known only to those sitting inside it, who were here before me. The longer you hesitate outside the door, the more of a stranger you become. What would it be like if someone opened the door now and asked me a question. Wouldn’t I seem like someone who wants to keep his secrets.

WE’D MADE CAMP at an oasis. The others were asleep. An Arab, tall and white, came past me; he’d been seeing to the camels and was heading for the tents.

I threw myself down on the grass; I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t; a jackal howled in the distance; I sat back up again. And what had been far off was suddenly very near. Jackals swarming all around me; eyes glowing a matt gold before dulling again; slender bodies, their movements as nimble and synchronized as if under threat of a whip.

One came forward from the back, pushed himself under my arm, right up against me, as if he needed my warmth, then stood in front of me so we were almost eye to eye, and spoke: “I’m the oldest jackal anywhere round here. And I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to welcome you. I’d almost given up hope, because we’ve been waiting for you almost since for ever; my mother waited for you, and her mother, and all their mothers back to the mother of all jackals. Believe me!”

“That’s astonishing,” I said, and forgot to light the wooden torch that was supposed to keep the jackals away with its smoke. “I’m astonished to hear that. It’s only by chance that I’ve come here from the far north, and this is only a brief trip. What is it you want, jackals?”

And as if encouraged by what was maybe an over-friendly response, they drew their circle tighter around me; I could hear them panting quick and hot.

“We know,” the oldest one went on, “that you come from the north, that’s what our hopes are based on. Up there, you have a rationality that you’ll never find among the Arabs. They’re so cold and arrogant, you know, that you can never strike a spark of sense on them. They kill animals for food, and won’t touch carrion.”

“Not so loud,” I said. “There are Arabs sleeping nearby.”

“You really must be a foreigner,” said the jackal. “Otherwise you would know that never in the history of the world has a jackal been afraid of an Arab. Be afraid of them? Isn’t it bad enough that we have to live beside them?”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” I said. “I wouldn’t presume to judge things that are so alien to me; it seems to be a very old feud; it’s probably in the blood, so it may well only end with bloodshed.”

“You’re very wise,” said the old jackal, and they all panted even faster, their lungs racing even though they were standing still; a bitter stink streamed from their open muzzles and I sometimes had to clench my teeth to tolerate it. “You’re very wise; what you say is in our ancient teachings. We’ll take their blood and the feud will be over.”

“Oh!” I said, more wildly than I wanted. “They’d defend themselves; they’d use guns to shoot you down in droves.”

“You misunderstand us in the human way,” he said, “even if you are from the far north. The Nile doesn’t have enough water to wash us clean. Just the sight of their living bodies sends us running off for cleaner air, into the desert, that’s why it’s our home.”