Франц Кафка - The Complete Stories (forword by John Updike)

Why did Pallas, the private citizen who was watching it all from his window nearby in the second storey, permit it to happen? Unriddle the mysteries of human nature! With his collar turned up, his dressing gown girt around his portly body, he stood looking down, shaking his head.

And five houses further along, on the opposite side of the street, Mrs. Wese, with a fox-fur coat over her nightgown, peered out to look for her husband who was lingering unusually late tonight.

At last there rang out the sound of the doorbell before Wese's office, too loud for a doorbell, right over the town and up to heaven, and Wese, the industrious nightworker, issued from the building, still invisible in that street, only heralded by the sound of the bell; at once the pavement registered his quiet footsteps.

Pallas bent far forward; he dared not miss anything. Mrs. Wese, reassured by the bell, shut her window with a clatter. But Schmar knelt down; since he had no other parts of his body bare, he pressed only his face and his hands against the pavement; where everything else was freezing, Schmar was glowing hot.

At the very corner dividing the two streets Wese paused, only his walking stick came around into the other street to support him. A sudden whim. The night sky invited him, with its dark blue and its gold. Unknowing, he gazed up at it, unknowing he lifted his hat and stroked his hair; nothing up there drew together in a pattern to interpret the immediate future for him; everything stayed in its senseless, inscrutable place. In itself it was a highly reasonable action that Wese should walk on, but he walked onto Schmar's knife.

"Wese!" shrieked Schmar, standing on tiptoe, his arm outstretched, the knife sharply lowered, "Wese! You will never see Julia again!" And right into the throat and left into the throat and a third time deep into the belly stabbed Schmar's knife. Water rats, slit open, give out such a sound as came from Wese.

"Done," said Schmar, and pitched the knife, now superfluous blood-stained ballast, against the nearest house front. "The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another's blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren't you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness. Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit, your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What's the good of the dumb question you are asking?"

Pallas, choking on the poison in his body, stood at the double-leafed door of his house as it flew open. "Schmar! Schmar! I saw it all, I missed nothing." Pallas and Schmar scrutinized each other. The result of the scrutiny satisfied Pallas, Schmar came to no conclusion.

Mrs. Wese, with a crowd of people on either side, came rushing up, her face grown quite old with the shock. Her fur coat swung open, she collapsed on top of Wese, the nightgowned body belonged to Wese, the fur coat spreading over the couple like the smooth turf of a grave belonged to the crowd.

Schmar, fighting down with difficulty the last of his nausea, pressed his mouth against the shoulder of the policeman who, stepping lightly, led him away.

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

The Next Village

MY grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that — not to mention accidents — even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

A Visit to a Mine

TODAY the chief engineers have been down to our part of the mine. The management has issued some instructions or other about boring new galleries, and so the engineers arrived to make the initial survey. How young these men are and yet how different from each other! They have all grown up in freedom and show clearly defined characters without self-consciousness even in their youth.

One, a lively man with black hair, has eyes that take in everything.

A second with a notebook makes jottings as he goes, looks around him, compares, notes down.

A third, his hands in his coat pockets, so that everything about him is taut, walks very upright; maintains his dignity; only the fact that he keeps biting his lips betrays his impatient, irrepressible youth.

A fourth showers explanations on the third, who does not ask for them; smaller than the other, trotting beside him like a temper, his index finger always in the air, he seems to be making a running commentary on everything he sees.

A fifth, perhaps the senior in rank, suffers no one to accompany him; now he is in front, now behind; the group accommodates its pace to him; he is pallid and frail; responsibility has made his eyes hollow; he often presses his hand to his forehead in thought.

The sixth and seventh walk leaning forward a little, their heads close together, arm in arm, in confidential talk; if this were not unmistakably our coal mine and our working station in the deepest gallery, one could easily believe that these bony, cleanshaven, knobbly-nosed gentlemen were young clerics. One of them laughs mostly to himself with a catlike purring; the other, smiling too, leads the conversation and beats some kind of time to it with his free hand. How sure these two must be of their position; yes, what services must they have already rendered to our mine in spite of their youth, to be able here, on such an important survey, under the eyes of their chief, to devote themselves so unwaveringly to their own affairs, or at least to affairs that have nothing to do with the immediate task? Or might it be possible that, in spite of their laughter and apparent inattention, they are very well aware of whatever is needful? One scarcely ventures to pass a decisive judgment on gentlemen like these.

On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that the eighth man, for instance, is incomparably more intent on his work than these two, indeed more than all the other gentlemen. He has to touch everything and tap it with a little hammer which he keeps taking out of his pocket and putting back again. He often goes down on his knees in the dirt, despite his elegant attire, and taps the ground, then again taps the walls as he walks along or the roof over his head. Once he stretched himself out at full length and lay still; we were beginning to think something had gone wrong with him; then with a sudden recoil of his lithe body he sprang to his feet. He had only been making another investigation. We fancy that we know our mine and its rock formations, but what this engineer can be sounding all the time in such a manner lies beyond our comprehension.

A ninth man pushes a kind of perambulator in front of him with the surveying instruments. Extremely expensive apparatus, deeply embedded in the softest cotton wool. The office porter ought really to be pushing this vehicle, but he is not trusted with it; an engineer has to do it, and one can see that he does it with good will. He is probably the youngest, perhaps he doesn't even understand all the apparatus yet, but he keeps his eye on the instruments all the time, which brings him often into danger of running his vehicle into the wall.

But there is another engineer walking alongside who prevents that from happening. Obviously he understands the apparatus thoroughly and seems to be really the man in charge of it. From time to time, without stopping the vehicle, he takes up a part of some instrument, peers through it, screws it open or shut, shakes it and taps it, holds it to his ear and listens; and finally, while the man pushing the instruments usually stands still, he lays the small thing, which one can scarcely discern at a distance, back into its packing with great care. This engineer is a little domineering, but only in the service of his instruments. Ten paces ahead of the perambulator we have to give way to it at a wordless sign of his finger, even where there is no room for us to make way.