The Diaries of Franz Kafka Read online

  One policeman did not know the address of the workmen’s compensation office, another where its exhibition was taking place, a third did not even know where Johannesgasse was. This they explained by their having been in the force only a short time. For directions I was obliged to go to the police station, where there were a great many policemen lounging about, all in uniforms whose beauty, newness, and colour surprised one, for otherwise one saw nothing but dark winter coats on the street.

  The narrow streets allowed for the laying of only a single line of track. This is why the tram going to the railway station ran on different streets than the one coming from the railway station. From the railway station through Wiener Strasse (where I was living in the Hotel Eiche); to the railway station through Stückerstrasse.

  Went to the theatre three times. Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen. I sat in the balcony, an actor who was much too good made too much noise in the part of Naukleros; I had tears in my eyes several times, as at the end of the first act when Hero and Leander could not take their eyes away from one another. Hero stepped out of the temple doorway through which you saw something that could have been nothing else but an ice-box. In the second act, forests of the kind you see pictured in old de luxe editions, it was very affecting, creepers twined from tree to tree. Everything mossy and dark green. The backdrop of the wall of the tower chamber turned up again in Miss Dudelsack a few evenings later. From the third act on, the play fell off, as though an enemy had been after it.

  TRIP TO SWITZERLAND, ITALY, PARIS AND ERLENBACH

  AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1911

  DEPARTED 28 August 1911. Noon. Our idea is a poor one: to describe the trip and at the same time our feelings towards each other during the trip.135 How impossible it is, proved when a wagon full of peasant women passed by. The heroic peasant woman (Delphic Sibyl). One of them was laughing and another, who had been sleeping in her lap, woke up and waved. If I should describe the way Max waved to them a false enmity would enter the description.

  A girl (who later turned out to be Alice R.136) got on at Pilsen. (During the trip you ordered coffee from the steward by putting a little green sticker up on the window. However, you didn’t have to take the coffee even if there was a sticker on your window, and could get it even if there was none.) At first I couldn’t see her because she was sitting next to me. Our first social contact: her hat, which had been put away on the rack above, fell down on Max. Thus do hats come in with difficulty through the carriage doors and fly out with ease through the large windows.

  Max probably made it impossible to give a true description of the scene later; he is a married man and had to say something that would deprive the incident of all its risk, and in doing so passed over what was important, emphasized what was didactic and made it all a little ugly.

  ‘Perfect aim!’ ‘Fire away!’ ‘Rate of fall zero point five’; our joking about the card she’d write in Munich, we agreed to post it for her, but from Zürich, and it will read: ‘The expected, alas, has happened … wrong train … now in Zürich … two days of the trip lost.’ Her delight. But she expected that as gentlemen we should add nothing to it. Motor-car in Munich. Rain, fast ride (twenty minutes), a view as if from a basement apartment, the driver called out the names of the invisible sights, the tyres hummed on the wet asphalt like a film projector. My clearest recollection: of the uncurtained window of the Vier Jahreszeiten, the reflection of the lights on the asphalt as if in a river.

  Washing hands and face in the men’s room in the station in Munich.

  Baggage left on the train. A place provided for Alice in a car where a lady (who was more to be feared than we) offered to take her under her protection. Offer enthusiastically accepted. Suspicious.

  Max asleep in the compartment. The two Frenchmen, the dark one laughed continually; once because Max left him hardly enough room in which to sit (he was so sprawled out), and then because he seized his opportunity and Max could no longer stretch out. Max under the hood of his ulster. Eating at night. An invasion by three Swiss. One of them was smoking. One, who stayed on after the other two got off, was at first inconspicuous, grew expansive only towards morning. Bodensee.

  Switzerland left to itself in the first hours of the morning. I woke Max when I caught sight of such a bridge137 and then got from it my first impression of Switzerland, despite the fact that I had been peering out into the grey daybreak at it for a long time from the inner obscurity of the train – The impression the houses in St Gallen give one of standing boldly upright in defiance of any arrangement into streets – Winterthur – The man leaning over the porch railing of the lighted villa in Württemberg at two o’clock in the morning. Door to the study open – The cattle already awake in sleeping Switzerland – Telegraph poles: cross-sections of clothes-hooks – The meadows paling under the rising sun – My recollection of the prison-like station at Cham, with its name inscribed on it with biblical solemnity. The window decorations, despite their meagreness, seemed to be contrary to regulations.

  Tramp in the station at Winterthur with cane, song, and one hand in his trouser pocket.

  Business carried on in villas.

  A lot of singing in the station at Lindau during the night.

  Patriotic statistics: the area of Switzerland, were it spread out level on a plain.

  Foreign chocolate companies.

  Zürich. The station loomed up before us like a composite of several stations recently seen – Max took possession of it for A + x.138

  The impression foreign soldiers made on one of being out of the past. The absence of it in one’s own. Anti-militarist argument.

  Marksmen in the station at Zürich. Our fear lest their guns go off when they ran.

  Bought a map of Zürich.

  Back and forth on a bridge in indecision as to the order in which to have a cold bath, a warm bath, and breakfast.

  In the direction of Limmat, Urania Observatory.

  Main business artery, empty tram, pyramids of cuffs in the foreground of an Italian haberdasher’s window.

  Only fancy posters (spas, festival performance of Marignano by Wiegand, music by Jermoli).

  Enlargement of the premises of a department store. Best advertisement. Watched for years by all the townspeople. (Dufayel.)

  Postmen, looked as though they were wearing night-shirts. Carried small boxes in front, in which they sorted their letters like the ‘planets’139 at the Christmas Fair. Lake view. If you imagine you live here, a strong sense of its being Sunday. Horseman. Frightened horse. Pedagogic inscription, possibly a relief of Rebecca at the well. The inscription’s serenity above the flowing water.

  Altstadt: Narrow, steep street which a man in a blue blouse was laboriously descending. Down steps.

  I remember the traffic-menaced lavatory in front of Saint Roche in Paris.

  Breakfast in the temperance restaurant. Butter like egg yolk. Zürcher Zeitung.

  Large cathedral, old or new? Men are supposed to sit at the sides. The sexton pointed out some better seats to us. We walked after him in that direction, since it was on our way to the door. When we were already at the exit, he apparently thought we couldn’t find the seats and came diagonally across the church towards us. We pushed each other out. Much laughter.

  Max: Scrambling languages together as the solution for national difficulties; the chauvinist would be at his wits’ end.

  Swimming-pool in Zürich: For men only. One man next to the other. Swiss: German poured out like lead. There weren’t enough lockers for everyone; republican freedom of undressing in front of your own clothes-hook, as well as the swimming master’s freedom to clear the crowded solarium with a fire hose. Moreover, clearing the solarium in this way would be no more senseless than the language was incomprehensible. Diver: his feet outspread on the railing, he jumped down on the springboard, thus adding to his spring – It’s only possible to judge the conveniences of a bathing establishment after long use. No swimming lessons. A long-haired nature-healer looking lonesome. Low
banks of the lake.

  Free concert by the Officers’ Tourist Club. A writer in the audience, surrounded by companions, was noting something down in a closely written notebook; after one number on the programme was finished, he was pulled away by his companions.

  No Jews. Max: The Jews have let this big business slip from their hands. Began with the Bersaglieri March. Ended with the Pro Patria March. In Prague there are no free concerts for the sake of the music alone (Jardin de Luxembourg); republican, according to Max.

  Keller’s room closed. Travel Bureau. Bright house behind a dark street. Houses with terraces on the right bank of the Limmat. Window shutters a brilliant blue-white. The soldiers walking slowly along serve as policemen. Concert hall. Polytechnic institute not looked for and not found. City Hall. Lunch on the first floor. Meilen wine. (Sterilized wine made of fresh grapes.) A waitress from Lucerne told us what trains run there. Pea soup with sago, beans with baked potatoes, lemon crême – Decent-looking buildings in Arts-and-Crafts style.

  Left about three o’clock for Lucerne, going around the lake. The empty, dark, hilly, wooded shore of the Lake of Zug with its many peninsulas. Had an American look. During the trip, my distaste for making comparisons with countries not yet seen. To the right of the railway station a skating rink. We walked into the midst of the hotel employees and called out: Rebstock. A bridge (so Max said) divides the lake from the river, as in Zürich.

  Where is the German population that warrants the German signs? Casino. The [German] Swiss you see everywhere in Zürich don’t seem to have any aptitude for hotel-keeping; here, where they do run hotels, they have disappeared from view, the hotel-keepers may even be French.

  The empty balloon hangar opposite. Hard to imagine how the airship glides in. Roller-skating rink, Berlin-like appearance. Fruit. The dark outlines of the Strand Promenade still clearly apparent under the tree-tops in the evening. Men with their daughters or prostitutes. Boats rocking so steeply their undermost ribs were visible.

  Ridiculous lady receptionist in the hotel; a laughing girl showed people to their rooms; a serious, red-cheeked chambermaid. Small staircase. Bolted, walled-in chest in the room. Happy to be out of the room. Would have liked to dine on fruit. Gotthard Hotel, girls in Swiss costume. Apricot compote, Meilen wine. Two elderly ladies and a gentleman talking about growing old.

  Discovered the gambling house in Lucerne. Admission one franc. Two long tables. It is unpleasant to describe anything really worth seeing, people impatiently expect, as it were, to see the thing before them. At each table a croupier in the middle with an observer on either side. Betting limit five francs. ‘The Swiss are requested to give precedence to foreigners as the game is intended for the entertainment of our visitors.’ One table with balls, one with toy horses. Croupiers in Prince Alberts. ‘Messieurs faites votre jeu’ – ‘Marquez le jeu’ – ‘Les jeux sont faits’ – ‘Sont marqués’ – ‘Rien ne va plus.’ Croupiers with nickelled rakes at the end of wooden sticks. The things they can do with them: rake the money on to the right squares, sort it, draw money to them, catch the money they toss on the winning squares. The influence the different croupiers have on your chances, or rather: you like the croupier with whom you win. Our excitement when we both of us decided to play; you feel entirely alone in the room. The money (ten francs) disappeared down a gently sloping incline. The loss of ten francs was not enough temptation to go on playing, but still, a temptation. Rage at everything. The day prolonged by the gambling.

  Monday, 28 August. Man in high boots breakfasting against the wall. Second-class steamer. Lucerne in the morning. Poorer appearance of the hotels. A married couple reading letters from home with newspaper clippings about cholera in Italy. The beautiful homes that you could only see from a boat on the lake. Changing shapes of the mountains. Vitznau. Rigi railways. Lake seen through leaves. Feeling of the south. Your surprise when you suddenly catch sight of the broad surface of the Lake of Zug. Woods like at home. Railway built in ’75; look it up in the old copy of Über Land und Meer. Old stamping-ground for the English. They still wear checks and sideburns here. Telescope. Jungfrau in the distance, rotunda of the Monk, shimmering heat waves lent movement to the picture. The outstretched palm of the Titli. A snow field sliced through life a loaf of bread. False estimates of the altitudes from above as well as from below. Unsettled dispute as to whether the railway station at Arth-Goldau rested on slanting or on level ground. Table d’hôte. Dark woman, serious, sharp mouth – had already seen her below near the carriage – sat in the hall. English girl at the departure, her teeth even all round. A short Frenchwoman got into the next compartment, with outstretched arm announced that our full compartment was not ‘complet’, and pushed in her father and her older, shorter sister, who looked at once innocent and lewd and who tickled my hips with her elbow. Some more English, toothily spoken by the old lady at Max’s right. We tried to guess what part of England. Route from Vitznau to Flüelen – Gersau, Beckenried, Brunnen (nothing but hotels), Schillerstein, Tellplatte, Rütli, two loggias on Axenstrasse (Max imagined there were several of them, because in photographs you always see these two), Urnser Becken, Flüelen. Hotel Sternen.

  Tuesday, 29 August. This beautiful room with a balcony. The friendliness. Too much hemmed in by mountains. A man and two girls, in raincoats, one behind the other, walked through the hall in the evening carrying alpenstocks; when all of them were already on the steps they were stopped by a question from the chambermaid. They thanked her, they knew about it. In reply to a further question about their mountain excursion: ‘And it wasn’t so easy either, I can tell you that.’ In the hall they seemed to me to be out of Miss Dudelsack; on the staircase they seem to Max to be out of Ibsen, then to me too. Forgotten binoculars. Boys with Swiss flags. Bathing in Lake Lucerne. Married couple. Life preserver. People walking on Axenstrasse. Fisherwoman in light yellow dress.

  Boarding the Gotthard train, Reuss. Milky water of our rivers. The Hungarian flower. Thick lips. Exotic curve from the back to the buttocks. The handsome man among the Hungarians. Jesuit general in the railway station at Göschenen. Italy suddenly, tables placed haphazardly in front of taverns; an excited young man dressed in all colours who couldn’t contain himself; the women with high-piled black hair waving their hands in good-bye (a kind of pinching motion) beside a station; bright pink houses, blurred signs. Later the landscape lost its Italian aspect, or the underlying Swiss quality emerged. Ticino Falls, off and on we saw waterfalls everywhere. German Lugano. Noisy palestra. Post office recently built. Hotel Belvedere. Concert in the assembly room. No fruit.

  30 August. From four in the evening to eleven at the same table with Max;140 first in the garden, then in the reading-room, then in my room. Bath in the morning and mail.

  31 August. The snowcaps on the Rigi rose up into view like the hands of a clock.

  Friday, 1 September. Left at 10.05 from Place Guglielmo Tell -Awning frames on the boats like on milk wagons – Every debarkation an attack.

  No luggage on the trip, hand free to prop up my head.

  Gandria [near Lugano]: one house stuck behind the other; loggias hung with coloured cloths; no bird’s-eye view; streets, then no streets. St Margarita, a fountain on the landing-stage. Villa in Oria with twelve cypresses. You cannot, dare not imagine a house in Oria that has a porch in front with Greek pillars. Mamette: medieval magician’s cap on a belfry. Earlier, a donkey in the arboured walk, along one side of the harbour. Osteno. The clergyman among the ladies. The shouting more than ordinarily incomprehensible. Child in the window behind the passage to the pissoir. Shivery feeling at the sight of lizards wriggling on a wall. Psyche’s falling hair. Soldiers riding by on bicycles and hotel employees dressed up as sailors.

  Children on the landing-stage at Menaggio; their father; the pride in her children expressed in the woman’s body.

  Passers-by in a carriage pointed out the Italian boys to one another.

  Statesman with half-opened mouth (Villa Carlotta).

&n
bsp; Frenchwoman with my aunt’s voice and a straw parasol with a thick fibre edge was writing something down about montagne, etc., in a small notebook. Dark man framed by the arching ribs of his boat, bent over the oars. Customs official rapidly examined a little basket, rummaging through it as if it all had been a present for him. Italian on the Porlezza–Menaggio train. Every word of Italian spoken to one penetrates the great void of one’s own ignorance and, whether understood or not, lengthily engages one’s attention; one’s own uncertain Italian cannot prevail against the speaker’s fluency and, whether understood or not, is easily disregarded – Joke about the train going backward at Menaggio, nice matter for a conversation – On the other side of the street, in front of the villas, decorated stone boat-houses. Thriving business in antiques. Boatman: Peu de commerce – Revenue cutter (‘Story of Captain Nemo’ and A Journey through Planetary Space).

  2 September, Saturday. My face was twitching on board the small steamer. Draped curtains (brown, edged in white) in front of the stores (Cadenabbia). Bees in the honey. Lonely, peevish, short-waisted woman, a language teacher. The punctiliously dressed gentleman in high-drawn trousers. His forearms were suspended over the table as though he were clasping not the handles of a knife and fork but the end of an arm rest. Children watching the weak rockets: Encore un – hiss – arms stretched up.

  Bad trip on the steamer, too much a part of the rocking of the boat. Not high enough to smell the fresh air and have an unobstructed view around, somewhat like the situation of the stokers. A passing group: man, cow, and woman. She was saying something. Black turban, loose dress – The heartbeat of lizards – Host’s little boy, without my having spoken to him previously, under the urging of his mother held his mouth up to me for a good-night kiss. I enjoyed it.