_______________________________________________
Franz Kafka
The Judgment
_______________________________________________
This translation by Ian
Johnston of Vancouver Island University Nanaimo, BC, Canada, has certain
copyright restrictions. For information please use the following
link: Copyright. For
comments or question please contact Ian
Johnston. This text was last revised on February 21, 2009. For links to
other Kafka stories, click here..
THE JUDGMENT
for Miss Felice
B.
It was a Sunday morning at the most beautiful time in spring.
George Bendemann, a young merchant, was sitting in
his private room on the first floor of one of the low, poorly constructed
houses extending in a long row along the river, almost indistinguishable from
each other except for their height and colour. He had
just finished a letter to a friend from his youth who was now abroad, had
sealed in a playful and desultory manner, and then was looking, elbows propped
on the writing table, out of the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills
on the other shore with their delicate greenery.
He was thinking about how this friend, dissatisfied with his progress
at home, had actually run off to Russia some years before. Now he ran a
business in St. Petersburg, which had gotten off to a very good start but which
for a long time now had appeared to be faltering, as his friend complained on
his increasingly rare visits. So he was wearing himself out working to no
purpose in a foreign land. The exotic full beard only poorly concealed the face
George had known so well since his childhood years, and the yellowish colour of his skin seemed to indicate a developing
sickness. As he explained it, he had no real connection to the colony of his
countrymen in the place and also hardly any social interaction with local
families and so was resigning himself to being a permanent bachelor.
What should one write to such a man, who had obviously gone off
course, a man one could feel sorry for but could not help.
Should one perhaps advise him to come back home again, shift his life back
here, take up again all the old friendly relationships—there was certainly nothing
to prevent that—and in addition rely on the help of friends? But at the same
time that amounted to saying to him—and the more gently one said it, the more
wounding it would also be—that his previous attempts had been unsuccessful,
that he should finally give them up, that he must come back and allow everyone
to look at him as an eternal returned prodigal, that only his friends
understood anything, and that he would be an over-age child, who should simply
obey his successful friends who had stayed home. And then was it even certain
that all the misery one would have to put him through had a point? Perhaps it
would not even succeed in bringing him back home at all—in fact, he said
himself that he no longer understood conditions in his homeland—so then he
would remain in his foreign country in spite of everything, embittered by the
advice and even a little more estranged from his friends. But if he really
followed the advice and became depressed here—not intentionally, of course, but
because of his circumstances—could not cope with life, with his friends or
without them, felt ashamed, and had, in fact, no homeland and no friends any
more, was it not much better for him to remain abroad, just as he was? Given
these facts, could one think that he would really advance himself here?
For these reasons, if one still wanted to maintain some sort of
relationship by correspondence, one could not provide any real news, the way
one would without any inhibitions to the most casual acquaintance. It was already
more than three years since his friend had been home, and he explained this
with the very inadequate excuse of the uncertainty of the political conditions
in Russia, which would not allow even the briefest absence of a small businessman,
while it permitted hundreds of thousands of Russians to travel around
peacefully in the world. But in the course of these three years much had
changed for George. Since his mother’s death, which had taken place about two
years earlier, George had lived with his old father in a household they shared.
His friend had naturally learned about it and had expressed his sympathy in a
letter with such a dry tone that the reason could only have been that the
sadness of such an event is completely inconceivable in a foreign country. But
since that time George had tackled both his business dealings and everything
else with greater determination. Perhaps while his mother was still alive, his
father’s unwillingness to accept any point of view in the business except his
had prevented George from developing a real project of his own; perhaps his
father, since his mother’s death, had grown slacker, although he still worked
all the time in the business; perhaps fortunate circumstances had played a much
more important role—something which was, in fact, highly likely—but in any case
in these two years the business had developed very unexpectedly. They had had
to double the staff, the cash turnover had increased fivefold, and there was no
doubt that further progress lay ahead.
His friend, however, had no idea of these changes. Earlier, perhaps
for the last time in that letter of condolence, he had wanted to persuade
George to emigrate to Russia and had expanded upon the
prospects which existed in St. Petersburg for George’s particular line of business.
The figures were minute compared to the scale which George’s business had now acquired.
But George had had no desire to write to his friend about his commercial
success, and if he were to do it now belatedly, it would have looked really
odd.
So George limited himself to writing to his friend only about
insignificant details, the kind which pile up at random in one’s memory when
one is thinking things over on a peaceful Sunday. The only thing he wanted was
to leave undisturbed the picture which his friend must have created of his home
town during the long interval and which he would have learned to live with. And
so it happened that George had announced three times to his friend in fairly
widely spaced letters the engagement of an unimportant man to an equally
unimportant young woman, until, quite contrary to George’s intentions, the
friend really began to get interested in this curious event.
But George preferred to write to him about such things rather than
to confess that he himself had become engaged a month ago to a Miss Frieda Brandenfeld, a young woman from a prosperous family. He often
spoke to his fiancée about this friend and about the unusual relationship he
had with him in their correspondence. “Then there’s no chance he’ll be coming
to our wedding,” she said, “and yet I have the right to meet all your friends.”
“I don’t want to upset him,” George replied. “Don’t misunderstand me. He would
probably come, at least I think so, but he would feel compelled and hurt and
would perhaps envy me—he’d certainly feel unhappy and incapable of ever coping
with his unhappiness and would travel back alone. Alone—do you know what that
means?” “Yes, but can’t he find out about our wedding in some other way?”
“That’s true, but I can’t prevent that. However, given his lifestyle it’s
unlikely.” “If you have friends like that, George, you shouldn’t have gotten
engaged at all.” “Well, we’re both to blame for that, but now I wouldn’t want
things to be any different.” And then when she, breathing rapidly under his
kisses, kept insisting “Still, it truly does upset me,” he really thought it
would be harmless to write everything to his friend. “That’s what I am, and
that’s just how he’ll have to accept me,” he said to himself. “I can't carve
out of myself another man who might perhaps be more suitable for a friendship
with him than I am.”
And, in fact, he did inform his friend about the engagement which had
taken place in the long letter which he had written that Sunday morning, in the
following words “The best piece of news I have saved until the end. I have
become engaged to a Miss Frieda Brandenfeld, a young
woman from a well-to-do family, who first settled here long after your
departure and thus whom you could hardly know. There will still be an opportunity
to tell you more detailed information about my fiancée. Today it's enough for
you to know that I am truly fortunate and that, as far as our mutual relationship
is concerned, the only thing that has changed is that in me you will now have,
instead of a completely ordinary friend, a happy friend. Moreover, in my
fiancée, who sends you her warm greetings and will soon write to you herself,
you acquire a sincere female friend, something which is not entirely without
significance for a bachelor. I know that there are many things hindering you
from coming back to visit us, but wouldn't my wedding be exactly the right
opportunity to throw aside all obstacles for once? But whatever the case, do
only what seems good to you, without concerning yourself about anything.”
George sat for a long time at his writing table with his letter in
his hand, his face turned towards the window. He barely acknowledged with an absent-minded
smile someone he knew who greeted him from the lane as he walked past.
Finally he put the letter in his pocket and went out of his room,
angling across a small passageway into his father’s room, which he had not been
in for months. There was really no need to do that, since he was always dealing
with his father at work and they took their noon meal at the same time in a restaurant.
In the evenings, of course, they each did as they wished, but for the most
part, unless George was with friends, as was most frequently the case, or was
now visiting his fiancée, they still sat for a little while, each with his own
newspaper, in the living room they shared.
George was surprised how dark his father’s room was, even on this
sunny morning. So that was the kind of shadow cast by the high wall which rose
on the other side of the narrow courtyard. His father was sitting by the window
in a corner decorated with various reminders of his late lamented mother and
was reading a newspaper, which he held in front of his eyes to one side,
attempting in this way to compensate for some weakness in his eyes. On the
table stood the remains of his breakfast, not much of which appeared to have
been eaten.
“Ah, George,” said his father, coming up at once to meet
him. His heavy night shirt opened up as he moved and the ends of it flapped
around him. “My father is still a giant,” said George to himself.
Then he spoke up: “It’s unbearably dark in here.”
“Yes, it certainly is dark,” his father answered.
“And you’ve shut the window as well?”
“I prefer it that way.”
“Well, it is quite warm outside,” said George, as if continuing
what he’d said earlier, and sat down.
His father cleared off the breakfast dishes and put them on a
chest.
“I really only wanted to tell you,” continued George, who
was following the movements of the old man quite absent mindedly, “that I’ve
now sent a report of my engagement to St. Petersburg.” He pulled the letter a
little way out of his pocket and let it drop back again.
“To St. Petersburg?” his father asked.
“To my friend,” said George, trying to look his father in the eye.
“In business he’s completely different,” he thought. “How sturdily he sits here
with his arms folded across his chest.”
“Ah yes, to your friend,” said his father, with emphasis.
“Well, father, you know at first I wanted to keep quiet to him
about my engagement. Out of consideration, for no other reason.
You yourself know he's a difficult person. I said to myself he could well learn
about my engagement from some other quarter, even if his solitary way of life
makes that hardly likely—I can’t prevent that—but he should never learn about
it from me personally.”
“And now you have been thinking about it differently?” the father
asked. He set the large newspaper on the window sill and on top the newspaper
his glasses, which he covered with his hand.
“Yes, now I’ve been reconsidering it. If he’s a good friend of
mine, I said to myself, then a happy engagement for me
is also something fortunate for him. And so I no longer hesitated to announce
it to him. But before I send the letter, I wanted to tell you about it.”
“George,” said his father, pulling his toothless mouth wide open,
“listen to me! You’ve come to me about this matter, to discuss it with me. No
doubt that’s a credit to you. But it’s nothing, worse than nothing if you don’t
now tell me the complete truth. I don’t want to stir up things which are not
appropriate here. Since the death of our dear mother certain nasty things have
been going on. Perhaps the time to talk about them has come and perhaps sooner
than we think. In the business, a good deal escapes me. Perhaps it’s not hidden
from me—at the moment I'm not claiming it’s done behind my back—I am no longer
strong enough, my memory is deteriorating, I can’t keep an eye on so many
things any more. First of all, that’s nature taking its course, and secondly
the death of our dear mother was a much bigger blow to me than to you. But
since we’re on the subject of this letter, I beg you, George, don’t deceive me.
It’s a trivial thing, not worth mentioning. So don’t deceive me. Do you really
have this friend in St. Petersburg?”
George stood up in embarrassment. “Let’s forget about my friend. A
thousand friends wouldn’t replace my father for me. Do you know what I think?
You’re not taking enough care of yourself. But old age demands its due. You are indispensable to me in the business—you’re
very well aware of that—but if the business is going to threaten your health, I’ll close it tomorrow for good. That won’t happen.
We must set up another life style for you. But something
completely different. You sit here in the dark, and in the living room
you'd have good light. You nibble at your breakfast instead of maintaining your
strength properly. You sit by the closed window, and the air would do you so
much good. No, my father! I’ll bring in the doctor, and we’ll follow his instructions.
We’ll change the room. You’ll move into the front room. I’ll come in here. For
you there won’t be any change. Everything will be moved over with you. But
there’s time for all that. Now I’ll set you in bed
for a little while. You need complete rest. Come, I’ll help you get undressed.
You’ll see. I can do it. Or do you want to go into the front room right away.
Then you can lie down in my bed for now. That would make a lot of sense.”
George stood close beside his father, who had let his head with
its tousled white hair sink onto his chest.
“George,” said his father faintly, without moving.
George knelt down immediately alongside his father. He saw the
enormous pupils in his father’s tired face staring right at him from the
corners of his eyes.
“You don’t have a friend in St. Petersburg. You have always been a
jokster and even with me you’ve not controlled
yourself. So how could you have a friend there! I simply can’t believe that.”
“Think about it for a moment, father,” said George. He raised his
father from the arm chair and took off his nightgown as he just stood there
very weakly. “It will soon be almost three years since my friend visited us. I
still remember that you did not particularly like him. At least twice I kept
him away from you, although he was sitting right in my room. It’s true I could
understand your aversion to him quite well. My friend does have his
peculiarities. But then you later had a really good conversation with him
yourself. At the time I was so proud of the fact that you listened to him,
nodded your head, and asked questions. If you think about it, you must
remember. That’s when he told us incredible stories about the Russian
Revolution. For example, on a business trip in Kiev during a riot he saw a
priest on a balcony who cut a wide bloody cross into the palm of his hand,
raised his hand, and appealed to the mob. You’ve even repeated this story
yourself now and then.”
Meanwhile, George had succeeded in setting his father down again
and carefully taking off the cotton trousers which he wore over his linen
underwear, as well as his socks. Looking at the undergarments, which were not
particularly clean, he reproached himself for having neglected his father. It certainly
should have been his responsibility to look after his father’s laundry. He had
not yet talked explicitly with his fiancée about how they wished to make arrangements
for his father’s future, for they had tacitly assumed
that his father would remain living alone in the old apartment. But now he
quickly came to the firm decision to take his father with him into his future
household. When one looked more closely, it almost seemed that the care which
he was ready to provide for his father there could come too late.
He carried his father to bed in his arms. He experienced a
dreadful feeling when he noticed, as he took a couple of paces to the bed, that
his father was playing with the watch chain on his chest. He could not put him
in the bed right away, so firm was his father’s grip on this
watch chain.
But as soon as he was in bed, all seemed well. He covered himself
up and then even pulled the bedspread unusually high up over his shoulders. He look up at George in a not unfriendly manner.
“You do still remember him, don’t you?” said George, nodding his
head in encouragement.
“Am I well covered up now?” asked the father, as if he could not
check whether his feet were sufficiently tucked in.
“So you feel good in bed now,” said George and arranged the
bedding better around him.
“Am I well covered up?” the father asked once more and seemed
particularly keen to hear the answer.
“Just rest for now. You’re well covered up.”
“No!” cried his father, cutting short George’s answer to the
question. He threw back the covers with such force that in an instant they had
completely flown off, and he stood upright on the bed. He steadied himself with
only one hand lightly touching the ceiling. “You wanted to cover me up—I know
that, my little offspring—but I am not yet under the covers. And even if this
is the last strength I have, it’s enough for you, too much for you. Yes, I do
know your friend. He’d be a son after my own heart. That’s why you’ve been
betraying him for years. Why else? Do you think I’ve not wept for him? That’s
the reason you lock yourself in your office—no one should disturb you, the boss
is busy—that’s the only way you can write your two-faced little letters to
Russia. But fortunately no one has to teach a father to see through his son.
Just now when you thought you’d brought him down, so far down that your
buttocks could sit on him and he wouldn’t move, at that point my son the
gentleman has decided to get married!”
George looked up at the frightening spectre
of his father. The friend in St. Petersburg, whom the father suddenly knew so
well, seized his imagination as never before. He saw him lost in the broad
expanse of Russia. He saw him at the door of an empty, plundered business.
Among the wreckage of his shelves, the shattered goods, the collapsed gas
brackets, he was still standing, but only just. Why did he have to go so far
away!
“But look at me,” cried his father, and George ran, almost
distracted, to the bed to take everything in, but he faltered half way.
“Because she hoisted up her skirts,” the father began in an
affected tone, “because she hoisted up her skirts like this, the repulsive
goose,” and in order to imitate the action, he raised his shirt so high one
could see the scar from his war years on his thigh, “because she hoisted her
dress up like this and this, you chatted her up, and that’s how you could
satisfy yourself with her without being disturbed—you've disgraced our mother’s
memory, betrayed your friend, and stuck your father in bed, so he can’t move.
But he can move, can’t he?”
And he stood completely unsupported and kicked his legs. He was
radiant with insight.
George stood in a corner, as far away as possible from his father.
A long time before he had firmly decided to observe
everything closely, so he would not be surprised somehow by any devious attack,
from behind or from above. Now he recalled again this long-forgotten decision
and forgot it, like someone pulling a short thread through the eye of a needle.
“But now your friend hasn’t been betrayed at all,” cried the
father—his forefinger, waving back and forth, emphasized the point. “I’ve been
his on-the-spot representative here.”
“You comedian!” George could not resist
calling out. He recognized immediately how damaging that was and bit down on
his tongue, only too late—his eyes froze—until he doubled up with pain.
“Yes, naturally I’ve been playing a comedy! Comedy! A fine word!
What other consolation remained for an old widowed father? Tell me—and while
you’re answering still be my living son—what else was left to me in my back
room, persecuted by a disloyal staff, old right down into to my bones? And my
son goes merrily through the world, finishing off business deals which I had
set up, falling over himself with delight, and walking away from your father
with the tight-lipped face of an honourable gentleman! Do you
think I didn’t love you, me, the one from whom you came?”
“Now he’ll bend forward,” thought George. “What if he falls and
breaks apart!” These words hissed through his head.
His father leaned forward but did not fall over. When George did
not come closer, as he had expected, he straightened himself up again.
“Stay where you are. I don’t need you! You think you still have
the strength to come here and are holding yourself back only because that’s
what you want. But what if you’re wrong! I am still much stronger than you.
Perhaps all on my own I would have had to back off, but your mother gave me so
much of her strength that I’ve established a splendid relationship with your
friend and I have your customers here in my pocket!”
“He even has pockets in his shirt!” said George to himself and
thought with this comment he could make his father look ridiculous to the whole
world. He thought this for only a moment, because he constantly forgot
everything.
“Just link arms with your fiancée and cross my path! I’ll sweep
her right from your side—you have no idea how!”
George made a grimace, as if he didn’t believe that. The father
merely nodded towards George’s corner, emphasizing the truth of what he’d said.
“How you amused me today when you came and asked whether you
should write to your friend about the engagement. For he knows everything, you
stupid boy, he knows everything! I’ve been writing to him, because you forgot to
take my writing things away from me. That’s why he hasn’t come for years. He
knows everything a hundred times better than you do yourself. He crumples up
your letters unread in his left hand, while in his right hand he holds my
letters up to read.”
In his enthusiasm he swung his arm over his head. “He knows
everything a thousand times better,” he shouted.
“Ten thousand times!” said George, in order to make his father
appear foolish, but in his mouth the phrase had already acquired the deathliest
of tones.
“For years now I’ve been watching out for you to come with this
question! Do you think I’m concerned about anything else? Do you think I read
the newspapers? There!” and he threw a newspaper page which had somehow been
carried into the bed right at George—an old newspaper, the name of which was
completely unknown to George.
“ How long you’ve waited before reaching maturity! Your mother had to
die. She could not experience the joyous day. Your friend is deteriorating in
his Russia—three years ago he was already yellow enough to be thrown away, and,
as for me, well, you see how things are with me. You’ve got eyes for that!”
“So you’ve been lying in wait for me,” cried George.
In a pitying tone, his father said as an afterthought, “Presumably
you wanted to say that earlier. But now it’s totally irrelevant.”
And in a louder voice : “So now you know
what there was in the world outside of yourself. Up to this point you’ve known
only about yourself! Essentially you’ve been an innocent child, but even more
essentially you’ve been a devilish human being! And therefore understand this:
I sentence you now to death by drowning! ”
George felt himself hounded from the room. The crash with which
his father fell onto the bed behind him he still carried in his ears as he left.
On the staircase, where he raced down the steps as if it were an inclined
plane, he surprised his cleaning woman, who was intending to tidy the apartment
after the night before. “Jesus!” she cried and hid her face in her apron. But
he was already past her. He leapt out the front door, driven across the roadway
to the water. He was already clutching the railings the way a starving man
grasps his food. He swung himself over, like the outstanding gymnast he had
been in his youth, to his parents’ pride. He was still holding on, his grip
weakening, when between the railings he caught sight of a motor coach which
would easily drown out the noise of his fall. He called out quietly, “Dear
parents, I have always loved you nonetheless” and let himself drop.
At that moment an almost unending stream of traffic was going over
the bridge.
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