Franz Kafka wants you to be an indestructible superhero! (1)

 

The history of mankind 

is the instant between 

two strides 

taken by a traveller

 

The Village

 

The cart creaked across the bridge. The driver's whip snapped at the horses. Snow flurried around them. K was lost in thought. 

 

The marble-man had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He heard tiny snores in his ear.

 

The cart bumped, and K peered over the edge. The drop was dizzying. The bridge spanned an abyss. Ashy flakes moved in drifts through it.

 

They ground to a halt. The horses stamped and huffed. K slid down, placing his hand over the sleeping marble-man for safety. He tottered forward and slipped. He pulled himself up and saw the driver walking across a vast field of ice. Sheet ice, as far the eye could see. K sighed and lumbered after the receding figure.

 

They crossed the ice for days. K held the distant dot of the driver amongst waves of snowflakes. His legs ached. The marble-man stirred occasionally, but for the most part seemed either affected by K's disposition, or lost in his own thoughts. 

 

Somewhere along the cold journey K lost heart. He remembered reading that it was a sin to lose heart, yet he had known this sensation a thousand times before and would know it again. His knees were buckling when he realised that there were objects beneath the ice.

 

The driver had stopped far ahead. K knelt and brushed snow from the surface. He squinted at the enormous shapes buried in the glacial depths. Huge grey orbs, frozen and suspended. His fingers trembled. He recognised the pattern. The assortment of spheres. 

 

The solar system.

 

There were planets entombed in the ice. Dead planets.

 

He felt something wink out in him. He stood and wiped snow from his shoulders. The marble-man sniffled and sat up, rubbing its eyes. K staggered on until he reached the driver.

 

Powdery gusts moved around them. They stood directly above the huge, dessicated shell of a planet, frozen beneath their feet. K traced the curve of its sphere under thousands of miles of ice. He felt overawed. He felt overawed by everything.

 

The driver knelt and, with his gloved hands, lifted a circular panel of ice from the sheet underfoot. The rungs of a ladder were visible in the resulting hole.

 

'Old lands,' he croaked. 'Not of much use now.'

 

The marble-man sneezed in K's ear.

 

 

I have never been here before:

my breath comes differently,

the sun is outshone

by a star beside it

 

Kierling, Klosterneuburg 

 

Candlelight flickered. Dr. Klopstock sat by the bed, drinking beer. His fingers worried the glass. He tried to pace his gulps. He felt conscious of his lips on the rim; the movement of his eyes; which expression to display as he lowered the glass to his lap. It was a performance, a terrible performance.

 

Kafka liked to watch people taking long drinks of water and beer in front of him, because he no longer could. 

 

His dark hair hung lank over his forehead. Drops of sweat beaded his temples. Klopstock drank again, and Kafka turned in the bed, his skinny frame all points and juts beneath the cover.

 

He'd spent the day working on the first proofs of his last book, 'The Hunger Artist'. Klopstock found this remarkable. An earlier visit from the publisher had proved tense. Kafka wanted the order of the stories changed, and he displayed some temper with the man, who had not followed his instructions closely enough.

 

Shadows swam around the candles. Klopstock rested the glass by the bedside and watched Kafka's eyes close. It was midnight. The covers rose and fell rhythmically. His own chin slumped into his chest.

 

Around four a.m. he was awoken by harsh, ragged breathing. Kafka had propped himself up on his pillows. Bedsheets fell away from his protruding ribs. His eyes were red and wide, and he clutched at folds of fabric.

 

Klopstock stumbled from his chair. He rummaged in his bag. Kafka's breath came in panicked hisses. Klopstock's hands shook as he measured the syringe. He administered the camphor. Kafka hacked. He was drenched in sweat. 

 

'Morphine.'

 

Klopstock wiped his hands. Kafka had slumped down onto the mattress. Slick droplets hung from his brow. He swallowed.

 

'Franz, you must let me - '

 

Kafka's eyes flared.

 

'You have been promising it to me for four years. You are torturing me; you have always been torturing me... I am not talking to you anymore. I shall die like that.'

 

Klopstock clucked his tongue. The second hand of the clock punctured the still.

 

He dabbed at Kafka's forehead with a moist cloth. Then he removed a small black box from his bag and clicked it open. He slid a white tube from its groove and lined up the syringe.

 

After the second injection Kafka stifled a cough and lifted his head.

 

'Don't cheat me,' he whispered. 'You're giving me an antidote.'

 

Klopstock cleaned the syringe. 

 

'You have to let it do its work, Franz... try to rest, try to rest.'

 

Kafka succumbed to the pillow. His eyelids closed.

 

'Kill me,' he muttered, 'or else you are a murderer.'

 

*

 

Kafka awoke one last time, around six a.m. 

 

Klopstock held his soaking head as he strained for breath. His wiry frame jerked. His eyes widened. He was mumbling about his sister. 

 

'Go away, Elly. Not so near, not so near.'

 

Klopstock dabbed at his forehead with the cloth. Kafka was always so afraid that he would infect someone. 

 

Early-morning light pushed soft panels into the curtains. Klopstock slid his hand out from under Kafka's head and turned to rinse out the cloth. Kafka clawed at the sheets.

 

'Don't leave me,' he said.

 

Klopstock dropped the cloth into the basin. He took Kafka's hand. 

 

'But I am not leaving you,' he said.

 

Kafka coughed. His voice was thin and hoarse.

 

'But I am leaving you.'

 

*

 

Franz Kafka died on June 3rd, 1924.

 

His body was brought to Prague in a sealed coffin, and on June 11th, at four o'clock, was placed in a grave in the Jewish cemetery of Prague-Straschnitz. When Kafka's friends arrived back at his home in the Old Town Square, they saw that the great clock on the Town Hall had stopped at four o'clock. 

 

 

A cage went in search

of a bird

 

New Jewish Garden, Prague

2018 

 

The cemetery was quiet. He passed only two other people as he strolled along pathways hemmed between tall trees. He stopped at benches and sat in the sun. He made his way slowly to the outside fence.

 

After two hundred metres, he saw it on the left. A black, hexagonal crystal. 

 

Dr. Franz Kafka

1883-1924

 

A Hebrew inscription. Flowers and stones at the base. A breeze played with K's hair. He placed his own stone amid a pile and glanced around. Sunlight beat the empty pathways. He scrabbled a small clump of earth into a tiny plastic packet, and slipped it into his pocket.

 

 

 

K sat at the back of the office. The meeting was busy. Suits swarmed around him. Someone was taking coffee orders. Someone else cracked a joke nearby, and slapped his shoulder.

 

K looked round blankly. He nodded and looked down at his palms. They were sweating.

 

A bright face hovered before him and thrust a mug into his hands. K started. He dropped the mug. It rolled clockwise. He watched a puddle of coffee slick between chair legs. His head felt hot. He dry heaved. He rose and made for the door, tripping over legs as he went.

 

 

It isn't necessary that you leave home

Sit at your desk and listen

Don't even listen; just wait

Don't wait, be still and alone

The whole world will offer itself to you, unmasked

 

K woke through doorways of dreams.

 

He showered. He shaved. He put his suit on. He grabbed his briefcase. He descended the stairs to his front door. His hand rested on the handle.

 

He couldn't go out. The thought made his skin crawl.

 

He slid down against the wall and kicked his briefcase away from him. He flexed his hands slowly. Then fast. Faster. They made a sticky sound as he sweated.