Kafka in Love Read online

  Copyright © Flammarion, 2011

  Originally published in French as Kafka, l’éternel fiancé by Flammarion, Paris, France.

  Translation Copyright © 2012 Willard Wood

  Excerpts from Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka, translated by Tania and James Stern, and from Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors by Franz Kafka, translated by Richard and Clara Winston, originally published by Schocken Books, have been reproduced by permission of Random House.

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Raoul-Duval, Jacqueline.

  [Kafka, l’eternel fiance. English]

  Kafka in love / Jacqueline Raoul-Duval; translated from the French by Willard Wood.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-59051-542-6

  1. Kafka, Franz,

  1883-1924—Fiction. I. Wood, Willard. II. Title.

  PQ2678.A545K3413 2012

  843’.914—dc23

  2012012773

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One: Felice

  From the First Glance

  A Passion Without Love

  Berlin, Seven Months Later

  The Triumph of Time and Disillusion

  Riva, the Italian Interlude

  Grete Bloch, or the First Trio

  The Trial

  That Night, or the Marienbad Enigma

  Freedom … Freedom!

  “It Wasn’t to Be Your Destiny”

  Two: Julie

  Julie, the Forgetting

  Three: Milena

  Milena, the End of an Illusion

  Four: Dora

  The Young Girl and Death

  The Last Day: June 3, 1924

  After 1924

  Author’s Note

  “I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.”

  “She is unattainable for me; I must resign myself to that, and my energies are in such a state that they do so jubilantly.”

  —LETTER TO MAX BROD

  From the First Glance

  On this August 13, 1912, at the late hour when this story of singular loves begins, a south wind has swept away the banks of mist and the rain squalls that battered Prague all day. The stars are out, it is a true summer’s night.

  In the heart of the old city, on quiet Obstgasse Street, a young man in a light-colored suit, vestless and wearing a straw boater, walks hurriedly. In front of him, between the gaping paving stones, are puddles, glistening under the light of the streetlamps. Like a man in an obstacle race, he jumps from puddle to puddle, reflection to reflection, his feet neatly together. Here a decorated gable, there a window’s arch, a church lintel, an apostle’s outstretched arm, a pigeon taking flight. In accelerated time, he sees fragments of his city march past at his feet.

  He is whistling “Collection de boutons au Louvre,” which Leonie Frippon has been performing recently at the City of Vienna cabaret. Carrying a large red envelope under his arm, the young man is on his way—as on many nights—to visit his friend Max.

  Max Brod and he met by chance at the university, on November 23, 1903. They were both working toward a doctorate in law, both with the same lack of enthusiasm. Max, already a leader, was at the center of a group of students, organizing conferences on literature and philosophy, his ruling passions. Giving a talk about Schopenhauer one evening, he called Nietzsche a charlatan. It sparked a debate, and he was applauded. As the hall emptied, a young man approached him. You cannot call Nietzsche a charlatan. In a few sentences, the stranger developed his thesis. A firm voice, a shy demeanor. Max examined the young righter of wrongs, who was taller than he by a head. He noticed the young man’s elegance of dress, the tie and stand-up collar, the intensity of his gaze, his black eyes on fire. He was reminded of a Dostoyevsky hero. The student’s high-cheekboned thinness and distinction made Max uncomfortable, and he regretted having overindulged in beer and fatty foods and neglected sports. But before Max could put his answer into words, the young man was gone. Where did this phantom come from? I’ve never seen him before, he has never participated in our meetings, never taken the floor. But can he have been reading the philosophers more attentively than all the rest of us?

  The next morning, Max received a letter from the stranger. Along with apologies, it developed his argument. The reasoning was fine-grained, the style direct. Max kept this letter. And the dozens of others that followed. Several included little drawn figures, strange black marionettes hanging from invisible strings.

  The two students became inseparable. They developed enthusiasms for the same books, the same movies, the cinematograph enthralled them. In late afternoon they could be seen leaving town together on long walks through the countryside. At night they attended the same shows, cheered and supported the Yiddish theater, patronized the same cafes. Max introduced his new friend to actors, young novelists, and poets, he knew all the most interesting literary circles, dance troupes, cabarets, and music halls in town.

  Max confided to Franz that he wrote, but he was afraid to show him his writings. They were not up to his friend’s literary standards. Standards that exasperated him even more than his friend’s asceticism. Franz did not smoke, did not drink alcohol, coffee, or tea, slept by an open window even in the heart of winter, swam in icy rivers, and barely ate at all. Bad enough. But he would ruthlessly pluck a text naked, trim it of its fat: this metaphor made him despair of literature, that sentence was bombast, this other rang false, these two rubbed together like a tongue on a hollow tooth! He said once in a reverent voice, “You have to pull words from the void!”

  “What void is that?” asked Max.

  In answer, his friend extolled the pleasures of the commonplace, praised detail. “The smell of damp flagstones in a hall,” he quoted, savoring each word, that is how one has to write.

  On this August 13, 1912, at the late hour when this story of singular loves begins, the young man in the light-colored suit who was earlier chasing reflections of his ancient city rings at his friend’s door.

  “Do you know what time it is?” asks Max straightaway.

  “He is always late,” offers a voice from a nearby room. “He sets his watch an hour and a half ahead, but he is still late with everyone! Strange, to set your watch forward an hour and a half!”

  The young man laughs. He deposits his straw boater in the entry hall and proceeds into the dining room, which connects to a library and a small music room. Otto, Max’s brother, is at the piano playing Lizst’s Sonata in B Minor, their mother is on the telephone, Herr Brod is rummaging the shelves for a book. They wave a greeting at their evening visitor.

  In the dining room, a young woman in a white blouse is eating dinner alone. Seeing her, the young man is for a moment undecided. Then he walks straight for her, stretches out his hand, and introduces himself.

  “Franz Kafka.”r />
  He sits down across the table and looks so steadily at her that the young woman lowers her eyes and hesitates before answering.

  “Felice Bauer.”

  “You’re not from Prague. Where are you from? Are you traveling alone? How long will you spend here? What is your connection to the Brods? Do you work?”

  Felice Bauer relaxes, answers in the same staccato: “I live in Berlin. I’m single. Related to the Brods by marriage. Yes, I work. I run the Parlograph department of the Carl Lindström Company. And I leave tomorrow morning. Does that answer your questions?”

  “I apologize, I’m always asking too many questions. May I keep you company?”

  Without waiting for an answer, which wasn’t coming, Franz Kafka draws a packet of photographs from his red envelope and empties the contents on the table.

  “Fräulein, may I show you these photographs? Max and I took them in Weimar, where we spent several days together. Why are you eating all alone at this big table?”

  “I came back late. I was at the theater. No one waited for me.”

  She smiles embarrassedly at Max, who comes to sit next to her. Franz shows her a photograph.

  “Here is Goethe’s house, first of all, with its fourteen windows on the street and—”

  “You counted them?” says Max.

  “I am envious of everything that touches Goethe, absolutely everything. His parlor. His study. The staircase made by a convict from a giant oak tree, without a single nail. His Chinese porcelains. His bust, sculpted by David d’Angers. His garden theater with its two rows of seats for spectators. And even the gold laurel wreath over his casket, given by the German women of Prague.”

  He picks out other photographs.

  “We bribed the watchman, and he let us take pictures of everything, even the bedroom with its canopy bed. Would you like to see?”

  Felice looks at each snapshot attentively. She pushes her unfinished plate away.

  “Your meat is getting cold,” says Max.

  “There is nothing more revolting than people who can’t stop eating,” says Felice.

  A serving girl comes in to tell Herr Brod, who is reading in the library, that he is wanted on the telephone.

  He rises and leaves the room.

  “There is nothing more revolting than the telephone ringing,” says Max.

  Felice describes the first scene of the operetta she has just seen at the Residenz Theater, The Auto Sweetheart.

  “The telephone rings fifteen times in a row. Somebody, using the same patter, calls each of the fifteen characters on the stage to the phone, one after another.”

  “Luckily, we aren’t so many,” says Max.

  Felice continues looking through the photographs, while Franz offers a running commentary.

  “Here is Liszt’s house. He only worked, apparently, from five to eight in the morning. Then he went to church, then back to bed, and at eleven he received visitors. This photograph shows Schiller’s house. The waiting room, the parlor, the study, the sleeping alcoves. Well laid out for a writer’s house.”

  Max snatches a picture that Franz was trying to hide.

  “Look at this one of Franz swimming. Traveling with him is pure hell. At every town, often after hours of wandering, we would have to find a hotel with no other guests, no dogs nearby, absolute quiet, and within easy distance of a vegetarian restaurant and an outdoor swimming pool. If he doesn’t swim, row, or walk every day, he becomes impossible.”

  “Do you often travel together?”

  “Yes. We’ve been to Italy together, Brescia, to see the airplanes, Milan, Riva, Lugano, Zurich. And twice to Paris. Otto was with us. He helped me deal with the demands of our nudist.”

  “You’re a nudist?”

  “Not really … I’m the man in the bathing suit. It is true that this summer, at the Jungborn colony, it made me a little sick to see people all naked and unconcerned. When they run, it doesn’t help things. And I’m not crazy about old men jumping over haystacks.”

  They all three laugh.

  “So why do you go there?”

  “The people are quiet, they live close to nature. You sleep under the open sky, walk barefoot through the grass in the early morning. It’s very pleasant.”

  Max holds up another photograph for Felice.

  “Look at Franz in front of Werther’s garden with Grete. They’re eating cherries.”

  “Who is Grete?”

  “The caretaker’s lovely daughter. Franz followed her day and night. Admit it, you were in love with her. You gave her chocolates, bunches of carnations, a little heart with a chain, who knows what else? You’d have asked her to marry you if she’d responded.”

  Max looks at his watch.

  “It’s already eleven o’clock and we haven’t decided on the sequence for your stories. You have to send them off first thing in the morning. Let’s sit in the next room while Felice finishes dinner.”

  He rises, picks up the red envelope from the table in front of Franz, and pulls out a manuscript. Felice looks at Franz in surprise.

  “Are you a writer too?”

  Max answers in his place: “Especially Franz! Writing is his reason for being. His head is crammed with unbelievable stories. He goes crazy if he doesn’t write them down. He is made of literature. You’ve never read anything by him?”

  Felice pages through the tome of Goethe left by Herr Brod on his armchair.

  “No, but I’ve read all your books, Max. Except for your first novel, Nornepygge Castle. I couldn’t get through it. I tried several times.”

  Franz looks at her, appalled. There is a silence, which Felice breaks in a calm voice.

  “I’m more surprised than anybody. I intend to pick it up again when I have the chance.”

  Max leads Franz to a pedestal table with three stiff, slender feet.

  “Let’s get to work. It will only take us a few minutes. I have a proposal for you, which I’ve written down somewhere. Where did I put it?”

  He searches through his pockets, looks all around him, and finally notices it on the mantelpiece.

  “There it is! I’ve put ‘Children on the Road’ first, followed by ‘The Excursion into the Mountains’ and ‘Desire to Be a Red Indian.’ For the last story, I’ve chosen ‘Being Unhappy.’ As far as all the others, I agree with the order you suggested.”

  Felice approaches them.

  “I love to transcribe manuscripts. I do it in Berlin occasionally. I’d be very grateful, Max, if you would send me some.”

  Franz looks at her. “To read the text, or just to transcribe it?”

  “Just to transcribe it.”

  Franz smacks his hand down on the pedestal table. All three jump.

  “Franz, do you agree with the sequence I proposed? Can I put your stories away?”

  “I won’t mail out anything tomorrow.”

  “You’re not starting that again! Every time you get a chance to publish I have to fight with you. Why this last-minute refusal?”

  “Because there’s no reason to publish a text that isn’t perfect. I’m in no hurry. Man was expelled from paradise because of his impatience. And it’s his impatience that keeps him from returning. Anyway, I don’t want to disappoint your editor again.”

  “But he’s the one who keeps asking me for your text. He called on the telephone again yesterday! I gave him my solemn word that you would mail the manuscript to him tomorrow morning. You can’t do this to me.”

  “I asked him how many copies of my first collection he had sold. Eleven. As I’d bought ten of them, I want to know who owns the eleventh Meditation. And why does your editor publish texts that don’t sell?”

  “Because he knows that one day he’ll sell hundreds of them. Do you want me to remind you of all the things that Rilke, Werfel, and Musil have said about you? You’re not leaving here until you promise to send out the text tomorrow.”

  “At the central post office, go to the young woman at window 14, she’s the prettiest,” O
tto interjects.

  “Send it as a registered letter,” says Max.

  “I have never sent a letter, or even a postcard, except as registered mail.”

  Otto has closed the piano lid. He kneels in front of the wood stove. Franz looks at him and laughs, saying to Felice: “Otto likes to go to bed early. Every time I visit, he makes a great show of fussing with the fire screen. It’s his way of reminding me that it’s time to go. He calls me the professional disturber of sleep. Sometimes it takes the combined forces of the whole Brod family to shoo me from the apartment. I’m afraid that tonight I’ve kept you up late too. What time do you leave tomorrow morning?”

  “Six-thirty. I haven’t packed my bag yet. And I want to finish my book before closing my eyes.”

  Franz smiles. “Do you like staying up late with a book?”

  “Sometimes until dawn.”

  “Are you returning to Berlin?”

  “No, I’m off to Budapest. To attend my sister’s wedding. Do you really want to know everything?”

  Frau Brod joins the conversation: “At her hotel, Felice showed me the batiste gown she plans to wear at the ceremony. Lovely!”

  Felice stands up. Franz, not taking his eyes off her, says, “Are you really wearing Frau Brod’s slippers?”

  “Yes. The weather was terrible all day, and my boots needed drying. But I’m used to wearing high-heeled mules.”

  “High-heeled mules! What a novelty!”

  She flies off down the hallway leading to the bathroom. A door slams. Frau Brod says, “Felice is such a gazelle!”

  Franz makes a face. Max sidles over to him and asks quietly, “How do you like our Berliner?”

  “No charm, no appeal. When I arrived, she was having dinner at the dining room table, but I took her for the maid. Her face is bony, empty. Her nose almost seems broken, her hair is blond, quite straight. She is dressed like a housewife, although she isn’t one at all, as I quickly realized. She is decisive, self-confident, strong. As might …”

  Steps sound in the hallway. He stops in midsentence, hurries to intercept Felice, pulling a magazine from his envelope to show her: “Fräulein Felice, I happen to have brought an issue of Palästina.”