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A Meal With Kafka And His Family

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[Ottla ~ Kafka’s little sister]

I have filled in the missing diaries of Franz Kafka in my novel Kafka In The Castle. Speculation on my part, of course, but based on actual incidents.

~~~~~

15 April 1917

I’ve just come from the train station. Seeing Ottla off to Zurau. She didn’t take much with her – I had little to carry. Very little help to give. She had not planned to go for another couple of weeks, but father took her to task at today’s dinner. He was vile even by his standards. I like to think he was really trying to stop her. You can stop someone by destroying them. Perhaps that is always his strategy.

She didn’t get to finish her meal – although, I suppose, throwing it across the table is one way of finishing it. A plate of soup which splattered against his chest, turning the shirt dark. “There you see it.”  He bellowed as he stood up from the table.  “Yes, yes. There it is.”  His voice growled, and spittle was on his lips. The rest of us were immobile. Even mother did not bustle forward to try to clean the mess, or make her usual noises to calm him down. His face flushed red, and his hands trembled in front of him, but for once he made no reference to his heart, or the other ailments he claims. Ottla did not look in his direction, but glanced at her sisters. and then at me.

I had the greatest desire to continue eating my soup. I wished some words of reason could come out of my mouth; that things could be made right, and we would go on to the next course of this ghastly meal. I wished these things all the while I looked up to father – and smiled.  “There! There!”  This time he did step back from the table. “There is the Herr Son. At last the true villain bares his teeth. The old cur teaching the bitch her new tricks. This educated misfit who knows nothing of children and families. Who never even knew how to be a proper child.”

I am sure the only reason father did not throw his food at me was because he did not think of it.  “The Herr Doktor who does not have a wife – who can not please a woman enough to make her stay. This has turned my family against me. I should rip him apart like a fish.” He made tearing motions with his hands. “The head just so – snapping it back to carry out the spine.”  And then he smiled at me – a mocking grin.  “If there is a spine in this particular minnow.”

He made motions as if to wipe his fingers on his shirt, and looked down with genuine surprise when they brushed against the dampness of the soup. Mother was standing by this time, and father looked at her with his mouth open. His hands fell to his side, and he finally looked at Ottla. “You disgrace your parents. The whores of Russia act better than you.”  “Then it is a shame I can’t get to Russia.”  Ottla stood carefully, though she shoved her chair back with enough deliberation to hit the wall. “I would truly be rid of you.”

She looked right at him, her face without expression.  “But I can go to Zurau. That I can do this evening. I’ll not have to stay another night under this roof. Within the reach of your contamination.” She walked from the room without looking back.  “You’ll think differently, after a few days on the farm. When your hands are blistered, and your body aching. Then you will be glad to return here, to the comforts of your home.”  I rose to follow Ottla, to be with her, and to help if I could.  “If you leave this table to go to her, then you are no son of mine.”  I looked father in the face as I passed, and smiled again. “How I pray you could accomplish that.”

(image)img2.ct24.cz/cache/900×700/article/11/1097/109616.jpg

 

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A Birthday Day l00 Years Ago Via Kafka And Me

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When I wrote my novel, Kafka In The Castle, filling in all of Kafka’s missing diary entries, I found something very interesting a few months into it. The day/month/year I was writing about, mirrored the day/month/year in which I was writing.
For example, if the third of July was a Friday in my year, it was also Friday, 03 July in 1917. It was quite an exciting surprise, and made (I think) for more immediate writing.
However, 19 September 1917 was already filled in by Kafka, and I had nothing to do.
Here is Kafka’s actual entry, abridged.
DE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
19. (September 1917) Instead of telegram: “Very welcome station Michelob is excellent Franz Ottla” I wrote a farewell letter, and once again strongly oppressed agonies.
Farewell letter however, is ambiguous, as my opinion.
 
It is the age of the wound, more than its depth and proliferation, which constitutes its painfulness.
To be torn up again and again in the same wound canal, the countless wound operated again treated.
 
The fragile moody void essence – a telegram swaying, a letter directs it, animated it, the silence after the letter makes it dull.
 
The game of the cat with the goats. The goats are similar: Polish Jews, Uncle Siegfried, Ernst Weiß, Irma
 
Various but similar strict inaccessibility of the creator Hermann (who has now gone away without a supper and salutation, the question is whether he will come tomorrow), of Fraulein, the Marenka.
Basically, they are oppressed on the other side, as in front of the animals in the stable, when they are asked for something and they follow astonishingly.
The case is only more difficult here, because they seem so often accessible and quite understandable.
 
It is always inconceivable to me that almost anyone who can write is able to objectify the pain in pain.
For example, in misfortune, perhaps with the burning misfortune, and to tell someone in writing: I am unhappy.
Yes, I can go beyond it, and in various pranks, depending on the gift, which seems to have nothing to do with the misfortune, simply or antithetically, or with whole orchestras of associations.
And it is not a lie at all, and does not nurture the pain; it is simply a graceful excess of the forces at a moment when the pain has visibly exhausted all my powers to the ground of my being, which he scrapes. What is the surplus?
 
Letter to Max. Liar, vain, comedic.
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Kafka To The Day: Writing His Diary

(page from *real* Kafka diary)

One of the most  startling situations regarding Kafka and my (re)construction of his *missing* diary occurred when I had been working on the manuscript a couple of months.

I initially (of course) had the hope of literally writing a diary entry a day. Not only did my real life intervene, but some of the constructed diary entries took days to write. Also, there were times when many of my diary entries were but a few lines long. Thus, I might do a number in a day of writing.

In one instance, as I was checking Kafka’s real diaries, I noted one of his entries had the exact date as the day I was reading it. That is, if he was filling in  a diary entry on Friday, 19 October (for I forget the exact day I realized this), I was reading it on Friday, 19 October. I looked at a perpetual calendar, and not only was the year in which I was writing an exact numerical year to his, so was the following year. 

As a result, I believe my novel took on a more authentic flavour. When I put my pen to paper on the 14th of March, it was also a Wednesday in 1917.  

DE

(image)  http://swc2.hccs.edu/htmls/rowhtml/kafka/Diaries.GIF

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