The Judgment
For Fräulein Felice B.
Click here to see the first and last pages of the manuscript.
It was a Sunday morning
at the very height of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young merchant,
was sitting in his own room on the second floor of one of a long row of
low, graceful houses stretching along the bank of the river, distinguishable
from one another only in height and color. He had just finished a
letter to an old friend who was now living abroad, had sealed it in its
envelope with slow and dreamy deliberateness, and with one elbow propped
on his desk was looking out the window at the river, the bridge, and the
hills on the farther bank with their tender green.
He was thinking about
this friend, who years before had simply run off to Russia, dissatisfied
with his prospects at home. Now he was running a business in St.
Petersburg, which at first had flourished but more recently seemed to be
going downhill, as the friend always complained on his increasingly rare
visits. So there he was, wearing himself out to no purpose in a foreign
country; the exotic-looking beard he wore did not quite conceal the face
Georg had known so well since childhood, and the jaundice color his skin
had begun to take on seemed to signal the onset of some disease.
By his own account he had no real contact with the colony of his fellow
countrymen there and almost no social connection with Russian families,
so that he was resigning himself to life as a confirmed bachelor.
What could one write
to such a man, who had obviously gone badly astray, a man one could be
sorry for but not help? Should one perhaps advise him to come home,
to reestablish himself here and take up his old friendships again--there
was certainly nothing to stand in the way of that--and in general to rely
on the help of his friends? But that was as good as telling him--and
the more kindly it was done the more he would take offense--that all his
previous efforts had miscarried, that he should finally give up,come back
home, and be gaped at by everyone as a returned prodigal, that only his
friends knew what was what, and that he himself was nothing more than a
big child and should follow the example of his friends who had stayed at
home and become successful. And besides, was it certain that all
the pain they would necessarily inflict on him would serve any purpose?
Perhaps it would not even be possible to get him to come home at all--he
said himself that he was now out of touch with business conditions in his
native country--and then he would still be left an alien in an alien land,
embittered by his friends' advice and more than ever estranged from them.
But if he did follow their advice and even then didn't fit in at home--not
because of the malice of others, of course, but through sheer force of
circumstances--if he couldn't get on with his friends or without them,
felt humiliated, couldn't really be said to have either friends or a country
of his own any longer, wouldn't it be better for him to go on living abroad
just as he was? Taking all this into account, how could one expect
that he would make a success of life back here?
For such reasons,
assuming one wanted to keep up any correspondence with him at all, one
could not send him the sort of real news one could frankly tell the most
casual acquaintances. It had been more than three years since his last
visit, and for this he offered the lame excuse that the political situation
in Russia was too uncertain and apparently would not permit even the briefest
absence of a small businessman, though it allowed hundreds of thousands
of Russians to travel the globe in perfect safety. But during these same
three years Georg's own position in life had changed considerably.
Two years ago his mother had died and since then he and his father had
shared the household together; and his friend had, of course, been informed
of that and had expressed his sympathy in a letter phrased so dryly that
the grief normally caused by such an event, one had to conclude, could
not be comprehended so far away from home. Since that time, however,
Georg had applied himself with greater determination to his business as
well as to everything else. Perhaps it was his father's insistence
on having everything his own way in the business that had prevented him,
during his mother's lifetime, from pursuing any real projects of his own;
perhaps since her death his father had become less agressive, although
he was still active in the business; perhaps it was mostly due to an accidental
run of good fortune--that was very probable indeed--but, at any rate, during
those two years the business had prospered most unexpectedly, the staff
had to be doubled, the volume was five times as great; no doubt about it,
further progress lay just ahead.
But Georg's friend
had no inkling of these changes. In earlier years, perhaps for the
last time in that letter of condolence, he had tried to persuade Georg
to emigrate to Russia and had enlarged upon the prospects of success in
St. Petersburg for precisely Georg's line of business. The figures
quoted were microscopic by comparison with Georg's present operations.
Yet he shrank from letting his friend know about his business success,
and if he were to do so now--retrospectively--that certainly would look
peculiar.
So Georg confined
himself to giving his friend unimportant items of gossip such as rise at
random in the memory when one is idly thinking things over on a quiet Sunday.
All he desired was to leave undisturbed the image of the hometown in which
his friend had most likely built up and accepted during his long absence.
And thus it happened that three times in three fairly widely separated
letters Georg had told his friend about the engagement of some insignificant
man to an equally insignificant girl, until, quite contrary to Georg's
intentions, his friend had actually begun to show some interest in this
notable event.
Yet Georg much preferred
to write about things like these rather than to confess that he himself
had become engaged a month ago to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl
from a well-to-do family. He often spoke to his fiancee about this
friend of his and the peculiar relationship that had developed between
them in their correspondence. "Then he won't be coming to our wedding,"
she said, "and yet I have a right to get to know all your friends."
"I don't want to trouble him," answered Georg, "don't misunderstand, he
would probably come, at least I think so, but he would feel that his hand
had been forced and he would be hurt, perhaps he would even envy me and
certainly he'd be discontented, and without ever being able to do anything
about his discontent he'd have to go away again alone. Alone--do
you know what that means?" "Yes, but what if he hears about our marriage
from some other source?" "I can't prevent that, of course, but it's
unlikely, considering the way he lives." "If you have friends like
that, Georg, you shouldn't ever have gotten engaged at all." "Well,
we're both to blame for that; but I wouldn't have it any other way now."
And when breathing heavily under his kisses, she was still able to add,
"All the same, it does upset me," he thought it would not really do any
harm if he were to send the news to his friend. "That's the kind
of man I am and he'll just have to accept me or not," he said to himself,
"I can't cut myself to another pattern that might make a more suitable
friend for him."
And, in fact, he did
inform his friend about his engagement, in the long letter he had been
writing that Sunday morning, with the following words: "I have saved my
best news for last. I am now engaged to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld,
a girl from a well-to-do family that settled here a long time after you
went away, so that it's very unlikely you'll know her. There will
be ample opportunity to tell you more about my fiancee later, but for today
let me just say that I am quite happy, and as far as our relationship is
concerned, the only change will be that instead of a quite ordinary friend
you will now have in me a happy friend. Besides that, you will acquire
in my fiancee, who sends you her warm regards and who will soon be writing
you herself, a genuine friend of the opposite sex, which is not without
importance to a bachelor. I know that there are many reasons why
you can't come to pay us a visit, but wouldn't my wedding be just the perfect
occasion to put aside everything that might stand in the way? Still,
however that may be, do just as seems good to you without regarding any
interests but your own."
With this letter in
his hand, Georg had been sitting a long time at his desk, his face turned
to the window. He had barely acknowledged, with an absent smile,
a greeting waved to him from the street below by a passing acquaintance.
At last he put the
letter in his pocket and went out of his room across a small hallway into
his father's room, which he had not entered for months. There was,
in fact, no particular need for him to enter it, since he saw his father
daily at work and they took their midday meal together at a restaurant;
in the evening, it was true, each did as he pleased, yet even then, unless
Georg--as was usually the case--went out with friends or, more recently,
visited his fiancee, they always sat for a while, each with his newspaper,
in their common sitting room.
Georg was startled
by how dark his father's room was, even on this sunny morning. He
had not remembered that it was so overshadowed by the high wall on the
other side of the narrow courtyard. His father was sitting by the
window in a corner decorated with various mementos of Georg's late mother,
reading a newspaper which he held tilted to one side before his eyes in
an attempt to compensate for some defect in his vision. On the table
stood the remains of his breakfast, little of which seemed to have been
consumed.
"Ah, Georg," said
his father, rising at once to meet him. His heavy dressing gown swung
open as he walked, and his skirts fluttered around him. --My father is
still a giant of a man, Georg said to himself.
"It's unbearably dark
in here," he said aloud.
"Yes, it is dark,"
answered his father.
"And you've shut the
window, too?"
"I prefer it like
that."
"Well, it's quite
warm outside," said Georg, as if continuing his previous remark, and sat
down.
His father cleared
away the breakfast dishes and set them on a chest.
"I really only wanted
to tell you," Georg went on, following the old man's movements as if transfixed,
"that I have just announced the news of my engagement to St. Petersburg."
He drew the letter a little way from his pocket and let it drop back again.
"To St. Petersburg?"
asked his father.
"To my friend, of
course," said Georg, trying to meet his father's eye. --In business
hours, he's quite different, he was thinking, how solidly he sits here
and folds his arms over his chest.
"Ah, yes. To
your friend," said his father emphatically.
"Well, you know, Father,
that I didn't want to tell him about my engagement at first. Out
of consideration for him--that was the only reason. You yourself
know how difficult a man he is. I said to myself that someone else might
tell him about my engagement, although he's such a solitary creature that
that was hardly likely, but I wasn't ever going to tell him myself."
"And now you've changed
your mind, have you?" asked his father, laying his enormous newspaper on
the window sill and on top of it his eyeglasses, which he covered with
one hand.
"Yes, now I've changed
my mind. If he's a good friend of mine, I said to myself, then my
being happily engaged should make him happy too. And that's why I
haven't put off telling him any longer. But before I mailed the letter
I wanted to let you know."
"Georg," said his
father, stretching his toothless mouth wide, "listen to me! You've
come to me about this business, to talk it over and get my advice.
No doubt that does you honor. But it's nothing, it's worse than nothing,
if you don't tell me the whole truth. I don't want to stir up matters
that shouldn't be mentioned here. Since the death of our dear mother
certain things have happened that aren't very pretty. Maybe the time
will come for mentioning them, and maybe sooner than we think. There
are a number of things at the shop that escape my notice, maybe they're
not done behind my back--I'm not going to say that they're done behind
my back--I'm not strong enough any more, my memory's slipping, I haven't
an eye for all those details any longer. In the first place that's
in the nature of things, and in the second place the death of our dear
little mother hit me harder than it did you.--But since we're talking about
it, about this letter, I beg you, Georg, don't decieve me. It's a
trivial thing, it's hardly worth mentioning, so don't decieve me.
Do you really have this friend in St. Petersburg?"
Georg rose in embarrassment.
"Never mind my friends. A thousand friends could never replace my
father for me. Do you know what I think? You're not taking
enough care of yourself. But old age has its own rightful demands.
I can't do without you in the business, you know that very well, but if
the business is going to undermine your health, I'm ready to close it down
tomorrow for good. This won't do. We'll have to make a change
in the way you live; a radical change. You sit here in the dark,
and in the sitting room you would have plenty of light. You just
take a bite of breakfast instead of keeping up your strength properly.
You sit by a closed window, and the air would be so good for you.
No, Father! I'll get the doctor to come, and we'll follow his orders.
We'll change rooms, you can move into the front room, and I'll move in
here. You won't notice the change, all your things will be moved
across the hall with you. But there's time for all that later, go
to bed now for a little, you must have some rest. Come, I'll help
uou to take off your things, you'll see I can do it. Or if you would
rather go into the front room at once, you can lie down in my bed for the
present. That would actually be the most sensible thing."
Georg stood close
behind his father, who had let his head with its shaggy white hair sink
to his chest.
"Georg," said his
father in a low voice, without moving.
Georg knelt down at
once beside his father. In the old man's weary face he saw the abnormally
large pupils staring at him fixedly from the corners of the eyes.
"You have no friend
in St. Petersburg. You've always been one for pulling people's legs
and you haven't hesitated even when it comes to me. How could you
have a friend there, of all places! I can't believe it."
"Just think back a
bit, Father," said Georg, lifting his father from the chair and slipping
off his dressing gown as he stood there, quite feebly, "soon it'll be three
years since my friend came to see us last. I remember you didn't
like him very much. At least twice I even told you he wasn't there
when he was acually sitting with me in my room. I could quite well
understand your dislike of him, my friend does have his peculiarities.
But then later you had a good talk with him after all. I was so proud
because you listened to him and nodded and asked him questions. If
you think back you're bound to remember. He told us the most incredible
stories of the Russian Revolution. For instance, the time he was
on a business trip to Kiev and ran into a riot, and saw a priest on a balcony
who cut a broad cross in blood into the palm of his hand and held the hand
up and appealed to the crowd. You've told that very story yourself
once or twice since."
Meanwhile Georg had
succeeded in lowering his father into the chair again and carefully taking
off the knitted drawers he wore over his linen undershorts and his socks.
The not particularly clean appearance of his underwear made Georg reproach
himself for having been so neglectful. It should certainly have been
his duty to see that his father had clean changes of underwear. He
had not yet explicitly discussed with his fiancee what arrangements should
be made for his father in the future, for they had both silently taken
it for granted that he would remain alone in the old apartment. But
now he made a quick,firm decision to take him into his own future home.
It almost looked, on further inspection, as if the care he meant to devote
to his father there might come too late.
He carried his father
over to the bed in his arms. It gave him a dreadful feeling to observe
that while he was taking the few steps toward the bed, the old man cradled
against his chest was playing with his watch chain. For a moment
he could not put him down on the bed, so firmly did he hang on to the watch
chain.
But as soon as he
was laid in bed, all seemed well. He covered himself up and even
drew the blanket higher than usual over his shoulders. He looked
up at Georg with a not unfriendly expression.
"You're beginning
to remember my friend, aren't you?" asked Georg, giving him an encouraging
nod.
"Am I well covered
up now?" asked his father, as if he couldn't see whether his feet were
properly tucked in or not.
"So you like it in
bed, don't you?" said Georg, and tucked the blanket more closely around
him.
"Am I well covered
up?" the father asked once more, seeming to be peculiarly intent upon the
answer.
"Don't worry, you're
well covered up."
"No!" cried his father,
so that the answer collided with the question, and flinging the blanket
back so violently that for a moment it hovered unfolded in the air, he
stood upright in bed. With one hand he lightly touched the ceiling
to steady himself. "You wanted to cover me up, I know, my little
puppy, but I'm far from being covered up yet. And even if this is
the last bit of strength I have, it's enough for you, more than enough.
Of course I know your friend. He would have been a son after my own
heart. That's why you've been betraying him all these years.
Why else? Do you think I haven't wept for him? And that's why
you've had to lock yourself up in the office--the boss is busy, mustn't
be disturbed--just so that you could write your lying little letters to
Russia. But fortunately a father doesn't need to be taught how to
see through his own son. And now that you thought you'd pinned him
down, so far down that you could plant your rear end on him so he couldn't
move, then my fine son decides to up and get married!"
Georg looked up at
the terrifying image of his father. His friend in St. Petersburg,
whom his father suddenly knew so well, seized hold of his imagination as
never before. He saw him lost in the vastness of Russia; at the door
of his empty, plundered warehouse he saw him. Amid the wreckage of
his storage shelves, the slashed remnants of his wares, the falling gas
brackets, he barely stood upright. Why did he have to go so far away!
"Pay attention to
me!" cried his father, and Georg, almost absentmindedly, ran toward
the bed to take everything in, but froze halfway there.
"Because she lifted
up her skirts," his father began to flute, "because she lifted up her skirts
like this, the revolting creature"--and mimicking her, he lifted his shirt
so high that one could see the scar on his thigh from his war wound--"because
she lifted her skirts like this and this and this you went after her, and
in order to have your way with her undisturbed you have disgraced our mother's
memory, betrayed your friend, and stuck your father into bed so that he
can't move. But can he move, or can't he?"
And he stood up quite
unsupported and kicked his legs about. He shone with insight.
Georg shrank into
a corner, as far away from his father as possible. A long time ago
he had firmly made up his mind to watch everything with the greatest attention
so that he would not be surprised by any indirect attack, a pounce from
behind or above. At this moment he recalled this long-forgotten resolve
and then forgot it again, like someone drawing a short thread through the
eye of a needle.
"But your friend hasn't
been betrayed after all!" cried his father, emphasizing the point with
stabs of his forefinger. "I've been representing him here on the
spot."
"You comedian!" Georg
could not resist shouting, realized at once the harm done, and his eyes
bulging in his head, bit his tongue--though too late--until the pain made
his knees buckle.
"Yes, of course I've
been playing a comedy! A comedy! That's the perfect word for
it! What other consolation was left for your poor old widowed father?
Tell me--and while you're answering me may you still be my loving son--what
else was left to me, in my back room, plagued by a disloyal staff, old
to the very marrow of my bones? And my son strutting through the
world, closing deals that I had prepared for him, turning somersaults in
his glee, and striding away from his father with the composed face of a
man of honor! Do you think I didn't love you, I, from whose loins
you sprang?"
Now he's going to
lean forward, thought Georg; if only he would topple over and smash to
pieces! These words went hissing through his brain.
His father leaned
forward but did not topple. Since Georg didn't come any closer, as
he had expected, he straightened himself up again.
"Stay where you are,
then, I don't need you! You think you have the strength to get yourself
over here and that you're only hanging back because you want to?
Don't be too sure! I am still much the stronger. All by myself
I might have had to give in, but your mother has given me her strength,
I have established a fine connection with your friend, and your customers
in my pocket!"
"He has pockets even
in his undershirt!" said Georg to himself, and thought that with this observation
he could expose him for a fool for all the world to see. He was able
to cling to that thought for no more than a moment, for in his distraction
he kept on forgetting everything.
"Just try linking
arms with your bride and getting in my way! I'll sweep her from your
side, you don't know how!"
Georg grimaced in
disbelief. His father only nodded in the direction of Georg's corner,
affirming the truth of his words.
"How you amused me
today, coming in here to ask if you should tell your friend about your
engagement. He knows all about it already, you stupid boy, he knows
it all! I've been writing to him, since you forgot to take my writing
things from me. That's why he hasn't been here for years, he knows
everything a hundred times better than you do yourself, with his left hand
he crumples up your letters unopenes while with his right he holds mine
and reads them through!"
In his exhilaration
he waved his arm over his head. "He knows everything a thousand times
better!" he cried.
"Ten thousand times!"
said Georg, to make fun of his father, but in his very mouth the words
turned deadly earnest.
"For years I've been
waiting for you to come with this question! Do you think I've concerned
myself with anything else? Do you think I've been reading my newspapers?
Look!" and he threw Georg a page from a newspaper that had somehow found
its way into the bed with him. An old newspaper, with a name entirely
unknown to Georg.
"How long it's taken
you to grow up! Your mother had to die--she couldn't live to see
the happy day--your friend is going to pieces in Russia, even three years
ago he was yellow enough to be thrown away, and as for me, you can see
what condition I'm in! You have eyes in your head for that!"
"So you've been lying
in wait for me!" cried Georg.
His father said pityingly,
in an offhand manner, "I suppose you wanted to say that earlier.
But now it is no longer appropriate."
And in a louder voice:
"So now you know there is more in the world than just you. Till now
you've known only about yourself! An innocent child, yes, that you
were, truly, but still more truly have you been a devilish human being!--And
therefore take note: I sentence you to death by drowning!"
Georg felt himself
driven from the room, the crash with which his father collapsed onto the
bed behind him still rang in his ears as he fled. On the staircase,
which he rushed down as if its steps were an inclind plane, he ran into
the cleaning woman on her way up to do the morning tidying of the apartment.
"Jesus!" she cried, and covered her face with her apron, but he was already
gone. Out the front door he bolted, across the roadway, driven toward
the water. Already he was clutching the railing as a starving man
clutches for food. He swung himself over, like the accomplished gymnast
he had been in his youth, to his parents' pride. With weakening grip
he was still holding on when he spied between the railings an approaching
bus that would easily cover the sound of his fall, called out in a faint
voice, "Dear parents, I have always loved you," and let himself drop.
At that moment an
almost endless line of traffic streamed over the bridge.
23 September [1912].
This story, "The Judgment," I wrote at one sitting during the night of
the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning.
I was hardly able to pull my legs out from under the desk, they had got
so stiff from sitting. The fearful strain and joy, how the story
developed before me, as if I were advancing over water. Several times
during the night I heaved my own weight on my back. How everything
can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits
a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. How it turned
blue outside the window. A wagon rolled by. Two men walked
across the bridge. At two I looked at the clock for the last time.
As the maid walked through the ante-room for the first time I wrote the
last sentence. Turning out the light and the light of day.
The slight pains around my heart. The weariness that disappeared
in the middle of the night. The trembling entrance into my sisters'
room. Reading aloud. Before that, stretching in the presence
of the maid and saying, "I've been writing until now." The appearance
of the undisturbed bed, as though it had just been brought in. The
conviction verified that with my novel-writing I am in the shameful lowlands
of writing. Only in this way can writing be done, only with such
coherence, with such a complete opening out of the body and the soul.
Morning in bed. The always clear eyes. Many emotions carried
along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something beautiful
for Max's Arkadia, thoughts about Freud, of course; in one passage, of
Arnold Beer; in another, of Wasserman; in one, of Werfel's giantess; of
course, also of my "The Urban World."
11 February [1913].
While I read the proofs of "The Judgment," I'll write down all the relationships
which have become clear to me in the story as far as I now remember them.
This is necessary because the story came out of me like a real birth, covered
with filth and slime, and only I have the hand that can reach to the body
itself and the strength of desire to do so:
The friend is the
link between father and son, he is their strongest common bond. Sitting
alone at his window, Georg rummages voluptuously in this consciousness
of what they have in common, believes he has his father within him, and
would be at peace with everything if it were not for a fleeting, sad thoughtfulness.
In the course of the story the father, with the strengthened position that
the other, lesser things they share in common give him--love, devotion
to the mother, loyalty to her memory, the clientele that he (the father)
had been the first to acquire for the business--uses the common bond of
the friend to set himself up as Georg's antagonist. Georg is left
with nothing; the bride, who lives in the story only in relation to the
friend, that is, to what father and son have in common, is easily driven
away by the father since no marriage has yet taken place, and so she cannot
penetrate the circle of blood relationship that is drawn around father
and son. What they have in common is built up entirely around the
father, Georg can feel it only as something foreign, something that has
become independent, that he has never given enough protection, that is
exposed to Russian revolutions, and only because he himself has lost everything
except his awareness of the father does the judgment, which closes off
his father from him completely, have so strong an effect on him.
Georg has the same
number of letters as Franz. In Bendemann, "mann" is a strengthening
of "Bende" to provide for all the as yet unforseen posibilities in the
story. But Bende has exactly the same number of letters as Kafka,
and the vowel e occurs in the same places as does the vowel a
in Kafka.
Frieda has as many
letters as F(elice) and the same initial, Brandenfeld has the same initial
as B(auer), and in the word "Feld" a certain connection in meaning, as
well. ["Bauer" is farmer, and "Feld" is field.] Perhaps even the
thought of Berlin was not without influence and the recollection of the
Mark Brandenburg perhaps had some influence. [Berlin was Felice's hometown.]
12 February.
In describing the friend I kept thinking of Steuer. Now when I happened
to meet him about three months after I had written the story, he told me
that he had become engaged about three months ago.
After I read the story
at Weltsch's yesterday, old Mr. Weltsch went out and, when he returned
a short time later, praised especially the graphic descriptions in the
story. With his arm extended he said, "I see this father before me,"
all the time looking directly at the empty chair in which he had been sitting
while I was reading.
My sister said, "It
is our house." I was astonished at how mistaken she was in the setting
and said, "In that case, then, Father would have to be living in the toilet."
14 August. Conclusion
of my case from "The Judgment." I am indirectly in her (Felice's)
debt for the story. But Georg goes to pieces because of his fiancee.
"When I wrote it, I
had in mind a violent ejaculation."
—Kafka to Brod