‘I enclose here the newest stories of Kafka, which I very much enjoyed. They are works of true genius, with a humour and a darkness that I find wholly irresistible.’
I read the letter again, but the line was still there. Wholly irresistible. The beat of my heart shook the paper in my hands. It was just what I had dreaded. Her letter, especially when considered together with the letter I had seen in Karlsbad, was as good as proof of her liaison with Franz. The room whirled around me and my stomach clenched so that I thought I would be sick. I felt a desperate need to see her. I had to go to her. I turned over the envelope and read the return address again: Nostitzstrasse 70, Berlin. I automatically reached for my watch, which of course I was not yet wearing, and was ready to run to the Franz-Josefs-Bahnhof and leap aboard the first train to Berlin.
‘Max?’ Sophie’s voice came through the door. I stuffed the letter back into my waistband and returned to my bedroom.
Sophie was standing outside my bedroom door. She gripped my arm when she saw my face. ‘You’re ill again,’ she said. Her eyes were round with concern.
I smiled at her, but I had seen my face in the hall mirror, the lines of my flesh all directed in a downward motion, the panels of my cheeks hanging flat, my eyes staring from bloodless skin.
‘It’s only tiredness.’
The bedroom was now even more crowded. My father had joined us. He was standing behind his wife with his hands on her shrunken shoulders, and as I limped into the room I felt a wave of sympathy for him; what a family he headed—a family of cripples and madwomen. For the first time I was aware that he must live with a shame and regret almost as deep as my own.
He stepped towards me and formally shook my hand and wished me many happy returns for the day, as though I were a distant relative, but Sophie pushed him and everyone else out of the room, saying that I was not yet well and that they had all overwhelmed me with their birthday wishes. I felt grateful to her as I climbed back into bed. The letter rustled under my pyjamas as I lay down. Sophie hovered around the room as I settled myself and she came and felt my forehead for signs of fever. I closed my eyes against her anxiously peering face until I heard her leave too.
For hours I lay there, not sleeping, not awake, aware of the letter against my skin and its significance. The words of the letter weighed like objects in the room, dark heavy furniture, crowding the space. If the situation was as I feared then I had nothing left to me. I had no more will to write, not after my last failure. And now it appeared that Anja, too, was lost to me. Franz had won. Once again, the only thing I had which was really my own was my broken body.
23.
ELSA AND SOPHIE CAME INTO THE ROOM SEVERAL TIMES DURING the day to check on me, and each time they did I closed my eyes and feigned sleep to avoid having to speak to them. When I was alone I fell into a kind of daze. I lay staring at a patch of sunlight that shifted along the wall with the passage of the hours. I listened to the noises of the street as people went about their unremarkable activities.
At some point in the afternoon I heard someone come in and move across the room to sit in the chair beside my bed. Sophie, I thought, my eyes still closed. She whispered my name a few times, testing the depth of my sleep. Her voice was tense. I think that she knew I was not sleeping, so I opened my eyes.
‘Max, how are you feeling?’ She put her hand on my forehead and frowned as she measured my temperature.
I groaned and closed my eyes again.
‘I know you’re not well,’ she said, ‘but do you think you could get up? We thought—Uta and I—well, it was going to be a surprise, but we’re having a birthday afternoon tea for you.’
Uta. The name fell like a stone. I felt sick at the thought of her coming into the house and inserting herself among my family and friends, as if she were one of them. I pictured her letter, with its violet ink, lying on the floor with the others.
‘What, now?’ I asked Sophie.
‘Yes. We’re all waiting for you downstairs.’
I groaned again in protest.
‘Please?’ she said. ‘Everyone is there.’
I could imagine Uta sitting there cosily with Sophie, patting my mother’s hand, laughing too loudly and ingratiatingly. The prospect was overwhelming, but I was too weak to refuse Sophie’s request.
‘Let me dress and then I will come down,’ I said.
When she had left the room, I threw back the bedclothes. As I sat up, Anja’s letter crunched in my dressing-gown pocket. The sound heralded a flood of images of her that settled on me like a flock of heavy black birds. For a crazy moment I wondered if she might be downstairs with the others, waiting for me to come.
I thought of Anja’s apartment in the Martinsgasse and those movements I had seen behind the curtains; perhaps the letter was a mistake, or perhaps the letter had been delayed and since sending it Anja had returned to Prague. I wanted to go to the apartment immediately. I pictured myself shoving the concierge out of the way and making for the stairs. I would throw stones up at her windows. break the glass panel, break down the door.
When I stood up, I realised that I did feel ill. My skin felt tender, and to move was to push through air that was mysteriously thick. I decided that I would dress and then simply leave the apartment and go to Anja. If I could not find her at the Martinsgasse, I would take the train to Berlin. I pulled on my clothes and shoes and put the letter in my pocket. My head ached and my ears magnified every sound. As soon as I opened the bedroom door the noise of Uta’s shrill laughed flew at me like a swarm of biting insects.
I could see from the head of the stairs that the double doors to the living room were folded back and Uta’s voice reigned. Perhaps I could just walk past, I thought, and no one would see me. I held on to the bannister to lighten my step, and proceeded down the stairs slowly, but the top stair still gave a loud creak, alerting Uta.
‘Max?’ came her voice.
I froze, still clinging to the bannister, and my heartbeat light and fast. There came a dense rustling of fabric and Uta appeared in the doorway of the living room.
‘My darling!’ she shouted up at me, making a stiff operatic gesture with one hand. She advanced.
My eyes darted around, looking for a way out. I wondered if it were possible for me to simply dodge her and run out of the room, out of the house. Her bulk blocked the stairwell. She climbed up a few steps.
‘Your face,’ she said when she stood a few steps below me, looking up. ‘His face!’ she called back to the room she had just left. ‘His face is white! Like a ghost.’
She darted forward to seize my arm and escorted me into the living room. There was quite a crowd. Along with Sophie and my parents were Felix and Kurt, and Oskar—the cousin from Brünn whose letter I had read that morning—together with his wife. There was no escape.
I let myself be propelled into the middle of the sofa, where I slumped, dazed. Someone handed me a cup of coffee. Its warmth was welcome in my hands, but when I brought it to my face the smell that rose up with the steam was like poisonous fumes. I abruptly put down the cup and spilled coffee over my shoes and trousers. It burned at first, and was quite painful, but then rapidly cooled. People jumped up and called for towels and cloths but I just sat and watched the brown stain widen into the carpet and drip from my shoe leather.
In our family, what we call ‘magazines’[19] are a tradition. For each family occasion we join together and take various kinds of submissions to assemble a little book, filled with poems, spoof newspaper articles and caricatures of the person who is being celebrated. I had always dreaded these magazines when it was my turn to receive them. I imagined the conversations among my family members when it was being assembled, and all the things that were not said as they carefully sifted through safe subjects to tease me about.
19
The birthday ‘magazine’ to which Brod refers has been located among the manuscripts, and will be made available online.