Chema Ruiz and Jesús Noguero in Madrid production. Photo by Marta Vidanes.

By Luis Araújo

Translated from Spanish by Phyllis Zatlin

Kafka In Love (Kafka enamorado) by Spanish playwright Luis Araújo is based in large part on Franz Kafka’s letters, written from 1912 to 1917. Some brief scenes also evoke moments from Kafka’s fictional works, The Trial and The Metamorphosis.

Araújo’s text reveals the romantic relationship between the author and Felice Bauer. The relationship failed both because Kafka feared that marriage would destroy his creative talents and because of his father’s interference in his life.

The debut production at the María Guerrero National Theatre in Madrid featured a minimalist single set that facilitated temporal and spatial fluidity. Although the cast could include up to five men and two women, plus the offstage voice of Kafka’s father, the Madrid production had two men and one woman handle multiple roles.

The Spanish premiere on March 2013 was under the direction of José Pascual. The play has since been translated and performed in various countries. The English translation is as yet professionally unproduced. The opening scene, however, appears in the on-line journal Asymptote, 2019.

The title deliberately mirrors the film Shakespeare in Love. Araújo’s text, on the other hand, is based on letters, written by Franz Kafka from 1912 to 1917, that reveal a romantic relationship between him and Felice Bauer.

Temporal and spatial fluidity in Kafka enamorado leads to scenes in such varied places as train stations, hotels, homes, and a tailor shop. In cinematographic fashion, music and lighting guided the audience in following these transitions and Franz’s emotions. The set design allowed spectators to see action upstage and downstage simultaneously. Particularly effective was the engagement party. Stage left, one could see Felice dancing even as Franz remained center stage, reluctant to join in the merriment.

The roles of Felice and her friend Grete, with whom Franz has a brief love affair, were doubled by one actor, who transitioned from one woman to the other by turning her back to the audience and changing costumes. Rapid costume changes also facilitated one actor playing Max Brod, Franz’s loyal friend and editor, as well as the tailor who prepared him for his engagement party, a uniformed officer who threatened him, and a bellhop in a hotel in Marienbad where Franz and 160 Felice escape together for ten days. Red lighting highlighted that romantic interlude.

Costumes for Felice Bauer reflected the evolution of her relationship with Franz. In opening scenes, she wore a conservative dark blue jacket and long skirt, appropriate for her career as a businesswoman; after the Marienbad tryst, she wore a feminine, summery, light gray dress.

The major clue to Franz’s conflict with his father was provided in the opening scene. Downstage right, Franz, presumably locked in a bathhouse, covers his face while his father yells at him to open the door and get ready to go swimming, an activity Franz truly hates.

The prime source for Araújo’s text is letters, which are read aloud to the audience. This strategy could lead to a static performance, but author and director cleverly avoided that pitfall, thus converting passive reading into dramatic action. In several scenes, Franz and Felice, separated at opposite sides of the stage, alternately read fragments of letters as writer and recipient.

Felice is an active woman, constantly in motion, in contrast to Franz, who is or wishes to be immersed in his anguished inner world. For brief moments that inner world emerges on stage in allusions to Kafka’s fiction: when the man in uniform questions him (The Trial) and when he wakes up from a dream in which he has become an insect (The Metamorphosis).

Luis Araújo (b. Madrid, 1956) is a playwright, director, actor, and professor. Since 2014 he has been on the faculty of the University of Strasbourg in France and, most recently, the Académie de Rouen. His involvement in French-language culture dates back three decades; he holds an M.A. degree in theater from the Université de Montréal. In Spain, he participated actively in Asociación de Autores de Teatro (Association of Playwrights) and the journal Primer Acto. His plays have been performed to acclaim in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and Puerto Rico, and have been translated and staged in France, Italy, Portugal, and other countries. Although he has also written children’s plays, often his works center on issues of social injustice and develop psychological portraits of his characters. In the United States, his compelling drama Vanzetti was published in 1999 in the series ESTRENO Plays (trans. Mary-Alice Lessing). Kafka enamorado, the play featured here, opened at the María Guerrero national theater in Madrid in March—April 2013 and was given a second performance at that prestigious playhouse January 17—March 2, 2014. The Spanish production in New York of his play Mercado libre received 11 different prizes in 2022, including “Best Author” from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Artists (HOLA).

Phyllis Zatlin, retired professor from Rutgers University in New Jersey, has translated numerous contemporary plays from Spanish and French. Several of these have appeared in The Mercurian. Her interest in the theatre of Luis Araújo dates back more than thirty years, to her collaboration with the journal Estreno and the series ESTRENO Plays. She saw his Kafka enamorado when it was first staged in Madrid and has shared her enthusiasm for this work with fellow members of the Door County Playwrights’ Collective. She and her husband now reside in Door County, Wisconsin.

Kafka In Love

(Kafka enamorado)

By Luis Araújo

Translated from Spanish by Phyllis Zatlin

CHARACTERS:

(In order of appearance)

FRANZ

An offstage VOICE

MAX

FELICE

A TAILOR

A YOUNG MAN IN UNIFORM

GRETE

A BELLHOP

All roles may be performed by three actors and an offstage voice.

Happy sounds from the area of bath houses along a river. Laughter, shouts, noises of children at play, splashing. Birds chirping. As the lights come up, FRANZ is immobile in the bright sunlight that comes through a small window in the changing booth. His big, terrified gray eyes stare into space.

(Pounding on the door.

FRANZ recoils in alarm.)

VOICE

May I ask what you’re doing?

(More pounding on the door.)

Will you get out of there? Or do I have to come in and get you?

(Silence.

More pounding on the door.)

Franz. Get out here!

FRANZ

(In a howl, like an animal in pain.)

I’m coming, Father.

VOICE

Son, come on out. We’re going to swim! I said, we’re going to swim. Get out of there, now!

(Silence.

The light disappears from the little window.)

FRANZ

Yesterday I saw the white horse for the first time. It came out of my head, went over me, jumped off the bed, and finally disappeared.

                                    (MAX and FELICE at opposite sides of a table. In front of them, a                                                briefcase filled with papers and an envelope.).

FRANZ

I’d like to be able to explain the feeling of happiness that comes over me when I’m writing. It’s something effervescent that engulfs me, a slight tremor that makes me believe that I have talent.

(MAX closes the briefcase.)

MAX

We’re going to leave it as is. Believe me, Franz, it’s marvelous.

FRANZ

If you say so.

MAX

Have you finally decided on a title?

FRANZ

Meditation.

MAX

I like it. Meditation. (Referring to the envelope.) And this? New texts?

FRANZ

No. Those are photos from our trip to Weimar.

FELICE

I’d like to see them!

(FELICE grabs the envelope from FRANZ.)

MAX

Well, we have to decide which ones we can show.

(MAX takes the envelope away from FELICE, removes the photos, starts passing them to FRANZ who in turn passes them on to FELICE.)

FRANZ

Miss Bauer, this is Goethe’s house.

FELICE

I’ve gone to Weimar so many times on business and I’ve never visited Goethe’s house. What an impressive garden!

FRANZ

He was a great naturalist. He personally grew all kinds of plants.

FELICE

I can’t imagine him digging in the soil. I’ve seen him as a statesman, possessed by the Muses.

MAX

That he was.

FRANZ

But he studied nature. Look, his favorite tree was the ginkgo.

(Pointing to a photo)

This one. It’s a prehistoric tree. A living fossil that’s still there.

MAX

(Hiding a photo)

We found lots of interesting things in Weimar, didn’t we, Franz?

(FRANZ, on his guard, says nothing.)

FELICE

What’s this?

FRANZ

That’s his writing stand. He wrote standing up, facing the garden window.

FELICE

He wrote standing up? Every writer is a world unto himself.

FRANZ

Yes, a world.

(Brief silence)

FELICE

Well, I’d better be going. Tomorrow I’ll be traveling again. I have to catch an early train to Budapest.

FRANZ

We’ll take you to your hotel, won’t we, Max?

FELICE

I’d appreciate that. It’s still raining and this morning I left my umbrella on the train from Berlin.

FRANZ

You must be exhausted. Ready, Max?

MAX

What? Yes, yes, of course.

(FELICE gets up and stumbles as she pulls out her chair. Both men gesture as if to help her, but they are on the other side of the table. FELICE laughs.)

MAX

I’m sorry, those are my mother’s slippers.

FRANZ

Your mother’s slippers?

FELICE

He lent them to me for inside, but my shoes have heels and I’m not used to walking without them.

(FELICE exchanges the slippers for elegant, high-heeled boots. FRANZ watches her. Then he takes a magazine out of his pocket.)

FRANZ

Do you know Palestine?

FELICE

No, but I’d love to.

FRANZ

(Ambiguously)

I’d love to, too.

(MAX looks at Franz in surprise.)

FELICE

I’m ready. Let’s go.

MAX

Father, we’re going with Felice.

VOICE

I’ll catch up with you.

(Pause)

FRANZ

We could plan a trip for next year.

FELICE

That would be interesting!

FRANZ

(Holding his hand out to her.)

You’re not saying that in jest, are you?

FELICE

(Shaking his hand.)

Of course not.

(MAX looks on scornfully as they shake hands. With a resolute step, FELICE exits. MAX continues to looks at FRANZ in scorn. FRANZ shows MAX the hand that has just touched FELICE.)

MAX

You liked her from the first moment.

FRANZ

She wasn’t very beautiful, right? A gaunt face, almost hollow . . . and that white blouse, without style. Straight, limp hair. When I got to your house that evening, I thought she was a servant.

MAX

(Laughing.)

A servant? She’s the general counsel of a Berlin firm.

FRANZ

I can’t stop thinking about her.

(MAX hands him the photo that he set aside.)

MAX

So that blonde in Weimar is history?

FRANZ

She didn’t pay any attention to me!

MAX

Shall we go to the Trocadero? Maybe your Hansi will still be there.

FRANZ

So tomorrow I’ll fall asleep at the office. This double life is going to drive me crazy.

MAX

Crazy in your case would be a workplace accident. And you’d have to process your own workman’s accident insurance from your company office.

FRANZ

Now it turns out that the director of my brother-in-law’s plant is away on a trip and my father is obsessed with the idea that if someone doesn’t watch the employees, they’ll take advantage of his absence. As if they were all thieves instead of normal people. I’ve been hard at work for two days on a story, but now I have to interrupt my writing. I have to go to the factory every afternoon for two weeks to watch the wicked employees when truthfully I don’t have the slightest idea of what they’re supposed to be doing and the foreman knows much more than I do.

MAX

Your sister Valli is finally getting married?

FRANZ

Today my mother was complaining about my father’s bad mood and illness, for which she says I’m responsible. I can feel bitterness growing inside me . . . unless it’s a buildup of bile. I realize I have only two options: either I throw myself out the window when everyone in the house is asleep or I trudge off to the factory everyday for the next two weeks.

MAX

Stop it, Franz.

FRANZ

In the former option, I would be relieved of all responsibility, of course. In the latter, I would have to disrupt my work and pick it back up, assuming I could begin again where I left off today.

MAX

Did you hear me?

FRANZ

Yes, I heard you. You’re getting married. My sister Valli is getting married. Everyone is getting married. And I’m getting farther and farther from my literary work, from the rhythm that let me write the book that you’re going to publish and that took so much of my effort these past months.

(Silence.)

FRANZ

I didn’t throw myself out the window, Max. I stood a long time with my head pressed against the glass, imagining how my fall would frighten the poor man in the toll booth on the bridge. In the end I thought that continuing my life would interrupt my work less than dying.

(Pause.)

What do you think, Max?

MAX

(Laughing.)

That you’re loony. Come on, I think you better try to sleep.

FRANZ

To sleep . . . In the morning, at the office; in the afternoon, at the factory; this time of day, at home, with shouting in all the rooms. My sisters with their children, my parents playing cards with their sons-in-law. Tomorrow night I’ll go get my little sister Ottilie from the theatre. She’s going to see Hamlet. I can’t progress at all. As if I were made of stone.

MAX

Try to get some sleep.

FRANZ

To sleep . . . Yes, of course, if you can sleep . . . (Laughing.) Say, do you think it’s possible to seduce a girl just with writing?

(Smiling, they hug.)

MAX

Good night.

FRANZ

Good night, Max. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

(MAX exits. Silence. FRANZ sits down to write.)

FRANZ

Every night for a week the guest in the room next door comes to fight with me. I don’t know him and up ‘til now I’ve never said a word to him. We just fight. Then, through the wall of his room he yells at me, “Good night!” If I wanted to put an end to this friendship, I’d have to leave this room. Closing the door from the inside does no good. Once I locked it because I wanted to read, but my neighbor split the door in two with an axe. He even threatened me with the axe. But I know how to adapt. He always comes at the same time, so I start some simple task that I can interrupt immediately if necessary. I organize a drawer, I copy something, I read a book of no importance. No sooner does he appear in the doorway, I have to drop everything:  close the drawer right away, drop the pen, throw down the book, seeing that all he wants to do is fight. Most of the time, our bodies are immediately locked in combat.

(FELICE enters.)

Today he had a girl with him. While I greet her, without paying attention to him, he jumps on me and tosses me into the air. “I protest,” I shout, raising a hand. “Shut up,” he whispers in my ear. I realize that at whatever cost, including dirty tricks, I want to win in front of the girl, to show off.

(FRANZ hands a sheet of paper to FELICE.)

FELICE

(Reading)

“. . . In the likely case that you don’t remember me at all, let me reintroduce myself. I am Dr. Franz Kafka. I met you for the first time one August afternoon at the home of Mr. Brod.”

FRANZ

I can still feel in this hand, the one with which I now write, the touch of yours with which you sealed your promise to travel with me to Palestine next year.

FELICE

(Surprised.)

“It is absolutely necessary that we reach an agreement on our trip to Palestine!”

FRANZ

The previous night you had been reading until four in the morning, and you must have been exhausted. I write until very late myself. My whole life centers on writing. Indeed, that is the only activity that interests me. Since I met you, I’ve been writing furiously. I am consumed by feverish thoughts, Miss Bauer! A nervous storm bursts forth in my head without stopping. If I want something now, a moment later I don’t want it. When I reach the top step, I don’t know what mood I’ll be in when I enter the house. Doubts have been piling up until finally I feel sure enough to write you these letters. I have a terrible memory. I’m lethargic. The other night, I got out of bed to jot down something I wanted to tell you, but I went back to bed reproaching myself for my agitation.

(FELICE laughs.

FRANZ openly stares at a young woman in the audience.)

FRANZ

The girl from the café. Tight skirt, white silk blouse, loose fitting, bare neck. Round, smiling face, trembling, a friendly look but a bit pretentious . . .  Why do I get red in the face when I think about Felice?

FELICE

I’m going to Frankfurt to promote dictaphones.

FRANZ

Dictaphones?

FELICE

Yes, Dictaphones. Technology is progress, Franz.

FRANZ

Believing in progress doesn’t mean that it has already happened. That isn’t belief.

FELICE

I’d like to write you longer letters, but that’s impossible. In addition to Miss Grossmann, another girl in the office is sick now and I have to take care of her work, too. That’s what it means to be the manager. So I’ve had to extend my schedule to 8 P.M., and I can’t even take a break at noon. By the way, do you know what companies in Prague don’t have dictaphones?

FRANZ

Oh, my dear business woman! Impose your dictaphones throughout Bohemia. I’ll attest that you are the best and most charming girl that exists and that the gadget is invaluable simply because of who is selling it. Let them ask me, let them ask.

(Pause)

FELICE

Did I tell you that I’ve met a very nice pediatrician? He’s been a bit insistent–you know what I mean–so insistent that I had to lie to him. It’s your fault. I don’t stop thinking about you. I am captive to your letters. I live for them, but I can’t respond to them one after another. Are you trying to get us writing two or three times a day?

FRANZ

My lady of felicity! How have I, silly me, remained here instead of jumping on a train with my eyes shut and not opening them until I am by your side? Well, yes, there is a reason why I haven’t . . .

FELICE

(Reading.)

. . . my health barely permits me to manage alone. It isn’t good enough for me to marry and even less so to be a father.

FRANZ

When I read your letters, I avoid thinking about that. In all sincerity, it pains me, but I am captive like a spirit in the felicity of your name! If I had written you Saturday, asking you not to write ever again, and promising to do the same. . . Now everything would be clear. As it is, what solution is there for us? Would it help if we wrote each other only once a week, as friends? No, I can see that I won’t even be able to write just a letter on Sunday. Thus, with all the strength that I have left, I beg you: Felice, if we value our lives, let us agree mutually to give it all up.

(Silence.)

FRANZ

(Timidly.)

Why don’t you answer me?

(Pause.)

FELICE

Do you know that when I was little my brothers and cousins always used to beat me and my arms were always covered with bruises? I believe that hardened me for life. Don’t be so anguished. You have to laugh at all those fears. I’ve put your photo in the locket I wear around my neck. I plan to have you with me day and night.

(Silence.)

VOICE

My dear friends: The Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute this year has experienced considerable growth thanks to the effort of all of you. An effort whose humanitarian value is the only consolation in the lives of those workers who have had the misfortune of suffering an accident.

FRANZ

How humble the workers can be! They come to submit applications. Instead of taking the building by assault and ransacking it, they fill out applications!

VOICE

That is why I wanted to approach you personally and commend the work you are doing. And what better occasion than this to highlight the effort of some of our employees?. Dr. Kafka, for example, is an exceptionally efficient worker whose subtle talents and outstanding loyalty . . .

(FRANZ stifles laughter.)

. . . placed in the service of our Institute undoubtedly make him worthy of a promotion. Therefore we have decided to name him Vice Secretary and Editor of Reports, a position that in the future will identify Dr. Franz Kafka in all Bohemia as the spokesman of The  Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute.

(FRANZ bursts out laughing.)

FRANZ

(Unable to stifle his laughs.)

I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.

VOICE

The lad has an excellent sense of humor.

FELICE

(Entering.)

My dear Dr. Pribram, how pleased I am to see you. I wonder if you are acquainted with our very useful Lindstrőm Dictaphones, manufactured in Berlin.

(Pause.)

FRANZ

My job is unbearable. It runs counter to my real desires. My only profession is literature. I am nothing but literature. I cannot and do not want to be anything else. This job can never motivate me. Rather it will destroy me. Indeed I’m not far from that condition now. If I cannot free myself from this office, I’m lost.

VOICE

Do what you wish. As far as I’m concerned, you are free. You’re an adult. I don’t need to give you advice!

(FELICE enters.)

FRANZ

Don Quijote’s misfortune isn’t his imagination. It’s Sancho Panza.

(Silence.)

FELICE

I don’t think I write you enough. You tell me everything but I hardly know what to talk to you about. I should write more, shouldn’t I?

FRANZ

I was so enthusiastic about how “The Stoker” turned out, as a first chapter for a novel, that I read it to my parents last night. Well . . . there is no greater critic than myself when I’m reading aloud in front of my father, who listens to me in total disgust.

VOICE

Stop always thinking about the same nonsense.

FRANZ

Nevertheless, my love, how fantastic is the world in my head. How could I free myself of it without tearing it to shreds? How could I free myself without being torn to shreds, too?

I would rather, a thousand times over, tear myself to shreds than repress that world and bury it inside me. It is perfectly clear to me that this is the reason for my life.

FELICE

Clearly yes. . .

FRANZ

Perhaps you can have a vague idea of what I mean. It truly frightens me that you might not understand.

VOICE

I don’t want to hear even a word of protest!

(Pause.)

(A TAILOR enters and measures FRANZ.)

FELICE

(Reading.)

When you are reading this letter, surely I will be in a carriage, wearing an old tailcoat, shabby patent leather boots, a top hat that is too small for me, and my extremely pale face. I’ll be seated next to a pretty, demure cousin, on the way to the synagogue for my sister Valli’s wedding.

FRANZ

Among Jews, solemnity makes weddings and funerals look the same.

TAILOR

The tuxedo vest must be worn open, doctor.

FRANZ

Well I prefer it buttoned.

TAILOR

Sir, that doesn’t make sense. You have to show the starched, white shirt.

FRANZ

On hearing that, I decided to fight with all my might. One has to resist such abuses.

TAILOR

What you want in no way resembles appropriate dress for a dance.

FRANZ

Well, it may not be appropriate dress for a dance, but I have no intention of dancing.

TAILOR

But my dear doctor, you can’t appear in society with improper clothing. I’m sure that. . .

FRANZ

It was exhausting.

TAILOR

. . . you understand perfectly well that the ladies expect you to make an appearance in keeping with the dictates of fashion. This is the 20th century, my dear doctor.

FRANZ

Naturally my mother was there. So I was separated forever from the ladies, from making an elegant appearance, and from dances in society. Forever, according to my mother’s reproaches, everything involving me is forever. I am a terrible disgrace for the family.

(To the TAILOR.)

You aren’t measuring me for a coffin, are you?

(Offended, the TAILOR exits.)

FELICE

You make me laugh. Except for my work, I don’t have much to tell you. I go to the theatre, I read magazines. . . I don’t know. Well, today our man from Cairo came.

FRANZ

I can see the man from Cairo wearing a linen tunic that floats in the breeze and chasing you around the empty office.

FELICE

Silly! He’s German.

(Pause.)

FRANZ

Oh! What nostalgia and yearning your photos awaken in me!

FELICE

Today I didn’t get a nap. I always take one after eating. But I hardly have any free time and what little I do have I spend writing to you. Are you a vegetarian? Why? Do you have to be different in everything?

FRANZ

Could you send me a list of your books so I’ll know what you’re reading?

FELICE

I’d love to be at your side while you write, observing you and feeling how you do it.

FRANZ

But, my dear, if you were at my side I’d be incapable of writing! I already have to make a great effort because of my headaches, but with someone observing me, I couldn’t write at all.

FELICE

(Reading Franz’s words with delight.)

Writing means to open oneself up without measure, in the most extreme sincerity, the most absolute surrender, with which any body dealing with other people would feel a loss of self and for that reason would draw back. Even so, it’s only the most superficial layer of writing,and it falls apart like a house of cards when a true and profound feeling emerges . . .

FRANZ

(Continuing.)

For that reason, one never can be sufficiently alone when one writes, surrounded by sufficient silence, not even night is night enough. One never has sufficient time: the way is long and it’s easy to get lost, one becomes afraid, wanting to retreat.

FELICE

(Still reading, annoyed.)

How much more so if the lips he most desires were kissing him.

(Silence.)

Come see me in Berlin, Franz. We could spend a few hours together on the weekend. What do you think? Or are the characters in your novel more interesting than I am? Are you trying to make me jealous?

FRANZ

Don’t be jealous, please. If my characters find out, they’ll run away from me.

FELICE

Don’t write so much and relax more.

FRANZ

Don’t make fun, my love. Right now my desire to have you here with me is frighteningly serious.

                                    (FRANZ puts on an overcoat, scarf, and derby hat. He picks up an                                                        overnight bag.)

I often amuse myself calculating how many hours it would take, traveling as rapidly as possible, to be at your side.

FELICE

So, you’re going to come?

FRANZ

But I never know if my work will let me go away for a few days. Sunday mornings I sometimes have to do extra hours. I therefore can’t let you know well in advance.

(Silence)

What’s has happened, Felice? I’m in Berlin, I have to go back this very afternoon at 5:00, the hours are passing and I know nothing about you. I’m at the Hotel Askanischer Hof. Please send me a message with the bell hop.

(Silence.)

The window is open. Time after time, every quarter hour, I jump from the window. The train comes in and one car after another runs over my body, stretched out across the rails. One wheel cuts my throat and the other, my legs.. .

FELICE

I didn’t go to the office this morning because I had to sign a contract on the outskirts of Berlin. I was far away from the center of the city when your note reached me, Franz. I am sorry. It took me almost two hours to get here. How are you?

(THEY look at each other in silence.)

FRANZ

Maybe in spite of these headaches, I’m still capable of creating something great, something that will let me believe in myself.

FELICE

(Affectionately.)

You’re wearing yourself out writing at night.

FRANZ

If I lose my writing, I would lose everything, including you. I need for you to understand, please. It’s . . . a steel locomotive that pursues me and that, nevertheless, I don’t want to avoid. I try to attract it, I run in front of it at risk of my life, wherever it drags me… or where I take it.

(A brief, uncomfortable silence.

FELICE is frustrated.)

FELICE

The next time you come, we’ll go swimming.

FRANZ

Swimming?

                                    (Sunlight enters through the little window of the changing booth.                                      FRANZ’s big gray eyes stare into space.)

FELICE

Yes. We can go to the Baltic. Haven’t you been to Rugen Island? It’s fantastic. We’ll eat freshly smoked halibut and herring in horseradish sauce. I love them!

(Pounding on the door. FRANZ recoils in alarm.)

VOICE

Franz, come out of there!

(More pounding on the door.)

May I ask what you’re doing? Will you get out of there? Or do I have to come in and get you?

(Silence.)

                                    (The little window disappears. FELICE forces a smile. So does FRANZ.)

FRANZ

Do you really want to see me again?

(We hear birds singing and the wind in the trees. There is an  uncomfortable silence between FRANZ and FELICE.)

FRANZ

Would you like me to read you what I’ve been writing lately?

FELICE

Franz, what do you . . . what are your plans for the future?

FRANZ

I . . . I’m the thinnest person I know, and I’ve been to several sanitariums. My physical condition is my biggest obstacle. With a body like mine you don’t go anywhere. I wonder how such a weak heart, that worries me so, can pump blood through these legs.

(FELICE smiles. Then another embarrassing silence.)

Felice, I can’t live without you.

(Pause.)

But I also can’t live with you.

FELICE

I think you can, that you could be able to live with me.

(Pause.)

FRANZ

But it’s your nature to be active, you think quickly, you’re aware of everything. But when you’re with me, you become reserved, you turn away. I have felt so insignificant surrounded by your family . . .

(Pause.)

FELICE

Leave that to me.

(Silence.)

FRANZ

My idea for the best life would be to shut myself away, down in a basement, with just a light and what I need for writing. They can bring me food and leave it at the outside door. My only walk would be through the passageway to get that food, wearing a bathrobe. Then I’d go back to my table, eat slowly while reflecting, and immediately get back to writing. What things I would write that way! From what depths could I extract them! But it anguishes me to think that if I failed even in those circumstances I would inevitably sink into complete madness.

(Silence.)

What do you say to that, my love? Won’t you draw back from the inhabitant of that cave?

(Pause.)

FELICE

Come out of that cave, Franz. You recognize that it is driving you to madness. Stop doubting yourself, feeling insecure, go out to the street and enjoy life. On Fridays I go to the synagogue. And I’ve learned a marvelous new dance, very sensual, really fun. It’s called the tango. We’ll dance it together, you’ll see. I forbid you to go into that cave, Franz!

FRANZ

If you don’t understand that I need you, I’m going to cause you a lot of suffering. Besides, what a man I could become if you wanted . . .

(Pause.)

Do you dare make a decision? I mean, if you want … to be my wife.  Will you think about it? Promise me?

(Pause.)

FELICE

To get married there has to be agreement on almost everything . . . on aspirations, on ideas . . . so each one retains freedom.

FRANZ

Such agreement is impossible, my love. The truth is that I …I think that I am a loss at dealing with other human beings. Except you.

(Silence.)

FELICE

My parents want you to know that they would be delighted to receive your family in Berlin.

FRANZ

My parents? Our parents?

FELICE

For our engagement party!

FRANZ

Our engagement party?

                                    (The lighting becomes unreal. A YOUNG MAN in UNIFORM                                                             enters with a tray of drinks.

FELICE

It’s time for introductions, don’t you think?

                                    (FELICE and FRANZ turn to the audience and offer drinks to                                                             two older couples.)

Mr. and Mrs. Kafka, Franz’s parents . . .

FRANZ

Father, mother, these are Felice’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bauer.

                                    (The light from the little window shines again on Franz. They all                                                        take their glasses to offer a toast.)

VOICE

It’s a real pleasure, believe me. Of course I would have preferred a good beer like the kind we make in Prague, but that’s not important. My son is a wonderful young man, as you will have occasion to learn. He received a promotion recently at the Institute, and if I’m not mistaken, he’ll soon have another. Right, Franz?

(Embarrassed silence.)

These young people don’t know what it takes to make their way in life. I had sores on my feet for years because of the cold.

FRANZ

Father, please!

(The MAN IN UNIFORM seats FRANZ facing the others.)

MAN IN UNIFORM

Please remain quietly here and wait until they decide something about you.

FRANZ

But I’m innocent. I don’t have any plan. I can’t direct myself to the future. I can throw myself into it, falling flat on my face. But I really have no plan, no perspective. I can’t live with people. Everything that isn’t literature bores me and I hate it because it bothers me. Well, I don’t know, perhaps it’s all just my imagination. Worries and doubts about my future and that of Felice.

VOICE

Son, don’t twist things so

MAN IN UNIFORM

(To FRANZ)

Hard to believe that you can’t understand your situation and you insist on provoking us for no reason, precisely us, the people nearest to you at this time.

VOICE

Couldn’t you wear a black suit for an occasion like this?

FELICE

Don’t worry about it, Franz. What do we care what they think? Later the two of us will go buy furniture, you’ll see how nice that will be.

FRANZ

But you don’t comprehend. I hate all my relatives, not because they are my relatives or because they are bad people, but simply because they are the people who live closest to me. I live among very good people, the nicest in the world, but I feel more like a stranger than an outsider would. With my mother. . . Mother, how many words on average have I exchanged with you in recent years? Twenty a day? Father, you tell us, we scarcely say hello and goodbye. With my sisters and brothers-in-law, I don’t speak at all, not because I’m angry with them but simply because I don’t have a word to say to them. I lack the least sense of family life. I can’t muster up the least feeling of relationship no matter how hard I try.

(An embarrassing silence.)

FELICE

It must be painful to live like that, Franz. You don’t even know if you can bear a hermit’s life, although I could replace all the other people.

(Pause.)

MAN IN UNIFORM

(To FRANZ)

So you would like to reach a settlement with us. No, I’m afraid that is going to be completely impossible. But that doesn’t mean that you have to despair. No, why should you? You are only engaged, nothing more. It had to be communicated, we have done that, and, moreover, we’ve all seen how you’ve fitted in. That’s enough for today. Now we have to leave. Although just for the moment, of course, The date has to be set.

(Disconcerting silence.)

FRANZ

In twenty years, Europe will be in ruins and beasts will wonder freely through the streets. There is a rotating knife stuck in my heart. I am enclosed in a strange house, among people who are strangers to me. Did I cease to exist these past two hours?

FELICE

(Kissing him.)

I’ve seen a Biedermeier credenza that will give our living room a very personal touch.

FRANZ

Furniture, heavy pieces of furniture that once put in place are impossible to move.

FELICE

Don’t you like them?

FRANZ

I found that credenza suffocating. It was a perfect funeral piece. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear death bells tolling from the shop. Felice, my dear, my current state is an exception. You couldn’t live even two days at my side.

FELICE

You and I were made for each other.

FRANZ

Now we are linked forever by the wrists, like couples that climbed the steps to the scaffold during the French Revolution.

FELICE

(Enters laughing.)

What ideas you have?

(Lights up. Silence)

(MAX hands FRANZ a copy of Meditation.

MAX

Congratulations, Franz. Now you’re a writer.

                                    (FRANZ leafs through the book a moment and then closes it,                                                             anguished.)

What’s wrong? Did something happen in Berlin?

FRANZ

Every step of that trip with my parents was martyrdom. When Felice came towards me in that huge living room to receive my engagement kiss in public, a shudder ran through me. That woman frightens me . . . really. How can I get married? I can’t do that to the woman I love. She’s a healthy young woman, happy, spontaneous, full of energy.

MAX

Why not? We all do.

FRANZ

I can’t, Max. Everything in me rebels no matter how much I love her. It’s . . . I feel that my work as a writer is going to be compromised. I am overwhelmed by doubt. I haven’t been able to write a line since that day.

MAX

Well, I keep on writing. Felix Weltsch also got married, is still writing, and seems very happy.

FRANZ

Yes, Felix. I see his first year of marriage and am horrified to imagine myself in the same felicity: the elegant life of social circles. Those young couples, clean, well dressed, that stroll on the boulevard remind me of my own adolescence, and for that very reason dis . . disgust

MAX

The poet feels shame when with serious people. Writing is a game compared to life.

FRANZ

With his marriage, we lost Felix. A friend ceases to be one when he marries.

MAX

My word, I didn’t expect that.

FRANZ

You’re different, Max. You and your brother Otto, you’re generous, you’re another kind of person. You’re a great man, Max.

MAX

(Laughing.)

But you’re a head taller than I am!

FRANZ

Is it true that when one finally learns to write, nothing can fail anymore, nothing can go under?

MAX

Well, it’s rare that true grandeur surfaces.

FRANZ

Do I feel this way because my marriage is coming so soon? Someday people will read your work and ask why you kept a friendship with someone like me.

MAX

(Disagreeing, with a smile.)

Don’t let literature torment you, Franz. After all, it’s a diversion for people of leisure. Sublime at times, no doubt, but a diversion. It doesn’t merit a minute of your anguish.

FRANZ

No, Max. No. Literature is the conscience of humanity and there are only a few of us who dare look it in the face.

(Silence.)

FRANZ

I am spiritually incapable of marrying. From the moment I decided to do it, I can’t sleep. My head burns day and night. I am desperate, turning from side to side, obsessed by my fears, belittling myself.

MAX

We writers are like children.

FRANZ

Marriage would have to be a guaranty of liberation, of personal independence. Establishing a family is the greatest aspiration of any man.

MAX

The male defending the nest.

FRANZ

Yes, like you. Like my father. But I believe I couldn’t go back to writing.

(Silence.

Somewhere FELICE is listening)

I’m jealous of all the people she mentions in her letters, of the ones she names and those she doesn’t, of men and of women, of businessmen and, especially, of writers. I would like to confront them all, separate them from her, free her so that she could talk exclusively of herself . . . and, naturally, of me . . .

(To FELICE)

You don’t like my book, admit it. But you don’t tell me that! Does it seem that dreadful to you? You told me you’d tell me, but you don’t tell me anything! And you want to go see Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhard? I’m going tonight to see Wedekind and his wife. Because, you should know, I don’t like Schnitzler at all! That’s enough. Basta! You can’t talk about him and Wedekind in the same letter. May I ask where is your list of books?

(Silence.

FELICE, in concern, looks at MAX.

Continued silence.)

FELICE

Why have you stopped writing me, Franz? What’s happened? Since war broke out, I’m afraid you’ll be drafted. Grete tells me that you’ve agreed for us to meet again at the Hotel Askanischer Hof. Will you really come?

FRANZ

Of course I went to Berlin. You two women made me feel like a criminal, handcuffed, waiting for the sentence before the court you formed against me. You sent your friend Grete to convince me and I, innocent that I am, told her everything. Everything, what I felt, what was going on in my head, what . . . Grete was . . . such a different kind of woman than you. I opened my heart to her, and she betrayed me. Yes, she entered the Askanischer Hof with all the letters in which I spoke of you and, simply, told you the truth.

(Pause.)

Even if you and I had the same perspective, the same possibilities, I couldn’t marry you. I love you as much as I can, but my love is buried and suffocates under fear and reproaches I make to myself.

FELICE

You think that it’s easy for me? It won’t be a pleasure for me to be seated at the table in your house with all your family. Don’t express your opinion without ever thinking if I’m going to like it or not.

(GRETE BLOCH enters, wearing traveling clothes.

She sits down with elegance and ease.)

FRANZ

Miss Bloch, I’ll be very pleased to meet with you. But I must warn you that in my experience talking has never served to clarify matters at all. Quite the contrary, normally it complicates them. If you still insist that we meet to talk about my situation with respect to Miss Bauer, I have no problem seeing you at a time and place convenient for you. Sincerely, Dr. Franz Kafka.

GRETE

Delighted to see you, Dr. Kafka.

(Taking off her gloves and putting out her hand.)

I hope you understand that this situation is very embarrassing for me. My friendship with Felice Bauer obliges me to accept her request that we have this encounter. In her opinion, and permit me to say that I am totally in agreement, that at the least you owe her an explanation. I can’t believe that you can reproach her for anything, either with respect to her conduct with you and even less so for her irreproachable personal conduct.

FRANZ

Felice and I think, each one individually, that the other is immovable, merciless. But I am absolutely not going to renounce living for my writing. She wants a comfortable home, abundant food, going to sleep at 11 in a warm room, the factory. . . the mediocrity. She sets my watch at the exact time, and I’ve had it an hour and a half fast for three months. She speaks to me of a “personal note” in the décor, she treats my two older sisters as insignificant because they don’t work the way she does. She’s not interested in the youngest one, the one I get along with best. She doesn’t ask me questions, she doesn’t seem to comprehend at all what I write. I . . . need someone who really understands me . . A person who would be a solid support for me . . . in every sense. It would be like having God. My sister Ottla, Félix, Max, my friends, they understand certain things. I suspect that Felice understands nothing at all.

GRETE

She’s confused. Indeed she doesn’t comprehend what’s happening.

(Pause.)

FRANZ

Nevertheless, sometimes people understand even without knowing it. One day she was waiting for me in the subway: I was looking for her, anxious to find her as soon as possible because I thought she was up in the street, and I started to walk past her, not seeing her, when she, without speaking, simply took my hand.

(Pause.)

GRETE

Felice is very conventional in a way. You can’t expect her to do certain things. She follows the example of her mother who, by the way, doesn’t like me.

FRANZ

I don’t think I’m the kind of son-in-law she had in mind either.

(THEY look at each other in silence.)

When I met Felice, I thought nothing could finish me off, nothing could destroy this hard, lucid, empty head, I will never close my eyes, not from being unconscious nor from pain, nor will my hands shake. But after our engagement in Berlin, the first sign of life sprang forth within me facing a Swiss girl in the train compartment on the return to Prague. For months I’ve not been able to write. I’ve thought of suicide.

GRETE

But why?

FRANZ

Do you think Felice would comprehend that?

(Pause.)

GRETE

Don’t do it!

(THEY look at each other in silence.)

FRANZ

And you, Grete. Do you understand me?

(THEY look at each other.)

Do you feel free?

(THEY kiss. Then GRETE hastily leaves.)

FRANZ

(To Felice.)

Grete told you everything, she showed you my letters . . . I remember your face in the lobby of the Askanischer Hof, how you put your hands over your face. Suddenly you turn and let loose all the hostility you have built up against me for so long. Then Grete returns, we say goodbye, and you stay there in silence. You know that everything is destroyed but you don’t move, you say nothing. I go up to my hotel room alone. It is unbearably hot. A bellhop moves around constantly, there’s a noise of machines in the patio, a bad smell, bedbugs. Afterwards, in your house, your mother’s tears, your father in shirt sleeves. He’s traveled all night from Sweden, from Malmő, because of it and says that he understands me. He has nothing against me. It’s Miss Bloch’s fault. I seem satanic in my total innocence.

(Long silence.)

Grete . . . wasn’t after anything. And for a moment she succeeded in making everything different.

(Silence.)

FELICE

Did you ever give me that opportunity?

FRANZ

In Bodenbach.

FELICE

My goodness! Bodenbach!

(Pause.)

FRANZ

We were alone for two hours in that room.

(FELICE lies down on the bed.)

FELICE

How nice it is here, my dear! Don’t you think it’s a darling hotel? Do you think I should change my hairdo? This afternoon at the office all the women knew that I was going to see you. Do you love me, Franz?

(Silence.)

What are you thinking?

                                    (FELICE waits for Franz to make advances, but he doesn’t.)

FRANZ

I said nothing, grief-stricken. We’ve not spent a single moment together when I breathed easily. Outside of letters, I’ve never felt with you the tenderness of a relationship with a beloved woman.

FELICE

You only spoke of yourself, you only thought of yourself. You didn’t stop for a second to think about my feelings . . .

FRANZ

I admired you slavishly, desperately; I pitied you, and despised myself endlessly. I didn’t know how to be at your level.

FELICE

My God, Franz, how I wanted you!

(Long silence.)

FRANZ

(To MAX.)

Probably now it’s all over, and my letter from yesterday was the last one. I have no doubt that would be the correct solution. How I will suffer, how she will suffer . . . is nothing compared to the common suffering we would have had to face afterwards. We’ve not been able to open a path for the two of us in the middle of a rock. I will get myself together, little by little. And she will get married and have children . . .

(Pause.)

And if it isn’t like that . . . I’ll end up marrying her. I’m too weak to stand up to her faith in our happiness.

(Pause)

MAX

(To the audience.)

He was like an injured man when you touch his wound and he feels the worst pain again. You never learn these things even if you’ve had similar experiences. You have to relive them in their full horror.

FRANZ

I think it’s impossible that we can ever be united, but when the decisive moment arrives, I don’t dare tell her, I don’t even dare tell myself. I hope her pain is not as great as mine, At least she doesn’t have a feeling of guilt.

(Silence)

FELICE

Soon it will be the end of the year again and I’ve had no news from you since August. It would be nice for us to see one another again, Franz.

MAX

It’s clear from her postcards that you’re tormenting her.

FRANZ

(To FELICE.)

It would be nice for us to see each other again? Better we don’t. Perhaps we would be happy momentarily, but we’ve already made each other suffer enough.

FELICE

I’ll go to Prague to see you.

FRANZ

I’d rather you not come. I don’t want to let myself be seen, I don’t want to see you while I don’t feel free. Think well of the previous times and you’ll not want us to see one another again.

FELICE

Please, at least come to Marienbad in the spring.

(Pause.)

FRANZ

Marienbad is an incredibly beautiful place.

                                    (A BELLHOP enters with suitcases and leaves them on the floor.)

BELLHOP

You have adjoining rooms here that connect on the inside. I hope your stay with us is pleasant. The management of the Balmoral Hotel invites you to a cocktail at 6:00.

                                    (HE leaves the keys on a table and waits for his tip. FRANZ looks                                       at him without understanding. FELICE gives him money.)

Thank you, miss.

(HE exits.)

FRANZ

He could have left my suitcase in the other room.

                                    (HE prepares to pick up his suitcase and move it. FELICE takes it                                              out of his hand.)

FELICE

What’s your hurry? Leave it there.

(SHE kisses him tenderly.)

Look at that view.

FRANZ

You have to excuse me. I . . .

(Silence.

FELICE seduces FRANZ.

MAX reads a letter.)

MAX

How beautiful the tranquil gleam in her eyes, that opening up to her feminine depths. I’ve seen her confident look as a woman and I couldn’t close myself off. I have no right to resist and even less so, when, if this hadn’t happened, I would have tried to provoke it, intentionally, if only to receive that look anew.

FRANZ

(To FELICE)

Really I absolutely did not know you. Nothing scared me more that being alone with you before the wedding.

(SHE embraces him and kisses him.)

Now it’s different, and it’s alright.

FELICE

We’ll be married when the war ends.

FRANZ

And we’ll live in Berlin.

FELICE

Just so long as you know that I plan to keep on working.

FRANZ

We can each take care of our economic problems. Don’t worry. I’ll see how I can manage mine.

(FELICE kisses him and exits.)

FRANZ

(Writing.)

It’s been ten days since you left and I’m on your terrace, on your side of the table, as if the two sides were the weights of a scale. I feel that the balance of our evenings has been disturbed and I, alone on one side, am sinking because you are far away. While I write you there is a great silence here that I like so much: On the little terrace table our lamp shines and all the other terraces are empty because it’s cold. From Kaiserstrasse there comes a monotonous murmur. Someone must be there. Someone has to keep watch. Fear and indifference are disappearing.

(Silence.)

MAX

So what do you want to do?

FRANZ

Leave Prague.

MAX

And quit your job?

FRANZ

My job is unbearable. So much security, so much planning for a lifetime that it isn’t good for me at all.

MAX

But what are you going to do?

FRANZ

I’m not taking any risks. Anything that I do will be to the good. I’m an Austrian lawyer. What I can achieve I have already done and that satisfies me completely. I want to leave Prague. I hate Vienna. I have no talent for languages, so I can only choose Berlin. With my writing skills, perhaps I can work as a journalist in Berlin.

MAX

But you’re used to a comfortable life.

FRANZ

No. The only thing I need is a room, a vegetarian diet, and nothing more.

VOICE

Your mother and I have found an apartment here in Prague, in the old Schoenborn Palace. Two spacious rooms. It’s a shared bath but for the moment you could move there while Felice is looking for work.

(Silence)

FELICE

But didn’t we agree to live in Berlin? Are you going to obey your parents your whole life?

FRANZ

I’m afraid that when I die they’ll put me in a furnished niche to complete my life happy, thanks to their attentions.

FELICE

How can I trust you if you change your mind according to what they say?

FRANZ

What gives you the right to judge me? Do you think someone has the right to judge someone else? You’ve never understood my work, and nevertheless you’ve become my best ally and also my worst enemy. That’s why I love you without reserve and I defend myself from you with all my might. There are two beings in me who fight each other. One is just the way you want him. The other one only thinks of work, that’s his only preoccupation. That’s why the most ignoble ideas absolutely do not seem strange to him. And he suffers because of that. These two beings fight, but the first one, the one you love, depends on the one who writes, and he could never defeat him. On the contrary, the first one is happy when the second one is. But when it seems that the first one is going to lose, the other one kneels down, anxiously, at his feet. The two belong to you, if you wish, but you can’t make them change in any way without destroying them both. To love means to renounce power. It’s a surrender. You can’t imagine how I understand you.

FELICE

You understand me? I’m not the one who goes through life begging for understanding. That’s you.

(Silence.)

FRANZ

Don’t you think I can sense your fear?

FELICE

My fear! Do you no longer remember Marienbad?

(Pause.)

Do you want me to be the one who moves to Prague?

FRANZ

I can’t be free as long as I live in Prague.

FELICE

But you’re incapable of living in any other city. Don’t you realize that? Do you or don’t you want us to get married?

FRANZ

Your letters from Frankfurt already revealed your fear on seeing the anxiety that you arouse in me. Then, at the Tiergarten in Berlin you were ready to take flight forever, but you preferred to remain silent. The first time you came to Prague, my lifestyle evoked such rejection from you that you decided to defy everyone. I had to fight for my work, that’s what gives me the right to live. But your permanent fear became my greatest anguish.

FELICE

I was very . . . nervous, Franz. And now I’m demoralized, I’m at the end of my strength.

FRANZ

You want a home appropriate to a family of our position, like mine. The idea that you have means you’re in agreement with them, but not with me. Others when they get married are already satisfied, marriage for them is icing on the cake. But I’m not satisfied, I have no need for a definitive residence; not only do I not need it, but it terrifies me. My hunger is for writing. But I live in totally adverse circumstances. If we set up a house in accord with your desires, we’ll be perpetuating those circumstances. And that is the worst thing that could happen to me.

(Pause.)

FELICE

What are you doing with my life, Franz?

FRANZ

You mean . . . you feel dishonored?

FELICE

You didn’t dishonor me, stupid. I seduced you. But you nullify me as a person. I no longer know what I feel. I no longer know if I’m a woman capable of satisfying a man, of sharing my life.

(Silence)

What’s so important about writing?

FRANZ

The fault is mine alone. But someone has to open deep wounds in the conscience of a world that is coming apart. And yes, I have a big enough guilt complex that you don’t have to feed it.

FELICE

Don’t you want to cry sometimes?

FRANZ

When I was twelve years old, my father made me spend a winter night outdoors, shut up on a balcony. I don’t remember crying since then. Life is a ruthless place where everyone deceives himself to avoid seeing what is happening in reality. Good knows nothing of Evil. But Evil knows Good perfectly well. Truth cannot look at itself. To know Truth requires Falsehood.

FELICE

Truth?

(Pause)

You desire me, Franz!

(Pause)

What do you feel when we make love?

(Pause)

FRANZ

It’s like  . . . trying to fill a bottomless well. The image of my parents’ bed at home, the nightgowns carefully folded, nauseates me, leaves my insides empty. It’s as if they had not finished giving birth to me, that I am constantly coming into the world with my feet entangled in that suffocating material. To me, sex seems to be the punishment to pay in exchange for the happiness of being together.

(FELICE looks at him aghast.)

There’s a secret law in human relationships. I’ve pushed your life into a dead end street until our marriage has become an unavoidable duty.

(Pause)

I’m sorry. You asked for the truth.

FELICE

The truth! I’ve made you a man. You were a frightened child, with complexes about life because of your father. Incapable of loving a woman. You even thought you could not be a father. Well, maybe now you are one. Ask Grete. I’ve gone through all this, I’ve turned you into a real man. And now what do you want? Literature? You want literature instead of all this? Instead of reality, a woman, a family, children, a home, a happy life, you want literature? Is that what you’re trying to have me understand? Well, no. I don’t understand it. No one in his right mind can understand that. Do you know why I’ve never told you what I think about your writing? It’s because I’ve loved you too much to hurt you. Don’t be an idiot, Franz. Are you going to destroy your true life, and mine along with it, in order to write stories at night?

(Long silence.)

FELICE

Give my thanks to your parents for everything.

(FELICE exits.

FRANZ cries. Then he sits down to write.)

FRANZ

There’s no need to leave the house. Stay next to your table and listen carefully. Or don’t even listen, just wait. No, don’t even wait. Just remain completely alone and in silence. The world will give you the chance to take off your mask. There’s no way out of it. Immobile, it will twist in front of you.

(A violent attack of coughing.

FRANZ takes out a handkerchief and wipes his mouth.

The handkerchief is stained with blood.

Silence)

Owning does not exist. Only being exists. That being who aspires until the last breath, until asphyxiation. To reduce oneself . . . reduce so that when the decisive moment arrives, you can hold yourself totally in one hand, like a stone you can throw, like a knife you use to kill.

(Coughing)

After a certain point there is no turning back. That’s the point you must reach. That’s what it means when the sword goes through your soul: keep a calm look, control yourself, welcome the cold of the blade with the cold of the stone. Make yourself invulnerable to the thrust. After the thrust.

VOICE

Franz, come out! Come out of there! Now!

(FRANZ keeps writing.)

FRANZ

I’ve once more entered that terrible, long, narrow crevice that, in reality, can only be crossed in dreams. I could never do it voluntarily being awake. The work that awaits me is tremendous. I have still not written the definitive work. No matter how wretched my abilities, I’m obliged to do with them the best that I can. And God doesn’t want me to write.

(MAX is reading)

MAX

After a restless sleep, Gregor Samsa woke up, transformed into a monstrous insect. Lying on his back, now a hard shell, he raised his head and saw a protruding, dark belly, criss-crossed by curving ridges. He could barely keep the quilt from sliding onto the floor. Many legs, pitifully thin compared to his normal legs, wiggled in disarray.

FRANZ

What has happened to me?

(HE coughs, raising the handkerchief to his mouth.)

BLACKOUT