Kafka

One day, when I was fourteen, I remember seeing a book with a very strange cover. On it there was a man with a light bulb instead of a head. I thought it might be interesting, but as it was a required reading for secondary school I couldn’t borrow it yet. Surprisingly, the librarian noticed me looking at it and she lent me the book.
It was Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” I will never forget first leafing through its pages, then reading it, being totally scared of his views on life, people and the world. What a strange, alien and sad world did he create? Why this horrifying death in a quarry to end Josef K’s life? When I closed the book I decided to learn more about Kafka. Soon he became my true friend.
I read most his books and stories – “America”, “The Trial”, “In the Penal Colony”, “Metamorphosis” and the most haunting and sad “Letter to His Father”. Franz was so unhappy in his life, alone, miserable and frightened. Franz the Outsider. Franz the Individual. The poor son, always a little boy scared that he could make his strict father angry again. He lived in the world of narrow-minded people who couldn’t understand him, his school mates who called him names, laughed at him and bullied. I observes little Franz in my imagination, lonely, with his body snuggled up to the wall, as Josef K lying on cold stones. Kafka was dying a thousand times in his life, when rejected, when lost in the world and its labyrinths, when unhappy in love, when publishers turned down his stories. Perhaps Max Brod sometimes understood him.
I wished I could help him, as friends do, but of course it wasn’t possible through the thickly written pages of his books and diaries. It was impossible to stop dark terrifying thoughts and ideas pour out of these pages. Yet, we were completely different, I thought. He was deeply unhappy. I am relatively content person. His parents didn’t understand him, just perceived him as a failure. I have a loving family. Two friends at different times in history, different places. He told me about pain, showed people laughing ominously and ironically, took me to the gloomy space between reality and emptiness. I regretted that my fictional plan to show him beautiful brief moments in life was never to be realised.

Some other day, when I was eighteen, my parents told me we were going to Prague. I was very happy about that idea. With my experience of Kafka, I imagined Prague as a grey, uninteresting capital, with small dark shops and people hiding in their homes.
I asked our host where Kafka’s museum was. I had never hoped for my dream to come true. When I entered the dark rooms of the museum I just saw him real again. In the background I heard raindrops falling down, on the black walls I saw Franz in photographs enclosed in some strange cages, I read his past, letters to his parents, sisters and his women. Perhaps he couldn’t really love them, or was afraid of being loved, afraid of taking responsibility, and entering a brighter world. Kafka’s eyes looked at me everywhere I went, and in one corridor with walls of mirrors I understood how false images of ourselves we form. Then there was another passage, with thousands drawers labeled with names: Josef K, Josef K, Josef K … and some empty labels, for visitors. Scary.
Outside, a different Prague. Old Town, restaurants, sunny Charles Bridge with people crossing the river chatting, buskers playing saxophones, guitars, flutes … As my parents and brother were sightseeing, for me the city and river were sinking in the blinding sun. Then I saw Franz standing on the bridge, nervously spreading his arms, as if getting ready to throw himself into the river. I felt fear, and in my imagination ran towards him. Then silence.
Then crowds of people, shouts and music were back. And my fast beating heart.
Fraz was ill. But is wasn’t only tuberculosis. He suffered from people and the world which they created. On a hard day, I open Kafka’s books, especially his stories. Then I know that I’m not alone, that his world still exists. Watching people in town, their ridiculous haste and race to nowhere, meeting them on my way, I ask myself questions about the sense of what they do. Though sometimes I find Franz’s heavy vision too limiting and I need a breadth of optimism, I know that not quite everything is alright and it will never be. There is still a lot of pain in this sad, grey world, people are too busy to notice others standing alone on bridges … Happy and laughing, I’m aware of his reality.