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Authors: Jacqueline Raoul-Duval
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planned for June 1.
On May 6, Felice is in Prague. She visits the latest apartment Franz has found, after combing the city for weeks. She doesn’t like it. The couple agree about nothing: neither their choice of furniture nor the life they will lead. Felice insists that Franz eat meat, that he sleep in a room that is adequately heated, that he give more time to the asbestos factory, and that he stop writing at night. The enormous sideboard that she buys frightens Franz. “It is a perfect funeral monument,” he says.
His parents are the ones who eventually find him a reasonable apartment and who pay the landlord the first six months’ rent.
Will they also lay me in my grave? Franz asks himself.
The closer the date of the official engagement comes, the more he suffers from insomnia, headaches, and nervous attacks.
O n May 27, Julie Kafka and her youngest daughter, Ottla, set off for Berlin ahead of the others. Franz and his father are to arrive three days later.
On Whitsun Monday, an elegant reception is held at the Bauers’ with a multitude of guests, a sumptuous buffet. But the bride-to-be looks tired, suddenly aged, her skin roughened, blemished. Her teeth, in worse condition than before, are filled with gold. Franz is distracted, agitated, downcast, and slips out onto the balcony to be alone. His face ashen, he feels handcuffed, like a criminal surrounded by policemen. He thinks only of fleeing, somewhere, anywhere, escaping from the trap that he has thrown himself into. He seems not to notice Grete at all or the sad eyes that she lifts toward him.
In the following days, he is incapable of writing to Felice. All his letters are for Grete. He demonstrates to her, in the end convincingly, that he neither wants nor is capable of marrying, that he has no aptitude for marriage, that everything in him revolts against theproposed union. His letter of July 3 is so clear that Grete is terrified.
Imagine her feelings, her embarrassment.
What is she to do now that she has heard this terrible, this magnificent admission? Keep quiet? Warn Felice? Betray her friend? Take her place?
The Trial
O n this Sunday, July 12, 1914, it is so fine a day in Berlin that, on stepping off the train, Franz hires a hackney to take him to the Hotel Askanischer Hof, where he is accustomed to staying. Entering the lobby, he is surprised to find Felice. It is the first time that she has come to meet him.
She is not alone.
Her sister Erna, her friend Grete Bloch, and the surgeon Ernst Weiss are grouped around her.
Is it an ambush? he wonders. Grete must have told calumnies about me to Felice, and together they have seta trap for me. He examines them. They look embarrassed and avoid his gaze. Grete nervously mops her neck with a handkerchief. Felice maintains an icy expression. She extends a limp hand to him. Is he no longer allowed to kiss her cheek? Only his friend, Ernst Weiss, seems at ease, as though impatient to operate.
They enter a private conference room and shut the door behind them.
Felice sits across from her fiancé. This long-limbed man, quiet and elegant, irritates her. She runs her fingers through her hair, stifles a yawn, squirms in her chair, and tugs on her skirt, which is pinching her at the waist. She has grown heavier. She reproaches herself for not having followed Dr. Müller’s gymnastics regimen for women, which Franz sent her.
She is the first to speak: “It’s time to sort things out, Franz. Since May 28, even before our engagement, you have not written me, not a single word. All your letters went to Grete, whose friendship with me you’ve been trying to wreck. I no longer know where I am in this, or who you are, or who you love, or what game you’re playing. Grete and I have decided to ask very specific questions, and to demand very specific answers. Grete, would you go first?”
Unlike Felice, Grete is emotional. Her face is flushedand she speaks hesitantly, in a choked voice. Her eyes remain glued to
On May 6, Felice is in Prague. She visits the latest apartment Franz has found, after combing the city for weeks. She doesn’t like it. The couple agree about nothing: neither their choice of furniture nor the life they will lead. Felice insists that Franz eat meat, that he sleep in a room that is adequately heated, that he give more time to the asbestos factory, and that he stop writing at night. The enormous sideboard that she buys frightens Franz. “It is a perfect funeral monument,” he says.
His parents are the ones who eventually find him a reasonable apartment and who pay the landlord the first six months’ rent.
Will they also lay me in my grave? Franz asks himself.
The closer the date of the official engagement comes, the more he suffers from insomnia, headaches, and nervous attacks.
O n May 27, Julie Kafka and her youngest daughter, Ottla, set off for Berlin ahead of the others. Franz and his father are to arrive three days later.
On Whitsun Monday, an elegant reception is held at the Bauers’ with a multitude of guests, a sumptuous buffet. But the bride-to-be looks tired, suddenly aged, her skin roughened, blemished. Her teeth, in worse condition than before, are filled with gold. Franz is distracted, agitated, downcast, and slips out onto the balcony to be alone. His face ashen, he feels handcuffed, like a criminal surrounded by policemen. He thinks only of fleeing, somewhere, anywhere, escaping from the trap that he has thrown himself into. He seems not to notice Grete at all or the sad eyes that she lifts toward him.
In the following days, he is incapable of writing to Felice. All his letters are for Grete. He demonstrates to her, in the end convincingly, that he neither wants nor is capable of marrying, that he has no aptitude for marriage, that everything in him revolts against theproposed union. His letter of July 3 is so clear that Grete is terrified.
Imagine her feelings, her embarrassment.
What is she to do now that she has heard this terrible, this magnificent admission? Keep quiet? Warn Felice? Betray her friend? Take her place?
The Trial
O n this Sunday, July 12, 1914, it is so fine a day in Berlin that, on stepping off the train, Franz hires a hackney to take him to the Hotel Askanischer Hof, where he is accustomed to staying. Entering the lobby, he is surprised to find Felice. It is the first time that she has come to meet him.
She is not alone.
Her sister Erna, her friend Grete Bloch, and the surgeon Ernst Weiss are grouped around her.
Is it an ambush? he wonders. Grete must have told calumnies about me to Felice, and together they have seta trap for me. He examines them. They look embarrassed and avoid his gaze. Grete nervously mops her neck with a handkerchief. Felice maintains an icy expression. She extends a limp hand to him. Is he no longer allowed to kiss her cheek? Only his friend, Ernst Weiss, seems at ease, as though impatient to operate.
They enter a private conference room and shut the door behind them.
Felice sits across from her fiancé. This long-limbed man, quiet and elegant, irritates her. She runs her fingers through her hair, stifles a yawn, squirms in her chair, and tugs on her skirt, which is pinching her at the waist. She has grown heavier. She reproaches herself for not having followed Dr. Müller’s gymnastics regimen for women, which Franz sent her.
She is the first to speak: “It’s time to sort things out, Franz. Since May 28, even before our engagement, you have not written me, not a single word. All your letters went to Grete, whose friendship with me you’ve been trying to wreck. I no longer know where I am in this, or who you are, or who you love, or what game you’re playing. Grete and I have decided to ask very specific questions, and to demand very specific answers. Grete, would you go first?”
Unlike Felice, Grete is emotional. Her face is flushedand she speaks hesitantly, in a choked voice. Her eyes remain glued to
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