The emperor – they say – has sent out to you, the single, the miserable underdog, the fleeing shadow, tiny before the imperial sun, to you only the emperor has sent out a message from his deathbed.
The messenger he called to kneel down by his bed and whispered the message into his ear; it meant so much to him, that he let the message be repeated into his ear. By a nod of the head he confirmed the correctness of what was said. And before the entire audience of his death – all hindering walls are broken down, and on the high and wide steps, in a ring, stand the great ones of the empire – before all these he dispatched the messenger.
The messenger immediately goes his way; a powerful, a tireless man; now stretching this, now stretching that arm before him, he clears the way for himself through the crowd; if he finds resistance, he only points at his chest, at the sign of the sun; he advances easily, as no one else could. But the crowd is so big; its habitat knows no end. If free fields opened, how he would fly and soon you may well hear the splendid beating of his fists at your door. But instead, how uselessly he wears himself out; still he is squeezing through the chambers of the inner palace; he will never overtake them; and even if he did, nothing would be won; he would have to struggle with the steps going down; and even if he did, nothing would be won; the courtyards would have to be crossed; and after the courtyards the second enclosing palace; and again steps and courtyards; and again a palace; and so on through thousands of years; and if he finally hurls out the outermost gate – but never, never can this happen – only then the capital city would lie before him, the center of the world, filled to the brim with its dregs.
No one gets through here, and what with the message of a dead man… but you sit at your window and dream it for yourself, when evening comes.
What’ll we do in these days of spring, fast a-coming? Early today the sky was dull, but if you go now to the window, you’re astonished and rest your cheek on the windowpane.
Down there you see the sun, already sinking, light on the face of a childish girl, walking by and glancing about, and meanwhile you see the shadow of a man, coming up fast behind her.
Then the man has already gone past and the girl’s face is all bright.
You feel the air’s persuasion after a storm! My merits appear and overwhelm me, even if I don’t try to work myself up.
I march along and my tempo is the tempo of this sidewalk, this street, this neighborhood. I am rightly responsible for all the bangings of doors, of plates and dishes, for all the drunken toasts, for the lovers in their beds -- on scaffolds of new projects -- in dark alleys pressed against the walls -- on ottomans in the brothels…
I weigh my past against my future and find both outstanding, cannot prefer one or the other, and must only chide the injustice that favors me so much.
Only when I step into my room, I am a bit reflective, but without having found anything worth reflecting on, while I was walking up the steps. It doesn’t help that I open the window all the way, and in a garden somewhere the music still plays.
When you’re strolling through an alley at night, and a man, visible from afar – since the alley climbs before us and it’s full moon – runs toward us, we won’t tackle him, even if he’s weak and raggy, even if someone runs behind him and shouts… rather we’ll let him keep on running.
Since it’s night, and we can’t help it that the alley climbs in full moon before us, and besides, maybe the two set up the chase for fun, maybe both are chasing a third, maybe the first man is innocent, maybe the second is set on murder, and we’d be accomplices in murder, maybe the two know nothing of each other, and each one’s running on his own business to bed, maybe they’re sleepwalkers, maybe the first has a gun.
And finally, can’t we be tired, haven’t we had so much to drink? We’re glad that we can’t see even the second man anymore.
When I run into a pretty girl and ask her, “Be nice, walk with me,” and she walks past me mum, this is what she means,
“You’re no jock in a flaming convertible, no broad-shouldered football player with a bulging build, with bright confident eyes, no artist with wild hair and arms swinging to a hip-hop beat, to the rhythm of the streets and the nightclubs, you haven’t lived in London or Paris or Italy, or all those other places I know nothing about. So let me ask you, why should I, a pretty girl, go with you?”
“You’re forgetting that there is no beamer waiting for you around the next corner; I don’t see the men that should be panting after you, whispering funnies in your ear, making a circle around you as you go. Your breasts are a fairly good size and shape, but your absent hips make up for that. You wear your jeans slashed in the middle, something that may still be fashionable in Bulgaria – and yet, you smile.”
“Yes, we’re both right, and so that we’re not helplessly aware of it, don’t you think we’d better head off our separate ways?”
Whoever lives abandoned but likes to lean here and there somewhere, who, fretted with the shifting of the day, of the weather, of stock markets and such, would just like to see an arm that he could hold on to – he won’t last long without a street window. And if it’s the case that he seeks nothing and only as a tired man, eyes up and down between sky and audience, steps to his windowsill, and he doesn’t want and has cocked his head a little back, he’ll yet be torn along by the cars down there with their honking and throbbing and thereby at last into the human harmony.
If you could be an Indian chief, just poised, and on the galloping horse, skew in the air, on and onwards shaking up over the shaking ground, till you let go of the spurs, since there were no spurs, till you threw away the reins, since there were no reins, and barely seeing the land before you as clean-shaven plain -- no horse’s neck and horse’s head.
For we are like tree trunks in snow. They seem to lie flat, and with a little force you should be able to push them on their way. No, you can’t do that, for they’re bound fast to the earth. But look, even that is just seeming.
“Alas,” said the mouse, “The world is getting smaller every day. At the beginning it was so huge that I was scared, I kept running and running, and I was glad when finally I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I’m in the last room already, and there in the corner stands the trap I must run into.” – “You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.
Before the law stands a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country and asks for entrance into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he can’t grant him entrance now. The man thinks about it, then asks if he’d be allowed to enter later. “It’s possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”
Since the gate to the law stands open as always and the gatekeeper steps aside, the man bends to see through the gate into the interior. When the gatekeeper notices, he laughs and says, “If you’re so fascinated, just try it, go ahead in spite of me. Notice though: I am powerful. And I’m only the lowest gatekeeper. But from hall to hall stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the last. Just the sight of the third one is more than I can ever bear.”
Such difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the law should surely be accesible to everyone and always, he thinks, but as he now observes the gatekeeper in his fur coat, his sharp nose, the long, thin, black Tatar beard, he decides it’s better to wait until he gets permission to enter. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down sideways by the door.
There he sits days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in and wearies the gatekeeper with his petitions. Often the gatekeeper interrogates him a little, questions him about his home town and many other things, but apathetic questions, the kind important people ask, and at the end he always tells him that he still can’t let him in. The man, who equipped himself with all sorts of things for his journey, uses everything, no matter how valuable, to bribe the gatekeeper. The latter in fact accepts everything but always adds, “I only accept this so you won’t think you’ve missed something.”
Through the years the man watches the gatekeeper almost without a break. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only hurdle between him and entrance into the law. He curses his predicament, in the first years loudly and insolently; and later, as he grows old, he just grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in years studying the gatekeeper he even got to know the fleas in his fur collar, he begs even the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper.
At last his eyes grow dim, and he doesn’t know whether it’s really getting darker around him or if his eyes deceive. But in the dark he makes out a glow, breaking unquenchably from the gate of the law. Now he has not long to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experience up to that time into a single question, which he hasn’t yet asked the gatekeeper.
He waves to him, since he can no longer hold his stiffening body upright. The gatekeeper has to bow deeply down to him, since the difference in size has changed very much against the man’s favor.
“What do you want now?” the gatekeeper asks, “You’re insatiable.”
“…but everyone strives for the law…” The man says, “how is it then, that in all these years, no one other than me has wanted to be let in?”
The gatekeeper realizes that the man is already at his end, and to reach his fading senses, he roars at him, “No one else could be let in here, because this entrance was meant only for you. I’m going now to shut it.”
My grandfather used to say, “life is surprisingly short. In my memory now it’s coming together, that for example, I can hardly grasp how a youngster could decide on riding to the next village without fearing – unfortunate circumstances aside – that even the time of ordinary, happily trickling life is not, for such a ride, by far enough.”