Before the Trial

Franz Kafka had been mulling over the opening of his next story for several hours when it happened. He had been struggling to find a way to express the inexpressible, to give voice to that feeling of bewilderment no amount of schooling or adult experience can prepare you for - that uncanny state of existence - when, like a somnambulist, he found himself stumbling and fumbling his way towards the door, his reddened eyes and aching limbs burning from overwork and exhaustion. Stretching out his left arm, he grabbed the brass knob and, with all his might, twisted and pulled it towards him. Two burly men in official-looking grey suits, the taller one clutching a leather-bound file and the other playfully fondling a set of handcuffs, stood officiously on the other side of the threshold, as if waiting for him to offer them a cup of coffee, or to follow them out into the blackness of the wintry night.  

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ said Franz.  

His question was a guise, a mere pretext for something more important. He had no intention of helping these men and fully intended to return to his writing. From the corner of his eye he could see the window where he had left his china mug carefully balanced between the flaking ledge and warped frame to allow a steady flow of air into the room. Good circulation is as important to the mind as exercise is to the body, he reasoned. He could also see his writing bureau where he had only moments before been wrestling with himself, searching the depths of his creative faculty for the next big idea.  

‘You know what you did,’ they said. 

Franz assumed this was some kind of prank and he had neither the time nor the inclination to indulge these two bumbling fools. As he was about to close the door, however, the shorter man inched his left foot forwards, as if automatically, and attempted to place the handcuffs on Franz’s wrists. 

‘I am innocent!’ he said. 

This protestation, bursting forth from his lips like cannon fire, came unexpectedly and suddenly from somewhere deep within Franz’s inner being, a place even he himself would not subsequently be able to locate. He was innocent. He knew that much. But of what? 

Felice. Was that it? Like a silent film, the events of the past few months played over in his mind. Diabolical images of that fateful meeting with Felice and her sister at the Askanischer Hof and the train journey from Prague flashed before his very eyes, causing him to breathe uneasily. The tribunal. Yes, he had had his doubts about the engagement and expressed them frankly, but was that a crime? As a law student he had briefly researched marriage contracts as part of his paper on family law reform. Now, in the middle of the night, some ten years’ later, standing before these two mindless baboons, the term breach of promise buzzed in his ears like a giant insect and stung him right in the chest. Damages were limited to pecuniary losses - booking fees, unclaimed rent (assuming the couple had lived together) and other sundry expenses; compensation for hurt feelings could theoretically be sought in some jurisdictions, but the prospects of success, Franz now reassured himself, were poor due to the outmoded customs upon which the cause of action had been established. Besides, hadn’t Felice been the one to break off the engagement? The wound in his chest morphed into a gaping chasm and his heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst right through his ribcage at any moment. 

As Franz’s pain momentarily eased, the two men in grey suits simultaneously pushed past him and, after surveying his lodgings, plonked themselves like two spuds on the springy pull-down bed opposite his bureau. The taller man pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and placed it on his lap while he appeared to search for a match. Franz would have offered him one had he asked, but neither he nor the intruder said a word. After what appeared to have been a genuine but failed attempt, the man picked up the cigarette, placed it back in his breast pocket and turned to his companion with a shrug of the shoulders. As if on cue, the shorter man reached into his breast pocket, removed a cigarette and placed it on his lap while he too appeared to search for a match. The whole routine had the quality of a performance and reminded Franz of those cheap mime acts he had once witnessed on the streets of Paris.  

‘You know what you did.’ Why had he assumed that these words, a simple statement, were directed at him? Why had he felt the need to enter a plea in response? Franz was battling these questions when he noticed the shorter man turn his attention to the side table in the far corner of the room where Felice’s framed portrait sat wedged between two small cactus plants. Franz followed the man’s gaze as it landed on Felice’s tiny likeness and, for reasons he could not entirely understand, felt a shudder course its way up his spine and across his shoulders. The sensation was similar to the one he had experienced that night in the hotel when Felice’s sister pointed her finger in his direction. He had agreed to the rendezvous in the hope that it would be an opportunity to clear the air, so to speak. But as soon as he entered the hotel lobby he knew he had made a mistake. The overly-polished green marble floors and crowded oak furniture gave the place a heavy, stifling atmosphere.  

Though his breathing felt strained, he managed to find enough oxygen to ask the doorman, a liveried and gangly fellow, for directions to Felice’s room. Without condescending to look Franz in the eye or seeming to acknowledge his presence, the doorman pointed towards an even larger oak desk on the far side of the lobby. As he made his way over to the reception, Franz strove to take in his surroundings, if only to feel more in control of his senses. A woman of about fifty was shouting at one of the porters and prodding him with her parasol. Despite the physical assault, the porter and his colleagues remained fixed to the spot, like statuary. Nearby, a young couple were reclining on a green velvet sofa and studying what appeared to be a map of the hotel.  

‘Where is the dining room?’  

‘Do they have a billiard table?’

‘Where is our bedroom?’

‘Can I help you, Sir?’  

The last question had been directed at Franz, but he failed to notice. The man behind the desk, a dandily-clad figure sporting a beard and monocle, cleared his throat, no doubt to catch Franz’s attention, and repeated his question.  

‘Can I help you, Sir?’ 

Yes, I hope so, thought Franz. My relationship with Felice is causing me sleepless nights and I need some answers! He never said this out loud, of course. Instead, he raised a half smile and asked politely to be shown to his fiancée’s room. The man pointed to a set of double doors leading to a long, narrow corridor and provided Franz with a series of instructions. Walk along the corridor, take a left, then a right, then another left, climb the stairs to the fourth floor, turn left along the corridor, then turn right and take the second door on the left. The man then handed Franz a map of the hotel and asked him if he would like the morning paper delivered to his room. Declining the man’s offer - he was perfectly capable of finding his way, thank you very much - Franz retreated down the corridor and repeated the directions under his breath. The corridor was dimly-lit and sparsely furnished; terracotta tiles lined the floor and the walls were coated in magnolia. Portraits of various statesmen, now long dead, had been placed at regular intervals along the corridor, presumably to give the space a more homely feel, but the general effect was oppressive, especially for someone who had been travelling for several hours non-stop. The bearded figures peered at Franz from every angle, making him feel more like an intruder than a guest. When he eventually found the staircase, he stopped for breath before making his ascent to the dreaded fourth floor, only turning back once to make sure that he was not being followed. 

A coughing fit drew Franz back to the present. The two men had been eyeing the crumpled up pieces of paper piled up around Franz’s bureau when a sudden breeze unsettled the layers of dust in the room, causing all three men to choke. 

‘Sorry about that,’ said Franz. 

‘Sorry won’t help you,’ they said, not quite in unison.

‘I really think you ought to be going now. I have nothing more to say,’ said Franz

‘You know what you did,’ said the taller man.  

‘Tell me, then,’ said Franz. 

‘We can’t,’ said the shorter man.

‘For heaven’s sake, why not?’

‘We do not know.’

‘You do not know why you cannot tell me, or you do not know what it is that I am supposed to have done?’

Though he had been only half hopeful of an answer, Franz was nevertheless disappointed when the two men ignored his question. They stood up, dusted themselves off and moved towards his bureau.  

‘Get away from there,’ he said. 

The two men did not budge. 

Franz hesitated, not knowing whether to make a run for it now that the two men were far enough away from the door, or to play along with their silly games. Did they really expect him to be able to write under such conditions? With other people present? Felice expected him to. She had practically demanded it that night in the hotel room. 

‘A writer needs to be alone, to have complete freedom,’ he said.

‘Franz, we’re a couple and couples need to make compromises,’ she said. 

But he had not been willing to compromise and walked out of the hotel room without so much as a parting kiss. Writing was as important to him as the air that filled his lungs and gave him life. Only now did it dawn on him that perhaps he had made a mistake. After all, if he could breathe and write, why not love too? 

Squeezing his way past the two men, Franz assumed his rightful place at the bureau. He spread the remaining sheet of parchment out, picked up his pen and began his story, a story about a man who is arrested one morning without apparent cause. The man would spend the rest of what little life he had left searching for answers, though he hardly knew which questions to ask. 

The two men in grey suits never left his side, not even when he took his final breath.