K was writing in his room when his father came knocking at the door. He resisted the temptation to swear and sat there silently praying for him to go away.
Eventually, he did, and K returned to his scribbling. But it was no good; he could not write. His father had interrupted his train of thought. Whatever marvellous ideas he had had before the interruption had dissipated into the silence.
He got up from the desk and sat down on the bed. He picked up a cigarette from the packet and opened the window. As he had always done, starting in his adolescence, he smoked it out the window. His father did not like smoke. “It upsets your mother,” he would say, which, if true, did not need to be said.
He thought of other comments of his father’s. Like the time he had complained about the stew and the consistency of the sauce, the stringiness of the beef. Why, on earth, was he so fussy? – And his poor mother, why did she put up with these erratic and uncalled for criticisms? – Cock-pecked Hannah, her friends called her! – And they were not wrong. Mother kept having jabs in her stomach!
K threw the cigarette out of the window with sudden violence. The violence of his gesture, conditioned by the violence of his imagination, suddenly appalled him. What are you thinking, K? – Your mother and father are good people. They are kind and mean well. You must not castigate them for crimes they do not understand and would not begin to know the meaning of!
K stared out the window, noting where the cigarette butt had land, just short of the pavement. Then he went and sat down again on the bed. He lay back, looking up at the ceiling. When he began to see the cracks, he fumed and leapt up from the bed. “I must get on,” he told himself. “The story must be finished.”
Once again, he sat down at his desk and began to write. And once again the words did not flow. This business of writing is all so painful, dishonest, he told himself. Your writing is utterly worthless.
When he said these words, his friend B came into his mind. B, who was so kind and gentle, and always so complementary about his writing.
“Keep going,” he would say. “You have an original talent.”
“What are you talking about?” he would reply. “It smacks of fraud and deceit. I am just a plagiarist.”
When he reached these moments of high-minded self-castigation, B would remain silent. He would draw on his cigar, or take a sip of his coffee or cut into the small piece of Sachertorte he always ordered when they met.
“I know,” he said, “you struggle. Every artist worth their salt struggles. But I believe in the end you will find a way.”
K would always leave these encounters, relaxed and happy. He would return to the room and sit down at his desk. He would begin to write again with renewed enthusiasm. He would write quickly, fluently and as if inspired. The pen would flow and he could feel his talent flowing through it.
But today that was not the case. He was beaten by the blank page. And to compound matters he had to suffer these appalling domestic arrangements. His father and his demands always for his presence at some pointless family gathering. His mother who would in turn sense his father’s agitation at his son’s failure to comply with the domestic arrangements. “Willy,” she would say, “don’t fret yourself and drink your glass of water.”
K, who was now thoroughly disgusted, was once again sitting on the edge of his bed. As he did so, he became aware of the photo of L. The one that sat on the bedside table. It was the one they had taken last summer, when they took the bicycles on that trip into the countryside.
For a moment he thought of the trip. He remembered L as she sped along the country lane that was going gently and ever so slightly downhill. Her feet were not on the pedals and she was freewheeling and laughing. K smiled to himself. What joy it was to think of her like that! But the pleasure was merely fleeting. Suddenly, inexplicably, he was filled with guilt. I have failed her, he told himself. I am not worthy. She deserves a happier man.
K was reminded of their correspondence. The one he had thrown himself into. He saw in his mind’s eye all the letters he had written to her over the winter months. All the thoughts he had poured onto the paper before. How he could scarcely contain himself. He had carried on writing as he was sitting on the lavatory. There would be one letter in the morning, one letter in the afternoon and one letter at night.
“Why do you write so much?” she declared one day in a letter that she returned – her one to his three. “I cannot possibly imagine how you manage it. There is always so much to do in the day.”
So much to do the day! The words made him pause. They threw him back on himself. Suddenly he was no longer in the reverie of memory, but back on the bed staring at the photo of L, whose lovely smile stared back at him in reproach.
K lay down once more on the bed. Once more he looked up at the ceiling where the cracks were forming above his bed and the plaster was all rotting by the cornice.
Suddenly K was thrown into the mood – that terrible one that he tried to keep at bay. But the feeling was too strong for him, and he succumbed. The creeping sensation that he captured so well in that one story – the only story he had ever written that made any sense. All of a sudden, he saw himself as he had seen himself then…
Those days when he began to pick at the skin on his hands. Those days when he could see the skin falling off, and that grub that was there inside him, moving slowly, grubbily along one of the planks of wood under foot till it was no longer under foot, but inside him, changing him, transforming him.
“Why do you write so much?” she declared one day in a letter that he returned – her one to his three. “I cannot possibly imagine how you manage it. There is always so much to do in the day.”
So much to do the day!
K was suddenly in tears. I cannot go on, he cried to himself. Even though these tears are silent, I am crying inside. When will it stop?
Once again there was a knock at the door. Once again, he froze, listening to the knock of the trumpeting fist. It shook his soul! It shook him to the bone.
“K,” called his father from outside the door, “are you in there?”
There was a slight pause; K’s father went on:
“K, your mother and I are expecting you for supper.”
And shortly after this:
“K, the gulasch is getting cold.”
And shortly after this:
The door opened and K’s father entered the room.
He looked round, but could not see his son.
K dare not leave his hiding place under the bed; no father’s foot would stamp on his grubby soul.