"Franz_Kafka_-_A_Report_to_an_Academy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kafka Franz)

After these two shots I came to myselfЧand this is where my own memories gradually beginЧbetween decks in the Hagenbeck steamer, inside a cage. It was not a
four-sided barred cage; it was only a three-sided cage nailed to a locker; the locker made the fourth side of it. The whole construction was too low for me to stand up in
and too narrow to sit down in. So I had to squat with my knees bent and trembling all the time, and also, since probably for a time I wished to see no one, and to stay in
the dark, my face was turned toward the locker while the bars of the cage cut into my flesh behind. Such a method of confining wild beasts is supposed to have its
advantages during the first days of captivity, and out of my own experiences I cannot deny that from the human point of view this is really the case.


But that did not occur to me then. For the first time in my life I could see no way out; at least no direct way out; directly in front of me was the locker, board fitted close
to board. True, there was a gap running right through the boards which I greeted with the blissful howl of ignorance when I first discovered it, but the hole was not even
wide enough to stick one's tail through and not all the strength of an ape could enlarge it.


I am supposed to have made uncommonly little noise, as I was later informed, from which the conclusion was drawn that I would either soon die or if I managed to
survive the first critical period would be very amenable to training. I did survive this period. Hopelessly sobbing, painfully hunting for fleas, apathetically licking a
coconut, beating my skull against the locker, sticking out my tongue at anyone who came near meЧthat was how I filled in time at first in my new life. But over and
above it all only the one feeling: no way out. Of course what I felt then as an ape I can represent now only in human terms, and therefore I misrepresent it, but although
I cannot reach back to the truth of the old ape life, there is no doubt that it lies somewhere in the direction I have indicated.


Until then I had had so many ways out of everything, and now I had none. I was pinned down. Had I been nailed down, my right to free movement would not have
been lessened. Why so? Scratch your flesh raw between your toes, but you won't find the answer. Press yourself against the bar behind you till it nearly cuts you in
two, you won't find the answer. I had no way out but I had to devise one, for without it I could not live. All the time facing that lockerЧI should certainly have
perished. Yet as far as Hagenbeck was concerned, the place for apes was in front of a lockerЧwell then, I had to stop being an ape. A fine, clear train of thought,
which I must have constructed somehow with my belly, since apes think with their bellies.


I fear that perhaps you do not quite understand what I mean by "way out." I use the expression in its fullest and most popular senseЧI deliberately do not use the word
"freedom." I do not mean the spacious feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, perhaps, I knew that, and I have met men who yearn for it. But for my part I desired
such freedom neither then nor now. In passing: may I say that all too often men are betrayed by the word freedom. And as freedom is counted among the most
sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can be also sublime. In variety theaters I have often watched, before my turn came on, a couple of acrobats
performing on trapezes high in the roof. They swung themselves, they rocked to and fro, they sprang into the air, they floated into each other's arms, one hung by the
hair from the teeth of the other. "And that too is human freedom," I thought, "self-controlled movement." What a mockery of holy Mother Nature! Were the apes to
see such a spectacle, no theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter.


No, freedom was not what I wanted. Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out prove to be an illusion; the
demand was a small one, the disappointment could be no bigger. To get out somewhere, to get out! Only not to stay motionless with raised arms, crushed against a
wooden wall.


Today I can see it clearly; without the most profound inward calm I could never have found my way out. And indeed perhaps I owe all that I have become to the calm
that settled within me after my first few days in the ship. And again for that calmness it vas the ship's crew I had to thank.


They were good creatures, in spite of everything. I find it still pleasant to remember the sound of their heavy footfalls which used to echo through my half-dreaming
head. They had a habit of doing everything as slowly as possible. If one of them wanted to rub his eyes, he lifted a hand as if it were a drooping weight. Their jests
were coarse, but hearty. Their laughter had always a gruff bark in it that sounded dangerous but meant nothing. They always had something in their mouths to spit out
and did not care where they spat it. They always grumbled that they got fleas from me; yet they were not seriously angry about it, they knew that my fur fostered fleas,
and that fleas jump; it was a simple matter of fact to them. When they were off duty some of them often used to sit down in a semicircle around me; they hardly spoke
but only grunted to each other; smoked their pipes, stretched out on lockers; smacked their knees as soon as I made one slightest movement; and now and then one of