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

The Judgment

For Frфulein Felice B.

It was a Sunday morning at the very height of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young merchant, was sitting in his own room on the second floor of one of a long row
of low, graceful houses stretching along the bank of the river, distinguishable from one another only in height and color. He had just finished a letter to an old friend who
was now living abroad, had sealed it in its envelope with slow and dreamy deliberateness, and with one elbow propped on his desk was looking out the window at the
river, the bridge, and the hills on the farther bank with their tender green.
He was thinking about this friend, who years before had simply run off to Russia, dissatisfied with his prospects at home. Now he was running a business in St.
Petersburg, which at first had flourished but more recently seemed to be going downhill, as the friend always complained on his increasingly rare visits. So there he was,
wearing himself out to no purpose in a foreign country; the exotic-looking beard he wore did not quite conceal the face Georg had known so well since childhood, and the
jaundice color his skin had begun to take on seemed to signal the onset of some disease. By his own account he had no real contact with the colony of his fellow
countrymen there and almost no social connection with Russian families, so that he was resigning himself to life as a confirmed bachelor.
What could one write to such a man, who had obviously gone badly astray, a man one could be sorry for but not help? Should one perhaps advise him to come
home, to reestablish himself here and take up his old friendships again--there was certainly nothing to stand in the way of that--and in general to rely on the help of his
friends? But that was as good as telling him--and the more kindly it was done the more he would take offense--that all his previous efforts had miscarried, that he should
finally give up,come back home, and be gaped at by everyone as a returned prodigal, that only his friends knew what was what, and that he himself was nothing more
than a big child and should follow the example of his friends who had stayed at home and become successful. And besides, was it certain that all the pain they would
necessarily inflict on him would serve any purpose? Perhaps it would not even be possible to get him to come home at all--he said himself that he was now out of touch
with business conditions in his native country--and then he would still be left an alien in an alien land, embittered by his friends' advice and more than ever estranged
from them. But if he did follow their advice and even then didn't fit in at home--not because of the malice of others, of course, but through sheer force of
circumstances--if he couldn't get on with his friends or without them, felt humiliated, couldn't really be said to have either friends or a country of his own any longer,
wouldn't it be better for him to go on living abroad just as he was? Taking all this into account, how could one expect that he would make a success of life back here?
For such reasons, assuming one wanted to keep up any correspondence with him at all, one could not send him the sort of real news one could frankly tell the most
casual acquaintances. It had been more than three years since his last visit, and for this he offered the lame excuse that the political situation in Russia was too uncertain
and apparently would not permit even the briefest absence of a small businessman, though it allowed hundreds of thousands of Russians to travel the globe in perfect
safety. But during these same three years Georg's own position in life had changed considerably. Two years ago his mother had died and since then he and his father
had shared the household together; and his friend had, of course, been informed of that and had expressed his sympathy in a letter phrased so dryly that the grief
normally caused by such an event, one had to conclude, could not be comprehended so far away from home. Since that time, however, Georg had applied himself with
greater determination to his business as well as to everything else. Perhaps it was his father's insistence on having everything his own way in the business that had
prevented him, during his mother's lifetime, from pursuing any real projects of his own; perhaps since her death his father had become less agressive, although he was
still active in the business; perhaps it was mostly due to an accidental run of good fortune--that was very probable indeed--but, at any rate, during those two years the
business had prospered most unexpectedly, the staff had to be doubled, the volume was five times as great; no doubt about it, further progress lay just ahead.
But Georg's friend had no inkling of these changes. In earlier years, perhaps for the last time in that letter of condolence, he had tried to persuade Georg to
emigrate to Russia and had enlarged upon the prospects of success in St. Petersburg for precisely Georg's line of business. The figures quoted were microscopic by
comparison with Georg's present operations. Yet he shrank from letting his friend know about his business success, and if he were to do so now--retrospectively--that
certainly would look peculiar.
So Georg confined himself to giving his friend unimportant items of gossip such as rise at random in the memory when one is idly thinking things over on a quiet
Sunday. All he desired was to leave undisturbed the image of the hometown in which his friend had most likely built up and accepted during his long absence. And thus
it happened that three times in three fairly widely separated letters Georg had told his friend about the engagement of some insignificant man to an equally insignificant
girl, until, quite contrary to Georg's intentions, his friend had actually begun to show some interest in this notable event.
Yet Georg much preferred to write about things like these rather than to confess that he himself had become engaged a month ago to a Fraulein Frieda
Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family. He often spoke to his fiancee about this friend of his and the peculiar relationship that had developed between them in their
correspondence. "Then he won't be coming to our wedding," she said, "and yet I have a right to get to know all your friends." "I don't want to trouble him," answered
Georg, "don't misunderstand, he would probably come, at least I think so, but he would feel that his hand had been forced and he would be hurt, perhaps he would even
envy me and certainly he'd be discontented, and without ever being able to do anything about his discontent he'd have to go away again alone. Alone--do you know
what that means?" "Yes, but what if he hears about our marriage from some other source?" "I can't prevent that, of course, but it's unlikely, considering the way he
lives." "If you have friends like that, Georg, you shouldn't ever have gotten engaged at all." "Well, we're both to blame for that; but I wouldn't have it any other way
now." And when breathing heavily under his kisses, she was still able to add, "All the same, it does upset me," he thought it would not really do any harm if he were to
send the news to his friend. "That's the kind of man I am and he'll just have to accept me or not," he said to himself, "I can't cut myself to another pattern that might