I left my apartment building one morning and she crossed my path slowly and smiled at me. She held a shopping bag in one hand and looked down at a piece of paper she had in the other. I assumed she was looking for a certain address. Perhaps she was delivering something.
With a polite preface, I asked if she needed help, hoping that she understood German. She nodded quickly. House, she said. Visit? I asked. No. She pointed to herself. House. I gathered she had recently moved in and was still having difficulty finding her building, many of which looked alike in Prague. Near here, she said, and made a little circle with her index finger. We spoke in abortive phrases. She had just moved here, and she giggled softly, helplessly, and still needed assistance with finding her own address. I know house, I said. She made a little motion with her hand that said, Come with me. I gestured to her bag, then pointed to myself and made a lifting motion. I took the bag from her. It was rather heavy. Not bricks but probably five kilo of flour. I show you way. She walked alongside me. Two turns and three streets later we stood before her building. Ahh, yes, building, she said, recognizing it. You want to come up? I make tea. Chinese tea. Thank you. I followed her up to the third floor. The flour got heavier with each landing. From her jacket pocket she took out the key and opened the door.
I stepped into the small apartment. A fragrance of jasmine hung in the air. A pleasant warmth surged in me. You like Chinese music? Of course, I said, thinking: I love music I have never heard before; it’s just music I’ve heard that I don’t like. She put on a record. The Chinese sounds, a high-pitched woman vocalist, and the perfumed air made my head spin. She began moving her head and hands ever so subtly, a happy, innocent expression on her face. Then her gestures became more elaborate, ballet-like. She may have beckoned me to dance with her, I don’t know. It just seemed her fingers called to me and, my head still whirling slowly, I danced with her, and she looked up at me and said, Soon I make Chinese tea. I held her slim waist and moved as best I could to the Oriental sounds. Then she suddenly slipped away and said, Wait, I put on Chinese costume. I looked about the room. A small sofa. Some Chinese prints on the wall. A little table for the phonograph and radio.
Five minutes later she appeared wearing a traditional Chinese green silk skirt and matching jacket, decorated with gold appliquéd dragons, that revealed her fine neck and throat. The music had stopped. She put it on again and continued dancing and moved closer to me. I bent down and kissed her neck and then her ear. She looked at me but did not say a word. Take jacket off, I said, and I helped her. She wore a white brassiere. I made a motion, Take it off. She had small breasts, but her nipples astounded me. They looked like shiny deep red cherries that had been pasted on her breasts. I had never seen a Chinese woman naked before, so I couldn’t tell if this was unique to her body or if all Chinese women were like that.
You have family? I asked. Son, fifteen, in school. In Prague? No, Shanghai. Her face was young, but her hands — one can always tell a woman’s age by her hands — showed she must have been in her late thirties. But she said, Me, forty-four. I took her hand and walked to the phonograph, lifted the arm, then walked with her to the bedroom.
Who was this woman, I wondered, and what kind of dreamworld had I fallen into? I felt I was in one of Boccaccio’s tales. Every adolescent boy’s dream was happening to me. I knew nothing of her language; she knew only a bit of mine. But still we spoke the same language.
Although she did not resist, her face remained impassive. Not a shred of excitement or emotion, as though her body wanted one thing but her will, her mind, were fixed on another plane; as if she wanted loving but refused intimacy. As if by seeming passive and not enjoying it, or, at least, giving the impression she wasn’t enjoying it, or sending a signal to me by her stoic-faced, inscrutably Oriental, absolutely unfeeling demeanor that she was so totally removed, she wasn’t actually betraying her husband.
You sick, she said, not as a question but as a declarative. How did she know that I once had tuberculosis? There was no sign of it on me. No sick, I said. Healthy. Sex sick, she said and pointed. Did she mean syphilis? I laughed. No no, I said, and laughed at the absurdity of it. Not that sickness. Yes yes, you sick, she said, as if by saying that she could excuse to herself her lack of enjoyment, or maybe explain to me her passivity by saying she was anxious about getting sick, catching something from me. Her quick concupiscence had a strange turn for me. Was she assuaging her guilt somewhat by accenting illness? She wouldn’t kiss me. Her lips clamped shut tightly. Maybe you sick, I said. And I afraid. She shook her head. You first man who not my husband. Ahh, I said, so you’re married. He works? Where? But she either didn’t understand me or didn’t want to answer. She nodded, said, Works where. I asked, What time he home? She held up seven fingers. It was only 4:30 but I felt it was time to go. She was warm and cold. Porcelain. A wall. The Great Wall of China. Several entrances. But still a wall. Me come tomorrow. You make Chinese tea. Tea, she said. You sick. I know.
NOTE: There is some puzzlement here. The entry, dated March 1928, has two contradictory statements. (Also, remember that often in K’s journals he is writing about an event that may have taken place years ago.) In any case, K indicates that he no longer has tuberculosis, which would place the encounter sometime after late spring 1924, when he was cured. (On the other hand, he could have been fibbing to the Chinese woman.) At the same time, K states that this encounter inspired his story, “The Great Wall of China,” which was written in 1917, the actual year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Yes, a contradiction. (See K’s entry, March 1925, where he discusses word coinage, “contradictionary.”) But, as usual, K will not comment on his journal entries. (K.L.)
JANUARY 1930. HOW BROD MADE ME A WRITER
Max made me a writer before I was a published author, mentioning my name along with Thomas Mann, Meyrink, and Wedekind in 1907. Brod had read some of my stories but I had not been published yet.
I liked Max’s novel, The Kingdom of Love; it’s rather hard to read a novel in which one appears supposedly after one is dead. But it is both an imaginative and accurate work. Still, I always felt that Max was a better composer than writer.
DECEMBER 1930. HOW TO INTERPRET MY WORKS
Some books read from left to right, some right to left, some up and down. My books read inside out, backwards, in mirror language. That’s the secret of interpreting my work that no one has discovered yet.
SEPTEMBER 1932. CREATIVITY PASSING THROUGH THIS WORID
Someone once wrote that I couldn’t wait for my daily grind of work at the office to end so I could find time to be at peace and write. Most people pass through this world only once. I passed through twice. Can you think of anything more creative than that? I know this is specious reasoning, playing with words. But don’t we writers always do just that? It is our stock in trade. And, anyway, this so-called drive of mine to write is a gross exaggeration. I didn’t spend all my free time writing. I loved to go to cafés, sit with friends, travel, play billiards, go for walks in the country, attend theater, study Hebrew and Yiddish, watch aeroplanes. The two in my room I called my flying prayer shawls, my gliding taleisim. I wasn’t always driven. Rarely, in fact. For if I were, I would have written more.