Amerika by Franz Kafka Read Free Book Online Page A

single word; Karl became very confused—“made my mark, got praised, all of the captains greatly appreciated my work, and even spent several years serving on the same merchant vessel.” He stood up as if this were the high point in his life—“and here on this tub, where everything is kept on such a tight leash, where one may not even joke around—I’m useless, always get in Schubal’s way, am simply a lazybones who deserves to be thrown out, and am paid only out of pity. Can you understand that? I certainly can’t.” “You shouldn’t stand for it,” Karl said in an agitated voice. So at home did he feel on the stoker’s bed that he had almost lost the feeling that he stood on the uncertain ground of a ship moored off the coast of an unfamiliar continent. “Have you been to the captain? Have you sought to obtain your rights from him?” “Oh go away, just go away. I don’t want you here. You don’t listen to what I have to say and then try to give me advice. How could I possibly go to the captain?” And the stoker sat down wearily, burying his face in both hands. “I couldn’t have given him any better advice,” Karl said to himself. And it occurred to him that he should have fetched his trunk rather than remain here and make suggestions only to hear them dismissed as stupid. On entrusting him with the trunk, his father had asked him in jest: How long will you hang on to it? And now that expensive trunk was perhaps lost. The only consolation was that his father would not discover anything about his present circumstances, even if he were to make inquiries. All the shipping company could say was that he had reached New York. Karl did regret, though, that he had barely made use of the belongings in the suitcase, especially since he should have changed his shirt sometime ago. So he had been economizing in the wrong places; now, at the outset of his new career, precisely when he needed to appear in clean clothes, he would have to turn up in a dirty shirt. What wonderful prospects! Otherwise the loss of the trunk wouldn’t have been so bad, since the suit he wore was better than the one in the trunk, which was meant only for emergencies and had been patched by his mother shortly before he left. He remembered now that there was still a piece of Veronese salami in the trunk, which his mother had packed in as an extra present, but of which he had eaten only the tiniest portion, for he had not had much of an appetite during the voyage and the soup handed out in steerage had more than sufficed. He would have liked to get his hands on the sausage so that he could bequeath it to the stoker. For one could gain the confidence of such people quite easily, merely by slipping them a little something; Karl knew this from his father, who had gained the confidence of all the lower-ranking employees he dealt with by handing out cigars. All that remained for Karl to give away was a little money, but now that he had perhaps lost his trunk, he did not want to touch that for the moment. His thoughts returned to the trunk, and he could no longer understand why he had even bothered to keep such close watch over his trunk that he had barely slept, only to let somebody relieve him of it so easily. He recalled the five nights he had lain in bed always suspecting that a little Slovak two beds away had his eyes on the trunk. That Slovak had awaited the moment when Karl would at last succumb to weakness and doze off so that he would then be able to take the long stick, with which he had played or possibly practiced all day, and pull the trunk over to his bed. By day the Slovak looked fairly innocent, but when darkness fell he would rise occasionally from his bed and look over at Karl’s trunk with a mournful expression on his face. Karl could observe this very clearly, for there was always someone prey to an emigrant’s unease who would turn on a little