The
Bucket Rider (1921)
by Franz Kafka
COAL
all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold;
the room freezing; the trees outside the window rigid, covered with rime; the
sky a silver shield against anyone who looks for help from it. I must have
coal; I cannot freeze to death; behind me is the pitiless stove, before me the
pitiless sky, so I must ride out between them and on my journey seek aid from
the coaldealer. But he has already grown deaf to ordinary appeals; I must prove
irrefutably to him that I have not a single grain of coal left, and that he
means to me the very sun in the firmament. I must approach like a beggar, who,
with the death rattle already in his throat, insists on dying on the doorstep,
and to whom the cook accordingly decides to give the dregs of the coffeepot;
just so must the coaldealer, filled with rage, but acknowledging the command
"Thou shalt not kill," fling a shovelful of coal into my bucket.
My
mode of arrival must decide the matter; so I ride off on the bucket. Seated on
the bucket, my hands on the handle, the simplest kind of bridle, I propel
myself with difficulty down the stairs; but once downstairs my bucket ascends,
superbly, superbly; camels humbly squatting on the ground do not rise with more
dignity, shaking themselves under the sticks of their drivers. Through the
hard-frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as
the first storey of a house; never do I sink as low as the house doors. And at
last I float at an extraordinary height above the vaulted cellar of the dealer,
whom I see far below crouching over his table, where he is writing; he has
opened the door to let out the excessive heat.
"Coaldealer!"
I cry in a voice burned hollow by the frost and muffled in the cloud made by my
breath, "please, coaldealer, give me a little coal. My bucket is so light
that I can ride on it. Be kind. When I can I'll pay you."
The
dealer puts his hand to his ear. "Do I hear right?" he throws the
question over his shoulder to his wife. "Do I hear right? A
customer."
"I
hear nothing," says his wife, breathing in and out peacefully while she
knits on, her back pleasantly warmed by the heat.
"Oh
yes, you must hear," I cry. "It's me; an old customer; faithful and
true; only without means at the moment."
"Wife,"
says the dealer, "it's someone, it must be; my ears can't have deceived me
so much as that; it must be and old, a very old customer, that can move me so
deeply."
"What
ails you, man?" says his wife, ceasing from her work for a moment and
pressing her knitting to her bosom. "It's nobody, the street is empty, all
our customers are provided for; we could close down the shop for several days
and take a rest."
"But
I am sitting up here on the bucket," I cry, and numb, frozen tears dim my
eyes, "please look up here, just once; you'll see me directly; I beg you,
just a shovelful; and if you give me more it'll make me so happy that I won’t
know what to do." All the other customers are provided for. Oh, if I could
only hear the coal clattering into the bucket!
"I'm
coming," says the coaldealer, and on his short legs he makes to climb the
steps of the cellar, but his wife is already beside him, holds him back by the
arm and says: "You stay here; seeing you persist in your fancies I'll go
myself. Think of the bad fit of coughing you had during the night. But for a
piece of business, even if it's one you've only fancied in your head, you're
prepared to forget your wife and child and sacrifice your lungs. I'll go."
"Then
be sure to tell him all the kinds of coal we have in stock! I'll shout out the
prices after you."
"Right,"
says the wife, climbing up to the street. Naturally she sees me at once.
"Frau Coaldealer" I cry, "my humblest greetings; just one
shovelful of coal; here in my bucket; I'll carry it home myself. One shovelful
of the worst you have. I'll pay you in full for it, of course, but not just
now, not just now." What a knell-like sound the words "not just
now" have, and how bewilderingly they mingle with the evening chimes that
fall from the church steeple nearby!
"Well,
what does he want?" shouts the dealer. "Nothing," his wife
shouts back, "there's nothing here; I see nothing, I hear nothing; only
six striking, and now we must shut up the shop. The cold is terrible; tomorrow
we'll likely have lots to do again."
She
sees nothing and hears nothing; but all the same she loosens her apron strings
and waves her apron to waft me away. She succeeds, unluckily. My bucket has all
the virtues of a good steed except powers of resistance, which it has not; it
is too light; a woman's apron can make it fly through the air.
"You
bad woman!" I shout back, while she, turning into the shop,
half-contemptuous, half-reassured, flourishes her fist in the air. "You
bad woman! I begged you for a shovelful of the worst coal and you would not
give it me." And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains
and am lost forever.
Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir