Franz Kafka
A Country
Doctor
This translation by Ian Johnston of Malaspina
University-College, Nanaimo, BC, has certain copyright restrictions. For
information please use the following link: Copyright.
For comments or question please contact Ian
Johnston. This text was last revised on February 21, 2009.
A Country Doctor
I was in great
difficulty. An urgent journey was facing me. A seriously ill man was waiting
for me in a village ten miles distant. A severe snowstorm filled the space
between him and me. I had a carriage—a light one, with large wheels, entirely
suitable for our country roads. Wrapped up in furs with the bag of instruments
in my hand, I was already standing in the courtyard ready for the journey; but
the horse was missing—the horse. My own horse had died the previous night, as a
result of overexertion in this icy winter. My servant girl was at that very
moment running around the village to see if she could borrow a horse, but it
was hopeless—I knew that—and I stood there useless, increasingly covered with
snow, becoming all the time more immobile. The girl appeared at the gate,
alone. She was swinging the lantern. Of course, who is now going to lend his
horse for such a journey? I walked once again across the courtyard. I couldn’t
see what to do. Distracted and tormented, I kicked my foot against the cracked
door of the pig sty which had not been used for years. The door opened and
banged to and fro on its hinges. A warmth and smell as if from horses came out.
A dim stall lantern on a rope swayed inside. A man huddled down in the stall
below showed his open blue-eyed face. “Shall I hitch up?” he asked, crawling
out on all fours. I didn’t know what to say and merely bent down to see what
was still in the stall. The servant girl stood beside me. “One doesn’t know the
sorts of things one has stored in one’s own house,” she said, and we both
laughed. “Hey, Brother, hey Sister,” the groom cried out, and two horses,
powerful animals with strong flanks, shoved their way one behind the other,
legs close to the bodies, lowering their well-formed heads like camels, and
getting through the door space, which they completely filled, only through the
powerful movements of their rumps. But right away they stood up straight, long
legged, with thick steaming bodies. “Help him,” I said, and the girl obediently
hurried to hand the wagon harness to the groom. But as soon as she was beside
him, the groom puts his arms around her and pushes his face against hers. She
screams out and runs over to me. On the girl’s cheek are red marks from two
rows of teeth. “You brute,” I cry out in fury, “do you want the whip?” But I
immediately remember that he is a stranger, that I don’t know where he comes
from, and that he’s helping me out of his own free will, when everyone else is
refusing to. As if he knows what I am thinking, he takes no offence at my
threat, but turns around to me once more, still busy with the horses. Then he
says, “Climb in,” and, in fact, everything is ready. I notice that I have never
before traveled with such a beautiful team of horses, and I climb in happily.
“But I’ll take the reins. You don’t know the way,” I say. “Of course,” he says;
“I’m not going with you. I’m staying with Rosa.” “No,” screams Rosa and runs
into the house, with an accurate premonition of the inevitability of her fate.
I hear the door chain rattling as she sets it in place. I hear the lock click.
I see how in addition she chases down the corridor and through the rooms
putting out all the lights in order to make herself impossible to find. “You’re
coming with me,” I say to the groom, "or I’ll give up the journey, no
matter how urgent it is. It’s not my intention to give you the girl as the
price of the trip.” “Giddy up,” he says and claps his hands. The carriage is
torn away, like a piece of wood in a current. I still hear how the door of my
house is breaking down and splitting apart under the groom’s onslaught, and
then my eyes and ears are filled with a roaring sound which overwhelms all my
senses at once. But only for a moment. Then I am already there, as if the farm
yard of my invalid opens up immediately in front of my courtyard gate. The
horses stand quietly. The snowfall has stopped, moonlight all around. The sick
man’s parents rush out of the house, his sister behind them. They almost lift
me out of the carriage. I get nothing from their confused talking. In the sick
room one can hardly breathe the air. The neglected cooking stove is smoking. I
want to push open the window, but first I’ll look at the sick man. Thin,
without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young
man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat, and
whispers in my ear, “Doctor, let me die.” I look around. No one has heard. The
parents stand silently, leaning forward, and wait for my judgment. The sister
has brought a stool for my handbag. I open the bag and look among my
instruments. The young man constantly gropes at me from the bed to remind me of
his request. I take some tweezers, test them in the candle light, and put them
back. “Yes,” I think blasphemously, “in such cases the gods do help. They send
the missing horse, even add a second one because it’s urgent, and even throw in
a groom as a bonus.” Now for the first time I think once more of Rosa. What am
I doing? How am I saving her? How do I pull her out from under this groom, ten
miles away from her, with uncontrollable horses in the front of my carriage?
These horses, who have now somehow loosened their straps, are pushing open the
window from outside, I don’t know how. Each one is sticking its head through a
window and, unmoved by the crying of the family, is observing the invalid.
“I’ll go back right away,” I think, as if the horses were ordering me to
journey back, but I allow the sister, who thinks I am in a daze because of the
heat, to take off my fur coat. A glass of rum is prepared for me. The old man
claps me on the shoulder; the sacrifice of his treasure justifies this
familiarity. I shake my head. In the narrow circle of the old man’s thinking I
was not well; that’s the only reason I refuse to drink. The mother stands by
the bed and entices me over. I follow and, as a horse neighs loudly at the ceiling,
lay my head on the young man’s chest, which trembles under my wet beard. That
confirms what I know: the young man is healthy. His circulation is a little
off, saturated with coffee by his caring mother, but he’s healthy and best
pushed out of bed with a shove. I’m no improver of the world and let him lie
there. I am employed by the district and do my duty to the full, right to the
point where it’s almost too much. Badly paid, but I’m generous and ready to
help the poor. I still have to look after Rosa, and then the young man may have
his way, and I want to die, too. What am I doing here in this endless winter!
My horse is dead, and there is no one in the village who’ll lend me his. I have
to drag my team out of the pig sty. If they hadn’t happened to be horses, I’d
have had to travel with pigs. That’s the way it is. And I nod to the family.
They know nothing about it, and if they did know, they wouldn’t believe it.
Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an
understanding with people. Now, at this point my visit might have come to an
end—they have once more called for my help unnecessarily. I’m used to that.
With the help of my night bell the entire region torments me, but that this
time I had to sacrifice Rosa as well, this beautiful girl, who lives in my
house all year long and whom I scarcely notice—this sacrifice is too great, and
I must somehow in my own head subtly rationalize it away for the moment, in
order not to leave this family who cannot, even with their best will, give me
Rosa back again. But as I am closing up by hand bag and calling for my fur
coat, the family is standing together, the father sniffing the glass of rum in
his hand, the mother, probably disappointed in me—what more do these people
really expect?—tearfully biting her lips, and the sister flapping a very bloody
hand towel, I am somehow ready, in the circumstances, to concede that the young
man is perhaps nonetheless sick. I go to him. He smiles up at me, as if I was
bringing him the most nourishing kind of soup—ah, now both horses are
whinnying, the noise is probably supposed to come from higher regions in order
to illuminate my examination—and now I find out that, yes indeed, the young man
is ill. On his right side, in the region of the hip, a wound the size of the
palm of one’s hand has opened up. Rose coloured, in many different shadings,
dark in the depths, brighter on the edges, delicately grained, with uneven
patches of blood, open to the light like a mining pit. That’s what it looks
like from a distance. Close up a complication is apparent. Who can look at that
without whistling softly? Worms, as thick and long as my little finger,
themselves rose coloured and also spattered with blood, are wriggling their
white bodies with many limbs from their stronghold in the inner of the wound
towards the light. Poor young man, there’s no helping you. I have found out
your great wound. You are dying from this flower on your side. The family is
happy; they see me doing something. The sister says that to the mother, the
mother tells the father, the father tells a few guests who are coming in on tip
toe through the moonlight of the open door, balancing themselves with
outstretched arms. “Will you save me?” whispers the young man, sobbing, quite
blinded by the life inside his wound. That’s how people are in my region.
Always demanding the impossible from the doctor. They have lost the old faith.
The priest sits at home and tears his religious robes to pieces, one after the
other. But the doctor is supposed to achieve everything with his delicate
surgeon’s hand. Well, it’s what they like to think. I have not offered myself.
If they use me for sacred purposes, I let that happen to me as well. What more
do I want, an old country doctor, robbed of my servant girl! And they come, the
family and the village elders, and are taking my clothes off. A choir of school
children with the teacher at the head stands in front of the house and sings an
extremely simple melody with the words
Take his clothes
off, then he’ll heal,
and if he doesn’t cure, then kill him.
It’s only a doctor; it’s only a doctor.
Then I am stripped
of my clothes and, with my fingers in my beard and my head tilted to one side,
I look at the people quietly. I am completely calm and clear about everything
and stay that way, too, although it is not helping me at all, for they are now
taking me by the head and feet and dragging me into the bed. They lay me
against the wall on the side of wound. Then they all go out of the room. The
door is shut. The singing stops. Clouds move in front of the moon. The
bedclothes lie warmly around me. In the open space of the windows the horses’
heads sway like shadows. “Do you know,” I hear someone saying in my ear, “my
confidence in you is very small. You were only shaken out from somewhere. You
don’t come on your own feet. Instead of helping, you give me less room on my
deathbed. The best thing would be if I scratch your eyes out.” “Right,” I say,
“it’s a disgrace. But now I’m a doctor. What am I supposed to do? Believe me,
things are not easy for me either.” “Should I be satisfied with this excuse?
Alas, I’ll probably have to be. I always have to make do. I came into the world
with a beautiful wound; that was all I was furnished with.” “Young friend,” I
say, “your mistake is that you have no perspective. I’ve already been in all
the sick rooms, far and wide, and I tell you your wound is not so bad. Made in
a tight corner with two blows from an axe. Many people offer their side and
hardly hear the axe in the forest, to say nothing of the fact that it’s coming
closer to them.” “Is that really so, or are you deceiving me in my fever?” “It
is truly so. Take the word of honour of a medical doctor.” He took my word and
grew still. But now it was time to think about my escape. The horses were still
standing loyally in their place. Clothes, fur coat, and bag were quickly
gathered up. I didn’t want to delay by getting dressed; if the horses rushed as
they had on the journey out, I should, in fact, be springing out of that bed
into my own, as it were. One horse obediently pulled back from the window. I
threw the bundle into the carriage. The fur coat flew too far and was caught on
a hook by only one arm. Good enough. I swung myself up onto the horse. The
reins dragging loosely, one horse barely harnessed to the other, the carriage
swaying behind, last of all the fur coat in the snow. “Giddy up,” I said, but
there was no giddying up about it. We dragged slowly through the snowy desert
like old men; for a long time the fresh but inaccurate singing of the children
resounded behind us:
“Enjoy yourselves,
you patients.
The doctor’s laid in bed with you.”
I’ll never come
home at this rate. My flourishing practice is lost. A successor is robbing me,
but to no avail, for he cannot replace me. In my house the disgusting groom is
wreaking havoc. Rosa is his victim. I will not think it through. Naked,
abandoned to the frost of this unhappy age, with an earthly carriage and
unearthly horses, I drive around by myself, an old man. My fur coat hangs
behind the wagon, but I cannot reach it, and no one from the nimble rabble of
patients lifts a finger. Betrayed! Betrayed! Once one responds to a false alarm
on the night bell, there’s no making it good again—not ever.
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