CONVERSATIONS WITH KAFKA
175
"A pretty little dog," I said.
"A dog?" asked Kafka suspiciously, and slowly began to move
again.
"A small, young dog. Didn't you see it?"
"I saw. But was it a dog?"
"It was a little poodle."
"A poodle?
It
could be a dog, but it could also be a sign. We
Jews often make tragic mistakes."
"It was only a dog," I said.
"It would be a good thing
if
it was." Kafka nodded. "But the
only
is true only for him who uses it. What one person takes to be
a bundle of rags, or a dog, is for another a sign."
"Odradek, in your story
The Cares of the Father,"
I said.
Kafka did not respond to my words, and continued his former
train of thought with a final sentence:
"There is always something unaccounted for."
We walked in silence across the Teinhof. At the side door of
the Teinkirche I said:
"Bloy writes that the tragic guilt of the Jews is that they did
not recognize the Messiah."
"Perhaps that is really so," said Kafka. "Perhaps they really
did not recognize him. But what a cruel God it is who makes it
possible for his creatures not to recognize him. After all, a father
always makes himself known to his children, when they cannot think
or speak properly. But this is not a subject for a conversation on
the street. Besides, I've reached home."
Kafka nodded his head toward his father's warehouse, stretched
out his hand and said good-by, and with rapid steps disappeared into
the Kinsky Palais.
I accompanied Franz Kafka home from his office.
At the entrance to his parents' house we unexpectedly met Felix
Weltsch, Max Brod and his wife. They exchanged a few words and
arranged to meet in the evening at Oskar Baum's.
When Kafka's friends had left us, he remembered suddenly that
I had never met Brod's wife before.
"And I didn't introduce you properly," he said. "I am really
very sorry."
