RONALD HAYMAN
359
Windows and doors a re abnormall y important in Kafk a's work because
he could never feel p roprietorial about sp ace: it was always a ma tter of
survey ing a li en territory or tresp ass ing on it. H e often daydreamed
about leaving Prague, but until he was thirty-one years old he never
managed (except for a few months in 1914 when there was no room for
him) to move out o f his parents' fl at into a room o f his own . His
bedroom was like a corridor. His parents had to walk th rough it to get
from the li ving room to their bedroom , and if his mo ther saw Kafka's
jacket hang ing up with a letter sti cking out of the pocket, she was quite
li abl e to fi sh it out and read it. She did that with one of Felice's letters,
and then asked Feli ce to use her influence on Franz
to
make him eat
more and sleep more.
I doubt wh ether an yone h as been more sensitive to n o ise than
Kafk a was, and we w ill never quantify the agon y he suffered from
famil y shouting ma tch es, laughter, doors slamming, taps running,
househo ld obj ects being dropped. There is the occas ional pointer to
this in the di ar ies, but except for one oblique remark-tha t he felt like
vomiting when h e saw the ma trimonia l bed, the bed linen no longer
clean , the carefull y la id out nightshirts-there is no po inter to the
sound that must h ave been nearly unbearable. H ermann Kafk a was no t
the sort of man who would feel obliged to respect his sensitive son 's
nervous sys tem by inhibiting or even modifying the noises he wanted
to make whil e coupling with his w ife. We know the walls were thin
enough for Kafka to hear if his fa ther coughed in bed , so he must have
heard a grea t dea l bes ides coughing. Poss ibl y that is one o f the reasons
he evolved the insane and exhausting routine of trying to sleep in the
late afternoon after he h ad come home from the offi ce and h ad
something to ea t. Then he tried to rouse himself into writing and go on
until the small h ours o f the morning. Defying his congenital weakness,
though onl y too aware of it, he was trying, in effect, to crowd two short
days into everyon e. His routine was more comfortable and more
productive wh en h e found a room of his own in 191 5, but as soon as he
had the hemorrhage, just over two years la ter, he gave up trying to live
on his own. For about eight months he stayed in the country with his
sister Ottla, and after tha t lived with his parents aga in for five years.
Apar t from eight months in a mountain sanatorium and three more
months with Ottla after she h ad married , he went on living in hi s
father 's fl a t until nin e months before he died. So he could never feel
that a house or a fl a t or even a room belonged to him . Throughout all
the stints of freedom he h ad outside wh at he came to think of as a
prison , it was a lways a ma tter of living as Ottla 's gues t or renting a
