Kafka in Brontëland

By Tamar Yellin

Fiction · Reprints · August 16, 2002

I leave the library with a strange reverence. It is as though the town and its cenotaph carry a peculiar secret, which I have stumbled on in the pages of a book. I see them for a moment with different eyes.

Having soaped my arm to remove Mrs. Rahim’s obstinate bangles, Hilda has lent me another book, John Wesley in Yorkshire. I thank her politely. I have not yet learnt any of the pieces in the Methodist Hymn Book.

My front door is open. Derek strides in, a big rangy man, and without a word he buries his pickaxe in my smooth white ceiling. It smashes up like papier mache. He grins a long sideways grin.

“By heck, I hope I’m right about this.”

He heaves at the plasterboard with all his strength and it comes crackling down, along with a shower of dirt and beetles which covers us both.

My beams are there. My revelation. The double crossbeam, backbone of the house: the ribwork of joists between. One has a blackened bite taken out of it where the oil lantern used to be. All are hung with a drapery of webs. Not so beautiful just now, perhaps: but when I have scrubbed them and scraped them, sanded and stained them, varnished them three times with tender loving care, they will be magnificent.

Derek stoops and picks out something from the heap of dirt: a piece of metal wrapped in a strip of cloth. “Old stays,” he mutters. He raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Lady of the house must have been dressing herself up there,” he says, “and dropped ‘em through the floorboards. An heirloom for you.”

He hands it ceremoniously to me. I use it as a bookmark.

When he has left I go for a walk on the moors. The sun is setting: lights are coming on in the valley. Someone is walking towards me down the moorland track.

It is Mr. Kafka. He is following his slow dog down the hill to the village. He has nearly finished his walk, and his head is bent, contemplatively.

I wonder whether to acknowledge him. I am afraid to disturb his silence. He does not often speak to people. Sometimes he nods a greeting to those he knows.

As we pass each other my voice chokes in my throat, I can say nothing ; but I manage a smile. Our eyes meet ; he smiles back at me.

It seems a smile of recognition, and for the briefest moment he resembles once more the Kafka of the photographs.

“Kafka in Brontëland” can be found in Leviathan 3 (Ministry of Whimsy, 2002), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre.

Copyright © 2002 by Tamar Yellin.