Kafka on the GateKeepers

[grarpamp]

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from
the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper
says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks
about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later
on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to
the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side,
so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the
inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it
tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But
take note. I am powerful. And I am only the lowliest gatekeeper. But
from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the last.
I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the
country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be
accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely
at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his
long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better
to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives
him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the
gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be
let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The
gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his
homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions,
the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more
that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself
with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how
valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as
he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you
have failed to do anything.”
During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost
continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one
seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the
unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud;
later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. He becomes
childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has
also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas
to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak,
and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or
whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in
the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the
gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his
death he gathers up in his head all his experiences of the entire time
into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves
to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The
gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the difference between
them has changed considerably to the disadvantage of the man. “What do
you want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.”
“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in
these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper
sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his
diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can
gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going
now to close it.”
-- Kafka