Sleeping Isn’t Walking

For the last few months, I have been renting a room in Bernal Heights. I got a great deal (by San Francisco standards anyhow.) For $600 a month, I get a virtually empty 4 bedroom house with hardwood floors, a washer and dryer in the basement and an upright downstairs. Of course, it was known to me that I would have to move out by October 1st, which is now quickly approaching.

Though I have been preparing for my move, taking great advantage of the two remaining weeks, everything changed on Saturday. While opening my bedroom door, three mice (no, for the five billionth time, they were NOT blind) scurried across the floor. Now, we have had mice in the downstairs portion of the house the entire time I have been there, which did not bother me TOO much. However, the thought of these dirty animals crawling across my face or into my shoes at night is unbearable.

My dearest friend, Ian, sent me an email which contained writing that Kafka did when he too experienced these unwanted pests. I greatly dread sleeping in my room for two more nights, jamming a towel under my door as I enter and leave the room. Kafka (Ian) have made this experience much less miserable.

Kafka: letter to Felix Weltsch, mid-November 1917

Dear Felix, the first great flaw of Zurau: a night of mice, a frightening experience. I am unscathed and my hair is no whiter than yesterday, but it was the most horrifying thing in the world. For some time now I've heard them here and there (my writing is continually interrupted, you'll soon see why), every now and then at night I've been hearing a soft nibbling, once I even got out of bed, trembling, to take a look, and then it stopped at once----but this time it was an uproar. What a dreadful, mute, and noisy race. At two I was awakened by a rustling near my bed and it didn't let up from then until morning. Up the coal box, down the coal box, crossing the room diagonally, running in circles, nibbling the woodwork, whistling softly when not moving, and all the while the sensation of silence, of the clandestine labor of an oppressed proletarian race to whom the night belongs.

After that first night, no matter to whom he was writing, Kafka spoke of mice. The subject lent itself to endless variations, all the more so when Kafka introduced, in self-defense, the presence of a cat, which raised further questions:

I can drive the mice away using the cat, but then how will I drive the cat away? Do you imagine you have nothing against mice? Naturally, you don't have anything against cannibals either, but if at night they crept out from under all the cupboards gnashing their teeth, you surely couldn't bear them any longer. Anyway, I'm now trying to harden myself, observing the field mice on my walks; they're not so bad, but my room isn't a field and sleeping isn't walking.