The Death of Josef K.
Not Franz Kafka
Note to readers: This short story is an alternate ending to the Franz Kafka novel The Trial, a strangely-written yet somehow meaningful novel familiar to Honors Sophomore English students. I wrote it last year, using Kafka’s uniquely confusing and horrifying style. The genre of this story would best be described as “grotesque horror.”
Josef K. was sitting at his desk in the office, staring out the window at passers-by, idly wondering if they, too, were being processed by the Court and how each one might react. He saw a frail, elderly woman with a limp trip over on the sidewalk, but no one helped her get up or even looked at her. Finally, she pulled herself up and continued walking along. She would not last any time at all under the Court; she would confess, and they would close her trial so quickly that no one would even remember her case. Next, he saw a tall, gaunt man dragging along a small child who was more interested in looking at the other people on the street than in walking with the man. The man never looked any direction but straight ahead, never looking at others nor at the child. K. stared at the man’s receding back until he disappeared into the distance, hoping the man would turn and look right at him. The man never did. He would fight the Court nobly, never confessing anything, and, even if he lost his case, it would be one remembered by the Court forever.
K. took a large swig of his hot coffee, relishing the bitterness and the burning sensation, telling himself how manly it was that he had brewed the communal coffee pot extra strong and hot purely for himself. The other clerks at the bank would have to learn to drink as he did, not quite allowing the coffee to stay on the tongue for long enough to really feel it, or they would burn themselves. For a moment, he contemplated Kaminer, with his wide, stupid grin, trying the drink the coffee and being unable to. Although it burned his throat, K. drank the rest of his coffee in one gulp, willing the other clerks to look at him, wanting to see how they reacted to his strength. None of them looked up.
A few minutes, or perhaps an hour, later, K. felt the need to relieve himself due to his consumption of the coffee. He pushed back the faded green chair he sat on and walked down the hallway towards the bank’s restrooms, looking straight ahead the whole time and walking with a businesslike air. The inside of the bank’s men’s restroom had a dingy, yellowing light and a grotty tile floor. Three men, dressed in the somber gray suits standard to all the bank employees, were using all but two of the urinals. Despite the available space at the end of the line of urinals further from the other men, K. selected the center urinal to do his business. When he looked down at the urinal, he saw something new: a small message embedded in the porcelain. It said AIM HERE in bold, black letters and had a smiley face. A paper card hung above the urinal informed K. that the bank was cutting costs by switching from nightly cleanings to weekly ones, and all employees were required to help by keeping the restrooms clean. He started to urinate, but a sudden moment of rebellion against the bank’s control of his most basic function prompted him to turn to the right, spilling his urine onto the floor. There was a mop in the corner; he could have cleaned it up, but there were other men who would watch and he could not be seen fixing his own mistake, especially by doing such a menial job. If the other men noticed what K. had done, they did not comment; such was the etiquette of the men’s room – no one ever talked. Even if there were twenty men in it, it was, for each one, as if he was perfectly alone. K. perfunctorily washed his hands, tore off a precise length of paper towel, dried his hands, and left the restroom without so much as a glance back.
When he passed the communal coffee pot, K. saw that it was still empty. Mentally cursing the bank’s cost-cutting that had removed the attendant who should have brewed the pot, yet secretly relishing the opportunity to increase the bitterness and heat of the coffee to punish the weaker clerks, he set another pot brewing. For reasons he could describe to himself, he was reluctant to return to his desk, so he waited at the coffee pot, drawing a paper from his pocket and pretending to read it, even though there was no one watching him and the deputy director never criticized K.’s time management. At last, the coffee finished brewing, and he brought a hot mug of it back to his desk. He had not been sleeping well for the past few days, and he needed the coffee to continue performing as the bank wanted him to.
Despite the extra coffee, K. could not focus on his work. A meeting with an important client passed in a blur. Halfway through the meeting, he felt trapped by the client’s questions that he would ordinarily have fended off easily. He mumbled “excuse me” and went to the restroom again. Along the way, he saw Kaminer look up, grinning at him. K. yelled sharply, “Get back to work! We have a lot to do!” Kaminer replied, “Yes, Josef.” K. thought it was a little odd for Kaminer, a little clerk of no consequence in the bank, to use his first name, but he satisfied himself by telling himself that his position in the bank was secure enough that the disrespect of one subordinate would do nothing to damage him. Once in the restroom, K. peed in the same urinal again. There was only one other man in the restroom, and that man was washing his hands, preparing to leave. Despite the copious quantities of coffee he had consumed, he found it difficult to pee. He saw, on the floor, the same pool of pee he left last time. No one had cleaned it up for him, as he had hoped they would. It had spread out, filling in the cracks in the tiled floor. This time, he did not deliberately miss the urinal. He managed to pee without spilling any on the floor. He had hoped, when escaping the client, that the insular culture of the restroom would offer some solace, but, once in the restroom, he felt a pressing need to leave the restroom and return to his client. This feeling was so strong that he forgot to wash his hands on the way out.
On his way back to his desk, K. filled himself another mug of coffee, this time drinking it all while standing by the coffee pot. Another clerk, one who must not have been very important because K. did not know his name, seemed to want to access the coffee pot, but K. pretended not to notice him and blocked the way. After finishing the coffee, he left the mug for the lesser clerk to deal with and started walking back to his desk to finish the meeting with the client. K. did not even make it back to his desk before he felt the urgent need to pee once more. He turned back towards the restroom.
K. pushed past the lesser clerk, who was sucking his finger after having apparently burned it on the overly hot coffee K. had brewed, and rushed into the restroom. There was no one else there. The puddle of urine was still where he had left it only minutes before, but the smell of it had spread, hitting K. like a wall. He purposely ignored it, deliberately inhaling deep breaths of the fetid air to pretend the urine was not there. Once again, he stood in front of the center urinal and tried to pee. He could not. He felt the overwhelming desire to relieve himself, but the pee was trapped within him. He felt a sudden awareness of the urine within him, poisoning him from the inside out, and felt a sense of revulsion. With the pressure of the impatient client who was probably still waiting at his desk, he tried harder but still could not pee. He danced the absurd little jig of one who cannot pee, hoping that no one would come in and see his predicament.
Suddenly, K. yelled to the reeking walls and the grotty floor and the fetid air, “I AM INNOCENT,” jumped up, struck his head on an iron pipe he had not noticed, and fell down, landing in the pool of his own urine and drowning in the puddle that had seemed so shallow. Josef K. died alone and afraid and with unfinished business.
