The Suffering of Being Kafka

The Suffering of Being Kafka

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Suffering of Being Kafka, by Sam Vaknin, Edited by Lidija Rangelovska
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Title: The Suffering of Being Kafka
Author: Sam Vaknin
Release Date: June 23, 2004 [eBook #12701]
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUFFERING OF BEING KAFKA***
Copyright (C) 2004 by Lidija Rangelovska.

The Suffering of Being Kafka
1st EDITION
Sam Vaknin
Editing and Design: Lidija Rangelovska
Lidija Rangelovska A Narcissus Publications Imprint Skopje 2004
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.
(c) 2004 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from: Lidija Rangelovska - write to: [email protected] or to [email protected]
Short Fiction in English and Hebrew http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/ http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html
Poetry of Healing and Abuse http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
Anatomy of a Mental Illness http://samvak.tripod.com/journal11.html
Download free anthologies here: http://samvak.tripod.com/freebooks.html
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited http://samvak.tripod.com/
Created by: Lidija Rangelovska, Skopje REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

C O N T E N T S

Short Fiction A Beheaded Cart Language of Black and Red On the Bus to Town The Butterflies are Laughing The Con Man Cometh Janusz Courts Dinah My Affair with Jesus The Last Days The Future of Madeleine The Out Kid Pierre's Friends Death of the Poet Redemption Shalev is Silent Pet Snail Write Me a Letter
Poetry of Healing and Abuse Our Love Alivid Moi Aussi Cutting to Existence A Hundred Children The Old Gods Wander In the Concentration Camp Called Home The Miracle of the Kisses Fearful Love My Putrid Lover When You Wake the Morning Narcissism Prague at Dusk In Moist Propinquity Prowling Getting Old Sally Ann Selfdream Snowflake Haiku Twinkle Star Synthetic Joy Tableaux (van Gogh)
The Author

The Suffering of Being Kafka
Short Fiction
A Beheaded Cart
by Sam Vaknin
(In Hebrew, the word "Agala" means both cart and the feminine form of calf. A beheaded calf is among the sacrificial offerings enumerated in the Bible).
My grandfather, cradling an infant's crib, departed. Navigating left and right, far along the pavement, he reached a concrete, round, post. There he rested, sheltered from the humid sun by peeling posters for lachrymose Turkish films. He pushed the crib outside the penumbral circle and waited.
Curious folks besieged the old man and his orphaned frame and then proceeded to buy from him the salted seeds and sweets that he lay, meticulously organised, inside the crib. My grandfather smiled at them through sea-blue eyes, as he wrapped the purchased sweetmeats in rustling brown paper bags.
My embarrassed uncles built for him a creaking wooden cart from remaindered construction materials. They painted it green and mounted it on large, thin-tyred, wheels borrowed from an ancient pram. They attached to it a partitioned table-top confiscated from the greengrocer down the lane. Every morning, forehead wrinkled, my grandfather would fill the wooden compartments with various snacks and trinkets, at pains to separate them neatly. Black sunflower seeds, white pumpkin seeds, the salted and the sweet, tiny plastic toys bursting with candies, whistles, and rattles.
Still, he never gave up his crib, installing it on top of his squeaking vehicle, and filling it to its tattered brim with a rainbow of offerings. At night, he stowed it under the cart, locking it behind its two crumbling doors, among the unsold merchandise.
With sunrise, my grandfather would exit the house and head towards the miniature plot of garden adjoining it. He would cross the patch, stepping carefully on a pebbled path in its midst. Then, sighing but never stooping, he would drive his green trolley - a tall and stout and handsome man, fair-skinned and sapphire-eyed. "A movie star" - they gasped behind his back. Day in and day out, he impelled his rickety pushcart to its concrete post, there dispensing to the children with a smile, a permanence till dusk. With sunset, he gathered his few goods, bolted the fledgling flaps, and pushed back home, a few steps away.
When he grew old, he added to his burden a stool with an attached umbrella, to shield him from the elements, and a greenish nylon sheet to protect his wares. He became a fixture in this town of my birth. His lime cart turned into a meeting spot - "by Pardo", they would say, secure in the knowledge that he would always be there, erect and gracious. Like two forces of nature, my grandpa and the concrete post - older than the fading movie posters - watched the town transformed, roads asphalted, children turn adults, bringing their off-spring to buy from him a stick of bitter black