upon which the sage had
ruthlessly drawn to the fullest extent of its capacities. He had been
fed and tended in his unconsciousness, he had, unknown to himself,
opened his eyes at regular intervals, and had absorbed through his ears
a series of vivid impressions destined to disarm his suspicions, when
he was at last allowed to wake and move about the world again. With
unfailing forethought Keyork had planned the details of a whole series
of artificial reminiscences, and at the moment when Kafka came to
himself in the carriage the machinery of memory began to work as Keyork
had intended that it should.

Israel Kafka leaned back against the cushions and reviewed his life
during the past month. He remembered very well the afternoon when,
after a stormy interview with Unorna, he had been persuaded by Keyork to
accompany the latter upon a rapid southward journey. He remembered how
he had hastily packed together a few necessaries for the expedition,
while Keyork stood at his elbow advising him what to take and what to
leave, with the sound good sense of an experienced traveller, and he
could almost repeat the words of the message he had scrawled on a sheet
of paper at the last minute to explain his sudden absence from his
lodging--for the people of the house had all been away when he was
packing his belongings. Then the hurry of the departure recalled itself
to him, the crowds of people at the Franz Josef station, the sense
of rest in finding himself alone with Keyork in a compartment of the
express train; after that he had slept during most of the journey,
waking to find himself in a city of the snow-driven Tyrol. With
tolerable distinctness he remembered the sights he had seen, and
fragments of conversation--then another departure, still southward,
the crossing of the Alps, Italy, Venice--a dream of water and sun and
beautiful buildings, in which the varied conversational powers of his
companion found constant material. As a matter of fact the conversation
was what was most clearly impressed upon Kafka's mind, as he recalled
the rapid passage from one city to another, and realised how many
places he had visited in one short month. From Venice southwards,
again, Florence, Rome, Naples, Sicily, by sea to Athens and on to
Constantinople, familiar to him already from former visits--up the
Bosphorus, by the Black Sea to Varna, and then, again, a long period of
restful sleep during the endless railway journey--Pesth, Vienna, rap