The Hearing – After Kafka
I sit at a table. It is March but the warmth of the sun is magnified by the double layer of clouded glass in the window, making the room hot and oppressive. A young woman is next to me. She is kind and appears to want to help me but often I am confused by what she is saying. She asks me questions and because I want to help her, too, I try to give the correct answers.
Across the table there are three people I have not met before. One of them has dark skin, like mine. On his left there is a woman, to the right a man. They are both older than the dark-skinned man. On my side of the table there are two other women. The older one gives me medicine on instructions from the younger one. Both tell me that the medicine is making me better but when I look in the mirror I see a man I do not recognise. I see a man who is fat and slow. I know that this body is mine and that this man is me but the image in the glass tells me I am lost, perhaps forever.
The conversation between all the people in the room is about something which they call insight. This is not a word I had heard before I came to stay in the building. The woman who I believe to be a doctor tells the three strangers that my insight is still not complete. She explains that she is testing my resolve and my ability to hold responsibility. I can feel sweat trickling down my temples and onto my cheeks. I do not understand the doctor’s words but I am afraid to say so in case this is connected with what they call insight.
The nurse – for I believe, too, that she is nurse – tells the strangers that she knows me well and that I am now like a different person. I feel frightened, just as I feel frightened when I look in the mirror. I want to remain the same person but I know if I explain this it may impede my release from the building. The nurse is kind just as everyone in the room is kind but in spite of being so she lists my wrong-doing just as a magistrate might read out charges against a person in the dock. She tells the strangers that I do not like to get out of my bed in the morning and that there have been times when I have preferred my own medicine to that of the doctor. She says that I do not want to do the things she and the doctor want me to do in the world outside the building.
I wonder if, among all the changes that have been happening around me, the nurse and the doctor have become my parents under the law. I want to shout and to leave the room just as I did when the people who used to be my parents seemed to want to take my will and my identity away from me.
The dark-skinned man tells me he will discuss my freedom with the older man and woman across the table. He asks me to leave the room with the people who I know as my gaolers. They say they have other business to attend to, leaving me with the young woman who had been trying to secure my release. While we wait in the long corridor outside I can hear the voices of the officials in the room. At first they are solemn but quickly they begin to sound like the laughing happy voices I used to hear when I passed an inn or cafe in the part of the town where I have my home.
Suddenly they fall silent and the man with the dark skin opens the door and beckons us in. We sit down and he thanks me for coming, which I do not understand. He tells me he is sorry which I also do not understand but I have a sense of foreboding and of anger. It is clear from the way the older man and woman look down at the table and not at me that they will not grant me my freedom and that I no longer need to listen to what they are saying. My heart tells me I must turn the table over and insult them and perhaps even strike them but my mind instructs me to remain humble and to show gratitude for their wise decision. Also it reminds me that all gaolers eventually tire of their captives and mine will convince themselves in time that due to their hard work and great skill I have acquired this treasured gift of insight and accordingly I should be released from the building. Only then will I be able to begin my journey to find my soul again.