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<\/a><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n As Franz Kafka awoke one morning from fevered dreams, he found himself transformed in his Ikea bed into a gigantic Author. Later, Max Brod visited him and asked why Franz was still in the Ikea bed, and not looking so well.<\/p>\n \u201cA bug,\u201d Kafka said.<\/p>\n \u201cA bug?\u201d asked Brod.<\/p>\n \u201cFlu bug,\u201d said the gigantic Author.<\/p>\n \u201cAh, flu bug,\u201d answered the friend.<\/p>\n Later still, Kafka said: \u201cBurn all my manuscripts, Max.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan\u2019t you burn them yourself, Franz,\u201d his dear friend said with some pique, feeling a bit put upon at this point.<\/p>\n \u201cI want you to burn them for me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou lazy, fucking Kraut,\u201d Max shouted. \u201cGet the fuck outta that Ikea bed and burn the fucking manuscripts yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMax, Max,\u201d the gigantic Author said, twitching. \u201cI have a bug.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cQuite right,\u201d Max said. \u201cWhen do you want me to burn all your manuscripts?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I die,\u201d the gigantic bug-eyed Author said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen is that, prey tell?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnon,\u201d Kafka answered.<\/p>\n Even later than when it was later still, Kafka said: \u201cMax, Max, this bug is getting worse. I\u2019m dying. Before I go, one more thing. I am not a Kraut. I may be a Shmuck, a Shlemazl and an Oiky Turd. But I am not a Kraut. I\u2019m Czech. I\u2019m a Czech, mate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCheckmate,\u201d Max Brod said, and went off to look for stick matches with which to burn the putative manuscripts of the gigantic Author.<\/p>\n Alone in his room, Kafka tossed furiously and turned ferociously, so big in his Ikea bed was he with the swelling of his forthcoming Fame, he knocked into walls, ripping the Ikea duvet and Ikea pillows to shreds in his Fever.<\/p>\n \u201cA bug, a bug,\u201d he said, burning up as if he himself were those manuscripts on fire.<\/p>\n When Max Brod returned with a box of stick matches, he said: \u201cNow where are those manuscripts you want me to burn for you?\u201d<\/p>\n But the gigantic Author did not answer, wherein he had nothing more to say. Therein Max ferreted about, looking for the alleged manuscripts. But he could not find them straight away.<\/p>\n \u201cNow what the hell am I supposed to do with this Czech fiend who has gone and died because of that bug he had?\u201d Max asked himself. \u201cI spent a few quid on these fucking stick matches, so there had better be a bundle of fucking manuscripts to burn.\u201d<\/p>\n Kafka lay there as silently as Lenin in his tomb, as iconic as Elvis Presley, as enigmatic as the Holy Ghost. Even as Brod stared at his dead friend, the dead friend\u2019s reputation was growing bountifully and leapingly, spreading through the countryside, running along the rails of Europe, shining forth on boatloads of tourists and immigrants bound for Amerika and beyond. Even Chinese disident students read his stories aloud, as did Korean and Japanese businessmen snowbound at Narita Airport outside of Tokyo. Ghurkas kept copies of the stories in their Ghurka hats. Formula One race-car drivers in Monte Carlo sat in pitstops, holding up the race, as they thumbed through various tales by the Gigantic Author from Prague. He had become as big and mystical as the Black Madonna of Poland or the Infant of Prague. Gauchos in Argentina, loping through the Pampas, swopped favorite lines from Kafka with other gauchos. A nun in Mexico kept a copy under her black gown. A boy and girl in Kansas sat in their barn reading the stories aloud. Even presidents of large countries quoted from the stories, speaking of themselves as Bullshit Artists. A philosopher in Cambridge, England said that he read the stories and felt almost as if he were Franz Kafka. But who is Franz Kafka? he asked. No one quite knew how to answer that question. Franz Kafka was Franz Kafka, and then again he was not Franz Kafka. He was Franz Kafka.<\/p>\n \u201cWho is Franz Kafka?\u201d Max Brod asked. \u201cI will tell you who he is. He is this lousy loafer in that Ikea bed, forever asking me to burn this, burn that. Then he pretends to die on me. He pretends to have slipped the mortal coil. Fuck him. That\u2019s what I say. Fuck Franz Kafka.\u201d<\/p>\n Max tossed the box of stick matches across the room.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, to hell with this,\u201d he said. \u201cBurn the fucking manuscripts yourself, you ungrateful bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n With that, Max stormed out.<\/p>\n 1.<\/p>\n There was an old Irish relative, May Faherty (pronounced Farty), whose name always made us laugh, and then get smacked for laughing, and she would visit us a few times every year, along with her husband, the very silent and polite Christy.<\/p>\n 2.<\/p>\n May was short and wide and had a moony full face, not a Coole, I presume, she had to be a Hopkins from Mayo, out on the island from Queens, usually on a Sunday like this day, early in the month of May, the sun shining, flowers in blooms, everything springing forth and burgeoning, one by one.<\/p>\n 3.<\/p>\n May Farty (tittering child \/ smacks all around) visited us in May, that was one of her months for visitations, and then maybe in December or January. I have no idea what she did the rest of the year, but there were no children which she and the Christy (silent, broodless, courteous, invisible) had. Instead, May lavished her attention on us, bringing my mother flowers\u2014the only time of year she received them\u2014and ice cream for the kids, the sting of the smack softened by the coldness of the ice cream (strawberry, vanilla, chocolate)<\/p>\n 4.<\/p>\n from Breyer\u2019s, specks of bean in the vanilla, the strawberry almost pinkish red, and the chocolate brown, we sat in the cool, sunny yard on the pink metal glider (already broken, though new), and the fantastic smell of lilacs, deep purply and blooming, in front of<\/p>\n 5.<\/p>\n the dining room window, bushes white with flowers, though the hollyhock was not going to bloom until the summer months, weeks and weeks away. May meant that one of us (this meant me) had to cut the grass with the manual lawn mower.<\/p>\n 6.<\/p>\n I also had to get the manual hedge clippers oiled, after taking them down from their perch on a wall hook in the broken down, dilapidated garage, starting my wearying journey of clipping at the front of the garage, then working down the street eastward along Lafayette,<\/p>\n 7.<\/p>\n turning at Astor Place, into the shade of the beech tree, clipping furiously until my arms felt like they might fall off, and then going inside for a glass of water to drink, only to confront May and Christy, the Fartys,<\/p>\n 8.<\/p>\n (titter, titter \/ smack, smack), putting on their hats, hers a spring bonnet of white and lace, and his a plain-looking fedora, one of those tweed contraptions of very rural older men. May also wore white cotton gloves with fake pearls sewn on, offering me her dainty Mayo hand to shake goodbye, with a kiss on the cheek, a peck, the smell of Chanel<\/p>\n 9.<\/p>\n #5 on the air, competing with the heavy scent of the lilac bush wafting through the dining room windows\u2014he looks so much like a Hopkins, May says of me\u2014only her cousin Jackie Coole is having none of these complements\u2014he\u2019s a bum, like his brothers, my father retorts\u2014despite<\/p>\n 10.<\/p>\n there being no evidence to prove his character-assassinating assertion, his soul-crushing remark, smack\/smack, the Fartys at the door, do I dare make\u2014to send the two of them on their way\u2014a wind-breaking noise, the Bronx cheer,<\/p>\n 11.<\/p>\n with my mouth, and then dash out the door, before my father could catch and throttle me good, forget the smacks, it would be worth it, wouldn\u2019t it, Mickey Mack, only I am saved by a younger brother Terry, making a fart noise<\/p>\n 12.<\/p>\n as May and Christy Faherty leave the premises and walk the ten minutes to the train station to take them back to Queens, their journey taking them past two excellent homemade ice-cream parlors, a Swedish bakery, a funeral parlor, a religious shop, and any number of ginmills and saloons.<\/p>\n 13.<\/p>\n There is the sound of a father, strap off, pants falling about his ass, chasing little Terry Coole around the dining room table. Perhaps neither of them is aware of the smell of the lilac bush, wafting through the two windows into the tiny dining room. Terry screams for help, but everyone is outside, post-ice-cream lethargic, ignoring his pleas.<\/p>\n 14.<\/p>\n I am back to trimming hedges, the last part of it, along Astor Place, in the shade of the beech tree, only now it is too cool to work in a tee-shirt, so I have put on a sweatshirt to keep me warm, as my weary-weary arms chop-chop the hedges with the heavy blades of the newly oiled hedge clipper. The task is far from over, though. Now I must find a bag big enough to put the clipped hedge bits after I have swept them up with the outside broom.<\/p>\n 15.<\/p>\n I trim the hedges, then sweep up the bits on the ground, putting them in a large bag afterwards, hardly a bum\u2019s work, though it is a mug\u2019s game. There is no credit where credit is due, no thanks for the work done. I am a slave to these immigrants, these slavers. One day I will leave them for good, tying a bag of food on a stick, and walking down the train tracks away from them, the way Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin do in their movies.<\/p>\n 16.<\/p>\n Already the coolness of evening suggests itself, summer moments away, school nearly out, the old man works furiously in the tiny kitchen, banging around pots and pans, as he prepares to re-cycle the stale beer for Welsh rabbit.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n