Franz and the Doll

While we were in Berlin, Franz often went to our local ark in Steiglitz. Sometimes I went with him. One day we met a little girl.  She was weeping an appeared to be in complete despair.  We spoke to her, Franz questioned her, and we learned that she had just lost her doll. At once he invented a sufficiently plausible story to explain the disappearance of the doll: “You doll has simply gone on a journey --  I know because she’s written me a letter.”   The little girl was a bit suspicious: “Have you got it on you?”  “No, I left it at home by mistake, but I’ll bring it with me tomorrow.”  Intrigued, the child has already almost forgotten what made her so upset in the first place.  And Franz went home immediately to write the letter.  He set to work with the same seriousness he displayed when composing one of his own works, and in the same state of tension he always inhabited at his table, even when writing a postcard.  Besides, it was a real labour, as essential as the others, since the child must at all costs not be cheated, but truly appeased, and since the lie must be transformed into the truth of reality by means of the truth of fiction. The next day he ran with the letter to the little girl who was waiting for him in the park.  As she did not know how to read, he read the letter out to her. The doll declared that she was tired of living in the same family all the time, expressed her longing for a change of air, and in a word to go a little away from her – a little girl whom, indeed, she loved, but from whom she had no choice but to separate.  She promised that she would write every day and, in fact, Kafka wrote a daily letter telling of new adventures which evolved very rapidly, according to the special rhythm of the life of dolls.  After a few days the child had forgotten the loss of her real toy and had no thought for anything but the fiction she had been offered in exchange.  Franz wrote every sentence of the novel with an attention to the minutiae, with a precision full of humour, which rendered the situation completely acceptable.  The doll grew up, went to school, got to know other people.  She continued to assure the child of her love but made allusions to the complexity of her life, to other obligations, too other interests which made it impossible, for the time being, to live with her.  The little girl was invited to reflect on this and was made ready for the inevitable renunciation.  The game lasted at least three weeks.  And Franz was u=in terrible distress at the thought of having to bring it to an end. For it was necessary that the end should be exactly right, that is to say, capable of substituting order for the disorder brought about by the loss of the doll.  He cast about for a long time and finally decided to marry off the doll. He described the young man, the engagement, the wedding preparations in the country, then, in great detail, the house of the young couple: “You yourself will understand, said the doll, we must give up seeing each other.”  Franz had resolved a child’s conflict through art, the best method he possessed for bringing order into the world.