The Burrow - Franz Kafka

The Burrow


 I have completed the construction of my burrow and it seems to be successful. All that
can be seen from outside is a big hole; that, however, really leads nowhere; if you take a
few steps you strike against natural firm rock. I can make no boast of having contrived this
ruse intentionally; it is simply the remains of one of my many abortive building attempts,
but finally it seemed to me advisable to leave this one hole without filling it in. True, some
ruses are so subtle that they defeat themselves, I know that better than anyone, and it is
certainly a risk to draw attention by this hole to the fact that there may be something in the
vicinity worth inquiring into. But you do not know me if you think I am afraid, or that I built
my burrow simply out of fear. At a distance of some thousand paces from this hole lies,
covered by a movable layer of moss, the real entrance to the burrow; it is secured as
safely as anything in this world can be secured; yet someone could step on the moss or
break through it, and then my burrow would lie open, and anybody who liked -- please
note, however, that quite uncommon abilities would also be required -- could make his way
in and destroy everything for good. I know that very well, and even now, at the zenith of
my life, I can scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquility; at that one point in the dark
moss I am vulnerable, and in my dreams I often see a greedy muzzle sniffing around it
persistently. It will be objected that I could quite well have filled in the entrance too, with a
thin layer of hard earth on top and with loose soil further down, so that it would not cost me
much trouble to dig my way out again whenever I liked. But that plan is impossible;
prudence itself demands that I should have a way of leaving at a moment's notice if
necessary, prudence itself demands, as alas! so often, to risk one's life. All this involves
very laborious calculation, and the sheer pleasure of the mind in its own keenness is often
the sole reason why one keeps it up. I must have a way of leaving at a moment's notice,
for, despite all my vigilance, may I not be attacked from some quite unexpected quarter? I
live in peace in the inmost chamber of my house, and meanwhile the enemy may be
burrowing his way slowly and stealthily straight toward me. I do not say that he has a
better scent than I; probably he knows as little about me as I of him. But there are
insatiable robbers who burrow blindly through the ground, and to whom the very size of my
house gives the hope of hitting by chance on some of its far-flung passages. I certainly
have the advantage of being in my own house and knowing all the passages and how they
run. A robber may very easily become my victim and a succulent one too. But I am
growing old; I am not as strong as many others, and my enemies are countless; it could
well happen that in flying from one enemy I might run into the jaws of another. Anything
might happen! In any case I must have the confident knowledge that somewhere there is
an exit easy to reach and quite free, where I have to do nothing whatever to get out, so
that I might never -- Heaven shield us! -- suddenly feel the teeth of the pursuer in my flank
while I am desperately burrowing away, even if it is at loose easy soil. And it is not only by
external enemies that I am threatened. There are also enemies in the bowels of the earth.
I have never seen them, but legend tells of them and I firmly believe in them. They are
creatures of the inner earth; not even legend can describe them. Their very victims can
scarcely have seen them; they come, you hear the scratching of their claws just under you
in the ground, which is their element, and already you are lost. Here it is of no avail to
console yourself with the thought that you are in your own house; far rather are you in
theirs. Not even my exit could save me from them; indeed in all probability it would not
save me in any case, but rather betray me; yet it is a hope, and I cannot live without it.
Apart from this main exit I am also connected with the outer world by quite narrow,
tolerably safe passages which provide me with good fresh air to breathe. They are the
work of the field mice. I have made judicious use of them, transforming them into an
organic part of my burrow. They also give me the possibility of scenting things from afar,
and thus serve as a protection. All sorts of small fry, too, come running through them, and I
devour these; so I can have a certain amount of subterranean hunting, sufficient for a
modest way of life, without leaving my burrow at all; and that is naturally a great
advantage.


 But the most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness. Of course, that is deceptive.
At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over. For the time being, however,
the silence is still with me. For hours I can stroll through my passages and hear nothing
except the rustling of some little creature, which I immediately reduce to silence between
my jaws, or the pattering of soil, which draws my attention to the need for repair; otherwise
all is still. The fragrance of the woods floats in; the place feels both warm and cool.
Sometimes I lie down and roll about in the passage with pure joy. When autumn sets in, to
possess a burrow like mine, and a roof over your head, is great good fortune for anyone
getting on in years. Every hundred yards I have widened the passages into little round
cells; there I can curl myself up in comfort and lie warm. There I sleep the sweet sleep of
tranquility, of satisfied desire, of achieved ambition; for I possess a house. I do not know
whether it is a habit that still persists from former days, or whether the perils even of this
house of mine are great enough to awaken me; but invariably every now and then I start
up out of profound sleep and listen, listen into the stillness which reigns here unchanged
day and night, smile contentedly, and then sink with loosened limbs into still profounder
sleep. Poor homeless wanderers in the roads and woods, creeping for warmth into a heap
of leaves or a herd of their comrades, delivered to all the perils of heaven and earth! I lie
here in a room secured on every side -- there are more than fifty such rooms in my burrow
-- and pass as much of my time as I choose between dozing and unconscious sleep.
Not quite in the center of the burrow, carefully chosen to serve as a refuge in case of
extreme danger from siege if not from immediate pursuit, lies the chief cell. While all the
rest of the burrow is the outcome rather of intense intellectual than of physical labor, this
Castle Keep was fashioned by the most arduous labor of my whole body. Several times, in
the despair brought on by physical exhaustion, I was on the point of giving up the whole
business, flung myself down panting and cursed the burrow, dragged myself outside and
left the place lying open to all the world. I could afford to do that, for I had no longer any
wish to return to it, until at last, after four hours or days, back I went repentantly, and when
I saw that the burrow was unharmed I could almost have raised a hymn of thanksgiving,
and in sincere gladness of heart started on the work anew. My labors on the Castle Keep
were also made harder, and unnecessarily so (unnecessarily in that the burrow derived no
real benefit from those labors), by the fact that just at the place where, according to my
calculations, the Castle Keep should be, the soil was very loose and sandy and had
literally to be hammered and pounded into a firm state to serve as a wall for the beautifully
vaulted chamber. But for such tasks the only tool I possess is my forehead. So I had to run
with my forehead thousands and thousands of times, for whole days and nights, against
the ground, and I was glad when the blood came, for that was a proof that the walls were
beginning to harden; and in that way, as everybody must admit, I richly paid for my Castle
Keep.


 In the Castle Keep I assemble my stores; everything over and above my daily wants that
I capture inside the burrow, and everything I bring back with me from my hunting
expeditions outside, I pile up here. The place is so spacious that food for half a year
scarcely fills it. Consequently I can divide up my stores, walk about among them, play with
them, enjoy their plenty and their various smells, and reckon up exactly how much they
represent. That done, I can always arrange accordingly, and make my calculations and
hunting plans for the future, taking into account the season of the year. There are times
when I am so well provided for that in my indifference to food I never even touch the
smaller fry that scuttle about the burrow, which, however, is probably imprudent of me. My
constant preoccupation with defensive measures involves a frequent alteration or
modification, though within narrow limits, of my views on how the building can best be
organized for that end. Then it sometimes seems risky to make the Castle Keep the basis
of defense; the ramifications of the burrow present me with manifold possibilities, and it
seems more in accordance with prudence to divide up my stores somewhat, and put part
of them in certain of the smaller rooms; thereupon I mark off every third room, let us say,
as a reserve storeroom, or every fourth room as a main and every second as an auxiliary
storeroom, and so forth. Or I ignore certain passages altogether and store no food in them,
so as to throw any enemy off the scent, or I choose quite at random a very few rooms
according to their distance from the main exit. Each of these new plans involves of course
heavy work; I have to make my calculations and then carry my stores to their new places.
True, I can do that at my leisure and without any hurry, and it is not at all unpleasant to
carry such good food in your jaws, to lie down and rest whenever you like, and to nibble an
occasional tasty tidbit. But it is not so pleasant when, as sometimes happens, you
suddenly fancy, starting up from your sleep, that the present distribution of your stores is
completely and totally wrong, might lead to great dangers, and must be set right at once,
no matter how tired or sleepy you may be; then I rush, then I fly, then I have no time for
calculation; and although I was about to execute a perfectly new, perfectly exact plan, I
now seize whatever my teeth hit upon and drag it or carry it away, sighing, groaning,
stumbling, and even the most haphazard change in the present situation, which seems so
terribly dangerous, can satisfy me. Until little by little full wakefulness sobers me, and I can
hardly understand my panic haste, breathe in deeply the tranquility of my house, which I
myself have disturbed, return to my resting place, fall asleep at once in a new-won
exhaustion, and on awakening find hanging from my jaws, say, a rat, as indubitable proof
of night labors which already seem almost unreal. Then again there are times when the
storing of all my food in one place seems the best plan of all. Of what use to me could my
stores in the smaller rooms be, how much could I store there in any case? And whatever I
put there would block the passage, and be a greater hindrance than help to me if I were
pursued and had to fly. Besides, it is stupid but true that one's self-conceit suffers if one
cannot see all one's stores together, and so at one glance know how much one
possesses. And in dividing up my food in those various ways might not a great deal get
lost? I can't be always scouring through all my passages and cross-passages so as to
make sure that everything is in order. The idea of dividing up my stores is of course a good
one, but only if one had several rooms similar to my Castle Keep. Several such rooms!
Indeed! And who is to build them? In any case, they could not be worked into the general
plan of my burrow at this late stage. But I will admit that that is a fault in my burrow; it is
always a fault to have only one piece of anything. And I confess too that during the whole
time I was constructing the burrow a vague idea that I should have more such cells stirred
in my mind, vaguely, yet clearly enough if I had only welcomed it; I did not yield to it, I felt
too feeble for the enormous labor it would involve, more, I felt too feeble even to admit to
myself the necessity for that labor, and comforted myself as best I could with the vague
hope that a building which in any other case would clearly be inadequate, would in my own
unique, exceptional, favored case suffice, presumably because providence was interested
in the preservation of my forehead, that unique instrument. So I have only one Castle
Keep, but my dark premonitions that one would not suffice have faded. However that may
be, I must content myself with the one big chamber, the smaller ones are simply no
substitute for it, and so, when this conviction has grown on me, I begin once more to haul
all my stores back from them to the Castle Keep. For some time afterwards I find a certain
comfort in having all the passages and rooms free, in seeing my stores growing in the
Castle Keep and emitting their variegated and mingled smells, each of which delights me
in its own fashion, and every one of which I can distinguish even at a distance, as far as
the very remotest passages. Then I usually enjoy periods of particular tranquility, in which I
change my sleeping place by stages, always working in toward the center of the burrow,
always steeping myself more profoundly in the mingled smells, until at last I can no longer
restrain myself and one night rush into the Castle Keep, mightily fling myself upon my
stores, and glut myself with the best that I can seize until I am completely gorged. Happy
but dangerous hours; anyone who knew how to exploit them could destroy me with ease
and without any risk. Here too the absence of a second or third large storeroom works to
my detriment; for it is the single huge accumulated mass of food that seduces me. I try to
guard myself in various ways against this danger; the distribution of my stores in the
smaller rooms is really one of these expedients; but unfortunately, like other such
expedients, it leads through renunciation to still greater greed, which, overruling my
intelligence, makes me arbitrarily alter my plans of defense to suit its ends.
To regain my composure after such lapses I make a practice of reviewing the burrow,
and after the necessary improvements have been carried out, frequently leave it, though
only for a short spell. Even at such moments the hardship of being without it for a long time
seems too punitive to me, yet I recognize clearly the need for occasional short excursions.
It is always with a certain solemnity that I approach the exit again. During my spells of
home life I avoid it, steer clear even of the outer windings of the corridor that leads to it;
besides, it is no easy job to wander about out there, for I have contrived there a whole little
maze of passages; it was there that I began my burrow, at a time when I had no hope of
ever completing it according to my plans; I began, half in play, at that corner, and so my
first joy in labor found riotous satisfaction there in a labyrinthine burrow which at the time
seemed to me the crown of all burrows, but which I judge today, perhaps with more justice,
to be too much of an idle tour de force, not really worthy of the rest of the burrow, and
though perhaps theoretically brilliant -- here is my main entrance, I said in those days,
ironically addressing my invisible enemies and seeing them all already caught and stifled
in the outer labyrinth -- is in reality a flimsy piece of jugglery that would hardly withstand a
serious attack or the struggles of an enemy fighting for his life. Should I reconstruct this
part of my burrow? I keep on postponing the decision, and the labyrinth will probably
remain as it is. Apart from the sheer hard work that I should have to face, the task would
also be the most dangerous imaginable. When I began the burrow I could work away at it
in comparative peace of mind, the risk wasn't much greater than any other risk; but to
attempt that today would be to draw the whole world's attention, and gratuitously, to my
burrow; today the whole thing is impossible. I am almost glad of that, for I still have a
certain sentiment about this first achievement of mine. And if a serious attack were
attempted, what pattern of entrance at all would be likely to save me? An entrance can
deceive, can lead astray, can give the attacker no end of worry, and the present one too
can do that at a pinch. But a really serious attack has to be met by an instantaneous
mobilization of all the resources in the burrow and all the forces of my body and soul -- that
is self-evident. So this entrance can very well remain where it is. The burrow has so many
unavoidable defects imposed by natural causes that it can surely stand this one defect for
which I am responsible, and which I recognize as a defect, even if only after the event. In
spite of that, however, I do not deny that this fault worries me from time to time, indeed
always. If on my customary rounds I avoid this part of the burrow, the fundamental reason
is that the sight of it is painful to me, because I don't want to be perpetually reminded of a
defect in my house, even if that defect is only too disturbingly present in my mind. Let it
continue to exist ineradicably at the entrance; I can at least refuse to look at it as long as
that is possible. If I merely walk in the direction of the entrance, even though I may be
separated from it by several passages and rooms, I find myself sensing an atmosphere of
great danger, actually as if my hair were growing thin and in a moment might fly off and
leave me bare and shivering, exposed to the howls of my enemies. Yes, the mere thought
of the door itself, the end of the domestic protection, brings such feelings with it, yet it is
the labyrinth leading up to it that torments me most of all. Sometimes I dream, that I have
reconstructed it, transformed it completely, quickly, in a night, with a giant's strength,
nobody having noticed, and now it is impregnable; the nights in which such dreams come
to me are the sweetest I know, tears of joy and deliverance still glisten on my beard when I
awaken.


 So I must thread the tormenting complications of this labyrinth physically as well as
mentally whenever I go out, and I am both exasperated and touched when, as sometimes
happens, I lose myself for a moment in my own maze, and the work of my hands seems to
be still doing its best to prove its sufficiency to me, its maker, whose final judgment has
long since been passed on it. But then I find myself beneath the mossy covering, which
has been left untouched for so long -- for I stay for long spells in my house -- that it has
grown fast to the soil around it, and now only a little push with my head is needed and I am
in the upper world. For a long time I do not dare to make that little movement, and if it were
not that I would have to traverse the labyrinth once more, I would certainly leave the matter
for the time being and turn back again. Just think. Your house is protected and
self-sufficient. You live in peace, warm, well nourished, master, sole master of all your
manifold passages and rooms, and all this you are prepared -- not to give up, of course --
but to risk it, so to speak; you nurse the confident hope, certainly, that you will regain it; yet
is it not a dangerous, a far too dangerous stake that you are playing for? Can there be any
reasonable grounds for such a step? No, for such acts as these there can be no
reasonable grounds. But all the same, I then cautiously raise the trap door and slip
outside, let it softly fall back again, and fly as fast as I can from the treacherous spot.
Yet I am not really free. True, I am no longer confined by narrow passages, but hunt
through the open woods, and feel new powers awakening in my body for which there was
no room, as it were, in the burrow, not even in the Castle Keep, though it had been ten
times as big. The food too is better up here; though hunting is more difficult, success more
rare, the results are more valuable from every point of view; I do not deny all this; I
appreciate it and take advantage of it at least as fully as anyone else, and probably more
fully, for I do not hunt like a vagrant out of mere idleness or desperation, but calmly and
methodically. Also I am not permanently doomed to this free life, for I know that my term is
measured, that I do not have to hunt here forever, and that, whenever I am weary of this
life and wish to leave it, Someone, whose invitation I shall not be able to withstand, will, so
to speak, summon me to him. And so I can pass my time here quite without care and in
complete enjoyment, or rather I could, and yet I cannot. My burrow takes up too much of
my thoughts. I fled from the entrance fast enough, but soon I am back at it again. I seek
out a good hiding place and keep watch on the entrance of my house -- this time from
outside -- for whole days and nights. Call it foolish if you like; it gives me infinite pleasure
and reassures me. At such times it is as if I were not so much looking at my house as at
myself sleeping, and had the joy of being in a profound slumber and simultaneously of
keeping vigilant guard over myself. I am privileged, as it were, not only to dream about the
specters of the night in all the helplessness and blind trust of sleep, but also at the same
time to confront them in actuality with the calm judgment of the fully awake. And strangely
enough I discover that my situation is not so bad as I had often thought, and will probably
think again when I return to my house. In this connection -- it may be in others too, but in
this one especially -- these excursions of mine are truly indispensable. Carefully as I have
chosen an out-of-the-way place for my door, the traffic that passes it is nevertheless, if one
takes a week's observation, very great; but so it is, no doubt, in all inhabited regions, and
probably it is actually better to hazard the risks of dense traffic, whose very impetus carries
it past, than to be delivered in complete solitude to the first persistently searching intruder.
Here enemies are numerous and their allies and accomplices still more numerous, but
they fight one another, and while thus employed rush past my burrow without noticing it. In
all my time I have never seen anyone investigating the actual door of my house, which is
fortunate both for me and for him, for I would certainly have launched myself at his throat,
forgetting everything else in my anxiety for the burrow. True, creatures come, in whose
vicinity I dare not remain, and from whom I have to fly as soon as I scent them in the
distance; on their attitude to the burrow I really can't pronounce with certainty, but it is at
least a reassurance that when I presently return I never find any of them there, and the
entrance is undamaged. There have been happy periods in which I could almost assure
myself that the enmity of the world toward me had ceased or been assuaged, or that the
strength of the burrow had raised me above the destructive struggle of former times. The
burrow has probably protected me in more ways than I thought or dared think while I was
inside it. This fancy used to have such a hold over me that sometimes I have been seized
by the childish desire never to return to the burrow again, but to settle down somewhere
close to the entrance, to pass my life watching the entrance, and gloat perpetually upon
the reflection -- and in that find my happiness -- how steadfast a protection my burrow
would be if I were inside it. Well, one is soon roughly awakened from childish dreams.
What does this protection which I am looking at here from the outside amount to after all?
Dare I estimate the danger which I run inside the burrow from observations which I make
when outside? Can my enemies, to begin with, have any proper awareness of me if I am
not in my burrow? A certain awareness of me they certainly have, but not full awareness.
And is not that full awareness the real definition of a state of danger? So the experiments I
attempt here are only half-experiments or even less, calculated merely to reassure my
fears and by giving me false reassurance to lay me open to great perils. No, I do not watch
over my own sleep, as I imagined; rather it is I who sleep, while the destroyer watches.
Perhaps he is one of those who pass the entrance without seeming to notice it, concerned
merely to ascertain, just like myself, that the door is still untouched and waits for their
attack, and only pass because they know that the master of the house is out, or because
they are quite aware that he is guilelessly lying on the watch in the bushes close by. And I
leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that
there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a
last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let
things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils. But spoiled by
seeing for such a long time everything that happened around the entrance, I find great
difficulty in summoning the resolution to carry out the actual descent, which might easily
draw anyone's attention, and without knowing what is happening behind my back and
behind the door after it is fastened. I take advantage of stormy nights to get over the
necessary preliminaries, and quickly bundle in my spoil; that seems to have come off, but
whether it has really come off will only be known when I myself have made the descent; it
will be known, but not by me, or by me, but too late. So I give up the attempt and do not
make the descent. I dig an experimental burrow, naturally at a good distance from the real
entrance, a burrow just as long as myself, and seal it also with a covering of moss. I creep
into my hole, close it after me, wait patiently, keep vigil for long or short spells, and at
various hours of the day, then fling off the moss, issue from my hole, and summarize my
observations. These are extremely heterogeneous, and both good and bad; but I have
never been able to discover a universal principle or an infallible method of descent. In
consequence of all this I have not yet summoned the resolution to make my actual
descent, and am thrown into despair at the necessity of doing it soon. I almost screw
myself to the point of deciding to emigrate to distant parts and take up my old comfortless
life again, which had no security whatever, but was one indiscriminate succession of perils,
yet in consequence prevented one from perceiving and fearing particular perils, as I am
constantly reminded by comparing my secure burrow with ordinary life. Certainly such a
decision would be an arrant piece of folly, produced simply by living too long in senseless
freedom; the burrow is still mine, I have only to take a single step and I am safe. And I tear
myself free from all my doubts and by broad daylight rush to the door, quite resolved to
raise it now; but I cannot, I rush past it and fling myself into a thorn bush, deliberately, as a
punishment, a punishment for some sin I do not know of. Then, at the last moment, I am
forced to admit to myself that I was right after all, and that it was really impossible to go
down into the burrow without exposing the thing I love best, for a little while at least, to all
my enemies, on the ground, in the trees, in the air. And the danger is by no means a
fanciful one, but very real. It need not be any particular enemy that is provoked to pursue
me, it may very well be some chance innocent little creature, some disgusting little beast
which follows me out of curiosity, and thus, without knowing it, becomes the leader of all
the world against me; nor need it be even that, it may be -- and that would be just as bad,
indeed in some respects worse -- it may be someone of my own kind, a connoisseur and
prizer of burrows, a hermit, a lover of peace, but all the same a filthy scoundrel who wishes
to be housed where he has not built. If he were actually to arrive now, if in his obscene lust
he were to discover the entrance and set about working at it, lifting the moss; if he were
actually to succeed, if he were actually to wriggle his way in in my stead, until only his
hindquarters still showed; if all this were actually to happen, so that at last, casting all
prudence to the winds, I might in my blind rage leap on him, maul him, tear the flesh from
his bones, destroy him, drink his blood, and fling his corpse among the rest of my spoil, but
above all -- that is the main thing -- were at last back in my burrow once more, I would
have it in my heart to greet the labyrinth itself with rapture; but first I would draw the moss
covering over me, and I would want to rest, it seems to me, for all the remainder of my life.
But nobody comes and I am left to my own resources. Perpetually obsessed by the sheer
difficulty of the attempt, I lose much of my timidity, I no longer attempt even to appear to
avoid the entrance, but make a hobby of prowling around it; by now it is almost as if I were
the enemy spying out a suitable opportunity for successfully breaking in. If I only had
someone I could trust to keep watch at post of observation; then of course I could descend
in perfect peace of mind. I would make an agreement with this trusty confederate of mine
that he would keep a careful note of the state of things during my descent and for quite a
long time afterwards, and if he saw any sign of danger knock on the moss covring, and if
he saw nothing do nothing. With that a clean sweep would be made of all my fears, no
residue would be left, or at most my confidant. For would he not demand some
counter-service from me; would he not at least want to see the burrow? That in itself, to let
anyone freely into my burrow, would be exquisitely painful to me. I built it for myself, not for
visitors, and I think I would refuse to admit him, not even though he alone made it possible
for me to get into the burrow would I let him in. But I simply could not admit him, for either I
must let him go in first by himself, which is simply unimaginable, or we must both descend
at the same time, in which case the advantage I am supposed to derive from him, that of
being kept watch over, would be lost. And what trust can I really put in him? Can I trust
one whom I have had under my eyes just as fully when I can't see him, and the moss
covering separates us? It is comparatively easy to trust anyone if you are supervising him
or at least can supervise him; perhaps it is possible even to trust someone at a distance;
but completely to trust someone outside the burrow when you are inside the burrow, that
is, in a different world, that, it seems to me, is impossible. But such considerations are not
in the least necessary; the mere reflection is enough that during or after my descent one of
the countless accidents of existence might prevent my confidant from fulfilling his duty, and
what incalculable results might not the smallest accident of that kind have for me? No, if
one takes it by and large, I have no right to complain that I am alone and have nobody that
I can trust. I certainly lose nothing by that and probably spare myself trouble. I can only
trust myself and my burrow. I should have thought of that before and taken measures to
meet the difficulty that worries me so much now. When I began the burrow it would at least
have been partly possible. I should have so constructed the first passage that it had two
entrances at a moderate distance from each other, so that after descending through the
one entrance with that slowness which is unavoidable, I might rush at once through the
passage to the second entrance, slightly raise the moss covering, which would be so
arranged as to make that easy, and from there keep watch on the position for several days
and nights. That would have been the only right way of doing it. True, the two entrances
would double the risk, but that consideration need not delay me, for one of the entrances,
serving merely as a post of observation, could be quite narrow. And with that I lose myself
in a maze of technical speculations, I begin once more to dream my dream of a completely
perfect burrow, and that somewhat calms me; with closed eyes I behold with delight
perfect or almost perfect structural devices for enabling me to slip out and in unobserved.
While I lie there thinking such things I admire these devices very greatly, but only as
technical achievements, not as real advantages; for this freedom to slip out and in at will,
what does it amount to? It is the mark of a restless nature, of inner uncertainty,
disreputable desires, evil propensities that seem still worse when one thinks of the burrow,
which is there at one's hand and can flood one with peace if one only remains quite open
and receptive to it. For the present, however, I am outside it seeking some possibility of
returning, and for that the necessary technical devices would be very desirable. But
perhaps not so very desirable after all. Is it not a very grave injustice to the burrow to
regard it in moments of nervous panic as a mere hole into which one can creep and be
safe? Certainly it is a hole among other things, and a safe one, or should be, and when I
picture myself in the midst of danger, then I insist with clenched teeth and all my will that
the burrow should be nothing but a hole set apart to save me, and that it should fufill that
clearly defined function with the greatest possible efficiency, and I am ready to absolve it
from every other duty. Now the truth of the matter -- and one has no eye for that in times of
great peril, and only by a great effort even in times when danger is threatening -- is that in
reality the burrow does provide a considerable degree of security, but by no means
enough, for is one ever free from anxieties inside it? These anxieties are different from
ordinary ones, prouder, richer in content, often long repressed, but in their destructive
effects they are perhaps much the same as the anxieties that existence in the outer world
gives rise to. Had I constructed the burrow exclusively to assure my safety I would not
have been disappointed, it is true; nevertheless the relation between the enormous labor
involved and the actual security it would provide, at least insofar as I could feel it and profit
by it, would not have been in my favor. It is extremely painful to have to admit such things
to oneself, but one is forced to do it, confronted by that entrance over there which now
literally locks and bars itself against me, the builder and possessor. Yet the burrow is not a
mere hole for taking refuge in. When I stand in the Castle Keep surrounded by my piled-up
stores, surveying the ten passages which begin there, raised and sunken passages,
vertical and rounded passages, wide and narrow passages, as the general plan dictates,
and all alike still and empty, ready by their various routes to conduct me to all the other
rooms, which are also still and empty -- then all thought of mere safety is far from my mind,
then I know that here is my castle, which I have wrested from the refractory soil with tooth
and claw, with pounding and hammering blows, my castle which can never belong to
anyone else, and is so essentially mine that I can calmly accept in it even my enemy's
mortal stroke at the final hour, for my blood will ebb away here in my own soil and not be
lost. And what but that is the meaning of the blissful hours which I pass, now peacefully
slumbering, now happily keeping watch, in these passages, these passages which suit me
so well, where one can stretch oneself out in comfort, roll about in childish delight, lie and
dream, or sink into blissful sleep. And the smaller rooms, each familiar to me, so familiar
that in spite of their complete similarity I can clearly distinguish one from the other with my
eyes shut by the mere feel of the wall: they enclose me more peacefully and warmly than a
bird is enclosed in its nest. And all, all still and empty.


 But if that is the case, why do I hang back? Why do I dread the thought of the intruding
enemy more than the possibility of never seeing my burrow again? Well, the latter
alternative is fortunately an impossibility; there is no need for me even to take thought to
know what the burrow means to me; I and the burrow belong so indissolubly together that
in spite of all my fears I could make myself quite comfortable out here, and not even need
to overcome my repugnance and open the door; I could be quite content to wait here
passively, for nothing can part us for long, and somehow or other I shall quite certainly find
myself in my burrow again. But on the other hand how much time may pass before then,
and how many things may happen in that time, up here no less than down there? And it
lies with me solely to curtail that interval and to do what is necessary at once.
And then, too exhausted to be any longer capable of thought, my head hanging, my legs
trembling with fatigue, half asleep, feeling my way rather than walking, I approach the
entrance, slowly raise the moss covering, slowly descend, leaving the door open in my
distraction for a needlessly long time, and presently remember my omission, and get out
again to make it good -- but what need was there to get out for that? All that was needed
was to draw to the moss covering; right; so I creep in again and now at last draw to the
moss covering. Only in this state, and in this state alone, can I achieve my descent. So at
last I lie down beneath the moss on the top of my bloodstained spoil and can now enjoy
my longed-for sleep. Nothing disturbs me, no one has tracked me down, above the moss
everything seems to be quiet thus far at least, but even if all were not quiet I question
whether I could stop to keep watch now; I have changed my place, I have left the upper
world and am in my burrow, and I feel its effect at once. It is a new world, endowing me
with new powers, and what I felt as fatigue up there is no longer that here. I have returned
from a journey dog-tired with my wanderings, but the sight of the old house, the thought of
all the things that are waiting to be done, the necessity at least to cast a glance at all the
rooms, but above all to make my way immediately to the Castle Keep; all this transforms
my fatigue into ardent zeal; it is as though at the moment when I set foot in the burrow I
had wakened from a long and profound sleep. My first task is a very laborious one and
requires all my attention; I mean getting my spoil through the narrow and thin-walled
passages of the labyrinth. I shove with all my might, and the work gets done too, but far
too slowly for me; to hasten it I drag part of my flesh supply back again and push my way
over it and through it; now I have only a portion of my spoil before me and it is easier to
make progress; but my road is so blocked by all this flesh in these narrow passages,
through which it is not always easy for me to make my way even when I am alone, that I
could quite easily smother among my own stores; sometimes I can only rescue myself
from their pressure by eating and drinking a clear space for myself. But the work of
transport is successful, I finish it in quite a reasonable time, the labyrinth is behind me, I
reach an ordinary passage and breathe freely, push my spoil through a communication
passage into a main passage expressly designed for the purpose, a passage sloping down
steeply to the Castle Keep. What is left to be done is not really work at all; my whole load
rolls and flows down the passage almost of itself. The Castle Keep at last! At last I can
dare to rest. Everything is unchanged, no great mishap seems to have occurred, the few
little defects that I note at a first glance can soon be repaired; first, however, I must go my
long round of all the passages, but that is no hardship, that is merely to commune again
with friends, as I often did in the old days or -- I am not so very old yet, but my memory of
many things is already quite confused -- as I often did, or as I have often heard that it was
done. Now I begin with the second passage, purposefully slow, now that I have seen the
Castle Keep I have endless time -- inside the burrow I always have endless time -- for
everything I do there is good and important and satisfies me somehow. I begin with the
second passage, but break off in the middle and turn into the third passage and let it take
me back again to the Castle Keep, and now of course I have to begin at the second
passage once more, and so I play with my task and lengthen it out and smile to myself and
enjoy myself and become quite dazed with all the work in front of me, but never think of
turning aside from it. It is for your sake, ye passages and rooms, and you, Castle Keep,
above all, that I have come back, counting my own life as nothing in the balance, after
stupidly trembling for it for so long, and postponing my return to you. What do I care for
danger now that I am with you? You belong to me, I to you, we are united; what can harm
us? What if my foes should be assembling even now up above there and their muzzles be
preparing to break through the moss? And with its silence and emptiness the burrow
answers me, confirming my words. But now a feeling of lassitude overcomes me and in
some favorite room I curl myself up tentatively, I have not yet surveyed everything by a
long way, though still resolved to examine everything to the very end; I have no intention of
sleeping here, I have merely yielded to the temptation of making myself comfortable and
pretending I want to sleep, I merely wish to find out if this is as good a place for sleeping
as it used to be. It is, but it is a better place for sleep than for waking, and I remain lying
where I am in deep slumber.


 I must have slept for a long time. I was only wakened when I had reached the last light
sleep which dissolves of itself, and it must have been very light, for it was an almost
inaudible whistling noise that wakened me. I recognized what it was immediately; the small
fry, whom I had allowed far too much latitude, had burrowed a new channel somewhere
during my absence, this channel must have chanced to intersect an older one, the air was
caught there, and that produced the whistling noise. What an indefatigably busy lot these
small fry are, and what a nuisance their diligence can be! First I shall have to listen at the
walls of my passages and locate the place of disturbance by experimental excavations,
and only then will I be able to get rid of the noise. However, this new channel may be quite
welcome as a further means of ventilation, if it can be fitted into the plan of the burrow. But
after this I shall keep a much sharper eye on the small fry than I used to; I shall spare none
of them.


 As I have a good deal of experience in investigations of this kind the work probably will
not take me long and I can start upon it at once; there are other jobs awaiting me, it is true,
but this is the most urgent. I must have silence in my passages. This noise, however, is a
comparatively innocent one; I did not hear it at all when I first arrived, although it must
certainly have been there; I must first feel quite at home before I could hear it; it is, so to
speak, audible only to the ear of the householder. And it is not even constant, as such
noises usually are; there are long pauses, obviously caused by stoppages of the current of
air. I start on my investigations, but I can't find the right place to begin at, and though I cut
a few trenches I do it at random; naturally that has no effect, and the hard work of digging
and the still harder work of filling the trenches up again and beating the earth firm is so
much labor lost. I don't seem to be getting any nearer to the place where the noise is, it
goes on always on the same thin note, with regular pauses, now a sort of whistling, but
again like a kind of piping. Now I could leave it to itself for the time being; it is very
disturbing, certainly, but there can hardly be any doubt that its origin is what I took it to be
at first; so it can scarcely become louder, on the contrary, such noises may quite well --
though until now I have never had to wait so long for that to happen -- may quite well
vanish of themselves in the course of time through the continued labors of these little
burrowers; and apart from that, often chance itself puts one on the track of the
disturbance, where systematic investigation has failed for a long time. In such ways I
comfort myself, and resolve simply to continue my tour of the passages, and visit the
rooms, many of which I have not even seen yet since my return, and enjoy myself
contemplating the Castle Keep now and then between times; but my anxiety will not let
me, and I must go on with my search. These little creatures take up much, far too much,
time that could be better employed. In such cases as the present it is usually the technical
problem that attracts me; for example, from the noise, which my ear can distinguish in all
its finest shades, so that it has a perfectly clear outline to me, I deduce its cause, and now
I am on fire to discover whether my conclusion is valid. And with good reason, for as long
as that is not established I cannot feel safe, even if it were merely a matter of discovering
where a grain of sand that had fallen from one of the walls had rolled to. And a noise such
as this is by no means a trifling matter, regarded from that angle. But whether trifling or
important, I can find nothing, no matter how hard I search, or it may be that I find too
much. This had to happen just in my favorite room, I think to myself, and I walk a fair
distance away from it, almost halfway along the passage leading to the next room; I do this
more as a joke, pretending to myself that my favorite room is not alone to blame, but that
there are disturbances elsewhere as well, and with a smile on my face I begin to listen; but
soon I stop smiling, for, right enough, the same whistling meets me here too. It is really
nothing to worry about; sometimes I think that nobody but myself would hear it; it is true, I
hear it now more and more distinctly, for my ear has grown keener through practice;
though in reality it is exactly the same noise wherever I may hear it, as I have convinced
myself by comparing my impressions. Nor is it growing louder; I recognize this when I
listen in the middle of the passage instead of pressing my ear against the wall. Then it is
only with an effort, indeed with great intentness, that I can more guess at than hear the
merest trace of a noise now and then. But it is this very uniformity of the noise everywhere
that disturbs me most, for it cannot be made to agree with my original assumption. Had I
rightly divined the cause of the noise, then it must have issued with greatest force from
some given place, which it would be my task to discover, and after that have grown fainter
and fainter. But if my hypothesis does not meet the case, what can the explanation be?
There still remains the possibility that there are two noises, that up to now I have been
listening at a good distance from the two centers, and that while its noise increases, when
I draw near to one of them, the total result remains approximately the same for the ear in
consequence of the lessening volume of sound from the other center. Already I have
almost fancied sometimes, when I have listened carefully, that I could distinguish, if very
indistinctly, differences of tone which support this new assumption. In any case I must
extend my sphere of investigation much farther than I have done. Accordingly I descend
the passage to the Castle Keep and begin to listen there. Strange, the same noise there
too. Now it is a noise produced by the burrowing of some species of small fry who have
infamously exploited my absence; in any case they have no intention of doing me harm,
they are simply busied with their own work, and so long as no obstacle comes in their way
they will keep on in the direction they have taken: I know all this, yet that they should have
dared to approach the very Castle Keep itself is incomprehensible to me and fills me with
agitation, and confuses the faculties which I need so urgently for the work before me. Here
I have no wish to discover whether it is the unusual depth at which the Castle Keep lies, or
its great extent and correspondingly powerful air suction, calculated to scare burrowing
creatures away, or the mere fact that it is the Castle Keep, that by some channel or other
has penetrated to their dull minds. In any case, I have never noticed any sign of burrowing
in the walls of the Castle Keep until now. Crowds of little beasts have come here, it is true,
attracted by the powerful smells; here I have had a constant hunting ground, but my quarry
has always burrowed a way through in the upper passages, and come running down here,
somewhat fearfully, but unable to withstand such a temptation. But now, it seems, they are
burrowing in all the passages. If I had only carried out the best of the grand plans I thought
out in my youth and early manhood, or rather, if I had only had the strength to carry them
out, for there would have been no lack of will. One of these favorite plans of mine was to
isolate the Castle Keep from its surroundings, that is to say, to restrict the thickness of its
walls to about my own height, and leave a free space of about the same width all around
the Castle Keep, except for a narrow foundation, which unfortunately would have to be left
to bear up the whole. I had always pictured this free space, and not without reason, as the
loveliest imaginable haunt. What a joy to lie pressed against the rounded outer wall, pull
oneself up, let oneself slide down again, miss one's footing and find oneself on firm earth,
and play all those games literally upon the Castle Keep and not inside it; to avoid the
Castle Keep, to rest one's eyes from it whenever one wanted, to postpone the joy of
seeing it until later and yet not have to do without it, but literally hold it safe between one's
claws, a thing that is impossible if you have only an ordinary open entrance to it; but above
all to be able to stand guard over it, and in that way to be so completely compensated for
renouncing the actual sight of it that, if one had to choose between staying all one's life in
the Castle Keep or in the free space outside it, one would choose the latter, content to
wander up and down there all one's days and keep guard over the Castle Keep. Then
there would be no noises in the walls, no insolent burrowing up to the very Keep itself;
then peace would be assured there and I would be its guardian; then I would not have to
listen with loathing to the burrowing of the small fry, but with delight to something that I
cannot hear now at all: the murmurous silence of the Castle Keep.


 But that beautiful dream is past and I must set to work, almost glad that now my work
has a direct connection with the Castle Keep, for that wings it. Certainly, as I can see more
and more clearly, I need all my energies for this task, which at first seemed quite a trifling
one. I listen now at the walls of the Castle Keep, and wherever I listen, high or low, at the
roof or the floor, at the entrance or in the corners, everywhere, everywhere, I hear the
same noise. And how much time, how much care must be wasted in listening to that noise,
with its regular pauses. One can, if one wishes, find a tiny deceitful comfort in the fact that
here in the Castle Keep, because of its vastness, one hears nothing at all, as distinguished
from the passages, when one stands back from the walls. Simply as a rest and a means to
regain my composure I often make this experiment, listen intently and am overjoyed when
I hear nothing. But the question still remains, what can have happened? Confronted with
this phenomenon my original explanation completely falls to the ground. But I must also
reject other explanations which present themselves to me. One could assume, for
instance, that the noise I hear is simply that of the small fry themselves at their work. But
all my experience contradicts this; I cannot suddenly begin to hear now a thing that I have
never heard before though it was always there. My sensitiveness to disturbances in the
burrow has perhaps become greater with the years, yet my hearing has by no means
grown keener. It is of the very nature of small fry not to be heard. Would I have tolerated
them otherwise? Even at the risk of starvation I would have exterminated them. But
perhaps -- this idea now insinuates itself -- I am concerned here with some animal
unknown to me. That is possible. True, I have observed the life down here long and
carefully enough, but the world is full of diversity and is never wanting in painful surprises.
Yet it cannot be a single animal, it must be a whole swarm that has suddenly fallen upon
my domain, a huge swarm of little creatures, which, as they are audible, must certainly be
bigger than the small fry, but yet cannot be very much bigger, for the sound of their labors
is itself very faint. It may be, then, a swarm of unknown creatures on their wanderings, who
happen to be passing by my way, who disturb me, but will presently cease to do so. So I
could really wait for them to pass, and need not put myself to the trouble of work that will
be needless in the end. Yet if these creatures are strangers, why is it that I never see any
of them? I have already dug a host of trenches, hoping to catch one of them, but I can find
not a single one. Then it occurs to me that they may be quite tiny creatures, far tinier than
any I am acquainted with, and that it is only the noise they make that is greater.
Accordingly I investigate the soil I have dug up, I cast the lumps into the air so that they
break into quite small particles, but the noisemakers are not among them. Slowly I come to
realize that by digging such small fortuitous trenches I achieve nothing; in doing that I
merely disfigure the walls of my burrow, scratching hastily here and there without taking
time to fill up the holes again; at many places already there are heaps of earth which block
my way and my view. Still, that is only a secondary worry; for now I can neither wander
about my house, nor review it, nor rest; often already I have fallen asleep at my work in
some hole or other, with one paw clutching the soil above me, from which in a semistupor I
have been trying to tear a lump. I intend now to alter my methods. I shall dig a wide and
carefully constructed trench in the direction of the noise and not cease from digging until,
independent of all theories, I find the real cause of the noise. Then I shall eradicate it, if
that is within my power, and if it is not, at least I shall know the truth. That truth will bring
me either peace or despair, but whether the one or the other, it will be beyond doubt or
question. This decision strengthens me. All that I have done till now seems to me far too
hasty; in the excitement of my return, while I had not yet shaken myself free from the cares
of the upper world, and was not yet completely penetrated by the peace of the burrow, but
rather hypersensitive at having had to renounce it for such a long time, I was thrown into
complete confusion of mind by an unfamiliar noise. And what was it? A faint whistling,
audible only at long intervals, a mere nothing to which I don't say that one could actually
get used, for no one could get used to it, but which one could, without actually doing
anything about it at once, observe for a while; that is, listen every few hours, let us say,
and patiently register the results, instead of, as I had done, keeping one's ear fixed to the
wall and at every hint of noise tearing out a lump of earth, not really hoping to find
anything, but simply so as to do something to give expression to one's inward agitation. All
that will be changed now, I hope. And then, with furious shut eyes, I have to admit to
myself that I hope nothing of the kind, for I am still trembling with agitation just as I was
hours ago, and if my reason did not restrain me I would probably like nothing better than to
start stubbornly and defiantly digging, simply for the sake of digging, at some place or
other, whether I heard anything there or not; almost like the small fry, who burrow either
without any object at all or simply because they eat the soil. My new and reasonable plan
both tempts me and leaves me cold. There is nothing in it to object to, I at least know of no
objection; it is bound, so far as I can see, to achieve my aim. And yet at bottom I do not
believe in it; I believe in it so little that I do not even fear the terrors which its success may
well bring, I do not believe even in a dreadful denouement; indeed it seems to me that I
have been thinking ever since the first appearance of the noise of such a methodical
trench, and have not begun upon it until now simply because I put no trust in it. In spite of
that I shall of course start on the trench; I have no other alternative; but I shall not start at
once, I shall postpone the task for a little while. If reason is to be reinstated on the throne,
it must be completely reinstated; I shall not rush blindly into my task. In any case I shall
first repair the damage that I have done to the burrow with my wild digging; that will take a
good long time, but it is necessary; if the new trench is really to reach its goal it will
probably be long, and if it should lead to nothing at all it will be endless; in any case this
task means a longish absence from the burrow, though an absence by no means so
painful as an absence in the upper world, for I can interrupt my work whenever I like and
pay a visit to my house; and even if I should not do that the air of Castle Keep will be
wafted to me and surround me while I work; nevertheless it means leaving the burrow and
surrendering myself to an uncertain fate, and consequently I want to leave the burrow in
good order behind me; it shall not be said that I, who am fighting for its peace, have myself
destroyed that peace without reinstating it at once. So I begin by shoveling the soil back
into the holes from which it was taken, a kind of work I am familiar with, that I have done
countless times almost without regarding it as work, and at which, particularly as regards
the final pressing and smoothing down -- and this is no empty boast, but the simple truth --
I am unbeatable. But this time everything seems difficult, I am too distracted, every now
and then, in the middle of my work, I press my ear to the wall and listen, and without taking
any notice let the soil that I have just lifted trickle back into the passage again. The final
embellishments, which demand a stricter attention, I can hardly achieve at all. Hideous
protuberances, disturbing cracks remain, not to speak of the fact that the old buoyancy
simply cannot be restored again to a wall patched up in such a way. I try to comfort myself
with the reflection that my present work is only temporary. When I return after peace has
been restored I shall repair everything properly: work will be mere play to me then. Oh yes,
work is mere play in fairy tales, and this comfort of mine belongs to the realm of fairy tales
too. It would be far better to do the work thoroughly now, at once, far more reasonable
than perpetually to interrupt it and wander off through the passages to discover new
sources of noise, which is easy enough, all that is needed being to stop at any point one
likes and listen. And that is not the end of my useless discoveries. Sometimes I fancy that
the noise has stopped, for it makes long pauses; sometimes such a faint whistling escapes
one, one's own blood is pounding all too loudly in one's ears; then two pauses come one
after another, and for a while one thinks that the whistling has stopped forever. I listen no
longer, I jump up, all life is transfigured; it is as if the fountains from which flows the silence
of the burrow were unsealed. I refrain from verifying my discovery at once, I want first to
find someone to whom in all good faith I can confide it, so I rush to the Castle Keep, I
remember, for I and everything in me has awakened to new life, that I have eaten nothing
for a long time, I snatch something or other from among my store of food half-buried under
the debris and hurriedly begin to swallow it while I hurry back to the place where I made
my incredible discovery, I only want to assure myself about it incidentally, perfunctorily,
while I am eating; I listen, but the most perfunctory listening shows at once that I was
shamefully deceived: away there in the distance the whistling still remains unshaken. And I
spit out my food, and would like to trample it underfoot, and go back to my task, not caring
which I take up; anyplace where it seems to be needed, and there are enough places like
that, I mechanically start on something or other, just as if the overseer had appeared and I
must make a pretense of working for his benefit. But hardly have I begun to work in this
fashion when it may happen that I make a new discovery. The noise seems to have
become louder, not much louder, of course -- here it is always a matter of the subtlest
shades -- but all the same sufficiently louder for the ear to recognize it clearly. And this
growing-louder is like a coming-nearer; still more distinctly than you hear the increasing
loudness of the noise, you can literally see the step that brings it closer to you. You leap
back from the wall, you try to grasp at once all the possible consequences that this
discovery will bring with it. You feel as if you had never really organized the burrow for
defense against attack; you had intended to do so, but despite all your experience of life
the danger of an attack, and consequently the need to organize the place for defense,
seemed remote -- or rather not remote (how could it possibly be!) -- but infinitely less
important than the need to put it in a state where one could live peacefully; and so that
consideration was given priority in everything relating to the burrow. Many things in this
direction might have been done without affecting the plan of the whole; most
incomprehensibly they have been neglected. I have had a great deal of luck all those
years, luck has spoiled me; I have had anxieties, but anxiety leads to nothing when you
have luck to back you.


 The thing to do, really to do now, would be to go carefully over the burrow and consider
every possible means of defending it, work out a plan of defense and a corresponding plan
of construction, and then start on the work at once with the vigor of youth. That is the work
that would really be needed, for which, I may add, it is now far too late in the day; yet that
is what would really be needed, and not the digging of a grand experimental trench, whose
only real result would be to deliver me hand and foot to the search for danger, out of the
foolish fear that it will not arrive quickly enough of itself. Suddenly I cannot comprehend my
former plan. I can find no slightest trace of reason in what had seemed so reasonable;
once more I lay aside my work and even my listening; I have no wish to discover any
further signs that the noise is growing louder; I have had enough of discoveries; I let
everything slide; I would be quite content if I could only still the conflict going on within me.
Once more I let my passages lead me where they will, I come to more and more remote
ones that I have not yet seen since my return, and that are quite unsullied by my
scratching paws, and whose silence rises up to meet me and sinks into me. I do not
surrender to it, I hurry on, I do not know what I want, probably simply to put off the hour. I
stray so far that I find myself at the labyrinth; the idea of listening beneath the moss
covering tempts me; such distant things, distant for the moment, chain my interest. I push
my way up and listen. Deep stillness; how lovely it is here, outside there nobody troubles
about my burrow, everybody has his own affairs, which have no connection with me; how
have I managed to achieve this? Here under the moss covering is perhaps the only place
in my burrow now where I can listen for hours and hear nothing. A complete reversal of
things in the burrow; what was once the place of danger has become a place of tranquility,
while the Castle Keep has been plunged into the melee of the world and all its perils. Still
worse, even here there is no peace in reality, here nothing has changed; silent or
vociferous, danger lies in ambush as before above the moss, but I have grown insensitive
to it, my mind is far too much taken up with the whistling in my walls. Is my mind really
taken up with it? It grows louder, it comes nearer, but I wriggle my way through the
labyrinth and make a couch for myself up here under the moss; it is almost as if I were
already leaving the house to the whistler, content if I can only have a little peace up here.
To the whistler? Have I come, then, to a new conclusion concerning the cause of the
noise? But surely the noise is caused by the channels bored by the small fry? Is not that
my considered opinion? It seems to me that I have not retreated from it thus far. And if the
noise is not caused directly by these channels, it is indirectly. And even if it should have no
connection with them whatever, one is not at liberty to make a priori assumptions, but must
wait until one finds the cause, or it reveals itself. One could play with hypotheses, of
course, even at this stage; for instance, it is possible that there has been a water burst at
some distance away, and what seems a piping or whistling to me is in reality a gurgling.
But apart from the fact that I have no experience in that sphere -- the groundwater that I
found at the start I drained away at once, and in this sandy soil it has never returned --
apart from this fact the noise is undeniably a whistling and simply not to be translated into
a gurgling. But what avail all exhortations to be calm; my imagination will not rest, and I
have actually come to believe -- it is useless to deny it to myself -- that the whistling is
made by some beast, and moreover not by a great many small ones, but by a single big
one. Many signs contradict this. The noise can be heard everywhere and always at the
same strength, and moreover uniformly, both by day and night. At first, therefore, one
cannot but incline to the hypothesis of a great number of little animals; but as I must have
found some of them during my digging and I have found nothing, it only remains for me to
assume the existence of a great beast, especially as the things that seem to contradict the
hypothesis are merely things which make the beast, not so much impossible, as merely
dangerous beyond all one's powers of conception. For that reason alone have I resisted
this hypothesis. I shall cease from this self-deception. For a long time already I have
played with the idea that the beast can be heard at such a great distance because it works
so furiously; it burrows as fast through the ground as another can walk on the open road;
the ground still trembles at its burrowing when it has ceased; this reverberation and the
noise of the boring itself unite into one sound at such a great distance, and I, as I hear only
the last dying ebb of that sound, hear it always at the same uniform strength. It follows
from this also that the beast is not making for me, seeing that the noise never changes;
more likely it has a plan in view whose purpose I cannot decipher; I merely assume that
the beast -- and I make no claim whatever that it knows of my existence -- is encircling me;
it has probably made several circles around my burrow already since I began to observe it.
The nature of the noise, the piping or whistling, gives me much food for thought. When I
scratch and scrape in the soil in my own fashion the sound is quite different. I can explain
the whistling only in this way: that the beast's chief means of burrowing is not its claws,
which it probably employs merely as a secondary resource, but its snout or its muzzle,
which, of course, apart from its enormous strength, must also be fairly sharp at the point. It
probably bores its snout into the earth with one mighty push and tears out a great lump;
while it is doing that I hear nothing; that is the pause; but then it draws in the air for a new
push. This indrawal of its breath, which must be an earthshaking noise, not only because
of the beast's strength, but of its haste, its furious lust for work as well: this noise I hear
then as a faint whistling. But quite incomprehensible remains the beast's capacity to work
without stopping; perhaps the short pauses provide also the opportunity of snatching a
moment's rest; but apparently the beast has never yet allowed itself a really long rest, day
and night it goes on burrowing, always with the same freshness and vigor, always thinking
of its object, which must be achieved with the utmost expedition, and which it has the
ability to achieve with ease. Now I could not have foreseen such an opponent. But apart
altogether from the beast's peculiar characteristics, what is happening now is only
something which I should really have feared all the time, something against which I should
have been constantly prepared: the fact that someone would come. By what chance can
everything have flowed on so quietly and happily for such a long time? Who can have
diverted my enemies from their path, and forced them to make a wide detour around my
property? Why have I been spared for so long, only to be delivered to such terrors now?
Compared with this, what are all the petty dangers in brooding over which I have spent my
life! Had I hoped, as owner of the burrow, to be in a stronger position than any enemy who
might chance to appear? But simply by virtue of being owner of this great vulnerable
edifice I am obviously defenseless against any serious attack. The joy of possessing it has
spoiled me, the vulnerability of the burrow has made me vulnerable; any wound to it hurts
me as if I myself were hit. It is precisely this that I should have foreseen; instead of thinking
only of my own defense -- and how perfunctorily and vainly I have done even that -- I
should have thought of the defense of the burrow. Above all, provision should have been
made for cutting off sections of the burrow, and as many as possible of them, from the
endangered sections when they are attacked; this should have been done by means of
improvised landslides, calculated to operate at a moment's notice; moreover these should
have been so thick, and have provided such an effectual barrier, that the attacker would
not even guess that the real burrow only began at the other side. More, these landslides
should have been so devised that they not only concealed the burrow, but also entombed
the attacker. Not the slightest attempt have I made to carry out such a plan, nothing at all
has been done in this direction, I have been as thoughtless as a child, I have passed my
manhood's years in childish games, I have done nothing but play even with the thought of
danger, I have shirked really taking thought for actual danger. And there has been no lack
of warning.


 Nothing, of course, approaching the present situation has happened before;
nevertheless there was an incident not unlike it when the burrow was only beginning. The
main difference between that time and this is simply that the burrow was only beginning
then. . . In those days I was literally nothing more than a humble apprentice, the labyrinth
was only sketched out in rough outline, I had already dug a little room, but the proportions
and the execution of the walls were sadly bungled; in short, everything was so tentative
that it could only be regarded as an experiment, as something which, if one lost patience
some day, one could leave behind without much regret. Then one day as I lay on a heap
of earth resting from my labors -- I have rested far too often from my labors all my life --
suddenly I heard a noise in the distance. Being young at the time, I was less frightened
than curious. I left my work to look after itself and set myself to listen; I listened and
listened, and had no wish to fly up to my moss covering and stretch myself out there so
that I might not have to hear. I did listen, at least. I could clearly recognize that the noise
came from some kind of burrowing similar to my own; it was somewhat fainter, of course,
but how much of that might be put down to the distance one could not tell. I was intensely
interested, but otherwise calm and cool. Perhaps I am in somebody else's burrow, I
thought to myself, and now the owner is boring his way toward me. If that assumption had
proved to be correct I would have gone away, for I have never had any desire for conquest
or bloodshed, and begun building somewhere else. But after all I was still young and still
without a burrow, so I could remain quite cool. Besides, the further course of the noise
brought no real cause for apprehension, except that it was not easy to explain. If whoever
was boring there was really making for me, because he had heard me boring, then if he
changed his direction, as now actually happened, it could not be told whether he did this
because my pause for rest had deprived him of any definite point to make toward, or
because -- which was more plausible -- he had himself changed his plans. But perhaps I
had been deceived altogether, and he had never been actually making in my direction; at
any rate the noise grew louder for a while as if he were drawing nearer, and being young
at that time I probably would not have been displeased to see the burrower suddenly rising
from the ground; but nothing of that kind happened, at a certain point the sound of boring
began to weaken, it grew fainter and fainter, as if the burrower were gradually diverging
from his first route, and suddenly it broke off altogether, as if he had decided now to take
the diametrically opposite direction and were making straight away from me into the
distance. For a long time I still went on listening for him in the silence, before I returned
once more to my work. Now that warning was definite enough, but I soon forgot it, and it
scarcely influenced my building plans.


 Between that day and this lie my years of maturity, but is it not as if there were no
interval at all between them? I still take long rests from my labors and listen at the wall,
and the burrower has changed his intention anew, he has turned back, he is returning from
his journey, thinking he has given me ample time in the interval to prepare for his
reception. But on my side everything is worse prepared for than it was then; the great
burrow stands defenseless, and I am no longer a young apprentice, but an old architect,
and the powers I still have fail me when the decisive hour comes; yet old as I am it seems
to me that I would gladly be still older, so old that I should never be able to rise again from
my resting place under the moss. For to be honest I cannot endure the place, I rise up and
rush, as if I had filled myself up there with new anxieties instead of peace, down into the
house again. What was the state of things the last time I was here? Had the whistling
grown fainter? No, it had grown louder. I listen at ten places chosen at random and clearly
notice the deception; the whistling is just the same as ever, nothing has altered. Over
there, there are no changes, there one is calm and not worried about time; but here every
instant frets and gnaws at the listener. I go once more the long road to the Castle Keep, all
my surroundings seem filled with agitation, seem to be looking at me, and then look away
again so as not to disturb me, yet cannot refrain the very next moment from trying to read
the saving solution from my expression. I shake my head, I have not yet found any
solution. Nor do I go to the Castle Keep in pursuance of any plan. I pass the spot where I
had intended to begin the experimental trench, I look it over once more, it would have
been an admirable place to begin at, the trench's course would have been in the direction
where lay the majority of the tiny ventilation holes, which would have greatly lightened my
labors; perhaps I should not have had to dig very far, should not even have had to dig to
the source of the noise; perhaps if I had listened at the ventilation holes it would have been
enough. But no consideration is potent enough to animate me to this labor of digging. This
trench will bring me certainty, you say? I have reached the stage where I no longer wish to
have certainty. In the Castle Keep I choose a lovely piece of flayed red flesh and creep
with it into one of the heaps of earth; there I shall have silence at least, such silence, at
any rate, as still can be said to exist here. I munch and nibble at the flesh, think of the
strange beast going its own road in the distance, and then again that I should enjoy my
store of food as fully as possible, while I still have the chance. This last is probably the sole
plan I have left that I can carry out. For the rest I try to unriddle the beast's plans. Is it on its
wanderings, or is it working on its own burrow? If it is on its wanderings then perhaps an
understanding with it might be possible. If it should really break through to the burrow I
shall give it some of my stores and it will go on its way again. It will go its way again, a fine
story! Lying in my heap of earth I can naturally dream of all sorts of things, even of an
understanding with the beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen,
and that at the instant when we see each other, more, at the moment when we merely
guess at each other's presence, we shall both blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of
us a second before or after the other, both of us filled with a new and different hunger,
even if we should already be gorged to bursting. And with entire justice, for who, even if he
were merely on his wanderings, would not change his itinerary and his plans for the future
on catching sight of the burrow? But perhaps the beast is digging in its own burrow, in
which case I cannot even dream of an understanding. Even if it should be such a peculiar
beast that its burrow could tolerate a neighbor, my burrow could not tolerate a neighbor, at
least not a clearly audible one. Now actually the beast seems to be a great distance away;
if it would only withdraw a little farther the noise too would probably disappear; perhaps in
that case everything would be peaceful again as in the old days; all this would then
become a painful but salutary lesson, spurring me on to make the most diverse
improvements on the burrow; if I have peace, and danger does not immediately threaten
me, I am still quite fit for all sorts of hard work; perhaps, considering the enormous
possibilities which its powers of work open before it, the beast has given up the idea of
extending'its burrow in my direction, and is compensating itself for that in some other one.
That consummation also cannot, of course, be brought about by negotiation, but only by
the beast itself, or by some compulsion exercised from my side. In both cases the decisive
factor will be whether the beast knows about me, and if so what it knows. The more I
reflect upon it the more improbable does it seem to me that the beast has even heard me;
it is possible, though I can't imagine it, that it can have received news of me in some other
way, but it has certainly never heard me. So long as I still knew nothing about it, it simply
cannot have heard me, for at that time I kept very quiet, nothing could be more quiet than
my return to the burrow; afterwards, when I dug the experimental trenches, perhaps it
could have heard me, though my style of digging makes very little noise; but if it had heard
me I must have noticed some sign of it, the beast must at least have stopped its work
every now and then to listen. But all remained unchanged.


 Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir