On letterhead of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute, where he holds an important post. A letter that is two pages long, typed on a typewriter he is unfamiliar with, and started after his sixth hour at the office. He reminds her of his name, Franz Kafka, their meeting at the Brods’, and their plan to travel to Palestine together. In case she sees no reason to accept him as her traveling companion and as a guide, burden, tyrant, or whatever else he might become, he suggests that in the meantime she accept him provisionally as her correspondent. He adds that he is not punctual and that, in exchange, he does not expect to receive regular letters. He signs: “Yours very sincerely, Dr. Franz Kafka.” (He is a doctor of law.) This first letter remains unanswered. Franz writes a second one, in longhand. He has much to say: it is a warm, sunny day, the window is open, he is humming a tune. He explains to Felice Bauer that for five weeks he begged high and low for her office address in Berlin, that anxieties rain down on him continuously, that he composed his first letter over the course of ten nights, so difficult did he find transcribing what he had in his head before going to sleep.
