Kafka, Love and the Travelling Doll

“Kafka and the travelling doll” is a great story, by author Jordi Sierra Fabra.

One year before his death, Franz Kafka was walking through Steglitz Park, in Berlin. This was his daily walking route and that day he met a little girl crying. She was heartbroken because she had lost her doll.

To calm her down, Franz first helped look for the doll. Eventually, realizing that they would not find it, Franz told the little girl that the doll was probably away on a trip but that she should not worry, as he was a postman and the doll would have sent her a letter. He arranged to meet her the next day at the park, to deliver the letter.

The next day there was a letter from the doll and the content said:

“Please do not cry, I have gone on a trip to see the world. I will write to you of my adventures.”

This was the beginning of a long exchange of letters. When he and the little girl met again, he read her the letters about the imagined adventures of the beloved doll. For three weeks Frank focused only on the doll’s letters and handed them to the girl every day.

When the meetings ended, Kafka bought her a doll. The doll was not the one the little girl lost, and the little girl said: “This is not my doll”.

So, Kafka gave her a letter in which the doll explained:

“…my travels have changed me… “

The little girl hugged the doll and went home thrilled. The following year, Kafka died.

Several years later, the girl found a letter stuffed into a previously unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter said:

“Everything that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

Nobody has ever known who was that little girl and what happened with the letters.

If you have not read Kafka, I would strongly encourage you to read “The Trial”, a short novel.