Franz Kafka passed away a century ago. One way to celebrate it could be to rediscover a true treasure fortunately available online. Listening is made possible by the careful recovery of the audio kept in a so-called “big pan”, a record larger than a 33 rpm record, made of glass paste spread on a metal plate. A particularly fragile support. Its content was re-proposed on 29 January 2015 for «Il Teatro di Radio 3» edited by Antonio Audino and, in that context, presented as «the only text written by Kafka for the stage». (The text in a longer version can be found included in the editions of the Prague genius’s stories). «The single act» was broadcast on the Third Program on 21 June 1951, directed by Guglielmo Morandi. Title: «The Guardian of the Tomb». The protagonist is Ubaldo Lay, supported by members of the RAI Rome Prose Company. A tense and dark dramaturgical confrontation.
A Prince intends to change the surveillance structure of the family tomb which is located in a large park and has housed the remains of his illustrious ancestors for more than four hundred years. The Prince’s Advisor half-heartedly disagrees: «Naturally everything that His Highness orders will be carried out. Even if you don’t understand the reason for the order.” At present, the Park Guardian is also the Guardian of the tomb: “a pitiful sinecure”, an “act of profound respect for the great dead”. If instead we chose to recruit an overseer assigned only to the crypt, this could have «a police sense. It would be a real surveillance of unreal things, removed from the human senses.” The Prince wants to precisely control that fleeting “frontier between the human and the rest”. He decides to hear the opinion of the current Guardian, a debilitated old man who has perhaps vanished. He calls him.
The Guardian arrives. Lost and tired. His job, he explains, is a “heavy duty”. He knows he carries out “the most important court duty”. For more than thirty years he has supported “struggles with the holy souls of the ancestors”. His job as day caretaker of the park was changed to “night duty” by the “lords of the tombs”. His nights “last for years”, he says. And they are all the same. At midnight, punctually, the dead gentlemen arrive. They knock on the door of his house. «They’re not human knuckles» he specifies, «but I’m practical and I don’t move». The dead persist. Then the greatest of them, Duke Federico, bursts in and «with his face, his beard, his hair, occupies all my poor window. How it has grown over the centuries!» As the Guardian speaks we understand, with growing horror, that his real task is not to prevent strangers from entering the crypt and the park, but to prevent the dead from leaving them. They want to go out.
The Guardian doesn’t know why. He never asked “out of awe.” He chases them away by waving the lantern. And they seem to disperse “with laughter and groans”. But they come back, they order him to open the door. And to the denial: «Then forward the whole dynasty against the door! We’ll open ourselves!” The Guardian physically fights with the Duke. An unarmed clash, “we fight only with our fists or, to be more precise, with the force of our breath”. The Guardian never doubts victory. «Only, sometimes, I fear that the Duke might lose me between his fingers and no longer know why he fights». As dawn breaks, the Guardian wins. The Duke then throws him to the ground and spits on him. It is the way of recognizing his defeat. The Guardian’s narration stops. And in short he, “miserable” and “worn out”, collapses. He lies unconscious. They take him away. The Princess sees him pass. As if dreamily, she says: «I’m staying in my rooms. But I know everything gets murkier. More cloudy. This time autumn is sad beyond all limits.”
