From Kafka's "Letters to Felice": Grete Bloch

Don't know how many letters he wrote to Grete. She was apparently a friend of Felice's, sent to Prague to somehow act as a go-between. The introduction sheds very little light on her, and there isn't much on the Net. It's possible that Grete and Kafka "commingled" (Grete has a mysterious son--the "timing" makes it possible that he was Kafka's, but the intro seems to lean on the side of "he wasn't"--who later dies at age 7). Though there seems to be some uncertainty re her later fate, Grete apparently dies in the camps.





***

I was expecting to meet (after all, I knew nothing about you except that you were efficient) an elderly spinster with maternal feelings who, moreover -- I don't quite know why -- would be tall and strong. To this kind of girl, I thought, one might really be able to confess everything, which in itself would be a blessing, and perhaps one might get some good advice (the belief that an adult is capable of receiving good advice is one of my greatest stupidities), and if not advice, then perhaps comfort, and if not comfort, then at least news of F. But then you arrived and were a slim, young, undoubtedly rather unusual girl.

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