In such a situation, Walter Tell’s son would have hesitated. Not because of lack of confidence in his father, but because nobody, not even the best crossbowman, could be sure to aim straight when he felt all that pressure on him. Walter Tell repeated that he’d not felt afraid at any point. How could he ever doubt his father, the man who, precisely as a result of that feat, would be transformed into the national hero? Walter Tell stroked his son’s head and didn’t mention that, with the passage of time, the heroic deed would finally turn into a headache. Not at the time, because he was only a child. And he wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t afraid, even for a thousandth of a second, that his father wouldn’t hit the apple. It was later on, when he grew up, that he began to think back and ask the questions his son now asked him. At the time of the heroic deed he was too young to grasp the real danger implicit in that challenge, but his father was no child. How could he have imperiled his son’s life without shaking at all? Didn’t his pulse race for a split second? What initially looked like confidence in hitting his target seemed in the end to be an indication of indifference. If he had had the shakes, if only for a moment, it would have meant, if only for the briefest moment, that he was afraid of missing and, thus, suffering for his sake. By virtue of turning it over in his mind so much, he concluded that his father didn’t, in fact, love him very much. It was evident he was the best crossbowman, but he only had to be an inch off and the arrow would have shattered his skull rather than the apple. With the passage of time, and this growing awareness, Walter Tell started to become quite prickly. Every night he dreamed the arrow was flying straight at him. He was standing against the tree trunk, head erect and still, to ensure that the apple (a pippin with a delicious aroma) didn’t fall. Facing him, a whole lot of people: Gessler de Brunock, several soldiers, and, among them, his father aiming his crossbow at him. Suddenly (time and again, effortlessly), the arrow (first small and distant, then suddenly huge) almost combing his hair, the squirsh of the apple shattering, and the sshsthud as the arrow penetrates the tree trunk. But, every now and then, in his dream the arrow hits him and not the apple. Walter would wake up, sit up, and scream in terror. His mother ran to soothe him. “It’s only a nightmare, Walter, try to get back to sleep.” While his mother hugged him, Walter could hear his father snoring in the matrimonial bed.
As a young man Walter Tell belonged for years to an anarchist group that was fighting for the abolition of the Swiss state. They read Bakunin, published a clandestine magazine, sang songs from countries that were on the road to development (particularly the Latin American sort), and, drunk on beer, painted circles on the walls of Freiburg University, where he studied Romance philology and was a member of the Olympic crossbow team. Years later he graduated, returned home, began living off the family inheritance, and finally devoted himself entirely to the two great passions in his life: crossbows and beer. He married the girlfriend he’d had from his first year at school. They had a child. They called the child William because that’s what his wife wanted (she was a big admirer of her father-in-law) and decided to bring him up according to the pedagogical precepts of non-violence.
•
Little William admired his father and grandfather, and when he asked them to tell him the story yet again (how exactly grandfather placed the apple on his son’s head, how he could agree to it without shaking with fear, if it were true he wasn’t at all afraid), he felt incredibly uplifted. He felt deep, unqualified admiration for his father and grandfather. But as an adolescent, he began to feel that natural rebellion towards his father, and he’d ask in a falsetto voice (to annoy him): “Father, tell me again exactly how grandfather placed the apple on your head. How could you let him do that? Did you really not feel scared?” He uses almost the same words as before. But now his tone is mocking, and he particularly likes asking in front of his school-friends, so (apart from admiring him as William Tell’s grandchild and the son of the child who wasn’t afraid when he became a target) they now admire him because he doesn’t idealize them. As far as he is concerned, those heroic figures are simply father and grandfather, like any of his friends’ fathers and grandfathers. That’s why he adopts the falsetto tone: “Father, tell me again exactly how grandfather placed the apple on your head. How could you let him do that? Did you really not feel scared?”
Walter Tell downs his beer, picks up his crossbow, and goes into the garden to practice. He is a good crossbowman. He has always lived in his father’s shadow; however, now that he’s in his forties, he can say, without arrogance, that he’s even better than his father was at the same age. If they competed side by side now, he would win. That’s why he finds his son’s constant taunts so irksome. Not so much because he reproaches him for trusting his father (that might simply be an expression of envy), but because of his doubt: in a similar situation, would his son trust him as he’d trusted his father? Today, between one jar of beer and another, he hears his son taunting him yet again: “Father, tell me again how exactly grandfather placed the apple on your head. How could you let him do that? Did you really not feel scared?”
Walter stares at him long and hard and asks if he wouldn’t like to have a try. To find out what things are like; there is nothing like experiencing it yourself, or so they say. You can get an approximate idea of what things are like from what people tell you, but you never really know what they’re like until you experience them for yourself. If he places the apple on his head, he will shoot from his crossbow. No need to be afraid: he knows he is as good as his grandfather.
His son looks surprised and smiles. His father continues: if there’s no reason to do it, the glory is even greater. As he speaks, he takes big strides around his son. Doing it in front of the Austrian governor, he says, added a heroic element, and the risk wasn’t entirely selfless: in the long run, every heroic deed earns its own reward. On the contrary, they are quite alone in their garden and there’s no heroic element involved. It’s simply an issue of trust. Does he or doesn’t he trust his father? He places the apple on his head, leans against the tree, and stands still.
Seen from this point of view, young William Tell is in complete agreement: accepting such a challenge has more (if not heroic) merit. It is random. Because, in fact, if he accepts it is simply to demonstrate that all the taunts he keeps making are no more than that, and if he continues to make them, knowing that deep down they hurt, it is because he wants to feel more grown up, more distanced from his father and his world of heroes of the fatherland. But deep, deep down, wouldn’t he too like to join that world of heroes? To accept his father’s suggestion will be even more audacious. He will surpass them both at a single stroke, because his courage is anonymous and he isn’t seeking a reward. If he accepts the challenge, it will immediately make an adult of him. He runs into the kitchen, grabs an apple, goes back into the garden, looks for a tree that is eighty paces away, leans against the trunk, and places the apple on his head while his father draws his crossbow.
Gregor
When the beetle emerged from his larval state one morning, he found he had been transformed into a fat boy. He was lying on his back, which was surprisingly soft and vulnerable, and if he raised his head slightly, he could see his pale, swollen belly. His extremities had been drastically reduced in number, and the few he could feel (he counted four eventually) were painfully tender and fleshy and so thick and heavy he couldn’t possibly move them around.
What had happened? The room seemed really tiny and the smell much less mildewy than before. There were hooks on the wall to hang a broom and mop on. In one corner, two buckets. Along another wall, a shelf with sacks, boxes, pots, a vacuum cleaner, and, propped against that, the ironing board. How small all those things seemed now—he’d hardly been able to take them in at a glance before. He moved his head. He tried twisting to the right, but his gigantic body weighed too much and he couldn’t. He tried a second time, and a third. In the end he was so exhausted that he was forced to rest.
He opened his eyes again in dismay. What about his family? He twisted his head to the left and saw them, an unimaginable distance