In the last months of his life,
Kafka wrote from Berlin to his sister Elli:
Recently I had an amorous escapade. I was sitting in the sun in the Botanical Garden... when the children from a girls’ school walked by. One of the girls was a lovely long-legged blonde, boyish, who gave me a coquettish smile, turning up the corners of her little mouth and calling out something to me. Naturally I smiled back at her in an overly friendly manner, and continued to do so when she and her girlfriends kept turning back in my direction. Until I began to realize what she had actually said to me: “Jew.”
