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K. stepped out into the windswept street and peered into the darkness. Wild, wild weather. As if there were some connection between the two he reflected again how the landlady had striven to make him accede to the protocol, and how he had stood out. The landlady’s attempt had of course not been a straightforward one, surreptitiously she had tried to put him against the protocol at the same time; in reality he could not tell whether he had stood out or given in. An intriguing nature, acting blindly, it seemed, like the wind, according to strange and remote behests which one could never guess at.
He had only taken a few steps along the main street when he saw two swaying lights in the distance; these signs of life gladdened him and he hastened towards them, while they too made in his direction. He could not tell why he was so disappointed when he recognised the assistants. Still, they were coming to meet him, evidently sent by Frieda, and the lanterns which delivered him from the darkness roaring round him were his own; nevertheless he was disappointed, he had expected something else, not those old acquaintances who were such a burden to him. But the assistants were not alone: out of the darkness between them Barnabas stepped out. “Barnabas!” cried K. and he held out his hand, “have you come to see me?” The surprise at meeting him again drowned at first all the annoyance which he had once felt at Barnabas. “To see you,” replied Barnabas unalterably friendly as before, “with a letter from Klamm.” “A letter from Klamm!” cried K. throwing back his head. “Lights here!” he called to the assistants, who now pressed close to him on both sides holding up their lanterns. K. had to fold the large sheet in small compass to protect it from the wind while reading it. Then he read: “To the Land Surveyor at the Bridge Inn. The surveying work which you have carried out thus far has been appreciated by me. The work of the assistants too deserves praise. You know how to keep them at their jobs. Do not slacken in your efforts! Carry your work on to a fortunate conclusion. Any interruption would displease me. For the rest be easy in your mind; the question of salary will presently be decided. I shall not forget you.” K. only looked up from the letter when the assistants, who read far more slowly than he, gave three loud cheers at the good news and waved their lanterns. “Be quiet,” he said, and to Barnabas: “There’s been a misunderstanding.” Barnabas did not seem to comprehend. “There’s been a misunderstanding,” K. repeated, and the weariness he had felt in the afternoon came over him again, the road to the schoolhouse seemed very long, and behind Barnabas he could see his whole family, and the assistants were still jostling him so closely that he had to drive them away with his elbows; how could Frieda have sent them to meet him when he had commanded that they should stay with her? He could quite well have found his own way home, and better alone, indeed, than in this company. And to make matters worse one of them had wound a scarf round his neck whose free ends flapped in the wind and had several times been flung against K.’s face; it is true, the other assistant had always disengaged the wrap at once with his long, pointed, perpetually mobile fingers, but that had not made things any better. Both of them seemed to have considered it an actual pleasure to walk here and back, and the wind and the wildness of the night threw them into raptures. “Get out!” shouted K., “seeing that you’ve come to meet me, why haven’t you brought my stick? What have I now to drive you home with?” They crouched behind Barnabas, but they were not too frightened to set their lanterns on their protector’s shoulders, right and left; however he shook them off at once. “Barnabas,” said K., and he felt a weight on his heart when he saw that Barnabas obviously did not understand him, that though his tunic shone beautifully when fortune was there, when things became serious no help was to be found in him, but only dumb opposition, opposition against which one could not fight, for Barnabas himself was helpless, he could only smile, but that was of just as little help as the stars up there against this tempest down below. “Look what Klamm has written!” said K., holding the letter before his face. “He has been wrongly informed. I haven’t done any surveying at all, and you see yourself how much the assistants are worth. And obviously too I can’t interrupt work which I’ve never begun; I can’t even excite the gentleman’s displeasure, so how can I have earned his appreciation? As for being easy in my mind, I can never be that.” “I’ll see to it,” said Barnabas, who all the time had been gazing past the letter, which he could not have read in any case, for he was holding it too close to his face. “Oh,” said K., “you promise me that you’ll see to it, but can I really believe you? I’m in need of a trustworthy messenger, now more than ever.” K. bit his lips with impatience. “Sir,” replied Barnabas with a gentle inclination of the head—K. almost allowed himself to be seduced by it again into believing Barnabas—“I’ll certainly see to it, and I’ll certainly see to the message you gave me last time as well.” “What!” cried K., “haven’t you see to that yet then? Weren’t you at the Castle next day?” “No,” replied Barnabas, “my father is old, you’ve seen him yourself, and there happened to be a great deal of work just then, I had to help him, but now I’ll be going to the Castle again soon.” “But what are you thinking of, you incomprehensible fellow?” cried K. beating his brow with his fist, “don’t Klamm’s affairs come before everything else then? You’re in an important position, you’re a messenger, and yet you fail me in this wretched manner? What does your father’s work matter? Klamm is waiting for this information, and instead of breaking your neck hurrying with it to him, you prefer to clean the stable!” “My father is a cobbler,” replied Barnabas calmly, “he had orders from Brunswick, and I’m my father’s assistant.” “Cobbler-orders-Brunswick!” cried K. bitingly, as if he wanted to abolish the words forever. “And who can need boots here in these eternally empty streets? And what is all this cobbling to me? I entrusted you with a letter, not so that you might mislay it and crumple it on your bench, but that you might carry it at once to Klamm!” K. became a little more composed now as he remembered that after all Klamm had apparently been all this time in the Herrenhof and not in the Castle at all; but Barnabas exasperated him again when, to prove that he had not forgotten K.’s first message, he now began to recite it. “Enough! I don’t want to hear any more,” he said. “Don’t be angry with me, sir,” said Barnabas, and as if unconsciously wishing to show disapproval of K. he withdrew his gaze from him and lowered his eyes, but probably he was only dejected by K.’s outburst. “I’m not angry with you,” said K., and his exasperation turned now against himself. “Not with you, but it’s a bad lookout for me only to have a messenger like you for important affairs.” “Look here,” said Barnabas, and it was as if, to vindicate his honour as a messenger, he was saying more than he should, “Klamm is really not waiting for your message, he’s actually cross when I arrive. ‘Another new message,’ he said once, and generally he gets up when he sees me coming in the distance and goes into the next room and doesn’t receive me. Besides, it isn’t laid down that I should go at once with every message; if it were laid down of course I would go at once; but it isn’t laid down, and if I never went at all, nothing could be said to me. When I take a message it’s of my own free will.” “Well and good,” replied K., staring at Barnabas and intentionally ignoring the assistants, who kept on slowly raising their heads by turns behind Barnabas’ shoulders as from a trapdoor, and hastily disappearing again with a soft whistle in imitation of the whistling of the wind, as if they were terrified at K.; they enjoyed themselves like this for a long time. “What it’s like with Klamm I don’t know, but that you can understand everything there properly I very much doubt, and even if you did, we couldn’t better things there. But you can carry a message and that’s all I ask you. A quite short message. Can you carry it for me tomorrow and bring me the answer tomorrow, or at least tell me how you were received? Can you do that and will you do that? It would be of great service to me. And perhaps I’ll have a chance yet of rewarding you properly, or have you any wish now, perhaps, that I can fulfil?” “Certainly I’ll carry out your orders,” said Barnabas. “And will you do your utmost to carry them out as well as you can, to give the message to Klamm himself, to get a reply from Klamm himself, and immediately, all this immediately, tomorrow, in the morning, will you do that?” “I’ll do my best,” replied Barnabas, “but I always do that.” “We won’t argue any more about it now,” said K. “This is the message: ‘The Land Surveyor begs the Director to grant him a personal interview; he accepts in advance any conditions which may be attached to the permission to do this. He is driven to make this request because until now every intermediary has completely failed; in proof of this he advances the fact that till now he has not carried out any surveying at all, and according to the information given him by the Village Superintendent will never carry out such work; consequently it is with humiliation and despair that he has read the last letter of the Director; only a personal interview with the Director can be of help here. The Land Surveyor knows how extraordinary his request is, but he will exert himself to make his disturbance of the Director as little felt as possible; he submits himself to any and every limitation of time, also any stipulation which may be considered necessary as to the number of words which may be allowed him during the interview, even with ten words he believes he will be able to manage. In profound respect and extreme impatience he awaits your decision.’ ” K. had forgotten himself while he was speaking, it was as if he were standing before Klamm’s door talking to the porter. “It has grown much longer than I had thought,” he said, “but you must learn it by heart, I don’t want to write a letter, it would only go the same endless way as the other papers.” So for Barnabas’ guidance, K. scribbled it on a scrap of paper on one of the assistants’ backs, while the other assistant held up the lantern; but already K. could take it down from Barnabas’ dictation, for he had retained it all and spoke it out correctly, without being put off by the misleading interpolations of the assistants. “You’ve an extraordinary memory,” said K., giving him the paper, “but now show yourself extraordinary in the other things as well. And any requests? Have you none? It would reassure me a little—I say it frankly—regarding the fate of my message, if you had any.” At first Barnabas remained silent, then he said: “My sisters send you their greetings.” “Your sisters,” replied K. “Oh, yes, the big strong girls.” “Both send you their greetings, but Amalia in particular,” said Barnabas, “besides it was she who brought me this letter for you today from the Castle.” Struck by this piece of information, K. asked: “Couldn’t she take my message to the Castle as well? Or couldn’t you both go and each of you try your luck?” “Amalia isn’t allowed into the Chancellory,” said Barnabas, “otherwise she would be very glad to do it.” “I’ll come and see you perhaps tomorrow,” said K., “only you come to me first with the answer. I’ll wait for you in the school. Give my greetings to your sisters too.” K.’s promise seemed to make Barnabas very happy, and after they had shaken hands he could not help touching K. lightly on the shoulder. As if everything were once more as it had been when Barnabas first walked into the inn among the peasants in all his glory, K. felt this touch on his shoulder as a distinction, though he smiled at it. In a better mood now, he let the assistants do as they pleased on the way home.