XV

XV

Seeing that with a somewhat astonished face K. remained standing where he was, Olga laughed at him and drew him towards the settle by the stove, she seemed to be really happy at the prospect of sitting there alone with him, but it was a contented happiness without a single hint of jealousy. And precisely this freedom of hers from jealousy and therefore from any kind of claim upon him did K. good, he was glad to look into her blue eyes which were not cajoling, nor hectoring, but shyly simple and frank. It was as if the warnings of Frieda and the landlady had made him, not more suspectible to all those things, but more observant and more discerning. And he laughed with Olga when she expressed her wonder at his calling Amalia good-natured, of all things, for Amalia had many qualities, but good-nature was certainly not one of them. Whereupon K. explained that of course his praise had been meant for Olga, only Amalia was so masterful that she not only took to herself whatever was said in her presence, but induced other people of their own free will to include her in everything. “That’s true,” said Olga, becoming more serious, “truer than you think. Amalia’s younger than me, and younger than Barnabas, but hers is the decisive voice in the family for good or for ill, of course she bears the burden of it more than anybody, the good as well as the bad.” K. thought that an exaggeration, for Amalia had just said that she paid no attention, for instance, to her brother’s affairs, while Olga knew all about them. “How can I make it clear?” said Olga, “Amalia bothers neither about Barnabas nor about me, she really bothers about nobody but the old people whom she tends day and night; now she had just asked them again if they want anything and has gone into the kitchen to cook them something, and for their sakes she has overcome her indisposition, for she’s been ill since midday and been lying here on the settle. But although she doesn’t bother about us we’re as dependent on her as if she were the eldest, and if she were to advise us in our affairs we should certainly follow her advice, only she doesn’t do it, she’s different from us. You have experience of people, you come from a strange land, don’t you think, too, that she’s extraordinarily clever?” “Extraordinarily unhappy is what she seems to me,” said K., “but how does it go with your respect for her that Barnabas, for example, takes service as a messenger, in spite of Amalia’s evident disapproval, and even her scorn?” “If he knew what else to do he would give up being a messenger at once, for it doesn’t satisfy him.” “Isn’t he an expert shoemaker?” asked K. “Of course he is,” said Olga, “and in his spare time he does work for Brunswick, and if he liked he could have enough work to keep him going day and night and earn a lot of money.” “Well then,” said K. “That would be an alternative to his service as a messenger.” “An alternative?” asked Olga in astonishment, “do you think he does it for the money?” “Maybe he does,” said K., “but didn’t you say he was discontented?” “He’s discontented, and for various reasons,” said Olga, “but it’s Castle service, anyhow a kind of Castle service, at least one would suppose so.” “What!” said K., “do you even doubt that?” “Well,” said Olga, “not really, Barnabas goes into the bureaux and is accepted by the attendants as one of themselves, he sees various officials, too, from the distance, is entrusted with relatively important letters, even with verbally delivered messages, that’s a good deal, after all, and we should be proud of what he has achieved for a young man of his years.” K. nodded and no longer thought of going home. “He has a uniform of his own, too?” he asked. “You mean the jacket?” said Olga, “no, Amalia made that for him long before he became a messenger. But you’re touching on a sore spot now. He ought long ago to have had, not a uniform, for there aren’t many in the Castle, but a suit provided by the department, and he has been promised one, but in things of that kind the Castle moves slowly, and the worst of it is that one never knows what this slowness means; it can mean that the matter’s being considered, but it can also mean that it hasn’t yet been taken up, that Barnabas for instance is still on probation, and in the long run it can also mean that the whole thing has been settled, that for some reason or other the promise has been cancelled, and that Barnabas will never get his suit. One can never find out exactly what is happening, or only a long time afterwards. We have a saying here, perhaps you’ve heard it: Official decisions are as shy as young girls.” “That’s a good observation,” said K., he took it still more seriously than Olga, “a good observation, and the decisions may have other characteristics in common with young girls.” “Perhaps,” said Olga. “But as far as the official suit’s concerned, that’s one of Barnabas’s great sorrows, and since we share all our troubles, it’s one of mine too. We ask ourselves in vain why he doesn’t get an official suit. But the whole affair is not just so simple as that. The officials, for instance, apparently have no official dress; so far as we know here, and so far as Barnabas tells us, the officials go about in their ordinary clothes, very fine clothes, certainly. Well, you’ve seen Klamm. Now, Barnabas is certainly not an official, not even one in the lowest category, and he doesn’t overstep his limitations so far as to want to be one. But according to Barnabas, the higher grade servants, whom one certainly never sees down here in the village, have no official dress; that’s a kind of comfort, one might suppose, but it’s a deceptive comfort, for is Barnabas a high-grade servant? Not he; however partial one might be towards him one couldn’t maintain that, the fact that he comes to the village and even lives here is sufficient proof of the contrary, for the higher-grade servants are even more inaccessible than the officials, perhaps rightly so, perhaps they are even of higher rank than many an official, there’s some evidence of that, they work less, and Barnabas says it’s a marvellous sight to see these tall and distinguished men slowly walking through the corridors, Barnabas always gives them a wide berth. Well, he might be one of the lower-grade servants, then, but these always have an official suit, at least whenever they come down into the village, it’s not exactly a uniform, there are many different versions of it, but at any rate one can always tell Castle servants by their clothes, you’ve seen some of them in the Herrenhof. The most noticeable thing about the clothes is that they’re mostly close-fitting, a peasant or a handworker couldn’t do with them. Well, a suit like that hasn’t been given to Barnabas, and it’s not merely the shame of it or the disgrace⁠—one could put up with that⁠—but the fact that in moments of depression⁠—and we often have such moments, none too rarely, Barnabas and I⁠—it makes us doubt everything. Is it really Castle service Barnabas is doing, we ask ourselves then; granted, he goes into the bureaux, but are the bureaux part of the real Castle? And even if there are bureaux actually in the Castle, are they the bureaux that Barnabas is allowed to enter?

“He’s admitted into certain rooms, but they’re only a part of the whole, for there are barriers behind which there are more rooms. Not that he’s actually forbidden to pass the barriers, but he can’t very well push past them once he has met his chiefs and been dismissed by them. Besides, everybody is watched there, at least so we believe. And even if he did push on further what good would it be to him, if he had no official duties to carry out and were a mere intruder? And you mustn’t imagine that these barriers are a definite dividing-line; Barnabas is always impressing that on me. There are barriers even at the entrance to the rooms where he’s admitted, so you see there are barriers he can pass, and they’re just the same as the ones he’s never yet passed, which looks as if one oughtn’t to suppose that behind the ultimate barriers the bureaux are any different from those Barnabas has already seen. Only that’s what we do suppose in moments of depression. And the doubt doesn’t stop there, we can’t keep it within bounds. Barnabas sees officials, Barnabas is given messages. But who are those officials, and what are the messages? Now, so he says, he’s assigned to Klamm, who gives him his instructions in person. Well, that would be a great favour, even higher-grade servants don’t get so far as that, it’s almost too much to believe, almost terrifying. Only think, directly assigned to Klamm, speaking with him face to face! But is it really the case? Well, suppose it is so, then why does Barnabas doubt that the official who is referred to as Klamm is really Klamm?” “Olga,” said K., “you surely must be joking; how can there be any doubt about Klamm’s appearance, everybody knows what he looks like, even I have seen him.” “Of course not, K.,” said Olga. “I’m not joking at all, I’m desperately serious. Yet I’m not telling you all this simply to relieve my own feelings and burden yours, but because Amalia charged me to tell you, since you were asking for Barnabas, and because I think too that it would be useful for you to know more about it. I’m doing it for Barnabas’s sake as well, so that you won’t pin too many hopes upon him, and suffer disappointment, and make him suffer too because of your disappointment. He’s very sensitive, for instance he didn’t sleep all night because you were displeased with him yesterday evening. He took you to say that it was a bad lookout for you to have only a messenger like him. These words kept him off his sleep. I don’t suppose that you noticed how upset he was, for Castle messengers must keep themselves well under control. But he hasn’t an easy time, not even with you, although from your point of view you don’t ask too much of him, for you have your own prior conception of a messenger’s powers and make your demands accordingly. But in the Castle they have a different conception of a messenger’s duties, which couldn’t be reconciled with yours, even if Barnabas were to devote himself entirely to the task, which, unfortunately, he often seems inclined to do. Still, one would have to submit to that and raise no objection, if it weren’t for the question whether Barnabas is really a messenger or not. Before you, of course, he can’t express any doubt of it whatever, to do that would be to undermine his very existence and to offend grievously against laws which he believes himself still plighted to, and even to me he doesn’t speak freely, I have to cajole and kiss his doubts out of him, and even then he refuses to admit that his doubts are doubts. He has something of Amalia in him. And I’m sure that he doesn’t tell me everything, although I’m his sole confidant. But we do often speak about Klamm, whom I’ve never seen; you know Frieda doesn’t like me and has never let me look at him, still his appearance is well-known in the village, some people have seen him, everybody has heard of him, and out of glimpses and rumours and through various distorting factors an image of Klamm has been constructed which is certainly true in fundamentals. But only in fundamentals. In detail it fluctuates, and yet perhaps not so much as Klamm’s real appearance. For he’s reported as having one appearance when he comes into the village and another on leaving it, after having his beer he looks different from what he does before it, when he’s awake he’s different from when he’s asleep, when he’s alone he’s different from when he’s talking to people, and⁠—what is comprehensible after all that⁠—he’s almost another person up in the Castle. And even within the village there are considerable differences in the accounts given of him, differences as to his height, his bearing, his size and the cut of his beard, fortunately there’s one thing in which all the accounts agree, he always wears the same clothes, a black morning coat with long tails. Now of course all these differences aren’t the result of magic, but can be easily explained; they depend on the mood of the observer, on the degree of his excitement, on the countless graduations of hope or despair which are possible for him when he sees Klamm, and besides, he can usually see Klamm only for a second or two. I’m telling you all this just as Barnabas has often told it to me, and, on the whole, for anyone not personally interested in the matter, it would be a sufficient explanation. Not for us, however; it’s a matter of life or death for Barnabas whether it’s really Klamm he speaks to or not.” “And for me no less,” said K. and they moved nearer to each other on the settle.

All this depressing information of Olga’s certainly affected K., but he regarded it as a great consolation to find other people who were at least externally much in the same situation as himself, with whom he could join forces and whom he could touch at many points, not merely at a few points as in Frieda’s case. He was indeed gradually giving up all hope of achieving success through Barnabas, but the worse it went with Barnabas in the Castle the nearer he felt drawn to him down here; never would K. have believed that in the village itself such a despairing struggle could go on as Barnabas and his sister were involved in. Of course it was as yet far from being adequately explained and might turn out to be quite the reverse, one shouldn’t let Olga’s unquestionable innocence mislead one into taking Barnabas’s uprightness for granted. “Barnabas is familiar with all those accounts of Klamm’s appearance,” went on Olga, “he has collected and compared a great many, perhaps too many, he even saw Klamm once through a carriage window in the village, or believed he saw him, and so was sufficiently prepared to recognise him again, and yet⁠—how can you explain this?⁠—when he entered a bureau in the Castle and had one of several officials pointed out to him as Klamm he didn’t recognise him, and for a long time afterwards couldn’t accustom himself to the idea that it was Klamm. But if you ask Barnabas what was the difference between that Klamm and the usual description given of Klamm, he can’t tell you, or rather he tries to tell you and describes the official of the Castle, but his description coincides exactly with the descriptions we usually hear of Klamm. Well then, Barnabas, I say to him, why do you doubt it, why do you torment yourself? Whereupon in obvious distress he begins to reckon up certain characteristics of the Castle official, but he seems to be thinking them out rather than describing them, and besides that they are so trivial⁠—a particular way of nodding the head, for instance, or even an unbottoned waistcoat⁠—that one simply can’t take them seriously. Much more important seems to me the way in which Klamm receives Barnabas. Barnabas has often described it to me, and even sketched the room. He’s usually admitted into a large room, but the room isn’t Klamm’s bureau, nor even the bureau of any particular official. It’s a room divided into two by a single reading-desk stretching all its length from wall to wall; one side is so narrow that two people can hardly squeeze past each other, and that’s reserved for the officials, the other side is spacious, and that’s where clients wait, spectators, servants, messengers. On the desk there are great books lying open, side by side, and officials stand by most of them reading. They don’t always stick to the same book, yet it isn’t the books that they change but their places, and it always astounds Barnabas to see how they have to squeeze past each other when they change places, because there’s so little room. In front of the desk and close to it there are small low tables at which clerks sit ready to write from dictation, whenever the officials wish it. And the way that is done always amazes Barnabas. There’s no express command given by the official, nor is the dictation given in a loud voice, one could hardly tell that it was being given at all, the official just seems to go on reading as before, only whispering as he reads, and the clerk hears the whisper. Often it’s so low that the clerk can’t hear it at all in his seat, and then he has to jump up, catch what’s being dictated, sit down again quickly and make a note of it, then jump up once more, and so on. What a strange business! It’s almost incomprehensible. Of course Barnabas has time enough to observe it all, for he’s often kept standing in the big room for hours and days at a time before Klamm happens to see him. And even if Klamm sees him and he springs to attention, that needn’t mean anything, for Klamm may turn away from him again to the book and forget all about him. That often happens. But what can be the use of a messenger-service so casual as that? It makes me quite doleful to hear Barnabas say in the early morning that he’s going to the Castle. In all likelihood a quite useless journey, a lost day, a completely vain hope. What’s the good of it all? And here’s cobbler’s work piled up which never gets done and which Brunswick is always asking for.” “Oh, well,” said K., “Barnabas has just to hang on till he gets a commission. That’s understandable, the place seems to be over-staffed, and everybody can’t be given a job every day, you needn’t complain about that, for it must affect everybody. But in the long run even a Barnabas gets commissions, he has brought two letters already to me.” “It’s possible, of course,” answered Olga, “that we’re wrong in complaining, especially a girl like me who knows things only from hearsay and can’t understand it all so well as Barnabas, who certainly keeps many things to himself. But let me tell you how the letters are given out, your letters, for example. Barnabas doesn’t get these letters directly from Klamm, but from a clerk. On no particular day, at no particular hour⁠—that’s why the service, however easy it appears, is really very exhausting, for Barnabas must be always on the alert⁠—a clerk suddenly remembers about him and gives him a sign, without any apparent instructions from Klamm, who merely goes on reading in his book. True, sometimes Klamm is polishing his glasses when Barnabas comes up, but he often does that anyhow⁠—however, he may take a look at Barnabas then, supposing, that is, that he can see anything at all without his glasses, which Barnabas doubts; for Klamm’s eyes are almost shut, he generally seems to be sleeping and only polishing his glasses in a kind of dream. Meanwhile the clerk hunts among the piles of manuscripts and writings under his table and fishes out a letter for you, so it’s not a letter newly written, indeed, by the look of the envelope, it’s usually a very old letter, which has been lying there a long time. But if that is so, why do they keep Barnabas waiting like that? And you too? And the letter too, of course, for it must be long out of date. That’s how they get Barnabas the reputation of being a bad and slow messenger. It’s all very well for the clerk, he just gives Barnabas the letter, saying: ‘From Klamm for K.’ and so dismisses him. But Barnabas comes home breathless, with his hardly-won letter next to his bare skin, and then we sit here on the settle like this and he tells me about it and we go into all the particulars and weigh up what he has achieved and find ultimately that it’s very little, and questionable at that, until Barnabas lays the letter down with no longer any inclination to deliver it, yet doesn’t feel inclined to go to sleep either, and so sits cobbling on his stool all night. That’s how it is, K. and now you have all my secrets and you can’t be surprised any longer at Amalia’s indifference to them.” “And what happens to the letter?” asked K. “The letter?” said Olga, “oh, some time later when I’ve plagued Barnabas enough about it, it may be days or weeks later, he picks it up again and goes to deliver it. In such practical matters he’s very dependent on me. For I can usually pull myself together after I’ve recovered from the first impression of what he has told me, but he can’t, probably because he knows more. So I always find something or other to say to him, such as ‘What are you really aiming at, Barnabas? What kind of career, what ambition are you dreaming of? Are you thinking of climbing so high that you’ll have to leave us, to leave me, completely behind you? Is that what you’re aiming at? How can I help believing so when it’s the only possible explanation why you’re so dreadfully discontented with all you’ve done already? Only take a look round and see whether any of our neighbours has got on so well as you. I admit their situation is different from ours and they have no grounds for ambition beyond their daily work, but even without making comparisons it’s easy to see that you’re all right. Hindrances there may be, doubts and disappointments, but that only means, what we all knew beforehand, that you get nothing without paying for it, that you have to fight for every trivial point; all the more reason for being proud instead of downcast. And aren’t you fighting for us as well? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that put new strength into you? And the fact that I’m happy and almost conceited at having such a brother, doesn’t that give you any confidence? It isn’t what you’ve achieved in the Castle that disappoints me, but the little that I’m able to achieve with you. You’re allowed into the Castle, you’re a regular visitor in the bureaux, you spend whole days in the same room as Klamm, you’re an officially recognised messenger, with a claim on an official suit, you’re entrusted with important commissions, you have all that to your credit, and then you come down here and instead of embracing me and weeping for joy you seem to lose all heart as soon as you set eyes on me, and you doubt everything, nothing interests you but cobbling, and you leave the letter, the pledge of our future, lying in a corner.’ That’s how I speak to him, and after I’ve repeated the same words day after day he picks up the letter at last with a sigh and goes off. Yet probably it’s not the effect of what I say that drives him out, but a desire to go to the Castle again, which he dare not do without having delivered his message.” “But you’re absolutely right in everything you say,” said K., “it’s amazing how well you grasp it all. What an extraordinarily clear mind you have!” “No,” said Olga, “it takes you in, and perhaps it takes him in too. For what has he really achieved? He’s allowed into a bureau, but it doesn’t seem to be even a bureau. He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who’s a little like Klamm? A secretary perhaps, at the most, who resembles Klamm a little and takes pains to increase the resemblance and poses a little in Klamm’s sleepy and dreamy style. That side of his nature is the easiest to imitate, there are many who try it on, although they have sense enough not to attempt anything more. And a man like Klamm who is so much sought after and so rarely seen is apt to take different shapes in people’s imagination. For instance Klamm has a village secretary here called Momus. You know him, do you? He keeps well in the background too, but I’ve seen him several times. A stoutly-built young man, isn’t he? And so evidently not in the least like Klamm. And yet you’ll find people in the village who swear that Momus is Klamm, he and no other. That’s how people work their own confusion. Is there any reason why it should be different in the Castle? Somebody pointed out that particular official to Barnabas as Klamm, and there is actually a resemblance that Barnabas has always questioned. And everything goes to support his doubt. Are we to suppose that Klamm has to squeeze his way among other officials in a common room with a pencil behind his ear? It’s wildly improbable. Barnabas often says, somewhat like a child and yet in a child’s mood of trustfulness: ‘The official is really very like Klamm, and if he were sitting in his own office at his own desk with his name on the door I would have no more doubt at all.’ That’s childish, but reasonable. Of course it would be still more reasonable of Barnabas when he’s up there to ask a few people about the truth of things, for judging from his account there are plenty of men standing round. And even if their information were no more reliable than that of the man who pointed out Klamm of his own accord, there would be surely some common ground, some ground for comparison, in the various things they said. That’s not my idea, but Barnabas’s, yet he doesn’t dare to follow it out, he doesn’t venture to speak to anybody for fear of offending in ignorance against some unknown rule and so losing his job; you see how uncertain he feels; and this miserable uncertainty of his throws a clearer light on his position there than all his descriptions. How ambiguous and threatening everything must appear to him when he won’t even risk opening his mouth to put an innocent question! When I reflect on that I blame myself for letting him go alone into those unknown rooms, which have such an effect on him that, though he’s daring rather than cowardly, he apparently trembles with fright as he stands there.”

“Here I think you’ve touched on the essential point,” said K. “That’s it. After all you’ve told me, I believe I can see the matter clearly. Barnabas is too young for this task. Nothing he tells you is to be taken seriously at its face value. Since he’s beside himself with fright up there, he’s incapable of observing, and when you force him to give an account of what he has seen, you get simply confused fabrications. That doesn’t surprise me. Fear of the authorities is born in you here, and is further suggested to you all your lives in the most various ways and from every side, and you yourselves help to strengthen it as much as possible. Still, I have no fundamental objection to that; if an authority is good why should it not be feared? Only one shouldn’t suddenly send an inexperienced youngster like Barnabas, who has never been further than this village, into the Castle, and then expect a truthful account of everything from him, and interpret each single word of his as if it were a revelation, and base one’s own life’s happiness on the interpretation. Nothing could be more mistaken. I admit that I have let him mislead me in exactly the same way and have set hopes upon him and suffered disappointments through him, both based simply on his own words, that is to say, with almost no basis.” Olga was silent. “It won’t be easy for me,” went on K., “to talk you out of your confidence in your brother, for I see how you love him and how much you expect from him. But I must do it, if only for the sake of that very love and expectation. For let me point out that there’s always something⁠—I don’t know what it is⁠—that hinders you from seeing clearly how much Barnabas has⁠—I’ll not say achieved⁠—but has had bestowed on him. He’s permitted to go into the bureaux, or if you prefer, into an antechamber, well let it be an antechamber, it has doors that lead on further, barriers which can be passed if one has the courage. To me, for instance, even this antechamber is utterly inaccessible, for the present at least. Who it is that Barnabas speaks to there I have no idea, perhaps the clerk is the lowest in the whole staff, but even if he is the lowest he can put one in touch with the next man above him, and if he can’t do that he can at least give the other’s name, and if he can’t even do that he can refer to somebody who can give the name. This so-called Klamm may not have the smallest trait in common with the real one, the resemblance may not exist except in the eyes of Barnabas, half-blinded by fear, he may be the meanest of the officials, he may not even be an official at all, but all the same he has work of some kind to perform at the desk, he reads something or other in his great book, he whispers something to the clerk, he thinks something when his eye falls on Barnabas once in a while, and even if that isn’t true and he and his acts have no significance whatever, he has at least been set there by somebody for some purpose. All that simply means that something is there, something which Barnabas has the chance of using, something or other at the very least; and that it is Barnabas’s own fault if he can’t get any further than doubt and anxiety and despair. And that’s only on the most unfavourable interpretation of things, which is extremely improbable. For we have the actual letters, which I certainly set no great store on, but more than on what Barnabas says. Let them be worthless old letters, fished at random from a pile of other such worthless old letters, at random and with no more discrimination than the lovebirds show in the fairs when they pick one’s fortune out of a pile; let them be all that, still they have some bearing on my fate. They’re evidently meant for me, although perhaps not for my good, and, as the Superintendent and his wife have testified, they are written in Klamm’s own hand, and, again on the Superintendent’s evidence, they have a significance which is only private and obscure, it is true, but still great.” “Did the Superintendent say that?” asked Olga. “Yes, he did,” replied K. “I must tell Barnabas that,” said Olga quickly, “that will encourage him greatly.” “But he doesn’t need encouragement,” said K. “to encourage him amounts to telling him that he’s right, that he has only to go on as he is doing now, but that is just the way he will never achieve anything by. If a man has his eyes bound you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he’ll never see anything. He’ll be able to see only when the bandage is removed. It’s help Barnabas needs, not encouragement. Only think, up there you have all the inextricable complications of a great authority⁠—I imagined that I had an approximate conception of its nature before I came here, but how childish my ideas were!⁠—up there, then, you have the authorities and over against them Barnabas, nobody more, only Barnabas, pathetically alone, where it would be enough honour for him to spend his whole life cowering in a dark and forgotten corner of some bureau.” “Don’t imagine, K., that we underestimate the difficulties Barnabas has to face,” said Olga, “we have reverence enough for the authorities, you said so yourself.” “But it’s a mistaken reverence,” said K., “a reverence in the wrong place, the kind of reverence that dishonours its object. Do you call it reverence that leads Barnabas to abuse the privilege of admission to that room by spending his time there doing nothing, or makes him when he comes down again belittle and despise the men before whom he has just been trembling, or allows him because he’s depressed or weary to put off delivering letters and fail in executing commissions entrusted to him? That’s far from being reverence. But I have a further reproach to make, Olga; I must blame you too, I can’t exempt you. Although you fancy you have some reverence for the authorities you sent Barnabas into the Castle in all his youth and weakness and forlornness, or at least you didn’t dissuade him from going.”

“This reproach that you make,” said Olga, “is one I have made myself from the beginning. Not indeed that I sent Barnabas to the Castle, I didn’t send him, he went himself, but I ought to have prevented him by all the means in my power, by force, by craft, by persuasion. I ought to have prevented him, but if I had to decide again this very day, and if I were to feel as keenly as I did then and still do the straits Barnabas is in, and our whole family, and if Barnabas, fully conscious of the responsibility and danger ahead of him, were once more to free himself from me with a smile and set off, I wouldn’t hold him back even today, in spite of all that has happened in between, and I believe that in my place you would do exactly the same. You don’t know the plight we are in, that’s why you’re unfair to all of us, and especially to Barnabas. At that time we had more hope than now, but even then our hope wasn’t great, but our plight was great, and is so still. Hasn’t Frieda told you anything about us?” “Mere hints,” said K., “nothing definite, but the very mention of your name exasperates her.” “And has the landlady told you nothing either?” “No, nothing.” “Nor anybody else?” “Nobody.” “Of course; how could anybody tell you anything? Everyone knows something about us, either the truth, so far as it is accessible, or at least some exaggerated rumour, mostly invention, and everybody thinks about us more than need be, but nobody will actually speak about it, people are shy of putting these things into words. And they’re quite right in that. It’s difficult to speak of it even before you, K., and when you’ve heard it all it’s possible⁠—isn’t it?⁠—that you’ll go away and not want to have anything more to do with us, however little it may seem to concern you. Then we should have lost you, and I confess that now you mean almost more to me than Barnabas’s service in the Castle. But yet⁠—and this argument has been distracting me all the evening⁠—you must be told, otherwise you would have no insight into our situation, and, what would vex me most of all, you would go on being unfair to Barnabas. Complete accord would fail between us, and you could neither help us, nor accept our additional help. But there is still one more question: Do you really want to be told?” “Why do you ask?” said K., “if it’s necessary, I would rather be told, but why do you ask me so particularly?” “Superstition,” said Olga. “You’ll become involved in our affairs, innocent as you are, almost as innocent as Barnabas.” “Tell me quickly,” said K., “I’m not afraid. You’re certainly making it much worse than it is with such womanish fussing.”

Amalia’s Secret

“Judge for yourself,” said Olga, “I warn you it sounds quite simple, one can’t comprehend at first why it should be of any importance. There’s a great official in the Castle called Sortini.” “I’ve heard of him already,” said K., “he had something to do with bringing me here.” “I don’t think so,” said Olga, “Sortini hardly ever comes into the open. Aren’t you mistaking him for Sordini, spelt with a d?” “You’re quite right,” said K., “Sordini it was.” “Yes,” said Olga, “Sordini is well-known, one of the most industrious of the officials, he’s often mentioned; Sortini on the other hand is very retiring and quite unknown to most people. More than three years ago I saw him for the first and last time. It was on the third of July at a celebration given by the Fire Brigade, the Castle too had contributed to it and provided a new fire-engine. Sortini, who was supposed to have some hand in directing the affairs of the Fire Brigade, but perhaps he was only deputising for someone else⁠—the officials mostly hide behind each other like that, and so it’s difficult to discover what any official is actually responsible for⁠—Sortini took part in the ceremony of handing over the fire-engine. There were of course many other people from the Castle, officials and attendants, and true to his character Sortini kept well in the background. He’s a small, frail, reflective-looking gentleman, and one thing about him struck all the people who noticed him at all, the way his forehead was furrowed; all the furrows⁠—and there were plenty of them although he’s certainly not more than forty⁠—were spread fanwise over his forehead, running towards the root of his nose, I’ve never seen anything like it. Well then, we had that celebration. Amalia and I had been excited about it for weeks beforehand, our Sunday clothes had been done up for the occasion and were partly new, Amalia’s dress was specially fine, a white blouse foaming high in front with one row of lace after the other, our mother had taken every bit of her lace for it. I was jealous, and cried half the night before the celebration. Only when the Bridge Inn landlady came to see us in the morning⁠—” “The Bridge Inn landlady?” asked K. “Yes,” said Olga, “she was a great friend of ours, well, she came and had to admit that Amalia was the finer, so to console me she lent me her own necklace of Bohemian garnets. When we were ready to go and Amalia was standing beside me and we were all admiring her, my father said: ‘Today, mark my words, Amalia will find a husband’; then, I don’t know why, I took my necklace, my great pride, and hung it round Amalia’s neck, and wasn’t jealous any longer. I bowed before her triumph and I felt that everyone must bow before her, perhaps what amazed us so much was the difference in her appearance, for she wasn’t really beautiful, but her sombre glance, and it has kept the same quality since that day, was high over our heads and involuntarily one had almost literally to bow before her. Everybody remarked on it, even Lasemann and his wife who came to fetch us.” “Lasemann?” asked K. “Yes, Lasemann,” said Olga, “we were in high esteem, and the celebration couldn’t well have begun without us, for my father was the third in command of the Fire Brigade.” “Was your father still so active?” asked K. “Father?” returned Olga, as if she did not quite comprehend, “three years ago he was still relatively a young man, for instance when a fire broke out at the Herrenhof he carried an official, Galater, who is a heavy man, out of the house on his back at a run. I was there myself, there was no real danger, it was only some dry wood near a stove which had begun to smoke, but Galater was terrified and cried for help out of the window, and the Fire Brigade turned out, and father had to carry him out although the fire was already extinguished. Of course Galater finds it difficult to move and has to be careful in circumstances like that. I’m telling you this only on father’s account; not much more than three years have passed since then, and look at him now.” Only then did K. become aware that Amalia was again in the room, but she was a long way off at the table where her parents sat, she was feeding her mother who could not move her rheumaticky arms, and admonishing her father meanwhile to wait in patience for a little, it would soon be his turn. But her admonition was in vain, for her father, greedily desiring his soup, overcame his weakness and tried to drink it first out of the spoon and then out of the bowl, and grumbled angrily when neither attempt succeeded; the spoon was empty long before he got it to his lips, and his mouth never reached the soup, for his drooping moustache dipped into it and scattered it everywhere except into his mouth. “And have three years done that to him?” asked K., yet he could not summon up any sympathy for the old people, and for that whole corner with the table in it he felt only repulsion. “Three years,” replied Olga slowly, “or, more precisely, a few hours at that celebration. The celebration was held on a meadow by the village, at the brook; there was already a large crowd there when we arrived, many people had come in from neighbouring villages, and the noise was bewildering. Of course my father took us first to look at the fire-engine, he laughed with delight when he saw it, the new fire-engine made him happy, he began to examine it and explain it to us, he wouldn’t hear of any opposition or holding back, but made every one of us stoop and almost crawl under the engine if there was something there he had to show us, and he smacked Barnabas for refusing. Only Amalia paid no attention to the engine, she stood upright beside it in her fine clothes and nobody dared to say a word to her, I ran up to her sometimes and took her arm, but she said nothing. Even today I cannot explain how we came to stand for so long in front of the fire-engine without noticing Sortini until the very moment my father turned away, for he had obviously been leaning on a wheel behind the fire-engine all the time. Of course there was a terrific racket all round us, not only the usual kind of noise, for the Castle had presented the Fire Brigade with some trumpets as well as the engine, extraordinary instruments on which with the smallest effort⁠—a child could do it⁠—one could produce the wildest blasts; to hear them was enough to make one think the Turks were there, and one could not get accustomed to them, every fresh blast made one jump. And because the trumpets were new everybody wanted to try them, and because it was a celebration, everybody was allowed to try. Right at our ears, perhaps Amalia had attracted them, were some of these trumpet blowers. It was difficult to keep one’s wits about one, and obeying father and attending to the fire-engine was the utmost we were capable of, and so it was that Sortini escaped our notice for such a long time, and besides we had no idea who he was. ‘There is Sortini,’ Lasemann whispered at last to my father⁠—I was beside him⁠—and father, greatly excited, made a deep bow, and signed to us to do the same. Without having met him till now father had always honoured Sortini as an authority in Fire Brigade matters, and had often spoken of him at home, so it was a very astonishing and important matter for us actually to see Sortini with our own eyes. Sortini however paid no attention to us, and in that he wasn’t peculiar, for most of the officials hold themselves aloof in public, besides he was tired, only his official duty kept him there. It’s not the worst officials who find duties like that particularly trying, and anyhow there were other officials and attendants mingling with the people. But he stayed by the fire-engine and discouraged by his silence all those who tried to approach him with some request or piece of flattery. So it happened that he didn’t notice us until long after we had noticed him. Only as we bowed respectfully and father was making apologies for us did he look our way and scan us one after another wearily, as if sighing to find that there was still another and another to look at, until he let his eyes rest on Amalia, to whom he had to look up, for she was much taller than he. At the sight of her he started and leapt over the shaft to get nearer to her, we misunderstood him at first and began to approach him, father leading the way, but he held us off with uplifted hand and then waved us away. That was all. We teased Amalia a lot about having really found a husband, and in our ignorance we were very merry the whole of that afternoon. But Amalia was more silent than usual ‘She’s fallen head over ears in love with Sortini,’ said Brunswick, who is always rather vulgar and has no comprehension of natures like Amalia’s. Yet this time we were inclined to think that he was right, we were quite mad that day, and all of us, even Amalia, were as if stupefied by the sweet Castle wine when we came home about midnight.” “And Sortini?” asked K. “Yes, Sortini,” said Olga, “I saw him several times during the afternoon as I passed by, he was sitting on the engine shaft with his arms folded, and he stayed there till the Castle carriage came to fetch him. He didn’t even go over to watch the fire-drill at which father, in the very hope that Sortini was watching, distinguished himself beyond all the other men of his age.” “And did you hear nothing more from him?” asked K. “You seem to have a great regard for Sortini.” “Oh yes, regard,” said Olga, “oh yes, and hear from him we certainly did. Next morning we were roused from our heavy sleep by a scream from Amalia; the others rolled back into their beds again, but I was completely awake and ran to her. She was standing by the window holding a letter in her hand which had just been given in through the window by a man who was still waiting for an answer. The letter was short, and Amalia had already read it, and held it in her drooping hand; how I always loved her when she was tired like that! I knelt down beside her and read the letter. Hardly had I finished it when Amalia after a brief glance at me took it back, but she couldn’t bring herself to read it again, and tearing it in pieces she threw the fragments in the face of the man outside and shut the window. That was the morning which decided our fate. I say ‘decided,’ but every minute of the previous afternoon was just as decisive.” “And what was in the letter?” asked K. “Yes, I haven’t told you that yet,” said Olga, “the letter was from Sortini addressed to the girl with the garnet necklace. I can’t repeat the contents. It was a summons to come to him at the Herrenhof, and to come at once, for in half an hour he was due to leave. The letter was couched in the vilest language, such as I had never heard, and I could only half guess its meaning from the context. Anyone who didn’t know Amalia and saw this letter must have considered a girl who could be written to like that as dishonoured, even if she had never had a finger laid on her. And it wasn’t a love letter, there wasn’t a tender word in it, on the contrary Sortini was obviously enraged because the sight of Amalia had disturbed him and distracted him in his work. Later on we pieced it all together for ourselves; evidently Sortini had intended to go straight to the Castle that evening, but on Amalia’s account had stayed in the village instead, and in the morning, being very angry because even overnight he hadn’t succeeded in forgetting her, had written the letter. One couldn’t but be furious on first reading a letter like that, even the most cold-blooded person might have been, but though with anybody else fear at its threatening tone would soon have got the upper hand, Amalia only felt anger, fear she doesn’t know, neither for herself nor for others. And while I crept into bed again repeating to myself the closing sentence, which broke off in the middle, ‘See that you come at once, or else⁠—!’ Amalia remained on the window-seat looking out, as if she was expecting further messengers and were prepared to treat them all as she had done the first.” “So that’s what the officials are like,” said K. reluctantly, “that’s the kind of type one finds among them. What did your father do? I hope he protested energetically in the proper quarter, if he didn’t prefer a shorter and quicker way of doing it at the Herrenhof. The worst thing about the story isn’t the insult to Amalia, that could easily have been made good, I don’t know why you lay such exaggerated stress upon it; why should such a letter from Sortini shame Amalia forever?⁠—which is what one would gather from your story, but that’s a sheer impossibility, it would have been easy to make up for it to Amalia, and in a few days the whole thing might have blown over, it was himself that Sortini shamed, and not Amalia. It’s Sortini that horrifies me, the possibility of such an abuse of power. The very thing that failed this one time because it came naked and undisguised and found an effective opponent in Amalia, might very well succeed completely on a thousand other occasions in circumstances just a little less favourable, and might defy detection even by its victim.” “Hush,” said Olga, “Amalia’s looking this way.” Amalia had finished giving food to her parents and was now busy taking off her mother’s clothes. She had just undone the skirt, hung her mother’s arms round her neck, lifted her a little, while she drew the skirt off, and now gently set her down again. Her father, still affronted because his wife was being attended to first, which obviously only happened because she was even more helpless than he, was attempting to undress himself; perhaps, too, it was a reproach to his daughter for her imagined slowness; yet although he began with the easiest and least necessary thing, the removal of the enormous slippers in which his feet were loosely stuck, he could not get them pulled off at all, and wheezing hoarsely was forced to give up trying, and leaned back stiffly in his chair again. “But you don’t realise the really decisive thing,” said Olga, “you may be right in all you say, but the decisive thing was Amalia’s not going to the Herrenhof; her treatment of the messenger might have been excused, it could have been passed over; but it was because she didn’t go that the curse was laid upon our family, and that turned her treatment of the messenger into an unpardonable offence, yes, it was even brought forward openly later as the chief offence.” “What!” cried K. at once, lowering his voice again, as Olga raised her hands imploringly, “do you, her sister, actually say that Amalia should have run to the Herrenhof after Sortini?” “No,” said Olga, “Heaven preserve me from such a suspicion, how can you believe that? I don’t know anybody who’s so right as Amalia in everything she does. If she had gone to the Herrenhof I should of course have upheld her just the same; but her not going was heroic. As for me, I confess it frankly, had I received a letter like that I should have gone. I shouldn’t have been able to endure the fear of what might happen, only Amalia could have done that. For there were many ways of getting round it, another girl, for instance, might have decked herself up and wasted some time in doing it and then gone to the Herrenhof only to find that Sortini had left, perhaps to find that he had left immediately after sending the messenger, which is very probable, for the moods of the gentlemen are fleeting. But Amalia neither did that nor anything else, she was too deeply insulted, and answered without reserve. If she had only made some pretence of compliance, if she had but crossed the threshold of the Herrenhof at the right moment, our punishment could have been turned aside, we have very clever advocates here who can make a great deal out of a mere nothing, but in this case they hadn’t even the mere nothing to go on, there was, on the contrary, the disrespect to Sortini’s letter and the insult to his messenger.” “But what is all this about punishment and advocates?” said K. “Surely Amalia couldn’t be accused or punished because of Sortini’s criminal proceedings?” “Yes,” said Olga, “she could, not in a regular suit at law, of course; and she wasn’t punished directly, but she was punished all right in other ways, she and our whole family, and how heavy the punishment has been you are surely beginning to understand. In your opinion it’s unjust and monstrous, but you’re the only one in the village of that opinion, it’s an opinion favourable to us, and ought to comfort us, and it would do that if it weren’t so obviously based on error. I can easily prove that, and you must forgive me if I mention Frieda by the way, but between Frieda and Klamm, leaving aside the final outcome of the two affairs, the first preliminaries were much the same as between Amalia and Sortini, and yet, although that might have shocked you at the beginning, you accept it now as quite natural. And that’s not merely because you’re accustomed to it, custom alone couldn’t blunt one’s plain judgment, it’s simply that you’ve freed yourself from prejudice.” “No, Olga,” said K., “I don’t see why you drag in Frieda, her case wasn’t the same, don’t confuse two such different things, and now go on with your story.” “Please don’t be offended,” said Olga, “if I persist in the comparison, it’s a lingering trace of prejudice on your part, even in regard to Frieda, that makes you feel you must defend her from a comparison. She’s not to be defended, but only to be praised. In comparing the two cases I don’t say they’re exactly alike, they stand in the same relation as black to white, and the white is Frieda. The worst thing one can do to Frieda is to laugh at her, as I did in the bar very rudely⁠—and I was sorry for it later⁠—but even if one laughs it’s out of envy or malice, at any rate one can laugh. On the other hand, unless one is related to her by blood, one can only despise Amalia. Therefore the two cases are quite different, as you say, but yet they are alike.” “They’re not at all alike,” said K. and he shook his head stubbornly, “leave Frieda out of it, Frieda got no such fine letter as that of Sortini’s, and Frieda was really in love with Klamm, and, if you doubt that, you need only ask her, she loves him still.” “But is that really a difference?” asked Olga. “Do you imagine Klamm couldn’t have written to Frieda in the same tone? That’s what the gentlemen are like when they rise from their desks, they feel out of place in the ordinary world and in their distraction they say the most beastly things, not all of them, but many of them. The letter to Amalia may have been the thought of a moment, thrown on the paper in complete disregard for the meaning to be taken out of it. What do we know of the thoughts of these gentlemen? Haven’t you heard of, or heard yourself, the tone in which Klamm spoke to Frieda? Klamm’s notorious for his rudeness, he can apparently sit dumb for hours and then suddenly bring out something so brutal that it makes one shiver. Nothing of that kind is known of Sortini, but then very little is known of him. All that’s really known about him is that his name is like Sordini’s. If it weren’t for that resemblance between the two names probably he wouldn’t be known at all. Even as the Fire Brigade authority apparently he’s confused with Sordini, who is the real authority, and who exploits the resemblance in name to push things on to Sortini’s shoulders, especially any duties falling on him as a deputy, so that he can be left undisturbed to his work. Now when a man so unused to society as Sortini is, suddenly finds himself in love with a village girl, he’ll naturally take it quite differently from, say, the joiner’s apprentice next door. And one must remember, too, that between an official and a village cobbler’s daughter there’s a great gulf fixed which has to be somehow bridged over, and Sortini tried to do it in that way, where someone else might have acted differently. Of course we’re all supposed to belong to the Castle, and there’s supposed to be no gulf between us, and nothing to be bridged over, and that may be true enough on ordinary occasions, but we’ve had grim evidence that it’s not true when anything really important crops up. At any rate, all that should make Sortini’s methods more comprehensible to you, and less monstrous; compared with Klamm’s they’re comparatively reasonable, and even for those intimately affected by them much more endurable. When Klamm writes a loving letter it’s much more exasperating than the most brutal letter of Sortini’s. Don’t mistake me, I’m not venturing to criticise Klamm, I’m only comparing the two, because you’re shutting your eyes to the comparison. Klamm’s a kind of tyrant over women, he orders first one and then another to come to him, puts up with none of them for long, and orders them to go just as he ordered them to come. Oh, Klamm wouldn’t even give himself the trouble of writing a letter first. And in comparison with that is it so monstrous that Sortini, who’s so retiring, and whose relations with women are at least unknown, should condescend for once to write in his beautiful official hand a letter, however abominable? And if there’s no distinction here in Klamm’s favour, but the reverse, how can Frieda’s love for him establish one? The relation existing between the women and the officials, believe me, is very difficult, or rather very easy to determine. Love always enters into it. There’s no such thing as an official’s unhappy love affair. So in that respect it’s no praise to say of a girl⁠—I’m referring to many others besides Frieda⁠—that she gave herself to an official only out of love. She loved him and gave herself to him, that was all, there’s nothing praiseworthy in that. But you’ll object that Amalia didn’t love Sortini. Well, perhaps she didn’t love him, but then after all perhaps she did love him, who can decide? Not even she herself. How can she fancy she didn’t love him, when she rejected him so violently, as no official has ever been rejected? Barnabas says that even yet she sometimes trembles with the violence of the effort of closing the window three years ago. That is true, and therefore one can’t ask her anything; she has finished with Sortini, and that’s all she knows; whether she loves him or not she does not know. But we do know that women can’t help loving the officials once they give them any encouragement, yes, they even love them beforehand, let them deny it as much as they like, and Sortini not only gave Amalia encouragement, but leapt over the shaft when he saw her; although his legs were stiff from sitting at desks he leapt right over the shaft. But Amalia’s an exception, you will say. Yes, that she is, that she has proved in refusing to go to Sortini, that’s exception enough, but if in addition she weren’t in love with Sortini, she would be too exceptional for plain human understanding. On that afternoon, I grant you, we were smitten with blindness, but the fact that in spite of our mental confusion we thought we noticed signs of Amalia’s being in love, showed at least some remnants of sense. But when all that’s taken into account, what difference is left between Frieda and Amalia? One thing only, that Frieda did what Amalia refused to do.” “Maybe,” said K., “but for me the main difference is that I’m engaged to Frieda, and only interested in Amalia because she’s a sister of Barnabas’s, the Castle messenger, and because her destiny may be bound up with his duties. If she had suffered such a crying injustice at the hands of an official as your tale seemed to infer at the beginning, I should have taken the matter up seriously, but more from a sense of public duty than from any personal sympathy with Amalia. But what you say has changed the aspect of the situation for me in a way I don’t quite understand, but am prepared to accept, since it’s you who tell me, and therefore I want to drop the whole affair, I’m no member of the Fire Brigade, Sortini means nothing to me. But Frieda means something to me, I have trusted her completely and want to go on trusting her, and it surprises me that you go out of your way, while discussing Amalia, to attack Frieda and try to shake my confidence in her. I’m not assuming that you’re doing it with deliberate intent, far less with malicious intent, for in that case I should have left long ago. You’re not doing it deliberately, you’re betrayed into it by circumstances, impelled by your love for Amalia you want to exalt her above all other women, and since you can’t find enough virtue in Amalia herself you help yourself out by belittling the others. Amalia’s act was remarkable enough, but the more you say about it the less clearly can it be decided whether it was noble or petty, clever or foolish, heroic or cowardly; Amalia keeps her motives locked in her own bosom and no one will ever get at them. Frieda, on the other hand, has done nothing at all remarkable, she has only followed her own heart, for anyone who looks at her actions with goodwill that is clear, it can be substantiated, it leaves no room for slander. However, I don’t want either to belittle Amalia or to defend Frieda, all I want is to let you see what my relation is to Frieda, and that every attack on Frieda is an attack on myself. I came here of my own accord, and of my own accord I have settled here, but all that has happened to me since I came, and, above all, any prospects I may have⁠—dark as they are, they still exist⁠—I owe entirely to Frieda, and you can’t argue that away. True, I was engaged to come here as a Land Surveyor, yet that was only a pretext, they were playing with me, I was driven out of everybody’s house, they’re playing with me still today; but how much more complicated the game is now that I have, so to speak, a larger circumference⁠—which means something, it may not be much⁠—yet I have already a home, a position and real work to do, I have a promised wife who takes her share of my professional duties when I have other business, I’m going to marry her and become a member of the community, and besides my official connection I have also a personal connection with Klamm, although as yet I haven’t been able to make use of it. That’s surely quite a lot? And when I come to you, why do you make me welcome? Why do you confide the history of your family to me? Why do you hope that I might possibly help you? Certainly not because I’m the Land Surveyor whom Lasemann and Brunswick, for instance, turned out of their house a week ago, but because I’m a man with some power at my back. But that I owe to Frieda, to Frieda who is so modest that if you were to ask her about it, she wouldn’t know it existed. And so, considering all this, it seems that Frieda in her innocence has achieved more than Amalia in all her pride, for may I say that I have the impression that you’re seeking help for Amalia. And from whom? In the last resort from no one else but Frieda.” “Did I really speak so abominably of Frieda?” asked Olga, “I certainly didn’t mean to, and I don’t think I did, still, it’s possible; we’re in a bad way, our whole world is in ruins, and once we begin to complain we’re carried further than we realise. You’re quite right, there’s a big difference now between us and Frieda, and it’s a good thing to emphasise it once in a while. Three years ago we were respectable girls and Frieda an outcast, a servant in the Bridge Inn, we used to walk past her without looking at her, I admit we were too arrogant, but that’s how we were brought up. But that evening in the Herrenhof probably enlightened you about our respective positions today. Frieda with the whip in her hand, and I among the crowd of servants. But it’s worse even than that! Frieda may despise us, her position entitles her to do so, actual circumstances compel it. But who is there who doesn’t despise us? Whoever decides to despise us will find himself in good company. Do you know Frieda’s successor? Pepi, she’s called. I met her for the first time the night before last, she used to be a chamber maid. She certainly outdoes Frieda in her contempt for me. She saw me through the window as I was coming for beer, and ran to the door and locked it, so that I had to beg and pray for a long time and promise her the ribbon from my hair before she would let me in. But when I gave it to her she threw it into a corner. Well, I can’t help it if she despises me, I’m partly dependent on her goodwill, and she’s the barmaid in the Herrenhof. Only for the time being, it’s true, for she certainly hasn’t the qualities needed for permanent employment there. One only has to overhear how the landlord speaks to Pepi and compare it with his tone to Frieda. But that doesn’t hinder Pepi from despising even Amalia, Amalia, whose glance alone would be enough to drive Pepi with all her plaits and ribbons out of the room much faster than her own fat legs would ever carry her. I had to listen again yesterday to her infuriating slanders against Amalia until the customers took my part at last, although only in the kind of way you have seen already.” “How touchy you are,” said K. “I only put Frieda in her right place, but I had no intention of belittling you, as you seem to think. Your family has a special interest for me, I have never denied it; but how this interest could give me cause for despising you I can’t understand.” “Oh, K.,” said Olga, “I’m afraid that even you will understand it yet; can’t you even understand that Amalia’s behaviour to Sortini was the original cause of our being despised?” “That would be strange indeed,” said K., “one might admire or condemn Amalia for such an action, but despise her? And even if she is despised for some reason I can’t comprehend, why should the contempt be extended to you others, her innocent family? For Pepi to despise you, for instance, is a piece of impudence, and I’ll let her know it if ever I’m in the Herrenhof again.” “If you set out, K.,” said Olga, “to convert all the people who despise us you’ll have your work cut out for you, for it’s all engineered from the Castle. I can still remember every detail of that day following the morning I spoke of. Brunswick, who was our assistant then, had arrived as usual, taken his share of the work and gone home, and we were sitting at breakfast, all of us, even Amalia and myself, very gay, father kept on talking about the celebration and telling us his plans in connection with the Fire Brigade, for you must know that the Castle has its own Fire Brigade which had sent a deputation to the celebration, and there had been much discussion about it, the gentlemen present from the Castle had seen the performance of our Fire Brigade, had expressed great approval, and compared the Castle Brigade unfavourably with ours, so there had been some talk of reorganising the Castle Brigade with the help of instructors from the village; there were several possible candidates, but father had hopes that he would be chosen. That was what he was discussing, and in his usual delightful way had sprawled over the table until he embraced half of it in his arms, and as he gazed through the open window at the sky his face was young and shining with hope, and that was the last time I was to see it like that. Then Amalia, with a calm conviction we had never noticed in her before, said that too much trust shouldn’t be placed in what the gentleman said, they were in the habit of saying pleasant things on such occasions, but it meant little or nothing, the words were hardly out of their mouths before they were forgotten, only of course people were always ready to be taken in again next time. Mother forbade her to say things like that, but father only laughed at her precocious air of wisdom, then he gave a start, and seemed to be looking round for something he had only just missed⁠—but there was nothing missing⁠—and said that Brunswick had told him some story of a messenger and a torn-up letter, did we know anything of it, who was concerned in it, and what it was all about? We kept silent; Barnabas, who was as youthful then as a spring lamb, said something particularly silly or cheeky, the subject was changed, and the whole affair forgotten.”

Amalia’s Punishment

“But not long afterwards we were overwhelmed with questions from all sides about the story of the letter, we were visited by friends and enemies, acquaintances and complete strangers. Not one of them stayed for any length of time, and our best friends were the quickest to go. Lasemann, usually so slow and dignified, came in hastily as if only to see the size of the room, one look round it and he was gone, it was like a horrible kind of children’s game when he fled and father, shaking himself free from some other people, ran after him to the very door and then gave it up; Brunswick came and gave notice, he said quite honestly that he wanted to set up in business for himself, a shrewd man, he knew how to seize the right moment; customers came and hunted round father’s storeroom for the boots they had left to be repaired, at first father tried to persuade them to change their minds⁠—and we all backed him up as much as we could⁠—but later he gave it up, and without saying a word helped them to find their belongings, line after line in the order-book was cancelled, the pieces of leather people had left with us were handed back, all debts owing us were paid, everything went smoothly without the slightest trouble, they asked for nothing better than to break every connection with us quickly and completely, even if they lost by it; that counted for nothing. And finally, as we might have foreseen, Seemann appeared, the Captain of the Fire Brigade; I can still see the scene before me, Seemann, tall and stout, but with a slight stoop from weakness in the lungs, a serious man who never could laugh, standing in front of my father whom he admired, whom he had promised in confidence to make a deputy Captain, and to whom he had now to say that the Brigade required his services no longer and asked for the return of his diploma. All the people who happened to be in our house left their business for the moment and crowded round the two men, Seemann found it difficult to speak and only kept on tapping father on the shoulder, as if he were trying to tap out of him the words he ought to say and couldn’t find. And he kept on laughing, probably to cheer himself a little and everybody else, but since he’s incapable of laughing and no one had ever heard him laugh, it didn’t occur to anybody that he was really laughing. But father was too tired and desperate after the day he’d had to help anybody out, he looked even too tired to grasp what was happening. We were all in despair, too, but being young didn’t believe in the completeness of our ruin, and kept on expecting that someone in the long procession of visitors would arrive and put a stop to it all and make everything swing the other way again. In our foolishness we thought that Seemann was that very man. We were all keyed up waiting for his laughter to stop, and for the decisive statement to come out at last. What could he be laughing at, if not at the stupid injustice of what had happened to us? Oh Captain, Captain, tell them now at last, we thought, and pressed close to him, but that only made him recoil away from us in the most curious way. At length, however, he did begin to speak, in response not to our secret wishes, but to the encouraging or angry cries of the crowd. Yet still we had hopes. He began with great praise for our father. Called him an ornament to the Brigade, an inimitable model to posterity, an indispensable member whose removal must reduce the Brigade almost to ruin. That was all very fine, had he stopped there. But he went on to say that since in spite of that the Brigade had decided, only as a temporary measure of course, to ask for his resignation, they would all understand the seriousness of the reason which forced the Brigade to do so. Perhaps if father had not distinguished himself so much at the celebration of the previous day it would not have been necessary to go so far, but his very superiority had drawn official attention to the Brigade, and brought it into such prominence that the spotlessness of its reputation was more than ever a matter of honour to it. And now that a messenger had been insulted, the Brigade couldn’t help itself, and he, Seemann, found himself in the difficult position of having to convey its decision. He hoped that father would not make it any more difficult for him. Seemann was glad to have got it out. He was so pleased with himself that he even forgot his exaggerated tact, and pointed to the diploma hanging on the wall and made a sign with his finger. Father nodded and went to fetch it, but his hands trembled so much that he couldn’t get it off the hook. I climbed on a chair and helped him. From that moment he was done for, he didn’t even take the diploma out of its frame, but handed the whole thing over to Seemann. Then he sat down in a corner and neither moved nor spoke to anybody, and we had to attend to the last people there by ourselves as well as we could.” “And where do you see in all this the influence of the Castle?” asked K. “So far it doesn’t seem to have come in. What you’ve told me about is simply the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbour, specious friendship, things that can be found anywhere, and, I must say, on the part of your father⁠—at least, so it seems to me⁠—a certain pettiness, for what was the diploma? Merely a testimonial to his abilities, these themselves weren’t taken from him, if they made him indispensable so much the better, and the one way he could have made things difficult for the Captain would have been by flinging the diploma at his feet before he had said two words. But the significant thing to me is that you haven’t mentioned Amalia at all; Amalia, who was to blame for everything, apparently stood quietly in the background and watched the whole house collapse.” “No,” said Olga, “nobody ought to be blamed, nobody could have done anything else, all that was already due to the influence of the Castle.” “Influence of the Castle,” repeated Amalia, who had slipped in unnoticed from the courtyard; the old people had been long in bed. “Is it Castle gossip you’re at? Still sitting with your heads together? And yet you wanted to go away immediately you came, K., and it’s nearly ten now. Are you really interested in that kind of gossip? There are people in the village who live on it, they stick their heads together just like you two and entertain each other by the hour. But I didn’t think you were one of them.” “On the contrary,” said K., “that’s exactly what I am, and moreover people who don’t care for such gossip and leave it all to others don’t interest me particularly.” “Indeed,” said Amalia, “well, there are many different kinds of interest, you know; I heard once of a young man who thought of nothing but the Castle day and night, he neglected everything else and people feared for his reason, his mind was so wholly absorbed by the Castle. It turned out at length, however, that it wasn’t really the Castle he was thinking of, but the daughter of a charwoman in the offices up there, so he got the girl and was all right again.” “I think I would like that man,” said K. “As for your liking the man, I doubt it,” said Amalia, “it’s probably his wife you would like. Well, don’t let me disturb you, I’ve got to go to bed, and I must put out the light for the old folks’ sake. They’re sound asleep now, but they don’t really sleep for more than an hour, and after that the smallest glimmer disturbs them. Good night.” And actually the light went out at once, and Amalia bedded herself somewhere on the floor near her parents. “Who’s the young man she mentioned?” asked K., “I don’t know,” said Olga, “perhaps Brunswick, although it doesn’t fit him exactly, but it might have been somebody else. It’s not easy to follow her, for often one can’t tell whether she’s speaking ironically or in earnest. Mostly she’s in earnest but sounds ironical.” “Never mind explaining,” said K. “How have you come to be so dependent on her? Were things like that before the catastrophe? Or did it happen later? And do you never feel that you want to be independent of her? And is there any sense in your dependence? She’s the youngest, and should give way to you. Innocently or not, she was the person who brought ruin on the family. And instead of begging your pardon for it anew every day she carries her head higher than anybody else, bothers herself about nothing except what she chooses to do for her parents, nothing would induce her to become acquainted with your affairs, to use her own expression, and then if she does speak to you at all she’s mostly in earnest, but sounds ironical. Does she queen it over you on account of her beauty, which you’ve mentioned more than once? Well, you’re all three very like each other, but Amalia’s distinguishing mark is hardly a recommendation, and repelled me the first time I saw it, I mean her cold hard eye. And although she’s the youngest she doesn’t look it, she has the ageless look of women who seem not to grow any older, but seem never to have been young either. You see her every day, you don’t notice the hardness of her face. That’s why, on reflection, I can’t take Sortini’s passion for her very seriously, perhaps he sent the letter simply to punish her, but not to summon her.” “I won’t argue about Sortini,” said Olga, “for the Castle gentlemen everything is possible, let a girl be as pretty or as ugly as you like. But in all the rest you’re utterly mistaken so far as Amalia is concerned. I have no particular motive for winning you over to Amalia’s side, and if I try to do it it’s only for your own sake. Amalia in some way or other was the cause of our misfortunes, that’s true, but not even my father, who was the hardest hit, and who was never very sparing of his tongue, particularly at home, not even my father has ever said a word of reproach to Amalia even in our very worst times. Not because he approved of her action, he was an admirer of Sortini’s, and how could he have approved of it? He couldn’t understand it even remotely, for Sortini he would have been glad to sacrifice himself and all that was his, although hardly in the way things actually happened, as an outcome apparently of Sortini’s anger. I say apparently, for we never heard another word from Sortini; if he was reticent before then, from that day on he might as well have been dead. Now, you should have seen Amalia at that time. We all knew that no definite punishment would be visited on us. We were only shunned. By the village and by the Castle. But while we couldn’t help noticing the ostracism of the village, the Castle gave us no sign. Of course we had had no sign of favour from the Castle in the past, so how could we notice the reverse? This blankness was the worst of all. It was far worse than the withdrawal of the people down here, for they hadn’t deserted us out of conviction, perhaps they had nothing very serious against us, they didn’t despise us then as they do today, they only did it out of fear, and were waiting to see what would happen next. And we weren’t afraid of being stranded, for all our debtors had paid us, the settling-up had been entirely in our favour, and any provisions we didn’t have were sent us secretly by relations, it was easy enough for us, it was harvest time⁠—though we had no fields of our own and nobody would take us on as workers, so that for the first time in our lives we were condemned to go nearly idle. So there we sat all together with the windows shut in the heats of July and August. Nothing happened. No invitations, no news, no callers, nothing.” “Well,” said K., “since nothing happened and you had no definite punishment hanging over you, what was there to be afraid of? What people you are!” “How am I to explain it?” said Olga. “We weren’t afraid of anything in the future, we were suffering under the immediate present, we were actually enduring our punishment. The others in the village were only waiting for us to come to them, for father to open his workshop again, for Amalia, who could sew the most beautiful clothes, fit for the best families, to come asking for orders again, they were all sorry to have had to act as they did; when a respected family is suddenly cut out of village life it means a loss for everybody, so when they broke with us they thought they were only doing their duty, in their place we should have done just the same. They didn’t know very clearly what was the matter, except that the messenger had returned to the Herrenhof with a handful of torn paper. Frieda had seen him go out and come back, had exchanged a few words with him, and then spread what she had learned everywhere. But not in the least from enmity to us, simply from a sense of duty which anybody would have felt in the same circumstances. And, as I’ve said, a happy ending to the whole story would have pleased everybody best. If we had suddenly put in an appearance with the news that everything was settled, that it had only been a misunderstanding, say, which was now quite cleared up, or that there had been actually some cause for offence which had now been made good, or else⁠—and even this would have satisfied people⁠—that through our influence in the Castle the affair had been dropped, we should certainly have been received again with open arms, there would have been kissings and congratulations, I have seen that kind of thing happen to others once or twice already. And it wouldn’t have been necessary to say even as much as that; if we had only come out in the open and shown ourselves, if we had picked up our old connections without letting fall a single word about the affair of the letter, it would have been enough, they would all have been glad to avoid mentioning the matter; it was the painfulness of the subject as much as their fear that made them draw away from us, simply to avoid hearing about it or speaking about it or thinking about it or being affected by it in any way. When Frieda gave it away it wasn’t out of mischief but as a warning, to let the parish know that something had happened which everybody should be careful to keep clear of. It wasn’t our family that was taboo, it was the affair, and our family only in so far as we were mixed up in the affair. So if we had quietly come forward again and let bygones be bygones and shown by our behaviour that the incident was closed, no matter in what way, and reassured public opinion that it was never likely to be mentioned again, whatever its nature had been, everything would have been made all right in that way too, we should have found friends on all sides as before, and even if we hadn’t completely forgotten what had happened people would have understood and helped us to forget it completely. Instead of that we sat in the house. I don’t know what we were expecting, probably some decision from Amalia, for on that morning she had taken the lead in the family and she still maintained it. Without any particular contriving or commanding or imploring, almost by her silence alone. We others, of course, had plenty to discuss, there was a steady whispering from morning till evening, and sometimes father would call me to him in sudden panic and I would have to spend half the night on the edge of his bed. Or we would often creep away together, I and Barnabas, who knew nothing about it all at first, and was always in a fever for some explanation, always the same, for he realised well enough that the carefree years that others of his age looked forward to were now out of the question for him, so we used to put our heads together, K., just like us two now, and forget that it was night, and that morning had come again. Our mother was the feeblest of us all, probably because she had not only endured our common sorrows but the private sorrow of each of us, and so we were horrified to see changes in her which, as we guessed, lay in wait for all of us. Her favourite seat was the corner of the sofa, it’s long since we parted with it, it stands now in Brunswick’s big living-room, well, there she sat and⁠—we couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong⁠—used to doze or carry on long conversations with herself, we guessed it from the moving of her lips. It was so natural for us to be always discussing the letter, to be always turning it over in all its known details and unknown potentialities, and to be always outdoing each other in thinking out plans for restoring our fortunes; it was natural and unavoidable, but not good, we only plunged deeper and deeper into what we wanted to escape from. And what good were these inspirations, however brilliant? None of them could be acted on without Amalia, they were all tentative, and quite useless because they stopped short of Amalia, and even if they had been put to Amalia they would have met with nothing but silence. Well, I’m glad to say I understand Amalia better now than I did then. She had more to endure than all of us, it’s incomprehensible how she managed to endure it and still survive. Mother, perhaps, had to endure all our troubles, but that was because they came pouring in on her; and she didn’t hold out for long; no one could say that she’s holding out against them today, and even at that time her mind was beginning to go. But Amalia not only suffered, she had the understanding to see her suffering clearly, we saw only the effects, but she knew the cause, we hoped for some small relief or other, she knew that everything was decided, we had to whisper, she had only to be silent. She stood face to face with the truth and went on living and endured her life then as now. In all our straits we were better off than she. Of course, we had to leave our house. Brunswick took it on, and we were given this cottage, we brought our things over in several journeys with a handcart, Barnabas and I pulling and father and Amalia pushing behind, mother was already sitting here on a chest, for we had brought her here first, and she whimpered softly all the time. Yet I remember than even during those toilsome journeys⁠—they were painful, too, for we often met harvest wagons, and the people became silent when they saw us and turned away their faces⁠—even during those journeys Barnabas and I couldn’t stop discussing our troubles and our plans, so that we often stood stock still in the middle of pulling and had to be roused by father’s ‘Hallo’ from behind. But all our talking made no difference to our life after the removal, except that we began gradually to feel the pinch of poverty as well. Our relatives stopped sending us things, our money was almost done, and that was the time when people first began to despise us in the way you can see now. They saw that we hadn’t the strength to shake ourselves clear of the scandal, and they were irritated. They didn’t underestimate our difficulties, although they didn’t know exactly what they were, and they knew that probably they wouldn’t have stood up to them any better themselves, but that made it only all the more needful to keep clear of us⁠—if we had triumphed they would have honoured us correspondingly, but since we failed they turned what had only been a temporary measure into a final resolve, and cut us off from the community forever. We were no longer spoken of as ordinary human beings, our very name was never mentioned, if they had to refer to us they called us Barnabas’s people, for he was the least guilty; even our cottage gained in evil reputation, and you yourself must admit, if you’re honest, that on your first entry into it you thought it justified its reputation; later on, when people occasionally visited us again, they used to screw up their noses at the most trivial things, for instance, because the little oil-lamp hung over the table. Where should it hang if not over the table? and yet they found it insupportable. But if we hung the lamp somewhere else they were still disgusted. Whatever we did, whatever we had, it was all despicable.”

Petitions

“And what did we do meanwhile? The worst thing we could have done, something much more deserving of contempt than our original offence⁠—we betrayed Amalia, we shook off her silent restraint, we couldn’t go on living like that, without hope of any kind we could not live, and we began each in his or her own fashion with prayers or blustering to beg the Castle’s forgiveness. We knew, of course, that we weren’t in a position to make anything good, and we knew too that the only likely connection we had with the Castle⁠—through Sortini, who had been father’s superior and had approved of him⁠—was destroyed by what had happened, and yet we buckled down to the job. Father began it, he started making senseless petitions to the village Superintendent, to the secretaries, the advocates, the clerks, usually he wasn’t received at all, but if by guile or chance he managed to get a hearing⁠—and how we used to exult when the news came, and rub our hands!⁠—he was always thrown out immediately and never admitted again. Besides, it was only too easy to answer him, the Castle always has the advantage. What was it that he wanted? What had been done to him? What did he want to be forgiven for? When and by whom had so much as a finger been raised against him in the Castle? Granted he had become poor and lost his customers, etc., these were all chances of everyday life, and happened in all shops and markets; was the Castle to concern itself about things of that kind? It concerned itself about the common welfare, of course, but it couldn’t simply interfere with the natural course of events for the sole purpose of serving the interest of one man. Did he expect officials to be sent out to run after his customers and force them to come back? But, father would object⁠—we always discussed the whole interview both before and afterwards, sitting in a corner as if to avoid Amalia, who knew well enough what we were doing, but paid no attention⁠—well, father would object, he wasn’t complaining about his poverty, he could easily make up again for all he had lost, that didn’t matter if only he were forgiven. But what was there to forgive? came the answer; no accusation had come in against him, at least there was none in the registers, not in those registers anyhow which were accessible to the public advocates, consequently, so far as could be established, there was neither any accusation standing against him, nor one in process of being taken up. Could he perhaps refer to some official decree that had been issued against him? Father couldn’t do that. Well then, if he knew of nothing and nothing had happened, what did he want? What was there to forgive him? Nothing but the way he was aimlessly wasting official time, but that was just the unforgiveable sin. Father didn’t give in, he was still very strong in those days, and his enforced leisure gave him plenty of time. ‘I’ll restore Amalia’s honour, it won’t take long now,’ he used to say to Barnabas and me several times a day, but only in a low voice in case Amalia should hear, and yet he only said it for her benefit, for in reality he wasn’t hoping for the restoration of her honour, but only for forgiveness. Yet before he could be forgiven he had to prove his guilt, and that was denied in all the bureaux. He hit upon the idea⁠—and it showed that his mind was already giving way⁠—that his guilt was being concealed from him because he didn’t pay enough; until then he had paid only the established taxes, which were at least high enough for means like ours. But now he believed that he must pay more, which was certainly a delusion, for, although our officials accept bribes simply to avoid trouble and discussion, nothing is ever achieved in that way. Still, if father had set his hopes on that idea, we didn’t want them upset. We sold what we had left to sell⁠—nearly all things we couldn’t do without⁠—to get father the money for his efforts, and for a long time every morning brought us the satisfaction of knowing that when he went on his day’s rounds he had at least a few coins to rattle in his pocket. Of course we simply starved all day, and the only thing the money really did was to keep father fairly hopeful and happy. That could hardly be called an advantage, however. He wore himself out on these rounds of his, and the money only made them drag on and on instead of coming to a quick and natural end. Since in reality nothing extra could be done for him in return for those extra payments, clerks here and there tried to make a pretence of giving something in return, promising to look the matter up, and hinting that they were on the track of something, and that purely as a favour to father, and not as a duty, they would follow it up⁠—and father, instead of growing sceptical, only became more and more credulous. He used to bring home such obviously worthless promises as if they were great triumphs, and it was a torment to see him behind Amalia’s back twisting his face in a smile and opening his eyes wide as he pointed to her and made signs to us that her salvation, which would have surprised nobody so much as herself, was coming nearer and nearer through his efforts, but that it was still a secret and we mustn’t tell. Things would certainly have gone on like this for a long time if we hadn’t finally been reduced to the position of having no more money to give him. Barnabas, indeed, had been taken on meanwhile by Brunswick after endless imploring as an assistant, on condition that he fetched his work in the dusk of the evening and brought it back again in the dark⁠—it must be admitted that Brunswick was taking a certain risk in his business for our sake, but in exchange he paid Barnabas next to nothing, and Barnabas is a model workman⁠—yet his wages were barely enough to keep us from downright starvation. Very gently and after much softening of the blow we told our father that he could have no more money, but he took it very quietly. He was no longer capable of understanding how hopeless were his attempts at intervention, but he was wearied out by continual disappointments. He said, indeed⁠—and he spoke less clearly than before, he used to speak almost too clearly⁠—that he would have needed only a very little more money, for tomorrow or that very day he would have found out everything, and now it had all gone for nothing, ruined simply for lack of money, and so on, but the tone in which he said it showed that he didn’t believe it all. Besides, he brought out a new plan immediately of his own accord. Since he had failed in proving his guilt, and consequently could hope for nothing more through official channels, he would have to depend on appeals alone, and would try to move the officials personally. There must certainly be some among them who had good sympathetic hearts, which they couldn’t give way to in their official capacity, but out of office hours, if one caught them at the right time, they would surely listen.”

Here K., who had listened with absorption hitherto, interrupted Olga’s narrative with the question: “And don’t you think he was right?” Although his question would have answered itself in the course of the narrative he wanted to know at once.

“No,” said Olga, “there could be no question of sympathy or anything of the kind. Young and inexperienced as we were, we knew that, and father knew it too, of course, but he had forgotten it like nearly everything else. The plan he had hit on was to plant himself on the main road near the Castle, where the officials pass in their carriages, and seize any opportunity of putting up his prayer for forgiveness. To be honest, it was a wild and senseless plan, even if the impossible should have happened, and his prayer have really reached an official’s ear. For how could a single official give a pardon? That could only be done at best by the whole authority, and apparently even the authority can only condemn and not pardon. And in any case even if an official stepped out of his carriage and was willing to take up the matter, how could he get any clear idea of the affair from the mumblings of a poor, tired, ageing man like father? Officials are highly educated, but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him by the hour, he may nod politely, but he won’t understand a word of it. That’s quite natural, take even the small official affairs that concern the ordinary person⁠—trifling things that an official disposes of with a shrug⁠—and try to understand one of them through and through, and you’ll waste a whole lifetime on it without result. But even if father had chanced on a responsible official, no official can settle anything without the necessary documents, and certainly not on the main road; he can’t pardon anything, he can only settle it officially, and he would simply refer to the official procedure, which had already been a complete failure for father. What a pass father must have been in to think of insisting on such a plan! If there were even the faintest possibility of getting anything in that way, that part of the road would be packed with petitioners; but since it’s a sheer impossibility, patent to the youngest schoolboy, the road is absolutely empty. But maybe even that strengthened father in his hopes, he found food for them everywhere. He had great need to find it, for a sound mind wouldn’t have had to make such complicated calculations, it would have realised from external evidence that the thing was impossible. When officials travel to the village or back to the Castle it’s not for pleasure, but because there’s work waiting for them in the village or in the Castle, and so they travel at a great pace. It’s not likely to occur to them to look out of the carriage windows in search of petitioners, for the carriages are crammed with papers which they study on the way.”

“But,” said K., “I’ve seen the inside of an official sledge in which there weren’t any papers.” Olga’s story was opening for him such a great and almost incredible world that he could not help trying to put his own small experiences in relation to it, as much to convince himself of its reality as of his own existence.

“That’s possible,” said Olga, “but in that case it’s even worse, for that means that the official’s business is so important that the papers are too precious or too numerous to be taken with him, and those officials go at a gallop. In any case, none of them can spare time for father. And besides, there are several roads to the Castle. Now one of them is in fashion, and most carriages go by that, now it’s another and everything drives pell-mell there. And what governs this change of fashion has never yet been found out. At eight o’clock one morning they’ll all be on another road, ten minutes later on a third, and half an hour after that on the first road again, and then they may stick to that road all day, but every minute there’s the possibility of a change. Of course all the roads join up near the village, but by that time all the carriages are racing like mad, while nearer the Castle the pace isn’t quite so fast. And the amount of traffic varies just as widely and incomprehensibly as the choice of roads. There are often days when there’s not a carriage to be seen, and others when they travel in crowds. Now, just think of all that in relation to father. In his best suit, which soon becomes his only suit, off he goes every morning from the house with our best wishes. He takes with him a small Fire Brigade badge, which he has really no business to keep, to stick in his coat once he’s out of the village, for in the village itself he’s afraid to let it be seen, although it’s so small that it can hardly be seen two paces away, but father insists that it’s just the thing to draw a passing official’s attention. Not far from the Castle entrance there’s a market garden, belonging to a man called Bertuch who sells vegetables to the Castle, and there on the narrow stone ledge at the foot of the garden fence father took up his post. Bertuch made no objection because he used to be very friendly with father and had been one of his most faithful customers⁠—you see, he has a lame foot, and he thought that nobody but father could make him a boot to fit it. Well, there sat father day after day, it was a wet and stormy autumn, but the weather meant nothing to him. In the morning at his regular hour he had his hand on the latch and waved us goodbye, in the evening he came back soaked to the skin, every day, it seemed, a little more bent, and flung himself down in a corner. At first he used to tell us all his little adventures, such as how Bertuch for sympathy and old friendship’s sake had thrown him a blanket over the fence, or that in one of the passing carriages he thought he had recognised this or the other official, or that this or the other coachman had recognised him again and playfully flicked him with his whip. But later he stopped telling us these things, evidently he had given up all hope of ever achieving anything there, and looked on it only as his duty, his dreary job, to go there and spend the whole day. That was when his rheumatic pains began, winter was coming on, snow fell early, the winter begins very early here; well, so there he sat sometimes on wet stones and at other times in the snow. In the night he groaned with pain, and in the morning he was many a time uncertain whether to go or not, but always overcame his reluctance and went. Mother clung to him and didn’t want to let him go, so he, apparently grown timid because his limbs wouldn’t obey him, allowed her to go with him, and so mother began to get pains too. We often went out to them, to take them food or merely to visit them, or to try to persuade them to come back home; how often we found them crouching together, leaning against each other on their narrow seat, huddled up under a thin blanket which scarcely covered them, and round about them nothing but the grey of snow and mist, and far and wide for days at a time not a soul to be seen, not a carriage; a sight that was, K., a sight to be seen! Until one morning father couldn’t move his stiff legs out of bed at all, he wasn’t to be comforted, in a slight delirium he thought he could see an official stopping his carriage beside Bertuch’s just at that moment, hunting all along the fence for him and then climbing angrily into his carriage again with a shake of his head. At that father shrieked so loudly that it was as if he wanted to make the official hear him at all that distance, and to explain how blameless his absence was. And it became a long absence, he never went back again, and for weeks he never left his bed. Amalia took over the nursing, the attending, the treatment, did everything he needed, and with a few intervals has kept it up to this day. She knows healing herbs to soothe his pain, she needs hardly any sleep, she’s never alarmed, never afraid, never impatient, she does everything for the old folks; while we were fluttering round uneasily without being able to help in anything she remained cool and quiet whatever happened. Then when the worst was past and father was able again to struggle cautiously out of bed with one of us supporting him on each side, Amalia withdrew into the background again and left him to us.”

Olga’s Plans

“Now it was necessary again to find some occupation for father that he was still fit for, something that at least would make him believe that he was helping to remove the burden of guilt from our family. Something of the kind was not hard to find, anything at all in fact would have been as useful for the purpose as sitting in Bertuch’s garden, but I found something that actually gave me a little hope. Whenever there had been any talk of our guilt among officials or clerks or anybody else, it was only the insult to Sortini’s messenger that had always been brought up, farther than that nobody dared to go. Now, I said to myself, since public opinion, even if only ostensibly, recognised nothing but the insult to the messenger, then, even if it were still only ostensibly, everything might be put right if one could propitiate the messenger. No charge had actually been made, we were told, no department therefore had taken up the affair yet, and so the messenger was at liberty, so far as he was concerned⁠—and there was no question of anything more⁠—to forgive the offence. All that of course couldn’t have any decisive importance, was mere semblance and couldn’t produce in turn anything but semblance, but all the same it would cheer up my father and might help to harass the swarm of clerks who had been tormenting him, and that would be a satisfaction. First of course one had to find the messenger. When I told father of my plan, at first he was very annoyed, for to tell the truth he had become terribly self-willed; for one thing he was convinced⁠—this happened during his illness⁠—that we had always held him back from final success, first by stopping his allowance and then by keeping him in his bed; and for another he was no longer capable of completely understanding any new idea. My plan was turned down even before I had finished telling him about it, he was convinced that his job was to go on waiting in Bertuch’s garden, and as he was in no state now to go there every day himself, we should have to push him there in a handbarrow. But I didn’t give in, and gradually he became reconciled to the idea, the only thing that disturbed him was that in this matter he was quite dependent on me, for I had been the only one who had seen the messenger, he did not know him. Actually one messenger is very like another, and I myself was not quite certain that I would know this one again. Presently we began to go to the Herrenhof and look round among the servants. The messenger of course had been in Sortini’s service and Sortini had stopped coming to the village, but the gentlemen are continually changing their servants, one might easily find our man among the servants of another gentleman, and even if he himself was not to be found, still one might perhaps get news of him from the other servants. For this purpose it was of course necessary to be in the Herrenhof every evening, and people weren’t very pleased to see us anywhere, far less in a place like that; and we couldn’t appear either as paying customers. But it turned out that they could put us to some use all the same. You know what a trial the servants were to Frieda, at bottom they are mostly quiet people, but pampered and made lazy by too little work⁠—‘May you be as well off as a servant’ is a favourite toast among the officials⁠—and really, as far as an easy life goes, the servants seem to be the real masters in the Castle, they know their own dignity too, and in the Castle, where they have to behave in accordance with their regulations, they’re quiet and dignified, several times I’ve been assured of that, and one can find even among the servants down here some faint signs of that, but only faint signs, for usually, seeing that the Castle regulations aren’t fully binding on them in the village, they seem quite changed; a wild unmanageable lot, ruled by their insatiable impulses instead of by their regulations. Their scandalous behaviour knows no limits, it’s lucky for the village that they can’t leave the Herrenhof without permission, but in the Herrenhof itself one must try to get on with them somehow; Frieda, for instance, felt that very hard to do and so she was very glad to employ me to quieten the servants. For more than two years, at least twice a week, I’ve spent the night with the servants in the stall. Earlier, when father was still able to go to the Herrenhof with me, he slept somewhere in the taproom, and in that way waited for the news that I would bring in the morning. There wasn’t much to bring. We’ve never found the messenger to this day, he must be still with Sortini who values him very highly, and he must have followed Sortini when Sortini retired to a more remote bureau. Most of the servants haven’t seen him since we saw him last ourselves, and when one or other claims to have seen him it’s probably a mistake. So my plan might have actually failed, and yet it hasn’t failed completely, it’s true we haven’t found the messenger, and going to the Herrenhof and spending the night there⁠—perhaps his pity for me, too, any pity that he’s still capable of⁠—has unfortunately ruined my father, and for two years now he has been in the state you’ve seen him in, and yet things are perhaps better with him than with my mother, for we’re waiting daily for her death; it has only been put off thanks to Amalia’s superhuman efforts. But what I’ve achieved in the Herrenhof is a certain connection with the Castle; don’t despise me when I say that I don’t repent what I’ve done. What conceivable sort of a connection with the Castle can this be, you’ll no doubt be thinking; and you’re right, it’s not much of a connection. I know a great many of the servants now, of course, almost all the gentlemen’s servants who have come to the village during the last two years, and if I should ever get into the Castle I shan’t be a stranger there. Of course they’re servants only in the village, in the Castle they’re quite different, and probably wouldn’t know me or anybody else there that they’ve had dealings with in the village, that’s quite certain, even if they have sworn a hundred times in the stall that they would be delighted to see me again in the Castle. Besides I’ve already had experience of how little all these promises are worth. But still that’s not the really important thing. It isn’t only through the servants themselves that I have a connection with the Castle, for apart from that I hope and trust that what I’m doing is being noticed by someone up there⁠—and the management of the staff of servants is really an extremely important and laborious official function⁠—and that finally whoever is noticing me may perhaps arrive at a more favourable opinion of me than the others, that he may recognise that I’m fighting for my family and carrying on my father’s efforts, no matter in how poor a way. If he should see it like that, perhaps he’ll forgive me too for accepting money from the servants and using it for our family. And I’ve achieved something more yet, which even you, I’m afraid, will blame me for. I learned a great deal from the servants about the ways in which one can get into the Castle service without going through the difficult preliminaries of official appointment lasting sometimes for years; in that case, it’s true, one doesn’t become an actual official employee, but only a private and semiofficial one, one has neither rights nor duties⁠—and the worst is not to have any duties⁠—but one advantage one does have, that one is on the spot, one can watch for favourable opportunities and take advantage of them, one may not be an employee, but by good luck some work may come one’s way, perhaps no real employee is handy, there’s a call, one flies to answer it, and one has become the very thing that one wasn’t a minute before, an employee. Only, when is one likely to get a chance like that? Sometimes at once, one has hardly arrived, one has hardly had time to look round before the chance is there, and many a one hasn’t even the presence of mind, being quite new to the job, to seize the opportunity; but in another case one may have to wait for even more years than the official employees, and after being a semiofficial servant for so long one can never be lawfully taken on afterwards as an official employee. So there’s enough here to make one pause, but it sinks to nothing when one takes into account that the test for the official appointments is very stringent and that a member of any doubtful family is turned down in advance; let us say someone like that goes in for the examination, for years he waits in fear and trembling for the result, from the very first day everybody asks him in amazement how he could have dared to do anything so wild, but he still goes on hoping⁠—how else could he keep alive?⁠—then after years and years, perhaps as an old man, he learns that he has been rejected, learns that everything is lost and that all his life has been in vain. Here, too, of course there are exceptions, that’s how one is so easily tempted. It happens sometimes that really shady customers are actually appointed, there are officials who, literally in spite of themselves, are attracted by those outlaws; at the entrance examinations they can’t help sniffing the air, smacking their lips, and rolling their eyes towards an entrant like that, who seems in some way to be terribly appetising to them, and they have to stick close to their books of regulations so as to withstand him. Sometimes however that doesn’t help the entrant to an appointment, but only leads to an endless postponement of the preliminary proceedings, which are never really terminated, but only broken off by the death of the poor man. So official appointment no less than the other kind is full of obvious and concealed difficulties, and before one goes in for anything of the kind it’s highly advisable to weigh everything carefully. Now we didn’t fail to do that, Barnabas and I. Every time that I come back from the Herrenhof we sat down together and I told the latest news that I had gathered, for days we talked it over, and Barnabas’ work lay idle for longer spells than was good for it. And here I may be to blame in your opinion. I knew quite well that much reliance was not to be put on the servants’ stories. I knew that they never had much inclination to tell me things about the Castle, that they always changed the subject, and that every word had to be dragged out of them, and then, when they were well started, that they let themselves go, talked nonsense, bragged, tried to surpass one another in inventing improbable lies, so that in the continuous shouting in the dark stalls, one servant beginning where the other left off, it was clear that at best only a few scanty scraps of truth could be picked up. But I repeated everything to Barnabas again just as I had heard it, though he still had no capacity whatever to distinguish between what was true and what was false, and on account of the family’s position was almost famishing to hear all these things; and he drank in everything and burned with eagerness for more. And as a matter of fact the cornerstone of my new plan was Barnabas. Nothing more could be done through the servants. Sortini’s messenger was not to be found and would never be found, Sortini and his messenger with him seemed to be receding further and further, by many people their appearance and names were already forgotten, and often I had to describe them at length and in spite of that learn nothing more than that the servant I was speaking to could remember them with an effort, but except for that could tell nothing about them. And as for my conduct with the servants, of course I had no power to decide how it might be looked on and could only hope that the Castle would judge it in the spirit I did it in, and that in return a little of the guilt of our family would be taken away, but I’ve received no outward sign of that. Still I stuck to it, for so far as I was concerned I saw no other chance of getting anything done for us in the Castle. But for Barnabas I saw another possibility. From the tales of the servants⁠—if I had the inclination, and I had only too much inclination⁠—I could draw the conclusion that anyone who was taken into the Castle service could do a great deal for his family. But then what was there that was worthy of belief in these tales? It was impossible to make certain of that, but that there was very little was clear. For when, say, a servant that I would never see again, or that I would hardly recognise even were I to see him again, solemnly promised me to help to get my brother a post in the Castle, or at least, if Barnabas should come to the Castle on other business, to support him, or at least to back him up⁠—for according to the servants’ stories it sometimes happens that candidates for posts become unconscious or deranged during the protracted waiting and then they’re lost if some friend doesn’t look after them⁠—when things like that and a great many more were told to me, they were probably justified as warnings, but the promises that accompanied them were quite baseless. But not to Barnabas; it’s true I warned him not to believe them, but my mere telling of them was enough to enlist him for my plan. The reasons I advanced for it myself impressed him less, the thing that chiefly influenced him was the servants’ stories. And so in reality I was completely thrown back upon myself, Amalia was the only one who could make herself understood to my parents, and the more I followed, in my own way, the original plans of father, the more Amalia shut herself off from me, before you or anybody else she talks to me, but not when we’re alone; to the servants in the Herrenhof I was a plaything which in their fury they did their best to wreck, not one intimate word have I spoke with any of them during those two years, I’ve had only cunning or lying or silly words from them, so only Barnabas remained for me, and Barnabas was still very young. When I saw the light in his eyes as I told him those things, a light which has remained in them ever since, I felt terrified and yet I didn’t stop, the things at stake seemed too great. I admit I hadn’t my father’s great though empty plans, I hadn’t the resolution that men have, I confined myself to making good the insult to the messenger, and only asked that the actual modesty of my attempt should be put to my credit. But what I had failed to do by myself I wanted now to achieve in a different way and with certainty through Barnabas. We had insulted a messenger and driven him into a more remote bureau; and what was more natural than for us to offer a new messenger in the person of Barnabas, so that the other messenger’s work might be carried on by him, and the other messenger might remain quietly in retirement as long as he liked, for as long a time as he needed to forget the insult? I was quite aware, of course, that in spite of all its modesty there was a hint of presumption in my plan, that it might give rise to the impression that we wanted to dictate to the authorities how they should decide a personal question, or that we doubted their ability to make the best arrangements, which they might have made long before we had struck upon the idea that something could be done. But then I thought again that it was impossible that the authorities should misunderstand me so grossly, or if they should, that they should do so intentionally, that in other words all that I did should be turned down in advance without further examination. So I did not give in and Barnabas’s ambition kept him from giving in. In this term of preparation Barnabas became so uppish that he found that cobbling was far too menial work for him, a future bureau employee, yes, he even dared to contradict Amalia, and flatly, on the few occasions that she spoke to him about it. I didn’t grudge him this brief happiness, for with the first day that he went to the Castle his happiness and his arrogance would be gone, a thing easy enough to foresee. And now began that parody of service of which I’ve told you already. It was amazing with what little difficulty Barnabas got into the Castle that first time, or more correctly into the bureau which in a manner of speaking has become his workroom. This success drove me almost frantic at the time, when Barnabas whispered the news to me in the evening after he came home. I ran to Amalia, seized her, drew her into a corner, and kissed her so wildly that she cried with pain and terror. I could explain nothing for excitement, and then it had been so long since we had spoken to each other, so I put off telling her until next day or the day after. For the next few days, however, there was really nothing more to tell. After the first quick success nothing more happened. For two long years Barnabas led this heartbreaking life. The servants failed us completely, I gave Barnabas a short note to take with him recommending him to their consideration, reminding them at the same time of their promises, and Barnabas, as often as he saw a servant, drew out the note and held it up, and even if he sometimes may have presented it to someone who didn’t know me, and even if those who did know me were irritated by his way of holding out the note in silence⁠—for he didn’t dare to speak up there⁠—yet all the same it was a shame that nobody helped him, and it was a relief⁠—which we could have secured, I must admit, by our own action and much earlier⁠—when a servant who had probably been pestered several times already by the note, crushed it up and flung it into the wastepaper basket. Almost as if he had said: ‘That’s just what you yourselves do with letters,’ it occurred to me. But barren of results as all this time was in other ways, it had a good effect on Barnabas, if one can call it a good thing that he grew prematurely old, became a man before his time, yes, even in some ways more grave and sensible than most men. Often it makes me sad to look at him and compare him with the boy that he was only two years ago. And with it all I’m quite without the comfort and support that, being a man, he could surely give me. Without me he could hardly have got into the Castle, but since he is there, he’s independent of me. I’m his only intimate friend, but I’m certain that he only tells me a small part of what he has on his mind. He tells me a great many things about the Castle, but from his stories, from the trifling details that he gives, one can’t understand in the least how those things could have changed him so much. In particular I can’t understand how the daring he had as a boy⁠—it actually caused us anxiety⁠—how he can have lost it so completely up there now that he’s a man. Of course all that useless standing about and waiting all day, and day after day, and going on and on without any prospect of a change, must break a man down and make him unsure of himself and in the end actually incapable of anything else but this hopeless standing about. But why didn’t he put up a fight even at the beginning? Especially seeing that he soon recognised that I had been right and that there was no opportunity there for his ambition, though there might be some hope perhaps for the betterment of our family’s condition. For up there, in spite of the servants’ whims, everything goes on very soberly, ambition seeks it sole satisfaction in work, and as in this way the work itself gains the ascendancy, ambition ceases to have any place at all, for childish desires there’s no room up there. Nevertheless Barnabas fancied, so he has told me, that he could clearly see how great the power and knowledge even of those very questionable officials was into whose bureau he is allowed. How fast they dictated, with half-shut eyes and brief gestures, merely by raising a finger quelling the surly servants, and making them smile with happiness even when they were checked; or perhaps finding an important passage in one of the books and becoming quite absorbed in it, while the others would crowd round as near as the cramped space would allow them, and crane their necks to see it. These things and other things of the same kind gave Barnabas a great idea of those men, and he had the feeling that if he could get the length of being noticed by them and could venture to address a few words to them, not as a stranger, but as a colleague⁠—true a very subordinate colleague⁠—in the bureau, incalculable things might be achieved for our family. But things have never got that length yet, and Barnabas can’t venture to do anything that might help towards it, although he’s well aware that, young as he is, he’s been raised to the difficult and responsible position of chief breadwinner in our family on account of this whole unfortunate affair. And now for the final confession: it was a week after your arrival. I heard somebody mentioning it in the Herrenhof, but didn’t pay much attention; a Land Surveyor had come and I didn’t even know what a Land Surveyor was. But next evening Barnabas⁠—at an agreed hour I usually set out to go a part of the way to meet him⁠—came home earlier than usual, saw Amalia in the sitting-room, drew me out into the street, laid his head on my shoulder, and cried for several minutes. He was the little boy he had used to be again. Something had happened to him that he hadn’t been prepared for. It was as if a whole new world had suddenly opened to him, and he could not bear the joy and the anxieties of all this newness. And yet the only thing that had happened was that he had been given a letter for delivery to you. But it was actually the first letter, the first commission, that he had ever been given.”

Olga stopped. Everything was still except for the heavy, occasionally disturbed breathing of the old people. K. merely said casually, as if to round off Olga’s story: “You’ve all been playing with me. Barnabas brought me the letter with the air of an old and much occupied messenger, and you as well as Amalia⁠—who for that time must have been in with you⁠—behaved as if carrying messages and the letter itself were matters of indifference.” “You must distinguish between us,” said Olga. “Barnabas had been made a happy boy again by the letter, in spite of all the doubts that he had about his capability. He confined those doubts to himself and me, but he felt it a point of honour to look like a real messenger, as according to his ideas real messengers looked. So although his hopes were now rising to an official uniform I had to alter his trousers, and in two hours, so that they would have some resemblance at least to the close-fitting trews of the official uniform, and he might appear in them before you, knowing, of course, that on this point you could be easily taken in. So much for Barnabas. But Amalia really despises his work as a messenger, and now that he seemed to have had a little success⁠—as she could easily guess from Barnabas and myself and our talking and whispering together⁠—she despised it more than ever. So she was speaking the truth, don’t deceive yourself about that. But if I, K., have seemed to slight Barnabas’s work, it hasn’t been with any intention to deceive you, but from anxiety. These two letters that have gone through Barnabas’s hands are the first signs of grace, questionable as they are, that our family has received for three years. This change, if it is a change and not a deception⁠—deceptions are more frequent than changes⁠—is connected with your arrival here, our fate has become in a certain sense dependent on you, perhaps these two letters are only a beginning, and Barnabas’s abilities will be used for other things than these two letters concerning you⁠—we must hope that as long as we can⁠—for the time being however everything centres on you. Now up in the Castle we must rest content with whatever our lot happens to be, but down here we can, it may be, do something ourselves, that is, make sure of your goodwill, or at least save ourselves from your dislike, or, what’s more important, protect you as far as our strength and experience goes, so that your connection with the Castle⁠—by which we might perhaps be helped too⁠—might not be lost. Now what was our best way of bringing that about? To prevent you from having any suspicion of us when we approached you⁠—for you’re a stranger here and because of that certain to be full of suspicion, full of justifiable suspicion. And, besides we’re despised by everybody and you must be influenced by the general opinion, particularly through your fiancée, so how could we put ourselves forward without quite unintentionally setting ourselves up against your fiancée, and so offending you? And the messages, which I had read before you got them⁠—Barnabas didn’t read them, as a messenger he couldn’t allow himself to do that⁠—seemed at the first glance obsolete and not of much importance, yet took on the utmost importance in as much as they referred you to the Superintendent. Now in these circumstances how were we to conduct ourselves towards you? If we emphasised the letters’ importance, we laid ourselves under suspicion by overestimating what was obviously unimportant, and in pluming ourselves as the vehicle of these messages we should be suspected of seeking our own ends, not yours; more, in doing that we might depreciate the value of the letter itself in your eyes and so disappoint you sore against our will. But if we didn’t lay much stress on the letters we should lay ourselves equally under suspicion, for why in that case should we have taken the trouble of delivering such an unimportant letter, why should our actions and our words be in such clear contradiction, why should we in this way disappoint not only you, the addressee, but also the sender of the letter, who certainly hadn’t handed the letter to us so that we should belittle it to the addressee by our explanations? And to hold the mean, without exaggeration on either side, in other words to estimate the just value of those letters, is impossible, they themselves change in value perpetually, the reflections they give rise to are endless, and chance determines where one stops reflecting, and so even our estimate of them is a matter of chance. And when on the top of that there came anxiety about you, everything became confused, and you mustn’t judge whatever I said too severely. When for example⁠—as once happened⁠—Barnabas arrived with the news that you were dissatisfied with his work, and in his first distress⁠—his professional vanity was wounded too I must admit⁠—resolved to retire from the service altogether, then to make good the mistake I was certainly ready to deceive, to lie, to betray, to do anything, no matter how wicked, if it would only help. But even then I would have been doing it, at least in my opinion, as much for your sake as for ours.”

There was a knock. Olga ran to the door and unfastened it. A strip of light from a dark lantern fell across the threshold. The late visitor put questions in a whisper and was answered in the same way, but was not satisfied and tried to force his way into the room. Olga found herself unable to hold him back any longer and called to Amalia, obviously hoping that to keep the old people from being disturbed in their sleep Amalia would do anything to eject the visitor. And indeed she hurried over at once, pushed Olga aside, and stepped into the street and closed the door behind her. She only remained there for a moment, almost at once she came back again, so quickly had she achieved what had proved impossible for Olga.

K. then learned from Olga that the visit was intended for him. It had been one of the assistants, who was looking for him at Frieda’s command. Olga had wanted to shield K. from the assistant; if K. should confess his visit here to Frieda later, he could, but it must not be discovered through the assistant; K. agreed. But Olga’s invitation to spend the night there and wait for Barnabas he declined, for himself he might perhaps have accepted, for it was already late in the night and it seemed to him that now, whether he wanted it or not, he was bound to this family in such a way that a bed for the night here, though for many reasons painful, nevertheless, when one considered this common bond, was the most suitable for him in the village; all the same he declined it, the assistant’s visit had alarmed him, it was incomprehensible to him how Frieda, who knew his wishes quite well, and the assistants, who had learned to fear him, had come together again like this, so that Frieda didn’t scruple to send an assistant for him, only one of them, too, while the other had probably remained to keep her company. He asked Olga whether she had a whip, she hadn’t one, but she had a good hazel switch, and he took it; then he asked whether there was any other way out of the house, there was one through the yard, only one had to clamber over the wall of the neighbouring garden and walk through it before one reached the street. K. decided to do this. While Olga was conducting him through the yard, K. tried hastily to reassure her fears, told her that he wasn’t in the least angry at the small artifices she had told him about, but understood them very well, thanked her for the confidence she had shown in him in telling him her story, and asked her to send Barnabas to the school as soon as he arrived, even if it were during the night. It was true, the messages which Barnabas brought were not his only hope, otherwise things would be bad indeed with him, but he didn’t by any means leave them out of account, he would hold to them and not forget Olga either, for still more important to him than the messages themselves was Olga, her bravery, her prudence, her cleverness, her sacrifices for the family. If he had to choose between Olga and Amalia it wouldn’t cost him much reflection. And he pressed her hand cordially once more as he swung himself on to the wall of the neighbouring garden.