XVI
When he reached the street he saw indistinctly in the darkness that a little farther along the assistant was still walking up and down before Barnabas’s house; sometimes he stopped and tried to peep into the room through the drawn blinds. K. called to him; without appearing visibly startled he gave up his spying on the house and came towards K. “Who are you looking for?” asked K., testing the suppleness of the hazel switch on his leg. “You,” replied the assistant as he came nearer. “But who are you?” asked K. suddenly, for this did not appear to be the assistant. He seemed older, wearier, more wrinkled, but fuller in the face, his walk too was quite different from the brisk walk of the assistants, which gave an impression as if their joints were charged with electricity; it was slow, a little halting, elegantly valetudinarian. “You don’t recognise me?” asked the man, “Jeremiah, your old assistant.” “I see,” said K. tentatively producing the hazel switch again, which he had concealed behind his back, “But you look quite different.” “It’s because I’m by myself,” said Jeremiah. “When I’m by myself then all my youthful spirits are gone.” “But where is Arthur?” asked K. “Arthur?” said Jeremiah, “the little dear? He has left the service. You were rather hard and rough on us, you know, and the gentle soul couldn’t stand it. He’s gone back to the Castle to put in a complaint.” “And you?” asked K. “I’m able to stay here,” said Jeremiah, “Arthur is putting in a complaint for me too.” “What have you to complain about, then?” asked K. “That you can’t understand a joke. What have we done? Jested a little, laughed a little, teased your fiancée a little. And all according to our instructions, too. When Galater sent us to you—” “Galater?” asked K. “Yes, Galater,” replied Jeremiah, “he was deputising for Klamm himself at the time. When he sent us to you he said—I took a good note of it, for that’s our business: You’re to go down there as assistants to the Land Surveyor. We replied: But we don’t know anything about the work. Thereupon he replied: That’s not the main point: if it’s necessary, he’ll teach you it. The main thing is to cheer him up a little. According to the reports I’ve received he takes everything too seriously. He has just got to the village, and starts off thinking that a great experience, whereas in reality it’s nothing at all. You must make him see that.” “Well?” said K., “was Galater right, and have you carried out your task?” “That I don’t know,” replied Jeremiah. “In such a short time it was hardly possible. I only know that you were very rough on us, and that’s what we’re complaining of. I can’t understand how you, an employee yourself and not even a Castle employee, aren’t able to see that a job like that is very hard work, and that it’s very wrong to make the work harder for the poor workers, and wantonly, almost childishly, as you have done. Your total lack of consideration in letting us freeze at the railings, and almost felling Arthur with your fist on the straw sack—Arthur, a man who feels a single cross word for days—and in chasing me up and down in the snow all afternoon, so that it was an hour before I could recover from it! And I’m no longer young!” “My dear Jeremiah,” said K., “you’re quite right about all this, only it’s Galater you should complain to. He sent you here of his own accord, I didn’t beg him to send you. And as I hadn’t asked for you it was at my discretion to send you back again, and like you, I would much rather have done it peacefully than with violence, but evidently you wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, why didn’t you speak to me when you came first as frankly as you’ve done just now?” “Because I was in the service,” said Jeremiah, “surely that’s obvious.” “And now you’re in the service no longer?” asked K. “That’s so,” said Jeremiah, “Arthur has given notice in the Castle that we’re giving up the job, or at least proceedings have been set going that will finally set us free from it.” “But you’re still looking for me just as if you were in the service,” said K. “No,” replied Jeremiah, “I was only looking for you to reassure Frieda. When you forsook her for Barnabas’s sister she was very unhappy, not so much because of the loss, as because of your treachery, besides she had seen it coming for a long time and had suffered a great deal already on that account. I only went up to the school-window for one more look to see if you mightn’t have become more reasonable. But you weren’t there: Frieda was sitting by herself on a bench crying. So then I went to her and we came to an agreement. Everything’s settled. I’m to be waiter in the Herrenhof, at least until my business is settled in the Castle, and Frieda is back in the taproom again. It’s better for Frieda. There was no sense in her becoming your wife. And you haven’t known how to value the sacrifice that she was prepared to make for you either. But the good soul had still some scruples left, perhaps she was doing you an injustice, she thought, perhaps you weren’t with the Barnabas girl after all. Although of course there could be no doubt where you were, I went all the same so as to make sure of it once and for all; for after all this worry Frieda deserved to sleep peacefully for once, not to mention myself. So I went and not only found you there, but was able to see incidentally as well that you had the girls on a string. The black one especially—a real wildcat—she’s set her cap at you. Well, everyone to his taste. But all the same it wasn’t necessary for you to take the roundabout way through the next door garden, I know that way.”
So now the thing had come after all which he had been able to foresee, but not to prevent. Frieda had left him. It could not be final, it was not so bad as that, Frieda could be won back, it was easy for any stranger to influence her, even for those assistants who considered Frieda’s position much the same as their own, and now that they had given notice had prompted Frieda to do the same, but K. would only have to show himself and remind her of all that spoke in his favour, and she would rue it and come back to him, especially if he should be in a position to justify his visit to these girls by some success due entirely to them. Yet in spite of those reflections, by which he sought to reassure himself on Frieda’s account, he was not reassured. Only a few minutes ago he had been praising Frieda up to Olga and calling her his only support; well, that support was not of the firmest, no intervention of the mighty ones had been needed to rob K. of Frieda—even this not very savoury assistant had been enough—this puppet which sometimes gave one the impression of not being properly alive.
Jeremiah had already begun to disappear. K. called him back. “Jeremiah,” he said, “I want to be quite frank with you; answer one question of mine too in the same spirit. We’re no longer in the position of master and servant, a matter of congratulation not only to you but to me too; we have no grounds, then, for deceiving each other. Here before your eyes I snap this switch which was intended for you, for it wasn’t for fear of you that I chose the backway out, but so as to surprise you and lay it across your shoulders a few times. But don’t take it badly, all that is over; if you hadn’t been forced on me as a servant by the bureau, but had been simply an acquaintance, we would certainly have got on splendidly, even if your appearance might have disturbed me occasionally. And we can make up now for what we have missed in that way.” “Do you think so?” asked the assistant, yawning and closing his eyes wearily. “I could of course explain the matter more at length, but I have no time, I must go to Frieda, the poor child is waiting for me, she hasn’t started on her job yet, at my request the landlord has given her a few hours’ grace—she wanted to fling herself into the work at once probably to help her to forget—and we want to spend that little time at least together. As for your proposal, I have no cause, certainly, to deceive you, but I have just as little to confide anything to you. My case, in other words, is different from yours. So long as my relation to you was that of a servant, you were naturally a very important person in my eyes, not because of your own qualities, but because of my office, and I would have done anything for you that you wanted, but now you’re of no importance to me. Even your breaking the switch doesn’t affect me, it only reminds me what a rough master I had, it’s not calculated to prejudice me in your favour.” “You talk to me,” said K., “as if it were quite certain that you’ll never have to fear anything from me again. But that isn’t really so. From all appearances you’re not yet free from me, things aren’t settled here so quickly as that—” “Sometimes even more quickly,” Jeremiah threw in. “Sometimes,” said K., “but nothing points to the fact that it’s so this time, at least neither you nor I have anything that we can show in black and white. The proceedings are only started, it seems, and I haven’t used my influence yet to intervene, but I will. If the affair turns out badly for you, you’ll find that you haven’t exactly endeared yourself to your master, and perhaps it was superfluous after all to break the hazel switch. And then you have abducted Frieda, and that has given you an inflated notion of yourself, but with all the respect that I have for your person, even if you have none for me any longer, a few words from me to Frieda will be enough—I know it—to smash up the lies that you’ve caught her with. And only lies could have estranged Frieda from me.” “These threats don’t frighten me,” replied Jeremiah, “you don’t in the least want me as an assistant, you were afraid of me even as an assistant, you’re afraid of assistants in any case, it was only fear that made you strike poor Arthur.” “Perhaps,” said K., “but did it hurt the less for that? Perhaps I’ll be able to show my fear of you in that way many times yet. Once I see that you haven’t much joy in an assistant’s work, it’ll give me great satisfaction again, in spite of all my fear, to keep you at it. And moreover I’ll do my best next time to see that you come by yourself, without Arthur, I’ll be able then to devote more attention to you.” “Do you think,” said Jeremiah, “that I have even the slightest fear of all this?” “I do think so,” said K., “you’re a little afraid, that’s certain, and if you’re wise, very much afraid. If that isn’t so why didn’t you go straight back to Frieda? Tell me, are you in love with her, then?” “In love?” said Jeremiah. “She’s a nice clever girl, a former sweetheart of Klamm’s, so respectable in any case. And as she kept on imploring me to save her from you why shouldn’t I do her the favour, particularly as I wasn’t doing you any harm, seeing that you’ve consoled yourself with these damned Barnabas girls?” “Now I can see how frightened you are,” said K., “frightened out of your wits; you’re trying to catch me with lies. All that Frieda asked for was to be saved from those filthy swine of assistants, who were getting past bounds, but unfortunately I hadn’t time to fulfil her wish completely, and now this is the result of my negligence.”
“Land Surveyor, Land Surveyor!” someone shouted down the street. It was Barnabas. He came up breathless with running, but did not forget to greet K. with a bow. “It’s done!” he said. “What’s done?” asked K. “You’ve laid my request before Klamm?” “That didn’t come off,” said Barnabas, “I did my best, but it was impossible, I was urgent, stood there all day without being asked and so close to the desk that once a clerk actually pushed me away, for I was standing in his light, I reported myself when Klamm looked up—and that’s forbidden—by lifting my hand, I was the last in the bureau, was left alone there with only the servants, but had the luck all the same to see Klamm coming back again, but it was not on my account, he only wanted to have another hasty glance at something in a book and went away immediately; finally, as I still made no move, the servants almost swept me out of the door with the broom. I tell you all this so that you might never complain of my efforts again.” “What good is all your zeal to me, Barnabas,” said K., “when it hasn’t the slightest success?” “But I have had success!” replied Barnabas, “as I was leaving my bureau—I call it my bureau—I saw a gentleman coming slowly towards me along one of the passages, which were quite empty except for him. By that time in fact it was very late. I decided to wait for him. It was a good pretext to wait longer, indeed I would much rather have waited in any case, so as not to have to bring you news of failure. But apart from that it was worth while waiting, for it was Erlanger. You don’t know him? He’s one of Klamm’s chief secretaries. A weakly little gentleman, he limps a little. He recognised me at once, he’s famous for his splendid memory and his knowledge of people, he just draws his brows together and that’s enough for him to recognise anybody, often people even that he’s never seen before, that he’s only heard of or read about; for instance he could hardly ever have seen me. But although he recognises everybody immediately, he always ask first as if he weren’t quite sure. Aren’t you Barnabas? he asked me. And then he went on: You know the Land Surveyor, don’t you? And then he said: That’s very lucky, I’m just going to the Herrenhof. The Land Surveyor is to report to me there. I’ll be in room number 15. But he must come at once. I’ve only a few things to settle there and I leave again for the Castle at 5 o’clock in the morning. Tell him that it’s very important that I should speak to him.”
Suddenly Jeremiah set off at a run. In his excitement Barnabas had scarcely noticed his presence till now and asked: “Where’s Jeremiah going?” “To forestall me with Erlanger,” said K. and set off after Jeremiah, caught him up, hung on to his arm, and said: “Is it a sudden desire for Frieda that’s seized you? I’ve got it as well, so we’ll go together side by side.”