XXI.
Well, so it had actually happened, as one could have foreseen, but there was no way it could have been prevented. Frieda had abandoned him. This wouldn’t have to be final, it wasn’t that bad, Frieda could be won back, she was easily influenced by strangers, even by those assistants, who thought that Frieda’s position resembled their own and who, since they had given notice, caused Frieda to do so too, but K. need only go up to her, remind her of everything that spoke in his favor, and she would once again be his, would even be full of remorse, especially if he could justify the visit to the girls with a success that he owed to them. But despite these thoughts with which he sought to calm himself with regard to Frieda, he was not calm. Just a little while ago he had boasted to Olga about Frieda, calling her his only support, well, it was not the most stable kind of support; stealing Frieda from K. did not require the intervention of some powerful figure, all it took was this not particularly appetizing assistant, whose flesh sometimes gave one the impression that it wasn’t quite alive.
Jeremias had already begun to leave, K. called him back. “Jeremias,” he said, “I want to be very open with you, and so do answer the question I have honestly asked. Our relationship is no longer that of master and servant, and I’m as pleased by that as you are, so we don’t have any reason to deceive each other. And now before your very eyes I will break this switch which was meant for you, for it wasn’t out of fear of you that I chose the path through the garden but in order to surprise you and to take a few swipes at you with the switch. Well, don’t hold it against me anymore, that’s all over; if you weren’t a servant imposed on me by the authorities but simply an acquaintance of mine we would certainly have got along extremely well, though your appearance sometimes bothers me a little. And we could certainly make up for all the things of that sort that we’ve neglected.” “You think so?” said the assistant and, yawning, he rubbed his weary eyes, “well, I could tell you about it in greater detail, but I haven’t time, I must go to Frieda, the dear child is waiting for me, she hasn’t begun her duties yet, for at my request the landlord gave her a little time to recuperate—she wanted to throw herself into the work right away, no doubt so as to forget everything—and that time at least we want to spend together. As for your proposal, I certainly have no reason for lying to you, but just as little reason for confiding anything in you. You see, the situation is different for me than it is for you. As long as my relationship to you was an official one, you were of course a very important person to me, not because of your own qualities but because of my official instructions, and I would have done anything for you at the time, but now I couldn’t care less about you. I’m not moved by your having broken the willow switch either, that only reminds me what a callous master I had, it’s hardly likely to win me over.” “You speak to me,” said K., “as though it were very certain that you need never fear anything from me again. But that is not so. You’re probably not rid of me yet, they don’t reach decisions that quick here—” “Sometimes even quicker,” Jeremias threw in. “Sometimes,” said K., “but nothing points to that having happened this time, at any rate neither of us has a written decision. So the proceedings have only just begun, and I haven’t even intervened in them yet with the help of my connections, but I will do so. If the results are not in your favor then you certainly won’t have done much to predispose your master in your favor and perhaps there was no need for me to break the willow switch. True, you carried off Frieda, and that especially is what has given you a swollen head, but I must say, despite all my respect for you as a person, even if you no longer have any for me, that if I addressed a few words to Frieda it would be enough, I’m sure, to rip apart the lies with which you’ve ensnared her. And only lies could draw Frieda away from me.” “Threats like that don’t frighten me,” said Jeremias, “you don’t want me as an assistant, you even fear me as an assistant, you are particularly fearful of assistants, it was only out of fear that you hit dear Artur.” “Perhaps,” said K., “but did it hurt any less because of that? Perhaps I will often be able to show my fear of you in the same way. If I see that your assistantship isn’t giving you much joy, I will, despite all that fear, take the greatest pleasure in forcing you to do your duty. And indeed this time I shall make a point of getting hold of you alone, without Artur, and then I can devote special attention to you.” “Do you really think,” said Jeremias, “that I have even the slightest fear of any of that?” “I certainly do,” said K., “you certainly fear me a little, and, if you’re clever, a great deal. If not, why haven’t you gone to Frieda? Tell me, are you fond of her?” “Fond?” said Jeremias, “she’s a good and also clever girl, a former mistress of Klamm’s, so she’s definitely respectable. And if she keeps asking me to rescue her from you, why shouldn’t I oblige her, especially since it doesn’t do any harm to you, who consoled yourself with the accursed Barnabases.” “I see your fear now,” said K., “what a miserable fear it is, you’re trying to ensnare me with your lies. Frieda asked only one thing of me, that I should rescue her from those frenzied and doggishly licentious assistants, unfortunately I didn’t have time to do all she asked and the consequences of my omission are now there.”
“Surveyor! Surveyor!” someone was shouting up the street. It was Barnabas. He was out of breath but did not forget to bow before K. “I succeeded,” he said. “What did you succeed in doing?” asked K. “You have presented my request to Klamm?” “There was no way that could be done,” said Barnabas, “I tried very hard but it was impossible, I pushed my way forward, and, without being asked, spent all day standing so close to the desk that a clerk in whose light I was standing even pushed me away, each time Klamm looked up I announced my presence by raising my hand, even though that is forbidden, stayed in the office longest, was the only one left with the servants, had once again the pleasure of seeing Klamm return, but it wasn’t for me, he merely wanted to check something else in a book quickly and then went away again at once, and in the end the servant, seeing that I still hadn’t moved, took his broom and almost swept me out the door. I’m admitting all this so that you won’t be dissatisfied with my accomplishments again.” “Barnabas, what good is all your diligence to me,” said K., “if you had no success at all.” “But I did have some success,” said Barnabas. “As I stepped from my office—I call it my office—I see a gentleman coming from the corridors deeper inside, the entire place was already empty, it was already very late, I decided to wait for him, it was a good opportunity to stay a bit longer there, besides I would rather have stayed there than bring you the bad news. But for other reasons too the gentleman was worth waiting for, it was Erlanger. You don’t know him? He’s one of the first secretaries of Klamm. A short, frail gentleman with a slight limp. He recognized me at once, he’s well known for his memory and for his ability to judge people, he simply knits his brow, that’s all it takes for him to recognize anyone, often even people whom he’s never seen before, whom he has only heard or read about, and in my case, for instance, he could hardly have seen me before. But though he recognizes everyone right away, he asks first as though he were unsure: ‘Aren’t you Barnabas?’ he said to me. And then he asked: ‘You know the surveyor, don’t you?’ And then he said: ‘That’s convenient. I’m going to the Gentlemen’s Inn. The surveyor should visit me there. I’m in room 15. But he would need to come at once. I have only a few meetings there and go back tomorrow morning at five. Tell him that I set great store on speaking to him.’ ”
Suddenly Jeremias took flight. Barnabas, who in his agitation had barely noticed him, asked: “What is Jeremias up to?” “Trying to beat me to Erlanger’s,” said K., who ran after Jeremias, caught up with him, took his arm, and said: “Was it the longing for Frieda that suddenly overcame you? It’s no less strong in me, so we’ll go there in step.”
Standing in front of the dark Gentlemen’s Inn was a small group of men, two or three were holding lanterns in such a way that some faces were recognizable. K. found only a single acqua
intance, Gerstäcker the coachman. Gerstäcker greeted him with a question: “You’re still in the village?” “Yes,” said K., “I came here for good.” “That’s really no concern of mine,” said Gerstäcker, coughing loudly, and he turned toward the others.
It became clear that they were all waiting for Erlanger. Erlanger had already come but was still negotiating with Momus before receiving the parties. The general tenor of the conversation concerned their not being allowed to wait in the building and having to stand outside in the snow. It wasn’t very cold, to be sure, nevertheless it was inconsiderate to keep the parties standing in front of the house at night, perhaps for hours. That wasn’t of course the fault of Erlanger, who was, on the contrary, most obliging, probably did not know about it, and would certainly have been quite annoyed had it been reported to him. It was the fault of the landlady at the Gentlemen’s Inn, who in her already quite pathological striving for refinement couldn’t bear to have a large number of parties coming into the Gentlemen’s Inn at the same time. “If it’s really necessary and they must come,” she often said, “then for heaven’s sake, always only one by one.” And she had seen to it that the parties, who at first had simply waited in a corridor, later on the staircase, then in the corridor, and finally in the taproom, were ultimately pushed out onto the street. And even that wasn’t enough to satisfy her. She found it unbearable being, as she put it, constantly “under siege” in her own house. She couldn’t understand the point of holding office hours for the parties. “To dirty the front steps of the inn,” an official had once said in response to a question from her, most likely in anger, but to her the remark seemed very convincing and she liked to quote it often. Her goal—and here her aspirations coincided with the wishes of the parties—was to see that a building was built across from the Gentlemen’s Inn, where the parties could wait. She would have much preferred that the meetings with the parties and the interrogations be held outside the Gentlemen’s Inn, but the officials opposed this idea, and anything that was seriously opposed by the officials was naturally unattainable for the landlady, though in minor issues she succeeded through her indefatigable but at the same time femininely delicate zeal in exercising a kind of minor tyranny. The landlady would probably have to continue to endure the meetings and interrogations at the Gentlemen’s Inn, for while in the village the Castle officials refused to leave the Gentlemen’s Inn on official business. They were always in a hurry, for it was only very much against their will that they were in the village, they hadn’t the slightest desire to prolong their stay here beyond what was absolutely necessary, and so it wasn’t reasonable to expect that they should, simply for the sake of ensuring peace and quiet at the Gentlemen’s Inn, temporarily move into some house across the street with all their writings and thereby lose time. The officials far preferred to discharge their official business in the taproom or in their own rooms, if at all possible during a meal or from their beds before going to sleep, or in the morning when they were too tired to get up and wanted to stretch out in bed a little while longer. On the other hand, the question of whether to construct a building for the waiting parties seemed about to be resolved; still, it was quite a severe punishment for the landlady—people had a good little laugh over this—that the waiting-room issue required many meetings and that the corridors of the inn were rarely empty.
All these matters were discussed in a low voice by those waiting outside. K. found it remarkable that, though there was a great deal of dissatisfaction, nobody had any objection to Erlanger’s summoning the parties in the middle of the night. He asked about this and was informed that one ought to be grateful to Erlanger for that. It’s only his goodwill and the exalted idea that he has of his office that makes him come down to the village in the first place, for he certainly could, if he wanted to—and that might be more in accordance with the regulations—send some undersecretary and get him to take the depositions. But he usually refused to do that, he wanted to see and hear everything for himself, but was obliged to sacrifice his nights for that purpose, since no time was set aside in his official schedule for journeys to the village. K. objected that, after all, Klamm also came to the village during the day and even stayed for days at a time; was Erlanger, who after all was only a secretary, more indispensable up there? A few laughed good-naturedly, others remained silent out of embarrassment, the latter soon gained the upper hand, and K. barely received an answer. Only one of them responded hesitantly by saying that Klamm was naturally indispensable, in the Castle as well as in the village.
Then the front door opened and Momus appeared, flanked by two servants carrying lamps. “The first to be admitted to see Secretary Erlanger,” he said, “are: Gerstäcker and K. Are those two here?” They answered, but Jeremias slipped ahead of them, saying “I work here as a room waiter,” was greeted with a smile and a slap on the shoulder by Momus, and entered the house. “I must pay closer attention to Jeremias,” K. told himself while remaining aware that Jeremias was probably far less dangerous than Artur, who was working against him at the Castle. Perhaps it was even wiser to let them torment him as his assistants rather than have them prowling about unchecked and freely engaging in intrigues, for which they seemed to have a special talent.
As K. went past, Momus pretended that he had only just noticed it was the surveyor. “Oh, if it isn’t the surveyor!” he said, “the gentleman who so disliked being interrogated is now pushing his way in to an interrogation. It would have been far easier with me back then. But of course it’s difficult to choose the right interrogations.” K. was about to stop in response to this remark but Momus said: “Go! Go! Back then I could have used your answers, but not now.” In spite of this, K., agitated by Momus’s behavior, said: “You’re thinking only of yourselves. Simply for the sake of the office I won’t answer, neither then nor now.” Momus said: “Well, whom else should we be thinking of? Who else is here? Do go!”
In the corridor they were received by a servant who led them along the path already known to K., across the courtyard and then through the gate into the low, slightly sloping passageway. The upper floors were evidently occupied only by the higher officials and this corridor here only by the secretaries, including Erlanger, though he was one of the highest-ranking in their midst. The servant put out his lantern, for there was bright electric lighting in here. Everything here was small, but delicately built. Full advantage had been taken of the space. The passage barely sufficed for walking upright. On the sides, one door came immediately after the next. The side walls didn’t reach the ceiling; this was probably to ensure ventilation, for the little rooms in this deep cellarlike corridor surely had no windows. The drawback of these walls that didn’t quite meet the ceiling was the noise in the corridor, and therefore, inevitably, in the rooms too. Many rooms seemed occupied, in several of them people were still awake, one could hear voices, hammer blows, clinking glasses. But this didn’t leave one with the impression of great merriment. The voices were hushed, one could barely understand a word every now and then, but it didn’t seem like conversation, it was probably only somebody dictating something, or reading something aloud, and it was precisely from those rooms giving off the sound of clinking glasses and plates that one couldn’t hear a word, and the hammer blows reminded K. of something he had been told somewhere, namely, that in order to recuperate from the constant mental effort some officials occasionally took up cabinetmaking, precision toolmaking, and the like. The actual corridor itself was empty except for a spot by a door where sat a pale, slender, tall gentleman in a fur coat with his nightclothes showing underneath, the room had probably become too stuffy for him, so he had sat down outside, where he was reading a newspaper, though not attentively, he often gave up reading with a yawn, then leaned out and looked along the corridor, perhaps he was expecting a party whom he had summoned and who had failed to come. After they had passed him, the servant said to Gerstäcker concerning the gentleman: “Pinzgauer!” Gerstäcker nodded: “He hasn’t been down in a long time,?
?? he said. “Not in a very long time,” confirmed the servant.
Finally they came to a door no different from the others but behind which, so the servant reported, lived Erlanger. Having asked K. to lift him up on his shoulders, the servant looked in through the narrow opening on top. “He’s lying on the bed,” he said, climbing down, “he has his clothes on, but I think he’s dozing. Sometimes he is quite overcome by weariness here in the village because the way of life is so different. We will have to wait. When he wakes up, he’ll ring. There have been times when he has slept through his entire stay in the village, and then when he woke up he had to go back at once to the Castle. In any case it’s voluntary, the work he does here.” “If only he would choose to sleep through to the end,” said Gerstäcker, “for when he wakes up again and finds he has little time to finish his work, he’s quite indignant at having slept and tries to expedite everything in a hurry, and one can hardly discuss one’s concerns.” “You’ve come because of the assignment of haulage contracts for the building?” asked the servant. Gerstäcker nodded, pulled the servant aside, and spoke quietly to him, but the servant was barely listening, he was looking out over Gerstäcker, whom he towered over by more than a head, while earnestly, deliberately stroking his hair.
XXII.
At that moment K., who was looking around aimlessly, saw Frieda some distance away at a bend in the corridor; she pretended not to recognize him, merely fixed her gaze on him; in one hand she held a tray with empty dishes. He said to the servant, who did not pay the slightest attention to him—the more you spoke to the servant, the more absentminded he seemed to become—that he would be back at once, and ran to Frieda. When he reached her, he grabbed her by the shoulders as though seizing possession of her again, and asked some trivial questions while looking quizzically into her eyes. But her rigid posture scarcely relaxed; distractedly she tried to rearrange the dishes on the tray and said: “What is it you want from me? Just go to those—you know their names, you’ve just come from them, I can tell from the way you look.” K. quickly changed the subject; that discussion shouldn’t begin so suddenly nor with the worst matters, with those least favorable to him. “I thought you were in the taproom,” he said. Frieda looked at him in astonishment, then ran her one free hand gently over his forehead and cheek. It was as if she had forgotten what he looked like and wanted to recall it that way, her eyes too had the blurred look of somebody trying with great difficulty to remember something. “I’ve been taken on for the taproom again,” she said slowly, as if what she was saying was not important but beneath the words she was holding a conversation with K. and this was what was important, “this work doesn’t suit me, anybody could do it, anybody who can make beds and put on a friendly face and does not fear being pestered by the guests but even invites it, any such person can be a chambermaid. But in the taproom it’s somewhat different. I was immediately taken on in the taproom again, though I didn’t leave it all that honorably earlier, but of course now I had patronage. Yet the landlord was glad that I had patronage and that it was therefore easy for him to take me back. They even had to pressure me to accept the post; if you think about what the taproom reminds me of, you’ll have no difficulty understanding that. In the end I accepted the position. But I’m only here temporarily. Pepi asked that she not be obliged to endure the disgrace of having to leave the taproom right away, and since she did her work diligently and saw to everything, to the extent that this was possible with her limited abilities, we have given her a twenty-four-hour extension.” “That’s a great arrangement,” said K., “only you once left the taproom for my sake, and now, just before the wedding, you want to go back?” “There will be no wedding,” said Frieda. “Because I was unfaithful?” asked K. Frieda nodded. “Look here, Frieda,” said K., “we have often talked about this so-called infidelity and you always had to acknowledge in the end that the suspicion was unjust. Since then there has been no change on my side, everything is still as innocent as it was, and must always remain so. Something must therefore have changed on your side, through the insinuations of strangers or for other reasons. In any case you’re treating me unjustly, for look, how do matters really stand with these two girls? One of them, the dark one—I’m almost ashamed at having to defend myself at such length, but you invited it—anyhow, the dark one is probably no less embarrassing to me than she is to you; whenever I can keep away from her somehow or other, I do so, and she even makes that easy, one cannot possibly be more reserved than she is.” “Yes,” cried Frieda, her words came out as though against her will; K. was glad to see her being distracted in this way; she was not what she wanted to be, “you may think she’s reserved, you call the most shameless of them all reserved, and this, unbelievable as it is, is your honest opinion, you’re not pretending, I know that. The landlady at the Bridge Inn says of you: I cannot stand him but cannot abandon him either, just as on seeing a little child who cannot quite walk venture off too far, one cannot restrain oneself, one must intervene.” “You should accept her warning,” said K., smiling, “but that girl, no matter how reserved or shameless she is, we can leave aside, I do not want to hear another word about her.” “But why do you call her reserved?” Frieda asked implacably, K. interpreted this expression of interest as a sign favorable to him, “have you put it to the test or is this simply an attempt to disparage somebody else?” “Neither the one nor the other,” said K., “I call her that out of gratitude, because she makes it easy for me to overlook her and because I couldn’t get myself to go there again no matter how often she spoke to me, which would certainly be a great loss for me, since I must, as you know, go there for the sake of our common future. And that’s another reason why I have to speak to the other girl, whom I respect for her diligence, prudence, and selflessness, but nobody can really claim that she is seductive.” “The domestics don’t agree,” said Frieda. “In this and no doubt also in many other respects as well,” said K. “Are you trying to draw conclusions about my unfaithfulness from the lusting of the domestics?” Frieda remained silent and allowed K. to take the tray from her hand, put it on the floor, slide his arm under hers, and walk slowly back and forth with her in the cramped space. “You have no idea what faithfulness is,” she said, trying to fend off his closeness, “however you may have behaved with the girls, that’s not the most important thing; that you should go there to that family at all and come back with the smell of their room in your clothes is already an unbearable disgrace for me. And you run out of the schoolhouse without saying a word. And you even spend half the night there. And when anyone asks whether you’re there, you have those girls deny it, and deny it passionately they do, especially the one who is said to be uncommonly reserved. You sneak out of that house along a secret path, perhaps even to protect the reputation of those girls, the reputation of those girls! No, let’s say no more about that.” “No more about that,” said K., “but rather about something else, Frieda. No more need be said about that. You know why I must go there. It won’t be easy, but I will overcome my reluctance. You shouldn’t make this more difficult for me than it is. All I intended to do today was to go there for a moment to ask them whether Barnabas, who should have brought me an important message long ago, had finally come. He hadn’t, but he should be coming very soon, so they assured me, plausibly enough. I didn’t want to let him follow me to the schoolhouse, so that he wouldn’t torment you with his presence. The hours went by, yet unfortunately he didn’t come. But another person came whom I despise. The idea of his spying on me didn’t appeal to me, so I went through the next-door garden, but I had no intention of hiding from him either and, once outside on the street, went up to him openly, holding, I have to admit, a very supple willow switch. That’s all, no more need be said about that, but rather about something else. What’s the situation with the assistants, the mere mention of whom is almost as repulsive for me as the mentioning of that family is for you? Compare your relationship to them with how I relate to that family. I understand your dislike of
that family and can certainly share it. I go there only because of this particular affair, and at times it almost seems to me as though I were doing them an injustice and exploiting them. But as for you and the assistants! You haven’t even tried to deny that they pursue you and you’ve also admitted that you’re attracted to them. I wasn’t angry at you because of that, I realized you were no match for the forces at work here and was happy to see you were at least putting up a fight, I helped to defend you, and it was only because I failed to do so for an hour or two, trusting in your faithfulness and also in hopes that the building would inevitably be locked and the assistants finally put to flight—I still underestimate them, I fear—only because I failed to do so for an hour or two and because this Jeremias, who on closer inspection is a none-too-healthy, oldish fellow, had the cheek to come to the window, it’s for those reasons alone that I must lose you, Frieda, and hear greetings such as: ‘There will be no wedding.’ Shouldn’t I be the one to utter reproaches, but I do not, I still do not.” And again K. thought it a good idea to distract Frieda, so he asked her to bring him something to eat, for he had not eaten anything since noon. Frieda, obviously relieved by the request, nodded and ran to get something, not farther along the corridor where K. assumed the kitchen was, but off to the side down a few steps. She soon brought a plate of cold meats and a bottle of wine, but these were evidently only the remnants of a meal, the individual slices had been quickly rearranged so that this could not be discerned, a few sausage skins had even been left lying there, and the bottle was three-quarters empty. But K. said nothing about this and with a good appetite set about eating. “You were in the kitchen?” he asked. “No, in my own room,” she said, “I have a room downstairs.” “If only you had taken me along,” said K., “I’ll go downstairs so that I can sit for a little while I eat.” “I’ll bring you a chair,” said Frieda, who was already on her way. “No thanks,” said K., holding her back, “I won’t go and don’t need a chair either.” Defiantly, Frieda endured his grip, she had her head bent low and was biting her lips. “Well, he’s downstairs,” she said, “what else did you expect? He’s lying in my bed, he caught a chill outside, he’s shivering, and has barely eaten. Basically this is all your fault; if you had not chased away the assistants and run after those people, we could be sitting peacefully in the schoolhouse. You alone destroyed our happiness. Do you really think Jeremias would have dared to abduct me while he was still on duty? In that case you fail to appreciate the system of order here. He tried to approach me, tormented himself, lay in wait for me, but it was only a game, just as a hungry dog plays about without quite having the audacity to jump up on the table. And the same is true of me. I was drawn to him, he’s my playmate from childhood days—we used to play with one another on the slope of the Castle hill, wonderful days, you’ve never once asked me about my past—but none of that was of any great moment while Jeremias’s position was still holding him in check, for I knew my duty as your wife-to-be. But then you drove away the assistants, and still boast of that, as though you had achieved something for me; well, in a sense that’s true. With Artur you attained your goal, though only temporarily, he’s delicate, he lacks Jeremias’s passion, which fears no obstacle, and also that night with your fist—that blow with your fist was also dealt against our happiness—you nearly destroyed him, he fled to the Castle to complain, and even if he comes back soon, he’s gone right now. But Jeremias stayed. On duty he fears every twitch in his master’s eye, but off-duty he fears nothing. He came and took me; abandoned by you, overpowered by him, my old friend, I couldn’t hold out anymore. It was not I who unlocked the school door, he smashed the window and pulled me out. We flew here, the landlord respects him, and nothing could please the guests more than to have a room waiter like him, so we were taken on, he doesn’t live in my room, but we have taken a room together.” “In spite of everything,” said K., “I don’t regret having driven the assistants from my service. If the relationship was as you describe it, in other words if your faithfulness depended solely on the professional commitment of the assistants, then it was good that all this came to an end. The happiness of that marriage in between those two predators, who backed down only under the threat of a whipping, would not have been that great. So I too am grateful to that family, which inadvertently played a role in separating us.” In silence they walked up and down, side by side, but now it was impossible to tell who had begun first. Frieda, who was beside K., seemed annoyed that he didn’t take her by the arm again. “And then everything would be in order,” K. went on, “we could take leave of each other, you could go to your master Jeremias, who probably still has a chill from the school garden and whom you have, under the circumstances, left alone for too long, and I could go on my own to the schoolhouse or, now that I have nothing to do there without you, anywhere I will be admitted. If I am nevertheless hesitant, it’s because I still have good reason to doubt what you told me. I have the opposite impression of Jeremias. All the time he was on duty, he was pursuing you, and I cannot believe that his being on duty would ultimately have restrained him from assaulting you in earnest. But now, ever since he chose to regard his duties here with me as suspended, he is different. Forgive me if I explain it to myself this way: Ever since you ceased to be his master’s fiancée, you are no longer the temptation you once were for him. You may be his friend from childhood, but in my opinion—and I know him only from a brief conversation I had with him tonight—he doesn’t attach much importance to sentimental matters of that sort. I don’t know why you consider him a passionate individual. On the contrary, I find his way of thinking remarkably cold. From Galater he received in my regard certain perhaps not very favorable instructions—he endeavors to carry them out, with, as I willingly admit, a certain passion for duty which is not all that rare here—specifying that he should destroy our relationship; he may have attempted this in various ways, for instance, by trying to entice you with his lascivious longings, and also—the landlady supported him in this—by spinning yarns about my unfaithfulness; his attack was successful, some memory or other of Klamm that still clings to him may have been of some help here, he certainly lost his post, but perhaps precisely when he no longer needed it, now he reaps the fruits of his labor and pulls you through the school window, but with that his work is finished, and, abandoned by his passion for duty, he becomes tired and would prefer to take over from Artur, who is not complaining but picking up praise and new orders, yet someone has to stay to keep track of how things develop here. He regards it as a somewhat bothersome duty, having to care for you. There is no love for you, he openly admitted that to me, but as the mistress of Klamm you are naturally somebody he respects, and it must make him feel very good to be able to settle down in your room and have for once the feeling of being like a little Klamm, but that’s all, you yourself mean nothing to him now; placing you in a position here was, in his opinion, simply an addition to his main work; in order not to unsettle you he himself remained here, but only temporarily, so long as he does not have any news from the Castle and you have not cured his cold for him.” “How you slander him!” said Frieda, knocking her little fists together. “Slander him?” said K., “no, I don’t want to slander him. Perhaps I’m doing him something of an injustice, that is of course possible. What I said about him doesn’t lie openly on the surface, it can be interpreted differently. But slander? After all, the only purpose in slandering him would be to combat your love of him. Were that necessary and were slander a suitable means, I wouldn’t hesitate to slander him. Nobody could condemn me for that, he has such a great advantage over me because of his patrons that I, thrown back as I am entirely on my own resources, should also be allowed to do a little slandering. That would be a relatively innocent and in the end also quite impotent means of defense. So drop your fists.” And K. took Frieda’s hand in his own; Frieda attempted to withdraw it, but smilingly and without any great effort. “But I have no need to slander him,” said K., “for you certainly don’t love him, yo
u only think you do, and you’ll be grateful when I deliver you from that illusion. Look, if someone wanted to take you from me without resorting to force, in the most carefully calculated fashion, he would have to do so through the two assistants. They are seemingly good, childish, funny, irresponsible youths, blown in from high up, from the Castle, along with a few childhood memories, but all this is quite endearing, especially if I myself am the opposite, as it were, for I’m constantly running after things that aren’t entirely comprehensible to you, that annoy you, that bring me together with people who seem despicable to you, and some of that gets carried over to me in all my innocence. All of this is simply a malicious, though certainly very clever, exploitation of the shortcomings in our relationship. Every relationship has its shortcomings, even ours; we came together, each of us from a completely different world, and ever since getting to know each other, each of our lives has taken a completely new path, we still feel uncertain, all of this is too new. I’m not talking about myself, that isn’t so important, on the whole I have been constantly inundated with gifts ever since you first turned your eyes toward me, and of course it isn’t all that difficult to get used to receiving gifts. But as for you, aside from everything else, you were torn from Klamm, I cannot gauge what that means, but I have gradually gained an idea of what that means, one staggers, one cannot find one’s way, and even if I was always prepared to take you in I was not always there, and when I was there you were sometimes detained by your daydreams or something even more alive, like, for instance, the landlady—in short, there were times when you looked away from me, you were yearning, poor child, for something that was only half-defined, and at moments like that all that was needed was that the right people be posted in the direction you were looking and you were lost to them, you succumbed to the illusion that all of this, which was nothing but moments, ghosts, old memories, mostly your past and constantly receding former life, was still your real life right then. A mistake, Frieda, nothing but the final, and, rightly considered, rather contemptible obstacle facing our ultimate union. Pull yourself together, compose yourself; even if you thought that the assistants were sent by Klamm—it isn’t true, they come from Galater—and if with the help of this illusion they could so enchant you that you believed that even in their dirt and their lechery you could find traces of Klamm, like a person who thinks he is seeing a long-lost precious stone in a dung heap, whereas in reality he would be incapable of finding it even if it actually was there—they too are simply the same type of fellows as the domestics in the stable, only not as healthy, a little fresh air makes them ill and throws them into bed, which they admittedly go about choosing with the craftiness of a domestic.” Frieda had leaned her head on K.’s shoulder; with their arms wrapped around each other they walked up and down in silence. “If only,” said Frieda, slowly, calmly, almost contentedly, as though she knew that she had merely been granted a tiny little interlude of peace on K.’s shoulder but intended to enjoy it to the utmost, “if only we had gone abroad at once, that same night, we could be somewhere else, safe, always together, your hand always close enough for me to catch hold of; how I need your closeness; how lost I am ever since I came to know you without your closeness; believe me, your closeness is the only dream that I dream, none other.”