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"he was Klamm's substitute at the time. "When he sent us to you, he said—I remember since that's what we're referring to— 'You're being sent there as assistants of the surveyor.' We said: 'But we don't know anything about that kind of work.' At that he said: 'That isn't so important; if it becomes necessary he will teach you. But it's important that you should cheer him up a bit. From what I hear, he takes everything very seriously. He has come to the village and right away thinks this is some great event, but in reality it's nothing at all. You should teach him that.'" "Well," said K., "was Galater right and did you carry out your instructions?" "I don't know," said Jeremias, "in that short time it may not have been possible. All I know is that you were very crude and that's what we're complaining about. I don't under­stand how you, who are only an employee after all, and not even a Castle employee at that, can fail to see that this kind of duty is hard work and that it's very wrong to make the work even more difficult for the worker, in a willful, almost childish manner, as you have done. How thoughtless it was of you to leave us freez­ing at the fence, or again how, on the mattress, you struck Artur an almost mortal blow, Artur, someone who feels the pain of a cross word for days; how that afternoon you chased me back and forth in the snow in such a way that I needed an hour to recover from the mad rush. After all, I'm no longer young!" "Dear Jere­mias," said K., "everything that you're saying is right, only you should raise this matter with Galater. He sent the two of you here of his own free will, I didn't request you from him. And since I didn't ask for you, I was free to send you back and would rather have done so peacefully than by use of force, but that's clearly how the two of you wanted it. By the way, when you first came to me, why didn't you speak as openly as you do now?" "Be­cause I was on duty," said Jeremias, "but that goes without say­ing." "And you're no longer on duty?" asked K. "No longer," said Jeremias, "Artur has given notice at the Castle, or at least the procedure is under way and should free us at last." "But you're still looking for me as though you were on duty," said K. "No," said Jeremias. "I'm looking for you only to reassure

Frieda. When you left her because of the Barnabas girls she was very unhappy, not so much at the loss as at your having betrayed her, though she had seen it coming a long time and had already suffered a lot because of it. I had just come back to the school-house window to see whether you mightn't have become more reasonable. But you weren't there, only Frieda was, sitting on a school bench, weeping. So I went up to her and we came to an understanding. And everything has already been taken care of. I'm a room waiter at the Gentlemen's Inn, at least while my case at the Castle remains unresolved, and Frieda is back in the tap­room. It's certainly better for Frieda this way. It made no sense for her to become your wife. Besides, you could not appreciate the sacrifice she was willing to make for you. But the good woman is having second thoughts, perhaps she actually wronged you, perhaps you weren't really at Barnabas's. Even though there was of course no doubt at all as to your whereabouts, I came here to establish conclusively that that was indeed the case; for after all that great excitement Frieda finally deserves a good night's sleep, as do I. So I came here and not only found you but on the side also noticed the way those girls are at your beck and call. Es­pecially the black-haired one, a real wildcat, put herself out for you. Well, each to his own taste. In any case there was no need for you to make that detour through the next-door garden, I know that path."

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. "Je-remias," 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, and 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 ac­quaintance, 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 Ar-tur, 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 no-

ticed 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.

Atthat 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 discus-

sion 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. But 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, but 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