Лабораторная работа №1 4 страница

even if outwardly still intact, begins to crumble, and in places where usually, as should happen, there were only questions and answers going back and forth, the persons involved switched places in a strange and absolutely inappropriate manner. At least that is what the secretaries say, in other words, those people who, owing to their profession, are endowed with an altogether extraordinary sensibility in such matters. But even they them­selves—and this is something we have often talked about in our circles—barely notice those detrimental effects during the night­time interrogations; on the contrary, from the very beginning they go to great lengths to fight against that and they end up thinking that they have done especially good work. But later, on reading the depositions, one is often amazed at the glaring weaknesses that come to light. And these are errors, even half-unjustified gains se­cured over and over again by the parties, and they can no longer be made good, or at least not as specified in our regulations, in the usual speedy manner. Of course, a control agency will correct these errors, but this will only be for the sake of justice, since it is no longer possible to do that particular party any harm. Now, under such circumstances aren't the complaints of the secretaries quite justified?" For some time K. had been half-dozing, but now he was roused again: "What's the point of all this? What's the point of all this?" he asked himself, and from under his droop­ing eyelids he viewed Bürgel not as an official who was dis­cussing difficult matters with him but merely as something that was keeping him from his sleep, and whose further significance couldn't be determined. But Bürgel, completely absorbed in his train of thought, smiled as though he had just managed to mis­lead K. somewhat. But he was prepared to put him back on the right track at once. "Well," he said, "one cannot simply say that these complaints are entirely justified. True, the nighttime inter­rogations are not expressly forbidden anywhere, and one isn't violating any regulation if one tries to avoid them, but the condi­tions, the overabundant work, the manner in which the officials are employed at the Castle, their indispensability, the regula­tion that no interrogations of the parties should be held until

the rest of the investigation has been fully concluded, but then right away, all this and many other things have turned the night­time interrogations into an unavoidable necessity. But if they have actually become a necessity, then—I would say—that is still, in­directly at any rate, a result of the regulations, and to carp at the nature of the nighttime interrogations would almost mean— I am naturally exaggerating a little and can therefore allow myself, simply as an exaggeration, to make the following re­mark—that would almost mean to carp at the regulations. On the other hand, the secretaries should be allowed to protect them­selves as best they can within the framework of the regulations against the nighttime interrogations and their perhaps merely apparent drawbacks. They certainly go about this very thor­oughly, permitting interrogations only on subjects that pose the least possible threat in that regard, examining themselves before the proceedings and, if the results of that examination make it necessary, canceling all interrogations even at the last minute, fortifying themselves often by summoning a party at least ten times before actually interrogating him, choosing to have them­selves represented by colleagues whose jurisdiction doesn't ex­tend to that particular case and who can therefore handle it more easily, setting the negotiations for the beginning or end of the night and avoiding the hours in between—there are many such measures; these secretaries don't let anybody get the better of them, and their resilience is almost equal to their vulnerability." K. slept, but it wasn't really sleep, he was still hearing what Bürgel was saying, perhaps better than earlier when he was still awake though dead tired, one word after the other accosted his ears, but that irritating awareness was gone, he felt free, it was no longer Bürgel who kept him, but he, K., who now and then groped about for Bürgel, he had not yet reached the depths of sleep, but he had dipped into it and now no one was going to steal this from him. And it seemed to him as though in this way he had achieved a great victory and a group of people was al­ready there to celebrate it and he or even somebody else was rais­ing a champagne glass in honor of the victory. And in order to let

everybody know what it was all about, the battle and the victory were being repeated once again, or perhaps they weren't being repeated but were taking place for the first time and had been celebrated earlier and kept on being celebrated, because there was fortunately no doubt at all about the outcome. A secre­tary, naked, very like the statue of a Greek god, was being hard pressed by K. in battle. That was quite comical, and in his sleep K. smiled gently at the way the secretary was being constantly startled out of his proud posture by K.'s advances and quickly had to use his raised arm and clenched fist to cover up his ex­posed parts, but he was not yet quick enough. The battle didn't last long, for step by step, and very big steps they were too, K. ad­vanced. Was this even a battle? There was no real obstacle, only every so often a few squeaks from the secretary. This Greek god squeaked like a girl being tickled. And then finally he was gone; K. was alone in a large room; ready to fight he turned around and looked for his opponent, but there wasn't anybody there any­more, the group of people had scattered as well, only the cham­pagne glass lay broken on the ground, K. stamped on it. But the splinters hurt; with a start he woke up feeling sick, like a small child on being woken up; nevertheless, at the sight of Bürgel's bare chest a thought from the dream came to him: "There's your Greek god! So pull him out of the sack!" "But there is," said Bürgel, lifting his face pensively toward the ceiling, as though he were racking his memory for suitable examples but couldn't find any, "but there is an opportunity, despite all the precautionary measures, for the parties to take advantage of the nighttime weakness of the secretaries, assuming as always that it actually is a weakness. Of course this is a very rare opportunity, that is to say, one that virtually never arises. It entails the party's arriving unannounced in the middle of the night. It may surprise you that this opportunity, which appears to be a matter of course, should arise so rarely. But then of course you don't know what condi­tions are like here. But even you must have been struck by the seamlessness of the official organization. As a result of this seam-lessness, though, everyone who has a request to make, or who

must for some reason be interrogated about something, receives, immediately, without delay, usually even before he has thought the matter through, indeed even before he knows about it, a sum­mons. This time he isn't interrogated, generally isn't interro­gated, the affair usually isn't sufficiently mature for that, but he has the summons and can no longer arrive unannounced, that is, he cannot arrive entirely by surprise, he can at best arrive at the wrong time, and then he is simply made aware of the date and hour of the summons, and if he comes back at the right time, then he is generally sent away, this isn't a problem anymore since the summons in the hands of the party and the memorandum in the files are strong, though not always adequate, weapons in the hands of the secretaries. All this relates only to the secretary who is authorized to deal with the affair; approaching the others at night by surprise is something everybody would be free to do. But nobody is likely to do so, that would be almost pointless. Above all else, it would greatly embitter the secretary who is au­thorized; but in dealing with the parties, we secretaries certainly aren't jealous of one another when it comes to the work—every­body has an exceedingly heavy load, indeed one that is piled on without skimping, but in dealing with the parties we cannot tol­erate any confusion about our jurisdiction. There are even people who have lost that round in the game because in the belief that they could get no further in the authorized office they tried to slip through at an unauthorized one. Such attempts inevitably fail be­cause even if an unauthorized secretary is surprised by the party at night and is most willing to help, owing to his lack of jurisdic­tion any intervention he would make would scarcely be more ef­fective than that of any lawyer, actually far less so, for he doesn't have the time, even if he were capable of taking some other step—and indeed he is more familiar with the secret ways of the law than all of those lawyerly gentlemen—but he has no time for matters over which he has no authority, he cannot even spare a moment for them. Who, faced with such prospects, would spend his nights going from one unauthorized secretary to the next; be­sides, the parties are fully occupied if, in addition to their usual

professions, they attempt to respond to the summonses and sig­nals from the authorized offices, but they are 'fully occupied' only according to the parties' understanding of that term, which is naturally by no means the same as 'fully occupied' in the sec­retaries' understanding of it." K. nodded, smiling; he thought that now he understood everything perfectly, not because it af­fected him but simply because he was convinced that in a few mo­ments he would fall sound asleep, and this time without dreams or interruptions; surrounded on one side by authorized secre­taries and on the other by unauthorized ones, and faced with the mass of fully occupied parties, he would fall into a deep sleep and thus escape from them all. He had become so used to Bürgel's soft, complacent voice, which was obviously trying in vain to put itself to sleep, that it would enhance rather than disturb his own sleep. "Chatter on, chatterbox," he thought, "you're chat­tering away just for me." "So where is it," said Bürgel, two fin­gers fidgeting at his lower lip, with widened eyes and craned neck, as though after a strenuous hike he were now coming to a delightful vista, "so where is the opportunity that I spoke of which rarely, and indeed almost never, arises? The secret lies in the regulations about jurisdiction. In fact, it is not true and in a great living organization cannot be true that there's only one au­thorized secretary for each case. It's just that one of them has chief authority, while many others have a lesser degree of au­thority. Who—even if he were the greatest worker—could keep together on his desk the ramifications of the smallest incident? Even what I was saying about the chief authority goes too far. Doesn't the least bit of jurisdiction contain all of it? Isn't the pas­sion with which the matter gets tackled decisive? And isn't this passion always present to the same extent, isn't it always there in full force? There can indeed be distinctions between the secre­taries in all matters, and there certainly are countless distinctions like that, but not in their degree of passion, there is not one of them who could restrain himself if he were approached with a re­quest to deal with a case over which he has even the slightest jurisdiction. But outwardly it is necessary to establish an orderly

means of negotiation, and therefore for each of the parties the pri­mary responsibility is taken on by one particular secretary, whom they are to heed in official matters. But this authorized secretary needn't even be the one with most jurisdiction in the case; this is something the organization determines in light of its current needs. That's how matters stand. And now, Surveyor, consider the possibility that a party does succeed somehow or other, de­spite the generally adequate obstacles I have already mentioned, in surprising in the middle of the night a secretary who does have some jurisdiction in that particular case. You probably haven't even considered the possibility of something like that? I can believe that. But in any case there's no need to think about it since it virtually never happens. What a strange, precisely shaped, small, clever little grain such a party would have to be in order to slip through that incomparable sieve. You think this can never happen. You're right, it can never happen. But one night—who can vouch for everything?—it does happen. True, I don't have any acquaintances that this has ever happened to; now, that doesn't prove very much, since my circle of acquain­tances is limited compared with the numbers involved here, and besides it is by no means certain that a secretary who has experi­enced anything like this would want to admit it; after all, this is a very personal matter, one that is closely tied to one's official sense of shame. Still, my experience may prove that it is so rare an occurrence—one that has actually only been rumored to take place and has never actually been quite confirmed—that one is exaggerating greatly if one actually fears it. Even if it did happen, one could—it would be reasonable to assume—render it quite harmless by showing it proof, as can easily be done, that there simply is no place on earth for it. In any case, it is morbid if out of fear of this somebody hides under the blanket and won't even dare to look out. And even if this perfect improbability had sud­denly materialized, does that mean all is lost? On the contrary. That all should be lost is even more improbable than the greatest improbability. Of course, if the party is in the room, it's already bad enough. It does constrict one's heart. 'How much longer can

you resist?' one asks oneself. But one knows that there will be no resistance. You just have to picture the situation correctly. Sitting there is the party whom one has never seen, always awaited, awaited with genuine thirst, and always quite wisely considered unreachable. Through his silent presence alone, he invites one to invade his poor life, to look about as though one were sur­rounded by one's own possessions, and to suffer along with him from the futile demands that he makes. On a quiet night an invi­tation like that is enchanting. One accepts it and has then actu­ally ceased to be an official. The situation then is such that it soon becomes impossible to turn down a request. Strictly speaking, one is desperate, and speaking even more strictly, quite happy. Des­perate, for the vulnerability with which one sits there waiting for the party's plea, knowing that one must grant it as soon as it is uttered, even if it should, at any rate insofar as one can perceive this oneself, literally tear apart the official system—this vulnera­bility must surely be the worst thing that can befall one in the course of one's duty. Especially since—leaving everything else aside—especially since the elevation in rank that one has force­fully claimed for oneself just then is beyond all comprehension. Our position is such that we are by no means authorized to grant requests of the kind at issue here, but through the proximity of the nocturnal visiting party our official powers increase, we prom­ise to do things that are outside our own area and will actually fulfill them; at night, like a robber in the woods, the party forces from us sacrifices that we would never have been capable of otherwise—well, anyhow, that's the way it is right now while the party is still here, giving us strength and coercing us and spurring us on and everything is still half-unconsciously under way, but what will it be like afterward, when this is over, and the party, replete and indifferent, leaves us, and we stand here alone, helpless in the face of our abuse of office—it is absolutely un­thinkable. And yet we are happy. How suicidal happiness can be! We could naturally make an effort to hide the real situation from the party. After all, he barely notices anything on his own. To his mind, it was probably only for indifferent, accidental reasons—

exhaustion, disappointment, inconsiderateness, and indifference— that he had out of exhaustion and disappointment penetrated into a room that was not the one he wanted, and sits there in complete ignorance, preoccupied with thoughts—if preoccupied with anything whatsoever—of his error or of his weariness. Can­not one simply let him be? One cannot. With the loquaciousness of the fortunate one must explain everything to him. Without sparing oneself in the least, one must show him exactly what has happened and why it has happened, how extremely rare and singularly great an opportunity this is, one must show the party how, even though he has stumbled into this affair in an utter help­lessness that no being other than a party is capable of, he can now, if he wants, Surveyor, take control of the entire situation, and to this end need only somehow present his request, for which the fulfillment is ready and even heading toward him—one must show all this to him; for the official it's the most difficult hour. But, Surveyor, once one has done this, then the most necessary things have been done, and one must simply content oneself and wait."

That was all K. heard, he was asleep, cut off from everything around him. His head, which initially had rested on his left arm up on the bedpost, had slid off while he slept and now hung freely, sinking slowly; the support from the arm above no longer suf­ficed, K. involuntarily found a new hold by bracing his right hand against the blanket, thereby accidentally grasping Bürgel's foot, which stuck up under the blanket. Bürgel looked down and let him have his foot, no matter how bothersome that must have been.

Just then, there was knocking, a few heavy blows, on the side wall, K. gave a start and stared at the wall. "Isn't the surveyor there?" a voice asked. "Yes," Bürgel said, freed his foot from K.'s grasp, and suddenly stretched in a wild and willful manner, like a little boy. "Then he should finally come," the voice said again; it showed no consideration for Bürgel nor for the possibility that he might still need K. "It's Erlanger," Bürgel said in a whisper; the presence of Erlanger next door didn't seem to surprise him, "go to him at once, he's angry now, try to soothe him. He's a sound sleeper, but we spoke too loudly, one cannot control oneself or

one's voice when one speaks of certain matters. Well, get going now, you seem unable to drag yourself out of your slumber. But do get going, what more do you want here? No, you needn't ex­cuse yourself because of your sleepiness, why should you? One's physical strength has a certain limit, who can help it that this limit is significant in other ways, too. No, nobody can help it. That is how the world corrects its course and keeps its equilib­rium. It's certainly an excellent, always unimaginably excellent arrangement, even if in certain other respects hopeless. Get going now, I don't know why you're looking at me like that. If you de­lay your departure any longer, Erlanger will come down on me, and that's something I would very much like to avoid. But get going now, who knows what awaits you there; here everything is full of opportunities. Except that some opportunities are, as it were, too great to be acted upon; there are things that fail through nothing other than themselves. Yes, that is amazing. In­cidentally, I hope that now I can finally go to sleep for a while. But it's already five o'clock and the noise will soon start. If only you would at least go!"

Dizzy on being suddenly awakened from deep sleep, still immensely in need of sleep, his body hurting all over owing to the uncomfortable position, for a long time K. couldn't decide whether to get up, he put his hands on his forehead and gazed down into his lap. Even Burgel's constant goodbyes couldn't have prompted him to leave; it was only a sense of the utter futility of remaining in this room that gradually led him to do so. How in­describably desolate this room seemed to him. Whether it had simply become like this or had always been like this he did not know. He wouldn't even be able to fall asleep here again. And that was the decisive thought; smiling slightly about this, he stood up, leaned against anything that would support him, against the bed, the door, and, as though he had long since taken leave of Bürgel, left without saying goodbye.

XXIV.

It's likely that he would have walked past Erlanger's room just as indifferently if Erlanger hadn't stood in the open door and sig­naled to him. A single brief signal with his index finger. Erlanger was already completely prepared to leave, he wore a black fur coat with a high-buttoned collar. A servant was handing him his gloves and still held his fur cap. "You should have come long ago," said Erlanger. K. was about to excuse himself, but Erlanger indicated by closing his eyes wearily that he did not want to hear it. "This has to do with the following matter," he said, "a certain Frieda used to serve in the taproom, I only know her name, I don't know Frieda herself, she is of no interest to me. At times this Frieda served Klamm his beer. There now seems to be an­other girl there. Well, this is of course a trivial change, probably for everyone and certainly for Klamm. But the greater the work,

and Klamm's work is of course the greatest, the less energy is left for fending off the outside world, and as a result every trivial change in the most trivial matters can be a serious disturbance. The slightest change on Klamm's desk, the removal of a stain that was there forever, all of these things can disturb him, and so too can a new serving girl. Now even if this were to disturb everybody else and every other kind of work, it does not disturb Klamm, there can simply be no question of that. Still, we must guard Klamm's comfort so closely that we even dispose of disturbances that he doesn't regard as such—and for him there probably are no disturbances—if they strike us as possible disturbances. It isn't for his sake, not because of his work, that we dispose of these disturbances, but for ourselves, for our consciences and for our peace of mind. And Frieda must therefore return to the taproom at once, she will perhaps cause a disturbance by returning; then we shall send her away again, but for now she must return. You live with her, they tell me, so see to it at once that she returns. Personal feelings cannot be taken into account, that goes without saying, and I therefore refuse to engage in any further discussion of the matter. I'm certainly doing far more than is necessary by mentioning that if you prove yourself in this little affair, it may at some point help you get ahead. That is all I have to say to you." Nodding to K. in farewell, he put on the fur cap the servant had handed him and set off down the corridor, quickly but with a slight limp, followed by the servant.

At times the orders given here were quite easy to carry out, but this ease was not to K.'s liking. Not only because the order pertained to Frieda and, although it was indeed meant as an or­der, sounded like mockery to K., but also especially because he thought it foreshadowed the futility of all his efforts. The orders simply passed over him, the unfavorable and the favorable, and even the favorable ones probably had a final, unfavorable core, but in any case they all passed over him and he was in far too in­ferior a position to influence them, let alone to make them fall silent and ensure that his own voice be heard. If Erlanger waves you aside, what can you do, and if he shouldn't wave you aside,

what could you say to him? True, K. remained conscious of the fact that his weariness today had done him greater harm than all the unfavorable circumstances; why couldn't he, who had be­lieved that he could rely on his own body and who, if it hadn't been for that belief, wouldn't have set out at all, why couldn't he put up with a few bad nights and one sleepless one, why did he become so uncontrollably tired, here of all places, where nobody was tired, or rather where everybody was constantly tired, though it didn't harm their work and even seemed to further it. One had to conclude from this that it was by nature an entirely different kind of weariness from K.'s. Here it was probably weariness in the course of happy work, something that from the outside looked like weariness but was actually indestructible calm, indestruc­tible peace. If you've become a little tired by noon, that is part of the benign, natural course of the day. For the gentlemen here it's always noon, K. told himself.

And this certainly tallied with the fact that now, at five o'clock, everything was coming alive on both sides of the corri­dor. This babble of voices from the rooms had something ex­tremely cheerful about it. First it sounded like the jubilation of children getting ready for an excursion, then like wake-up time in a henhouse, like the joy of being in complete accord with the awakening day, somewhere there was even a gentleman imitat­ing the crowing of a cock. Though the actual corridor was still empty, the doors were already moving, there was always one being opened a crack and then closed again quickly, the corridor was buzzing with all these door openers and door closers; K. saw here and there, above in the opening in the walls, which didn't quite reach the ceiling, disheveled early-morning heads appear, and then vanish. From a distance, guided by a servant, came a tiny little cart containing files. A second servant walked along­side, holding a list which he was evidently using to compare the numbers on the doors with those on the files. The little cart halted before most doors, which generally opened, and the relevant files, sometimes only a single sheet—in cases like that a brief con­versation arose between the room and the corridor, the servant

was probably being chided—were handed into the room. If the door remained closed, the files were carefully stacked on the threshold. In such cases it seemed to K. that the movement of the doors in the immediate vicinity was not lessening, even though the files had already been distributed there as well, but increas­ing. Perhaps the others were peering longingly at the files on the threshold, which still hadn't been picked up and were, incompre­hensibly, still lying there; they couldn't understand how someone who had only to open his door to gain possession of his files could possibly fail to do so; perhaps it was even possible that any files left lying there were later distributed among the other gen­tlemen, who by making frequent checks were already trying to establish whether the files were still lying on the threshold and whether there was therefore still hope for them. Besides, most of the remaining files were in especially large bundles and K. assumed that they had been temporarily left there out of a certain boast-fulness or malice or even out of justified pride, as a way to en­courage their colleagues. Confirming him in this assumption was the tendency every now and then, always just when he wasn't looking, for the pile, after it had been put on show for a sufficiently long time, to be suddenly and hastily pulled into the room and then the door remained as quiet as it had been ear­lier; then the other doors in the vicinity also calmed down, dis­appointed or even satisfied that this object of constant annoyance had finally been disposed of, but they gradually started moving again.

K. observed all this not only with curiosity but with sympathy. He felt almost comfortable amid the bustle, glanced about here and there, and—from suitably far away—watched the servants, who had, to be sure, often turned toward him with a severe expres­sion, lowered heads, pursed lips, as they distributed the files. The further the work advanced, the less smoothly it went; either the list wasn't entirely accurate or the servant couldn't make out the files, or the gentlemen objected on other grounds, in any case it turned out that some distributions had to be reversed, and then the little cart went back and negotiations for the return of

the files were conducted through a crack in the door. These ne­gotiations created sufficient difficulties, but it also happened of­ten enough that whenever there was any question about files having to be returned precisely those doors that had previously moved the fastest remained implacably closed, as though they didn't want to have anything more to do with the matter. Only now did the real difficulties begin. The one gentleman who con­sidered himself entitled to the files was extremely impatient, made much noise in his room, clapped his hands, stamped his feet, and repeatedly called out into the corridor through the crack in the door the number of a certain file. Then the little cart was often left quite abandoned. One servant was busy soothing the impatient gentleman, the other was standing in front of the closed door, fighting for the return of the files. Both had a diffi­cult time of it. The impatient gentleman became even more im­patient at these efforts to pacify him, could no longer endure the empty words of the servant, for what he wanted was not conso­lation but rather files; at one point one such gentleman emptied from the opening above a full washbasin on the servant. But the other servant, who was evidently of higher rank, had an even more difficult time. If the gentleman in question agreed to negotiate, then there were sober discussions in the course of which the ser­vant quoted from his list, the gentleman from his memos and also from the files that he was supposed to return but that for now he still held tightly in his hand so that barely a corner of them re­mained visible to the servant's longing eyes. The servant also had to run back for new evidence to the cart, which in the slightly sloping corridor had kept rolling all by itself, or he had to go to the gentlemen who were claiming the files and exchange the ob­jections of the previous owners for new counterobjections. Those negotiations took a long time, occasionally they came to an agreement, the gentleman gave up a portion of the files, or as compensation received another file since there had merely been a mix-up, but there were also times when somebody had to give up all the requested files without any fuss, either because the ser­vant's evidence had driven him into a corner or because he had