Лабораторная работа №1 5 страница

grown tired of the continual negotiations, but then he didn't hand the files to the servant, and instead threw them on a sudden deci­sion along the corridor so that the strings came loose and the sheets went flying and the servants had great difficulty putting everything back in order again. But all this was still easy enough compared to when the servant received no answer to his repeated requests for the files to be returned, for then he stood before the closed door, requesting, pleading, citing from his list, quoting regulations, but all in vain, there wasn't a sound from the room, and the servant evidently had no right to enter without permis­sion. And then even this excellent servant was sometimes aban­doned by his self-control, he went to his little cart, sat down on the files, wiped the sweat from his forehead and for a while did nothing but swing his feet helplessly. All about him there was great interest in the affair, whispers came from all sides, scarcely a door stood still, and up at the molding following all these events were faces that, oddly enough, were almost completely masked by scarves and that, what's more, wouldn't stay in one place even for a second. During this commotion K. was struck by the fact that Bürgel's door had been closed the entire time and that even though the servants had already passed through this sec­tion of the corridor no files had been distributed to Bürgel. Per­haps he was still asleep, and in this noise it must have been a sound sleep, but why hadn't he received any files? Only very few rooms, probably unoccupied ones at that, had been overlooked in that way. By contrast, Erlanger's room was now occupied by a new and uncommonly restless guest who must have literally dri­ven Erlanger away during the night; this wasn't exactly in keep­ing with Erlanger's cool, worldly-wise nature, but the fact that he had had to wait for K. on the threshold indicated as much.

From all these remote observations K. always returned before long to the servant; this particular servant truly had little in com­mon with what K. had been told about the servants in general, about their idleness, their comfortable life, their arrogance, for even among the servants there were surely exceptions, or more likely diverse groups, for there were, as K. noticed, many differ-

ent ranks here, of which he had up to now barely seen a hint. The intransigence of this servant was especially pleasing to him. In the battle against these stubborn little rooms—to K. it often seemed like a battle against the rooms, since he barely got to see the occupants—the servant never let up. True, he was becoming exhausted—who wouldn't have become exhausted?—but, recov­ering quickly, he slid down from the little cart and, erect, with clenched teeth, had another go at the door that had to be con­quered. Twice, three times he was beaten back, actually by quite simple means, merely by the devilish silence, but he was not yet defeated. Since he saw that he couldn't achieve anything through an open attack, he tried another method, relying, if K. under­stood this properly, on cunning. He then seemed to leave the door alone, as if to exhaust its capacity for silence, turning to other doors instead, but after a while he came back, called the other servant, all this conspicuously and loudly, and began piling files on the threshold of the closed door, as though he had changed his mind and were now convinced that by rights the files should not be taken from the gentleman but rather allocated to him. Then he went ahead, keeping an eye on the door, and when before long, as usually happened, the gentleman cautiously opened the door to pull in the files, in a few leaps the servant was there, shoved his foot between door and jamb, and at least suc­ceeded in forcing him to negotiate face to face, which usually led to a halfway satisfactory settlement. And if this didn't work or if it seemed to him to be the wrong method for one of the doors, he tried a different approach. Then he would turn, for instance, to­ward the gentleman who was demanding the files. Pushing aside the other servant, who was only working mechanically and was quite useless as an attendant, he began to address the gentleman, emphatically, in a whisper, secretively, sticking his head quite far into the room; most likely he was promising him that the other gentleman would be suitably punished during the next distribu­tion, at any rate he pointed often to the opponent's door and laughed, insofar as his weariness allowed. Then there were some cases, though, one or two, where he did abandon all his efforts,

but here too K. thought that was merely a seeming abandonment or at least a justifiable abandonment, for the servant went ahead, enduring the noise from the deprived gentleman without even looking around; only a rare, protracted closing of the eyes indi­cated that he was suffering from the noise. But then that gentle­man too gradually calmed down; just as children's uninterrupted crying gradually turns into ever more isolated sobbing, so too with his shouting, but even after he had quieted down entirely, one could sometimes once again hear an isolated shout or a hasty opening and slamming of that door. In any case, it turned out that here too the servant had probably proceeded in an abso­lutely correct manner. Finally there was only one gentleman left who wouldn't calm down, he had remained quiet for quite a while, though only in order to recuperate, then started off again, no less loudly than before. It wasn't altogether clear why he was shouting and complaining like this, perhaps it hadn't anything to do with the distribution of the files. Meanwhile the servant had finished his work, only one file, actually only a scrap of paper, a note from a notepad, had been left lying in the cart through the fault of the attendant, and now they couldn't decide to whom it should be allocated. "That might well be my file," was the thought that went through K.'s head. The council chairman had always spoken of the smallest case. Arbitrary and ridiculous though this assumption seemed to K., he nonetheless tried to ap­proach the servant, who was pensively examining the note; this wasn't exactly easy, since the servant repaid K. poorly for his sympathy; even throughout the hardest work he had always found time to glance angrily or impatiently, twitching his head ner­vously, at K. But now that the distribution was over, he seemed to have almost forgotten K., just as he had become more in­different in other respects; his fatigue made this understan­dable, he didn't bother much with the note either, perhaps he hadn't even read it but had only pretended, and though he could probably have made each of the gentlemen here in the corridor happy by allotting him the note, he decided otherwise, for he was fed up with this task; with his index finger on his lips he

motioned for his companion to be quiet—K. was still some dis­tance away from him—tore the note into little pieces and put them in his pocket. That was probably the first irregularity in office operations that K. had ever noticed here, though it was possible that he misunderstood this, too. And even if it was an irregularity, that was forgivable, for under the conditions that pre­vailed here the servant could not work without error, and at some point the pent-up irritation, the pent-up unrest, would have to erupt, and if this expressed itself merely in the tearing up of a little note, that was still innocent enough. The voice of the gentleman who was impossible to calm down still rang out in the corridor, and his colleagues, who otherwise weren't exactly friendly to one an­other, seemed to be in complete agreement about the noise, it be­gan to seem as if this particular gentleman had taken on the task of making noise for all the rest, who were merely encouraging him with nods and shouts to keep going. But the servant paid no attention to it, he had finished his work and now pointed to the cart handle, signaling to the other servant that he should grasp it, and so they left as they had come, only more content, and so quickly that the little cart went bouncing ahead of them. Only once did they flinch and look back as the gentleman—who was still shouting and at whose door K. now hung about because he would have liked to know what the gentleman actually wanted— must no longer have found shouting adequate and had probably discovered the button of an electric bell and, no doubt overjoyed to be thus relieved, had stopped shouting and now began to ring incessantly. At that, a great murmur went up in the other rooms, it appeared to indicate general agreement, the gentleman appeared to be doing something that all the others would have gladly done long ago had they not for some unknown reason been obliged to abandon the effort. Was it perhaps the servants, perhaps Frieda, whom the gentleman wanted to call with the bell? Well he could keep on ringing. For Frieda was busy wrapping Jeremias in wet compresses and even if he was now healthy again, she had no time, for then she lay in his arms. Still, the ringing had an im­mediate effect. Rushing over from some distance away came the

landlord of the Gentlemen's Inn, dressed in black and buttoned up as usual; but it was as if he had forgotten his dignity, he was running so hard; his arms were half-extended, as if he had been called because of some great misfortune and came to seize it and smother it on his breast; and at every little irregularity in the ring­ing he seemed to do a little jump and then hurry even more. At some distance behind him, his wife now appeared as well, she too ran with her arms extended, but her steps were small and minc­ing and K. thought that she would arrive here too late, for by then the landlord would already have taken care of everything. And to make way for the landlord's dash, K. went and stood close to the wall. But the landlord stopped right next to K., as though he were the goal, and soon the landlady was there too and both inundated him with reproaches, which he couldn't un­derstand in the bustle and surprise, especially since the gentle­man's bell mixed in as well, and then other bells went into action, no longer out of necessity, but simply as a game and in an excess of joy. Because it was important to him to gain a proper under­standing of his guilt, K. readily complied when the landlord took him under his arm and accompanied him away from the noise, which kept increasing, for behind them—K. didn't even turn around since the landlord and, even more so, on the other side, the landlady, were scolding him—the doors now opened fully, the corridor sprang to life, there was an increase in traffic as in a lively narrow alley, the doors before them were evidently waiting impatiently for K. to pass so that they could let out the gentle­men, and amidst all this pealed the bells, which were repeatedly rung as if in celebration of a victory. Now, finally—they were al­ready back in the calm white courtyard, where some sleighs were waiting—K. gradually learned what it was all about. Neither the landlord nor the landlady could understand how K. could possi­bly have dared to do something like that. But what had he done? Repeatedly K. asked, but for a long time he could not elicit an an­swer, because his guilt was all too self-evident to them, and so they never even remotely considered that he might have acted in good faith. K. only slowly recognized all of these things. It

was wrong of him to have been in the corridor, for in general he was at most allowed into the taproom, and then only as a favor, which could always be withdrawn. If summoned by a gentleman, he must of course go where he was summoned, but must always realize—surely he had at least normal human intelligence?—that he was in a place where he did not belong and to which he had merely been summoned by a gentleman, most reluctantly, and only because some official business demanded and excused it. So he had to appear there quickly to submit to the interrogation, but then he had to disappear, if possible, more quickly still. Hadn't he had a feeling of grave impropriety there in the corridor? But if that were so, how could he have hung around there like an ani­mal in pasture? Hadn't he been called to a nighttime interroga­tion and did he not know why nighttime interrogations had been introduced? The sole purpose of the nighttime interrogations— and here K. received a new explanation of what they meant— was to ensure that those parties whom the gentlemen couldn't stand to see by day were quickly examined at night under artifi­cial light, so the gentlemen would get a chance right after the hearing to forget all that ugliness in their sleep. But K.'s behavior had made a mockery of all of the measures. Even ghosts disap­pear toward morning, but K. had remained there with his hands in his pockets, as though he expected that since he was not going away the entire corridor with all the rooms and gentlemen would go away instead. And this would certainly have happened—he could be sure of this—had it been at all possible, for the gentle­men's delicacy of feeling was boundless. Nobody would, for in­stance, drive K. away, or even tell him what was so obvious, namely, that he should finally go, nobody would do so, even though they probably trembled with excitement while K. was around, and so the morning, their favorite time, was spoiled for them. Rather than take action against K., they preferred to suffer, though no doubt partly in hopes that K. would finally have to recognize the most glaringly obvious thing and would have to suffer, in a way that matched the gentlemen's sufferings, by being obliged to stand in the corridor in the morning, so terribly out of

place, so visible to all. Vain hope. They don't know or in their friendliness and disdain don't want to know that there are insen­sitive, hard hearts that cannot be softened even by reverence. Does not even the night moth, poor creature, when day comes, seek a quiet corner and flatten itself out, preferring to disappear and unhappy that it cannot. K., by contrast, goes and stands where he is most visible, and if in this way he could prevent the day from dawning, he would do so. He cannot prevent that, but unfortunately he can postpone it and make it more difficult. Didn't he watch the files being distributed? Something that nobody was allowed to watch, except for the immediate participants. Some­thing that the landlord and the landlady weren't even allowed to watch in their own house. About which they had heard only a few hints, such as today, for instance, from the servant. So he hadn't noticed the difficulties under which the distribution of files had taken place, which were actually incomprehensible, for, after all, each gentleman serves only the cause, never thinks of personal gain, and therefore had to work with all his strength to ensure that the distribution of files, this important, essential work, proceed quickly, easily, and without error? And had it re­ally never even remotely dawned on K. that the main thing about all the difficulties was that the distribution had to be carried out with the doors almost closed, without the possibility of direct contact between the gentlemen, who could of course signal to one another in a flash, whereas the distribution through the ser­vants necessarily has to go on for hours, can never take place without complaints, is a constant source of torment to the gen­tlemen and to the servants, and will probably have harmful con­sequences for the work later on. And why couldn't the gentlemen have any contact with one another? So K. didn't understand this yet? Nothing like this had ever happened to the landlady—the landlord confirmed that this was also true of him—though they had had to deal with quite a few unruly people. Things that otherwise one didn't dare to say had to be said to him openly, for otherwise he did not understand the most important point. Well now, since it had to be said: because of him, simply and

solely because of him, the gentlemen couldn't emerge from their rooms, for early in the morning, shortly after sleep, they are too modest, too vulnerable, to be able to expose themselves to the eyes of strangers; they feel too bare, even if they're completely dressed, to show themselves. It's certainly hard to say why they're ashamed, perhaps they're ashamed, these eternal workers, simply because they have slept. But perhaps they are even more ashamed of seeing strangers than of being seen; the very thing that they had happily overcome with the help of the nighttime interroga­tions, namely, the sight of the parties—whom they find hard to stand—they do not want intruding on them in the morning, sud­denly, abruptly, in all of nature's truth. They are simply not up to that. What kind of person would fail to respect this! Well, it could only be a person like K. Somebody who puts himself above everything, above the law and above the most ordinary human consideration with that stolid indifference and drowsiness of his, who doesn't care that he not only makes it almost impossible for the files to be distributed and damages the reputation of the inn and who brings about an entirely unprecedented situation, namely, that the gentlemen, who have been reduced to despair, begin to fight and after an inner struggle inconceivable to ordi­nary people reach for the bell and call for help in order to drive away the otherwise unshakable K. They, the gentlemen, call for help! Wouldn't the landlord and the landlady and their entire staff have come running over a long time ago if they had only dared to appear unsolicited before the gentlemen in the morning, even if only to bring help and then to disappear at once. Trem­bling with outrage at K., inconsolable because of their impo­tence, they had waited here at the entrance to the corridor, and the utterly unexpected ringing had been like a deliverance for them. Now the worst was over! But if only they could steal a look at the joyous antics of the gentlemen who had been finally liberated from K.! But this wasn't the end of it for K., for he would certainly have to answer for what he had gone and done here.

They had meanwhile reached the taproom; why the landlord,

angry though he was, had brought K. here wasn't entirely clear, perhaps he had actually noticed that right now K.'s weariness made it impossible for him to leave the inn. Without waiting for an invitation to sit down, K. literally sank onto one of the barrels. It felt good to be in the dark. In this large room there was only a single weak electric bulb burning over the beer taps. Outside, too, it was still completely dark, and there seemed to be snow flurries. Once inside in the warmth, one had to be grateful and make sure one would not be thrown out. The landlord and the landlady were still standing in front of him, as though he actually posed a certain threat, as though one could not rule out the pos­sibility, given his utter unreliability, that he would suddenly jump up and attempt to invade the corridor again. Besides, they them­selves were tired after the nighttime fright and the early rising, especially the landlady, who wore a rustling silklike, carelessly buttoned and tied, full-skirted brown dress—where had she found it in the rush?—and, resting her head, as if it had snapped, upon her husband's shoulder, she dabbed her eyes with an ele­gant little handkerchief while now and then aiming childishly nasty looks at K. In order to calm the couple, K. said that every­thing they had just told him was completely new to him but that though he had not known about that he hadn't wanted to stay so long in the corridor, where he really had nothing to do and certainly hadn't wanted to torment anybody, all this had happened merely because of his extreme weariness. He thanked them for putting a stop to that embarrassing scene. If he were called to account, he would welcome the opportunity, for only in that way could he ensure that his conduct would not be generally misinterpreted. Only weariness was to blame. But this weariness came from his still not being used to the strain of the interroga­tions. After all, he hadn't been here all that long. Once he had more experience at this, nothing like that would ever be possible again. Perhaps he was taking the interrogations too seriously, but that alone was hardly a drawback. He had had to go through two interrogations, one shortly after the other, the first with Bürgel and the other with Erlanger, the first especially had ex-

hausted him, but the second hadn't lasted long, Erlanger had simply asked him for a favor, but the two together were more than he could bear at once, perhaps this sort of thing would also be too much for anybody, for instance, the landlord. After the second interrogation all he had managed to do was stagger out. It had almost been a sort of drunkenness—that was the first time he had seen and heard the two gentlemen, and he also had to come up with answers for them. So far as he knew, everything had turned out rather well, but then there had occurred that misfortune which, after what had happened earlier, they could scarcely blame him for. Unfortunately, only Erlanger and Bürgel had known about his condition and would certainly have taken care of him and averted everything that had subsequently occurred, but Erlanger had had to leave right after the interro­gation, evidently to go to the Castle, and Bürgel, probably ex­hausted from that same interrogation—so how could K. have survived it without weakening?—had fallen asleep and even slept right through the distribution of the files. Had K. been given a similar opportunity he would have used it with pleasure and gladly given up all forbidden glimpses, and this all the more read­ily, given that he had been in such a state that he couldn't see any­thing, so even the most sensitive gentlemen could have appeared before him without fear.

The mentioning of both interrogations, especially that of Er­langer, and the respect with which K. had spoken of the gentle­men, made the landlord more favorably disposed toward him. He already seemed prepared to fulfill K.'s request for permission to put a board over the barrels and to sleep there, at least until dawn; the landlady clearly opposed that and, vainly tugging here and there at her dress, which she had only just noticed was in disarray, shook her head repeatedly; a seemingly long-standing quarrel about the cleanliness of the house was about to break out. To K. in his weariness the couple's conversation seemed far more significant than usual. Being driven away from here seemed to him a misfortune that surpassed everything he had experi­enced up to now. That must not be allowed to happen, even if the

landlord and landlady were to be united against him. K. lay in wait, doubled up on the barrel, watching the two of them. Until the landlady, who with her unusual sensitivity, which had struck K. a long time ago, suddenly stepped aside and—most likely she had begun talking to the landlord about other matters—cried: "See how he's looking at me! It's about time you sent him away! " But K., seizing this opportunity, for by now he was absolutely confident, even almost to the point of indifference, that he would stay, said: "I'm not looking at you, only at your dress." "Why my dress?" asked the landlady, agitated. K. shrugged. "Come," said the landlady to the landlord, "he must be drunk, the lout. We'll let him sleep off his stupor here," and she gave an order that Pepi, who had at a call from her appeared out of the dark, unkempt, tired, casually holding a broom, should throw K. a cushion.

XXV.

When K. awoke, he thought at first that he had barely slept, the room had not changed, it was empty and warm, the walls in the dark, a single lightbulb over the beer taps, and outside the windows too, night. But when he stretched out, the pillow fell to the floor and the board and barrels creaked, Pepi came at once and he learned that it was already late evening and that he had slept for well over twelve hours. The landlady had asked for him several times during the day, as had Gerstäcker, who had waited here in the dark in the morning over a beer while K. spoke with the landlady, but then hadn't dared to disturb K., had since come back once looking for K., and finally even Frieda had supposedly come in and had stood for a moment beside K.; still, she had scarcely come because of K. but rather because she had to get some things ready here, for this evening she was supposed to take

up her old duties again. "So she doesn't like you anymore?" Pepi asked, while bringing him coffee and cake. Yet she didn't ask ma­liciously, as she used to do, but sadly, as though she had mean­while become acquainted with the malice of the world, in the face of which all one's own malice gives way and becomes mean­ingless; she spoke to K. as though to a fellow sufferer, and when he was sipping the coffee and she thought she saw that it wasn't sweet enough for him, she ran to get him a full sugar bowl. Still, her sadness hadn't prevented her from prettying herself perhaps even more today than last time; she had a wealth of bows and rib­bons, which were plaited through her hair, and along the fore­head and temples her hair had been carefully crimped, and around her neck she wore a small chain, which hung down into the low neckline of her blouse. When K., satisfied because he had fi­nally had enough sleep and was able to drink some good coffee, stealthily reached for a bow and attempted to undo it, Pepi said wearily: "Would you leave me alone," and sat down on a barrel next to him. And K. didn't even have to ask her about her sor­row, she herself began to talk right away, fixing her gaze on K.'s pot of coffee as though she needed some distraction even while she was talking, as though she were incapable, even while preoc­cupied with her sorrow, of abandoning herself completely to it, for that would exceed her strength. In the first place K. found out that he himself was to blame for Pepi's misfortune but that she wasn't reproaching him for that. And she nodded eagerly as she spoke in order to forestall K.'s objections. First, he had taken Frieda from the taproom and thus enabled Pepi to advance. It would otherwise be difficult to imagine what could have induced Frieda to give up her post, she was just sitting there in the tap­room like a spider in its web, had threads everywhere that only she knew of; stealing her away against her will would have been absolutely impossible; only love for an inferior, something in other words that was incompatible with her position, could drive her from her post. And Pepi? Had she ever thought of securing the position for herself? She was a chambermaid, had an in­significant and scarcely promising post; like all girls, she dreamed

of a great future, one cannot prevent oneself from dreaming, but gave no serious thought to moving on, she had resigned herself to what she had already achieved. And then all of a sudden Frieda disappeared from the taproom; that had happened so suddenly that the landlord didn't have a suitable replacement at hand, he looked about and his eye fell on Pepi, who had admittedly pushed her way to the fore. At the time she loved K. as she had never loved anybody else, for months she had sat downstairs in her tiny dark bedchamber and was prepared to spend years there unnoticed and at worst her entire life, and then all of a sudden K. had appeared, a hero, a rescuer of maidens, and had opened the way to the top for her. True, he didn't know anything about her, hadn't done it for her sake, but this didn't lessen her gratitude, the night before she was taken on—it was not yet clear that she would be taken on, but it was quite likely—she spent hours talk­ing to him and whispering thanks in his ear. And his deed became even more exalted in her eyes, for it was precisely Frieda with whom he had burdened himself; there was something incompre­hensibly selfless about his having, with the aim of bringing Pepi to the fore, made Frieda his mistress, Frieda, an unattractive, old­ish, thin girl with short, sparse hair, and, what's more, a devious girl who always has some secret or other, which surely has some­thing to do with her looks; if the wretchedness of her face and body is incontestable, then at least she must have some other se­crets that nobody can check on, such as her supposed relation­ship with Klamm. And at the time Pepi even had thoughts such as these: is it possible that K. really loves Frieda, is he not deceiv­ing himself, or could it be that he might only be deceiving Frieda, and so all that will happen is that Pepi will advance, and will K. then notice the mistake or no longer wish to hide it and no longer see Frieda, but only Pepi, which wasn't necessarily an insane idea of Pepi's, for she was certainly well able to compete with Frieda, one girl against another, nobody could deny it, and it was above all else Frieda's position and the brilliance that Frieda had been able to give it that had blinded K. just then. And then Pepi had dreamed that once she had the position K. would come and plead

with her, and then she would have the choice of either granting K.'s plea and losing the post, or rejecting him and climbing higher. And she had planned to give up everything and to go down to him and to teach him the true love that he could never experience with Frieda and that is independent of every position of honor in the world. But that is not what happened. And what was to blame for that? K. above all, and then of course Frieda's slyness. K. above all, for what does he want, and what sort of strange person is he? What is he striving for, what are the important things that make him so preoccupied and make him forget what is nearest and best and most beautiful? Pepi is sacrificed and everything is idiotic and everything is lost, and anybody who had the strength to set the entire Gentlemen's Inn on fire and burn it down, without leaving a trace, to burn it up like a sheet of pa­per in a stove, today he would be Pepi's chosen one. Well, so Pepi came to the taproom, it was four days ago today, shortly before lunch. The work here isn't easy, it is almost murderous work, but then the things to be gained aren't insignificant either. Pepi hadn't simply lived from day to day before that, and in her wildest thoughts she would never have claimed this post for herself, but she had already made numerous observations, knew what was involved in the post, and hadn't taken it on unprepared. You cer­tainly couldn't take it on unprepared, for if you did, you would lose it in the first hour or two. Even if you were willing to con­duct yourself like the chambermaids here. As a chambermaid, you do after a while feel quite lost and forgotten, it's like work­ing in a mine, at least it's like that in the secretaries' corridor, for days you see nobody other than the odd daytime parties, who flit about and don't dare look up, nobody except for two or three other chambermaids, and they are just as embittered. In the morning you aren't even allowed out of your room, the secretaries want to be left to themselves, the domestics carry in their meals from the kitchen, the chambermaids usually don't have anything to do with that and during mealtimes they aren't even allowed to appear in the corridor. It's only while the gentle­men are at work that the chambermaids are allowed to tidy up,