Лабораторная работа №1 7 страница

in another day or two Klamm can no longer be kept from the public room by means of intrigue, comes, drinks, feels comfort­able, and, if he even notices Frieda's absence, he is extremely pleased with the change, another day or two and Frieda with her scandal, her connections, the assistants, all of that, is completely forgotten, she's never mentioned again. Then she might cling to K. all the more tightly and might, if she were capable of this, truly learn to love him? No, that wouldn't happen either. For even K. doesn't need more than a day to become tired of her and to recognize how dreadfully she deceives him in everything, her so-called beauty, her so-called fidelity, and most of all her so-called love of Klamm; only one day more, that's all it takes for him to chase her and that whole filthy assistant mess from the house, even K. doesn't need any more than that. And just then, between these two dangers, when the grave is beginning to close above her, K. in his simplemindedness keeps the last narrow path open for her, just then she takes to her heels. All of a sudden— and this is something hardly anybody was expecting anymore, it goes against nature—all of a sudden it is she who is pushing away K., who still loves her and constantly pursues her, and it is she who with some helpful pressure from friends and assistants appears to the landlord as a savior, all the more enticing owing to her scandal, desired by the lowest as well as the highest, as has been proved, but who was only enthralled with the lowest for a moment and soon pushed him away, as is only fitting, and is as unattainable for him and for everyone else as she used to be, ex­cept that earlier one had just doubted all this but now one had been persuaded again. So she returns, the landlord with a side glance at Pepi hesitates—should he sacrifice the barmaid who proved her worth?—but he's soon persuaded, so much speaks in favor of Frieda, especially since she'll woo Klamm back to the public rooms. And now it's already evening. Pepi won't wait un­til Frieda comes and makes a triumphant show out of taking on the post. She has already handed over the cashbook to the land­lady, she can leave. The bed compartment in the chambermaids' room downstairs is prepared for her, she will go down, be greeted

by her tearful friends, rip the dress from her body, the ribbons from her hair, and stuff everything into a corner where it is well hidden and doesn't needlessly remind her of times that ought to be forgotten. Then she will take the big bucket and the broom, clench her teeth, and get down to work. But first she had to tell all this to K., who even now couldn't have made this out without some help, so that he for once would see clearly how horribly he has treated Pepi and how unhappy he has made her. Of course he too has been subjected to nothing but mistreatment.

Pepi had finished. Breathing deeply, she wiped a few tears from her eyes and cheeks and looked at K., nodding her head as though she wanted to say that this had really nothing at all to do with her misfortune, she would bear it and did not need help or consolation from anybody, least of all from K., for she knew a great deal about life, despite her youth, and her misfortune only confirmed her knowledge, but it certainly had to do with K.; she had wanted to hold a mirror up to him, and even after all her hopes had been dashed she had thought it was still necessary to do so.

"What a wild imagination you have, Pepi," said K. "It's not at all true that you've only just discovered all this, those are only dreams from your dark narrow chambermaids' room down­stairs, which are not out of place there, but here in the public tap­room they sound odd. You couldn't make your mark here with ideas like that, well, that's quite understandable. Even the dress and hairdo you boast about are nothing but the evil spawn of that darkness and of those beds in your room; they're no doubt all very fine down there, but here everyone laughs at them, se­cretly or openly. And what else were you saying? That I was mis­treated and deceived? No, dear Pepi, I was as little mistreated and deceived as you were. It's true, for the moment Frieda has left me, or has, as you put it, taken to her heels with an assistant, you have certainly caught a glimmer of the truth, and it is also really quite unlikely that she will ever become my wife, but it is absolutely untrue that I would have grown tired of her, let alone that I would have driven her away the very next day or indeed

that she would have deceived me, as otherwise a woman might deceive a man. You chambermaids are used to spying through a keyhole, and so from the tiny details that you actually see you of­ten draw grand but false conclusions about the whole thing. The result is that, for example in this case, I know far less than you do. I certainly cannot give as detailed an explanation as you can of the reasons why Frieda left me. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is the one you mentioned but didn't use, namely my neglect of her. That's unfortunately true, I did neglect her, but there were specific reasons for that, which are irrelevant here; I would be happy if she returned, but then I would immediately start neglecting her again. That's how it is. When she was with me, I was always away on those wanderings that you ridicule; now that she's gone, I have almost nothing to do, am tired, and I desire to have even less to do. Don't you have any advice for me, Pepi?" "Oh, yes," said Pepi, becoming animated all of a sudden and seizing K. by the shoulder, "both of us were deceived, let's stay together, come on down with me to the girls." "So long as you complain about being deceived," said K., "I cannot reach an understanding with you. You're constantly wishing to have been deceived, because it's flattering and because it moves you. But the truth is that you aren't suited for that position. How clear that unsuitability must be if even I, the most ignorant person in your opinion, can see it. You're a good girl, Pepi, but it isn't so easy to see that; I, for one, initially considered you cruel and arrogant, but you're not, you're simply confused by this position, which confuses you because you aren't suited to it. I don't want to say that the position is too lofty for you, it's really not such an ex­ceptional position, but looked at more closely, perhaps it is some­what more honorable than your previous position; but on the whole, there is no great difference, the two are really confusingly similar, one could almost claim that it would be preferable to be a chambermaid rather than serve in the taproom, for one is al­ways surrounded by secretaries there, while here, though one may serve the superiors of the secretaries in the public rooms, one must waste one's time with the lowest riffraff, like me, for

instance; by rights I'm not allowed to spend my time anywhere except here in the taproom, so is it such an enormous honor to associate with me? Well, it seems so to you and you may have your reasons for that. But that's why you are unsuitable. It's a po­sition like any other, but to you it is heaven, so you seize every­thing with exaggerated eagerness and pretty yourself just as, in your opinion, the angels pretty themselves—but in reality they're different—you tremble for the position, feel you're constantly be­ing hounded, seek to win over through exaggerated friendliness everyone who could to your mind support you, but you only dis­turb and disgust them, for what they want at the inn is peace, and not the barmaids' worries on top of their own worries. It is possible that after Frieda's departure none of the high-ranking guests noticed what had happened, but today they know it and really long for Frieda, since Frieda must have managed every­thing quite differently. No matter how she is otherwise and no matter how high a regard she had for her position, on duty she was highly experienced, cool and restrained, you even stress that yourself, though you obviously haven't learned anything from the example. Did you ever notice that look of hers? That surely was no longer the look of a barmaid, it was almost the look of a landlady. That look of hers swept over everything, but also took in each person, and the glance accorded to each one was still suf­ficiently strong to conquer him. Who cares that perhaps she was rather thin, rather old, that one could imagine more plentiful hair; those are trifles compared with what she really had in her pos­session, and anybody who found these shortcomings disturbing would simply have demonstrated his incapacity to appreciate higher things. One certainly cannot reproach Klamm for that; it's only because of your mistaken point of view as an inexperienced young girl that you cannot believe in Klamm's love for Frieda. To you, Klamm seems unattainable—and rightly so—you therefore think Frieda couldn't have approached Klamm either. You are mistaken. On this question I would rely solely on Frieda's word even if I didn't have unmistakable proof. No matter how unbe­lievable this may seem to you, and no matter how difficult it may

be for you to reconcile it with your notions of the world, of offi­cialdom, of refinement, and of the effect of female beauty, it is true all the same that just as we sit here and I take your hand in mine they sat there side by side, Klamm and Frieda, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and he came down here of his own free will, even hurried down, nobody was lying in wait for him in the corridor and leaving other tasks undone, Klamm himself had to go to the trouble of coming down, and the defects in Frieda's clothing that would have horrified you did not disturb him at all. You don't want to believe her! And you don't realize how you're exposing yourself, and the lack of experience you are revealing in this way. Even someone who knew nothing of her relationship with Klamm would certainly have to recognize by observing her nature that it had been molded by someone who was more than you and me and all of the people in the village, and that the conversations between them went beyond the jokes that go back and forth between guests and waitresses and that seem to be your goal in life. But I'm being unjust toward you. You do recognize Frieda's good qualities yourself, only you're in­terpreting everything incorrectly, you think she's simply using all of this for her own purposes and to some evil end, or even as a weapon against you. No, Pepi, even if she had arrows like that, she could not shoot them at such close range. And selfish? One could rather say that by sacrificing the things she already owned and the things she might have expected to gain she gave the two of us the chance to prove ourselves in a higher position, but we have disappointed her, and we're even forcing her to come back. I don't know whether that is so, nor am I certain of my guilt, it's only when I compare myself with you that such things come to mind; it is as if both of us had struggled too hard, too noisily, too childishly, too naively to obtain something that can be easily and imperceptibly gained through, say, Frieda's tranquillity and Frieda's reserve, and had done so by weeping, scratching, and tugging, just as a child tugs at the tablecloth but doesn't gain anything and only tears down all that splendor and puts it out of his reach for­ever—I don't know whether that is so, but I certainly do know

that it's more like that than as you say." "Oh, well," said Pepi, "you're in love with Frieda because she ran away from you, it's not hard to be in love with her when she's gone. But even if every­thing is as you would have it, and even if all this, even your ridi­cule of me, is justified—what are you going to do now? Frieda has left you, neither my explanation nor yours gives you any hope that she'll return, and even if she does, in the meantime you'll have to stay somewhere, it's cold and you don't have work or a bed, so come to us, you'll like my friends, we'll make you com­fortable, you'll help us with our work, which is really too heavy for girls to do on their own, we girls won't have to fend for ourselves anymore, and we will no longer be afraid at night. Come to us! My friends know Frieda too, we'll tell you stories about her until you have grown tired of them. Do come! We have pictures of Frieda too and we'll show them to you. In those days Frieda was even more unassuming than she is now, you'll barely recognize her, at most by her eyes, which had a sly expression even then. So will you come?" "Is that permitted? Yesterday there was after all a big scandal because I was caught in your cor­ridor." "Because you were caught; but when you are with us, you won't be caught. Nobody will know about you, except for the three of us. Ah, it'll be fun. Life there now seems more bearable to me than it did only a moment ago. Perhaps I won't even lose that much by having to go away from here. Listen, even with only the three of us we weren't bored, one must sweeten the bit­terness of life, it's already been made bitter for us in our youth to ensure that our tongues don't get spoiled, the three of us stick to­gether, we live as pleasantly as possible there, you will like Hen­riette in particular, but Emilie too, I have already told them about you, there one listens to such stories with incredulity, as though nothing could ever happen outside that room, it's warm and nar­row, and we huddle all the more closely; no, even though we de­pend on each other, we haven't become tired of each other; on the contrary, whenever I think of my friends I'm almost glad to be returning; why should I climb any higher than they; that's pre­cisely what kept us together, that for all three of us the future was

blocked off in the same way, but then I broke through and was separated from them; I didn't forget them of course and my first concern was how to help them; my own position was still un­certain—I had no idea just how uncertain—and it wasn't long before I talked to the landlord and Henriette and Emilie. Con­cerning Henriette, the landlord wasn't altogether intransigent, but for Emilie, who's much older than the two of us, she's about Frieda's age, he held out no hope. But, believe it or not, they have no wish to leave, they know the life that they're leading there is miserable, but they've already reconciled themselves to it, the dear souls; I think their tears over my departure were mostly out of grief that I had to leave the room we share and go out into the cold—there, everything outside the room seems cold—and that I had to cope with strange tall people in strange tall rooms for the sole purpose of making a living, which after all I had been doing quite successfully in our common household. They probably won't be at all astonished when I return and will weep for a while and bewail my fate only so as to let me have my way. But then they'll see you and realize that it was actually a good thing that I went off. It'll make them happy to see that we now have a man who will help us and protect us and they'll simply be delighted that all this must be kept secret and that through this secret we will be bound together even more closely than we were be­fore. Come, oh please, come to us! There will be no obligation, you won't be confined to our room all the time, as we are. Then, when spring comes and you find a refuge somewhere else and don't like being with us anymore, you can of course leave, but even then you must keep this secret and not give us away, since that would be our last hour at the Gentlemen's Inn; and in other ways, too, you must naturally be careful while you are with us and not go showing yourself anywhere, unless we've said that there's no danger there, and in general you must follow our ad­vice; that's the only thing that binds you and surely you're just as keen about this as we are, but otherwise you're completely free, the work we'll assign you won't be too difficult, you need have no fear of that. So will you come?" "How much longer is it till

spring?" asked K. "Till spring?" repeated Pepi, "the winter here is long, a very long winter, and monotonous. But we don't com­plain about that down there, we're safe from the winter. Of course at some point spring does come and summer too, and they certainly have their day, but in one's memory spring and summer seem so short, as if they didn't last much longer than two days, and sometimes even on these days, throughout the most beauti­ful day, snow falls."

Just then the door opened, Pepi gave a start, her thoughts had strayed too far from the taproom, but it was not Frieda, it was the landlady. She feigned surprise on finding K. still here, K. ex­cused himself by saying that he had been waiting for the land­lady, he also thanked her for the permission he had been given to spend the night here. The landlady could not understand why K. had waited for her. K. said he had the impression that the land­lady wanted to say something else to him, and he begged her par­don if he had been mistaken, besides he had to leave, he had left the school, where he was janitor, to its own devices for too long, that summons yesterday was to blame for everything, he didn't have enough experience in such matters yet, it would certainly never happen again, never again would he create unpleasantness for the landlady, like yesterday. And he bowed with the intention of leaving. The landlady gazed at K., as if she were dreaming. Her gaze detained K. longer than he had intended. And now she was even smiling a little, having only just been awakened, as it were, by the astonished expression on K.'s face; it was as though she were expecting an answer to her smile and woke up only be­cause the answer failed to come. "Yesterday, I think it was, you were so cheeky as to say something about my dress." K. couldn't remember. "You cannot remember? Cheekiness is often followed by cowardice." K. excused himself, yesterday he had been tired and might have said something like that, in any case he couldn't remember anymore. Besides, what could he have said about the landlady's clothes? That they were so beautiful that he had never before seen anything like them. At any rate he had never seen a

landlady working in such clothes. "Stop making comments like that," the landlady said quickly, "I do not want to hear another word from you about the clothes. My clothes are no concern of yours. I forbid you to talk about them, once and for all." K. bowed again and went to the door. "Well, what does that mean," the landlady called after him, "that you've never seen a landlady working in such clothes. What's the point of senseless comments like that? That makes no sense at all. What are you trying to say?" K. turned around and asked the landlady not to get upset. Of course it was a pointless comment. Besides, he knew ab­solutely nothing about clothes. In the situation he was in every clean, unpatched dress seemed valuable to him. He had simply been surprised to see the landlady appear at night in the corridor in such a beautiful evening dress among all those barely dressed men, that was all. "Well, then," said the landlady, "you finally seem to have remembered the comment you made yesterday. And you're now topping it off with some more nonsense. As for your not knowing anything about clothes, that is true. But in that case—and I am requesting this of you in all seriousness—do also refrain from passing judgment on the valuableness of clothes or the inappropriateness of evening dresses and so on. Besides"—it was if a cold shudder went running through her—"you may have nothing to do with my clothes, do you hear?" And since K. was about to turn away again without saying a word, she asked: "So where did you acquire your knowledge of clothes?" K. shrugged and said that he had no such knowledge. "You have no such knowledge," said the landlady, "then you shouldn't act as though you do. Come to the office, I'll show you something, and then you will, I hope, cease being cheeky for good." She went through the door first; Pepi leaped over to K.; under the pretext of settling K.'s account, they quickly reached agreement; this was quite easy since K. knew the courtyard, which had a gate leading into the side street; by the gate was a small door behind which Pepi would be standing in about an hour and which she would open on the third knock.

The private office was opposite the taproom, all he had to do now was cross the corridor, the landlady already stood in the il­luminated office, looking impatiently in K.'s direction. But there was another interruption. Gerstäcker had been waiting in the corridor and wanted to speak to K. It wasn't easy to shake him off, even the landlady helped out by chiding Gerstäcker for his intrusiveness. "So where to? So where to?" Gerstäcker could still be heard calling even after the door had been closed, and his words were disagreeably interspersed with sighs and coughs.

It was a small overheated room. By the end walls were a read­ing stand and an iron safe, along the side walls a cabinet and an ottoman. Most of the room was occupied by the cabinet, which not only took up the entire side wall but was so deep that it made the room much narrower, three sliding doors were needed to open it completely. The landlady pointed to the ottoman, K. should take a seat, she herself sat on the swivel chair by the desk. "Have you never even learned anything about clothesmaking?" asked the landlady. "No, never," said K. "Well, then, what are you?" "A surveyor." "And what's that?" K. explained, the ex­planation made her yawn. "You're not telling the truth. So why aren't you telling the truth?" "You are not either." "I'm not? You're becoming cheeky again. And even if I weren't telling the truth—must I answer to you? And in what way am I not telling the truth?" "You are not only a landlady, as you claim." "Look here, you're full of discoveries. So what else am I? But your cheekiness is really getting out of hand." "I don't know what else you are. I can see only that you are a landlady and besides that you are wearing clothes which aren't suitable for a landlady and which, so far as I know, no one else in the village wears." "Well then we finally are getting to the heart of the matter, you cannot even conceal it, perhaps you are not cheeky, you are like a child who knows some silly thing and cannot be kept silent. So speak. What's special about these clothes?" "You'll be angry if I tell you." "No, I shall laugh, it'll be nothing but childish talk. What kind of clothes are they?" "So you do want to know. Well, they are made of good material, quite costly, but they are outmoded,

overdone, they've been frequently altered, are worn out, and aren't suitable for your age, your figure, or your position. They struck me at once when I first saw you, it was about a week ago, here in the corridor." "Oh, so that's it, then. They're outmoded, over­done, and what else? And how do you come to know all this?" "I can see it. No training is required." "So you can see it that eas­ily. You do not need to ask, you simply know immediately what fashion demands. Then you will become indispensable to me, since I do have a weakness for beautiful clothes. And now what will you say once you see that the wardrobe here is full of clothes." She pushed aside the sliding doors, one could see the dresses pressed tightly together throughout the length and breadth of the wardrobe, they were mostly dark-colored, gray, brown, or black dresses, all of them had been carefully hung up and spread out. "These are my dresses, they are all in your opinion out­moded and overdone. But these are simply the dresses I have no space for in my room upstairs, I have two more full ward­robes there, two wardrobes, each one almost as large as this one here. You are amazed?" "No, I was expecting something like that, for, as I said, you are not only a landlady, you have other goals." "My only goal is to dress beautifully, and you are a fool, or a child, or a very malicious, dangerous person. Off with you now!" K. was already in the corridor and Gerstäcker had again caught hold of his sleeve when the landlady called after him: "I am getting a new dress tomorrow, perhaps I shall send for you." Gerstäcker, waving his hand angrily, as if determined to si­lence from afar the landlady, who was bothering him, asked K. to go with him. Initially he refused to give any further explanation. He paid scarcely any attention to K.'s objection that he needed to go to the school. Only when K. began to resist being dragged did Gerstäcker tell him that he shouldn't worry, that he would be given everything he needed at his house, that he could give up his position as school janitor but should finally come, he had spent all day waiting for him, his mother had no idea where he was. Gradually giving way to him, K. asked what he wanted in return for food and lodgings. Gerstäcker gave only a cursory answer, he

needed K.'s help with the horses, he himself now had other busi­ness, but K. shouldn't let himself be dragged along like this and make things needlessly difficult for him. If he wanted to be paid, he would be paid. But K. now came to a halt, despite all the drag­ging. He didn't know anything at all about horses. That wasn't necessary, Gerstäcker said impatiently, clasping his hands angrily in order to induce K. to go with him. "I know why you want to take me with you," K. said finally. What K. knew was of no con­cern to Gerstäcker. "Because you think I can get something out of Erlanger for you." "Certainly," said Gerstäcker, "why else would I be interested in you?" K. laughed, took Gerstäcker's arm, and let himself be led through the darkness.

The room in Gerstäcker's cottage was only dimly illuminated by the fire in the hearth and by a candle stump in the light of which someone deep inside an alcove sat bent under the crooked protruding beams, reading a book. It was Gerstäcker's mother. She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down be­side her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to under­stand her, but what she said

Appendix

AFTERWORD TO THE GERMAN CRITICAL EDITION

BY MALCOLM PASLEY

Kafka began The Castle in January 1922, in a mountain village where he had sought refuge after a severe breakdown. On the evening of his arrival he notes in his diary: "The strange, myste­rious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps redeeming consolation of writing." He had long been unproductive, and it was many years since he had attempted a substantial piece of work.

He continued work on the novel in Prague (where he read parts of it to Max Brod), and then at his sister Ottla's house in the country; but in September he writes to Brod: "I have not spent this past week very cheerfully, for I have had to give up the Castle story, evidently for good." Like all the novels he had pre­viously embarked on, this last and most ambitious one remained a fragment.

When Kafka died in 1924, Brod rapidly began to make his un­published works known. He brought out the The Trial in 1925, The Castle in 1926, and Amerika in 1927. Of his first edition of The Castle Brod later declares: "At that time my aim was to present in accessible form an unconventional, disturbing work which had not been quite finished: thus every effort was made to avoid anything that might have emphasized its fragmentary state." In order to achieve this he brought the novel to a close at a point which suggested to him that the hero had suffered a "probably decisive" defeat, namely when K. loses Frieda (end of

This afterword is a translation of that which was written for the paperback edi­tion of the novel in the German critical edition (Franz Kafka, Das Schloß, Roman in der Fassung der Handschrift [Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994], 385-90).

chapter 22 in the critical edition). Almost a fifth of Kafka's text was thus omitted.

Brod's second edition, which restored most of what he had left out, went virtually unnoticed for political reasons. It was pub­lished in 1935 in Berlin, by Schocken Verlag, which was only permitted to issue its books in limited editions (and with sales re­stricted to Jewish readers); that same year Kafka's work as a whole was entered in the notorious "List of Harmful and Unde­sirable Literature." So it was not in the original German that this novel by a writer rejected in the Third Reich became world fa­mous, but through translations—above all the English transla­tion by Willa and Edwin Muir (1930). But all these translations were based on the text of Brod's severely abridged first edition. The fuller text which he presented in 1935 did not become wide­ly known until much later, when it was republished in 1946 (by Schocken Books, New York) and in 1951 (by S. Fischer, Frank­furt am Main).

After Brod had completed his own editorial work and most of Kafka's manuscripts had become available for study (in 1961), it was possible to undertake the critical edition of his writings, diaries, and letters. The first volume to appear was The Castle (with the accompanying critical apparatus in a separate volume) in 1982.