The Castle (12 page)

"You've come at last," said the landlady feebly.

She was lying stretched out on her back, she breathed with visible difficulty, she had thrown back the feather quilt. In bed she looked much younger than in her clothes, but a nightcap of delicate lacework which she wore, although it was too small and nodded on her head, made her sunk face look pitiable.

"Why should I have come?" asked K. mildly. "You didn't send for me."

"You shouldn't have kept me waiting so long," said the landlady with the capriciousness of an invalid. "Sit down," she went on, pointing to the bed, "and you others go away."

Meantime the maids as well as the assistants had crowded in.

"I'll go too, Gardana," said the landlord.

This was the first time that K. had heard her name.

"Of course," she replied slowly, and as if she were occupied with other thoughts she added absently: "Why should you remain any more than the others?"

But when they had all retreated to the kitchen-even the assistants this time went at once, besides, a maid was behind them - Gardana was alert enough to grasp that everything she said could be heard in there, for the annex lacked a door, and so she commanded everyone to leave the kitchen as well. It was immediately done.

"Land Surveyor," said Gardana, "there's a wrap hanging over there beside the chest, will you please reach me it? I'll lay it over me. I can't bear the feather quilt, my breathing is so bad."

And as K. handed her the wrap, she went on: "Look, this is a beautiful wrap, isn't it?"

To K. it seemed to be an ordinary woollen wrap. He felt it with his fingers again merely out of politeness, but did not reply.

"Yes, it's a beautiful wrap," said Gardana covering herself up.

Now she lay back comfortably, all her pain seemed to have gone, she actually had enough strength to think of the state of her hair which had been disordered by her lying position; she raised herself up for a moment and rearranged her coiffure a little round the nightcap. Her hair was abundant.

K. became impatient, and began: "You asked me, madam, whether I had found other lodgings yet."

"I asked you?" said the landlady, "no, you're mistaken."

"Your husband asked me a few minutes ago."

"That may well be," said the landlady, "I'm at variance with him. When I didn't want you here, he kept you here, now that I'm glad to have you here, he wants to drive you away. He's always like that."

"Have you changed your opinion of me so greatly, then?" asked K. "In a couple of hours?"

"I haven't changed my opinion," said the landlady more freely again, "give me your hand. There, and now promise to be quite frank with me and I'll be the same with you."

"Right," said K., "but who's to begin first?"

"I shall," said the landlady.

She did not give so much the impression of one who wanted to meet K. half-way, as of one who was eager to have the first word. She drew a photograph from under the pillow and held it out to K.

"Look at that portrait," she said eagerly.

To see it better K. stepped into the kitchen, but even there it was not easy to distinguish anything on the photograph, for it was faded with age, cracked in several places, crumpled, and dirty.

"It isn't in very good condition," said K.

"Unluckily no," said the landlady, "when one carries a thing about with one for years it's bound to be the case. But if you look at it carefully, you'll be able to make everything out, you'll see. But I can help you. Tell me what you see, I like to hear anyone talk about the portrait. Well, then?"

"A young man," said K.

"Right," said the landlady, "and what's he doing?"

"It seems to me he's lying on a board stretching himself and yawning."

The landlady laughed. "Quite wrong," she said.

"But here's the board and here he is lying on it," persisted K. on his side.

"But look more carefully," said the landlady in annoyance, "is he really lying down?"

"No," said K. now, "he's floating, and now I can see it, it's not a board at all, but probably a rope, and the young man is taking a high leap."

"You see," replied the landlady triumphantly, "he's leaping, that's how the I official messengers practise. I knew quite well that you would make it out. Can you make out his face, too?"

"I can only make out his face very dimly," said K., "he's obviously making a great leap. His mouth is open, his eyes tightly shut and his hair flutter."

"Well done," said the landlady appreciatively, "nobody who ever saw him could have made out more than that But he was a beautiful young man. I only saw him once for a second and I'll never forget him."

"Who was he then?" asked K.

"He was the messenger that Klamm sent to call me to him the first rime."

K could not hear properly, his attention was distracted by the rattling of glass. He immediately discovered the cause of the disturbance. The assistants were standing outside in the yard hopping from one foot to the other in the snow, behaving as if they were glad to see him again. In their joy they pointed each other out to him and kept tapping all the time on the kitchen window. At a threatening gesture from K. they stopped at once, tried to pull one another away, but the one would slip immediately from the grasp of the other and soon they were both back at the window again. K. hurried into the annex where the assistants could not see him from outside and he would not have to see them. But the soft and as it were beseeching tapping on the window-pane followed him there too for a long time.

"The assistants again," he said apologetically to the landlady and pointed outside.

But she paid no attention to him. She had taken the portrait from him, looked at it, smoothed it out, and pushed it again under her pillow. Her movements had become slower, but not with weariness, but with the burden of memory. She had wanted to tell K. the story of her life and had forgotten about him in thinking of the story itself. She was playing with the fringe of her wrap. A little time went by before she looked up, passed her hand over her eyes, and said:

"This wrap was given me by Klamm. And the nightcap, too. The portrait, the wrap, and the nightcap, these are the only three things of his I have as keepsakes. I'm not young like Frieda, I'm not so ambitious as she is, nor so sensitive either, she's very sensitive to put it bluntly, I know how to accommodate myself to life, but one thing I must admit, I couldn't have held out so long here without these three keepsakes. Perhaps these three things seem very trifling to you, but let me tell you, Frieda, who has had relations with Klamm for a long time, doesn't possess a single keepsake from him. I have asked her, she's too fanciful, and too difficult to please besides, I, on the other hand, though I was only three times with Klamm- after that he never asked me to come again, I don't know why I managed to bring three presents back with me all the same, having a premonition that my time would be short. Of course one must make a point of it. Klamm gives nothing of himself, but if one sees something one likes lying about there, one can get it out of him."

K. felt uncomfortable listening to these tales, much as they interested him.

"How long ago was all that, then?" he asked with a sigh.

"Over twenty years ago," replied the landlady, "considerably over twenty years."

"So one remains faithful to Klamm as long as that," said K. "But are you aware, madam, that these stories give me grave alarm when I think of my future married life?"

The landlady seemed to consider this intrusion of his own affairs unseasonable and gave him an angry sidelook.

"Don't be angry, madam," said K. "Ìve nothing at all to say against Klamm. All the same, by force of circumstances I have come in a sense in contact with Klamm. That can't be gainsaid even by his greatest admirer. Well, then. As a result of that I am forced whenever Klamm is mentioned to think of myself as well, that can't be altered. Besides, madam," here K. took hold of her reluctant hand, "reflect how badly our last talk turned out and that this time we want to part in peace." "You're right," said the landlady, bowing her head, "but spare me. I'm not more touchy than other people. On the contrary, everyone has his sensitive spots, and I only have this one."

"Unfortunately it happens to be mine too," said K., "but promise to control myself. Now tell me, madam, how I am put up with my married life in face of this terrible fidelity granted that Frieda, too, resembles you in that?"

"Terrible fidelity !" repeated the landlady with a growl. "Is it a question of fidelity? I'm faithful to my husband but Klamm once chose me as his mistress, can I ever lose this honour? And you ask how you are to put up with Frieda? Land Surveyor, who are you after all that you dare ask such things?"

"j^fadam," said K. warningly.

"I know," said the landlady, controlling herself, "but my husband never put such questions. I don't know which to call the unhappier - myself then or Frieda now. Frieda who saucily left Klamm, or myself whom he stopped asking to come. Yet it is probably Frieda, though she hasn't even yet guessed the full extent of her unhappiness, it seems.

Still, my thoughts were more exclusively occupied by my unhappiness then, all the same, for I had always to be asking myself one question, and in reality haven't ceased to ask it to this day: Why did this happen? Three times Klamm sent for me, but he never sent a fourth time, no, never a fourth time. What else could I have thought of during those days? What else could I have talked about with my husband, whom I married shortly afterwards? During the day we had no time, we had taken over this inn in a wretched condition and had to struggle to make it respectable, but at night... For years all our nightly talks turned on Klamm and the reason for his changing his mind. And if my husband fell asleep during those talks I woke him and we went on again."

"Now," said K., "if you'll permit me, I'm going to ask a very rude question."

The landlady remained silent.

"Then I mustn't ask it," said K. "Well, that serves my purpose as well."

"Yes," replied the landlady, "that serves your purpose as well, and just that serves it best. You misconstrue everything, even a person's silence. You can't do anything else. I allow you to ask your question."

"If I misconstrue everything, perhaps I misconstrue my question as well, perhaps it's not so rude after all. I only want to know how you came to meet your husband and how this inn came into your hands."

The landlady wrinkled her forehead, but said indifferently: "That's a very simple story. My father was the blacksmith, and Hans, my husband, who was a groom at a big farmer's place, came often to see him. That was just after my last meeting with Klamm. I was very unhappy and really had no right to be so, for everything had gone as it should, and that I wasn't allowed any longer to see Klamm was Klamm's own decision. It was as it should be then, only the grounds for it were obscure. I was entitled to inquire into them, but I had no right to be unhappy. Still I was, all the same, couldn't work, and sat in our front garden all day. There Hans saw me, often sat down beside me. I didn't complain to him, but he knew how things were, and as he was a good young man, he wept with me. The wife of the landlord at that time had died and he had consequently to give up business, besides he was already an old man. Well once as he passed our garden and saw us sitting there, he stopped, and without more ado offered us the inn to rent, didn't ask for any money in advance, for he trusted us, and set the rent at a very low figure. I didn't want to be a burden on my father, nothing else mattered to me, and so thinking of the inn and of my new work that might perhaps help me to forget a little, I gave Hans my hand. That's the whole story."

There was silence for a little, then K. said: "The behaviour of the landlord was generous, but rash, or had he particular grounds for trusting you both?"

"He knew Hans well," said the landlady. "He was Hans's uncle."

"Well then," said K., "Hans's family must have been very anxious to be connected with you?"

"It may be so," said the landlady, "I don't know. I've never bothered about it."

"But it must have been so all the same," said K., "seeing that the family was ready to make such a sacrifice and to give the inn into your hands absolutely without security."

"It wasn't imprudent, as was proved later," said the landlady. "I threw myself into the work, I was strong, I was the blacksmith's daughter, I didn't need maid or servant. I was everywhere, in the taproom, in the kitchen, in the stables, in the yard. , I cooked so well that I even enticed some of the Herrenhof's customers away. You've never been in the inn yet at lunchtime, you don't know our day customers. At that time there were more of them, many of them have stopped coming since. And the consequence was that we were able not merely to pay the t regularly, but after a few years we bought the whole place. Today it's practically free of debt. The further consequence, I admit, was that I ruined my health, got heart disease, and am now an old woman. Probably you think that I'm much older than Hans, but the fact is that he's only two or three years younger than me and will never grow any older either, for at his work - smoking his pipe, listening to the customers, knocking out his pipe again, and fetching an occasional pot of beer.At that sort of work one doesn't grow old." "What you've done has been splendid," said K. "I don't doubt that for a moment, but we were speaking of the time before your marriage, and it must have been an extraordinary thing at that stage for Hans's family to press on the marriage - at a money sacrifice, or at least at such a great risk as the handing over of the inn must have been, and without trusting in anything but your powers of work, which besides nobody knew of then, and Hans's powers of work, which everybody must have known beforehand were nil."

"Oh, well," said the landlady wearily. "I know what you're getting at and how wide you are of the mark. Klamm had absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Why should he have concerned himself about me, or better, how could he in any case have concerned himself about me? He knew nothing about me by that time. The fact that he had ceased to summon me was a sign that he had forgotten me. When he stops summoning people, he forgets them completely. I didn't want to talk of this before Frieda. And it's not mere forgetting, it's something more than that. For anybody one has forgotten can come back to one's memory again, of course. With Klamm that's impossible. Anybody that he stops summoning he has forgotten completely, not only as far as the past is concerned, but literally for the future as well. If I try very hard I can of course think myself into your ideas, valid, perhaps, in the very different land you come from. But it's next thing to madness to imagine that Klamm could have given me Hans as a husband simply that I might have no great difficulty in going to him if he should summon me sometime again. Where is the man who could hinder me from running to Klamm if Klamm lifted his little finger? Madness, absolute madness, one begins to feel confused oneself when one plays with such mad ideas."