The Castle (16 page)

What questions to ask!

And what could one answer?

Was K. to admit simply and flatly to this man that his attempt, begun with so many hopes, had failed?

Instead of replying, K. turned to the sledge, opened the door, and retrieved his cap, which he had forgotten there. He noticed with discomfort that the brandy was dripping from the footboard. Then he turned again to the gentleman, to show him that he had been in the sledge gave him no more compunction now, besides that wasn't the worst of it. When he was questioned, but only then, he would divulge the fact that the coachman himself had at least asked him to open the door of the sledge. But the real calamity was that the gentleman had surprised him, that there had not been enough time left to hide from him so as afterwards to wait in peace for Klamm, or rather that he had not had enough presence of mind to remain in the sledge, close the door and wait there among the rugs for Klamm, or at least to stay there as long as this man was about. True, he couldn't know of course whether it might not be Klamm himself who was coming, in which case it would naturally have been much better to accost him outside the sledge. Yes, there had been many things here for thought, but now there was none, for this was the end.

"Come with me," said the gentleman, not really as a command, for the command lay not in the words, but in a slight, studiedly indifferent gesture of the hand which accompanied them.

"Ìm waiting here for somebody," said K., no longer in the hope of any success, but simply on principle.

"Come," said the gentleman once more quite imperturbably, as if he wanted to show that he had never doubted that K. was waiting for somebody.

"But then I would miss the person I'm waiting for," said K. with an emphatic nod of his head.

In spite of everything that had happened he had the feeling that what he had achieved thus far was something gained, which it was true he only held now in seeming, but which^he must not relinquish all the same merely on account of a polite command.

"You'll miss him in any case, whether you go or stay," said the gentleman, expressing himself bluntly, but showing an unexpected consideration for K.'s line of thought.

"Then I would rather wait for him and miss him," said K. defiantly.

He would certainly not be driven away from here by the mere talk of this young man.

Thereupon with his head thrown back and a supercilious look on his face the gentleman closed his eyes for a few minutes, as if he wanted to turn from K's senseless stupidity to his own sound reason again, ran the tip of his tongue round his slightly parted lips, and said at last to the coachman: "Unyoke the horses."

Obedient to the gendeman, but with a furious sideglance at K., the coachman had now to get down in spite of his fur coat, and began very hesitatingly - as if he did not so much expect a counter-order from the gentleman as a sensible remark from K. - to back the horses and the sledge closer to the side wing, in which apparently, behind a big door, was the shed where the vehicles were kept. K. saw himself deserted, the sledge was disappearing in one direction, in the other, by the way he had come himself, the gentleman was receding, both it was true very slowly, as if they wanted to show K. that it was still in his power to call them back. Perhaps he had this power, but it would have availed him nothing. To call the sledge back would be to drive himself away. So he remained standing as one who held the field, but it was a victory which gave him no joy.

Alternately he looked at the backs of the gentleman and the coachman. The gentleman had already reached the door through which K. had first come into the courtyard. Yet once more he looked back, K. fancied he saw him shaking his head over such obstinacy, then with a short, decisive, final movement he turned away and stepped into the hall, where he immediately vanished. The coachman remained for a while still in the courtyard, he had a great deal of work with the sledge, he had to open the heavy door of the shed, back the sledge into its place, unyoke the horses, lead them to their stalls. All this he did gravely, with concentration, evidently without any hope of starting soon again, and this silent absorption which did not spare a single side-glance for K. seemed to the latter a far heavier reproach than the behaviour of the gentleman. And when now, after finishing his work in the shed, the coachman went across the courtyard in his slow, rolling walk, closed the huge gate and then returned, all very slowly, while he literally looked at nothing but his own footprints in the snow and finally shut himself into the shed. And now as all the electric lights went out too - for whom should they remain on? - and only up above the slit in the wooden gallery still remained bright, holding one's wandering gaze for a little, it seemed to K. as if at last those people had broken off all relations with him, and as if now in reality he were freer than he had ever been, and at liberty to wait here in this place usually forbidden to him as long as he desired, and had won a freedom such as hardly anybody else had ever succeeded in winning, and as if nobody could dare to touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him. But - this conviction was at least equally strong - as if at the same time there was nothing more senseless, nothing more hopeless, than this freedom, this waiting, this inviolability.

And he tore himself free and went back into the house - this time not along the wall but straight through the snow and met the landlord in the hall, who greeted him in silence and pointed towards the door of the taproom. K. followed the hint, for he was shivering, and wanted to see human faces. But he was greatly disappointed when he saw there, sitting at a little table - which must have been specially set out, for usually the customers put up with upturned barrels - the young gentleman and standing before him

- an unwelcome sight for K. - the landlady from the Bridge Inn. Pepi, proud, her head thrown back and a fixed smile on her face, conscious of her incontestable dignity, her plait nodding with every movement, hurried to and fro, fetching beer and then pen and ink, for the gentleman had already spread out papers in front of him, was comparing dates which he looked up now in this paper, then again in a paper at the other end of the table, and was preparing to write. From her full height the landlady silently overlooked the gentleman and the papers, her lips pursed a little as if musing. It was as if she had already said everything necessary and it had been well received.

"The Land Surveyor, at last," said the gentleman at K.'s entrance, looking up briefly, then burying himself again in his papers. The landlady, too, only gave K. an indifferent and not in the least surprised glance. But Pepi actually seemed to notice K. for the first time when he went up to the bar and ordered a brandy. K. leaned there, his hands pressed to his eyes, oblivious of everything. Then he took a sip of the brandy and pushed it back, saying it was undrinkable.

"All the gentlemen drink it," replied Pepi curdy, poured out the remainder, washed the glass and set it on the rack.

"The gentlemen have better stuff as well," said K.

"It's possible," replied Pepi, "but I haven't," and with that she was finished with K.

and once more at the gentleman's service, who, however, was in need of nothing, and behind whom she only kept walking to and fro in circles, making respectful attempts to catch a glimpse of the papers over his shoulder. But that was only her senseless curiosity and self-importance, which the landlady, too, reprehended with knitted brows.

Then suddenly the landlady's attention was distracted, she stared, listening intently, into vacancy. K. turned round, he could not hear anything in particular, nor did the others seem to hear anything. But the landlady ran on tiptoe and taking large steps to the door which led to the courtyard, peered through the keyhole, turned then to the others with wide, staring eyes and flushed cheeks, signed to them with her finger to near, and now they peered through the keyhole by turns. The landlady had, of course, the lion's share, but Pepi, too, was sidered. The gentleman was on the whole the most indifferent of the three. Pepi and the gentleman came away soon, but , landlady kept on peering anxiously, bent double, almost kneeling. One had almost the feeling that she was only imploring the keyhole now to let her through, for there had certainly been nothing more to see for a long time. When at last she got passed her hand over her face, arranged her hair, took a deep breath, and now at last seemed to be trying with reluctance to accustom her eyes again to the room and the people in it, K. said, not so much to get his suspicions confirmed, as to forestall the announcement, so open to attack did he feel now: "Has Klamm gone already then?"

The landlady walked past him in silence, but the gentleman answered from his table:

"Yes, of course. As soon as you gave up your sentry go, Klamm was able to leave. But it's strange how sensitive he is. Did you notice, landlady, how uneasily Klamm looked round him?"

The landlady did not appear to have noticed it, but the gentleman went on: "Well, fortunately there was nothing more to be seen, the coachman had effaced even the footprints in the snow."

"The landlady didn't notice anything," said K., but he said it without conviction, merely provoked by the gentleman's assertion, which was uttered in such a final and unanswerable tone.

"Perhaps I wasn't at the keyhole just then," said the landlady presently, to back up the gentleman, but then she felt compelled to give Klamm his due as well, and added: "All the same, I can't believe in this terrible sensitiveness of Klamm. We are anxious about him and try to guard him, and so go on to infer that he's terribly sensitive. That's as it should be and it's certainly Klamm's will. But how it is in reality we don't know.

Certainly, Klamm will never speak to anybody that he doesn't want to speak to, no matter how much trouble this anybody may take, and no matter how insufferably forward he may be.

But that fact alone, that Klamm will never speak to him, never allow him to come into his presence, is enough in itself. Why after all should it follow that he isn't able to endure seeing this anybody? At any rate, it can't be proved, seeing that it will never come that." The gentleman nodded eagerly.

"That is essentially, of course," he said, "if I expressed myself a little to the test.

Then my opinion too, differently, it was to make myself comprehensible to the Land Surveyor. All the same it's a fact that when Klamm stepped out of the doorway he looked round him several times."

"Perhaps he was looking for me,' said K.

"Possibly," said the gentleman. "I hadn't thought of that."

They all laughed, Pepi, who hardly understood anything that was being said, loudest of all.

"Seeing we're all so happy here now," the gentleman went on, "I want to beg you very seriously, Land Surveyor, to enable me to complete my papers by answering a few questions."

"There's a great deal of writing there," said K. glancing at the papers from where he was standing.

"Yes, a wretched bore," said the gentleman laughing again, "but perhaps you don't know yet who I am. I'm Momus, Klamm's village secretary."

At these words seriousness descended on the room. Although the landlady and Pepi knew quite well who the gentleman was, yet they seemed staggered by the utterance of his name and rank. And even the gentleman himself, as if he had said more than his judgement sanctioned, and as if he were resolved to escape at least from any after-effects of the solemn import implicit in his own words, buried himself in his papers and began to write, so that nothing was heard in the room but the scratching of his pen.

"What is that: village secretary," asked K. after a pause.

The landlady answered for Momus, who now that he had introduced himself did not regard it seemly to give such explanations himself: "Herr Momus is Klamm's secretary in the same sense as any of Klamm's secretaries, but his official province, and if I'm not mistaken, his official standing" - still writing Momus shook his head decidedly and the landlady amended her phrase - "well, then, his official province, but not his official standing, is confined to the village. Herr Momus dispatches any clerical work of Klamm's which may become necessary in the village and as Klamm's deputy receives any petitions to Klamm which may be sent by the village."

As, still quite unimpressed by these facts, K. looked at the landlady with vacant eyes, she added in a halfembarrassed tone: "That's how it's arranged. All the gentlemen in the Castle have their village secretaries."

Momus, who had been listening far more attentively than K., supplied the landlady with a supplementary fact: "Most of the village seretaries work only for one gentleman, but I work for s for Klamm and for Vallabene."

"Yes," went on the landlady remembering now on her side too, and turning to K., "Herr Momus works for two gentlemen, for Klamm and for Vallabene, and so is twice a village secretary."

"Actually twice," said K., nodding to Momus - who now, leaning slightly forward, looked him full in the face - as one nods to a child whom one has just heard being praised. If there was a certain contempt in the gesture, then it was either unobserved or else actually expected. Precisely to ,K., it seemed, who was not considered worthy even to be seen in passing by Klamm, these people had described in detail the services of a man out of Klamm's circle with the unconcealed intention of evoking K.'s recognition and admiration. And yet K. had no proper appreciation of it. He, who with all his powers strove to get a glimpse of Klamm, valued very little, for example, the post of a Momus who was permitted to live in Klamm's eye. For it was not Klamm's environment in itself that seemed to him worth striving for, but rather that he, K., he only and no one else, should attain to Klamm, and should attain to him not to rest with him, but to go on beyond him, farther yet, into the Castle. And he looked at his watch and said: "But now I must be going home."

Immediately the position changed in Momus's favour. "

Yes, of course," the latter replied, "the school work calls. But you must favour me with just a moment of your time. Only a few short questions."