The Castle (17 page)

"I don't feel in the mood for it," said K. and turned towards the door.

Momus brought down a document on the table and stood up: "In the name of Klamm I command you to answer my questions!"

"In the name of Klamm!" repeated K., "does he trouble himself about my affairs, then?"

"As to that," replied Momus, "I have no information and you certainly have still less.

We can safely leave that to him. All the same I cornmand you by virtue of my function granted by Klamm to stay here and to answer."

"Land Surveyor," broke in the landlady, "I refuse to advise you any further, my advice till now, the most well-meaning that you could have got, has been cast back at me in the most unheard-of manner. And I have come here to Momus - I have nothing to hide - simply to give the office adequate idea of your behaviour and your intentions and to protect myself for all time from having you quartered on me again. That's how we stand towards each other and that's how we'll always stand, and if I speak my mind accordingly now, I don't do it, I can tell you, to help you, but to ease a little the hard job which Herr Momus is bound to have in dealing with a man like you. All the same, just because of my absolute frankness and I couldn't deal otherwise than frankly with you even if I were to try - you can extract some advantage for yourself out of what I say, if you only take the trouble. In the present case I want to draw your attention to this, that the only road that can lead you to Klamm is through this protocol here of Herr Momus. But I don't want to exaggerate, perhaps that road won't get you as far as Klamm, perhaps it will stop long before it reaches him. The judgement of Herr Momus will decide that. But in any case that's the only road that will take you in the direction of Klamm. And do you intend to reject that road, for nothing but pride?"

"Oh, madam," said K., "that's neither the only road to Klamm, nor is it any better than the others. But you, Mr Secretary, decide this question, whether what I may say here can get as far as Klamm or not."

"Of course it can," said Momus, lowering his eyes proudly and gazing at nothing,

"otherwise why should I be secretary here?"

"Now you see, madam," said K., "I don't need a road to Klamm, but only to Mr Secretary."

"I wanted to throw open this road for you," said the landlady, "didn't I offer this morning to send your request to Klamm? That might have been done through Herr Momus. But you refused, and yet from now on no other way will remain for you but this one. But frankly, after your attempt on Klamm's privacy, with much less prospect of success. All the same this last, any, vanishing, yes, actually invisible hope, is your only one."

"How is it, madam," said K., "that originally you tried so hard to keep me from seeing Klamm, and yet now take my wish to see him quite seriously, and seem to consider me lost largely on account of the miscarrying of my plan? If at advise me sincerely from your heart against you not trying to see at how can you possibly drive me on the road to Klamm now, apparently just as sincerely, even though it's admitted that the road may not reach as far as him?"

"Am I driving you on?" asked the landlady. "Do you call it , driving you on when I tell you that your attempt is hopeless?. Would it really be the limit of audacity if you tried in that way push the responsibility on to me. Perhaps it's Herr Momus's presence that encourages you to do it. No, Land Surveyor, I'm not trying to drive you on to anything. I can admit only one mistake, that I overestimated you a little when I first saw you. Your immediate victory over Frieda frightened me, I didn't know what you might still be capable of. I wanted to prevent further damage, and thought that the only means of achieving that was to shake your resolution by prayers and threats. Since then I have learned to look on the whole thing more calmly. You can do what you like. Your actions may no doubt leave deep footprints in the snow out there in the courtyard, but they'll do nothing more."

"The contradiction doesn't seem to me to be quite cleared up," said K., "but I'm content with having drawn attention to it. But now I beg you, Mr Secretary, to tell me whether the landlady's opinion is correct, that is, that the protocol which you want to take down from my answers can have the result of gaining me admission to Klamm. If that's the case, I'm ready to answer all your questions at once. In that direction I'm ready, indeed, for anything."

"No," replied Momus, "that doesn't follow at all. It's simply a matter of keeping an adequate record of this afternoon's happenings for Klamm's village register. The record is already complete, there are only two or three omissions which you must fill in for the sake of order. There's no other object in view and no other object can be achieved."

K. gazed at the landlady in silence.

"Why are you looking at me?" asked she, "did I say anything else? He's always like that, Mr Secretary, he's always like that. Falsifies the information one gives him, and then maintains that he received false information. I've told him from the first and I tell him again to-day that he hasn't the faintest prospect of being received by Klamm.

Well, if there's no prospect in any case he won't alter that fact by means of this protocol. Could anything be clearer? I said further that this protocol is the only real official connection that he can have with Klamm. That too is surely clear and incontestable enough. But if in spite of that he won't believe me, and keeps on hoping -

I don't know why or with what idea - that he'll be able to reach Klamm, then so long as he remains in that frame of mind, the only thing that can help him is this one real official connection he has with Klamm, in other words, this protocol. That's all I have said, and whoever main, tains the contrary twists my words maliciously."

"If that is so, madam," said K., "then I beg your pardon, and I've misunderstood you.

For I thought - erroneously, as it turns out now - that I could take out of your former words that there was still some very tiny hope for me."

"Certainly," replied the landlady, "that's my meaning exactly. You're twisting my words again, only this time in the opposite way. In my opinion there is such a hope for you, and founded actually on this protocol and nothing else. But it's not of such a nature that you can simply fall on Herr Momus with the question: "Will I be allowed to see Klamm if I answer your questions?" When a child asks questions like that people laugh, when a grown man does it it is an insult to all authority. Herr Momus graciously concealed this under the politeness of his reply. But the hope that I mean consists simply in this, that through the protocol you have a sort of connection, a sort of connexion perhaps with Klamm. Isn't that enough? If anyone inquired for any service which might earn you the privilege of such a hope, could you bring forward the slightest one? For the last time, that's the best that can be said about this hope of yours, and certainly Herr Momus in his official capacity could never give even the slightest hint of it. For him it's a matter, as he says, merely of keeping a record of this afternoon's happenings, for the sake of order. More than that he won't say, even if you ask him this minute his opinion of what I've said."

"Will Klamm, then, Mr Secretary," asked K., "read the protocol?"

"No," replied Momus, "why should he? Klamm can't read every protocol, in fact he reads none. "Keep away from me with your protocols!" he usually says."

"Land Surveyor," groaned the landlady, "you exhaust me with such questions. Do you think it's necessary, or even simply desirable, that Klamm should read his protocol and become acquainted word for word with the curiousities of your life? Shouldn't you rather pray humbly that A,C protocol should be concealed from Klamm - a prayer, however, that would be just as unreasonable as the other, for who would hide anything from Klamm even though he has given many signs of his sympathetic nature? And is it even necessary for that you call your hope? Haven't you admitted yourself that you would be content if you only got the chance of speaking to Klamm, even if he never looked at you and never listened to you? And won't you achieve that at least through the protocol, perhaps much more?"

"Much more?" asked K. "In what way?"

"If you wouldn't always talk about things like a child, as if they were for eating. Who on earth can give any answer to such questions? The protocol will be put in Klamm's village register, you have heard that already, more than that can't be said with certainty. But do you know yet the full importance of the protocol, and of Herr Momus, and of the village register? Do you know what it means to be examined by Herr Momus?

Perhaps - to all appearances at least - he doesn't know it himself. He sits quietly there and does his duty, for the sake of order, as he says. But consider that Klamm appointed him, that he acts in Klamm's name, that what he does, even if it never reaches Klamm, has yet Klamm's assent in advance. And how can anything have Klamm's assent that isn't filled by his spirit? Far be it from me to offer Herr Momus crude flattery besides he would absolutely forbid it himself - but I'm speaking of him not as an independent person, but as he is when he has Klamm's assent, as at present; then he's an instrument in the hand of Klamm, and woe to anybody who doesn't obey him."

The landlady's threats did not daunt K.. Of the hopes with which she tried to catch him he was weary. Klamm was far away. Once the landlady had compared Klamm to an eagle, and that had seemed absurd in K.'s eyes, but it did not seem absurd now. He thought of Klamm's remoteness, of his impregnable dwelling, of his silence, broken perhaps only by cries such as K. had never yet heard, of his downward-pressing gaze, which could never be proved or disproved, of his wheelings which could never be disturbed by anything that K.

did down below, which far above he followed at the behest of incomprehensibly laws and which only for instants were visible - all these things Klamm and the eagle had in common. But assuredly these had nothing to do with the protocol, over which just now Mornus was crumbling a roll dusted with salt, which he was eating with beer to help it out, in the process all the papers becoming covered with salt and caraway seeds.

"Good night," said K. "I've no objection to any kind of examination," and now he went at last to the door.

"He's going after all," said Momus almost anxiously to the landlady.

"He won't dare," said she.

K. heard nothing more, he was already in the hall. It was cold and a strong wind was blowing. From a door on the opposite side came the landlord, he seemed to have been keeping the hall under observation from behind a peephole. He had to hold the tail of his coat round his knees, the wind tore so strongly at him in the hall.

"You're going already, Land Surveyor?" he asked.

"You're surprised at that?" asked K.

"I am," said the landlord, "haven't you been examined then?"

"No," replied K. "I didn't let myself be examined."

"Why not?" asked the landlord.

"I don't know," said K., "why I should let myself be examined, why I should give in to a joke or an official whim. Perhaps some other time I might have taken it on my side too as a joke or as a whim, but not to-day." "

Why certainly, certainly," said the landlord, but he agreed only out of politeness, not from conviction. "I must let the servants into the taproom now," he said presently, "it's long past their time. Only I didn't want to disturb the examination."

"Did you consider it as important as all that?" asked K.

"Well, yes," replied the landlord.

"I shouldn't have refused," said K.

"No," replied the landlord, "you shouldn't have done that."

Seeing that K. was silent, he added, whether to comfort K. or to get away sooner:

"Well, well, the sky won't rain sulphur for all that."

"No," replied K., "the weather signs don't look like it."

And they parted laughing. ...

K stepped out into the windswept street and peered into .. the darkness. Wild, wild weather. As if there were some connection between the two he reflected again how the landlady had striven to make him accede to the protocol, and how he had stood out. The landlady's attempt had of course not been a straightforward one, surreptitiously she had tried to put him against the protocol at the same time. In reality he could not tell whether he had stood out or given in. An intriguing nature, acting blindly, it seemed, like the wind, according to strange and remote behests which one could never guess at. He had only taken a few steps along the main street when he saw two swaying lights in the distance. These signs of life gladdened him and he hastened towards them, while they, too, made in his direction. He could not tell why he was so disappointed when he recognized the assistants. Still, they were coming to meet him, evidently sent by Frieda, and the lanterns which delivered him from the darkness roaring round him were his own; nevertheless he was disappointed, he had expected something else, not those old acquaintances who were such a burden to him. But the assistants were not alone. Out of the darkness between them Barnabas stepped out.

"Barnabas!" cried K. and he held out his hand, "have you come to see me?"

The surprise at meeting him again drowned at first all the annoyance which he had once felt at Barnabas.

"To see you," replied Barnabas unalterably friendly as before, "with a letter from Klamm."

"A letter from Klamm!" cried K. throwing back his head.

"Lights here!" he called to the assistants, who now pressed close to him on both sides holding up their lanterns. K. had to fold the large sheet in small compass to protect it from the wind while reading it. Then he read: "To the Land Surveyor at the Bridge Inn.

The surveying work which you have carried out thus far has ken appreciated by me. The work of the assistants, too, deserves Praise. You know how to keep them at their jobs. Do not slacken in your efforts! Carry your work on to a fortunate contusion. Any interruption would displease me. For the rest be easy in your mind. The question of salary will presently be decided. I shall not forget you."

K. only looked up from the letter when the assistants, who read far more slowly than he, gave three loud cheers at the good news and waved their lanterns.