The Castle (38 page)

But why do they complain of this?

Because it is too strenuous for them?

Because they would rather spend the night sleeping?

No, that is certainly not what they complain of.

Among the secretaries there are of course those who are hardworking and those who are less hard-working, as everywhere. But none of them complains of excessive exertion, and least of all in public. That is simply not our way. In this respect we make no distinction between ordinary time and working time. Such distinctions are alien to us.

But what then have the secretaries got against the night interrogations? Is it perhaps consideration for the applicants? No, no, it is not that either. Where the applicants are concerned, the secretaries are ruthless, admittedly not a lot more ruthless than towards themselves, but merely precisely as ruthless. Actually this ruthlessness is, when you come to think of it, nothing but a rigid obedience to and execution of their duty, the greatest consideration that the applicants can really wish for.

And this is at bottom - granted, a superficial observer does not notice this -

completely recognized. Indeed, it is, for instance in this case, precisely the night interrogations that are welcomed by the applicants, no objections in principle come in regarding the night interrogations. Why nevertheless the secretaries' dislike?"

This K. did not know , he knew so little, he could not even distinguish where Burgel was seriously or only apparently expecting an answer.

"You let me lie down in your bed," he thought, "I shall answer all your questions for you at noon to-morrow or, better still tomorrow evening."

But Burgel did not seem to be paying attention to him, he was far too much occupied with the question that he had put to himself: "So far as I can see and so far as my own experience takes me, the secretaries have the following qualms regarding the night interrogations: the night is suitable for negotiations with applicants for the reason that by night it is difficult or positively impossible completely to preserve the official character of the negotiations. This is not a matter of externals, the forms can of course, if desired, be just as strictly observed by night as by day. So it is not that, on the other hand the official power of judgement suffers at night. One tends involuntarily to judge things from a more private point of view at night, the allegations of the applicants take on more weight than is due to them, the judgement of the case becomes adulterated with quite irrelevant considerations of the rest of the applicants'

situation, their sufferings and anxieties, the necessary barrier between the applicants and the officials, even though externally it may be impeccably maintained, weakens, and where otherwise, as is proper, only questions and answers are exchanged, what sometimes seems to take place is an odd, wholly unsuitable changing of places between the persons.

This at least is what the secretaries say, and they are of course the people who, through their vocation, are endowed with a quite extraordinary subtlety of feeling in such matters. But even they - and this has often been discussed hi our circles - notice little of those unfavourable influences during the night interrogations. On the contrary, they exert themselves right from the beginning to counteract them and end up by believing they have achieved quite particularly good results. If, however, one reads the records through afterwards one is often amazed at their obvious and glaring weaknesses. And these are defects, and, what is more, ever and again mean half-unjustified gains for the applicants, which at least according to our regulations cannot be repaired by the usual direct method. Quite certainly they will at some later time be corrected by a control-officer, but this will only profit the law, but will not be able to damage that applicant more. Are the complaints of the secretaries under such circumstances not thoroughly justified?"

K. had already spent a little while sunk in half-sleep, but now he was roused again.

"Why all this? Why all this?" he wondered, and from under lowered eyelids considered Burgel not like an official discussing difficult questions with him, but only like something that was preventing him from sleeping and whose further meaning he could not discover.

But Burgel, wholly abandoned to the pursuit of his thoughts, smiled, as though he had just succeeded in misleading K. a little. Yet he was prepared to bring him back on to the right road immediately.

"Well," he said, "on the other hand one cannot simply go and call these complaints quite justified, either. The night interrogations are, indeed, nowhere actually prescribed by the regulations, so one is not offending against any regulation if one tries to avoid them, but conditions, the excess of work, the way the officials are occupied in the Castle, how indispensable they are, the regulation that the interrogation of applicants is to take place only after the final conclusion of all the rest of the investigation, but then instantly, all this and much else has after all made the night interrogations an indispensable necessity. But if now they have become a necessity - this is what I say - this is nevertheless also, at least indirectly, a result of the regulations, and to find fault with the nature of the night interrogations would then almost mean - I am, of course, exaggerating a little, and only since it is an exaggeration can I utter it, as such - would then indeed mean finding fault with the regulations.

On the other hand it may be conceded to the secretaries that they should try as best they can to safeguard themselves, within the terms of the regulations, against the night interrogations and their perhaps only apparent disadvantages. This is in fact what they do, and indeed to the greatest extent. They permit only subjects of negotiation from which there is in every sense as litde as possible to be feared, test themselves closely prior to negotiations and, if the result of the test demands it, even at the very last moment cancel all examinations, strengthen their hand by summoning an applicant often as many as ten times before really dealing with him, have a liking for sending away - to deputize for them colleagues who are not competent to deal with the given case and who can, therefore, handle it with greater ease, schedule the negotiations at least for the beginning or the end of the night, avoiding the middle hours, there ar many more such measures, the secretaries are not the people to let anyone get the better of them so easily, they are almost a resilient as they are vulnerable."

K. was asleep, it was not real sleep, he could hear Burgel's words perhaps better than during his former dead-tired state of waking, word after word struck his ear, but the tiresome consciousness had gone, he felt free it was no longer Burgel who held him, only he still sometimes groped towards Burgel, he was not yet in the depths of sleep but immersed in it he certainly was. No one should deprive him of that now. And it seemed to him as though with this he had achieved a great victory and already there was a party of people there to celebrate it, and he or perhaps someone else raised the champagne glass in honour of this victory. And so that all should know what it was all about the fight and the victory were repeated once again or perhaps not repeated at all, but only took place now and had already been celebrated earlier and there was no leaving off celebrating it, because fortunately the outcome was certain.

A secretary, naked, very like the statue of a Greek god, was hard pressed by K. in the fight. It was very funny and K. in his sleep smiled gently about how the secretary was time and again startled out of his proud attitude by K,'s assaults and would hastily have to use his raised arm and clenched fist to cover unguarded parts of his body and yet was always too slow in doing so. The fight did not last long. Step for step, and they were very big steps, K. advanced.

Was it a fight at all?

There was no serious obstacle, only now and then a squeak from the secretary.

This Greek god squeaked like a girl being tickled. And finally he was gone, K. was alone in the large room, ready for battle he turned round, looking for his opponent. But there was no longer anyone there, the company had also scattered, only the champagne glass lay broken on the floor. K. trampled it to smithereens. But the splinters pricked him, with a start he woke once again, he felt sick, like a small child being woken up.

Nevertheless, at the sight of Burgel`s chest a thought that was part of his dream brushed his awareness: "Here you have your Greek god! Go on, haul him out of bed!"

"There is, however," Burgel said, his face thoughtfully tilted towards the ceiling, as though he were searching his memory for examples, but without being able to find any,

"there is however, nevertheless, in spite of all precautionary measures, a way in which it is possible for the applicants to exploit this nocturnal weakness of the secretaries -

always assuming that it is a weakness - to their own advantage.

Admittedly, a very rare possibility, or, rather, one that almost never occurs. It consists in the applicant's coming unannounced in the middle of the night. You marvel, perhaps, that this, although it seems to be so obvious, should happen so very seldom.

Well, yes, you are not familiar with conditions here. But even you must, I suppose, have been struck by the foolproofness of the official organization. Now from this foolproofness it does result that everyone who has any petition or who must be interrogated in any matter for other reasons, instantly, without delay, usually indeed even before he has worked the matter out for himself, more, indeed, even before he himself knows of it, has already received the summons. He is not yet questioned this time, usually not yet questioned, the matter has usually not yet reached that stage, but he has the summons, he can no longer come unannounced, at best he can come at the wrong time, well, then all that happens is that his attention is drawn to the date and the hour of the summons, and if he then comes back at the right time he is as a rule sent away, that no longer causes any difficulty.

Having the summons in the applicant's hand and the case noted in the files are, it is true, not always adequate, but, nevertheless, powerful defensive weapons for the secretaries. This refers admittedly only to the secretary in whose competence the matter happens to lie. It would still, of course, be open to everyone to approach the others in the night, taking them by surprise. Yet this is something scarcely anyone will do, it is almost senseless.

First of all it would mean greatly annoying the competent secretary.

We secretaries are, it is true, by no means jealous of each other with regard to work, as everyone carries far too great a burden of work, a burden that is piled on him truly stint, but in dealing with the applicants we simply must not tolerate any interference with our sphere of competence. An applicant, one before now, has lost the game because, thinking he would not be making progress with the competent authority, he tried to slip through by approaching some other, one not competent. Such attempts must, besides, fail also because of the fact that a non-competent secretary, even when he is taken unawares at dead of night and has die best will to help, precisely as a consequence of his non-competence can scarcely intervene any more effectively than the next best lawyer, indeed at bottom much less so, for what he lacks, of course - even if otherwise he could do something, since after all he knows the secret paths of the law better than all these legal gentry - concerning things with regard to which he is not competent, what he lacks is quite simply time, he hasn't a moment to spare for it.

So who then, the prospects being such, would spend his nights playing the non-competent secretary?

Indeed, the applicants are in any case fully occupied if, besides carrying out their normal duties, they wish to respond to the summonses and hints from the competent authorities, "fully occupied" that is to say in the sense in which it concerns the applicants, which is, of course, far from being the same as "fully occupied" in the sense in which it concerns the secretaries."

K. nodded, smiling, he believed he now understood everything perfectly. Not because it concerned him, but because he was now convinced he would fall fast asleep in the next few minutes, this time without dreaming or being disturbed. Between the competent secretaries on the one hand and the non-competent on the other, and confronted with the crowd of fully occupied applicants, he would sink into deep sleep and in this way escape everything.

Burgel's quiet, self-satisfied voice, which was obviously doing its best to put its owner to sleep, was something he had now become so used to that it would do more to put him to sleep than to disturb him.

"Clatter, mill, clatter on and on," he thought, "you clatter just for me."

"Where then, now," Burgel said, fidgeting at his underlip with two fingers, with widened eyes, craning neck, rather as though after a strenuous long walk he were approaching a delightful view, "where now is that previously mentioned, rare possibility that never occurs? The secret lies in the regulations regardjug competence. The fact is things are not so constituted, and so such a large living organization cannot be so constituted, that there is only one definite secretary competent to deal with each case.

It is rather that one is competent above all others, but partly others are in certain respects, even though to a smaller degree - also competent.

Who, even if he were the hardest of workers, could keep together on his desk, single-handed, all the aspects of even the most minor incident? Even what I have been saying about the competence above all others is saying too much. For is not the whole competence contained even in the smallest? Is not what is decisive here the passion with which the case is tackled? And is this not always the same, always present in full intensity? In all things there may be distinctions among the secretaries, and there are countless such distinctions, but not in the passion. None of them will be able to restrain himself if it is demanded of him that he shall concern himself with a case in regard to which he is competent if only in the smallest degree. Outwardly, indeed, an orderly mode of negotiation must be established, and so it comes about that a particular secretary comes into the foreground for each applicant, one they have, officially, to keep to.