The Castle (8 page)

"Of course, guarantees, most certainly," said K., "but they'll be best given before the notary, and at the same time other officials of the Count's will perhaps be concerned.

Besides, before I'm married there's something I must do. I must have a talk with Klamm."

"That's impossible," said Frieda, raising herself a little and pressing close to K.,

"what an idea!"

"But it must be done," said K., "if it's impossible for me to manage it, you must!"

"I can't, K., I can't," said Frieda. "Klamm will never talk to you. How can you even think of such a thing!"

"And won't he talk to you?" asked K.

"Not to me either," said Frieda, "neither to you nor to me, it's simply impossible."

She turned to the landlady with outstretched arms: "You see what he's asking for!"

"You're a strange person," said the landlady, and she was an awe-inspiring figure now that she sat more upright, her legs spread out and her enormous knees projecting under her thin skirt, "you ask for the impossible."

"Why is it impossible?" said K.

"That's what I'm going to tell you," said the landlady in a tone which sounded as if her explanation were less a final concession to friendship than the first item in a score of penalties she was enumerating, "that's what I shall be glad to let you know. Although I don't belong to the Castle, and am only a woman, only a landlady here in an inn of the lowest kind - it's not of the very lowest but not far from it - and on that account you may not perhaps set much store by my explanation, still I've kept my eyes open all my life and met many kinds of people and taken the whole burden of the inn on my own shoulders, for Martin is no landlord although he's a good man, and responsibility is a thing he'll never understand. It's only his carelessness, for instance, that you've got to thank - for I was tired to death on that evening - for being here in the village at all, for sitting here on this bed in peace and comfort."

"What?" said K., waking from a kind of absent-minded distraction, pricked more by curiosity than by anger.

"It's only his carelessness you've got to thank for it," cried the landlady again, pointing with her forefinger at K. Frieda tried to silence her.

"I can't help it," said the landlady with a swift turn of her whole body.

"The Land Surveyor asked me a question and I must answer it. There's no other way of making him understand what we take for granted, that Herr Klamm will never speak to him -

will never speak, did I say? can never speak to him. Just listen to me, sir. Herr Klamm is a gentleman from the Castle, and that in itself, without considering Klamm's position there at all, means that he is of very high rank. But what are you, for whose marriage we are humbly considering here ways and means of getting permission? You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren't anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn't wanted and is in everybody's way, a man who's always causing trouble, a man who takes up the maids' room, a man whose intentions are obscure, a man who has ruined our dear little Frieda and whom we must unfortunately accept as her husband. I don't hold all that up against you. You are what you are, and I have seen enough in my lifetime to be able to face facts. But now consider what it is you ask. A man like Klamm is to talk with you. It vexed me to hear that Frieda let you look through the peephole, when she did that she was already corrupted by you. But just tell me, how did you have the face to look at Klamm? You needn't answer, I know you think you were quite equal to the occasion. You're not even capable of seeing Klamm as he really is, that's not merely an exaggeration, for I myself am not capable of it cither. Klamm is to talk to you, and yet Klamm doesn't talk even to people from the village, never yet has he spoken a word himself to anyone in the village. It was Frieda's great distinction, a distinction I'll be proud of to my dying day, that he used at least to call out her name, and that she could speak to him whenever she liked and was permitted the freedom of the peephole, but even to her he never talked. And the fact that he called her name didn't mean of necessity what one might think, he simply mentioned the name Frieda - who can tell what he was thinking of? - and that Frieda naturally came to him at once was her affair,] and that she was admitted without let or hindrance was an act] of grace on Klamm's part, but that he deliberately summoned her is more than one can maintain. Of course that's all over now for good. Klamm may perhaps call "Frieda" as before, that's possible, but she'll never again be admitted to his presence, a girl who has thrown herself away upon you. And there's one thing, one thing my poor head can't understand, that a girl who had the honour of being known as Klamm's mistress - a wild exaggeration in my opinion - should have allowed you even to lay a finger on her."

"Most certainly, that's remarkable," said K., drawing Frieda to his bosom - she submitted at once although with bent head "but in my opinion that only proves the possibility of your being mistaken in some respects. You're quite right, for instance, in saying that I'm a mere nothing compared with Klamm, and even though I insist on speaking to Klamm in spite of that, and am not dissuaded even by your arguments, that does not mean at all that I'm able to face Klamm without a door between us, or that I mayn't run from the room at the very sight of him. But such a conjecture, even though well founded, is no valid reason in my eyes for refraining from the attempt. If I only succeed in holding my ground there's no need for him to speak to me at all, it will be sufficient for me to see what effect my words have on him, and if they have no effect or if he simply ignores them, I shall at any rate have the satisfaction of having spoken my mind freely to a great man. But you, with your wide knowledge of men and affairs, and Frieda, who was only yesterday Klamm's mistress - I see no reason for questioning that tide -

could certainly procure me an interview with Klamm quite easily; if it could be done in no other way I could surely see him in the Herrenhof, perhaps he's still there."

"It's impossible," said the landlady, "and I can see that you're incapable of understanding why. But just tell me what you want to speak to Klamm about?"

"About Frieda, of course," said K.

"About Frieda?" repeated the landlady, uncomprehendingly, and turned to Frieda. "Do you hear that, Frieda, it's about you that he, he, wants to speak to Klamm, to Klamm!"

"Oh," said K., "you're a clever and admirable woman, and yet every trifle upsets you.

Well, there it is, I want to speak to him about Frieda; that's not monstrous, it's only natural. And you're quite wrong, too, in supposing that from the moment of my appearance Frieda has ceased to be of any importance to Klamm. You underestimate him if you suppose that. I'm well aware that it's impertinence in me to lay down the law to you in this matter, but I must do it. I can't be the cause of any alteration in Klamm's relation to Frieda. Either there was no essential relationship between them - and that's what it amounts to if people deny that he was her honoured lover - in which case there is still no relationship between them, or else there was a relationship, and then how could I, a cipher in Klamm's eyes, as you rightly point out, how could I make any difference to it?

One flies to such suppositions in the first moment of alarm, but the smallest reflection must correct one's bias. Anyhow, let us hear what Frieda herself thinks about it"

With a far-away look in her eyes and her cheek on K.'s breast, Frieda said: "It's certain, as mother says, that Klamm will have nothing more to do with me. But I agree that it's not because of you, darling, nothing of that kind could upset him. I think on the other hand that it was entirely his work that we found each other under, the bar counter, we should bless that hour and not curse it."

"If that is so," said K. slowly, for Frieda's words were sweet, and he shut his eyes a moment or two to let their sweetness penetrate him, 'if that is so, there is less ground than ever to flinch from an interview with Klamm."

"Upon my word," said the landlady, with her nose in the air, "you put me in mind of my own husband, you're just as childish and obstinate as he is. You've been only a few days in the village and already you think you know everything better than people who have spent their lives here, better than an old woman like me, and better than Frieda who has seen and heard so much in the Herrenhof. I don't deny that it's possible once in a while to achieve something in the teeth of every rule and tradition. I've never experienced anything of that kind myself, but I believe there are precedents for it. That may well be, but it certainly doesn't happen in the way you're trying to do it, simply by saying

"no, no", and sticking to your own opinions and flouting the most well-meant advice. Do you think it's you I'm anxious about? Did I bother about you in the least so long as you were by yourself? Even though it would have been a good thing and saved a lot of trouble?

The only thing I ever said to my husband about you was: "Keep your distance where he's concerned." And I should have done that myself to this very day if Frieda hadn't got mixed up with your affairs. It's her you have to thank - whether you like it or not - for my interest in you, even for my noticing your existence at all. And you can't simply shake me off, for I'm the only person who looks after little Frieda, and you're strictly answerable to me. Maybe Frieda is right, and all that has happened is Klamm's will, but I have nothing to do with Klamm here and now. I shall never speak to him, he's quite beyond my reach. But you're sitting here, keeping my Frieda, and being kept yourself - I don't see why I shouldn't tell you - by me. Yes, by me, young man, for let me see you find a lodging anywhere in this village if I throw you out, even it were only a dog-kennel."

"Thank you," said K., "that's frank and I believe you absolutely. So my position is as uncertain as that, is it, and Frieda's position, too?"

"No!" interrupted the landlady furiously. "Frieda's position in this respect has nothing at all to do with yours. Frieda belongs to my house, and nobody is entitled to call her position here uncertain."

"All right, all right," said K., "I'll grant you that, too, especially since Frieda for some reason I'm not able to fathom seems to be too afraid of you to interrupt. Stick to me then for the present. My position is quite uncertain, you don't deny that, indeed you rather go out of your way to emphasize it. Like everything else you say, that has a fair proportion of truth in it, but it isn't absolutely true. For instance, I know where I could get a very good bed if I wanted it."

"Where? Where?" cried Frieda and the landlady simultaneously and so eagerly that they might have had the same motive for asking.

"At Barnabas's," said K.

"That scum!" cried the landlady. "That rascally scum I At Barnabas's! Do you hear -"

and she turned towards the corner, but the assistants had long quitted it and were now standing arm-in-arm behind her. And so now, as if she needed support, sne seized one of them by the hand: "Do you hear where the man goes hobnobbing, with the family of Barnabas. Oh, certainly he'd get a bed there; I only wished he'd stay'd there overnight instead of in the Herrenhof. But where were you two?" ' "Madam," said K., before the assistants had time to answer, "these are my assistants. But you're treating them as if they were your assistants and my keepers. In every other respect I'm willing at least to argue the point with you courteously, but not where my assistants are concerned, that's too obvious a matter. I request you therefore not to speak to my assistants, and if my request proves ineffective I shall forbid my assistants to answer you."

"So I'm not allowed to speak to you," said the landlady, and they laughed all three, the landlady scornfully, but with less anger than K. had expected, and the assistants in their usual manner, which meant both much and little and disclaimed all responsibility.

"Don't get angry," said Frieda, "you must try to understand why we're upset. I can put it in this way, it's all owing to Barnabas that we belong to each other now. When I saw you for the first time in the bar - when you came in arm-in-arm with Olga - well, I knew something about you, but I was quite indifferent to you. I was indifferent not only to you but to nearly everything, yes, nearly everything. For at that time I was discontented about lots of things, and often annoyed, but it was a queer discontent and a queer annoyance. For instance, if one of the customers in the bar insulted me - and they were always after me - you saw what kind of creatures they were, but there were many worse than that, Klamm's servants weren't the worst - well, if one of them insulted me, what did that matter to me? I regarded it as if it had happened years before, or as if it had happened to someone else, or as if I had only heard tell of it, or as if I had already forgotten about it. But I can't describe it, I can hardly imagine it now, so different has everything become since losing Klamm."

And Frieda broke off short, letting her head drop sadly, folding her hands on her bosom.

"You see," cried the landlady, and she spoke not as if in her own person but as if she had merely lent Frieda her voice; she moved nearer, too, and sat close beside Frieda,

"you see, sir, the results of your actions, and your assistants too, whom I am not allowed to speak to, can profit by looking on at them. You've snatched Frieda from the happiest state she had ever known, and you managed to do that largely because in her childish susceptibility she could not bear to see you arm-in-arm with Olga, and so apparently delivered hand and foot to the Barnabas family. She rescued you from that and sacrificed herself in doing. And now that it's done, and Frieda has given up all she had for the pleasure of sitting on your knee, you come out with this fine trump card that once you had the chance of getting a bed from Barnabas. That's by way of showing me that you're independent of me. I assure you, if you had slept in that house you would be so independent of me that in the twinkling of an eye you would be put out of this one."