The Castle (9 page)

"I don't know what sins the family of Barnabas have cornmitted," said K., carefully raising Frieda - who drooped as if lifeless - setting her slowly down on the bed and standing up himself, "you may be right about them, but I know that I was right in asking you to leave Frieda and me to settle our own affairs. You talked then about your care and affection, yet I haven't seen much of that, but a great deal of hatred and scorn and forbidding me your house. If it was your intention to separate Frieda from me or me from Frieda it was quite a good move, but all the same I think it won't succeed, and if it does succeed - it's my turn now to issue vague threats you'll repent it. As for the lodging you favour me with - you can only mean this abominable hole - it's not at all certain that you do it of your own free will, it's much more likely that the authorities insist upon it I shall now inform them that I have been told to go - and if I am allotted other quarters you'll probably feel relieved, but not so much as I will myself. And now I'm going to discuss this and other business with the Superintendent, please be so good as to look after Frieda at least, whom you have reduced to a bad enough state with your so-called motherly counsel."

Then he turned to the assistants.

"Come along," he said, taking Klamm's letter from its nail and making for the door.

The landlady looked at him in silence, and only when his hand was on the latch did she say: "There's something else to take away with you, for whatever you say and however you insult an old woman like me, you're after all Frieda's future husband. That's my sole reason for telling you now that your ignorance of the local situation is so appalling that it makes my head go round to listen to you and compare your ideas and opinions with the real state of things. It's a kind of ignorance which can't be enlightened at one attempt, and perhaps never can be, but there's a lot you could learn if you would only believe me a little and keep your own ignorance constantly in mind. For instance, you would at once be less unjust to me, and you would begin to have an inkling of the shock it was to me - a shock from which I'm still suffering - when I realized that my dear little Frieda had, so to speak, deserted the eagle for the snake in the grass, only the real situation is much worse even than that, and I have to keep on trying to forget it so as to be able to speak civilly to you at all. Oh, now you're angry again! No, don't go away yet, listen to this one appeal; wherever you may be, never forget that you're the most ignorant person in the village, and be cautious; here in this house where Frieda's presence saves you from harm you can drivel on to your heart's content, for instance, here you can explain to us how you mean to get an interview with Klamm, but I entreat you, I entreat you, don't do it in earnest."

She stood up, tottering a little with agitation, went over to K., took his hand and looked at him imploringly.

"Madam," said K., "I don't understand why you should stoop to entreat me about a thing like this. If as you say, it's impossible for me to speak to Klamm, I won't manage it in any case whether I'm entreated or not. But if it proves to be possible, why shouldn't I do it, especially as that would remove your main objection and so make your other premises questionable. Of course, I'm ignorant, that's an unshaken truth and a sad truth for me, but it gives me all the advantage of ignorance, which is greater daring, and so I'm prepared to put up with my ignorance, evil consequences and all, for some time to come, so long as my strength holds out. But these consequences really affect nobody but myself, and that's why I simply can't understand your pleading. I'm certain you would always look after Frieda, and if I were to vanish from Frieda's side you couldn't regard that as anything but good luck. So what are you afraid of? Surely you're not afraid _ an ignorant man thinks everything possible" - here K. flung the door open - "surely you're not afraid for Klamm?"

The landlady gazed after him in silence as he ran down the staircase with the assistants following him.

To his own surprise K. had little difficulty in obtaining an interview with the Superintendent. He sought to explain this to himself by the fact that, going by his experience hitherto, official intercourse with the authorities for him was always very easy. This was caused on the one hand by the fact that the word had obviously gone out once and for all to treat his case with the external marks of indulgence, and on the other, by the admirable autonomy of the service, which one divined to be peculiarly effective precisely where it was not visibly present. At the mere thought of those facts, K. was often in danger of considering his situation hopeful; nevertheless, after such fits of easy confidence, he would hasten to tell himself that just there lay his danger.

Direct intercourse with the authorities was not particularly difficult then, for well organized as they might be, all they did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters, while K. fought for something vitally near to him, for himself, and moreover, at least at the very beginning, on his own initiative, for he was the attacker; and besides he fought not only for himself, but clearly for other powers as well which he did not know, but in which, without infringing the regulations of the authorities, he was permitted to believe.

But now by the fact that they had at once amply met his wishes in all unimportant matters - and hitherto only unimportant matters had come up - they had robbed him of the possibility of light and easy victories, and with that of the satisfaction which must accompany them and the well-grounded confidence for further and greater struggles which must result from them. Instead, they let K. go anywhere he liked - of course only within the village - and thus pampered and enervated him, ruled out all possibility of conflict, and transported him to an unofficial totally unrecognized, troubled, and alien existence.

In this life it might easily happen, if he were not always on his guard, until one day or other, in spite of the amiability of the authorities the scrupulous fulfilment of all his exaggeratedly light duties, might - deceived by the apparent favour shown him - conduc himself so imprudently that he might get a fall; and the authorities, still ever mild and friendly, and as it were against their wil but in the name of some public regulation unknown to hit might have to come and clear him out of the way. And what was it, this other life to which he was consigned? Never yet had K. seen vocation and life so interlaced as here, so interlaced sometimes one might think that they had exchanged places.

What importance, for example, had the power, merely formal up till now, which Klamm exercised over K.'s services, cor pared with the very real power which Klamm possessed in K.'s bedroom? So it came about that while a light and frivolous bearing, a certain deliberate carelessness was sufficient when one came in direct contact with the authorities, one needed in everything else the greatest caution, and had to look round on every side before one made a single step.

K. soon found his opinion of the authorities of the place confirmed when he went to see the Superintendent. The Superintendent, a kindly, stout, clean-shaven man, was laid up; he was suffering from a severe attack of gout, and received K. in bed.

"So here is our Land Surveyor," he said, and tried to sit up, failed in the attempt, and flung himself back again on die cushions, pointing apologetically to his leg. In the faint light of the room, where the tiny windows were still further darkened by curtains, a noiseless, almost shadowing woman pushed forward a chair for K. and placed it beside the bed.

"Take a seat, Land Surveyor, take a seat," said the Superintendent, "and let me know your wishes."

K. read out Klamm's letter and adjoined a few remarks to it. Again he had this sense of extraordinary ease in intercourse with the authorities. They seemed literally to bear every burden, one could lay everything on their shoulders and remain free and untouched oneself. As if he, too, felt this in his way, the Superintendent made a movement of discomfort on the bed. At length he said:

"You know about the whole business as, indeed, you have remarked. The reason why I've done nothing is, firstly, that I've been unwell, and secondly, that you've been so long in coming; I thought finally that you had given up the business. But now that you've been so kind as to look me up, really I must tell you the plain unvarnished truth of the matter. You've been taken on as Land Surveyor, as you say, but, unfortunately, we have no need of a Land Surveyor. There wouldn't be the least use for one here. The frontiers of our little state are marked out and all officially recorded. So what should we do with a Land Surveyor?"

Though he had not given the matter a moment's thought before, K. was convinced now at the bottom of his heart that he had expected some such response as this. Exactly for that reason he was able to reply immediately:

"This is a great surprise for me. It throws all my calculations out. I can only hope that there's some misunderstanding."

"No, unfortunately," said the Superintendent, "it's as I've said."

"But how is that possible?" cried K. "Surely I haven't made this endless journey just to be sent back again."

"That's another question," replied the Superintendent, "which isn't for me to decide, but how this misunderstanding became possible, I can certainly explain that. In such a large governmental office as the Count's, it may occasionally happen that one department ordains this, another that; neither knows of the other, and though the supreme control is absolutely efficient, it comes by its nature too late, and so every now and then a trifling miscalculation arises. Of course that applies only to the pettiest little affairs, as for example your case. In great matters I've never known of any error yet, but even little affairs are often painful enough. Now as for your case, I'll be open with you about its history, and make no official mystery of it - I'm not enough of the official for that, I'm a farmer and always will remain one. A long time ago - I had only been Superintendent for a few months - there came an order, I can't remember from what department, in which in the usual categorical way of the gentlemen up there, it was made known that a Land Surveyor was to be called in, and the municipality were instructed to hold themselves ready for the plans and measurements necessary for his work. This order obviously couldn't have concerned you, for it was many years ago, and I shouldn't have remembered it if I weren't ill just now and with ample time in bed to think of the most absurd things ..."

"Mizzi," he said, suddenly interrupting his narrative, to the woman who was still flitting about the room in incomprehensible activity, "please have a look in the cabinet, perhaps you'll find the order."

"You see, it belongs to my first months here," he explained to K., "at that time I still filed everything away."

The woman opened the cabinet at once. K. and the Superintendent looked on. The cabinet was crammed full of papers. When it was opened two large packages of papers rolled out, tied in round bundles, as one usually binds firewood; the woman sprang back in alarm.

"It must be down below, at the bottom," said the Superintendent, directing operations from the bed.

Gathering the papers in both arms the woman obediently threw them all out of the cabinet so as to read those at the bottom. The papers now covered half the floor.

"A great deal of work is got through here," said the Superintendent nodding his head,

"and that's only a small fraction of it. I've put away the most important pile in the shed, but the great mass of it has simply gone astray. Who could keep it all together?

But there's piles and piles more in the shed."

"Will you be able to find the order?" he said, turning again to his wife, "you must look for a document with the word Land Surveyor underlined in blue pencil."

"It's too dark," said the woman, "Ìll fetch a candle," and she stamped through the papers to the door.

"My wife is a great help to me," said the Superintendent, "in these difficult official affairs, and yet we can never quite keep up with them. True, I have another assistant for the writing that has to be done, the teacher, but all the same it's impossible to get things shipshape, there's always a lot of business that has to be left lying, it has been put away in that chest there," and he pointed to another cabinet.

"And just now, when I'm laid up, it has got the upper hand," he said, and lay back with a weary yet proud air.

"Couldn't I," asked K., seeing that the woman had now returned with the candle and was kneeling before the chest looking for the paper, "couldn't I help your wife to look for it?"

The Superintendent smilingly shook his head: "As I said before, I don't want to make any parade of official secrecy before you, but to let you look through these papers yourself - no, I can't go so far as that."

Now stillness fell in the room, only the rustling of the papers was to be heard. It looked, indeed, for a few minutes, as if the Superintendent were dozing. A faint rapping on the door made K. turn round. It was of course the assistants. All the same they showed already some of the effects of their training, they did not rush at once into the room, but whispered at first through the door which was slightly ajar:

"It's cold out here."

"Who's that?" asked the Superintendent, starting up.

"It's only my assistants," replied K. "I don't know where to ask them to wait for me, it's too cold outside and here they would be in the way."

"They won't disturb me," said the Superintendent indulgently. "Ask them to come in.

Besides I know them. Old acquaintances."

"But they're in my way," K. replied bluntly, letting his gaze wander from the assistants to the Superintendent and back again, and finding on the faces of all three the same smile.

"But seeing you're here as it is," he went on experimentally, "stay and help the Superintendent's lady there to look for a document with the word Land Surveyor underlined in blue pencil."

The Superintendent raised no objection. What had not been permitted to K. was allowed to the assistants. They threw themselves at once on the papers, but they did not so much seek for anything as rummage about in the heap, and while one was spelling out a document the other would immediately snatch it out of his hand. The woman meanwhile knelt before the empty chest, she seemed to have completely given up looking, in any case the candle was standing quite far away from her. "The assistants," said the Superintendent with a self-complacent smile, which seemed to indicate that he had the lead, though nobody was in a position even to assume this, "they're in your way then? Yet they're your own assistants."