The Castle (13 page)

"No," said K., "I've no intention of getting confused. My thoughts hadn't gone so far as you imagined, though, to tell the truth, they were on that road. For the moment the only thing that surprises me is that Hans's relations expected so much from his marriage and that these expectations were actually fulfilled, at the sacrifice of your sound heart and your health, it is true. The idea that these facts were connected with Klamm occurred to me, I admit, but not with the bluntness, or not till now with the bluntness that you give it - apparently with no object but to have a dig at me, because that gives you pleasure. Well, make the most of your pleasure! My idea, however, was this: first of all Klamm was obviously the occasion of your marriage. If it hadn't been for Klamm you wouldn't have been unhappy and wouldn't have been sitting doing nothing in the garden, if it hadn't been for Klamm Hans wouldn't have seen you sitting there, if it hadn't been that you were unhappy a shy man like Hans would never have ventured to speak, if it hadn't been for Klamm Hans would never have found you in tears, if it hadn't been for Klamm the good old uncle would never have seen you sitting there together peacefully, if it hadn't been for Klamm you wouldn't have been indifferent to what life still offered you, and therefore would never have married Hans. Now in all this there's enough of Klamm already, it seems to me. But that's not all. If you hadn't been trying to forget, you certainly wouldn't have overtaxed your strength so much and done so splendidly with the inn. So Klamm was there too. But apart from that Klamm is also the root cause of your illness, for before your marriage your heart was already worn out with your hopeless passion for him. The only question that remains now is, what made Hans's relatives so eager for the marriage? You yourself said just now that to be Klamm's mistress is a distinction that can't be lost, so it may have been that that attracted them. But besides that, I imagine, they had the hope that the lucky star that led you to Klamm - assuming that it was a lucky star, but you maintain that it was - was your star and so would reinstant to you and not leave you quite so quickly and suddenly as Klamm did."

"Do you mean all this in earnest?" asked the landlady.

"Yes, in earnest," replied K. immediately, "only I consider Hans's relations were neither entirely right nor entirely wrong :n their hopes, and I think, too, I can see the mistake that they made. In appearance, of course, everything seems to have succeeded.

Hans is well provided for, he has a handsome wife, is looked up to, and the inn is free of debt. Yet in reality everything has not succeeded, he would certainly have been much happier with a simple girl who gave him her first love, and if he sometimes stands in the inn there as if lost, as you complain, and because he really feels as if he were lost -

without being unhappy over it, I grant you, I know that much about him already - it's just as true that a handsome, intelligent young man like him would be happier with another wife, and by happier I mean more independent, industrious, manly. And you yourself certainly can't be happy, seeing you say you wouldn't be able to go on without these three keepsakes, and your heart is bad, too. Then were Hans's relatives mistaken in their hopes? I don't think so. The blessing was over you, but they didn't know how to bring it down."

"Then what did they miss doing?" asked the landlady.

She was lying outstretched on her back now gazing up at the ceiling.

"To ask Klamm," said K.

"So we're back at your case again," said the landlady.

"Or at yours," said K. "Our affairs run parallel."

"What do you want from Klamm?" asked the landlady.

She had sat up, had shaken out the pillows so as to lean her back against them, and looked K. full in the eyes.

"I've told you frankly about my experiences, from which you should have been able to learn something. Tell me now as frankly what you want to ask Klamm. I've had great trouble in persuading Frieda to go up to her room and stay there, I was afraid you wouldn't talk freely enough in her presence."

"I have nothing to hide," said K. "But first of all I want to draw your attention to something. Klamm forgets immediately, you say. Now in the first place that seems very improbable to me, and secondly it is undemonstrable, obviously nothing more than legend, thought out moreover by the flappcrish minds of those who have been in Klamm's favour.

I'm surprised that you believe in such a banal invention."

"It's no legend," said the landlady, "it's much rather the result of general experience."

"I see, a thing then to be refuted by further experience," said K. "Besides there's another distinction still between your case and Frieda's. In Frieda's case it didn't happen that Klamm never summoned her again, on the contrary he summoned her but she didn't obey. It's even possible that he's still waiting for her."

The landlady remained silent, and only looked K. up and down with a considering stare.

At last she said: "Ìll try to listen quietly to what you have to say. Speak frankly and don't spare my feelings. I've only one request. Don't use Klamm's name. Call him "him" or something, but don't mention him by name."

"Willingly," replied K., "but what I want from him is difficult to express. Firstly, I want to see him at close quarters. Then I want to hear his voice. Then I want to get from him what his attitude is to our marriage. What I shall ask from him after that depends on the outcome of our interview. Lots of things may come up in the course of talking, but still the most important thing for me is to be confronted with him. You see I haven't yet spoken with a real official. That seems to be more difficult to manage than I had thought. But now I'm put under the obligation of speaking to him as a private person, and that, in my opinion, is much easier to bring about. As an official I can only speak to him in his bureau in the Castle, which may be inaccessible, or - and that's questionable, too - in the Herrenhof. But as a private person I can speak to him anywhere, in a house, in the street, wherever I happen to meet him. If I should find the official in front of me, then I would be glad to accost him as well, but that's not my primary object."

"Right," said the landlady pressing her face into the pillows as if she were uttering something shameful, "if by using my influence I can manage to get your request for an interview passed on to Klamm, promise me to do nothing on your own account until the reply comes back."

"I can't promise that," said K., "glad as I would be to fulfil ur wishes or your whims.

The matter is urgent, you see, specify after the unfortunate outcome of my talk with the Superintendent."

"That excuse falls to the ground," said the landlady, "the superintendent is a person of no importance. Haven't you found that out? He couldn't remain another day in his post if it weren't for his wife, who runs everything."

"Mizzi?" asked K.

The landlady nodded.

"She was present," said K.

"Did she express her opinion?" asked the landlady.

"No," replied K., "but I didn't get the impression that she could."

"There," said the landlady, "you see how distorted your view of everything here is. In any case the Superintendent's arrangements for you are of no importance, and I'll talk to his wife when I have time. And if I promise now in addition that Klamm's answer will come in a week at latest, you can't surely have any further grounds for not obliging me."

"All that is not enough to influence me," said K. "My decision is made, and I would try to carry it out even if an unfavourable answer were to come. And seeing that this is my fixed intention, I can't very well ask for an interview beforehand. A thing that would remain a daring attempt, but still an attempt in good faith so long as I didn't ask for an interview, would turn into an open transgression of the law after receiving an unfavourable answer. That frankly would be far worse."

"Worse?" said the landlady. "It's a transgression of the law in any case. And now you can do what you like. Reach me over my skirt."

Without paying any regard to K.'s presence she pulled on her skirt and hurried into the kitchen. For a long time already K. had been hearing noises in the dining-room. There was a tap ping on the kitchen-hatch. The assistants had unfastened it and were shouting that they were hungry. Then other faces appeared at it. One could even hear a subdued song being chanted by several voices. Undeniably K.'s conversation with the landlady had greatly delayed the cooking of the midday meal, it was not ready yet and the customers had assembled. Nevertheless nobody had dared to set foot in the kitchen after the landlady's order. But now when the observers at the hatch reported that the landlady was coming, the maids immediately ran back to the kitchen, and as K. entered the dining-room a surprisingly large cornpany, more than twenty, men and women - all attired in provincial but not rustic clothes streamed back from the hatch to the tables to make sure of their seats. Only at one little table in the corner was a married couple seated already with a few children. The man, a kindly, blue-eyed person with disordered grey hair and beard, stood bent over the children and with a knife beat time to their singing, which he perpetually strove to soften. Perhaps he was trying to make them forget their hunger by singing. The landlady threw a few indifferent words of apology to her customers, nobody complained of her conduct. She looked round for the landlord, who had fled from the difficulty of the situation, however, long ago. When she went slowly into the kitchen, she did not take any more notice of K., who hurried to Frieda in her room.

At upstairs K. ran into the teacher. The room was improved by almost beyond recognition, so well had Frieda set to work. It was well aired, the stove amply stoked, the floor scrubbed, the bed put in order, the maids' filthy pile of things and even their photographs cleared away. The table, which had literally struck one in the eye before with its crust of accumulated dust, was covered with a white embroidered cloth. One was in a position to receive visitors now. K.'s small change of underclothes hanging before the fire - Frieda must have washed them early in the morning - did not spoil the impression much. Frieda and the teacher were sitting at the table, they rose at K.'s entrance. Frieda greeted K. with a kiss, the teacher bowed slightly. Distracted and still agitated by his talk with the landlady, K. began to apologize for not having been able yet to visit the teacher. It was as if he were assuming that the teacher had called on him finally because he was impatient at K.'s absence. On the other hand the teacher in his precise way only seemed now gradually remember that sometime or other there had been some matter between K. and himself of a visit.

"You must be, Land Surveyor," he said slowly, "the stranger I had a few words with he other day in the church square."

"I am," replied K. shortly.

The behaviour which he had submitted to when he felt homeless he did not intend to put up with now here in his room. He turned to Frieda and consulted with her about an important visit which he had to pay at once and for which he would need his best clothes.

Without further inquiry Frieda called over the assistants, who were already busy examining the new tablecloth, and commanded them to brush K.'s suit and shoes - which he had begun to take off - down in the yard. She herself took a shirt from the line and ran down to the kitchen to iron it. Now K. was left alone with the teacher, who was seated silently again at the table. K. kept him waiting for a little longer, drew off his shirt and began to wash himself at the tap. Only then, with his back to the teacher, did he ask him the reason for his visit.

"I have come at the instance of the Parish Superintendent," he said.

K. made ready to listen. But as the noise of the water made it difficult to catch what K. said, the teacher had to come nearer and lean against the wall beside him. K. excused his washing and his hurry by the urgency of his coming appointment. The teacher swept aside his excuses, and said: "You were discourteous to the Parish Superintendent, an old and experienced man who should be treated with respect."

"Whether I was discourteous or not I can't say," said K. while he dried himself, "but that I had other things to think of than polite behaviour is true enough, for my existence is at stake, which is threatened by a scandalous official bureaucracy whose particular failings I needn't mention to you, seeing that you're an acting member of it yourself. Has the Parish Superintendent complained about me?"

"Where's the man that he would need to complain of?" asked the teacher. "And even if there was anyone, do you think he would ever do it? I've only made out at his dictation a short protocol on your interview, and that has shown me clearly enough how kind the Superintendent was and what your answers were like."

While K. was looking for his comb, which Frieda must have cleared away somewhere, he said: "What? A protocol? Drawn up afterwards in my absence by someone who wasn't at the interview at all? That's not bad. And why on earth a protocol? Was it an official interview, then?"

"No," replied the teacher, "a semi-official one, the protocol too was only semi-official. It was merely drawn up because with us everything must be done in strict order. In any case it's finished now, and it doesn't better your credit."

K., who had at last found the comb, which had been tucked into the bed, said more calmly: "Well, then, it's finished. Have you come to tell me that?"

"No," said the teacher, "but I'm not a machine and I had to give you my opinion. My instructions are only another proof of the Superintendent's kindness. I want to emphasize that his kindness in this instance is incomprehensible to me, and that I only carry out his instructions because it's my duty and out of respect to the Superintendent."

Washed and combed, K. now sat down at the table to wait for his shirt and clothes. He was not very curious to know the message that the teacher had brought, he was influenced besides by the landlady's low opinion of the Superintendent.

"It must be after twelve already, surely?" he said, thinking of the distance he had to walk. Then he remembered himself, and said: "You want to give me some message from the Superintendent."