The Castle (2 page)

"but he pays well for good work, doesn't he? When a man like me travels so far from home he wants to go back with something in his pockets."

"There's no need for the gentleman to worry about that kind of thing; nobody complains of being badly paid."

"Well," said K.," Ìm not one of your timid people, and can give a piece of my mind even to a Count, but of course it's much better to have everything settled up without any trouble."

The landlord sat opposite K. on the rim of the window-ledge, not daring to take a more comfortable seat, and kept on gazing at K. with an anxious look in his large brown eyes.

He had thrust his company on K. at Erst, but now it seemed that he was eager to escape.

Was he afraid of being cross-questioned about the Count? Was he afraid of some indiscretion on the part of the "gentleman" whom he took K. to be? K. must divert his attention. He looked at the clock, and said:

"My assistants should be arriving soon. Will you be able to put them up here?"

"Certainly, sir," he said, "but won't they be staying with you up at the Castle?"

Was the landlord so willing, then, to give up prospective customers, and K. in particular, whom he so unconditionally transferred to the Castle?

"That's not at all certain yet," said K. "I must first find out what work I am expected to do. If I have to work down here, for instance, it would be more sensible to lodge down here. I'm afraid, too, that the life at the Castle wouldn't suit me. I like to be my own master."

"You don't know the Castle," said the landlord quietly.

"Of course," replied K., "one shouldn't judge prematurely. All that I know at present about the Castle is that the people there know how to choose a good Land Surveyor.

Perhaps it has other attractions as well."

And he stood up in order to rid the landlord of his presence, since the man was biting his lip uneasily. His confidence was not to be lightly won. As K. was going out he noticed a dark portrait in a dim frame on the wall. He had already observed it from his couch by the stove, but from that distance he had not been able to distinguish any details and had thought that it was only a plain back to the frame. But it was a picture after all, as now appeared, the bust portrait of a man about fifty. His head was sunk so low upon his breast that his eyes were scarcely visible, and the weight of the high, heavy forehead and the strong hooked nose seemed to have borne the head down. Because of this pose the man's full beard was pressed in at the chin and spread out farther down.

His left hand was buried in his luxuriant hair, but seemed incapable of supporting the head.

"Who is that?" asked K., "the Count?"

He was standing before the portrait and did not look round at the landlord.

"No," said the latter, "the Castellan."

"A handsome castellan, indeed," said K., "a pity that he had such an ill-bred son."

"No, no," said the landlord, drawing K. a little towards him and whispering in his ear,

"Schwarzer exaggerated yesterday, his father is only an under-castellan, and one of the lowest, too."

At that moment the landlord struck K. as a very child.

"The villain!" said K. with a laugh, but the landlord instead of laughing said, "Even his father is powerful."

"Get along with you," said K., "you think everyone powerful. Me too, perhaps?"

"No," he replied, timidly yet seriously, "I don't think you powerful."

"You're a keen observer," said K., "for between you and me I'm not really powerful. And consequently I suppose I have no less respect for the powerful than you have, only I'm not so honest as you and am not always willing to acknowledge it." And K. gave the landlord a tap on the cheek to hearten him and awaken his friendliness. It made him smile a little. He was actually young, with that soft and almost beardless face of his; how had he come to have that massive, elderly wife, who could be seen through a small window bustling about the kitchen with her elbows sticking out? K. did not want to force his confidence any further, however, nor to scare away the smile he had at last evoked. So he only signed to him to open the door, and went out into the brilliant winter morning.

Now, he could see the Castle above him clearly defined in the glittering air, its outline made still more definite by the moulding of snow covering it in a thin layer. There seemed to be much less snow up there on the hill than down in the village, where K. found progress as laborious as on the main road the previous day. Here the heavy snowdrifts reached right up to the cottage windows and began again on the low roofs, but up on the hill everything soared light and free into the air, or at least so it appeared from down below. On the whole this distant prospect of the Castle satisfied K.'s expectations. It was neither an old stronghold nor a new mansion, but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two storeys; if K. had not known that it was a castle he might have taken it for a little town. There was only one tower as far as he could see, whether it belonged to a dwelling-house or a church he could not determine. Swarms of crows were circling round it. With his eyes fixed on the Castle K. went on farther, thinking of nothing else at all. But on approaching it he was disappointed in the Castle; it was after all only a wretched-looking town, a huddle of village houses, whose sole merit, if any, lay in being built of stone, but the plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away. K. had a fleeting recollection of his native town. It was hardly inferior to this so-called Castle, and if it were merely a question of enjoying the view it was a pity to have come so far. K.

would have done better to visit his native town again, which he had not seen for such a long time. And in his mind he compared the church tower at home with the tower above him.

The church tower, firm in line, soaring unfalteringly to its tapering point, topped with red tiles and broad in the roof, an earthly building-what else can men build? -but with a loftier goal than the humble dwellinghouses, and a clearer meaning than the muddle of everyday life. The tower above him here-the only one visible-the tower of a house, as was now apparent, perhaps of the main building, was uniformly round, part of it graciously mantled with ivy, pierced by small windows that glittered in the sun, a somewhat maniacal glitter, and topped by what looked like an attic, with battlements that were irregular, broken, fumbling, as if designed by the trembling or careless hand of a child, clearly outlined against the blue. It was as if a melancholy-mad tenant who ought to have been kept locked in the topmost chamber of his house had burst through the roof and lifted himself up to the gaze of the world.

Again K. came to a stop, as if in standing still he had more power of judgement. But he was disturbed. Behind the village church where he had stopped-it was really only a chapel widened with barn-like additions so as to accommodate the parishioners - was the school.

A long, low building, combining remarkably a look of great age with a provincial appearance, it lay behind a fenced-in garden which was now a field of snow. The children were just coming out with their teacher. They thronged round him, all gazing up at him and chattering without a break so rapidly that K. could not follow what they said. The teacher, a small young man with narrow shoulders and a very upright carriage which yet did not make him ridiculous, had already fixed K. with his eyes from the distance, naturally enough, for apart from the school-children there was not another human being in sight. Being the stranger, K. made the first advance, especially as the other was an authoritative-looking little man, and said:

"Good morning, sir."

As if by one accord the children fell silent, perhaps the master liked to have a sudden stillness as a preparation for his words.

"You are looking at the Castle?" he asked more gently than K. had expected, but with the inflexion that denoted disapproval of K.'s occupation.

"Yes," said K. "I am a stranger here, I came to the village only last night."

"You don't like the Castle?" returned the teacher quickly.

"What?" countered K., a little taken aback, and repeated the question in a modified form. "Do I like the Castle? Why do you assume that I don't like it?"

"Strangers never do," said the teacher.

To avoid saying the wrong thing K. changed the subject and asked: "I suppose you know the Count?"

"No," said the teacher turning away.

But K. would not be put off and asked again: "What, you don't know the Count?"

"Why should I?" replied the teacher in a low tone, and added aloud in French: "Please remember that there are innocent children present."

K. took this as a justification for asking: "Might I come to pay you a visit one day, sir? I am to be staying here for some time and already feel a little lonely. I don't fit in with the peasants nor, I imagine, with the Castle."

"There is no difference between the peasantry and the Castle," said the teacher.

"Maybe," said K.., "that doesn't alter my position. Can I pay you a visit one day?"

"I live in Swan Street at the butcher's."

That was assuredly more of a statement than an invitation, but K. said: "Right, I'll come."

The teacher nodded and moved on with his batch of children, who began to scream again immediately. They soon vanished in a steeply descending by-street. But K. was disconcerted, irritated by the conversation. For the first time since his arrival he felt really tired. The long journey he had made seemed at first to have imposed no strain upon him - how quietly he had sauntered through the days, step by step i - but now the consequences of his exertion were making themselves felt, and at the wrong time, too. He felt irresistibly drawn to seek out new acquaintances, but each new acquaintance only seemed to increase his weariness. If he forced himself in his present condition to go on at least as far as the Castle entrance, he would have done more than enough. So he resumed his walk, but the way proved long. For the street he was in, the main street of the village, did not lead up to the Castle hill, it only made towards it and then, as if deliberately, turned aside, and though it did not lead away from the Castle it got no nearer to it either. At every turn K. expected the road to double back to the Castle, and only because of this expectation did he go on; he was flatly unwilling, tired as he was, to leave the street, and he was also amazed at the length of the village, which seemed to have no end; again and again the same little houses, and frost-bound window-panes and snow and the entire absence of human beings-but at last he tore himself away from the obsession of the street and escaped into a small side-lane, where the snow was still deeper and the exertion of lifting one's feet clear was fatiguing; he broke into a sweat, suddenly came to a stop, and could not go on. Well, he was not on a desert island, there were cottages to right and left of him. He made a snowball and threw it at awindow. The door opened immediately-the first door that had opened during the whole length of the village-and there appeared an old peasant in a brown fur jacket, with his head cocked to one side, a frail and kindly figure.

"May I come into your house for a little?" asked K., " Ìm very tired."

He did not hear the old man's reply, but thankfully observed that a plank was pushed out towards him to rescue him from the snow, and in a few steps he was in the kitchen. A large kitchen, dimly lit. Anyone coming in from outside could make out nothing at first.

K. stumbled over a washing' tub, a woman's hand steadied him. The crying of children came loudly from one corner. From another steam was welling out and turning the dim light into darkness. K. stood as if in the clouds.

"He must be drunk," said somebody.

"Who are you?" cried a hectoring voice, and then obviously to the old man: "Why did you let him in? Are we to let in everybody that wanders about in the street?"

"I am the Count's Land Surveyor" said K., trying to justify himself before this still invisible personage.

"Oh, it's the Land Surveyor," said a woman's voice, and then came a complete silence.

"You know me, then?" asked K.

"Of course," said the same voice curtly.

The fact that he was known did not seem to be a recommendation. At last the steam thinned a little, and K. was able gradually to make things out. It seemed to be a general washing-day. Near the door clothes were being washed. But the steam was coming from another corner, where in a wooden tub larger than any K. had ever seen, as wide as two beds, two men were bathing in steaming water. But still more astonishing, although one could not say what was so astonishing about it, was the scene in the right-hand corner.

From a large opening, the only one in the back wall, a pale snowy light came in, apparently from the courtyard, and gave a gleam as of silk to the dress of a woman who was almost reclining in a high arm-chair. She was suckling an infant at her breast.

Several children were playing around her, peasant children, as was obvious, but she seemed to be of another class, although of course illness and weariness give even peasants a look of refinement.

"Sit down, " said one of the men, who had a full beard and breathed heavily through his mouth which always hung open, pointing-it was a funny sight-with his wet hand over the edge of the tub towards a settle, and showering drops of warm water all over K.'s face as he did so.

On the settle the old man who had admitted K. was already sitting, sunk in vacancy. K.

was thankful to find a seat at last. Nobody paid any further attention to him. The woman at the washing-tub, young, plump, and fair, sang in a low voice as she worked, the men stamped and rolled about in the bath, the children tried to get closer to them but were constantly driven back by mighty splashes of water which fell on K., too, and the woman in the arm-chair lay as if lifeless staring at the roof without even a glance towards the child at her bosom. She made a beautiful, sad, fixed picture, and K. looked at her for what must have been a long time; then he must have fallen asleep, for when a loud voice roused him he found that his head was lying on the old man's shoulder.