by Franz Kafka
A large dimly lit room. At first, the new arrival from outdoors could not see a thing. K. stumbled against a washtub, a woman’s hand held him back. From one corner came the sound of children crying. From another, smoke billowed, turning the dim light to darkness, K. remained standing there as if in the clouds. “He must be drunk,” someone said. “Who are you?” cried an imperious voice, and then, probably to the old man: “Why did you let him in?” “Can we let in everything that is slinking through the streets?” “I am the land surveyor of the Count,” said K., trying to justify himself in front of these as yet invisible people. “Ah, it is the land surveyor,” a woman’s voice said, and then there was complete silence. “You know me?” asked K. “Of course,” the same voice said, curtly. Their knowing K. did not seem to recommend him.
Finally the smoke dispersed a little, and K. was gradually able to get his bearings. It seemed to be washday. By the door, clothes were being washed. Yet the smoke had actually come from the left-hand corner, where in a wooden tub, larger than any K. had ever seen, it was about the size of two beds, two men were bathing in steaming water. But even more surprising, though one still couldn’t make out the exact nature of the surprise, was the right-hand corner. Through a large garret window, the only one in the back wall, came pale snow-light, surely from the courtyard, which lent a luster as of silk to the dress of a woman who almost lay wearily in a tall armchair set deep in the corner. She held an infant at her breast. A few children were playing around her, peasant children by the looks of them, but she seemed out of place among them, though illness and weariness can make even peasants seem refined.
“Sit down!” said one of the men, who had a full beard in addition to the mustache over his mouth, which he kept open, snorting, and pointed—a comical sight—with one hand over the rim of the bath at a trunk, splashing warm water all over K.’s face. Seated on the trunk, already dozing off, was the old man who had let K. in. K. was glad he could finally sit down. No one was paying the slightest attention to him now. The woman at the washtub, blond, youthfully ample, sang softly as she worked, the men in the bath stomped their feet and thrashed about, the children tried to approach them but were repeatedly driven back by great splashes of water, from which not even K. emerged unscathed, the woman in the armchair lay there as if lifeless, without even glancing down at the infant on her breast, merely gazing vaguely upward.
K. must have spent a long time looking at them, at this unchanging, beautiful, sad picture, but then he must have fallen asleep, for when a loud voice called out to him he awoke with a start, his head was resting on the shoulder of the old man beside him. The men were finished with the bath—in which the children now romped under the blond woman’s supervision—and stood before him fully clothed. The loudmouthed man with the full beard turned out to be the slighter of the two. The other one, no taller, but with a smaller beard than that of his full-bearded colleague, was a silent, slow-witted man, of stout build, with an equally stout face, he kept his head lowered. “Surveyor,” he said, “you cannot stay here. Forgive the impoliteness.” “I didn’t want to stay,” said K., “I simply wanted a rest. Now that I have had it, I am leaving.” “This lack of hospitality may surprise you,” said the man, “but there is no custom of hospitality here, we do not need guests.” Somewhat refreshed after his sleep, somewhat keener of hearing than before, K. was glad to hear such frank words. He moved about more freely now, rested his stick here and there, approached the woman in the armchair, and was, incidentally, the biggest in the room.
“Certainly,” said K., “what would you need guests for? But every now and then someone is needed, such as me, the land surveyor.” “I don’t know about that,” the man said slowly, “if they summoned you, then they probably need you, this may be an exception, but we little people go by the rule, you shouldn’t blame us for that.” “No, no,” said K., “I simply want to thank you, you and all the others here.” And, to everyone’s surprise, K. turned around almost in one bound and stood before the woman. With tired blue eyes she looked at K., a transparent silk kerchief had slipped down to the middle of her forehead, the infant was sleeping at her breast. “Who are you?” asked K. Dismissively, it was unclear whether the contempt was meant for K. or her own answer, she said: “A girl from the Castle.”
All this had taken no more than an instant; now two men, right and left, seized K. and pulled him to the door, silently but with full force, as if there were no other means of communication. Something about this pleased the old man, who clapped his hands. The washerwoman laughed over near the children, who suddenly began making noise like mad.
Yet K. soon stood outside on the street, the men watched him from the threshold, it was snowing again, although it now seemed a little brighter outside. The man with the full beard cried impatiently: “Where do you want to go? Here’s the way to the Castle, this way to the village.” K. did not answer, but turned rather to the other man, who, despite his superiority, struck him as the more congenial of the two: “Who are you? Whom should I thank for the visit?” “I am Master Tanner Lasemann,” came the reply, “but you needn’t thank anybody.” “Fine,” said K., “perhaps we shall meet again.” “I do not think so,” said the man. Just then the man with the full beard, raising his arm, cried: “Good day, Artur, good day, Jeremias!” K. turned around, so other people were showing up on the streets of this village! Coming from the Castle were two young men of medium height, both quite slender, in tight-fitting clothes, with very similar, dark-brown faces and strikingly black goatees. They were going astonishingly fast for the state of these roads, flinging out their slender legs in step. “What’s the matter?” cried the man with the full beard. One had to shout to make oneself heard, they were going so fast and did not stop. “Business,” they shouted back, laughing. “Where?” “At the inn.” “That’s where I’m going,” K. cried all of a sudden, louder than everyone else, he so wanted these two to take him along; though he did not consider this acquaintanceship all that rewarding, they were good traveling companions and could cheer one up. Yet, though they heard K.’s remark, they simply nodded and were gone.
K. was still standing in the snow, he had no great desire to lift his foot out of the snow only to sink it back in a little farther on; the master tanner and his colleague, satisfied at having finally rid themselves of K., slowly pushed their way, eyes still fixed on him, through the barely open door into the house, leaving K. alone in the blanketing snow. “Cause for a slight attack of despair,” was the thought that came to him, “if I were only here by accident, not on purpose.”
Just then in the cottage to the left a tiny window opened; closed, it had seemed deep blue, perhaps in the reflection from the snow, and so tiny now that it was open that one couldn’t see the full face of the onlooker, only the eyes, old brown eyes. “There he is,” K. heard the tremulous voice of a woman saying. “It’s the surveyor,” a man’s voice was speaking. Then the man came to the window and asked, not in an unfriendly way but as if he wanted everything to be in order on the street in front of his house: “Who are you waiting for?” “For a sleigh to take me,” said K. “No sleighs come along here,” said the man, “no traffic comes through here.” “But this is the road that leads to the Castle,” objected K. “Even so, even so,” the man said rather implacably, “no traffic comes through here.” Then the two of them fell silent. But the man was obviously contemplating something since he still hadn’t closed the window, from which smoke was pouring. “A bad road,” K. said to help him out. But all he said was: “Yes, indeed.” After a little while, however, he said: “If you like, I will take you on my sleigh.” “Please do,” said K., delighted, “how much do you want?” “Nothing,” the man said by way of explanation. K. was astonished. “You are after all the surveyor,” said the man, “and you belong to the Castle. So where do you want to go?” “To the Castle,” K. said quickly. “Then I will not go,” the man said at once. “But I belong to the Castle,” K. said, repeating the man’s own words. “Mayb
e so,” the man said dismissively. “Then take me to the inn,” said K. “Very well,” said the man, “then I’ll be out right away with the sleigh.” This did not leave the impression of any great friendliness but rather of an extremely egotistical, anxious, almost pedantic effort to get K. away from the street in front of his house.
The courtyard gate opened and let out a small sleigh, made for light loads, quite flat, without any seats, pulled by a small weak horse, and then the man himself, not old, but weak, bent, limping, with a lean red congested face, which seemed especially tiny because of the woolen shawl wrapped tightly round his neck. The man was clearly ill and had obviously only come out to carry K. away. K. said something to that effect, but the man shrugged it off. K. learned only that he was Coachman Gerstäcker and that he had simply chosen this uncomfortable sleigh because it happened to be ready and it would have taken too long to pull out another one. “Sit down,” he said, pointing with his whip to the back of the sleigh. “I shall sit beside you,” said K. “I will walk,” said Gerstäcker. “But why?” asked K. “I will walk,” repeated Gerstäcker, so shaken by a fit of coughing that he had to brace his feet in the snow and grasp the side of the sleigh with both hands. Without saying another word, K. sat down in the back of the sleigh, his coughing gradually eased, and they set off.
The Castle up there, oddly dark already, which K. had still been hoping to reach today, receded again. Yet as though he still had to be given a cue for this temporary parting, a bell up there rang out cheerfully, a bell that for a moment at least made one’s heart tremble as if it were threatened—for the sound was painful too—with the fulfillment of its uncertain longings. Yet this large bell soon fell silent and was followed by a faint, monotonous little bell, perhaps still from up there, though perhaps already from the village. This tinkling was better suited to this slow journey and this wretched but implacable coachman.
“You there,” K. cried suddenly—they were already near the church, the inn wasn’t far off, K. could now afford to take a risk—“I’m very surprised you risk driving me around like this, on your own responsibility. Are you allowed to?” Gerstäcker ignored him and continued walking along quietly beside his little horse. “Hey,” K. cried, then, rolling some snow from the sleigh, he threw it at Gerstäcker, hitting him right on the ear. Now Gerstäcker stopped and turned around; but when K. saw him standing so close by—the sleigh had slid forward a little—his bent and almost maltreated figure, with the red lean face and cheeks that were somehow different, one flat, the other sunken, and his rapt open mouth with only a few scattered teeth, he was obliged to repeat what he had just said out of malice, only this time out of compassion, and to ask Gerstäcker whether he might not be punished for conveying K. “What do you want?” asked Gerstäcker, baffled, but without waiting for further explanation, he called his little horse, and they moved on.
When they were almost at the inn—K. could see this from a curve in the road—it was, much to his astonishment, quite dark. Had he been away that long? But it was only about an hour or two, by his calculations. He had set out in the morning. And he hadn’t needed to eat. And till a moment ago there had been steady daylight, then just now darkness. “Short days, short days,” he said to himself as he slid off the sleigh and walked toward the inn.
Standing above on the small front steps of the inn, a welcome sight for K., was the landlord, raising a lantern and shining it at him. Suddenly remembering the coachman, K. stopped, someone coughed in the dark, it was he. Well, he would be seeing him again soon enough. Not until he was on the steps with the landlord, who greeted him deferentially, did he notice the two men, one on either side of the door. He took the lantern from the landlord’s hand and shone it at them; these were the men he had already met whose names had been called out, Artur and Jeremias. They saluted. Thinking of his time in the army, those happy days, he laughed. “Who are you?” he asked, glancing from one to the other. “Your assistants,” they answered. “Those are the assistants,” said the landlord softly in confirmation. “What?” asked K., “you are the old assistants whom I told to join me and am expecting?” They said yes. “It’s a good thing,” said K., after a little while, “it’s a good thing that you’ve come.” “By the way,” said K., after another little while, “you’re very late, you’ve been most negligent!” “It was such a long way,” said one of the assistants. “A long way,” repeated K., “but when I met you, you were coming from the Castle.” “Yes,” they said, without further explanation. “Where did you put the instruments?” asked K. “We don’t have any,” they said. “The instruments I entrusted you with,” said K. “We don’t have any,” they repeated. “Oh, you’re a fine sort!” said K., “do you know anything about surveying?” “No,” they said. “But if you are my old assistants, then you must know something about it,” said K. They remained silent. “Well, come along, then,” said K., pushing them ahead into the inn.
II.
BARNABAS
They then sat together rather quietly over beer in the taproom, at a small table with K. in the middle and the assistants on either side. Only one other table was occupied, by peasants, as on the previous evening. “This is difficult,” said K., comparing their faces as he had often done before, “how am I supposed to distinguish between you? Only your names are different, otherwise you’re as alike as—” he hesitated, then went on involuntarily—“otherwise you’re as alike as snakes.” They smiled. “People usually can distinguish quite easily between us,” they said in self-defense. “I can believe that,” said K., “for I witnessed it myself, but I can only see with my eyes and cannot distinguish between you with them. So I shall treat you as one person and call you both Artur, that’s what one of you is called—you perhaps?” K. asked one. “No,” he said, “my name is Jeremias.” “Fine, it doesn’t matter,” said K., “I shall call you both Artur. When I send Artur somewhere, both of you must go, when I give Artur a task, both of you must do it, the great disadvantage this has for me is that I cannot use you for separate tasks, but the advantage is that the two of you bear undivided responsibility for carrying out all my instructions. How you divide up the work is immaterial to me so long as you do not try to excuse yourselves by blaming each other, I consider you one person.” They thought this over and said: “That would be quite unpleasant for us.” “Why, of course!” said K., “it must indeed be unpleasant for you, but that’s how it’s going to be.” For some time now K. had been watching one of the peasants slinking about the table; at last the peasant came to a decision, approached an assistant, and was about to whisper something in his ear. “Excuse me,” said K., banging his hand on the table and standing up, “these are my assistants, and we are having a meeting. Nobody has the right to disturb us.” “Oh sorry, oh sorry,” the peasant said anxiously, walking backward toward his companions. “One thing above all else you must keep in mind,” said K., sitting down again, “you’re not to speak to anyone without my permission. I’m a stranger here, and if you are my old assistants, then you are strangers, too. We three strangers must stick together, give me your hands on that.” All too eagerly they stretched out their hands. “Drop your paws,” he said, “but my order stands. I shall go to bed now and suggest you do likewise. We have lost a full workday and have to start work very early tomorrow. You must get hold of a sleigh for the journey to the Castle and have it ready at the door at six o’clock.” “Fine,” said one, but the other broke in: “You say ‘fine,’ though you know it’s impossible.” “Be quiet,” said K., “you’re simply trying to show you’re different.” But now the first one, too, said: “He’s right, that’s impossible, no strangers are allowed into the Castle without permission.” “Where must one apply for permission?” “I don’t know, at the steward’s, perhaps.” “Then we shall apply there by telephone, telephone the steward at once, both of you.” They ran to the telephone, obtained a connection—how they jostled each other there, outwardly they were ridiculously obedient—and inquired whether K. could go with them
tomorrow to the Castle. The “No” of the answer reached K. at his table, but the answer was more explicit, it went, “neither tomorrow nor any other time.” “I myself shall telephone,” said K., getting up. While K. and his assistants had attracted little attention up to now, aside from the incident with the peasant, his last remark attracted general attention. They all stood up with K., and though the landlord tried to push them back, they gathered round him in a tight half-circle at the telephone. The majority thought that K. would get no answer. K. was obliged to ask them to be quiet, he had no desire to hear their opinion.
From the mouthpiece came a humming, the likes of which K. had never heard on the telephone before. It was as though the humming of countless childlike voices—but it wasn’t humming either, it was singing, the singing of the most distant, of the most utterly distant, voices—as though a single, high-pitched yet strong voice had emerged out of this humming in some quite impossible way and now drummed against one’s ears as if demanding to penetrate more deeply into something other than one’s wretched hearing. K. listened without telephoning, with his left arm propped on the telephone stand he listened thus.
He had no idea how long, not until the landlord tugged at his coat, saying that a messenger had come for him. “Go,” shouted K., beside himself, perhaps into the telephone, for now someone answered. The following conversation came about: “Oswald here, who’s there?” said a severe, arrogant voice with a slight speech defect, for which, it seemed to K., the speaker tried to compensate by sounding even more severe. K. was hesitant to give his name, against the telephone he was defenseless, the person could shout him down, lay down the mouthpiece, and K. would have blocked a path that was perhaps not insignificant. K.’s hesitation made the man impatient. “Who’s there?” he repeated, adding, “I should be greatly pleased if less use were made of the telephone there, someone telephoned only a moment ago.” K. did not reply to this remark and announced with sudden resolve: “This is the assistant of the gentleman who came as surveyor.” “What assistant? What gentleman? What surveyor?” K. recalled yesterday’s telephone conversation. “Ask Fritz,” he said curtly. It worked, to his own astonishment. Yet what amazed him even more than its working was the consistency of the official service there. The response was: “I know. The eternal land surveyor. Yes, yes. Go on? What assistant?” “Josef,” said K. Having the peasants mumbling behind his back was somewhat annoying, they evidently disapproved of his not giving his right name. But K. had no time to deal with them, for the conversation required all his attention. “Josef?” came the reply. “The assistants are called—” a short pause, he was apparently asking somebody else for their names—“Artur and Jeremias.” “Those are the new assistants,” said K. “No, those are the old ones.” “Those are the new ones, I’m the old one who came today to join the surveyor.” “No,” the voice was now shouting. “Who am I, then?” K. asked as calmly as before. And after a pause, the same voice, which had the same speech defect but sounded like a different, deeper, more imposing voice, said: “You’re the old assistant.”