by Franz Kafka
“It’s certainly odd,” said K., and he took Frieda on his lap; she yielded right away, though with her head down, “but it shows, I think, that everything isn’t quite as you think. For instance, you’re certainly right to say I am nothing in Klamm’s eyes, and even if I insist on speaking to Klamm and refuse to let your explanations deter me, this doesn’t mean I could bear the sight of Klamm if there weren’t a door separating us, or wouldn’t run from the room the moment he appeared. But such fears, even if they’re justified, are still no reason for me not to risk going ahead. Yet if I can stand up to him, he needn’t even speak to me, I’ll be sufficiently gratified on seeing the effect my words have on him, and if they have none, or if he doesn’t hear a word I say, I will still have gained something from the chance to speak frankly to a person with power. But you, Landlady, with your wide experience of life and people, and Frieda, who as of yesterday was still Klamm’s mistress—I don’t see why I should drop the term—can no doubt easily arrange for me to talk to Klamm; if there’s no other way, then at the Gentlemen’s Inn, perhaps he’s still there today as well.”
“That’s impossible,” said the landlady, “and I can see you’re incapable of understanding this. But anyhow, tell me, what do you want to talk to Klamm about?”
“About Frieda, of course,” said K.
“About Frieda?” asked the landlady, baffled, turning to Frieda. “Do you hear, Frieda, he, he wants to talk about you to Klamm, to Klamm.”
“Oh, Landlady,” said K., “you’re such a clever woman, so worthy of respect and yet you’re frightened by every little thing. Well, I want to talk to him about Frieda, there’s nothing monstrous about that, it’s only natural. For you’re certainly mistaken again if you think Frieda lost all meaning for Klamm from the very moment I arrived. If that’s what you think, you’re underestimating him. I have the distinct feeling that it’s presumptuous of me to lecture you on the subject, but I simply cannot avoid it. Nothing can have changed in Klamm’s relationship to Frieda because of me. Either there was no significant relationship—and that’s precisely what those who deprive Frieda of her honorable title as mistress are suggesting—in which case it doesn’t exist today, or else there was one, but then how could it have been disturbed by me, by someone who, as you rightly said, is a mere nothing in Klamm’s eyes? One believes such things in the first moment of fright, but a little thought ought to straighten it out. By the way, we should let Frieda say what she thinks.”
Looking into the distance, her cheek resting on K.’s chest, Frieda said: “It’s certainly as Mother says: Klamm doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me. But certainly not because you came here, darling, nothing like that could ever shake him. But I believe it was through Klamm’s work that we found each other under the counter, blessed, not accursed, be the hour!”
“If that’s so,” said K. slowly, for Frieda’s words were sweet, he closed his eyes for several seconds to let the words permeate him, “if that’s so, then there’s even less reason to fear an interview with Klamm.”
“Frankly,” said the landlady, gazing down from her height at K., “you sometimes remind me of my husband, you’re just as stubborn and childlike as he. You’ve been in the village a few days and already think you know everything better than everyone here, better than me, an old woman, and better than Frieda, who has heard and seen so much at the Gentlemen’s Inn. I’m not denying it’s possible to accomplish something that runs absolutely counter to the rules and the old traditions, I myself have never experienced anything of the sort, but such instances are said to occur, this may be so, but they certainly don’t occur the way you go about it, simply by saying ‘no, no’ all the time and by swearing to do what you think and by ignoring the most well-meant advice. Do you really think I’m concerned about you? Did I do anything for you while you were still on your own? Although that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing and might have prevented certain incidents. All I said to my husband about you then was: ‘Stay away from him.’ That would also be the case with me now if Frieda hadn’t become entangled in your fate. It is to her—whether you like it or not—that you owe my care and even my respect. And you cannot simply turn me away, for I’m the only person who watches over little Frieda with motherly concern, and I hold you strictly accountable. Perhaps Frieda is right and everything that has happened is the will of Klamm, but now I know nothing about Klamm, I shall never again speak to him, he’s completely beyond my reach, but you sit here, keep my Frieda, and are in turn—why shouldn’t I say this?—kept by me. Yes, kept by me, young man, for if I ever threw you out, just try to find lodgings anywhere in the village, even in a doghouse!”
“Thanks,” said K., “you’ve spoken frankly and I believe you entirely. So my position is that uncertain, and in connection with that, Frieda’s position, too!”
“No,” the landlady broke in furiously, “in that respect Frieda’s position has nothing whatsoever to do with yours. Frieda belongs in my house, and nobody has any right to call her position here uncertain.”
“Fine, fine,” said K., “I’ll concede you’re right this time, too, especially since Frieda—for reasons unknown to me—seems too afraid of you to get involved. So, for now, let’s just stick to me. My position is utterly uncertain, you’re not denying that, but rather struggling to prove it. As in everything you say, that’s mostly right, but not entirely so. Just one instance, I do know of a good night’s lodging that I can use.”
“Where? Where?” Frieda and the landlady cried eagerly, almost in one voice, as if both had the same reason for asking.
“At Barnabas’s,” said K.
“That riffraff,” cried the landlady, “that slippery riffraff! At Barnabas’s! Do you hear—” and she turned toward the assistants’ corner, but they had come out quite a while ago and now stood arm in arm behind the landlady, who, as if needing support, seized one by the hand, “do you hear where the gentleman hangs out, at Barnabas’s! He’s sure to find lodgings there, oh, if only he had liked it better there than at the Gentlemen’s Inn! But where have the two of you been?”
“Landlady,” said K. before the assistants could answer, “those are my assistants, but you treat them as if they were your assistants and my warders. On every other subject I’m at least willing to engage in a polite discussion of your opinions, but not concerning my assistants, for that’s an absolutely clear-cut affair. So I request that you not speak to my assistants, and if my request should not suffice, I shall forbid my assistants to answer you.”
“So I’m not allowed to speak to you,” said the landlady, and all three laughed, the landlady derisively but more softly than K. had expected, the assistants in their usual way, meaning everything and nothing, disclaiming all responsibility.
“Now don’t get angry,” said Frieda, “you must try to understand why we’re so upset. One could say that it’s solely thanks to Barnabas that the two of us are together now. When I first caught sight of you in the taproom—you came in arm in arm with Olga—I did already know a few things about you, but on the whole I felt completely indifferent about you. Yet you weren’t the only one, I felt indifferent about almost everything, almost everything. Indeed, I felt dissatisfied then about many things and annoyed by many more, but what an odd sort of dissatisfaction and annoyance it was. If someone insulted me, say one of the guests in the taproom—they were always after me, you saw those fellows there, but others came who were far worse, Klamm’s servants weren’t the worst—if one of them insulted me, what difference did that make to me? I felt as if the incident had happened many years before or as if it hadn’t happened to me or as if I had only heard people speak of it or as if I myself had forgotten it. But I cannot describe it, I cannot even imagine it anymore, that’s how much everything has changed since Klamm abandoned me—”
And Frieda broke off her story, lowered her head sadly, and folded her hands in her lap.
“Look,” cried the landlady, sounding as though she herself weren’t speakin
g but were lending Frieda her voice, she moved closer as well and was now sitting beside Frieda, “Surveyor, look at the results of your actions, and your assistants too—but then of course I’m not supposed to speak to them—may watch and learn a lesson from this. You wrenched Frieda out of the happiest state ever granted her, and could do so largely because Frieda herself, owing to her childlike, exaggerated sense of compassion, couldn’t bear to see you hanging on Olga’s arm and thus seemingly at the mercy of Barnabas’s family. She rescued you and sacrificed herself. And now that this has happened and Frieda has given up all she had in exchange for the happiness of sitting on your knee, you come and pass off as your greatest trump card the fact that you once had the opportunity to spend the night at Barnabas’s. You’re probably trying to prove you’re not dependent on me. Certainly, if you really had spent the night at Barnabas’s, you would be so little dependent on me that you would have to leave my house at once, and double-quick, too.”
“I don’t know the sins of the Barnabas family,” said K., carefully lifting Frieda, who seemed lifeless, placing her on the bed, and getting up again, “perhaps you’re right in this case, though I was certainly right when I requested that you leave our affairs, Frieda’s and mine, in our hands. You said something about love and concern, I haven’t noticed much of that, but I have noticed great hatred and contempt and talk of banishment from the house. If your goal was to get Frieda to leave me or me to leave Frieda, then you went about this quite cleverly, but I don’t think you’ll succeed, and if you do—and now for a change let me be the one to give you a dark warning—you’ll regret it bitterly. As for the lodgings you’re providing me with—you must mean this awful hole—it isn’t at all clear that this is a voluntary offer on your part, it seems more likely that the Count’s authorities have issued a directive to this effect. I shall report now that I was given notice here, and if they assign other lodgings to me, you may well breathe more easily, but I’ll certainly breathe more deeply. And now I’m going to see the council chairman about this and several other matters. You could at least take care of Frieda, whom you’ve seriously harmed with those so-called motherly talks of yours.”
Then he turned to the assistants. “Come,” he said, then he took Klamm’s letter from the hook and was about to go. Although the landlady had watched him silently, his hand was already on the latch before she spoke: “Surveyor, I have a parting thought for you, for no matter what you say or how many insults you heap on an old woman like me, you are still the future husband of Frieda. And that’s the only reason why I even bother telling you that you’re dreadfully ignorant about the situation here, one’s head buzzes from listening to you and from comparing your opinions and ideas with the real situation. Your ignorance cannot be remedied all at once, and perhaps not at all, but many things can get better if you would only show a little faith in me and always keep in mind how ignorant you are. And then you will, say, become less unjust toward me and begin to sense how shocked I was—I still haven’t recovered from the shock—when I noticed that my dearest little one has, so to speak, abandoned the eagle to unite with a blindworm, but the actual relationship is worse still, and I’m constantly trying to forget all about it, because otherwise I couldn’t speak calmly to you at all. Oh, now you’re angry at me again! No, don’t go yet, you must first listen to my final request: Wherever you go, keep in mind that you’re the most ignorant person here and be careful; here with us you’ll be out of harm’s way with Frieda present, so you may chatter to your heart’s content, you can even show us how you plan to talk to Klamm, but in reality, in reality … please, oh please don’t do it.”
She stood up, swaying somewhat with excitement, approached K., took his hand, and looked at him pleadingly. “Landlady,” said K., “I cannot understand why you humiliate yourself over such a trifling matter by pleading with me like this. If, as you say, it’s impossible for me to speak to Klamm, then I won’t succeed whether you plead with me or not. If it were actually possible, though, why shouldn’t I do it, especially since, after your main objection has fallen by the wayside, your other fears will be very doubtful. Certainly, I am ignorant, that at least is true, sadly enough for me, but the advantage here is that those who are ignorant take greater risks, and so I’ll gladly put up with my deficient knowledge and its undoubtedly serious consequences for a little while, for as long as my energy holds out. But those consequences essentially concern only me, and so, particularly for that reason, I cannot understand why you are pleading with me. After all, you will certainly always take care of Frieda, and if I ever vanished from Frieda’s sight, that would inevitably be good news for you. So what are you afraid of? Surely you aren’t afraid—those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible”—here K. opened the door—“surely you aren’t afraid for Klamm’s sake?” The landlady looked after him in silence as he hurried down the stairs followed by the assistants.
V.
AT THE CHAIRMAN’S
The meeting with the chairman caused K. little concern, almost to his own surprise. He sought to explain this to himself on the grounds that, judging by his previous experiences, dealing with the Count’s authorities was very simple for him. On one hand, this was due to their having issued for his affairs, apparently once and for all, a definite ruling that was outwardly very much in his favor, and on the other, to the admirable consistency of the service, which was, one suspected, especially perfect on occasions when it appeared to be missing. Sometimes when thinking of such matters K. almost concluded that his situation was quite satisfactory, though he always told himself quickly after such fits of satisfaction that this is precisely where the danger lay. Dealing directly with the authorities wasn’t all that difficult, for no matter how well organized they were, they only had to defend distant and invisible causes on behalf of remote and invisible gentlemen, whereas he, K., was fighting for something vitally close, for himself, and what’s more of his own free will, initially at least, for he was the assailant, and he was not struggling for himself on his own, there were also other forces, which he knew nothing of, but could believe in because of the measures adopted by the authorities. By mostly obliging him from the start in some of the more trivial matters—and no more had been at stake until now—the authorities were depriving him not only of the chance to gain a few easy little victories but also of the corresponding satisfaction and the resulting well-founded confidence for other, greater battles. Instead they let K. wander about as he wished, even if only in the village, spoiling and weakening him, barred all fighting here, and dispatched him to this extra-official, completely unclear, dull, and strange life. If this went on, if he weren’t always on guard, he might one day, despite the friendly attitude of the authorities, despite his meticulous fulfillment of his exaggeratedly light official duties, be deceived by the favor seemingly granted him and lead the rest of his life so imprudently that he would fall to pieces, and the authorities, gentle and friendly as ever, would have to come, as though against their will but actually at the behest of some official ordinance of which he knew nothing, in order to clear him out of the way. And what did that actually amount to here, the other part of his life? Nowhere else had K. ever seen one’s official position and one’s life so intertwined as they were here, so intertwined that it sometimes seemed as though office and life had switched places. How great, say, was the power Klamm wielded over K.’s service, which up to now had been no more than a formality, compared with the power Klamm possessed in actual fact in K.’s bedroom. That’s why a slightly more frivolous approach, a certain easing of tension, was appropriate only when dealing directly with the authorities, whereas otherwise you always had to exercise great caution and look about on all sides before each step you took. K. initially found his view of the local authorities very much confirmed at the chairman’s. A friendly fat clean-shaven man, the chairman was ill, he had a severe attack of gout and received K. in bed. “So you must be our surveyor,” he said, intending to sit up and greet K., but he could
n’t manage it and, pointing apologetically to his legs, threw himself back down on the pillows. A woman, quite still, almost shadowlike in the dimly lit room, whose small curtained windows made it even darker, brought K. a chair and put it by the bed. “Sit down, sit down, Surveyor,” said the chairman, “and tell me what you want.” K. read Klamm’s letter aloud and then added a few comments. Again he thought he felt the extraordinary ease of dealing with the authorities. They bore the whole burden, quite literally, you could leave everything up to them and remain free and untouched yourself. As though sensing this in his own way, the chairman stirred uneasily in his bed. Finally he said: “Surveyor, as you’ve noticed, I knew about the entire affair. The reason I haven’t seen to it yet is, first, I have been ill, and then you took so long to come I thought you had given up the affair. But now that you’re so kind as to call on me, I must of course let you know the entire unpleasant truth. You were, as you say, taken on as a surveyor, but we don’t need a surveyor. There wouldn’t be the least bit of work for a person like that. The boundaries of our small holdings have been marked out, everything has been duly registered, the properties themselves rarely change hands, and whatever small boundary disputes arise, we settle ourselves. So why should we have any need for a surveyor?” K., despite having never really thought about this before, was convinced deep down that he had been expecting some such communication. For that very reason he was immediately able to say: “I find this most surprising. It upsets all my plans. I can only hope there’s been a misunderstanding.” “Unfortunately not,” said the chairman, “it is as I say.” “But how is that possible?” cried K. “After all, I didn’t set out on this endless journey only to be sent back now.” “That is a different matter,” said the chairman, “and one that’s not for me to decide, though I can explain how this misunderstanding was possible. In an administration as large as the Count’s, it can happen at some point that one department issues an order, another a second, neither department knows of the other, the higher-ranking control agency is indeed extremely precise, but by nature it intervenes too late, and so a little confusion can nonetheless arise. Of course, this happens only in the tiniest matters, such as yours, in a large affair I have never heard of an error, but even the small cases are often quite embarrassing. Now, as for your case, without turning this into an official secret—I’m simply not enough of an official for that, I’m only a peasant, and that’s good enough for me—I want to give you a frank description of what happened. A long time ago, I had only been chairman for a few months, a decree came—I cannot recall from which department—stating in the categorical manner so typical of the gentlemen up there that a surveyor would be summoned and instructing the local council to be ready with all the plans and records needed for his work. This decree obviously cannot have been about you, for that was many years ago, and I wouldn’t even have thought of it if I weren’t ill in bed with all the time in the world to think about the silliest matters. Mizzi,” he said, suddenly interrupting his account, to the woman, who was still flitting about the room on some incomprehensible errand, “please look in the cabinet, perhaps you’ll find the decree. You see,” he told K. by way of explanation, “it’s from the early days when I still kept everything.” The woman opened the cabinet right away, K. and the chairman watched. The cabinet was crammed with papers; once it was open, two large packs of files tied together in a bundle like firewood came rolling out, the woman started and jumped aside. “Down below, it should be down below,” said the chairman, directing from his bed. After obediently gathering the files in both arms so as to reach the papers underneath, the woman threw out the entire contents of the cabinet. The papers already covered half the room. “We’ve certainly accomplished a great deal,” said the chairman, nodding, “and that’s only a small part of it. I stored the bulk of it in the barn, but most of it got lost. Who could keep all that together! But there is still a great deal left in the barn. You think you can find the decree?” he said, turning again to his wife, “You should look for a file with the word ‘surveyor’ underlined in blue.” “It’s too dark here, I’ll get a candle,” said the woman, walking on the papers as she went to the door. “My wife,” said the chairman, “she’s such a great help in carrying out this difficult official work, which is only part-time, I have one other aide, the teacher, for written work, but it’s still impossible to finish everything, a large portion never gets done, but we have put that away in the cabinet there,” and he pointed to another cabinet. “And especially now that I am ill, everything is quite out of hand,” he said, lying down again, tired yet proud. “Well,” K. said, the woman had come back with the candle and was on her knees looking for the decree, “couldn’t I help your wife look?” The chairman shook his head and smiled: “As I said, I’m not keeping official secrets from you, but to let you look through the files would be going too far.” There was now silence in the room, all one could hear was the rustling of papers, perhaps the chairman was dozing off. A light knock at the door made K. turn around. The assistants, of course. Still, they had picked up some manners, didn’t barge into the room right away, but whispered first through the slightly open door: “It’s too cold outside.” “Who is it?” asked the chairman, starting. “Only my assistants,” said K., “I’m not sure where I should get them to wait for me, it’s too cold outside, and they’re a nuisance here.” “They won’t bother me,” said the chairman agreeably, “let them in. Incidentally, I know them. Old acquaintances.” “But they do bother me,” said K. frankly, letting his eyes wander from the assistants to the chairman and back again to the assistants; he found the smiles of all three indistinguishable. “Well, now that you’re here,” he added as a test, “stay and help the chairman’s wife look for a file with the word ‘surveyor’ underlined in blue.” The chairman did not object to this; what K. was not permitted, the assistants were now being permitted; they immediately threw themselves on the papers, but instead of searching, they merely rummaged about in the pile, and each time one of them spelled out the words on a file, the other tore the file from his hand. But the woman was still kneeling in front of the empty cabinet, she seemed to have stopped looking altogether, the candle was now some distance from her.