by Franz Kafka
“The assistants,” said the chairman with a self-satisfied smile, as though he himself had arranged all this without anybody else’s knowledge, “so they bother you. But they’re your own assistants.” “No,” said K. coolly, “they simply ran up to me here.” “Why ‘ran up’?” he said. “You must mean ‘were assigned.’ ” “Fine, ‘were assigned’ then,” said K., “but they could just as easily have fallen like snowflakes, given how little thought went into assigning them.” “Nothing ever happens here without due thought,” said the chairman, who even forgot about the pain in his foot and sat up. “Nothing,” said K., “and what about my being summoned here?” “Even the decision to summon you was carefully considered,” said the chairman, “but a few minor details introduced some confusion, I can prove this through the files.” “Well, the files won’t be found,” said K. “Won’t be found?” cried the chairman, “Mizzi, do hurry a bit with your search! I can first tell you the story, though, even without the files. We responded to the decree I mentioned earlier by pointing out gratefully that we don’t need a surveyor. However, this reply seems never to have reached the first department—which I shall call A—and went by error to another department, B. So Department A was left without an answer, and unfortunately B didn’t receive our entire answer; either because the contents of the file never left us, or because the file itself got lost on the way—though certainly not in the department itself, I’ll vouch for that—all that came to Department B in any case was the file folder, which simply had on it a note saying that the enclosed, though in reality unfortunately missing, file dealt with the summoning of a surveyor. Meanwhile, Department A was waiting for our answer, they had preliminary notes on the affair, but as often happens, and this is quite understandable and even justifiable given the precision with which such matters must be handled, the designated official was expecting that we would answer and he would then summon a surveyor or, if need be, engage us in further correspondence about the matter. As a result he paid no attention to his preliminary notes and the entire matter slipped his mind. In Department B the folder reached a functionary famous for his conscientiousness, Sordini is his name, an Italian, even an insider such as myself cannot understand how a man of his abilities can be kept in what is virtually the lowest position of all. Now this Sordini did of course return the empty folder to us for completion. But by now many months, if not years, had passed since we had received the message from Department A, understandably, for when, as is the rule, a file heads the right way, it arrives at its department in one day at the latest and is dealt with that same day, but should it ever lose its way, the excellence of the organization is such that the file must zealously seek the wrong way, for otherwise it won’t find it, and then it does indeed take a long time. So when we got Sordini’s memorandum, we had only the vaguest memories of the affair, there were only two of us then for all this work, Mizzi and I, the teacher hadn’t been assigned yet, and we kept copies only in the most important cases—in short, we could answer only vaguely to the effect that we knew of no such summons and that there was no need for a surveyor here.
“But,” said the chairman, interrupting himself as if he had gone too far in his eagerness to tell the story, or as if it were at least possible that he had gone too far, “does the story bore you?”
“No,” said K., “it amuses me.”
At that, the chairman said: “I am not telling you this for your amusement.”
“It amuses me,” said K., “only because it gives me some insight into the ridiculous tangle that may under certain circumstances determine a person’s life.”
“You still haven’t gained any insight,” the chairman said gravely, “and so I can go on. Well of course our answer couldn’t satisfy a Sordini. I admire the man, even though he torments me. You see, he distrusts everyone, even if for instance on countless occasions he finds that someone is a most trustworthy person, on the very next occasion he mistrusts him, as if he didn’t know him or, more precisely, as if he knew him to be a rascal. I think that is right, that’s how an official must behave, unfortunately by nature I cannot follow that precept myself, you can see how I’m telling all this openly to you, a stranger, I simply cannot help it. But Sordini immediately distrusted our answer. A lengthy correspondence came about. Sordini asked why I had suddenly realized that a surveyor shouldn’t be summoned; with the help of Mizzi’s excellent memory I answered that the initial proposal had come from his own office (that a different office had been involved we had of course long since forgotten), and then Sordini said: why was I mentioning this official memorandum only now; I: because I had only just recalled it; Sordini: that was quite odd; I: it wasn’t odd in a long-drawn-out affair like this; Sordini: it certainly was odd, for the memorandum that I recalled did not exist; I: of course it didn’t exist, since the whole file had been lost; Sordini: still, there should be a preliminary note concerning that first memorandum, but there was none. Then I faltered, for I was not so daring as to claim, or even to think, that Sordini’s department had made a mistake. Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame even in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of the authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”
“Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.”
“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”
“That would be something completely new,” cried K.
“It’s very old as far as I’m concerned,” said the chairman. “Not altogether unlike you, I’m convinced that there has been an error, that Sordini became seriously ill out of despair over this, and that the first control agencies, to which we owe the discovery of the source of the error, also recognize the error here. But who can claim that the second control agencies will judge likewise and the third, and so on?”
“Perhaps,” said K., “but I would rather not start interfering with considerations like that yet, and also this is the first I have heard of these control agencies, and so naturally I can’t understand them yet. Still, I think two things must be distinguished here, first, what happens inside the offices, which can then be officially interpreted this way or that, and second, the actual person, me, who stands outside those offices and is threatened by those offices with a restriction that would be so senseless that I still cannot believe in the gravity of the danger. Chairman, as regards the former, the matters you have just spoken of with such admirably uncommon expertise are probably valid, but I should also like to hear a few words about me.”
“I’m getting there,” said the chairman, “but you wouldn’t be able to understand it if I didn’t say a few other things first. Even my mentioning of the control agencies just now was premature. So I’m going back to the differences with Sordini. As I said, my defenses gradually weakened. But if Sordini has even the slightest advantage over a person, then he has already won, for this sharpens his attention, energy, and wits, and for those under attack he is a terri
ble sight, but a splendid one for the enemies of the person under attack. Only because I experienced the latter in other cases can I speak of him as I do. By the way, I have never yet succeeded in setting eyes on him, he cannot come down, he’s over-burdened with work, I was once told that the walls in his room are hidden behind columns of large bundles of files piled on top of one another, those are only the files Sordini is working on just then, and since files are constantly being taken from and added to the bundles, all this at great speed, the stacks are constantly falling down, and it’s precisely those endless thuds in rapid succession that have come to seem typical of Sordini’s study. Well, Sordini is indeed a worker and pays as much attention to the smallest case as to the biggest.”
“Chairman,” said K., “you’re always calling my case one of the smallest and yet it has kept many officials very busy and, even if it was perhaps quite small at first, it has through the zeal of officials of the same type as Mr. Sordini become a big case. Unfortunately and very much against my will; for my ambition is not to have big stacks of files concerning me piling up and then crashing down, but to work quietly as a little surveyor at his little drawing board.”
“No,” said the chairman, “it isn’t a big case, you have no cause for complaint in that respect, it’s one of the smallest of the small cases. It’s not the amount of work that determines the rank of a case, you’re still far from an understanding of the authorities if you believe that. But even if the amount of work were decisive, your case would still be one of the least significant; the ordinary cases, that is, those without so-called errors, create a far greater quantity of admittedly much more productive work. Incidentally, you still have no idea of the actual work caused by your case, so I want to tell you about that first. Initially, Sordini left me out of it, but his officials came, every day formal hearings were held at the Gentlemen’s Inn with respected members of the community. Most stood by me, but a few became suspicious, land surveying is an issue that deeply affects peasants, they scented some sort of secret deals and injustice, they also found a leader, and Sordini had to conclude from their presentations that if I had raised the matter at the local council not everybody would have opposed the summoning of a surveyor. And so this perfectly obvious point—namely, that there’s no need for a surveyor—was at the very least made to seem problematic. In all this a certain Brunswick played a prominent role, you probably don’t know him, perhaps he isn’t bad, just stupid and given to fantasy, he’s the brother-in-law of Lasemann.”
“Of the master tanner?” asked K., and he described the man with the full beard whom he had seen at Lasemann’s.
“Yes, that’s he,” said the chairman.
“I know his wife too,” K. said, just on an off-chance.
“That’s possible,” the chairman said, and he fell silent.
“She’s beautiful,” said K., “though rather pale and sickly. She probably comes from the Castle?” this was said half as a question.