by Franz Kafka
XVI.
K. stayed behind, a rather astonished look on his face, Olga laughed at him, drew him over to the bench by the stove, she seemed really happy that she could sit here with him on her own, but it was a peaceful happiness, certainly not marred by jealousy. And precisely this absence of jealousy and thus of any trace of severity did K. good, he liked looking into those blue, not enticing, not domineering, but shyly tranquil, shyly steadfast eyes. It was as if the warnings of Frieda and the landlady had not made him more receptive to everything here but rather more alert and resourceful. And he laughed with Olga when she expressed surprise at his having called Amalia, of all people, good-natured, for though Amalia was any number of things, she was not really good-natured. At that, K. explained that the praise had actually been meant for her, Olga, but Amalia was so domineering that she not only appropriated everything said in her presence but that one was even willing to let her have all of it. “That’s true,” said Olga, becoming more serious, “truer than you think. Amalia is younger than me, younger than Barnabas too, but she’s the one who decides everything in the family, the good and the bad, and of course she also shoulders more than everyone else, both good and bad.” K. thought this exaggerated, Amalia had just said that she didn’t look after her brother’s business, for instance, whereas Olga knew everything about it. “How should I explain this?” said Olga, “Amalia doesn’t look after Barnabas or me, she doesn’t look after anybody except for our parents, whom she cares for day and night, just now she asked again if they needed anything and went into the kitchen to cook for them, forcing herself to get up because of them, for she’s been unwell since noon and has been lying here on the bench. But though she doesn’t look after us, we depend on her as if she were the eldest, and if she gave us advice about our affairs we would certainly follow it, but she doesn’t; to her we are strangers. But you have great knowledge of people, you come from abroad, doesn’t she seem especially clever to you too?” “To me she seems especially unhappy,” said K., “but how can you reconcile your respect for her, say, with Barnabas’s duties as a messenger, which Amalia disapproves of and may even despise.” “If he knew of something else he could do, he would immediately leave the messenger service, which doesn’t satisfy him at all.” “Didn’t he complete his apprenticeship as a shoemaker?” asked K. “Certainly,” said Olga, “indeed he also works on the side for Brunswick and if he wanted to he could have work both day and night, and good pay too.” “Well, then,” said K., “in that case he’d have something as a replacement for the messenger service.” “The messenger service?” Olga asked in astonishment, “so he took it on for the income?” “Possibly,” said K., “but you did mention that he’s dissatisfied with it.” “He’s dissatisfied with it for several reasons,” said Olga, “but it’s still Castle work, well, a certain kind of Castle work, or at least one ought to think so.” “What?” said K., “do you people even have doubts about that?” “Well,” said Olga, “not really, Barnabas goes into the offices, deals with the servants on an equal footing, gets to see individual officials from a distance, receives relatively important letters, even ones that have to be delivered orally; that is quite a lot, and indeed we could be proud that he has accomplished so much at such a young age.” K. nodded, he was no longer thinking of going home. “He also has his own livery?” he asked. “The jacket, you mean?” said Olga, “no, Amalia made it for him before he became a messenger. But now you’re getting to the sore point. What he should have received from the offices a long time ago is not a livery, there are none at the Castle, but a suit, it has even been promised to him, but in this respect they’re very slow at the Castle and the terrible thing is that one never knows for sure what this slowness means; it can mean that the official procedure has begun, but it can also mean that the official procedure has not yet even begun, that, for instance, they first want to continue testing Barnabas, but finally, it can even mean that the official procedure is already over, that for some reason the promise has been withdrawn and Barnabas will never get his suit. One hears nothing more precise than this, or only after a long time. There’s an expression here, perhaps you know it: ‘Official decisions are as shy as young girls.’ ” “That’s a good observation,” said K., taking it even more seriously than Olga did, “a good observation, and the decisions may have other traits in common with girls.” “Perhaps,” said Olga, “I really don’t know how you mean that. Perhaps you even mean it as praise. But, as for the official clothing, this is one of Barnabas’s concerns and, since we share those concerns, also mine. Why doesn’t he receive an official suit, we vainly ask ourselves. Well, this entire affair is not exactly simple. The officials, for instance, don’t seem to have any official clothing; so far as we villagers know and so far as Barnabas tells us, the officials go around in ordinary, though certainly beautiful, clothing. Besides, you have seen Klamm. Now Barnabas is of course not an official, not even an official of the lowest rank, nor is he so presumptuous as to want to become one. But even the higher servants, whom we admittedly never get to see here in the village, do not, according to Barnabas, have an official suit; there’s some consolation in this, or one might initially be tempted to think so, but that is misleading, for is Barnabas a higher servant? No, even if one is very favorably disposed toward him, one cannot say so, his coming to the village and even living here is already proof of the opposite, the higher servants are even more reserved than the officials, perhaps justifiably so, perhaps they’re even higher than certain officials, there is some evidence to this effect, they work less and, according to Barnabas, it’s a wonderful sight to watch these exquisitely tall strong men go through the corridors, Barnabas always sneaks around them. In short, there can be no question of Barnabas’s being a higher servant. He could therefore be one of the lesser servants, but they wear official suits, at least whenever they come down to the village, it’s not a real livery, there are many variations, but still one can immediately recognize a Castle servant by his clothes, and anyhow you’ve seen such people at the Gentlemen’s Inn. The most striking thing about their clothes is that they’re usually tight-fitting, a suit like that would be of no use to a farmer or a tradesman. Well, Barnabas does not have this suit, that is not only, let’s say, shameful or demeaning, that one could tolerate, but it causes Barnabas and me—especially in bleak hours, which we do have now and then, and not all that infrequently—to despair about everything. Is it even Castle work that Barnabas is doing, we then ask; he certainly does go into the offices, but are the offices actually the Castle? And even if the Castle does have offices, are they the offices Barnabas is permitted to enter? He enters offices, but those are only a portion of the total, then there are barriers and behind them still more offices. He has not been altogether prohibited from going farther, but he certainly cannot go farther once he has found his superiors and they have dealt with him and sent him away. One is always under observation up there, or at least one thinks so. And even if he went farther, what good would that do if he had no official duties up there and were merely an intruder. You shouldn’t imagine these barriers as a fixed boundary, Barnabas is constantly pointing this out to me. There are also barriers in the offices that he enters, those are the barriers he crosses, and yet they look no different from the ones he has not yet crossed, so one shouldn’t assume from the outset that the offices behind those other barriers differ significantly from the ones Barnabas has already been in. It is only during those bleak hours that one thinks so. And then one’s doubts increase, one is defenseless against them. Barnabas speaks to officials, Barnabas receives messages. But what kind of officials, what kind of messages are they? Now he has been assigned to Klamm, he tells us, and receives instruction from him personally. Well, that would indeed be quite a lot, even higher servants never get that far, it would almost be too much, that’s what is so frightening about it. Just think, to be directly assigned to Klamm, to speak with him face to face. But is it really so? Well yes, it is indeed so, but then why does Barnabas do
ubt that the official identified there as Klamm really is Klamm?” “But Olga,” said K., “surely you don’t mean to turn this into a joke; how can there be any doubt about Klamm’s appearance, his appearance is well known, I’ve seen him myself.” “Certainly not, K.,” said Olga, “this isn’t a joke, it’s my gravest concern. But I’m telling it to you not to ease my heart and perhaps weigh down yours but because you asked about Barnabas, because Amalia instructed me to tell you, and because I believe that it’s also useful for you to know more about this. I’m also doing it because of Barnabas, so that you do not put excessive hope in him and he does not disappoint you and then have to suffer because of your disappointment. He is very sensitive; he didn’t sleep last night, for instance, because you were dissatisfied with him yesterday afternoon and apparently said that it’s very bad to have ‘only’ a messenger like Barnabas. Those words deprived him of his sleep, you yourself probably saw little of his agitation, Castle messengers have to keep themselves very much under control. But it isn’t easy for him, even with you. To your mind, you’re certainly not asking too much of him, you came here with definite ideas about the messenger service and base your demands on them. But at the Castle they have different ideas about the messenger service, these cannot be reconciled with yours even if Barnabas were to sacrifice himself entirely to the service, which he unfortunately sometimes seems prepared to do. One would certainly have to accept this, couldn’t say anything against it, were it not for the question whether it is really messenger work that he is doing. Of course he cannot disclose his doubts about this to you; to do so would be to undermine his own existence and blatantly violate the laws he thinks he lives under, he doesn’t even speak openly to me, I have to coax his doubts out of him through flattery and kisses, and even then he finds it difficult to admit to himself that his doubts are indeed doubts. He has something of Amalia in his blood. And he certainly doesn’t tell me everything, though I’m his only confidante. But sometimes we do speak about Klamm, I still haven’t seen Klamm; you know, Frieda has little love for me and would never have let me take a look, but his appearance is of course well known in the village, some have actually seen him, everyone has heard of him, and what emerges from this mixture of sightings, rumors, and distorting ulterior motives is a picture of Klamm that is probably correct in its essential features. But only in its essential features. Otherwise it is variable and perhaps not even as variable as Klamm’s real appearance. They say he looks completely different when he comes into the village and different when he leaves it, different before he has had a beer, different afterwards, different awake, different asleep, different alone, different in a conversation, and, quite understandably after all this, almost utterly different up there at the Castle. And even within the village there are some rather significant differences in the reports, differences in size, posture, corpulence, beard, and only concerning the coat do the reports happily agree, he always wears the same coat, a black morning coat with long tails. Now all these discrepancies did not of course come about by magic but are quite understandable, they are a product of the momentary mood, the degree of excitement, the countless gradations of hope or despair in which the observer, who in any case is at most allowed to see Klamm only briefly, happens to find himself, I repeat all this to you just as Barnabas often explained it to me, and in general, if one is not personally, directly involved in the affair, one can calm oneself down with such thoughts. We cannot do so; for Barnabas this is a vital matter, whether or not he actually speaks to Klamm.” “No less so for me,” said K., and they drew even closer on the bench by the stove. K. was indeed affected by Olga’s unfavorable news, but he thought that this was largely offset by the encounter with these people here, who were at least outwardly more or less in the same situation as he himself and with whom he could therefore ally himself, whom he could agree with on many things, and not only on some as with Frieda. True, he was gradually losing hope that Barnabas’s messages would accomplish anything, but the worse everything went for Barnabas up there, the closer he felt to him down here, K. would never have thought that an endeavor as ill-fated as the one launched by Barnabas and his sister could have come from the village itself. This was not yet entirely clear and the opposite could eventually prove true, you had to be careful not to let Olga’s undoubtedly innocent nature seduce you into believing in Barnabas’s honesty. “As for the reports of Klamm’s appearance,” Olga went on, “Barnabas knows them well, he has gathered and compared many of them, perhaps too many, he himself once saw Klamm through a carriage window, or thought he saw him, and was therefore quite ready to recognize him, and yet—how can you explain this to yourself?—when he came to an office at the Castle and an official standing with several others was pointed out to him and identified as Klamm, he did not recognize him and for a long time afterward couldn’t get used to that man’s supposedly being Klamm. But if you ask Barnabas how that man differs from the usual notion one has of Klamm, he cannot answer, or rather he answers by describing the official at the Castle, yet his description tallies exactly with the description of Klamm as we already know it. ‘Look, Barnabas,’ I say, ‘why do you doubt it, why are you tormenting yourself.’ And then, clearly distressed, he begins to list the Castle official’s traits, which he seems to be inventing rather than actually describing, and anyhow they are so trivial—they include, for instance, a particular way of nodding his head or even just an unbuttoned vest—that one cannot possibly take them seriously. Even more important, it seems to me, is the way Klamm deals with Barnabas. Barnabas described this often to me, and even drew it. He is usually taken into a large office chamber, but it is not Klamm’s office, nor indeed that of any particular individual. Lengthwise the room is divided in two by a single high desk, which reaches from one side wall to the other, a narrow section in which two persons could barely get past each other, that’s the space for the officials, and a wide section, the space for the individual parties, the spectators, the servants, the messengers. Lying open on the desk are large books, one next to the other, with officials standing over most of them, reading. Yet they do not always stay at the same book, and exchange not books but rather places, Barnabas is most astonished by the way they must squeeze past one another while switching places owing to the tightness of the space. At the front near the high desk are tiny low tables, where sit the copyists, who, if the officials so wish, write from their dictation. Barnabas always wonders how this is done. The official doesn’t give any explicit order, there’s no loud dictation to be heard, one barely notices that someone is dictating; on the contrary, the official seems to continue reading, only he begins to whisper and the copyist hears it. Often the official dictates so softly that the copyist cannot hear it sitting down, he must constantly jump up, catch the dictation, sit down and make a note of it, jump back up, and so on. It’s so strange! It’s almost incomprehensible. Of course Barnabas has sufficient time to observe all this since he stands there in the spectators’ room for hours and sometimes days before Klamm’s gaze falls on him. And even when Klamm has seen him and Barnabas comes to attention, nothing decisive has happened since Klamm can turn away from him again and go back to his book and forget him, that’s what often happens. But what sort of messenger service can it be if it’s so insignificant? I become melancholy when Barnabas says in the morning that he will go to the Castle. That probably entirely useless path, that probably lost day, that probably futile hope. What’s the point of it all? And here there’s shoemaker’s work piled up that nobody does and Brunswick keeps demanding it be finished.” “All right,” said K., “Barnabas has to wait a long time before he gets an assignment. That is understandable, there certainly seem to be more than enough employees here, it’s not possible for everybody to get an assignment every day, you shouldn’t complain about this, it surely applies to everybody. But in the end surely even Barnabas gets assignments, he has already brought me two letters.” “Well,” said Olga, “it is of course possible that it’s wrong for us to complain, especia
lly since I know all this only from hearsay and, as a girl, cannot understand it as well as Barnabas, who does keep certain things to himself. But now listen to how matters stand with the letters, with your letters, for instance. These letters he receives not directly from Klamm but from the copyist. On any day, at any hour—and for that reason the service, easy though it seems, is actually very tiring, since Barnabas has to be constantly alert—the copyist can remember him and signal to him. Klamm wouldn’t appear to be behind this, he is still quietly reading his book, but sometimes, though this often happens on other occasions too, he’s busy cleaning his pince-nez when Barnabas arrives, and perhaps Klamm looks at him, assuming that he can see at all without his pince-nez, Barnabas doubts it, at such moments Klamm’s eyes are almost closed, he seems to be asleep and to be cleaning his pince-nez merely in a dream. Meanwhile the copyist searches through the many files and correspondences that he keeps under the table for a letter to you, it’s therefore not a letter he has just written, but more likely by the looks of the envelope a very old letter that was lying there for a long time. But if it’s an old letter, why did they make Barnabas wait so long? And you too, no doubt? And finally the letter as well, for it’s probably already outdated. And this gives Barnabas a reputation as a bad, slow messenger. The copyist certainly makes things easy for himself, gives Barnabas the letter, says: ‘From Klamm to K.,’ whereupon Barnabas is dismissed. Then Barnabas comes home, breathless, with the letter that he has finally managed to get hold of under his shirt on his bare skin, and we sit on this bench, like the two of us now, and he talks, and then we examine everything in detail and estimate what he has accomplished and decide in the end that it’s very little and that little questionable and Barnabas puts away the letter and doesn’t feel like delivering it but doesn’t feel like going to bed either so he picks up his shoemaker’s work and spends the night sitting there on his shoemaker’s stool. That’s it, K., those are my secrets, and surely you’re no longer surprised that Amalia will have nothing to do with it.” “And the letter?” K. asked. “The letter?” said Olga, “well, some time later, once I have put sufficient pressure on Barnabas, days or weeks may have passed, he takes the letter and goes off to deliver it. In trivial things like that he’s very dependent on me. I can always pull myself together after I recover from my first impression of his story, but he cannot, probably because he actually does know more. And I am therefore able to tell him over and over again: ‘What is it you really want, Barnabas? What sort of career, what sort of goal is it you dream of? Perhaps you want to get so far ahead that you’ll have to leave me behind completely, leave me for good? Might this be your goal? Don’t I have to believe it, for otherwise your great dissatisfaction with your accomplishment would seem incomprehensible? Just take a look, though, and see whether any of our neighbors have come this far. True, their situation differs from ours and they have no reason for striving to reach beyond their own households, but even without such comparisons one has to recognize that in your case everything is going extremely well for you. There are obstacles, questionable matters, disappointments, but this merely shows, as we already knew, that nothing is given to you on a platter, that you yourself have to fight for every trifle, another reason for being proud, not dejected. Besides, aren’t you fighting for us too? Does that mean nothing to you? Doesn’t it give you new strength? And my happiness, almost haughtiness, at having a brother like you, doesn’t that give you some security? Truly, it’s not what you’ve accomplished at the Castle that disappoints me, but what I have accomplished with you. You’re allowed into the Castle, you’re a constant visitor in the offices, you spend entire days in the same room as Klamm, you are an officially recognized messenger, you’re entitled to official clothing, you are entrusted with the delivery of important correspondences, you are all these things, you’re actually allowed to do all these things, and you come down and instead of our crying for joy in each other’s arms you seem to lose all courage as soon as you see me and have doubts about everything, only the shoemaker’s iron tempts you, but the letter, this guarantee of our future, you set aside.’ That’s how I talk to him, and after I have kept repeating it for days on end he picks up the letter with a sigh and goes off. But this probably isn’t even due to the impact of my words, he’s simply compelled to go to the Castle, and without having first carried out the instruction he would not dare to go there.” “But everything you’re saying to him is absolutely correct,” said K., “you have summed things up in an admirably correct fashion. Your thinking is astonishingly clear!” “No,” said Olga, “it’s deceiving you, and this may also be how I deceived him. So what has he accomplished? He can enter an office, though it doesn’t even seem to be an office but rather an anteroom to the offices, and perhaps not even that, perhaps it’s a room intended for all those who aren’t allowed into the real offices. He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who merely resembles Klamm? Perhaps at the very most a secretary who is a little like Klamm and goes to great lengths to be even more like him and tries to seem important by affecting Klamm’s drowsy, dreamlike manner. That part of his being is easiest to imitate, many try to do so; as for the rest of his being, though, they wisely steer clear of it. And a man such as Klamm, who is so often the object of yearning and yet so rarely attained, easily takes on a variety of shapes in the imaginations of people. For instance, Klamm has a village secretary here called Momus. Really? You know him? He too keeps to himself but I have seen him a couple of times. A powerful young gentleman, isn’t he? And so he probably doesn’t look at all like Klamm? And yet you can find people in the village who would swear that Momus is Klamm and none other than he. That’s how people create confusion for themselves. And why should it be any different at the Castle? Somebody told Barnabas that the official is Klamm, and there actually is a resemblance between the two of them, but it’s a resemblance that Barnabas himself has always doubted. And everything supports his doubts. Klamm is supposed to squeeze between other officials in a public room, with a pencil stuck behind his ear? But that is highly unlikely. Barnabas often says rather childishly, though only when he’s in a confident mood: ‘That official certainly looks very like Klamm, and if he were sitting in his own office, at his own desk, and his name were on the door, I would no longer doubt it.’ That’s childish, but it does make sense. But it would make far more sense if Barnabas, when he’s up there, would ask several people about the real state of affairs, for according to him there are enough people standing about in that room. And even if their reports weren’t much more reliable than the report of the man who, without even being asked, showed him Klamm, then at least some reference points, some points of comparison, might emerge from the diversity of opinion. This isn’t my idea, it’s Barnabas’s idea, but he won’t dare try it out; out of fear of possibly losing his position by inadvertently breaking some unknown rules, he won’t dare speak to anyone; that’s how insecure he feels; to my mind this truly pitiful insecurity sheds more light on his position than all of his reports. How suspicious and threatening everything must seem to him there if he doesn’t even dare to open his mouth to ask an innocent question. Whenever I reflect on this I accuse myself of leaving him alone in those unknown rooms where the things that go on are such that even he, who is timid rather than cowardly, surely trembles with fear.”