by Franz Kafka
“That is possible,” said Olga, “but then it’s even worse since the official has such important concerns that the files are too valuable or too voluminous to be taken along, such officials give orders to drive at a gallop. In any case nobody has time to spare for Father. And besides: There are several approaches to the Castle. At times this one is fashionable and most drive there, at others that one and everyone rushes in that direction. The rules according to which these changes take place are still unknown. At eight o’clock in the morning all of them may be traveling on a certain road, half an hour later all are on a different one, ten minutes later on a third, half an hour later back on the first, which they then remain on all day, but at any moment this may change. True, all approach roads merge near the village, but by then all carriages are speeding along, whereas near the Castle the pace is somewhat more moderate. But just as the sequence of departures in relation to the roads is irregular and inscrutable, so too is the number of carriages. Indeed, there are often days when there’s not a single carriage to be seen, but soon there are throngs of them out driving again. And just think of Father having to cope with all this. In his best suit, soon his only one, he sets off each morning from the house, accompanied by our blessings. He takes along a small fire company badge, which he has kept illicitly, so that he can pin it on outside the village, he’s afraid to show it in the village itself, though it’s so small you can barely see it two paces away, and yet to Father’s mind it’s even supposed to be able to draw the attention of passing officials. Not far from the entrance to the Castle is a market garden, it belongs to one Bertuch who supplies the Castle with vegetables, there on the narrow stone pedestal of the garden fence Father selected a place for himself. Bertuch tolerated that because he had been friends with Father and had been one of his most faithful customers; he has a rather crippled foot, you see, and believed that only Father was capable of making him a boot that fit. Father sat there day after day, it was a bleak rainy fall but he was utterly indifferent to the weather, each morning at a certain hour he put his hand on the latch and waved goodbye; in the evening—each day he seemed more stooped—he returned completely soaked and threw himself in a corner. First he described his little experiences, for instance, that Bertuch had thrown him a blanket over the fence out of compassion or old friendship, or that he thought he had recognized one or other official in a passing carriage, or that a coachman would recognize him from time to time and jokingly flick him with his whip. Later he stopped telling us these things, he had obviously given up hope of accomplishing anything there, he merely considered it his duty, his dreary vocation, to go and spend the day there. That was when he started getting rheumatic pains, winter was coming, snow fell early, the winters here begin very early, anyhow he sat there, first on the rain-drenched stones, then in the snow. At night he gasped with pain, in the morning there were times when he wasn’t sure whether he should go, but then he overcame his reluctance and went. Mother clung to him and did not want to let him go, so probably out of anxiety over his no longer compliant limbs he let her go with him, and then before long Mother too was racked with the same pains. We often went to see them, brought them food or simply visited them or tried to persuade them to return home, how often we found them there, slumped on their narrow seat, leaning on each other, crouched in a thin blanket that barely covered them, with only the gray of snow and mist for surroundings and no person or carriage anywhere about, what a sight, K., what a sight! Until one morning Father could no longer get his stiff legs out of bed; he was inconsolable, in the delirium of a light fever he thought that he saw a carriage halt up at Bertuch’s, an official get down, look for Father at the fence, shake his head angrily, and go back to the carriage. Meanwhile, Father let out screams as if he were determined to make the official up there notice him so that he could explain the blamelessness of his absence. And it turned into a long absence, he never went back, for weeks he had to remain in bed. Amalia took over all care, services, treatment, everything, and indeed, with a few breaks, she has kept it up to this day. She knows medicinal herbs that ease the pains, needs almost no sleep, is never startled, fears nothing, never becomes impatient, she did all the work for our parents; whereas we were unable to do anything to help and fluttered about uneasily, she remained cool and calm throughout. But when the worst was over and Father was able to work his way out of bed, carefully, supported on both sides, Amalia immediately withdrew and left him to us.”
XX.
OLGA’S PLANS
“Then we had to find some occupation for Father that he could still do, anything that would at least support him in his belief that his work served to shift the guilt away from the family. Finding something like that wasn’t difficult, for anything, essentially, could match the effectiveness of sitting outside Bertuch’s garden, and yet I found something that gave hope even to me. Each time the question of our guilt was raised in offices, by clerks, or elsewhere, there was only talk of the insult to Sortini’s messenger, nobody dared to probe any further. Well, I said to myself, if people in general know only of the insult to the messenger, even if only seemingly so, then it would be possible, again even if only seemingly so, to make amends for everything if we succeeded in appeasing the messenger. Of course no complaint arrived, as has been stated, nor has the matter been taken up by any agency, and so the messenger is, in his capacity as an individual—and that’s all that matters here—free to forgive. All of this couldn’t possibly be of decisive importance, was merely an illusion, might once again lead nowhere, but still it would please Father, and in this way one might almost manage, perhaps even to his satisfaction, to drive into a corner the numerous information givers who had tormented him. But first, of course, the messenger had to be found. When I told Father of my plan, at first he became very annoyed; you see, he had become extremely stubborn, partly in the belief, which had come to him during his illness, that we had always prevented him from obtaining final victory, first by ending his subsidy and then by keeping him in bed, and partly because he was no longer capable of grasping the ideas of anybody else. I had not even come to the end of my story when my plan was rejected; he believed that he had to continue waiting at Bertuch’s garden and that we should take him there in the handcart because he would no longer be able to climb up there every day. But I didn’t relent and gradually he became reconciled to the idea, all that disturbed him was his complete dependence upon me, since I was the only one who had seen the messenger at the time, Father didn’t know him. Of course one servant resembles the next, and even I wasn’t entirely sure that I could recognize that one. Then we began to go to the Gentlemen’s Inn to look among the servants there. True, he had been a servant of Sortini’s and Sortini no longer came to the village, but the gentlemen often switch servants, we could surely find him in some other gentleman’s group, and even if we didn’t find him we might be able to gather information about him from the other servants. To that end we would have to spend every evening at the Gentlemen’s Inn, and we weren’t particularly welcome anywhere, especially not in a place of that sort, and of course it wasn’t possible for us to go there as paying guests. But as it turned out, they actually were able to find some use for us, I’m sure you know what a torment the servants were for Frieda, mostly they are on the whole quiet people, the easy work makes them spoiled and ponderous, ‘May you fare like a servant’ is how officials wish somebody well, and it’s said that when it comes to the good life the servants are the true masters at the Castle; they certainly do know how to appreciate that and while at the Castle, where they must move about under its laws, they are calm and dignified, I have heard various reports confirming this, and even among the servants here you find traces of it, but only traces, because in the village the laws of the Castle are no longer entirely applicable to them, they seem transformed, having turned into a wild, unruly horde, governed not by the laws but by their insatiable drives. Their shamelessness knows no bounds, it’s lucky for the village that they can leave the Gentlemen’
s Inn only upon orders, but at the Gentlemen’s Inn itself one has to try to get along with them; well, Frieda found that very difficult, so she was very glad she could use me to calm the servants; for over two years now I have spent the night in the stable with the servants, at least twice a week. Earlier, when Father was still able to go to the Gentlemen’s Inn he slept somewhere in the taproom waiting for the news that I used to bring in the morning. It was little enough. To this day we haven’t found the messenger we sought, they say he’s still working for Sortini, who has high regard for him, the messenger must have followed Sortini when he withdrew to more distant offices. The servants haven’t seen him any more recently than we have, and if one of them insists that he has, then it’s probably a mistake. So my plan might seem to have failed, but that isn’t quite so, we haven’t actually found the messenger, and the treks to the Gentlemen’s Inn and the nights spent there, and perhaps even his compassion for me, if he’s still capable of any such thing, have unfortunately almost finished off Father, and he has been in the condition in which you saw him for almost two years, but he may be faring better than Mother, whose end we expect each day, for it’s been postponed only thanks to the superhuman efforts of Amalia. But what I did manage to do at the Gentlemen’s Inn was establish a certain connection with the Castle; don’t despise me if I say that I don’t regret having acted as I did. But what could that important connection to the Castle possibly be, you may be asking yourself. And you’re right, it certainly isn’t an important connection. But I have come to know many servants, the servants of almost all the gentlemen who have come to the village over the last few years, and if I do reach the Castle someday, I won’t be a stranger there. Of course, those were only the servants in the village, they’re completely different at the Castle and probably wouldn’t even recognize anyone anymore, especially not someone they have associated with in the village, even if they had sworn a hundred times in the stable that they were eagerly anticipating a reunion at the Castle. Besides, I know from experience how little all such promises mean. But that certainly isn’t the most important thing. It’s not only through the servants themselves that I have a connection with the Castle but perhaps also hopefully in such a way that whoever is observing me and my actions from up there—and managing the large staff of servants is of course an extremely important and vexatious part of official work—that the person observing me in that manner will perhaps reach a milder verdict about me than anyone else would, perhaps he will recognize that I too am fighting, no matter how miserably, for the sake of our family, and am continuing Father’s efforts. If that is how they see things, then perhaps I will also be forgiven for accepting money from the servants and for using it for our family. And I accomplished something else, though you blame me for this too. I found out from the domestics that it is possible, for instance, in roundabout ways, without difficult official application proceedings, to enter the Castle services, but then you’re not an official employee, only a secret semi-probationer, you don’t have rights or duties, it’s harder not having duties, though you do have some since you’re close to everything and can notice favorable opportunities and take advantage of them, you aren’t an employee, but then by chance some kind of work can turn up; just then there’s no employee around, someone cries, you hurry over and the very thing that a moment ago you were not, namely an employee, you then become. But when can such opportunities be found? Sometimes right away, you have barely entered, barely looked around, and the opportunity is already at hand, but it is not everyone who already has, as a novice, enough presence of mind to immediately seize the chance, at other times this takes years longer than the proceedings for public admission, and for such semi-probationers there’s no possibility whatsoever of a regular public admission. So a good many doubts arise; but they become moot since the candidates for public admission are most painstakingly selected, and any member of a family found to be in any way disreputable is immediately rejected; if such a person subjects himself to this proceeding, for instance, and spends years trembling about the outcome, everyone will ask in astonishment how he could dare to attempt anything so pointless, but he does have hope, for otherwise how could he live, though after many years, perhaps as an old man, he learns that he was rejected, finds out that all is lost and that his life was in vain. Of course here too there are exceptions, which is why one is so easily tempted. It sometimes happens that it’s precisely those disreputable people who are finally accepted, there are some officials who very much against their own will love the smell of that sort of wild game, and during admission exams they sniff the air, twist their mouths, roll their eyes, men like that somehow seem to stir their appetite, and they must cling to the law books in order to be able to resist. But sometimes that doesn’t help the man gain admission but only endlessly prolongs the admission proceedings, which are not terminated but simply broken off after the man dies. Thus both the legal admission and the other kind are full of open and hidden difficulties, and it certainly makes sense to weigh everything carefully before getting mixed up in anything of that sort. Well, we did not fail to do so, Barnabas and I. Each time I came from the Gentlemen’s Inn we sat down together, I talked about my latest discovery, we discussed it for days, and it wasn’t good that the work in Barnabas’s hands went untouched for so long. And here I may be at fault from your point of view. After all, I knew the domestics’ stories weren’t very reliable. I knew that they never had the slightest desire to tell me about the Castle and always diverted attention elsewhere, they made us beg for each word, but of course once they got going, they let rip, talked gibberish, bragged, outdid one another with exaggerations and fabrications, so that the constant shouting at which everybody took turns inside the dark stable must have obviously at best contained only a few meager hints of the truth. I told all this to Barnabas, just as I had seen it, and he, who was still utterly incapable of separating truth from lies and because of our family circumstances almost thirsted with longing for these matters, drank everything in, and glowed with fervor for more. And my new plan did indeed rely on Barnabas. No more could be accomplished through the domestics. Sortini’s messenger was not to be found and would never be found; Sortini, and therefore his messenger too, seemed to have receded ever farther, people had often forgotten their appearance and their names, so I often had to describe them at length, with no result other than that they remembered them with great difficulty, but that’s all they could say about them. And as far as my life with the domestics was concerned, I had no say of course in how they pronounced judgment on it, and could only hope that they would take that episode in the spirit in which it had been engaged in and therefore deduct a small part of our family’s guilt, but I got no outward signs of that. Still, I kept it up since I could see no other possibility of our accomplishing anything at the Castle. For Barnabas, though, I could see a possibility of that sort. From the domestics’ stories I could deduce, if I wanted to, as I certainly do, that anyone who is admitted to the Castle services can accomplish a great deal for his family. But then, of course, how credible were these stories? That was impossible to determine, but I knew it was little enough. For if, say, I was solemnly assured by a domestic, whom I would never see again or would hardly recognize even if I did, that he would help my brother find a position at the Castle, or at least support him if Barnabas were somehow to enter the Castle, say by providing him with refreshment, for according to the stories the domestics tell, in the course of the excessively long waiting periods it does happen that applicants for positions faint or become confused and then they are lost, unless their friends watch out for them—when these warnings alerted me to such matters and much else besides, they were probably justified, but the promises accompanying them were absolutely empty. But not for Barnabas, whom I cautioned against believing in such promises, but even the mere mention of them won him over to my plans. The examples I gave didn’t greatly impress him, he was far more impressed with the stories of the domestics. And so I was actually thrown back
on my own resources, no one except for Amalia could get through to our parents, the more I pursued Father’s old plans in my own way, the more Amalia cut herself off from me; she still speaks to me in front of you and others, but not when the two of us are alone; for the domestics at the Gentlemen’s Inn I was a plaything, which they kept trying to break; throughout those two years I have never said an intimate word to any of them, nothing but dissimulation, lies, or craziness, so I had only Barnabas to turn to, and Barnabas was still very young. While informing him of all this, I noticed the gleam in his eyes, which he still has; I was startled but didn’t give up, for I thought the stakes were too high. True, I didn’t have the great, if empty, plans of my father and I also lacked the determination that men possess, I stuck to the task of making amends for the insult to the messenger and even wanted to get credit for my modesty. But what I had failed to do alone I now wanted to achieve through Barnabas in a different and more secure way. After we had insulted a messenger and driven him from the front offices, we took what was surely the most natural step and offered them a new messenger in the shape of Barnabas, who would carry out the duties of the insulted messenger and thus make it possible for the insulted party to bide his time quietly someplace, at some remove, for as long as he wanted, for as long as he needed to forget the insult. But I fully realized that, for all its modesty, this plan wasn’t lacking in presumption, for it might seem as though we wanted to dictate to the authorities how they should settle personnel matters or as if we doubted that the authorities were capable of arranging everything in the best way through their own devices and had even made arrangements long before it dawned on us that anything could be done here. But then again I thought it impossible that the authorities should misunderstand me in that way or, even if they did, that they would do so intentionally, that they would in other words reject everything I do from the outset, without further scrutiny. So I didn’t relent, and Barnabas’s ambition took care of the rest. During the preparations Barnabas became so arrogant that he began to feel that a shoemaker’s job was too dirty for a future office employee like him, and on those rare occasions when Amalia spoke to him he even had the audacity to contradict her outright. I didn’t begrudge him this short-lived joy, for, as could easily have been foreseen, on the very first day he went to the Castle his joy and his arrogance instantly disappeared. It was the start of that apparent service I’ve already told you about. It was astonishing that Barnabas had no difficulty entering the Castle, or rather the office which has become his workplace, as it were. This success almost made me go mad, the moment Barnabas whispered me news of it when he came home I ran to Amalia, grabbed her, pressed her into a corner, and kissed her with lips and teeth, causing her to weep in pain and fright. I was so agitated I couldn’t say a word, besides we hadn’t spoken to each other in a long time, I therefore put off the conversation for a few days. But of course over the next few days there was no reason to talk. After those rapid gains, that was it. And then for two years Barnabas led that monotonous wrenching life. The domestics let us down completely; I gave Barnabas a short letter to take along, commending him to the care of the domestics, whom I at the same time reminded of their promises, and whenever Barnabas saw a domestic he pulled out the letter and held it up in front of his eyes, and though he had probably come across domestics who didn’t know me, and though his way of showing the letter without saying a word—he doesn’t dare to speak up there—irritated my acquaintances, all the same it was shameful that nobody helped him, and it was a deliverance, which we admittedly could have brought about a long time ago on our own, when a domestic, who may have several times had the letter thrust at him, crumpled it up and threw it into a wastebasket. It even occurred to me that he could almost have said: ‘After all, you treat letters the same way too.’ But, however fruitless this entire period, it had a positive effect on Barnabas, if one wants to describe as positive his aging before his time and prematurely becoming a man, in some ways earnest and insightful beyond manhood itself. It often saddens me to look at him and to compare him with the youth he was even two years ago. And yet I do not get from him any of the consolation and support that he might be able to give me as a man. Without me, he would hardly have got into the Castle, but ever since going up there he has become independent of me. I’m the only one he confides in, but he probably tells me only a fraction of what he has on his mind. He tells me a great deal about the Castle, but from his stories, from the minute facts he discloses, it’s impossible to gather how this can have so greatly transformed him. It is especially difficult to understand why up there, as a man, he has so completely lost the courage which, when he was a boy, was enough to drive us to despair. Of course this futile standing around, this waiting around over and over again for days on end without any prospect of change, is wearying and fills you with despair and finally even makes you unable to do anything better than stand around in desperation. But why didn’t he resist earlier? Especially since he soon noticed that I had been right and that there was nothing there to further his goal, though one could probably take advantage of certain things to improve our family’s lot. For up there everything, except for the whims of the servants, is quite modest, and since ambition seeks fulfillment in work and the task itself becomes paramount, eventually all ambition disappears; there is no reason to indulge in childish wishes there. Still, Barnabas was convinced, he told me, that he could clearly see how power and knowledge were wielded even by those rather dubious officials whose rooms he could enter. How they dictated, quickly, with half-closed eyes and brief gestures; how, only with their index finger, wordlessly, they dispatched the surly servants who, breathing heavily at such moments, smiled happily, or how they found an important passage in their books, pounded on it, and the others, insofar as this was possible in the confined space, ran up and stretched their necks out toward it. Such things gave Barnabas exalted ideas about these men and he had the impression that if he advanced far enough to be noticed and could exchange a few words with them not as a stranger but as an office colleague, if only of the most subordinate kind, then it would be possible to obtain unforeseen benefits for our family. But things have simply not yet gone that far, and Barnabas doesn’t dare to undertake anything that might take him closer to that goal, though he is keenly aware that within the family, because of the unfortunate circumstances and despite his youth, he has moved up and taken on the heavy responsibility of acting as head of the family. And there’s one other thing I must confess: It has been a week now since you arrived. I heard someone say so at the Gentlemen’s Inn but paid no attention to it; a land surveyor had come, I didn’t even know what that was. But the following evening Barnabas comes home earlier than usual—at a set time I used to go to meet him partway—and seeing Amalia in the room, he pulls me out onto the street, presses his face down on my shoulder, and weeps for several minutes. He has again become the little boy he once was. Something has happened to him, and he’s clearly no match for it. It’s as if a completely new world has opened up before him and he cannot stand the happiness and worries stemming from the novelty of it all. And yet all that happened to him was that he received a letter to deliver to you. Still, it is the first letter, the first task he has ever been given.”