by Franz Kafka
XXIV.
It’s likely that he would have walked past Erlanger’s room just as indifferently if Erlanger hadn’t stood in the open door and signaled to him. A single brief signal with his index finger. Erlanger was already completely prepared to leave, he wore a black fur coat with a high-buttoned collar. A servant was handing him his gloves and still held his fur cap. “You should have come long ago,” said Erlanger. K. was about to give an excuse, but Erlanger indicated by closing his eyes wearily that he did not want to hear it. “This has to do with the following matter,” he said, “a certain Frieda used to serve in the taproom, I only know her name, I don’t know Frieda herself, she is of no interest to me. At times this Frieda served Klamm his beer. There now seems to be another girl there. Well, this is of course a trivial change, probably for everyone and certainly for Klamm. But the greater the work, and Klamm’s work is of course the greatest, the less energy is left for fending off the outside world, and as a result every trivial change in the most trivial matters can be a serious disturbance. The slightest change on Klamm’s desk, the removal of a stain that was there forever, all of these things can disturb him, and so too can a new serving girl. Now even if this were to disturb everybody else and every other kind of work, it does not disturb Klamm, there can simply be no question of that. Still, we must guard Klamm’s comfort so closely that we even dispose of disturbances that he doesn’t regard as such—and for him there probably are no disturbances—if they strike us as possible disturbances. It isn’t for his sake, not because of his work, that we dispose of these disturbances, but for ourselves, for our consciences and for our peace of mind. And Frieda must therefore return to the taproom at once, she will perhaps cause a disturbance by returning; then we shall send her away again, but for now she must return. You live with her, they tell me, so see to it at once that she returns. Personal feelings cannot be taken into account, that goes without saying, and I therefore refuse to engage in any further discussion of the matter. I’m certainly doing far more than is necessary by mentioning that if you prove yourself in this little affair, it may at some point help you get ahead. That is all I have to say to you.” Nodding to K. in farewell, he put on the fur cap the servant had handed him and set off down the corridor, quickly but with a slight limp, followed by the servant.
At times the orders given here were quite easy to carry out, but this ease was not to K.’s liking. Not only because the order pertained to Frieda, and although it was indeed meant as an order sounded like mockery to K., but also especially because he thought it foreshadowed the futility of all his efforts. The orders simply passed over him, the unfavorable and the favorable, and even the favorable ones probably had a final, unfavorable core, but in any case they all passed over him and he was in far too inferior a position to influence them, let alone to make them fall silent and ensure that his own voice be heard. If Erlanger waves you aside, what can you do, and if he shouldn’t wave you aside, what could you say to him? True, K. remained conscious of the fact that his weariness today had done him greater harm than all the unfavorable circumstances; why couldn’t he, who had believed that he could rely on his own body and who, if it hadn’t been for that belief, wouldn’t have set out at all, why couldn’t he put up with a few bad nights and one sleepless one, why did he become so uncontrollably tired, here of all places, where nobody was tired, or rather where everybody was constantly tired, though it didn’t harm their work and even seemed to further it. One had to conclude from this that it was by nature an entirely different kind of weariness from K.’s. Here it was probably weariness in the course of happy work, something that from the outside looked like weariness but was actually indestructible calm, indestructible peace. If you’ve become a little tired by noon, that is part of the benign, natural course of the day. For the gentlemen here it’s always noon, K. told himself.
And this certainly tallied with the fact that now, at five o’clock, everything was coming alive on both sides of the corridor. This babble of voices from the rooms had something extremely cheerful about it. First it sounded like the jubilation of children getting ready for an excursion, then like wake-up time in a henhouse, like the joy of being in complete accord with the awakening day, somewhere there was even a gentleman imitating the crowing of a cock. Though the actual corridor was still empty, the doors were already moving, there was always one being opened a crack and then closed again quickly, the corridor was buzzing with all these door openers and door closers; K. saw here and there, above in the opening in the walls, which didn’t quite reach the ceiling, disheveled early-morning heads appear, and then vanish. From a distance, guided by a servant, came a tiny little cart containing files. A second servant walked alongside, holding a list which he was evidently using to compare the numbers on the doors with those on the files. The little cart halted before most doors, which generally opened, and the relevant files, sometimes only a single sheet—in cases like that a brief conversation arose between the room and the corridor, the servant was probably being chided—were handed into the room. If the door remained closed, the files were carefully stacked on the threshold. In such cases it seemed to K. that the movement of the doors in the immediate vicinity was not lessening, even though the files had already been distributed there as well, but increasing. Perhaps the others were peering longingly at the files on the threshold, which still hadn’t been picked up and were, incomprehensibly, still lying there; they couldn’t understand how someone who had only to open his door to gain possession of his files could possibly fail to do so; perhaps it was even possible that any files left lying there were later distributed among the other gentlemen, who by making frequent checks were already trying to establish whether the files were still lying on the threshold and whether there was therefore still hope for them. Besides, most of the remaining files were in especially large bundles and K. assumed that they had been temporarily left there out of a certain boastfulness or malice or even out of justified pride, as a way to encourage the colleagues. Confirming him in this assumption was the tendency every now and then, always just when he wasn’t looking, for the pile, after it had been put on show for a sufficiently long time, to be suddenly and hastily pulled into the room and then the door remained as quiet as it had been earlier; then the other doors in the vicinity also calmed down, disappointed or even satisfied that this object of constant annoyance had finally been disposed of, but they gradually started moving again.
K. observed all this not only with curiosity but with sympathy. He felt almost comfortable amid the bustle, glanced about here and there, and—from suitably far away—watched the servants, who had, to be sure, often turned toward him with a severe expression, lowered heads, pursed lips, as they distributed the files. The further the work advanced, the less smoothly it went; either the list wasn’t entirely accurate or the servant couldn’t make out the files, or the gentlemen objected on other grounds, in any case it turned out that some distributions had to be reversed, and then the little cart went back and negotiations for the return of the files were conducted through a crack in the door. These negotiations created sufficient difficulties, but it also happened often enough that whenever there was any question about files having to be returned precisely those doors that had previously moved the fastest remained implacably closed, as though they didn’t want to have anything more to do with the matter. Only now did the real difficulties begin. The one gentleman who considered himself entitled to the files was extremely impatient, made much noise in his room, clapped his hands, stamped his feet, and repeatedly called out into the corridor through the crack in the door the number of a certain file. Then the little cart was often left quite abandoned. One servant was busy soothing the impatient gentleman, the other was standing in front of the closed door, fighting for the return of the files. Both had a difficult time of it. The impatient gentleman became even more impatient at these efforts to pacify him, could no longer endure the empty words of the servant, for what he wanted was not consolation but rather f
iles; at one point one such gentleman emptied, from the opening above, a full washbasin on the servant. But the other servant, who was evidently of higher rank, had an even more difficult time. If the gentleman in question agreed to negotiate, then there were sober discussions in the course of which the servant quoted from his list, the gentleman from his memos and also from the files that he was supposed to return but which for now he still held tightly in his hand, so that barely a corner of them remained visible to the servant’s longing eyes. The servant also had to run back for new evidence to the cart, which in the slightly sloping corridor had kept rolling all by itself, or he had to go to the gentlemen who were claiming the files and exchange the objections of the previous owners for new counterobjections. Those negotiations took a long time, occasionally they came to an agreement, the gentleman gave up a portion of the files, or as compensation received another file since there had merely been a mix-up, but there were also times when somebody had to give up all the requested files without any fuss, either because the servant’s evidence had driven him into a corner or because he had grown tired of the continual negotiations, but then he didn’t hand the files to the servant, and threw them instead on a sudden decision along the corridor, so that the strings came loose and the sheets went flying and the servants had great difficulty putting everything back in order again. But all this was still easy enough compared to when the servant received no answer to his repeated requests for the files to be returned, for then he stood before the closed door, requesting, pleading, citing from his list, quoting regulations, but all in vain, there wasn’t a sound from the room, and the servant evidently had no right to enter without permission. And then even this excellent servant was sometimes abandoned by his self-control, he went to his little cart, sat down on the files, wiped the sweat from his forehead and for a while did nothing but swing his feet helplessly. All about him there was great interest in the affair, whispers came from all sides, scarcely a door stood still, and up at the molding following all these events were faces that, oddly enough, were almost completely masked by scarves and that, what’s more, wouldn’t stay in one place even for a second. During this commotion K. was struck by the fact that Bürgel’s door had been closed the entire time and that even though the servants had already passed through this section of the corridor no files had been distributed to Bürgel. Perhaps he was still asleep, and in this noise it must have been a sound sleep, but why hadn’t he received any files? Only very few rooms, probably unoccupied ones at that, had been overlooked in that way. By contrast, Erlanger’s room was now occupied by a new and uncommonly restless guest who must have literally driven Erlanger away during the night; this wasn’t exactly in keeping with Erlanger’s cool, worldly-wise nature, but the fact that he had had to wait for K. on the threshold indicated as much.
From all these remote observations K. always returned before long to the servant; this particular servant truly had little in common with what K. had been told about the servants in general, about their idleness, their comfortable life, their arrogance, for even among the servants there were surely exceptions or, more likely, diverse groups, for there were, as K. noticed, many different ranks here, of which he had up to now barely seen a hint. The intransigence of this servant was especially pleasing to him. In the battle against these stubborn little rooms—to K. it often seemed like a battle against the rooms, since he barely got to see the occupants—the servant never let up. True, he was becoming exhausted—who wouldn’t have become exhausted?—but, recovering quickly, he slid down from the little cart and, erect, with clenched teeth, had another go at the door that had to be conquered. Twice, three times he was beaten back, actually by quite simple means, merely by the devilish silence, but he was not yet defeated. Since he saw that he couldn’t achieve anything through an open attack, he tried another method, relying, if K. understood this properly, on cunning. He then seemed to leave the door alone, as if to exhaust its capacity for silence, turning to other doors instead, but after a while he came back, called the other servant, all this conspicuously and loudly, and began piling files on the threshold of the closed door, as though he had changed his mind and were now convinced that by rights the files should not be taken from the gentleman but rather allocated to him. Then he went ahead, keeping an eye on the door, and when before long, as usually happened, the gentleman cautiously opened the door to pull in the files, in a few leaps the servant was there, shoved his foot between door and jamb, and at least succeeded in forcing him to negotiate face to face, which usually led to a halfway satisfactory settlement. And if this didn’t work or if it seemed to him to be the wrong method for one of the doors, he tried a different approach. Then he would turn, for instance, toward the gentleman who was demanding the files. Pushing aside the other servant, who was only working mechanically and was quite useless as an attendant, he began to address the gentleman, emphatically, in a whisper, secretively, sticking his head quite far into the room; most likely he was promising him that the other gentleman would be suitably punished during the next distribution, at any rate he often pointed to the opponent’s door and laughed, insofar as his weariness allowed. Then there were some cases, though, one or two, where he did abandon all his efforts, but here too K. thought that was merely a seeming abandonment or at least a justifiable abandonment, for the servant went ahead, enduring the noise from the deprived gentleman without even looking around; only a rare, protracted closing of the eyes indicated that he was suffering from the noise. But then that gentleman too gradually calmed down; just as children’s uninterrupted crying gradually turns into ever more isolated sobbing, so too with his shouting, but even after he had quieted down entirely, one could sometimes once again hear an isolated shout or a hasty opening and slamming of that door. In any case, it turned out that here too the servant had probably proceeded in an absolutely correct manner. Finally there was only one gentleman left who wouldn’t calm down, he had remained quiet for quite a while, though only in order to recuperate, then started off again, no less loudly than before. It wasn’t altogether clear why he was shouting and complaining like this, perhaps it hadn’t anything to do with the distribution of the files. Meanwhile the servant had finished his work, only one file, actually only a scrap of paper, a note from a notepad, had been left lying in the cart through the fault of the attendant, and now they couldn’t decide to whom it should be allocated. “That might well be my file,” was the thought that went through K.’s head. The council chairman had always spoken of the smallest case. Arbitrary and ridiculous though this assumption seemed to K., he nonetheless tried to approach the servant, who was pensively examining the note; this wasn’t exactly easy, since the servant repaid K. poorly for his sympathy; even throughout the hardest work he had always found time to glance angrily or impatiently, twitching his head nervously, at K. But now that the distribution was over, he seemed to have almost forgotten K., just as he had become more indifferent in other respects; his fatigue made this understandable, he didn’t bother much with the note either, perhaps he hadn’t even read it but had only pretended, and though he could probably have made each of the gentlemen here in the corridor happy by allotting him the note, he decided otherwise, for he was fed up with this task; with his index finger on his lips he motioned for his companion to be quiet—K. was still some distance away from him—tore the note into little pieces and put them in his pocket. That was probably the first irregularity in office operations that K. had ever noticed here, though it was possible that he misunderstood this, too. And even if it was an irregularity, that was forgivable, for under the conditions that prevailed here the servant could not work without error, and at some point the pent-up irritation, the pent-up unrest, would have to erupt, and if this expressed itself merely in the tearing up of a little note, that was still innocent enough. The voice of the gentleman who was impossible to calm down still rang out in the corridor, and his colleagues, who otherwise weren’t exactly friendly to one another, seemed to be in complete agreement abou
t the noise, it began to seem as if this particular gentleman had taken on the task of making noise for all the rest, who were merely encouraging him with nods and shouts to keep going. But the servant paid no attention to this, he had finished his work and now pointed to the cart handle, signaling to the other servant that he should grasp it, and so they left as they had come, only more content, and so quickly that the little cart went bouncing ahead of them. Only once did they flinch and look back, just when the gentleman—who was still shouting and at whose door K. now hung about because he would have liked to know what the gentleman actually wanted—evidently no longer finding shouting adequate, had probably discovered the button of an electric bell and, no doubt overjoyed to be thus relieved, had stopped shouting and now began to ring incessantly. At that, a great murmur went up in the other rooms, it appeared to indicate general agreement, the gentleman appeared to be doing something that all the others would have gladly done long ago had they not for some unknown reason been obliged to abandon the effort. Was it perhaps the servants, perhaps Frieda, whom the gentleman wanted to call with the bell? Well he could keep on ringing. For Frieda was busy wrapping Jeremias in wet compresses and even if he was now healthy again, she had no time, for then she lay in his arms. Still, the ringing had an immediate effect. Rushing over from some distance away came the landlord of the Gentlemen’s Inn, dressed in black and buttoned up as usual; but it was as if he had forgotten his dignity, he was running so hard; his arms were half-extended, as if he had been called because of some great misfortune and came to seize it and smother it on his breast; and at every little irregularity in the ringing he seemed to do a little jump and then hurry even more. At some distance behind him, his wife now appeared as well, she too ran with her arms extended, but her steps were small and mincing and K. thought that she would arrive here too late, for by then the landlord would already have taken care of everything. And to make way for the landlord’s dash, K. went and stood close to the wall. But the landlord stopped right next to K., as though he were the goal, and soon the landlady was there too and both inundated him with reproaches, which he couldn’t understand in the bustle and surprise, especially since the gentleman’s bell mixed in as well, and then other bells went into action, no longer out of necessity but simply as a game and in an excess of joy. Because it was important to him to gain a proper understanding of his guilt, K. readily complied when the landlord took him under his arm and accompanied him away from the noise, which kept increasing, for behind them—K. didn’t even turn around since the landlord and, even more so, on the other side, the landlady, were scolding him—the doors now opened fully, the corridor sprang to life, there was an increase in traffic as in a lively narrow alley, the doors before them were evidently waiting impatiently for K. to pass so that they could let out the gentlemen, and amidst all this pealed the bells, which were repeatedly rung as if in celebration of a victory. Now, finally—they were already back in the calm white courtyard, where some sleighs were waiting—K. gradually learned what it was all about. Neither the landlord nor the landlady could understand how K. could possibly have dared to do something like that. But what had he done? Repeatedly K. asked, but for a long time he could not elicit an answer, because his guilt was all too self-evident to them, and so they never even remotely considered that he might have acted in good faith. K. only slowly recognized all of these things. It was wrong of him to have been in the corridor, for in general he was at most allowed into the taproom, and then only as a favor, which could always be withdrawn. If summoned by a gentleman, he must of course go where he was summoned, but must always realize—surely he had at least normal human intelligence?—that he was in a place where he did not belong and to which he had merely been summoned by a gentleman, most reluctantly, and only because some official business demanded and excused this. So he had to appear there quickly to submit to the interrogation, but then he had to disappear, if possible, more quickly still. Hadn’t he had a feeling of grave impropriety there in the corridor? But if that were so, how could he have hung around there like an animal in pasture? Hadn’t he been called to a nighttime interrogation and did he not know why nighttime interrogations had been introduced? The sole purpose of the nighttime interrogations—and here K. received a new explanation of what they meant—was to ensure that those parties whom the gentlemen couldn’t stand to see by day were quickly examined under artificial light at night, so the gentlemen would get a chance right after the hearing to forget all that ugliness in their sleep. But K.’s behavior had made a mockery of all of the measures. Even ghosts disappear toward morning, but K. had remained there with his hands in his pockets, as though he expected that since he was not going away the entire corridor with all the rooms and gentlemen would go away instead. And this would certainly have happened—he could be sure of this—had it been at all possible, for the gentlemen’s delicacy of feeling was boundless. Nobody would, for instance, drive K. away, or even tell him what was so obvious, namely, that he should finally go, nobody would do so, even though they probably trembled with excitement while K. was around, and so the morning, their favorite time, was spoiled for them. Rather than take action against K., they preferred to suffer, though no doubt partly in hopes that K. would finally have to recognize the most glaringly obvious thing and would have to suffer, in a way that matched the gentlemen’s sufferings, by being obliged to stand in the corridor in the morning, so terribly out of place, so visible to all. Vain hope. They don’t know or in their friendliness and disdain don’t want to know that there are insensitive, hard hearts that cannot be softened even by reverence. Does not even the night moth, poor creature, when day comes, seek a quiet corner and flatten itself out, preferring to disappear and unhappy that it cannot. K., by contrast, goes and stands where he is most visible, and if in this way he could prevent the day from dawning, he would do so. He cannot prevent that, but unfortunately he can postpone it and make it more difficult. Didn’t he watch the files being distributed? Something that nobody was allowed to watch, except for the immediate participants. Something that the landlord and the landlady weren’t even allowed to watch in their own house. About which they had heard only a few hints, such as today, for instance, from the servant. So he hadn’t noticed the difficulties under which the distribution of files had taken place, which were actually incomprehensible, for after all each gentleman serves only the cause, never thinks of personal gain, and therefore had to work with all his strength to ensure that the distribution of files, this important, essential work, proceed quickly, easily, and without error? And had it really never even remotely dawned on K. that the main thing about all the difficulties was that the distribution had to be carried out with the doors almost closed, without the possibility of direct contact between the gentlemen, who could of course signal to one another in a flash, whereas the distribution through the servants necessarily has to go on for hours, can never take place without complaints, is a constant source of torment to the gentlemen and to the servants, and will probably have harmful consequences for the work later on. And why couldn’t the gentlemen have any contact with one another? So K. didn’t understand this yet? Nothing like this had ever happened to the landlady—the landlord confirmed that this was also true of him—though they had had to deal with quite a few unruly people. Things that otherwise one didn’t dare to say had to be said to him openly, for otherwise he did not understand the most important point. Well now, since it had to be said: because of him, simply and solely because of him, the gentlemen couldn’t emerge from their rooms, for early in the morning, shortly after sleep, they are too modest, too vulnerable, to be able to expose themselves to the eyes of strangers; they feel too bare, even if they’re completely dressed, to show themselves. It’s certainly hard to say why they’re ashamed, perhaps they’re ashamed, these eternal workers, simply because they have slept. But perhaps they are even more ashamed of seeing strangers than of being seen; the very thing that they had happily overcome with the help of the nighttime interrogation
s, namely, the sight of the parties—whom they find hard to stand—they do not want intruding on them in the morning, suddenly, abruptly, in all of nature’s truth. They are simply not up to that. What kind of person would fail to respect this! Well, it could only be a person like K. Somebody who puts himself above everything, above the law and above the most ordinary human consideration with that stolid indifference and drowsiness of his, who doesn’t care that he not only makes it almost impossible for the files to be distributed and damages the reputation of the inn and who brings about an entirely unprecedented situation, namely, that the gentlemen, who have been reduced to despair, begin to fight and after an inner struggle inconceivable to ordinary people reach for the bell and call for help in order to drive away the otherwise unshakable K. They, the gentlemen, call for help! Wouldn’t the landlord and the landlady and their entire staff have come running over a long time ago if they had only dared to appear unsolicited before the gentlemen in the morning, even if only to bring help and then to disappear at once. Trembling with outrage at K., inconsolable because of their impotence, they had waited here at the entrance to the corridor, and the utterly unexpected ringing had been like a deliverance for them. Now the worst was over! But if only they could steal a look at the joyous antics of the gentlemen who had been finally liberated from K.! But this wasn’t the end of it for K., for he would certainly have to answer for what he had gone and done here.