by Franz Kafka
K. soon ceased worrying about him and the people in the hallway, particularly since he saw, about halfway down the hall, a turn to the right through an opening with no door. He checked with the court usher whether it was the right way, the court usher nodded, and K. took the turn. It annoyed him that he always had to walk a pace or two ahead of the court usher, since, given the location, it might appear that he was an arrested man under escort. So he slowed up several times for the court usher, who, however, kept hanging back. Finally, to put an end to his discomfort, K. said: “Well, I’ve seen what things look like here, and I’m ready to leave.” “You haven’t seen everything yet,” said the court usher, completely without guile. “I don’t want to see everything,” said K., who was in fact feeling quite tired, “I want to leave, where’s the exit?” “Surely you’re not lost already,” asked the court usher in amazement, “you go to the corner there, turn right and go straight down the hall to the door.” “Come with me,” said K. “Show me the way; I’ll miss it, there are so many ways here.” “It’s the only way,” said the court usher, reproachfully now, “I can’t go back with you; I have to deliver my report, and I’ve already lost a good deal of time because of you.” “Come with me,” K. repeated more sharply, as if he had finally caught the court usher in a lie. “Don’t shout so,” whispered the court usher, “there are offices all around here. If you don’t want to go back by yourself, then come along with me a ways, or wait here until I’ve delivered my report, then I’ll gladly go back with you.” “No, no,” said K., “I won’t wait and you have to go with me now.” K. hadn’t even looked around the room he was in; not until one of the many wooden doors surrounding him opened did he glance over. A young woman, no doubt drawn by K.’s loud voice, stepped in and asked: “May I help you, sir?” Behind her in the distance a man could be seen approaching in the semidarkness. K. looked at the court usher. After all, he’d said that no one would pay any attention to K., and now here came two people already; it wouldn’t take much and the official bureaucracy would notice him and demand an explanation for his presence. The only reasonable and acceptable one was that he was a defendant trying to discover the date of his next hearing, but that was precisely the explanation he didn’t wish to give, particularly since it wasn’t true, for he had come out of pure curiosity or, even less acceptable as an explanation, out of a desire to confirm that the interior of this judicial system was just as repugnant as its exterior. And it seemed that he had been right in that assumption; he had no wish to intrude any further, he was inhibited enough by what he had already seen, and he was certainly in no mood now to confront some high official who might appear from behind any door; he wanted to leave, with the court usher or alone if need be.
But the way he was silently standing there must have been striking, and the young woman and the court usher were actually looking at him as if they thought he was about to undergo some profound metamorphosis at any moment, one they didn’t want to miss. And in the doorway stood the man K. had noticed in the background earlier, holding on tightly to the lintel of the low door and rocking back and forth slightly on the tips of his toes, like an impatient spectator. It was the young woman, however, who first realized that K.’s behavior was the result of a slight indisposition; she brought him a chair and asked: “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” K. sat down immediately and propped his elbows on the arms of the chair for better support. “You’re a little dizzy, aren’t you?” she asked him. Her face was now quite near; it bore the severe expression some young women have precisely in the bloom of youth. “Don’t worry,” she said, “there’s nothing unusual about that here, almost everyone has an attack like this the first time. You are here for the first time? Well, you see then, it’s nothing at all unusual. The sun beats down on the attic beams and the hot wood makes the air terribly thick and stifling. That’s why this isn’t such a good location for the offices, in spite of the many other advantages it offers. But as far as the air is concerned, on days when the traffic of involved parties is heavy you can hardly breathe, and that’s almost daily. Then if you take into consideration that a great deal of wash is hung out here to dry as well—the tenants can’t be entirely forbidden from doing so—it will come as no surprise that you feel a little sick. But in the end people get quite used to the air. When you come here the second or third time, you’ll hardly notice the stuffiness at all. Do you feel better yet?” K. didn’t reply; he was too embarrassed that this sudden weakness had placed him at these people’s mercy; moreover, now that he knew the cause of his nausea he didn’t feel better, but instead a little worse. The young woman noticed this right away, picked up a hooked pole leaning against the wall and, to give K. a little fresh air, pushed open a small hatch directly above K. that led outside. But so much soot fell in that the young woman had to close the hatch again immediately and wipe the soot from K.’s hands with her handkerchief, since K. was too tired to do it himself. He would gladly have remained sitting there quietly until he had gathered the strength to leave, and the less attention they paid to him, the sooner that would happen. But now the young woman added: “You can’t stay here, we’re interrupting the flow of traffic”—K. looked around to see what traffic he could possibly be interrupting—“if you want, I’ll take you to the infirmary.” “Help me please,” she said to the man in the doorway, who approached at once. But K. didn’t want to go to the infirmary; that was precisely what he wanted to avoid, being led farther on, for the farther he went, the worse things would get. So he said, “I can walk now,” and stood up shakily, spoiled by the comfort of sitting. But then he couldn’t hold himself upright. “I can’t do it,” he said, shaking his head, and sat down again with a sigh. He remembered the court usher, who could easily lead him out in spite of everything, but he appeared to be long gone; K. peered between the young woman and the man, who were standing in front of him, but couldn’t find the court usher.
“I believe,” said the man, who was elegantly dressed, with a striking gray waistcoat that ended in two sharply tailored points, “the gentleman’s illness can be traced to the air in here, so it would be best, and please him most, if we simply skipped the infirmary and led him out of the law offices.” “That’s it,” K. cried out, so overjoyed he barely let the man finish his sentence, “I’m sure I’ll feel better soon, I’m not that weak, I just need a little support under the arms, I won’t be much trouble, it’s not very far, just take me to the door, I’ll sit on the steps a bit and be fine soon, I never have attacks like this, it surprised me too. After all, I’m an official myself and I’m used to office air, but it does seem really bad here, you say so yourself. Would you be so kind as to help me a little, I’m dizzy, and I feel sick when I stand on my own.” And he lifted his shoulders to make it easier for the others to grab him under the arms.
But the man didn’t follow his suggestion; instead he kept his hands calmly in his pockets and laughed aloud. “You see,” he said to the young woman, “I hit the nail on the head. It’s only here that the gentleman feels unwell, not in general.” The young woman smiled too, but she tapped the man lightly on the arm with her fingertips, as if he’d carried a joke with K. too far. “Oh, don’t worry,” the man said, still laughing, “of course I’ll show the gentleman out.” “All right then,” said the young woman, inclining her charming head for a moment. “Don’t attach too much meaning to his laughter,” the young woman said to K., who had lapsed into dejection again, staring vacantly, and didn’t seem in need of any explanation, “this gentleman—may I introduce you?” (the man gave his permission with a wave of his hand) “—this gentleman is our information officer. He provides waiting parties with any information they may need, and since our judicial system is not very well known among the general population, a great deal of information is requested. He has an answer for every question; you can try him out if you feel like it. But that’s not his only asset, a second is his elegant dress. We—the staff that is—decided that the information officer, who’s always the first
person the parties meet and the one they deal with most often, should be dressed elegantly, to create a respectable first impression. The rest of us, sadly enough, are, as you can see in my own case, poorly dressed, in old-fashioned clothes; it doesn’t make much sense to spend anything on clothing, since we’re almost always in the offices, and even sleep here. But as I said, in the information officer’s case we thought fancy clothes were necessary. But since we couldn’t get them from the administration, which is funny about that sort of thing, we took up a collection—the parties pitched in too—and we bought him this handsome suit and a few others as well. So everything was set to make a good impression, but he ruins it by the way he laughs, which startles people.” “So it does,” the man said with an annoyed air, “but I don’t understand, Fräulein, why you’re telling this gentleman all our intimate secrets, or more accurately, forcing them upon him, since he has no interest in knowing them. Just look at him sitting there, obviously immersed in his own affairs.” K. didn’t even feel like objecting; the young woman probably meant well; perhaps she was trying to take his mind off things, or give him a chance to pull himself together, but she’d chosen the wrong method. “I had to explain why you laughed,” the young woman said. “After all, it was insulting.” “I think he’d forgive much worse insults if I would just show him the way out.” K. said nothing, he didn’t even look up; he put up with the fact that the two were discussing him like a case, indeed, he preferred it that way. But suddenly he felt the hand of the information officer on one arm and the hand of the young woman on the other. “Up with you now, you feeble fellow,” said the information officer. “Thank you both very much,” said K. pleasantly surprised, rose slowly, and guided the others’ hands to the places where he most needed their support. “It seems like I’m overly concerned to place the information officer in a good light,” the young woman said softly in K.’s ear, as they approached the hallway, “but believe me, what I say is true. He’s not hard-hearted. It’s not his duty to accompany sick parties out and yet he does, as you can see. Perhaps none of us is hard-hearted, perhaps we’d all like to help, but as court officials it can easily appear that we’re hard-hearted and don’t want to help anyone. That really bothers me.” “Wouldn’t you like to sit here for a bit?” asked the information officer; they were already in the hallway, directly in front of the defendant K. had spoken to earlier. K. was almost ashamed to face him: earlier he had stood so erect before him, while now two people had to hold him up, the information officer balanced his hat on his outspread fingers, and his tousled hair fell across his sweat-covered brow. But the defendant seemed to notice none of this; he stood humbly before the information officer, who stared right past him, and merely attempted to excuse his presence. “I realize there can’t be any response to my petitions today,” he said. “But I came anyway; I thought I could at least wait here, since it’s Sunday, and I have plenty of time and won’t disturb anyone.” “You don’t have to be so apologetic about it,” said the information officer, “your concern is quite praiseworthy; of course you’re taking up space unnecessarily, but as long as it doesn’t begin to annoy me, I certainly won’t hinder you from following the course of your affair in detail. Having seen others who scandalously neglect their duty, one learns to be patient with people like you. You may be seated.” “He really knows how to talk to the parties,” whispered the young woman. K. nodded, but immediately flared up as the information officer asked him again: “Wouldn’t you like to sit down here?” “No,” said K., “I don’t want to rest.” He had said it as firmly as he could, but in reality it would have done him a great deal of good to sit down; he felt seasick. He thought he was on a ship, rolling in heavy seas. It seemed to him that the waters were pounding against the wooden walls, there was a roar from the depths of the hallway like the sound of breaking waves, the hallway seemed to pitch and roll, lifting and lowering the waiting clients on both sides. That made the calm demeanor of the young woman and man who led him even more incomprehensible. He was at their mercy; if they let go of him, he would fall like a plank. Sharp glances shot back and forth from their small eyes; K. felt their steady tread without matching it, for he was practically carried along from step to step. He realized at last that they were speaking to him, but he couldn’t understand them; he heard only the noise that filled everything, through which a steady, high-pitched sound like a siren seemed to emerge. “Louder,” he whispered with bowed head, and was ashamed, for he knew that they had spoken loudly enough, even though he hadn’t understood. Then finally, as if the wall had split open before him, a draft of fresh air reached him, and he heard beside him: “First he wants to leave, then you can tell him a hundred times that this is the exit and he doesn’t move.” K. saw that he was standing at the outer door, which the young woman had opened. Instantly, all his strength seemed to return; to get a foretaste of freedom he stepped down immediately onto the first step and from there took leave of his escorts, who bowed to him. “Thank you very much,” he said again, shaking hands with both of them repeatedly, stopping only when he thought he noticed that they were unable to bear the comparatively fresh air from the stairway, accustomed as they were to the air in the offices of the court. They could hardly reply, and the young woman might have fallen had K. not shut the door as quickly as possible. K. stood quietly for a moment, smoothed his hair into place with the help of a pocket mirror, picked up his hat, which was lying on the landing below—the information officer must have tossed it there—and then raced down the steps with such long, energetic leaps that he was almost frightened by the sudden change. His normally sound constitution had never provided him with such surprises before. Was his body going to rebel and offer him a new trial, since he was handling the old one so easily? He didn’t entirely rule out the thought of consulting a doctor at the first opportunity; in any case—and here he could advise himself—he would spend his Sunday mornings more profitably than this from now on.
THE FLOGGER
A few evenings later, as K. passed through the corridor that led from his office to the main staircase—he was almost the last to leave that night, only two assistants in shipping were still at work in the small circle of light from a single bulb—he heard the sound of groans behind a door that he had always assumed led to a mere junk room, though he had never seen it himself. He stopped in amazement and listened again to see if he might not be mistaken—it was quiet for a little while, but then the groans came again.—At first, feeling he might need a witness, he was about to call one of the assistants, but then he was seized by such uncontrollable curiosity that he practically tore the door open. It was, as he had suspected, a junk room. Old obsolete printed forms and overturned empty ceramic ink bottles lay beyond the threshold. In the little room itself, however, stood three men, stooping beneath the low ceiling. A candle stuck on a shelf provided light. “What’s going on here?” K. blurted out in his excitement, but not loudly. One man, who was apparently in charge of the others and drew K.’s attention first, was got up in some sort of dark leather garment that left his neck and upper chest, as well as his entire arms, bare. He didn’t reply. But the other two cried out: “Sir! We’re to be flogged because you complained about us to the examining magistrate.” And only then did K. recognize that it was indeed the guards Franz and Willem, and that the third man held a rod in his hand to flog them with. “Well now,” said K. staring at them, “I didn’t complain, I just told them what went on in my lodgings. And your behavior wasn’t exactly impeccable.” “Sir,” said Willem, while Franz apparently tried to seek safety behind him from the third man, “if you knew how poorly we’re paid, you’d judge us more kindly. I have a family to feed and Franz here wants to get married, you try to make money however you can, just working isn’t enough, no matter how hard you try, I was tempted by your fine undergarments, guards are forbidden to act that way of course, it was wrong, but it’s a tradition that the undergarments belong to the guards, it’s always been that way, believe me; and you can see why, wha
t difference do such things make to a person unlucky enough to be arrested. If he makes it public, of course, then punishment must follow.” “I didn’t know any of that, and I certainly didn’t demand your punishment, it was a matter of principle.” “Franz,” Willem turned to the other guard, “didn’t I tell you the gentleman didn’t demand our punishment? Now, as you hear, he didn’t even realize we’d have to be punished.” “Don’t be swayed by that sort of talk,” the third man said to K., “their punishment is as just as it is inevitable.” “Don’t listen to him,” said Willem, interrupting himself only to lift a hand, across which he had received a blow of the rod, quickly to his mouth, “we’re only being punished because you reported us. Otherwise nothing would have happened, even if they had found out what we had done. Do you call that justice? Both of us have proved ourselves as guards over a long period of time, especially me—you have to admit we did a good job from the authorities’ point of view—we had prospects for advancement and would soon have been floggers ourselves, like him, who was simply fortunate enough never to be reported by anyone, for such reports are really quite rare. And now everything is lost, sir, our careers are finished, we’ll have to work at a much lower level than a guard, and undergo this terribly painful flogging as well.” “Can a rod cause that much pain?” K. asked, and examined the rod, which the flogger swung before him. “We have to strip completely,” said Willem. “Oh, I see,” said K., looking more closely at the flogger, who had a sailor’s tan and a savage, ruddy face. “Is there any possibility of sparing these two a flogging?” he asked him. “No,” said the flogger, and shook his head with a smile. “Strip,” he ordered the guards. And to K. he said: “You mustn’t believe everything they say. They’re already a bit weak in the head because they’re so afraid of the flogging. What this one was saying, for example”—he pointed at Willem—“about his prospective career is totally ridiculous. Look how overweight he is—the first blows of the rod will be lost in fat.—Do you know how he got so fat? He’s in the habit of eating the breakfast of anyone who’s arrested. Didn’t he eat yours as well? Well, what did I tell you? But a man with a belly like that can never become a flogger, it’s totally out of the question.” “There are floggers like me,” insisted Willem, who was just undoing his belt. “No!” said the flogger, stroking him across the neck with the rod in a way that made him twitch, “you shouldn’t be listening, you should be stripping.” “I’ll reward you well if you’ll let them go,” said K., taking out his wallet without looking at the flogger again, such matters being best conducted by both parties with lowered eyes. “Then you’ll probably report me too,” said the flogger, “and earn me a flogging as well. No thanks!” “Be reasonable,” said K., “if I’d wanted to have these two punished, I wouldn’t be trying to buy them off. I could simply shut the door, close my eyes and ears, and head home. But I’m not doing that, instead I’m serious about getting them off; if I’d suspected they’d be punished, or even known they faced possible punishment, I would never have mentioned their names. Because I don’t even consider them guilty; it’s the organization that’s guilty, it’s the high officials who are guilty.” “That’s right,” cried the guards, and immediately received a blow across their now bare backs. “If you had a high judge here beneath your rod,” said K., pressing down the rod, which was about to rise again as he spoke, “I really wouldn’t stop you from flailing away; on the contrary, I’d pay you extra, to strengthen you in your good work.” “I believe what you say,” said the flogger, “but I can’t be bribed. I’ve been hired to flog, and flog I will.” The guard Franz, who had kept somewhat in the background up to that point, perhaps in hope of a favorable outcome based on K.’s intervention, now stepped to the door dressed only in his trousers, fell to his knees, and clinging to K.’s arm whispered: “If you can’t manage to get us both off, please try to at least save me. Willem is older than me, less sensitive in every way, and he already received a minor flogging once a few years ago, but I’ve never been disgraced that way, and was only following the lead of Willem, who is my mentor in all things good and bad. My poor bride is waiting for me below in front of the bank; I’m so terribly ashamed.” He dried his tearstained face on K.’s jacket. “I’m not waiting any longer,” said the flogger, seized the rod with both hands, and laid into Franz, while Willem cowered in a corner and peeked over without daring to turn his head. The scream that Franz expelled rose steady and unchanging, scarcely human, as if it came from some tortured instrument; the whole corridor rang with it, the entire building would hear. “Don’t scream,” cried K., unable to stop himself, and as he looked intently in the direction from which the assistants would be coming, he pushed Franz, not hard, but hard enough that the witless man fell to the floor and clawed convulsively about with his hands; he didn’t escape the blows, however, the rod found him on the floor as well, as he writhed beneath it, its tip swung up and down steadily. And in the distance an assistant had already appeared, and a few steps behind him a second one. K. slammed the door quickly, stepped up to a nearby courtyard window, and opened it. The screams had ceased completely. To keep the assistants from coming nearer, he called out: “It’s me.” “Good evening, sir,” the call came back. “Has anything happened?” “No, no,” K. replied, “it’s just a dog howling in the courtyard.” When the assistants still didn’t stir, he added: “You can go on with your work.” And to avoid getting involved in a conversation with them, he leaned out the window. When he looked down the corridor again a while later, they were gone. But now K. remained at the window; he didn’t dare go into the junk room, and he didn’t want to go home either. The small, rectangular courtyard he looked down upon was lined with offices; all the windows were dark by now, only the highest ones catching a reflection of the moon. K. peered down intently, trying to penetrate the darkness of a corner of the courtyard where several pushcarts had been shoved together. It tormented him that he had been unable to prevent the flogging, but it wasn’t his fault; if Franz hadn’t screamed—of course it must have hurt terribly, but at critical moments you have to control yourself—if he hadn’t screamed, K. could very probably have still found some way to convince the flogger. If the entire lowest level of the bureaucracy was made up of riff-raff, why should the flogger, who had the most inhuman job of all, be an exception; K. had also taken close note of the way his eyes gleamed at the sight of the bank note; he had obviously taken the flogging so seriously solely to raise the amount of the bribe. And K. wouldn’t have been stingy, he really wanted to get the guards off; having already begun to fight corruption in the judicial system, it was only natural to take this approach as well. But the moment Franz started screaming, it was all over of course. K. couldn’t permit the assistants, and perhaps all sorts of other people, to arrive and catch him negotiating with this bunch in the junk room. No one could really demand such a sacrifice of him. If he had intended one, it would almost have been simpler for K. to strip and offer himself to the flogger in place of the guards. The flogger would hardly have accepted this substitution, however, since it would have been a grave dereliction of duty with nothing to gain, and no doubt a double dereliction, since surely no employee of the court had the right to harm him while his case was still in progress. Of course there might be special instructions in this respect as well. In any case, K. could not have done otherwise than slam the door, even though he had by no means escaped all danger by doing so even now. That he had shoved Franz at the end was unfortunate, and could only be excused by his state of agitation.