by Franz Kafka
Then a sound like breaking china came from the hall, causing them all to prick up their ears. “I’ll go see what’s happened,” said K., and walked out slowly, as if he was giving the others a chance to stop him. He had barely stepped into the hall and was trying to find his way about in the dark when a small hand, much smaller than K.’s, placed itself upon the hand he still held against the door and closed it softly. It was the nurse, who had been waiting there. “It was nothing,” she whispered, “I just threw a plate against the wall to get you to come out.” In his embarrassment, K. said: “I was thinking about you too.” “All the better,” said the nurse. “Come on.” After a few steps they came to a door with frosted glass, which the nurse opened before K. “Go on in,” she said. It must have been the lawyer’s study; as far as could be seen in the moonlight, which now brightly illuminated only a small rectangle of the floor by each of the two large windows, it was furnished with old, heavy furniture. “This way,” said the nurse, and pointed toward a dark bench chest with a carved wooden back. Even as he was sitting down, K. looked around the room: it was a large and lofty room; the clients of the poor man’s lawyer must have felt lost in it. K. felt he could picture the tiny steps with which the visitors approached the massive desk. But then he forgot about that and had eyes only for the nurse, who was sitting right beside him, almost pressing him against the arm of the bench. “I thought you would come to me on your own,” she said, “without my having to call you first. It was strange. First you stared at me from the moment you entered and then you kept me waiting.” “By the way, call me Leni,” she added abruptly, as if not a moment of their talk should be wasted. “Gladly,” said K. “But it’s easy enough to explain what you found so strange, Leni. First, I had to listen to the idle talk of those old men and couldn’t walk out without a reason; second, I’m not very forward, I’m more on the shy side, and you, Leni, didn’t really look like you could be had for the asking.” “That’s not it,” said Leni, laying her arm along the back of the bench and looking at K., “I didn’t please you and probably still don’t.” “Please isn’t the half of it,” said K. evasively. “Oh!” she said with a smile, and through K.’s remark and her little cry gained a certain advantage. So K. remained silent for a while. Since he had already grown accustomed to the darkness of the room, he could make out various details of the furnishings. He noticed in particular a large painting hanging to the right of the door and leaned forward to see it better. It showed a man in a judge’s robe; he was sitting on a throne, its golden highlights gleaming forth from the painting in several places. The strange thing was that this judge wasn’t sitting in calm dignity, but instead had his left arm braced against the back and arm of the chair, while his right arm was completely free, his hand alone clutching the arm of the chair, as if he were about to spring up any moment in a violent and perhaps wrathful outburst to say something decisive or even pass judgment. The defendant was probably to be thought of as at the foot of the stairs, the upper steps of which, covered with a yellow carpet, could be seen in the picture. “Perhaps that’s my judge,” said K. and pointed to the picture. “I know him,” said Leni, looking up at the picture as well, “he comes here often. That’s a portrait of him when he was young, but he surely never looked like that, he’s so small he’s almost tiny. Even so, he had himself stretched out that way in the painting, since he’s ridiculously vain, like everyone here. But I’m vain too, and very unhappy that I don’t please you.” K. responded to this last remark simply by putting his arm around Leni and drawing her to him; she leaned her head quietly against his shoulder. But to the rest he said only: “What’s his rank?” “He’s an examining magistrate,” she said, taking the hand K. had around her and playing with his fingers. “Just another examining magistrate,” K. said in disappointment, “the higher judges stay in hiding. But yet he’s sitting on a throne.” “That’s all an invention,” said Leni, her head bent over K.’s hand, “he’s actually sitting on a kitchen stool with an old horse blanket folded over it. But is your trial all you think about?” she added slowly. “No, not at all,” said K. “I probably think too little about it.” “That’s not the mistake you make,” said Leni, “you’re too stubborn, the way I hear it.” “Who said that?” asked K.; he felt her body against his chest and looked down at her thick, dark, tightly rolled hair. “I’d reveal too much if I told you,” Leni responded. “Please don’t ask for names, but stop making that mistake, don’t be so stubborn; you can’t defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess. Confess the first chance you get. That’s the only chance you have to escape, the only one. However, even that is impossible without help from others, but you needn’t worry about that, I’ll help you myself.” “You know a lot about this court and the deceit it makes necessary,” said K., lifting her up onto his lap since she was pressing against him all too insistently. “This is nice,” she said, and arranged herself in his lap, smoothing her skirt and straightening her blouse. Then she put both her arms around his neck, leaned back, and took a long look at him. “And if I don’t confess, you can’t help me?” K. asked tentatively. I recruit women helpers, he thought, almost amazed: first Fräulein Bürstner, then the court usher’s wife, and now this little nurse, who seems to have an inexplicable desire for me. The way she’s sitting on my lap, as if it were the only proper place for her! “No,” Leni replied, shaking her head slowly, “then I can’t help you. But you don’t want my help, you don’t care about it, you’re stubborn and refuse to be convinced.” “Do you have a sweetheart?” she asked after a moment. “No,” said K. “Oh, surely you must,” she said. “In fact I do,” said K., “just think, I denied her existence and yet I even carry her picture with me.” At her request, he showed her a photograph of Elsa; curled in his lap, she studied the picture. It was a snapshot: Elsa was caught at the end of a whirling dance of the sort she enjoyed performing at the tavern, her dress still swirling about her, her hands on her hips, looking off to the side and laughing, her throat taut; the person at whom her laughter was directed couldn’t be seen in the picture. “She’s very tightly laced,” said Leni, and pointed to the spot where, in her opinion, this was evident. “I don’t like her, she’s clumsy and rough. But perhaps she’s kind and gentle with you, you could gather that from looking at the picture. Big strong girls like that often don’t know how to be anything but kind and gentle. But would she sacrifice herself for you?” “No,” K. said, “she’s neither kind and gentle, nor would she sacrifice herself for me. But so far I haven’t demanded either of her. I’ve never even examined the picture as closely as you have.” “So you don’t care that much about her,” said Leni, “she’s not really your sweetheart.” “Oh yes,” said K., “I won’t take back what I said.” “Well she may be your sweetheart now,” said Leni, “but you wouldn’t miss her much if you lost her, or traded her for someone else—me, for example.” “Of course,” said K. with a smile, “that’s conceivable, but she has one major advantage over you: she doesn’t know anything about my trial, and even if she did, she wouldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t try to talk me into giving in.” “That’s no advantage,” said Leni. “If that’s her only advantage, I won’t lose heart. Does she have a physical defect of any sort?” “A physical defect?” asked K. “Yes,” said Leni, “I have a slight defect of that sort, look.” She spread apart the middle and ring fingers of her right hand, between which the connecting skin extended almost to the top knuckle of her short fingers. In the darkness, K. couldn’t see at first what it was she wanted to show him, so she guided his hand to feel it. “What a whim of nature,” K. said, and added, when he had examined her whole hand: “What a pretty claw!” Leni watched with a kind of pride as K. opened and closed her two fingers repeatedly in astonishment, until he finally kissed them lightly and released them. “Oh!” she cried out at once, “you’ve kissed me!” Hastily, with open mouth, she climbed up his lap on her knees; K. looked up at her in near dismay; now that she was so close to him an exciting, almost bi
tter odor, like pepper, rose from her; she pulled his head to her and bent over it, biting and kissing his neck, even biting his hair. “You’ve traded her for me,” she cried from time to time, “you see, now you’ve traded her for me after all!” Then her knees slid from under her, and with a small cry she almost slipped to the carpet; K. put his arms around her to catch her and was drawn down with her. “Now you belong to me,” she said.