not sure himself whether he was merely flattering her or she had really made a conquest of him. ‘No one ever noticed them at the time,’ she said, ‘and even now—’ K. looked enquiringly at her, but she shook her head and would say no more. ‘Of course you have your secrets,’ said K., ‘and you won’t discuss them with someone you’ve known for only half an hour, and who has had no chance to tell you anything about himself yet.’ But that, it turned out, was the wrong thing to say; it was as if he had woken Frieda from a slumber in which she liked him, for she took a small piece of wood out of the leather bag that hung from her belt, stopped up the peephole with it, and said to K., visibly forcing herself not to let him see how her mood had changed: ‘As for you, I know everything about you. You are the land surveyor.’ And she added: ‘But now I must get on with my work,’ and went back behind the counter, while now and then one of the men here rose to have his empty glass refilled. K. wanted another quiet word with her, so he took an empty glass from a stand and went over to her. ‘One more thing, Miss Frieda,’ he said, ‘it’s extraordinary, and takes great strength of mind, to work your way up from dairymaid to barmaid, but is that the height of ambition for a person like you? No, what a silly question. Your eyes—don’t laugh at me, Miss Frieda—speak not so much of past struggles as of struggles yet to come. But there are great obstacles in the world, they become greater the greater your goals, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in making sure you have the help of a man who may be small and uninfluential, but is none the less ready to fight.

Perhaps we could talk quietly some time, without so many eyes watching us.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re after,’ she said, and this time, against her will, her tone of voice spoke not of the triumphs of her life but of its endless disappointments. ‘Are you by any chance trying to take me away from Klamm? Good heavens!’ And she struck her hands together. ‘You see right through me,’ said K., as if worn out by such distrust. ‘Yes, I secretly intended to do that very thing. I wanted you to leave Klamm and become my lover instead. Well, now I can go. Olga!’ cried K. ‘We’re going home.’ Olga obediently slid down from the cask, but she couldn’t get away at once from her friends, as they surrounded her. Now Frieda said quietly, with a dark glance at K.: ‘When can I speak to you?’ ‘Can I stay the night here?’ asked K. ‘Yes,’ said Frieda. ‘Can I stay here now?’ ‘You’d better go out with Olga so that I can get the men here to leave. Then you can come back in a little while.’ ‘Good,’ said K., and waited impatiently for Olga. But the men here weren’t letting her go; they had invented a dance with Olga at its centre. They danced in a circle, and whenever they all uttered a shout in unison one of them went up to her, put one hand firmly around her waist, and whirled her about several times. The round dance became faster and faster, the raucous, avid shouting gradually merged into what was almost a single cry. Olga, who had tried to break through the circle earlier, smiling, was now staggering from one man to another, with her hair coming down. ‘The kind of people they send me here!’ said Frieda, biting her thin lips in annoyance. ‘Who are they?’ asked K. ‘Klamm’s servants,’ said Frieda. ‘He always brings them with him, and their presence upsets me.

I hardly know what I was discussing with you just now, Mr Land Surveyor, and if there was anything wrong in it you must forgive me. I blame it on the company here, they are the most contemptible and repulsive people I know, and here am I, obliged to fill up their beer glasses. How often I’ve asked Klamm to leave them behind! I have to put up with other gentle-men’s servants too—he might think of me for once, but whatever I say it’s no use, an hour before he arrives they come barging in like cattle into the cowshed. And now they really must go to the stables where they belong. If you weren’t here I’d open that door and Klamm himself would have to drive them out.’ ‘Doesn’t he hear them, then?’ asked K. ‘No,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s asleep.’ ‘What!’ cried K. ‘Asleep? When I looked into the room he was awake and sitting at the desk.’ ‘He’s still sitting there like that,’ said Frieda. ‘He was already asleep when you saw him—would I have let you look in otherwise? That’s the position he sleeps in, the gentlemen sleep a great deal, it’s hard to understand. Then again, if he didn’t sleep so much, how could he stand those men? Well, I’ll have to chase them out myself.’ And picking up a whip* from the corner, she took a single awkward leap high into the air, rather like a lamb gambolling, and made for the dancers. At first they turned to her as if she were a new dancer join-ing them, and indeed, for a moment it looked as if Frieda would drop the whip, but then she raised it again. ‘In the name of Klamm,’ she cried, ‘out into the stables, all of you, out into the stables.’ Now they saw that she was serious, and in a kind of terror that K. couldn’t understand, they began crowding away to the back of the room.

A door was pushed open by the first to get there, night air blew in, and they all disappeared with Frieda, who was obviously driving them across the yard to the stables. However, in the sudden silence K. heard footsteps in the corridor. For the sake of his own safety he went round behind the bar counter. The only possible place to hide was underneath it. He had not, to be sure, been forbidden to stay in the bar, but as he was planning to spend the night here he didn’t want to be seen now. So when the door really was opened, he got under the counter. Of course there was a danger of being discovered there too, but he could always say he had hidden from the boisterous ser-vants, which was a not improbable excuse. It was the landlord who came in. ‘Frieda!’ he called, pacing up and down the room several times. Luckily Frieda soon came back and did not mention K., but just complained of the common people here, and went round behind the bar in her attempt to find K., who managed to touch her foot. Now he felt sure of himself. Since Frieda did not mention K., in the end the landlord had to. ‘So where’s the land surveyor?’ he asked. In fact he was a courteous man, whose manners had benefited by con-stant and relatively free intercourse with those of much higher rank than himself, but he spoke to Frieda with particular respect, which was all the more noticeable because during their conversation he was still very much an employer talking to a member of his staff, and a very impertinent one at that. ‘I’d quite forgotten the land surveyor,’ said Frieda, planting her small foot on K.’s chest. ‘He must have left long ago.’ ‘But I never saw him,’ said the landlord, ‘and I was out in the front hall almost all the time.’ ‘Well, he isn’t here,’ said Frieda coolly, pressing her foot down harder on K. There was something cheerful and easygoing in her demeanour which K. hadn’t noticed at all before, and now, improbably, it gained the upper hand as she suddenly bent down to K., smiling and saying: ‘Maybe he’s hidden down here.’ She quickly kissed him and then popped up again, saying regretfully: ‘No, he isn’t here.’ The landlord too sprang a surprise by saying: ‘I don’t like it at all, I wish I knew for certain whether he’s gone. It’s not just because of Mr Klamm, it’s because of the rules.

And the rules apply to you, Miss Frieda, just as they do to me. You stay here in the bar, I’ll search the rest of the house. Goodnight, and sleep well!’ He had hardly left the room when Frieda turned off the electric light and joined K. under the bar. ‘My darling! My sweet darling!’ she whispered, but she did not touch K. She lay on her back as if swooning with desire, and spread her arms wide. Time must have seemed endless to her in her amorous bliss, and she sighed rather than sang a little song of some kind.* Then she took alarm, for K. remained quiet, lost in thought, and she began tugging at him like a child. ‘Come on, I’m stifling down here.’ They embraced one another, her little body burned in K.’s hands, they rolled, in a semi-conscious state from which K. tried constantly but unsuccessfully to surface, a little way on, bumped into Klamm’s door with a hollow thud, then lay there in the puddles of beer and the rubbish* covering the floor. Hours passed as they lay there, hours while they breathed together and their hearts beat in unison, hours in which K. kept