So I can tell you, madam, that I think the best thing would be for Frieda and me to get married, and very soon too. Sad to say, very sad to say, I won’t be able to compensate Frieda for what she has lost through me: her position at the Castle Inn and the friendship of Klamm.’ Frieda looked up. Her eyes were full of tears, and there was no expression of triumph in them. ‘Why me? Why was I chosen?’ ‘Why?’ asked K. and the landlady at the same time. ‘She’s confused, poor child,’ said the landlady. ‘Bewildered by too much happiness and unhappiness coming all at once.’ And as if to confirm what the landlady had said, Frieda now ran to K., kissed him wildly as if there were no one else in the room, and then fell on her knees in front of him weeping, and still embracing him. As K. stroked Frieda’s hair with both his hands, he said to the landlady: ‘You seem to agree with me?’ ‘You’re an honourable man,’ said the landlady, and her own voice sounded tearful. She looked a little weary, and was breathing heavily, but she found the strength to say: ‘Now, there are certain assurances that you must give Frieda, for much as I respect you, you’re a stranger here, you can’t call on anyone to vouch for you, we don’t know your domestic circumstances, so assurances are neces-sary, as I am sure you will realize, my dear sir. You yourself have pointed out how much Frieda stands to lose by throwing in her lot with yours.’ ‘Of course, assurances, naturally,’ said K. ‘They’d better be made in front of a notary, I expect, but perhaps some of the count’s authorities will want to be involved as well.
What’s more, there is something else I absolutely must do before the marriage. I must speak to Klamm.’ ‘That’s impossible,’ said Frieda, straighten-ing up slightly and pressing close to K. ‘What an idea!’ ‘But it must be done,’ said K. ‘If it’s impossible for me to arrange it, then you must.’ ‘I can’t, K., I can’t,’ said Frieda. ‘Klamm will never speak to you. How can you imagine that Klamm would speak to you?’ ‘Well, would he speak to you?’ asked K. ‘He wouldn’t speak to me either,’ said Frieda. ‘He wouldn’t speak to either you or me, it’s downright impossible.’ She turned to the landlady with her arms outspread. ‘There, ma’am, you see what he asks.’ ‘You’re a strange man, sir,’ said the landlady, and she looked rather alarming as she sat there very upright, with her legs spread and her mighty knees showing beneath her flimsy skirt. ‘You want the impossible.’ ‘Why is it impossible?’ asked K. ‘I’ll explain,’ said the landlady, in a tone suggesting that by explaining she was not doing K. a final favour but inflicting his first punishment on him. ‘I will be happy to explain to you. I do not belong to the castle, to be sure, I am only a woman, I am only the landlady of the lowest kind of inn—well, not quite the lowest kind, but not so very far from it—so maybe you won’t set much store by my explan-ation, but I have kept my eyes open all my life, I have met a great many people, and I have borne the whole burden of running this inn on my own, for my husband may be a good young fellow, but he’s no landlord, and he will never understand the meaning of responsibility.
You, for instance, owe it only to his carelessness—I was tired to death the other evening—that you are here in the village at all, sit-ting on that bed in peace and comfort.’ ‘What do you mean?’ cried K., emerging from a certain mood of abstraction, but aroused from it more by curiosity than by anger. ‘You owe it only to his careless-ness,’ repeated the landlady, pointing her forefinger at K. Frieda tried to mollify her. ‘What do you expect?’ the landlady asked Frieda, with a swift turn of her whole body. ‘The land surveyor here has asked me a question, and I must answer him. How else is he to understand what we ourselves take for granted, which is that Mr Klamm will never speak to him—and why do I say “will”? He never can speak to him. Listen, sir, Mr Klamm is a gentleman from the castle, which in itself, quite apart from Klamm’s position in any other respect, means that he is of high rank. But what about you, whose agreement to marry Frieda we are so humbly soliciting here? You’re not from the castle, you’re not from the village, you’re nothing. Unfortunately, however, you are a stranger, a superfluous person getting in every-one’s way, a man who is always causing trouble—why, the maids have had to move out of their room on your account—a man whose intentions are unknown, a man who has seduced dear little Frieda and whom, unfortunately, we must allow to marry her. Basically I don’t blame you for all this; you are what you are. I’ve seen too much in the course of my life to be unable to tolerate this sight too. But think what you are really asking. You expect a man like Klamm to speak to you. I was sorry to hear that Frieda let you look through the peephole; you’d already seduced her when she did that.
Tell me, how did you bear the sight of Klamm? You needn’t answer that, I know, you bore it very well. You are in no position to see Klamm properly, and that’s not arrogance on my part, because I am in no position to do so either. You want Klamm to speak to you, but he doesn’t even speak to the villagers, he himself has never spoken to anyone from the village. It was Frieda’s greatest distinction, a distinction that will be my pride to my dying day, that at least he used to call her by name, and she could speak to him as she liked, and had permission to use the peephole, although he never really spoke to her either. And the fact that he sometimes called for Frieda doesn’t necessarily have the importance with which you might wish to endow it, he simply called Frieda by name—who knows his intentions?—and the fact that Frieda, of course, came hurrying up was her own business. Well, it was due to Klamm’s kindness that she was allowed in to see him without any trouble, but you couldn’t say he actually summoned her to him. And what’s gone is certainly gone for ever. Perhaps Klamm will call for Frieda by name again, yes, that’s possible, but she cer-tainly won’t be allowed in to see him any more—not a girl who has given herself to you. And there’s one thing, just one thing that I can’t get my poor head around, which is how a girl said to be Klamm’s lover—although personally I consider that a greatly exaggerated description—would so much as let you touch her.’
‘Remarkable, to be sure,’ said K., and he took Frieda, who complied at once, although lowering her head, to sit on his lap. ‘But I think it shows that not everything is exactly as you think. For instance, yes, I am sure you’re right when you say that I am nothing compared to Klamm, and if I now demand to speak to Klamm and even your explan-ation does not dissuade me, it doesn’t mean that I am in a position to bear the sight of Klamm without so much as a door between us, or that I might not run out of the room when he appeared. But as I see it, such a fear, though it might be justified, is no reason not even to try the
