You have been engaged, you say, as a land sur-veyor, but unfortunately we don’t need a land surveyor. There wouldn’t be any work for you here at all. The boundary markings of our little farms are all established, everything has been duly recorded. Property hardly ever changes hands, and we settle any little argu-ments about the boundaries ourselves. So why would we need a land surveyor?’ Without actually having thought about it in advance, K. felt firmly convinced that he had expected some such informa-tion. For that very reason he was able to say instantly: ‘Well, that does surprise me a great deal. It throws out all my calculations. I can only hope there’s some misunderstanding.’ ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the mayor. ‘It’s exactly as I say.’ ‘But how can that be possible?’ cried K. ‘I didn’t make such an endless journey just to be sent back again now.’ ‘Oh, that’s another question,’ said the mayor, ‘and it’s not for me to decide, but I can explain how the misunderstanding may have come about. In such a large authority as the count’s, it sometimes happens that one department will arrange this matter, another that, and neither hears about it from the other. A higher supervisory department checks everything, and very closely too, but of its nature such supervision comes too late, and so a little confusion can still arise. To be sure, that is only in the tiniest of minor details, such as your own case, and to the best of my knowledge no mistake of the kind has ever been made in matters of real importance, but the minor ones often give trouble enough. And as for your case, I will tell you—I’m not giving any official secrets away, I’m not enough of an official for that, I’m a farmer and that’s that—as for your case, I’ll tell you straight out what happened.
Long ago—I’d been village mayor for only a few months at the time—a decree came from I forget which department, saying in the categorical terms typical of the gen-tlemen there that a land surveyor was to be appointed, and the village was directed to have all the plans and sketches necessary for his work ready. That decree can’t in fact have had anything to do with you per-sonally, because it was many years ago, and I wouldn’t have remem-bered it but for being sick just now, with plenty of time to lie in bed and think about the most ridiculous incidents. Mizzi,’ he added, sud-denly interrupting his account to address his wife, who was still scurrying about the room busy with something, though K. couldn’t make out just what, ‘please look in the cupboard there and perhaps you’ll find the decree. The fact is,’ he said in an explanatory tone, turning to K., ‘it dates back to my early days as village mayor, when I used to keep everything.’ The woman opened the cupboard at once, while K. and the mayor watched. It was stuffed with papers, and when it was opened two large bundles of files fell out, tied up as you might tie up bundles of firewood. The woman flinched in alarm. ‘Try lower down, lower down,’ said the mayor, directing operations from his bed. The woman, gathering up the files in her arms, obediently cleared everything out of the cupboard to get to the papers at the bottom. The room was already half full of papers. ‘Oh, there’s been a lot of work done,’ said the mayor, nodding, ‘and this is only a small part of it. I keep the larger part of what I have here in the barn, but most of it has been lost. How can anyone keep all this together? But there’s still plenty in the barn. Will you be able to find the decree?’ he asked, turning to his wife again. ‘You must look for a file with the words Land Surveyor underlined in blue on it.’ ‘It’s too dark in here,’ said his wife. ‘I’ll fetch a candle.’ And she walked over the papers and out of the room. ‘My wife is a great help to me,’ said the village mayor, ‘with the burden of all this official stuff, which I have to do as a sideline.
I do have another assistant for the written work, that’s the schoolteacher, but all the same no one can ever get through it, there’s always a great deal left undone, and it’s in that cupboard.’ He pointed to another cupboard. ‘And when I’m ill, as I am now, it really gets the upper hand,’ he said, lying back wearily, but with an expression of pride on his face. ‘Couldn’t I help your wife to search?’ asked K., when the woman had come back with the candle and was kneeling in front of the cupboard, looking for the decree. Smiling, the mayor shook his head. ‘As I said just now, I’m keeping no official secrets from you, but I can’t go so far as to let you search the files yourself.’ All was still in the room now, only the rustle of the papers was to be heard, and the mayor may even have dropped off to sleep for a moment. A soft knock at the door made K. turn. Inevitably, it was his assistants. But at least they had learned to behave a little better, and didn’t burst straight into the room but began by whispering through the door, which stood slightly ajar. ‘It’s too cold for us out there,’ they said. ‘Who’s that?’ asked the mayor, waking with a start. ‘Only my assistants,’ said K. ‘I don’t know where to leave them to wait for me; it’s too cold outside, and they’ll be in the way in here.’ ‘They won’t bother me,’ said the mayor in kindly tones, ‘let them come in.
Anyway, I know them. We’re old acquaintances.’ ‘Well, they bother me,’ said K. frankly, letting his gaze wander from the assistants to the mayor and back to the assistants, and finding it impossible to tell their three smiles apart. ‘However, since you’re here,’ he suggested tentatively, ‘you can stay and help the lady look for a file with the words Land Surveyor on it underlined in blue.’ The mayor did not object to that; while K. wasn’t allowed to search the papers the assist-ants were, and they flung themselves on the files immediately, but just churning up the heaps rather than searching properly, and while one of them was spelling out the words on a piece of paper the other kept snatching it from his hand. As for the mayor’s wife, she was kneeling in front of the empty cupboard and no longer seemed to be searching at all, or at least the candle was a long way away from her. ‘So your assistants bother you, do they?’ said the mayor, with a satisfied smile, as if it was all due to his own arrangements, but no one was in a position even to suspect as much. ‘But they’re your own assistants.’ ‘No,’ said K. coolly, ‘they didn’t latch on to me until I got here.’ ‘Latch on to you?’ said the mayor. ‘I suppose you mean they were allocated to you.’ ‘Very well, then, they were allocated to me,’ said K., ‘but they might just as well have fallen like snow from the sky, so little thought went into choosing them.’ ‘Oh, nothing hap-pens here without thought,’ said the mayor, forgetting the pain in his foot and even sitting up in bed. ‘Nothing?’ said K. ‘What about my appointment?’ ‘Your appointment will have been carefully consid-ered too,’ said the mayor. ‘But collateral circumstances entered into it and confused things. I can show you how it all happened from the files.’ ‘I don’t think the files are going to be found,’ said K. ‘Not found?’ cried the mayor. ‘Mizzi, please search a little faster! For a start, how-ever, I can tell you the story without files.
We replied to the decree I was talking about by sending our thanks, but pointing out that we didn’t need a land surveyor. However, that reply doesn’t seem to have reached the original department, let’s call it A, but by mistake went to another department, B. So Department A received no answer, but unfortunately Department B didn’t get our full answer either. Whether the contents of the file were left behind here or were lost in transit— they weren’t lost in the department itself, I can vouch for that—well, anyway Department B also received the cover of a file bearing only the remark that the enclosed file (which in fact, unfortunately, was not enclosed) dealt with the appointment of a land surveyor. Department A, meanwhile, was waiting for our answer; it did have some prelim-inary notes on the matter, but as often and understandably happens, and indeed should happen, in view of the meticulous nature of all the official work done, the head of department was relying on us to send an answer, whereupon he would either appoint the land surveyor or, if necessary, correspond with us on the subject further. As a result, he neglected to look at the preliminary notes and let the whole affair lapse into oblivion. In Department B, however, the cover of the file reached an official well known for his conscientiousness, Sordini* by name, an Italian. Even to me, and I’m in the know, it’s hard to under-stand why a man of his abilities is left languishing in one of the lowest-ranking positions of all. Well,
