‘Now, if you will permit me,’ said K., ‘I am going to ask you a very forthright question.’
The landlady said nothing to that.
‘So I see you will not permit me,’ said K. ‘Very well, that is enough for me.’
‘Indeed it is,’ said the landlady, ‘that in particular. You take everything the wrong way, even a silence. You can’t help it. I’ll allow you to ask.’
‘If I take everything the wrong way,’ said K., ‘perhaps I’m wrong about my question too, and it isn’t so forthright after all. I just wanted to know how you came to know your husband, and how this inn came into your hands.’
The landlady frowned, but said equably enough: ‘It’s a very sim-ple story. My father was the blacksmith here, and Hans, my present husband, was groom to a gentleman farmer and often visited my father. That was after my last meeting with Klamm, I was very unhappy, although I shouldn’t have been, for it was all in order, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed near Klamm again was Klamm’s own decision, so that was in order too, only the reasons for it were obscure, and I might well wonder about those, but I ought not to have been unhappy. However, I was, and I couldn’t work, but sat in our front garden all day. Hans saw me there and sometimes sat down with me. I didn’t tell him my troubles, but he knew what it was all about, and because he’s a good lad he would sometimes shed tears in sympathy with me. And when the landlord of that time, whose wife had died, so that he had to give up the business, besides being an old man already, well, when he passed our little garden one day he saw the two of us sitting there, stopped, and without more ado, offered to lease us the inn. He trusted us, so he didn’t want any money in advance, and he set the rent very low as well. I didn’t want to be a burden to my father, I was indifferent to everything else, and so, thinking of the inn and the new work there that might perhaps help me to forget a little, I gave Hans my hand in marriage. And that’s my story.’
There was silence for a while, and then K. said: ‘The old landlord acted generously, if rashly—or did he have special reasons to trust you both?’
‘Oh, he knew Hans well,’ said the landlady. ‘He was Hans’s uncle.’ ‘Then, to be sure,’ said K., ‘Hans’s family must have been greatly
in favour of his marriage to you?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the landlady. ‘I don’t know, I never troubled to think about it.’
‘But it must have been so,’ said K., ‘if his family was ready to make such a sacrifice and simply hand the inn over to you without security.’
‘He wasn’t being rash, as it turned out later,’ said the landlady. ‘I threw myself into the work, I was strong, I was the blacksmith’s daughter, I didn’t need a maid or a manservant about the place, I was everywhere: in the saloon bar, in the kitchen, in the stables, in the yard.
I cooked so well that guests were even enticed away from the Castle Inn. You haven’t been in the saloon bar at midday, you don’t know our guests at lunchtime, at that time there were even more of them, although since then many have stopped coming. As a result we could not only pay the rent properly, we were able to buy the whole place after a few years, and we owe almost nothing on it today. To be sure, another result was that I undermined my health with all this, I developed a serious heart condition, and now I am an old woman. You may think that I am much older than Hans, but in reality he is only two or three years younger than me, and you can be sure he will never age, for his kind of work—smoking a pipe, listening to the guests, knocking out his pipe again, sometimes fetching a beer—his kind of work doesn’t age anyone.’
‘Your achievements are remarkable,’ said K., ‘no doubt about that, but we were speaking of the time before your marriage, and then it really would have been amazing for Hans’s family to urge the two of you to marry, when it meant financial sacrifice, or at least shoulder-ing such a great risk as handing over the inn trusting only in your own capacity for work, which they couldn’t have known at the time, and Hans’s capacity for work, the total absence of which they must have noticed.’
‘Yes, well,’ said the landlady wearily, ‘I can see what you’re getting at, and how wide you are of the mark. Klamm had no hand in any of this. Why would he have thought he should do anything for me, or more accurately, how could he have thought of doing so anyway? He knew nothing about me. The fact that he never summoned me again showed that he had forgotten me. When he doesn’t summon anyone any more, he forgets her entirely. I didn’t want to say so in front of Frieda. But it’s not just that he forgets; it’s more than that. For if you have forgotten someone, you can get to know her again. With Klamm, however, that’s impossible. When he stops summoning someone he’s forgotten her entirely, not just in the past, but for the future too, once and for all. If I go to a great deal of trouble I can think myself into your mind and your ideas, which make no sense here, however much to the point they may be wherever it is you come from.
Perhaps your foolish fancies are wild enough to imagine that Klamm gave me in marriage to a man like Hans so that I would have no trouble in coming to him again, should he summon me at some time in the future. Well, folly can go no further. Where is the man who could keep me from going to Klamm if Klamm were to give me a sign? Nonsense, utter nonsense, nothing but confusion comes of playing about with such nonsensical ideas.’
‘No,’ said K., ‘let’s not confuse ourselves. My thoughts had gone nowhere near as far as you assume, although to tell you the truth they were on their way there. For the time being, however, I was simply marvelling that Hans’s family hoped for so much from his marriage to you, and their hopes were indeed fulfilled, although at the cost of your own heart and your health. The idea of connecting those facts with Klamm was, indeed, forcing itself upon me, but not—or not yet—in the crude way in which you presented it, obviously solely for the purpose of allowing you to snap at me again, which you seem to enjoy. I wish you joy of that! But I was thinking: first, Klamm is obviously the reason for your marriage. If not for Klamm you wouldn’t have been unhappy, you wouldn’t have been sitting idle in the front garden; if not for Klamm Hans wouldn’t have seen you there, and were it not for your grief Hans, who is shy, would never have ventured to speak to you. If not for Klamm you and Hans would never have found yourselves in tears; if not for Klamm Hans’s kind old uncle the landlord would never have seen you and his nephew sitting amicably together; if not for Klamm you would not have been indifferent to life, so you wouldn’t have married Hans. Well, I would say that Klamm features prominently in all this. But it goes further. If you hadn’t been trying to forget, you certainly wouldn’t have worked so hard, with no thought for yourself, and given the inn such a good reputation. So I detect Klamm again here too. But quite apart from that, Klamm is the cause of your illness, for your heart was exhausted with unhappy passion even before your marriage. There remains only the question of what induced Hans’s family to favour the marriage so much. You mentioned once that to have been Klamm’s mistress means a rise in rank for a woman that she can never lose, so I suppose that may have tempted them. But in addition, I think, it was the hope that the lucky star which led you to Klamm—always supposing
