‘Do you mean all that seriously?’ asked the landlady.
‘I do mean it seriously,’ K. was quick to say, ‘only I think that Hans’s family were neither entirely right nor entirely wrong in their hopes, and I also think I see the mistake you made. Outwardly it all seems to have been successful: Hans is well off, his wife is a fine, capable woman, he enjoys high regard, no money is owed on the inn. But it wasn’t really successful: Hans would certainly have been much happier with a simple girl whose first great love he was. If, as you say reproachfully, he sometimes stands there in the saloon bar look-ing lost, it may be because he really does feel lost—without being unhappy about it, to be sure, as far as I know him by now—but it is equally sure that this handsome, intelligent young man would have been happier with another wife, by which I mean he would have been more independent, hard-working, and virile. And you yourself cer-tainly are not happy. As you said, you wouldn’t want to go on living without those three mementoes, and you have a weak heart as well. So were Hans’s family wrong in their hopes? No, I don’t think so. The blessing of that lucky star was yours, but they didn’t know how to make the most of it.’
‘What did they fail to do, then?’ asked the landlady. She was now lying full-length on her back, looking up at the ceiling.
‘They didn’t ask Klamm,’ said K.
‘Ah, so we’re back with your own affairs,’ said the landlady. ‘Or yours,’ said K. ‘Our affairs run parallel.’
‘What do you want of Klamm, then?’ asked the landlady. She had now shaken up the pillows so that she could lean back on them sitting upright, and was looking K. full in the face. ‘I have told you frankly about my case, from which you might have learnt something. Now, tell me equally frankly what you want to ask Klamm. It was only with difficulty that I persuaded Frieda to go up to your room and stay there. I was afraid you wouldn’t speak frankly enough in front of her.’
‘I have nothing to hide,’ said K. ‘But first let me point something out to you. Klamm forgets at once, you said. First, that seems to me most unlikely, and second, it can’t be proved and is obviously noth-ing but a legend invented by the girlish minds of those who have been in favour with Klamm. I am surprised that you believe such a downright invention.’
‘It isn’t a legend,’ said the landlady. ‘It derives from general ex-perience.’
‘But it can also be countered by a new experience,’ said K. ‘There’s a difference between your case and Frieda’s. Klamm didn’t stop summoning Frieda; one might say, he did summon her but she didn’t comply. It’s even possible that he is still waiting for her.’
The landlady fell silent and merely let her eyes wander over K., observing him. Then she said: ‘I will listen calmly to everything you have to say. I would rather you spoke openly than think you were sparing me. I have only one request. Do not mention Klamm’s name. Call him “he”, or something else, but don’t call him by his name.’
‘I’m happy to oblige you,’ said K., ‘but it’s difficult to say just what I want of him. First I want to see him at close quarters, then I want to hear his voice, and then I want to know from the man himself how he feels about our marriage. Anything else I may ask him depends on the course of the conversation. There could be a good many subjects for discussion, but what matters most to me is to see him face to face. I have never yet spoken directly to any of the real officials here. It seems harder to achieve that than I expected. But now it’s my duty to speak to him as a private person, and as I see it that’s much more easily done; I can speak to him as an official only in his office, which may be inaccessible, in the castle or—and I’m not sure about that— at the Castle Inn, but I can speak to him as a private person any-where, indoors or in the street, wherever I happen to meet him. If I then find I have the official facing me instead, I’m happy with that, but it is not my prime aim.’
‘Very well,’ said the landlady, pressing her face down into the pillows as if venturing to make an indecent remark, ‘if I can get your request for a conversation with Klamm passed on through my con-nections, then promise me to do nothing on your own account* until the answer comes down from the castle.’
‘Much as I’d like to do as you ask or humour your whim,’ said K., ‘I can’t promise that. This is urgent, particularly after the unfortu-nate outcome of my conversation with the village mayor.’
‘We can dismiss that objection,’ said the landlady. ‘The mayor is a man of no importance at all. Didn’t you notice? He wouldn’t keep his job for a day if it weren’t for his wife. She’s in charge of everything.’ ‘Mizzi?’ asked K. The landlady nodded. ‘She was there, yes,’ K.
said.
‘Did she give an opinion on anything?’ asked the landlady. ‘No,’ said K. ‘And I didn’t get any impression that she could.’
‘Ah, well,’ said the landlady, ‘you have the wrong idea of every-thing here. At least, whatever the mayor has decided about you is of no significance. I’ll have a word with his wife some time. And if I also promise you that Klamm’s answer will come in a week at the latest, you have no reason not to do as I say.’
‘None of this is the deciding factor,’ said K. ‘I’ve made my deci-sion, and I would try to act by it even if a negative answer came. But if that’s what I mean to do all along, I can’t request an interview first. What might still be a daring but honestly meant venture without such a request would be downright insubordination after an answer rejecting it. Surely that would be much worse.’
‘Worse?’ said the landlady. ‘It’s insubordination in any case. And now do as you like. Hand me my dress.’
Taking no more notice of K., she put on her dress and hurried into the kitchen. A commotion in the saloon had been audible for some time. Someone had knocked on the hatch in the partition. The assist-ants had pushed it open and called in that they were hungry. Then other faces had appeared there. You could even hear several voices singing in harmony.
It was true that K.’s conversation with the landlady had consider-ably delayed the cooking of the midday meal, which was not ready yet, but the customers were assembled, although no one had dared to break the landlady’s ban on entering the kitchen. However, now that the watchers at the hatch were calling for the landlady to hurry up, the maids came running into the kitchen, and when K. entered the saloon bar the remarkably large company, over twenty people, both men and women, dressed in provincial but not rustic fashion, left the window where they had been assembled and streamed towards the small tables to make sure of their places. A married couple and sev-eral children were already sitting at one little table in a corner: the husband, a friendly, blue-eyed gentleman with ruffled grey hair and a beard, was standing up and bending over towards the children, beating time with a knife to their song, which he kept trying to quieten down. Perhaps he hoped that singing would make them forget they were hungry. The landlady apologized to the company in a few words, perfunctorily spoken, and no one reproached her. She looked round for the landlord, but in view of the awkwardness of the situation he had probably made his escape long ago. Then she went slowly into the kitchen, without another glance at K., who hurried up to his room and Frieda.
7
The Teacher
K. found the teacher up there. It was good to see that the room could hardly be recognized, Frieda had been so busy. It had been well aired, the stove heated with plenty of fuel, the floor washed, the bed made, while the maids’ things, mostly nasty and tawdry, had gone, and so finally had their pictures. The table, where the encrusted dirt on top of it had previously positively stared you in the face wher-ever you turned, was now covered with a white crochet-work table-cloth. It was possible to receive guests here now, and the fact that K.’s small stock of underwear, which Frieda had obviously washed earlier, was hanging near the stove to dry was not obtrusive. The schoolteacher and Frieda were sitting at the table and rose to their feet when K. came in. Frieda greeted K. with a kiss, the teacher bowed slightly. K., distracted and still agitated after his conversation with the landlady, began to apologize for not having visited the teacher yet, sounding as if he assumed that the teacher, impatient over his failure to turn up, had now himself come to visit him. However, in his measured way the teacher seemed to recollect only after a while that he and K. had made an appointment to meet at some time. ‘So,
