for him. However, K. was able to write it straight out as dictated back to him by Barnabas, who had remembered every word and recited it as meticulously as a school-boy, taking no notice of the way the assistants were saying it all wrong. ‘Your memory is remarkable,’ said K., giving him the paper, ‘so please show yourself remarkable in other respects too. And what about your own wishes? Don’t you have any? I’ll say frankly, it would reassure me a little about the fate of my message if you did want something’. At first Barnabas was silent, but then he said: ‘My sisters send their regards.’ ‘Your sisters,’ said K. ‘Ah yes, those tall, strong girls.’ ‘They both send you their regards, but particularly Amalia,’ said Barnabas. ‘And she brought me this letter from the castle for you today too.’ Seizing upon this piece of information above all, K. asked: ‘Then couldn’t she take my message to the castle as well? Or couldn’t you both go and try your luck separately?’ ‘Amalia isn’t allowed into the offices,’ said Barnabas. ‘Otherwise I’m sure she’d be happy to do it.’ ‘I may visit you tomorrow,’ said K., ‘but come to see me yourself first with the answer. I’ll expect you at the school. And give my regards to your sisters too.’ K.’s words seemed to make Barnabas very happy, and after they had shaken hands he touched K. briefly on the shoulder. As if everything was back the way it had been when Barnabas, in all his finery, first appeared among the locals in the bar of the inn, K. felt that this touch, although given with a smile, was a mark of distinction. He was less upset now, and let the assistants do as they liked on their way back.

11

At the School

He reached home frozen. It was dark everywhere, the candles in the lanterns had burned down, and he made his way into one of the classrooms with the help of the assistants, who knew their way around the place—‘Your first praiseworthy job done,’ he told them, remembering Klamm’s letter. Frieda, still half asleep, called from a corner of the room: ‘Let K. sleep! Don’t disturb him!’ For K. occu-pied her mind even when she was so overcome by drowsiness that she hadn’t been able to wait up for him. Now a lamp was lit, although it couldn’t be turned up very far, for there was very little paraffin. Their new household still lacked a number of things. There was heating, but the large room, which was also used as the school gymnasium—the gymnastic apparatus stood around and hung from the ceiling—had already used up all the wood for the stove. K. was assured that it had been nice and warm, but unfortunately it had now cooled down again entirely. There was a large supply of wood in a shed, but the shed was locked and the teacher, who would allow firewood to be taken to heat the rooms only during school hours, had the key. They could have put up with that if there had been beds where they could take refuge. However, there was nothing but a single straw mattress, neatly covered with a woollen shawl of Frieda’s in a way that did her credit, but there was no eiderdown, and just two stiff, coarse blankets that gave hardly any warmth. The assistants were looking covetously even at this wretched straw mattress, but of course they had no hope of ever lying on it. Frieda looked anxiously at K.; she had shown at the Bridge Inn that she could make even the most miserable room fit to live in, but she hadn’t been able to do much here, entirely without any means. ‘The gymnastic apparatus is all we have to decorate our room,’ she said, trying to smile through her tears. As for what they needed most, beds to sleep in and fuel to heat the room, she promised K. that she would get something done about it next day, and asked him to wait patiently until then. Not a word, not a hint, not a look on her face suggested that she felt the slightest bitterness in her heart towards K., although as he couldn’t help reflecting he had taken her away first from the Castle Inn and now from the Bridge Inn. So K. did his best to seem to find it all tolerable, which was not so hard for him, because in his mind he was with Barnabas, going over his message again word by word, although not exactly as he had given it to Barnabas but as he thought it would sound to Klamm.

At the same time, however, he was really glad of the coffee that Frieda made him over a spirit-burner, and leaning against the stove, which was now cooling off, he watched her quick and expert movements as she spread the inevitable white tablecloth on the teacher’s desk, which did duty as a table, put a flowered coffee cup on the cloth, and beside it some bread and bacon and even a can of sardines. Now everything was ready. Frieda hadn’t eaten yet herself, but had waited for K.’s return. There were two chairs, which K. and Frieda drew up to the table, while the assistants sat on the podium at their feet, but they would never keep still, even when they were eating they were a nuisance. Although they had been served good helpings of everything, and hadn’t nearly finished what was on their plates, they rose from time to time to see if there was still plenty left on the table so that they could hope for seconds. K. took no notice of them, and only Frieda’s laughter drew his attention to them. He covered her hand on the table affectionately with his own, and asked quietly why she let them get away with so much, even putting up with their bad habits in a friendly way. This way, he pointed out, they would never be rid of the assistants, while a certain amount of stern treatment, such as their conduct deserved, might either enable him to keep them under control or, more probably and even better, make them dislike their position so much that in the end they would run away. The schoolhouse here didn’t look like being a pleasant place to live in; well, their stay wouldn’t be long, but if the assistants weren’t around and the two of them were alone in this quiet house they would hardly mind what was missing. Didn’t she notice, he asked, that the assistants were getting more impertinent every day, as if they were actually encouraged by Frieda’s presence and the hope that K. would not attack them in front of her, as he otherwise would? What was more, there might be a perfectly simple means of getting rid of them at once, without much ceremony; per-haps Frieda, who knew this place so well, might even know of some-thing.

And they’d really be doing the assistants a favour if they drove them away somehow, for the life they were leading here was not very comfortable, and they’d have to give up, at least to some extent, the idleness they had enjoyed so long, because they would have to work, while Frieda must rest after all the upheavals of the last few days, and he, K., would be busy finding a way out of their present plight. However, if the assistants were to go, he said, he would feel so relieved that he would easily be able to take on the duties of a school janitor as well as everything else.
Frieda, who had listened attentively to him, slowly caressed his arm and said that all that was her own opinion too, but perhaps he made too much of the assistants’ bad habits; they were young fellows, cheerful and a little simple, taken into a stranger’s service for the first time, away from the stern discipline of the castle and so a little sur-prised and excited all the time, and in that frame of mind, yes, they did sometimes do silly things. Of course it was natural to get annoyed about that, but it would be more sensible to laugh. Sometimes she really couldn’t help laughing at them herself. All the same, she entirely agreed with K., she said, that it would be better to send them away, and then there’d be just the two of them. She moved closer to K. and hid her face against his shoulder. And still in that position, she said in a voice so muffled that K. had to bend down to hear her, that no, she didn’t know any means of getting rid of the assistants, and she was afraid that none of the ideas K. had suggested would work. As far as she knew, she said, K. himself had asked for his assistants, and now he had them and would have to keep them. It would be a good idea simply to accept them as the lightweight couple they were, that was the best way to put up with them, she said.
K. was not happy with this reply. Half in earnest, half joking, he said that she seemed to be in league with them, or at least to like them very much; well, they were good-looking young fellows, but there was no one you couldn’t get rid of if you really put your mind to it, and so he would show her with the assistants.

Frieda said she would be very grateful to him if he succeeded,