K. took advantage of this to take Frieda’s mind off the assistants; he drew her to him, and they finished their meal sitting close together. It was really time to go to sleep now, and they were all very tired; one of the assistants had actually fallen asleep over his supper, which amused the other very much, and he kept trying to make his master and mistress look at the sleeping man’s stupid face, but he didn’t succeed, for K. and Frieda were sitting above him and didn’t respond. They hesitated to drop off in the cold, which was becoming unbearable, and finally K. said they really must have some heating or it would be impossible to sleep. He looked for some kind of axe. The assistants knew where to find one, and brought it, and now they went out to the woodshed. Its flimsy door was soon broken down, and the assistants, as delighted as if they had never known such fun, began carrying wood into the classroom, chasing and pushing each other about. Soon there was a great heap of it there, the stove was lit, and everyone lay down around it. The assistants were given one of the blankets to wrap themselves in, which was quite enough for them, for it was agreed that one should stay awake and keep the fire going. After a while it was so warm by the stove that the blankets weren’t even needed any more. The lamp was put out, and K. and Frieda, happy to be warm and quiet, lay down to sleep.
When a sound of some kind woke K. in the night, and in his first uncertain drowsy movement he groped around for Frieda, he found one of the assistants lying beside him instead. This, probably as a result of his irritable mood on being suddenly woken, was the biggest shock he had yet had in the village. With a cry, he half rose, and in a blind fury punched the assistant so hard with his fist that the man began shedding tears. The whole affair was soon cleared up. Frieda had been woken when some large animal—or so it had seemed to her at least—probably a cat, jumped on her breast and then ran away again. She had risen, and was searching the whole room for the ani-mal with a candle. The assistant had seized his chance to enjoy lying on the straw mattress for a little while, and now paid dearly for it. However, Frieda could find nothing; perhaps she had just imagined it, and now she came back to K. On her way, as if she had forgotten the evening’s conversation, she comfortingly stroked the whimper-ing assistant’s hair as he crouched on the ground. K. said nothing about that, but he told the assistant to stop putting fuel in the stove, for almost all the wood they had piled up was burned, and the room was too hot now.
In the morning they none of them woke up until the first of the schoolchildren had arrived and were standing around the place where they lay, full of curiosity. This was awkward, for as a result of the heat, although now it had given way to a cool atmosphere again, they had all undressed to their underclothes, and just as they were beginning to get dressed Miss Gisa the assistant teacher, a tall, blonde, handsome girl with a little stiffness in her manner, appeared at the door. She was obviously prepared for the new school janitor, and the teacher had probably told her how to treat him, for even in the doorway she said: ‘I really can’t have this. Here’s a nice thing! You have permission to sleep in the classroom, but that’s all; it’s not my duty to teach the children in your bedroom. A school janitor and his family lying in bed until the middle of the morning! Shame on you!’
Well, K. thought he could have said a thing or two about that, particularly on the subject of beds and his family, as he and Frieda—the assistants were useless here, and were lying on the floor staring at the teacher and the children—quickly pushed the parallel bars and the vaulting-horse together, draped the blankets over them, and so created a small room in which they could at least get dressed away from the children’s eyes. Not that they had a moment’s peace; first the assistant teacher was cross because there was no fresh water in the washbasin—K. had just been thinking of fetching the wash-basin for Frieda and himself, but he gave that idea up for the time being so as not to annoy the assistant teacher still more. However, abandoning the notion did not help, for soon there was a great crash. Unfortunately they had forgotten to clear away the remains of their supper, and now Miss Gisa was sweeping it all off the teacher’s desk with her ruler. Everything fell on the floor. The teacher wasn’t going to bother about the fact that the oil from the sardines and the remains of the coffee were spilt on the floor, and the coffee-pot had broken to pieces; after all, the school janitor would clear it up. Still not fully dressed, K. and Frieda, leaning against the gymnastic appa-ratus, watched the destruction of their few household goods. The assistants, who clearly had no idea of getting dressed, peered out from under the blankets, much to the children’s amusement. What upset Frieda most, of course, was the loss of the coffee-pot, and only when K., to comfort her, assured her that he would go straight to the village mayor, ask for a replacement, and get one, did she pull herself together enough to emerge from their enclosure, still in nothing but her chemise and petticoat, to retrieve the tablecloth at least and keep it from being soiled any further.
And she succeeded, although the teacher, trying to alarm her, kept hammering on the desk with the ruler in a nerve-racking way. When K. and Frieda were dressed they not only had to urge the assistants, who seemed quite dazed by these events, to dress too, giving them orders and nudging them, they even had to help with dressing the pair themselves. Then, when they were all ready, K. shared out the next tasks: the assistants were to fetch wood and heat the stoves, going first to the stove in the other class-room, a source of great danger, for the teacher himself was probably there now. Meanwhile Frieda would clean the floor, and K. would fetch water and generally tidy up. They couldn’t think of having any breakfast yet. K. wanted to emerge from their shelter first, so as to find out what the assistant teacher’s temper was like in general, and the others were to follow only when he called them. One reason why he made this arrangement was that he didn’t want to let the situation go straight from bad to worse because of the assistants’ silly tricks, and another was to spare Frieda as much as possible; she had high ambitions, he did not; she was sensitive, he was not; she thought only of their present petty discomforts, while he was thinking of Barnabas and the future. Frieda did all he said and hardly took her eyes off him. No sooner had he stepped out into the room than the assistant teacher asked, to the accompaniment of laughter from the children which seemed as if it would never stop: ‘Oh, had your sleep out, have you?’ When K. ignored this, for it was not a real question, and instead made for the washstand, Miss Gisa asked: ‘Whatever have you been doing to my kitty?’ For a large, fat old cat lay stretched out on the washstand, and Miss Gisa was examining one paw, which was obviously slightly injured.
So Frieda had been right; the cat had not actually jumped on her, for it probably couldn’t jump any more, but it had clambered over her, was alarmed to find people in the usually empty schoolhouse, and had hidden in a hurry, hurting itself in its unwonted haste. K. tried to explain all this calmly to Miss Gisa, but she saw only the outcome of this course of events and said: ‘You’ve hurt my kitty, that’s how you start your work here. Look at this!’ And she called K. up to the desk, showed him the paw, and before he knew what she was about she had run it over the back of his hand, scratching him. The cat’s claws were blunt, to be sure, but Miss Gisa, without thought for the cat itself, had pressed them down so hard that they left bloody weals. ‘Now, get on with your work,’ she said impatiently, bending over the cat again. Frieda, who had been watching with the assistants from behind the apparatus, screamed at the sight of the blood. K. showed the children his hand and said: ‘There, just see what a nasty, sneaking cat did to me.’ Of course
