When K. had taken out the bucket of dirty water, fetched fresh water, and now began sweeping the schoolroom, a boy of about twelve rose from one bench, touched K.’s hand, and in all the noise said something he couldn’t make out at all. Then the racket suddenly stopped. K. turned. Here was what he had feared all morning. The teacher, small man that he was, stood in the doorway holding an assistant by the collar with each hand. He had probably caught them fetching firewood, for he thundered in a mighty voice, pausing after every word: ‘Who has dared to break into the woodshed? Where is the fellow? Let me crush him as he deserves!’ Here Frieda rose from the floor, which she was trying to wash around Miss Gisa’s feet, looked at K. as if to draw strength from the sight, and said, with something of her old dignity in her voice and bearing: ‘I did, sir. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. If the classrooms were to be heated at all this morning, we had to open the shed, and I dared not come to you for the key at night. My fiancé had gone to the Castle Inn, it was possible that he might spend the night there, so I had to make the decision for myself. If I did wrong you must forgive my inexperience. I was scolded hard enough by my fiancé when he saw what had happened. In fact he even forbade me to heat the rooms early, because he thought your locking the woodshed showed that you didn’t want them heated until you had arrived yourself. So the fact that they aren’t heated is his fault, but breaking into the woodshed is mine.’ ‘Who broke down the door?’ the teacher asked the assistants, who were still trying to shake off his grip, but in vain. ‘That gentleman,’ they both said, and pointed to K., thus leaving the matter in no doubt.
Frieda laughed, and this laughter seemed even more convincing than her words. Then she began to wring out the rag she had been using to wash the floor in the bucket, as if her explan-ation were the end of the incident, and what the assistants said was just a passing joke. Only when she was kneeling down again to get on with the work did she say: ‘Our assistants are like mere children,* and in spite of their years they still belong on those school benches. I broke down the door with the axe by myself yesterday evening. It was perfectly simple, and I didn’t need the assistants to help me. They would only have been in the way. But then, in the night, my fiancé came back and went out to see the damage and repair it if possible, and the assistants went with him, probably fearing to stay here on their own; they saw my fiancé working on the broken door, and that’s why they say what they do now—as I said, they are just children at heart.’ While the assistants kept shaking their heads as Frieda gave her explanation, pointed to K. again, and tried but failed to make Frieda change her mind through mute pantomime, they finally gave in, took Frieda’s words as an order, and did not reply to another question from the teacher. ‘Well then,’ the teacher said to them, ‘so you were lying? Or at least, you blamed the school janitor out of carelessness?’ They were still silent, but their trembling and their anxious glances seemed to show that they knew they were to blame. ‘Then I shall give you a sound thrashing on the spot,’ said the teacher, and he sent a child into the other room to fetch his cane. When he raised it, Frieda cried: ‘Oh no, the assistants were telling the truth!’ and flung her rag desperately into the bucket, making the water splash up. Then she ran behind the apparatus and hid there. ‘What a pack of liars,’ said Miss Gisa, who had just finished banda-ging the cat’s paw, and now took the animal on her lap, for which it was almost too large.
‘So that leaves us with the school janitor,’ said the teacher, push-ing the assistants away and turning to K., who had been listening and leaning on his broom all this time. ‘The school janitor, who is cow-ardly enough to let others take the blame for his own shabby tricks.’ ‘Well,’ said K., noticing that Frieda’s intervention had in fact moder-ated the teacher’s first fury, ‘if the assistants had been given a bit of a thrashing it wouldn’t have bothered me; they’ve been let off scot free a dozen times when they deserved it, so they might as well pay for that with a thrashing on one occasion when they don’t. However, there are other reasons why I’d have been glad to avoid a direct clash between you and me, sir. And perhaps you’d have been glad too. But since Frieda has sacrificed me for the sake of the assistants,’ said K., pausing—and in the silence Frieda could be heard sobbing behind the blankets—‘we must of course have the whole thing out in the open.’ ‘Outrageous,’ said the assistant teacher. ‘I entirely agree with you, Miss Gisa,’ said the teacher. ‘You are of course dismissed as school janitor on the spot for this shameful dereliction of duty. I reserve the right to decide what punishment will follow, but now get out of this house at once, with all your belongings.
It will be a great relief to us, and we’ll be able to begin lessons at last. So hurry up!’ ‘I’m not moving from this place,’ said K. ‘You are my superior here, but it wasn’t you who appointed me to this post, that was the mayor, and I’m accepting notice only from him. And nor did he appoint me for my household and me to freeze to death in this place, but—as you yourself have said—to keep me from any rash acts that I might commit in my desperation. So dismissing me now out of hand would directly contravene his intentions, and until I hear other-wise from the mayor himself I won’t believe it. What’s more, it will probably be very much to your advantage if I don’t go along with your thoughtless dismissal of me.’ ‘You mean you won’t go?’ said the teacher. K. shook his head. ‘Think it over carefully,’ said the teacher. ‘Your decisions aren’t always the wisest; think, for instance, of yes-terday afternoon when you declined to answer questions at a hear-ing.’ ‘Why do you mention that now?’ asked K. ‘Because I feel like it,’ said the teacher, ‘and now, for the last time, I repeat: get out of here!’ But when that too had no effect, the teacher went to Miss Gisa’s desk and consulted his assistant quietly. She said something about the police, but the teacher wouldn’t have that, and finally they came to an agreement. The teacher told the children to go over to his classroom, and they would be taught their lessons with the other set of children, a change which delighted them all.
The room was cleared amidst laughter and shouting, with the teacher and his assist-ant bringing up the rear. Miss Gisa was carrying the class register, with the corpulent and totally apathetic cat lying on it. The teacher himself would rather have left the cat behind, but a suggestion to that effect was rejected so firmly by Miss Gisa, with reference to K.’s cruelty, that to put the lid on his offences K. had now also unloaded Miss Gisa’s cat on the teacher, a fact which probably affected the last words spoken to K. by the teacher as he stood in the doorway. ‘Miss Gisa is forced to leave this room with the children because you are refractory and refuse to go when I dismiss you, and no one can expect her, a young girl like that, to give lessons in the middle of your squalid household arrangements. You will therefore be left alone, and can do as you like in this room, undisturbed by the aversion of all decent bystanders. But it won’t be for long, you mark my words.’ And with that he slammed the door.
12
The Assistants
As soon as they had all left K. told the assistants: ‘Go away, you two!’ Surprised by this unexpected order, they obeyed, but when K. locked the door behind them they tried to get back in, and stood out-side whimpering and knocking. ‘You’re dismissed!’ cried K. ‘I’m never going to take you back into my service.’ They were not at all happy with that, and hammered on the door with their hands and feet. ‘Let us back in, sir!’ they cried, as if K. were dry land and they were sink-ing in a river nearby. But K. was ruthless. He waited impatiently for the ghastly noise to force the teacher to intervene, and so he soon did. ‘Let your damned assistants in!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve dismissed them,’ K. shouted back, which
