Soon they reappeared outside the windows of the school gymna-sium, knocking on the panes and shouting, but their words could no longer be made out. They didn’t stay there very long, however; they couldn’t jump about in the deep snow well enough to express their profound uneasiness. So they hurried to the fence around the school garden, climbed up on its stone base, from which they had a better view into the room, although only from a distance, ran along the base, clinging to the fence, and then stopped again and held their clasped hands out pleadingly to K. They carried on like this for a long time, ignoring the futility of their efforts. As if they’d been struck blind, they probably went on even when K. drew the curtains over the windows to be rid of the sight of them.
In the now dim light of the room, K. went over to the gymnastic apparatus to look for Frieda. Under his eyes she rose to her feet, tidied her hair, dried her face, and in silence put some coffee on to heat. Although she knew it, K. told her formally that he had dismissed the assistants. She just nodded. K. sat down on one of the school benches and observed her weary movements. It had been her sprightliness and determination that lent beauty to her meagre body, and now that beauty was gone. A few days of living with K. had been enough to do it. Her work in the bar of the inn had not been easy, but she had probably liked it better. Or was her removal from Klamm’s sphere the real reason for her decline? It was the proximity of Klamm that had made her so ridiculously enticing, and enticed as he was, K. had swept her into his arms, where she was now withering away.
‘Frieda,’ said K. She immediately put the coffee-mill down and came over to K. on the bench. ‘Are you cross with me?’ she asked. ‘No,’ said K. ‘I think you can’t help it. You were living happily at the Castle Inn. I ought to have left you there.’ ‘Yes,’ said Frieda, looking sadly into space. ‘You ought to have left me there. I am not worthy to live with you. Free of me, you might be able to achieve everything you want. It’s out of thoughtfulness for me that you submit to that tyrannical teacher, accept this miserable job, go to so much trouble to get an interview with Klamm. All for me, and I repay you so poorly.’ ‘No, no,’ said K., putting his arm round her to console her. ‘All these things are petty details that don’t hurt me, and it’s not just on your account that I want to see Klamm. Think how much you have done for me! Before I met you I was absolutely lost here.
No one would take me in, and if I forced myself on people they soon said goodbye. And if I could have found peace with anyone, it would have been with those from whom I fled in my turn, say Barnabas and his family—’ ‘You did flee from them, didn’t you? Oh, my dearest!’ cried Frieda, interrupting impulsively, but then, after a hesitant, ‘Yes’ from K., she lapsed into lethargy again. But K. himself no longer felt enough determination to explain just how things had turned out well for him through his connection with Frieda. He slowly removed his arm from her waist, and they sat for a while in silence, until Frieda, as if K.’s arm had given her a warmth that was essential to her now, said: ‘I won’t endure this life here any more. If you want to keep me we must go away, emigrate, go anywhere, to the south of France, to Spain.’* ‘I can’t emigrate,’ said K. ‘I came to this place meaning to stay here, and stay I will.’ And in a spirit of contradiction which he didn’t even try to explain he added, as if to himself: ‘What could have lured me to this desolate part of the country but a longing to stay here?’ Then he added: ‘But you must want to stay here too; it’s your own country, after all. However, you miss Klamm, and that’s what casts you into despair.’ ‘You think I miss Klamm?’ said Frieda. ‘There’s an excessive amount of Klamm here, there’s only too much Klamm. I want to go so that I can get away from him. You’re the one I’d miss, not Klamm. It’s for your sake I want to go, because I can’t get enough of you here where everyone’s pulling me in different directions. I’d rather my pretty face were gone, I’d rather my body felt wretched, just so long as I could live in peace with you.’
All that K. gathered from this was a single point. ‘Klamm is still in touch with you, is he?’ he asked at once. ‘Does he want you to go back to him?’ ‘I don’t know anything about Klamm,’ said Frieda, ‘it’s other people I’m talking about now, it’s the assistants.’ ‘Oh, the assistants,’ said K. in surprise. ‘Do they pester you?’ ‘Haven’t you noticed?’ asked Frieda. ‘No,’ said K., and tried in vain to think of any details. ‘They’re importunate, lecherous young fellows, but no, I hadn’t noticed them pestering you.’ ‘You hadn’t?’ said Frieda. ‘You mean you never noticed how there was no getting them out of our room at the Bridge Inn, or the way they jealously watched what we were doing together, you didn’t notice one of them lying down in my place on the straw mattress, you didn’t hear the things they said about you just now, hoping to drive you away, ruin you, and be left alone with me. You never noticed any of that?’ K. looked at Frieda without replying. No doubt her complaints of the assistants were justified, but in view of their utterly ridiculous, childish, restless, and intemperate nature all that could be seen in a much more innocent light. And didn’t the way they had always done their utmost to go everywhere with K. rather than being left alone with Frieda disprove her accusation? K. said something of the kind. ‘Hypocrisy,’ said Frieda. ‘Didn’t you see through it? Why did you drive them away if that wasn’t the reason?’ And she went to the win-dow, moved the curtain a little way aside, looked out, and then called K. over to her. The assistants were still out there by the railings; from time to time, tired as they obviously were, they still summoned up enough strength to raise their arms and point imploringly to the school. One of them had attached himself by his coat to a spike in the fence behind him so that he didn’t have to cling to it all the time.
‘Poor things! Poor things!’ said Frieda. ‘You ask why I drove them away?’ asked K. ‘Well, you were the immediate cause.’ ‘I was?’ asked Frieda, without taking her eyes off the scene outside. ‘Your excessively friendly treatment of the assistants,’ said K., ‘forgiving their naughty tricks, laughing at them, caressing their hair, feeling sorry for them all the time. You’ve just called them “poor things, poor things” again, and then only a little while ago you were ready to sacrifice me to save the assistants from a thrashing.’ ‘That’s just it,’ said Frieda, ‘that’s what I’m talking about, that’s what makes me unhappy and keeps me apart from you, although I know of no greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, without end, but I feel in my dreams that there is no place on earth where our love can be at peace, not in the village or anywhere else, and I imagine a deep and narrow grave where we lie embracing tightly in each other’s arms as if in pincers, I bury my face against you, you bury yours against me, and no one will ever see us again. But here—just look at the assistants! It’s not you they’re pleading with when they clasp their hands, it’s me.’ ‘Well, I don’t see that,’ said K., ‘even if you do.’ ‘Indeed I do,’ said Frieda almost angrily, ‘that’s what I keep telling you. Why else would the assistants be after me, even if they are Klamm’s envoys—’ ‘Klamm’s envoys?’ said K., greatly surprised by this idea, although it instantly seemed to him natural. ‘Yes, Klamm’s envoys, to be sure,’ said Frieda, ‘but even if they are, they’re also silly young fellows, they need a good thrashing to teach them a lesson. What ugly, grubby lads they are, and how I hate the contrast between their faces, from which anyone might think they were adults or maybe students, and their foolish, childish conduct! Do you think I don’t
