And when I lie beside you at night I can’t sleep, and I can’t help constantly glancing across you and see-ing one of them asleep, wrapped up in his blanket, and the other kneeling in front of the stove door putting wood on the fire, while I have to bend forward so far that I almost wake you up. It’s not the cat that scares me, either—oh, I know about cats—and I know how diffi-cult it was to sleep in the bar, where I was always being disturbed. No, it’s not the cat that scares me, it’s myself. And it didn’t take that monstrous cat to startle me either, I jump at the slightest little sound. Sometimes I’m afraid you’ll wake up and it will all be over between us, and then again I jump up and light the candle so that you will wake up and you can protect me.’ ‘I had no idea of any of this,’ said K. ‘Or, rather, I had a slight presentiment of it, that’s why I drove the assistants away. But now they’re gone, so perhaps all will be well.’ ‘Yes, they’re gone at last,’ said Frieda, but her face was anxious and not happy. ‘Only we don’t really know who they are. I call them Klamm’s envoys in my mind, as a game, but maybe they actually are. Their eyes, so guileless yet sparkling, sometimes remind me of Klamm’s. Yes, that’s it, those eyes of theirs sometimes look at me as Klamm’s did. So it’s not quite accurate to say I’m ashamed of them. I only wish I were. I do know that anywhere else, in other people, the same behaviour would be stupid and repellent, but in them it’s not.
I even watch their silly tricks with respect and admiration. However, if they’re Klamm’s envoys, then who’s going to free us from them, and would that even be a good thing? Don’t you think you’d better run after them, catch up with them quickly, and be glad if they came back?’ ‘You want me to let them in again?’ asked K. ‘No, no,’ said Frieda. ‘There’s nothing I want less. The sight of them storming in, their delight at seeing me again, the way they’d hop about like chil-dren but reach out their arms to me like men, I might not be able to bear any of that. But then again, when I think that by remaining so implacable to them you may be denying Klamm himself access to you, I know I want to protect you from the consequences of that in any way I can. Yes, when I think of that I do want you to let them in. So quick, let’s have them in again. Never mind me, what do I matter? I’ll defend myself as long as I can, but if I should fail, well, then I’ll fail knowing that I did it all for your sake.’ ‘You only confirm me in what I think of the assistants,’ said K. ‘They’ll never come in here again with my consent. The fact that I threw them out shows that in some circumstances they can be controlled, and what’s more, it shows that they have nothing to do with Klamm. Only yesterday evening I received a letter from Klamm which clearly proves that he has been entirely misinformed about the assistants, and from that we must conclude in turn that they are a matter of total indifference to him, for if they were not, he would surely have known the facts about them more accurately. Your thinking you see Klamm in them proves nothing, because I’m sorry to say that you’re still under the landlady’s influence, so you see Klamm everywhere. You are still more Klamm’s lover than my wife. Sometimes that makes me very downcast, and I feel as if I’d lost everything, it’s as if I had only just arrived in the village, not full of hope as I really was at that time, but aware that only disappointments await me, and I must suffer them one after another to the very last. But it’s only at times I feel like that,’ added K., smiling when he saw Frieda sinking under the effect of his words, ‘and basically it’s good because it shows what you mean to me. And if you’re going to ask me to choose between you and the assistants, well, the assistants have lost. What an idea, choosing between you and them! Well, now I’ll be finally rid of them. And who knows whether we’re not both feeling rather weak just because we haven’t had any breakfast yet?’ ‘That’s possible,’ said Frieda, with a tired smile, and she set to work. K. himself picked up the broom again.
13
Hans
After a little while there was a quiet knock at the door. ‘Barnabas!’ cried K., throwing down his broom, and in a few strides he was at the door. Frieda looked at him in alarm, more because of that name than anything else. But K.’s hands were so unsteady that he couldn’t undo the old lock of the door at once. ‘Just coming, just opening up,’ he repeated, instead of asking who was out there knocking. And then, having flung the door wide, he saw not Barnabas coming in but the little boy who had tried to speak to him earlier in the day. Not that K. remembered that with any pleasure. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Lessons are in the classroom next door.’ ‘That’s where I’ve come from,’ said the boy, and looked up calmly at K. with his big brown eyes, standing very upright with his arms at his sides. ‘What do you want, then? Quick, out with it!’ said K., bending down a little way, because the boy spoke so softly. ‘Can I help you?’ asked the boy. ‘He wants to help us,’ K. told Frieda, and then, turning to the boy, asked: ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Hans Brunswick,’ said the boy. ‘I’m in Class Four and my father is Otto Brunswick, the master shoemaker who lives in Madeleine Alley.’ ‘Well, well, so your name is Brunswick,’ said K., sounding friendlier. It turned out that Hans had been so upset to see the bleeding scratch inflicted on K.’s hand by the assistant teacher that he had made up his mind there and then to go over to K.’s side. Now he had come from the schoolroom next door like a deserter, risking severe punishment. Such boyish ideas might well motivate him, but a gravity to match them was evident in all he did. At first, however, shyness had held him back, but soon he felt at ease with K. and Frieda, and when he had been given some good hot coffee he became lively and confiding. He also asked eager questions that were very much to the point, as if he wanted to learn the most important facts as quickly as possible so that then he could decide for himself what was best for K. and Frieda. He was naturally a little overbearing, but that was mingled with childish innocence so that you felt like doing as he said half in earnest, half in jest. At any rate, he claimed all their attention. They had stopped work, and breakfast was going to be a long business. Although Hans sat on the classroom bench, K. at the teacher’s desk, and Frieda in a chair near it, it looked as if the boy were the teacher himself, testing them and assessing their answers. A slight smile on his soft mouth seemed to indicate that he knew it was just a game, but he took it very seriously. Or perhaps it was not a smile but the happiness of childhood playing around his lips.
It was some time before he admitted to having seen K. before, on the day when K. called at Lasemann’s house. K. was pleased. ‘You were playing around at that woman’s feet, weren’t you?’ asked K. ‘Yes,’ said Hans, ‘she’s my mother.’ And now he had to tell them about his mother, but he did it hesitantly, and only after being asked repeatedly, for it turned out that he was a little boy who sometimes seemed to speak almost like a clever, energetic, and far-sighted man, particularly in his questions, and perhaps anticipating what he would be in future, or then again perhaps it was only a trick of the senses if you were listening to him intently. But suddenly, without any apparent transition, he was once again a schoolboy who didn’t even understand many of the questions put to him, mistook the meaning of others, spoke too quietly out of childish thoughtless-ness, although he had often had this failing pointed out to him, and finally, as if defiantly, said nothing at all in reply to many urgent queries, entirely without embarrassment, as a grown-up man never could be. It was as if he thought he should be the only one allowed to ask questions, while questions asked by other people broke some rule and were a waste of time. Then he could sit still for a long while, his back straight and his head bent, his lower lip thrust out. Frieda rather liked that, so much so that she
