on seeing K. and Frieda sitting quietly at the table: ‘Oh, pray forgive me for disturbing you! But can you tell me when you are finally going to tidy this place up? We’re having to sit all cooped up together over there, and lessons are suffering from it, while you lounge around in the big gymnasium, and you’ve sent the assistants away so as to have even more room for yourselves. So kindly stand up and get moving!’ And he added, to K. alone: ‘And you, fellow, go and fetch me my buffet lunch from the Bridge Inn!’ All this was said furiously, at the top of his voice, but the words were relatively inoffensive, even the disrespectful address of K. as ‘fellow’. K. was ready to do as he was told at once, and it was only to sound the teacher out that he said: ‘But I’ve been dismissed.’ ‘Dismissed or not, fetch me my lunch,’ said the teacher. ‘Dismissed or not is what I want to know,’ said K. ‘What are you going on about?’ said the teacher. ‘You didn’t accept the dismissal.’ ‘So is that enough to cancel it out?’ asked K. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned, believe me,’ said the teacher. ‘But extraordinarily enough, the village mayor won’t hear of it. So get moving, or you really will be thrown out.’ K. was pleased; so in the interim the teacher had spoken to the village mayor, or perhaps not spoken to him but simply worked out what he expected the village mayor’s opinion would be, and it was to K.’s advantage. Now K. started straight off to fetch the buffet lunch, but the teacher called him back again from the corridor, whether because he had just wanted to test K.’s willingness to be of service with this special order, so that he could add more directions to it, or because he felt like giving orders and it pleased him to see K. running busily back and forth like a waiter at his behest. For his part, K. knew that if he gave way too far he would become the teacher’s slave and scapegoat, but he would put up with the man’s whims within limits, for if the teacher, as it transpired, could not legitimately dismiss him, he could certainly make his job unpleasant to the point of being intolerable. And now K. was much more anxious to keep the job than before.

His conversation with Hans had given him new hope—admittedly improbable hope, and for no good reason at all, but hope not to be forgotten all the same. It almost put even Barnabas out of his mind. If he acted in accordance with it, and he had no alternative, then he must do everything in his power to think of nothing else, not food and lodging, not the village authorities, not even Frieda—and at bot-tom this was all about Frieda, for everything else concerned him only in relation to her. So he had to try to keep this job, which gave Frieda some security, and with his eye fixed on that purpose he must not shrink from enduring more from the teacher than he could otherwise have brought himself to do. All this was not too painful; it was to be classed with the constant little pinpricks of life, it was nothing by comparison with what K. was striving for, and he had not come here to lead a life of peace in high esteem.
And so, while he had been ready to run straight off to the inn, he was also prepared to obey the new order to tidy up the room first, so that Miss Gisa could move back with her class. But it had to be done very fast, for after that K. was to fetch the lunch anyway, and the teacher said he was very hungry and thirsty. K. assured him that he would do just as he wanted. The teacher watched for a little while as K. made haste to clear away the bedding, put the gymnastic appara-tus back in its proper place, and sweep up in haste, while Frieda washed and scoured the podium. All this industry seemed to satisfy the teacher. He pointed out that there was a heap of firewood for the stove outside the door—he wasn’t going to let K. have access to the woodshed any more—and then he went away, threatening to be back soon and look in on the children.

After some time spent working in silence, Frieda asked why K. was obeying the teacher so meekly now. She probably meant her question to show sympathetic concern, but K., thinking how little Frieda had succeeded in keeping her original promise to protect him from the teacher’s orders and his violence, just said briefly that now he was a school janitor he must fill the post well. Then they were quiet again, until those few words reminded K. that Frieda had been deep in anxious thought for a long time, indeed through almost his entire conversation with Hans, and now, as he was carrying in firewood, he asked straight out what was on her mind. She replied, slowly looking up at him, that it was nothing in particular. She was just thinking of the landlady and how true much of what she said was.

Only when K. pressed her further did she reply at greater length, and after several refusals, but without stopping her work, which she was doing not out of zeal, since she was really getting nowhere with it, but only so as not to be forced to look at K. And now she told him how she had listened calmly to his conversation with Hans at first, but then, startled by some of the things K. said, she had begun to listen more closely, and from that point on had been unable to stop hearing in it confirmation of a warning that the landlady had given her, although she had never wanted to believe it. K., angered by all these generalities, more irritated than moved even by Frieda’s tearful voice—and above all because here came the landlady meddling in his life again, at least in his mind, since she hadn’t yet had much success in person—dropped the wood he was carrying in his arms on the floor, sat down on it, and speaking seriously, insisted on a full explan-ation. ‘Well,’ began Frieda, ‘the landlady often tried to make me doubt you, right from the start, she didn’t say you were lying, on the contrary, she said you were childishly honest, but your nature was so different from ours that even when you speak frankly we can hardly bring ourselves to believe you, and without a good friend like her to come to our aid we could bring ourselves to believe it only through bitter experience. It had been much the same even for her, she said, despite her keen eye for human nature.

But since that last conversa-tion she had with you at the Bridge Inn—I’m only repeating what she said—she had seen through you, you couldn’t deceive her any more however hard you tried to conceal your intentions. “Not that he really conceals anything,” she kept saying, and then she added: “Do try listening to him properly at every opportunity, not just superficially, listen to what he’s actually saying.” That was all she said, yet what I read into it was something like this: you’d chatted me up—yes, that was the vulgar term she used—just because I hap-pened to cross your path, you didn’t dislike me, and you wrongly thought a barmaid was bound to fall for every guest who put his hand out to her. In addition, as the landlady learned from the landlord of the Castle Inn, you wanted to spend the night there for some reason or other, and whatever that reason was, I was the only way you could achieve that aim. All of this would have been enough for you to make love to me that night in the hope that more would come of it, and that more was Klamm. The landlady doesn’t claim to know what you want from Klamm, she says only that you were as anxious to meet Klamm before you knew me as you were later.

The only difference was that earlier you had no hope of an interview, but now you thought you could use me as a sure way of actually getting to see Klamm quickly, even of having some advantage over him. How alarmed I was—but at first only momentarily, without any deeper reasons—when you said today that before you knew me you had gone astray here. Those might be the very words the landlady used; she also says that only after you came to know me were you sure of your purpose. That comes of your believing that, in me, you had made a conquest of one of Klamm’s lovers, a pledge to be redeemed at the highest price. And she said your sole aim was to negotiate with Klamm over that price. As you thought nothing of me, only of the price, you were ready to make any concessions as far as I was concerned, except over the price. That’s why you don’t mind my losing my place at the Castle Inn, you don’t mind my having to leave the Bridge Inn too, you don’t mind my having to do the hard work of a school janitor here, you have no tenderness and not even any time left for me. You leave me to the assistants, you’re not jealous, I am