What about Barnabas? Yes, I am certainly expecting him. He is Klamm’s messenger, but that wasn’t my doing.’ ‘Barnabas again,’ cried Frieda. ‘I can’t believe he is a good messen-ger.’ ‘You may be right,’ said K., ‘but he’s the only messenger who’s been sent to me.’ ‘That makes it all the worse,’ said Frieda. ‘You should beware of him all the more.’ ‘I’m afraid he has given me no reason to beware of him yet,’ said K., smiling. ‘He seldom comes, and what he brings is of no importance; only the fact that it comes directly from Klamm gives it any value.’ ‘But look,’ said Frieda, ‘you aren’t even making Klamm your business any more, and perhaps that’s what worries me most. The way you were always wanting to go and see Klamm, overriding me, was bad enough, but now you seem to want to avoid Klamm, which is much worse, and something that even the landlady didn’t foresee. According to the landlady my hap-piness, precarious yet very real as it was, ended on the day when you finally saw that your hopes of Klamm were in vain. But now you aren’t even waiting for such a day any more; all of a sudden a little boy comes along, and you begin quarrelling with him over his mother as if you were fighting for the very air you breathe.’ ‘You have the right idea of my conversation with Hans,’ said K. ‘Yes, that’s how it really was. But is all your earlier life really so remote from you (except, of course, for the landlady, and there’s no getting rid of her) that you no longer know how one must fight to make any progress, particularly when you start from so far below? How any method offering any kind of hope must be used? And this woman comes from the castle, she told me so herself when I lost my way and visited Lasemann’s house on my first day here. What would be more natural than to ask her for advice, or even aid? If the landlady knows about all the obstacles keeping people from Klamm, then that woman probably knows the way to find him; after all, she came the same way herself.’ ‘The way to Klamm?’ asked Frieda. ‘To Klamm, yes, of course, where else?’ asked K. Then he jumped up. ‘But now it’s high time I went to fetch that buffet lunch.’ Frieda earnestly begged him to stay, pleading far harder than the situation required, as if only his staying would prove all the consoling things he had said to her.
But K. remembered the teacher, pointed to the door that might be flung open at any moment with a crash like thunder, and promised to come back quickly, saying she wouldn’t even have to heat the stove, he would do it himself. And finally, in silence, Frieda agreed. As K. trudged through the snow outside—the path ought to have been shovelled clear a long time ago; it was strange how slowly all this work went—he saw one of the assistants still clinging to the barred fence, worn out. Only one; where was the other? Had K. at least broken the spirit of one of them? The remaining assistant was cer-tainly still eager to carry on as before, you could see that when, en-livened by the sight of K., he immediately began stretching out his arms and rolling his eyes imploringly. I must say, K. told himself, he’s a model of intransigence, but immediately he couldn’t help adding: it could freeze him to that fence. However, outwardly K. had nothing to offer the assistant but a threat, shaking his fist in a manner calculated to deter him from any approach, and indeed the assistant anxiously moved some way backwards. Frieda was just opening a window to air the room before the stove was lit, as she and K. had agreed. At that the assistant left K. alone and stole up to the window, irresistibly drawn to it. Her expression one of mingled kind feelings for the assistant and helpless pleading when she looked at K., she waved her hand slightly out of the window. It wasn’t even clear whether that was to fend the assistant off or to welcome him, but it didn’t keep him from coming closer. Then Frieda quickly opened the outer window, but stayed behind it, her hand on the latch, her head on one side, her eyes wide, and a fixed smile on her lips. Did she know that she was enticing rather than deterring the assistant? But K. did not look back any more; he wanted to hurry as fast as possible and be back again soon.
15
At Amalia’s House
At last—it was already dark, late in the afternoon—K. had cleared the garden path, piling up the snow and beating it down firmly on both sides of the path, and now he had finished his day’s work. He stood at the garden gate, with no one else in sight. He had sent the assistant off hours ago, chasing after him for quite a long way, and then the assistant had gone to hide somewhere among the little gar-dens and huts, couldn’t be seen, and had not emerged since. Frieda was at home, either doing their laundry or still busy bathing Gisa’s cat; it was a sign of great confidence on Gisa’s part to give Frieda the job of bathing the cat, unpleasant and unsuitable for her as it was, and K. would certainly not have allowed it had it not been advisable, considering his various derelictions of duty, to seize every opportun-ity of getting into Gisa’s good graces. Gisa had watched with pleas-ure as K. brought down the small child’s bathtub from the attic, water was heated, and finally the cat was picked up and carefully placed in the tub. Then Gisa had left the cat entirely to Frieda, for Schwarzer, K.’s acquaintance of that first evening, had arrived, greeted K. with a mixture of timidity—for which the foundations had been laid that evening—and the boundless disdain due to a school janitor, and then went into the other schoolroom with Gisa. K. had been told at the Bridge Inn that Schwarzer, although he was the son of one of the castle wardens, had been living in the village for a long time for love of Gisa, and through his connections had got the parish council to appoint him an assistant teacher, although his work in that capacity was mainly confined to missing hardly any of the lessons given by Gisa herself, sitting either on the school bench with the children, or for preference at Gisa’s feet on the podium.
By now he was not in the way; the children had long ago become used to him, perhaps more easily because Schwarzer neither liked nor understood children and hardly spoke to them. All he had done was to take over the gymnastics lessons from Gisa, and for the rest he was happy to be near her, to live in the air that Gisa breathed and the warmth of her presence.* His greatest pleasure was to sit beside Gisa and correct the pupils’ exercise books with her. They were busy with that today. Schwarzer had brought a large stack of exercise books with him, the teacher gave them his too, and as long as there was still light K. could see the pair of them sitting at a little table by the window, their heads together, never moving. Now all you could see there was the flickering light of two candles. It was a grave and silent love that united the couple. The tone was set by Gisa, whose lethargic nature would nonetheless sometimes break out into wild excess, but who would never have tolerated such conduct in other people at other times, and so the lively Schwarzer had to adapt to her, walk slowly, speak slowly, keep silent a great deal. However, anyone could see that he was richly rewarded for all this by Gisa’s mere silent pres-ence. Yet perhaps Gisa did not really love him at all, at least her round, grey eyes, which almost never blinked, although their pupils seemed to roll, gave no answer to such questions.
You saw that she tolerated Schwarzer, but she certainly did not understand what an
