Can’t you tell me? I’ve never seen a country girl like you before. Only today, only now, has that really occurred to me. Do you come from this village? Were you born here?’ Amalia said yes, as if K. had asked only the last question, and then added: ‘So you will wait for Olga, then?’ ‘I don’t know why you keep asking the same thing,’ said K. ‘I can’t stay any longer because my fiancée expects me home.’ Amalia propped herself on her elbows; she said she didn’t know anything about any fiancée. K. told her Frieda’s name. Amalia said she didn’t know her. She asked if Olga knew about the engagement, and K. said he thought so; after all, Olga had seen him with Frieda, and such news spread quickly in the village. However, Amalia assured him that Olga was unlikely to know about it, and it would make her very unhappy, for she seemed to be in love with K. herself. She hadn’t said anything about it openly, for she was very reserved, but she involuntarily betrayed her love. K. was sure, he said, that Amalia was wrong. Amalia smiled, and that smile, although a sad one, lit up her sombre face, made her silence eloquent and her strangeness familiar. It was like the telling of a secret, a hitherto closely guarded posses-sion that could be taken back again, but never taken back entirely. Amalia said she was sure she wasn’t wrong, why, she knew even more, she knew that K. liked Olga too, and that his visits, on the pretext of some message or another from Barnabas, were really to see Olga.
But now that Amalia knew all about it, he didn’t have to be so strictly cautious and could come more often. That was all she’d wanted to tell him, she added. K. shook his head and thought of his engagement. Amalia didn’t seem to be giving that engagement much thought; the immediate impression made on her by K., who after all was standing in front of her alone, was what mattered to her. She asked only when K. had met the girl Frieda; he had been in the vil-lage only a few days. K. told her about the evening at the Castle Inn, to which Amalia said only, and briefly, that she had been very much against anyone’s taking him there. She called on Olga to vouch for that, for her sister was just coming in with an armful of wood, fresh and pink-cheeked from the cold air, lively and strong, as if her usual heavy immobility indoors were transformed by the work outside. She threw the wood down, greeted K. without embarrassment, and immediately asked after Frieda. K. cast Amalia a meaning glance, but she did not seem to think herself refuted yet. A little annoyed by that, K. talked about Frieda at greater length than he would have done otherwise, describing the difficult circumstances in which she was trying to keep house somehow or other in the school, and in the haste of telling his tale—for he wanted to go straight home—he forgot himself so far that, as he took his leave, he invited the sisters to visit him some time.
But now he did feel alarm and stopped, while Amalia immediately said, without giving him time to say another word, that she would accept the invitation, so now Olga had to say so too, and she did. K., however, still harried by his feeling that he ought to get away in a hurry, and uneasy under Amalia’s gaze, did not hesitate to say bluntly that the invitation had been entirely unconsidered, he had made it only out of personal inclination, but unfortunately he would have to withdraw it, since there was such hostility, although for his own part he didn’t know why, between Frieda on the one hand and Barnabas and his family on the other. ‘Oh, it’s not hostility,’ said Amalia, getting up from the bench and dropping the rug behind her, ‘it’s nothing that looms as large as that, it’s just a case of going along with public opinion. Well, off you go to your fiancée, I can see what a hurry you’re in. And never fear that we shall come and see you. I said we would at first only as a joke, out of malice. But you can come and see us when you like, there’s no diffi-culty about that. You can always give Barnabas’s messages as an excuse. I’ll make it still easier for you by saying that even if Barnabas brings you a message from the castle, he can’t go to the school to see you. He can’t run about like that, poor lad, he’s wearing himself out in the service of the castle, you’ll have to come to fetch the message yourself.’ K. had never heard Amalia make such a long speech, and it did not sound like the usual way she spoke; there was a kind of haughtiness in it felt not only by K. but also, obviously, by her sister Olga, who knew her well. She stood a little to one side, hands held in her lap, once again in her usual attitude, stooping slightly and with legs apart. Her eyes were fixed on Amalia, while Amalia looked only at K. ‘This is all a mistake,’ said K. ‘You are much mistaken if you think I’m not serious about waiting for Barnabas.
Getting my affairs with the authorities into order is my dearest, indeed my only, wish. And Barnabas is going to help me achieve it; much of my hope is set on him. To be sure, he has disappointed me badly once, but that was more my own fault than his. It happened in the confusion of my first hours here. I thought at the time I could get everything done on a little evening walk, and then I bore him a grudge because the impossible proved to be impossible indeed. That has influenced me even in assessing your family and you yourselves, but that’s all over. I think I know you better now. You are even—’ here K. looked for the right word, did not find it at once, and contented himself by say-ing something like what he meant: ‘You may well be more kindly disposed than any of the other village people, as far as I yet know them. But Amalia, you bewilder me again when you make so light, if not of your brother’s job, then of his importance to me. Perhaps you are not in the know about Barnabas’s affairs. If so, very well, and I will let the matter rest. But perhaps you are in the know—indeed, that’s the impression I get—and then it’s bad, then it would mean that your brother is deceiving me.’ ‘Never fear,’ said Amalia. ‘I am not in the know, nothing could induce me to let anyone tell me about his affairs, nothing, not even consideration for you, and I would do a good deal for you, for as you said we are kindly disposed people. But my brother’s affairs are his own, I know nothing about them except what I hear now and then by chance and involuntarily. On the other hand, Olga can tell you all about it, because she’s very close to him.’ And Amalia went away, first to her parents, with whom she had a whispered conversation, and then into the kitchen. She had left with-out taking her leave of K., as if she knew he would stay a good deal longer, and goodbyes were not needed.
16
K. stayed behind, looking rather surprised; Olga laughed at him and drew him over to the bench by the stove. She seemed to be really happy to be able to sit here alone with him, but it was a peaceable happiness, certainly untroubled by jealousy. And that very lack of jealousy, and thus also of any severity, did K. good. He liked to look into her blue eyes, which were not enticing nor dominating, but shy as they rested on him and held his gaze. It was as if the warnings of Frieda and the landlady had made him not more receptive to all this, but more attentive and alert. And he laughed with Olga when she wondered why he had called Amalia kindly disposed just now. Amalia had all kinds of qualities, but kindness was not among them. To that K. explained that naturally his praise had been intended for her, Olga, but Amalia was so overbearing that she not only applied everything said in her presence to herself, but made you apply it to her of your own free will. ‘That’s true,’ said Olga, growing more serious now. ‘Truer than you think. Amalia is younger than me, younger than Barnabas too, but she’s the one who makes decisions in the family, for good and for bad, and indeed she has more to bear than any of us, good as well as bad.’ K. thought she was exaggerating, for
