You have a great deal of experience of human nature, you come from outside this place, doesn’t she seem to you too particularly clever?’ ‘She seems to me particularly unhappy,’ said K., ‘but how does your respect for her fit the fact that, for instance, Barnabas carries messages, and Amalia disapproves of his job and perhaps even despises it?’ ‘If he knew what else to do he would stop carrying messages at once. It’s not a job that satisfies him at all.’ ‘Isn’t he a trained shoemaker?’ asked K. ‘Yes, to be sure,’ said Olga. ‘He does some work on the side for Brunswick, and could have work day and night and earn good money if he wanted.’ ‘Well then,’ said K., ‘he’d have something to do instead of working as a messenger.’ ‘Instead of working as a messenger?’ said Olga, astonished. ‘Why, do you think he does the job for what he can earn from it?’ ‘Maybe,’ said K., ‘but you were just saying it didn’t satisfy him.’ ‘It doesn’t satisfy him, for several different reasons,’ said Olga, ‘but it is service to the castle, after all, a kind of service to the castle, or at least that’s what people are meant to think.’ ‘What?’ said K. ‘Are you all in doubt even of that?’ ‘Well,’ said Olga, ‘not really. Barnabas goes to the offices, mingles with the servants as if he were one of them, even occasionally sees an official in the distance, he is regularly given important letters to carry, why, even oral messages are entrusted to him to be deliv-ered. That’s a great deal, and we can be proud of what he has already achieved at such a young age.’ K. nodded.
There was no thought of going home in his mind now. ‘Does he have his own livery too?’ he asked. ‘The jacket, you mean?’ said Olga. ‘No, Amalia made that for him even before he was a messenger. But you are close to touching a sore point. For a long time he’d have liked to have, well, not a livery, because there is no such thing at the castle, but an official suit, and he was promised one too, but they are very dilatory about such things at the castle, and the worst of it is that you never know what the delay means. It could mean that the matter is going through official chan-nels, but then again it could mean that the official process hasn’t even begun, that—for instance—they want to test Barnabas more first. And finally, it could also mean that the case has already been through official channels, and Barnabas will never get that suit. Nothing can be discovered in more detail, or only after a long time. We have a saying here—maybe you know it—“Official decisions are as elusive as young girls.” ’ ‘That’s a good observation,’ said K., and he took it even more seriously than Olga. ‘A good observation, and such deci-sions may share certain other characteristics with young girls.’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Olga, ‘though I really don’t know what you mean. Maybe you mean it as a compliment. However, as to the official suit, that’s only one of Barnabas’s worries, and as we all share our worries it’s one of mine too. We ask ourselves in vain: why doesn’t he get an official suit? But then none of this is simple. The officials, for instance, don’t seem to wear official dress; as far as we know here, and from what Barnabas tells us, no, the officials go about in ordinary clothing, although it is very elegant. And you’ve seen Klamm.
But of course Barnabas is not an official, even an official of the lowest rank, and does not presume to be one. However, even upper servants, not that we get to see those here in the village, have no official dress, according to Barnabas, which you might think on the face of it is some comfort, but a deceptive one, for is Barnabas an upper servant? No, however fond I may be of him I can’t say that, he is not an upper servant, and the mere fact that he comes into the village and even lives here proves it; the upper servants are even more reserved than the officials, perhaps rightly so, perhaps in fact they rank higher than many of the officials, and there’s something to be said for that view, for they do less work. According to Barnabas it is a wonderful sight to see those remarkably tall, strong men slowly walking down the corridor. Barnabas always steals carefully around them. In short, there can be no question of Barnabas’s being an upper servant. So he could be one of the lower servants, but they do have official suits, at least when they come down into the village, not exactly livery, for there are many differences between them, but anyway, you can always tell the servants from the castle at once by their clothes. You’ve seen such men at the Castle Inn. The most striking thing about those clothes is that they are generally close-fitting. No farmer or craftsman could wear clothing like that. Well, Barnabas doesn’t have such a suit, which is not just slightly shameful or humiliating, that could be borne, but it makes us doubt everything—especially when we feel depressed, and sometimes, in fact quite often, Barnabas and I do feel depressed. Then we wonder: is what Barnabas does service to the castle? He certainly goes into the offices, but are the offices really the castle? And even if the castle does have offices, are they the offices which Barnabas is allowed to enter? He goes into offices, yes, but that’s only a part of the whole, for there are barriers, and yet more offices beyond them. He is not exactly forbidden to go any further, but he can’t go any further once he has found his su-periors, and when they have dealt with him they send him away. What’s more, you are always being watched there, or at least you think you are.
And even if he did go further, what good would that do if he had no official work there and was an intruder? You mustn’t imagine those barriers as distinct dividing-lines; Barnabas always impresses that upon me. There are barriers in the offices that he does enter too; there are barriers that he passes, and they look no different from those that he has never crossed, so it can’t be assumed from the outset that beyond those last barriers there are offices of an essen-tially different kind from those into which Barnabas has been. We think so only at those times of depression. And then the doubts con-tinue, there’s no dismissing them. Barnabas speaks to officials, Barnabas is given messages. But what kind of officials, what kind of messages are they? Now, he says, he has been assigned to Klamm, and Klamm in person gives him work to do. Well, that would be a great achievement, even upper servants do not get so far, in fact it would be almost too much, and that’s cause for concern. Just think of being assigned to Klamm, speaking to him face to face! But is it really all it seems? Well, yes, it is, but then why does Barnabas doubt that the official who is described there as Klamm really is Klamm?’ ‘Olga,’ said K., ‘are you joking? How can there be any doubt of Klamm’s appearance? It’s well known what he looks like; I have seen him myself.’ ‘Oh, I’m certainly not joking, K.,’ said Olga. ‘Those are not jokes, they are my gravest anxieties. But I’m not telling you this to relieve my heart and perhaps burden yours, I am telling you because you were asking about Barnabas, Amalia told me to tell you, and I too think it will be useful for you to know more. I am also doing it for the sake of Barnabas, so that you won’t hope for too much from him, so that he won’t disappoint you, when he himself would suffer from your disappointment. He is very sensitive; for instance, he didn’t sleep last night because you were displeased with him yester-day evening, and it seems you said that it was very hard on you to have “only such a messenger” as Barnabas. Those words kept him awake, although I don’t suppose that you personally noticed it much, for messengers have to be in control of themselves. But he doesn’t have an easy time, not even with you. As you see it, I’m sure you don’t think you are asking too much of him; you have certain ideas of a messenger’s work in your head, and you judge your own demands by those ideas.
But at the
