That’s how it is, K., those are my secrets, and now I suppose you won’t be surprised any more that Amalia feels she can do without them.’ ‘But what about the letter?’ asked K. ‘The letter?’ said Olga. ‘Well, after a while, when I have pressed Barnabas enough, and meanwhile days and weeks could have passed, he takes the letter and goes to deliver it. He is very dependent on me in such practical details, because once I have overcome the first impression of what he is telling me, I can understand what it is that he’s unable to do, probably because he knows more about it. And so I can keep asking him, for instance: “What do you really want, Barnabas? What kind of career do you dream of, what is your ambition? Do you want to go so far as to abandon us, abandon me, entirely? Is that your aim? I think I should believe that, shouldn’t I, because otherwise there’d be no under-standing why you are so dreadfully dissatisfied with what you have already achieved. Look around you, see if any of our neighbours has done as well. To be sure, their situation is different from ours, and they have no reason to look for a better way of life, but even without making the comparison anyone can see that all is going very well for you. There are obstacles, there are doubtful factors, there are disap-pointments, but that means only, as we knew before, that no one gives you anything gratis, you must strive for every little thing yourself—one more reason to be proud and not downcast. And then you are fighting for us too, surely? Does that mean nothing to you?
Doesn’t it give you fresh strength? And doesn’t the fact that I feel proud, almost arrogant, to know that I have such a brother give you a sense of security? It is true that you disappoint me not in what you have achieved at the castle but in what I have achieved in you. You can go to the castle, you are a constant visitor to the offices, you spend whole days in the same room as Klamm, you are a publicly acknowledged messenger, you carry important messages, you are all that, you can do all those things, and then you come down—and instead of our falling into each other’s arms weeping for happiness, all your courage seems to desert you at the sight of me, you doubt everything, nothing but the shoemaker’s last seems to tempt you, and you do nothing with the letter which guarantees our future.” That’s how I talk to him, and after I have repeated it for days on end he sighs, picks up the letter, and goes out. But that’s probably not the influence of my remarks, for he is on his way up to the castle again—where else?—and he wouldn’t dare to go there without carrying out his errand.’ ‘Well, you are right in everything you tell him,’ said K., ‘you have summed it all up extremely well.
How remarkably clearly you think!’ ‘No,’ said Olga, ‘you’re deceived, and perhaps I am deceiving him. For what has he achieved? He can enter an office, but it doesn’t even seem to be a real office, more of an anteroom to the offices, perhaps not even that, perhaps a room where all who may not enter the real offices must be detained. He speaks to Klamm, but is it really Klamm? Isn’t it more likely someone who simply resem-bles Klamm? A secretary, perhaps, who at a pinch looks a little like Klamm, and tries to be even more like him, and then puts on airs in Klamm’s sleepy, drowsy way. That part of his nature is the easiest to imitate, many try to copy it, although they carefully leave the rest of him alone. And a man like Klamm—in such demand, although it is so difficult to come into his presence—easily takes on different forms in people’s minds. For instance, Klamm has a village secretary by the name of Momus. Ah, so you know him? He too keeps his distance, but I have seen him several times. A strong young gentleman, isn’t he? And he probably doesn’t look at all like Klamm. Yet you can find people in the village who would swear that Momus is Klamm, and that there really is a similarity between the two of them, but it’s a similarity that Barnabas always doubts. And there is every-thing to back up his doubts. Is Klamm going to thrust his way into a common room here among other officials, pencil behind his ear?
That’s most unlikely. Barnabas has the slightly childish habit of saying sometimes—but this is when he’s in a confident mood—“The official looks very like Klamm; if he were sitting in an office of his own, at a desk of his own, and his name were on the door, well, I’d have no doubts at all.” Childish but sensible. It would be even more sensible, however, if when Barnabas is up there he would ask several people how things really stand. After all, from what he says there are plenty of people going around in that room. And wouldn’t what they say be much more reliable than the information of the man who showed him Klamm unasked? With so many up there, they must surely come up with points of reference of some kind, points of com-parison would at least arise from the sheer number of them. That’s not my idea, Barnabas thought of it, but he dares not act on it; he dares not speak to anyone for fear he might lose his job through some kind of unintentional infringement of unknown rules. That shows you how insecure he feels. His insecurity, pitiful as it really is, shows up his position more clearly than any description. How uncertain and menacing everything there must seem if he dares not even open his mouth to ask an innocent question! When I think of that I blame myself for leaving him alone in those unknown rooms where such things go on that even he, who is reckless rather than cowardly, probably trembles for fear there.’
‘Now here I think you come to the crucial point,’ said K., ‘and this is it. From all you have said, I think I now see the situation clearly. Barnabas is too young for his responsibilities. It’s impossible to take any of what he says seriously just like that. If he is half dead of fear when he goes up to the offices—well, he can’t notice anything there, and if he is forced to talk about it here all the same, you’ll only get confused fairy tales. I am not surprised. Awe of the authorities is innate in all of you here, and then it is also dinned into you throughout your lives in all manner of different ways and from all sides, and you your-selves add to it as best you can. I’m saying nothing against that in principle; if authorities are good authorities, why shouldn’t people go in awe of them? But an uninformed youth like Barnabas, who has never been far outside the village, ought not to be suddenly sent to the castle and then expected to come back with faithful reports, where-upon everything he says is studied like a revelation, with everyone’s own happiness depending on its interpretation. Nothing can be more misguided. To be sure I, like you, let myself be led astray by him, I placed my hopes on him and suffered disappointment through him, both hopes and disappointment founded merely on his words, which is to say that they had hardly any foundation at all.’ Olga did not reply. ‘It will not be easy for me,’ said K. ‘to shake your con-fidence in your brother, for I see how you love him and what you expect of him. But I must do it, not least for the sake of your love and your expectations.
Listen: something—I don’t know what it is—keeps preventing you from recognizing fully what Barnabas has not in fact achieved himself but has been granted to him. He can go into the offices, or into an anteroom if you like, well, if it is an anteroom there are doors leading further, barriers that can be crossed if you know how to do it. To me, for instance, that anteroom is entirely inaccess-ible, for the time being anyway. I don’t know who Barnabas talks to there, perhaps that clerk is the lowest of the servants, but even if he is the lowest he can go to the next one up, and if he can’t go to him he can at least give his name, and if he can’t give his name then he can point to someone who will be able to give his name. The alleged Klamm may not have anything in common
