a lantern in the air and shining it in his direction. Fleetingly remembering the carrier, K. stopped. There was a cough somewhere in the darkness; that was him. Well, he’d prob-ably be seeing him again soon. Only when he reached the top of the steps, to be respectfully greeted by the landlord, did he see two men, one on each side of the door. Taking the lantern from the landlord’s hand, he shone it on the pair of them; they were the men he had already met and who had been addressed as Artur and Jeremias. They saluted him. Reminded of the happy days of his military service, he laughed. ‘Well, so who are you?’ he asked, looking from one to the other. ‘Your assistants,’ they replied. ‘That’s right, they’re the assist-ants,’ the landlord quietly confirmed. ‘What?’ asked K. ‘Do you say you’re my old assistants who were coming on after me and whom I’m expecting?’ They assured him that they were. ‘Just as well, then,’ said K. after a little while. ‘It’s a good thing you’ve come. What’s more,’ he added after another moment’s thought, ‘you’re extremely late. That’s very remiss of you.’ ‘It was a long way,’ said one of them. ‘A long way?’ K. repeated. ‘But I saw you coming down from the castle.’ ‘Yes,’ they agreed, without further explanation. ‘What have you done with the instruments?’ asked K. ‘We don’t have any,’ they said. ‘I mean the surveying instruments that I entrusted to you,’ said K. ‘We don’t have any of those,’ they repeated. ‘What a couple you are!’ said K. ‘Do you know anything about land surveying?’ ‘No,’ they said. ‘But if you claim to be my old assistants, then you must know something about it,’ said K. They remained silent. ‘Oh, come along, then,’ said K., pushing them into the house ahead of him.

2

Barnabas

The three of them were sitting rather silently at a small table in the saloon bar of the inn over their beer, K. in the middle, his assistants to right and left of him. Otherwise there was only a table where some of the local rustics sat, just as they had yesterday evening. ‘I’m going to have a hard time with you two,’ said K., comparing their faces yet again. ‘How am I to know which of you is which? The only difference between you is your names, and apart from that’—he hesitated— ‘apart from that you’re as like as two snakes.’ They smiled. ‘Oh, other people find it easy to tell us apart,’ they said. ‘I believe you,’ said K. ‘I’ve seen that for myself, but then I have only my own eyes, and I can’t distinguish between you with those. So I shall treat you as a single man, and call you both Artur, which is the name of one of you— you, perhaps?’ K. asked one of the assistants. ‘No,’ he said, ‘my name is Jeremias.’ ‘Well, never mind that,’ said K, ‘I shall call you both Artur. If I send Artur somewhere you’ll both go, if I give Artur a job to do you’ll both do it, which from my point of view will be a disad-vantage in that I can’t employ you on separate tasks, but also an advantage because then I can hold you jointly responsible for every-thing I ask you to do. How you divide the work between you is all the same to me, only you can’t make separate excuses. To me you’ll be just one man.’ They thought this over and said: ‘We wouldn’t like that at all.’ ‘Of course not,’ said K. ‘Naturally you’re bound to dislike it, but that’s how it’s going to be.’ For some time, he had been watch-ing one of the local rustics prowling around the table, and at last the man made up his mind, went over to one of the assistants, and was about to whisper something in his ear. ‘Excuse me,’ said K., slam-ming his hand down on the table and standing up, ‘these are my assistants and we are in the middle of a discussion. No one has any right to disturb us.’ ‘Oh, I see, I see,’ said the local man in some alarm, walking backwards to rejoin his company. ‘I want you two to take particular note of this,’ said K., sitting down again. ‘You may not speak to anyone without my permission. I’m a stranger here, and if you’re my old assistants then you are strangers here too. So we three strangers must stick together. Let’s shake hands on it.’ They offered K. their hands only too willingly. ‘Well, never mind about those great paws of yours,’ he said, ‘but my orders stand.

I’m going to get some sleep now, and I advise you to do the same. We’ve missed out on one working day already, and work must start early tomorrow. You’d better find a sleigh to go up to the castle and be here outside the inn with it at six in the morning, ready to leave.’ ‘Very well,’ said one of the assistants. But the other objected. ‘Why say “very well”, when you know it can’t be done?’ ‘Be quiet,’ said K. ‘I think you’re trying to start distinguishing yourselves from each other.’ Now, however, the assistant who had spoken first said: ‘He’s right, it’s impossible. No stranger may go up to the castle without a permit.’ ‘So where do we have to apply for a permit?’ ‘I don’t know. Maybe to the castle warden.’ ‘Then we’ll apply by telephone. Go and telephone the castle warden at once, both of you.’ They went to the telephone, made the connec-tion, crowding together eagerly and showing that outwardly they were ridiculously ready to oblige, and asked whether K. might come up to the castle with them next day. The reply was a ‘No’ that K. could hear all the way over to his table, but the answer went on. It ran: ‘Not tomorrow nor any other time either.’ ‘I’ll telephone myself,’ said K., rising to his feet. So far, apart from the incident with that one local rustic, no one had taken much notice of K. and his assistants, but this last remark of his aroused general attention. The whole company stood up with K., and although the landlord tried to fend them off, they crowded around him in a semicircle close to the telephone. Most of them seemed to be of the opinion that K. wouldn’t get an answer. K. had to ask them to keep quiet, telling them he didn’t want to hear their views.

A humming, such as K. had never before heard on the telephone, emerged from the receiver. It was as if the murmur of countless childish voices—not that it was really a murmur, it was more like the singing of voices, very very far away—as if that sound were forming, unlikely as that might be, into a single high, strong voice, striking the ear as if trying to penetrate further than into the mere human sense of hearing. K. heard it and said nothing; he had propped his left arm on the telephone stand, and listened like that.
He didn’t know just how long he stood there, but after a while the landlord plucked at his coat and told him that someone had come with a message for him. ‘Go away!’ cried K., angrily, perhaps into the telephone, for now someone was answering at the other end, and the following conversation took place. ‘Oswald speaking—who’s there?’ asked the speaker in a stern, haughty voice with a small speech defect for which, as it seemed to K., he tried to compensate by dint of extra severity. K. hesitated to give his name; he was powerless against the telephone, leaving the other man free to shout at him and put down the receiver. If that happened, K. would have cut himself off from what might be a not-unimportant means of getting somewhere. K.’s hesitation made the man impatient. ‘Who’s there?’ he repeated, add-ing, ‘I really would rather you lot down there didn’t do so much telephoning. We had a call only a minute ago.’ Taking no notice of this remark, K. came to a sudden decision and announced: ‘This is the land surveyor’s assistant speaking.’ ‘What assistant?

What land surveyor?’ K. remembered yesterday’s conversation. ‘Ask Fritz,’ he said briefly. To his surprise, this worked. But over and beyond that, he marvelled at the consistency among the people up there, for the answer was: ‘Yes, yes, I know. That eternal land surveyor!* Yes, yes, so what else? What assistant?’ ‘Josef,’ said K. He was slightly taken aback by the way the locals were muttering behind him; obviously they didn’t like to hear him giving a false name. But K. had no time to bother about them, for the conversation called for all his attention. ‘Josef?’ came the answer. ‘No, the assistants are called’—here there was a pause, while someone else was obviously consulted—‘are called Artur and Jeremias.’ ‘Those are the new assistants,’ said K. ‘No, they’re the old ones.’ ‘They are the new assistants, but I’m the old one, and I came on later than the land surveyor and got here today.’ ‘No,’ the other man replied, shouting now. ‘Who am I, then?’ asked K., still keeping calm. And after a pause the same voice, with the same speech defect, yet sounding like another and deeper voice, commanding more respect, agreed: ‘You are the old assistant.’

K. was listening to the sound of the voice, and almost missed hear-ing the next question: ‘What do you want?’ He felt like slamming the