‘And where do you see the influence of the castle in that?’ asked K. ‘It doesn’t seem to have done anything yet. What you have told me about so far was only the unreasoning anxiety of the people, enjoy-ment of their neighbour’s misfortunes, unreliable friendships—things that we meet with every day, and a certain pettiness on your father’s part too (or so it seems to me), for what was that diploma? Confirmation of his abilities, and he still had those, they made him all the more indispensable, and he could really have made things difficult for the fire chief only by throwing the diploma on the floor at his feet once the man had spoken the first word. But characteristically, as I see it, you don’t mention Amalia at all; Amalia, whose fault it all was, was probably standing calmly in the background watching the devasta-tion.’ ‘No, no,’ said Olga, ‘it was no one’s fault, no one could act in any other way, it was all the influence of the castle.’ ‘The influence of the castle,’ Amalia repeated. She had come in from the yard, unnoticed; her parents had been in bed for some time. ‘Are you tell-ing stories about the castle? Are you still sitting together? Even though you wanted to leave at once, K., and now it’s nearly ten. Don’t such stories trouble you at all? There are people here who feed on stories like that, they sit together the way you two are sitting here and ply one another with gossip. But you don’t seem to me to be one of them yourself.’ ‘Yes, I am,’ said K. ‘I am certainly one of them, and I’m not impressed by those who don’t care for such stories and leave them to others.’ ‘Ah, well,’ said Amalia, ‘people have interests of very different kinds. I once heard of a young man who was busy thinking about the castle day and night, he neglected all else, there were fears for his sanity because his whole mind was up there in the castle. However, in the end it turned out that he wasn’t thinking of the castle at all, only of the daughter of a woman who washed the dishes in the offices there. He got his girl and then everything was all right again.’ ‘I think I’d like that man,’ said K. ‘I doubt whether you’d like the man,’ said Amalia, ‘but you might like his wife.
Now, don’t let me disturb you, I’m going to bed myself, and I’ll have to put the light out for my parents’ sake; they drop off to sleep at once, but their deep sleep lasts only for an hour, and after that the smallest glimmer of light disturbs them. Goodnight.’ And sure enough, the room was darkened at once. Amalia probably made herself a bed somewhere on the floor beside her parents’ bed. ‘Who is that young man she was talking about?’ asked K. ‘I don’t know,’ said Olga. ‘Maybe Brunswick, although it doesn’t sound quite like him, maybe someone else. It’s not always easy to understand exactly what Amalia means, because you often can’t tell whether she is serious or speaking ironically. She’s usually serious, but she may be ironic.’ ‘Never mind the interpretations!’ said K. ‘How did you come to depend on her so much? Did you feel the same before the great disaster, or only afterwards? And don’t you ever feel a wish to be independent of her? Then again, have you any sensible reason for depending on her? She is the youngest, and ought to obey you. Guilty or innocent, she brought misfortune on your family. Instead of asking each of you to forgive her every new day, she carries her head higher than anyone, cares for nothing except your par-ents—I expect she feels sorry for them—doesn’t want to be “in the know” about anything, as she puts it, and when she does at last speak to the rest of you, “she’s usually serious, but she may be ironic”. Or is it because of her beauty, which you sometimes mention, that she rules the rest of you? Well, you are all three very much alike, but what distinguishes her from you and Barnabas is not in her favour, not at all. Even when I first set eyes on her, her dull, unloving look alarmed me. And although she may be the youngest you wouldn’t know it from her outward appearance. She has the look of those women who hardly age at all, but have never been truly young. You see her every day, you don’t notice how hard her face is.
That’s why, when I think about it, I can’t even take Sortini’s fondness for her very seriously. Perhaps he just meant to punish her with that letter, not summon her to him.’ ‘I don’t want to talk about Sortini,’ said Olga. ‘Anything is possible with the gentlemen from the castle, whether we’re talking about the most beautiful girl or the ugliest. But otherwise you are quite wrong about Amalia. Look, I have no reason in particular to win you over to Amalia’s side, and if all the same I am trying to do so, it is only for your own sake. In some way or other Amalia was the cause of our misfortune, that’s certain, but even Father, who was worst affected by the disaster, and could never con-trol his tongue very well, certainly not at home, even Father has never spoken a word of reproach to Amalia, not at the worst of times. And that’s not because, say, he approved of what Amalia did; how could he, who revered Sortini, have approved of it? He couldn’t even remotely understand it, he’d gladly have sacrificed himself and all he had to Sortini, although not in the way he actually did, not in the shadow of Sortini’s probable anger. I say probable anger because we never heard any more of Sortini; if he had been reserved before, from then on he might not have existed at all. And you should have seen Amalia at that time. We all knew that no actual punishment would be inflicted. Everyone simply ostracized us, here as well as in the castle. But while of course we noticed the villagers here withdrawing from us, there was no sign from the castle. We hadn’t noticed the castle paying us any special attention earlier, so how could we notice any change now? This calm state of affairs was the worst of it, not ostracism by the villagers, not by a long way, they hadn’t done it out of any kind of conviction, perhaps they had nothing serious against us, their disdain had not reached its present extent, they had acted only out of fear, and now they were waiting to see what would happen next. We were not yet in want; everyone who owed money had paid us, the final balance had been to our advantage, and as for what we lacked in the way of food, relations helped us out in secret. That was easy, for it was harvest time, although we had no fields ourselves and no one would let us work for them. For the first time in our lives, we were condemned almost to idleness. So there we sat together behind closed windows in the heat of July and August. And nothing happened. No invitation, no news, no visit, nothing.’ ‘Well,’ said K., ‘since nothing happened, and you didn’t expect any punish-ment to be inflicted, what were you all frightened of ? What strange folk you are!’
‘How can I explain it to you?’ said Olga. ‘We didn’t fear anything in the future, we just suffered in the present, we were in the middle of our punishment. The villagers were waiting for us to come back to them, for Father to open his workshop again, for Amalia, whose clever needle could make lovely dresses, although only for the finest people, to be taking orders again, they were all sorry for what they had done. When a highly esteemed family is suddenly entirely excluded from village life, everyone suffers in some way; they had only thought they were doing their duty when they ostracized us, and we would have done just the same in their place. They hadn’t even known exactly what it was all about, just that the messenger had returned to the Castle Inn with a handful of scraps of paper; Frieda had seen him go and then come back, had exchanged a couple of words with him, and immediately passed on what she had learnt, but again not out of hostility to us, only because it was her duty, as it would have been anyone’s duty in a similar situation. So now a happy solution of the whole thing would have been—how shall I put it?—the most welcome outcome to the people here. If we’d suddenly turned up with the news that everything was all right again, perhaps that it had been just a misunderstanding which was now entirely cleared up, or again that, yes, an
