What I said to him myself had little influence on him, he was influenced mainly by the servants’ stories. And so I was really thrown entirely on my own resources; no one could communicate with our parents but Amalia, and the more I followed my father’s old plans in my own way, the more Amalia cut herself off from me. She will speak to me in front of you or other people, but never now when we are alone; I was only a toy to the servants at the Castle Inn, one that they furiously tried to break, I never spoke a single word with any of them in friendship for two years, it was all underhand or lies or false, so I was left with only Barnabas, and Barnabas was still very young. When I told my stories and saw the gleam in his eyes—it is there to this day—I was alarmed, but I didn’t give up; there seemed to be too much at stake. To be sure, I did not have my father’s grand if empty plans, I did not have a man’s determination, my idea was still to make up for the insult to the messenger, and I even thought this modest wish of mine might be considered meritorious. But what I alone had failed to do, I now hoped to achieve in a different way and more securely through Barnabas. We had insulted a messenger and chased him out of the offices at the front of the castle; what was more obvious than to offer the castle a new messenger in the person of Barnabas, so that Barnabas could do the work of the messenger who had suffered the insult, thus making it possible for him, the messenger, to stay away with an easy mind for as long as he liked, for however long he needed to forget the insult? I did realize that for all the modest nature of this plan there was also presumption in it; it could give the impression that we were dictating to the authorities, telling them how to manage their own staff, or make it look as if we doubted whether the author-ities were able to make arrangements for the best of their own accord, or had been doing so long before we even thought of lending them a hand. But then again I thought it was impossible for the authorities to misunderstand me like that, or if they did they would do it on purpose, and then all I did would be rejected from the outset, with-out more thought. So I persisted, and Barnabas’s ambition did the rest. In this time of preparation, Barnabas became so grand in his ideas that he thought shoemaking too dirty a job for someone who was to be an office employee, he even dared to contradict Amalia when she said something to him, which was rare enough, and indeed he contradicted her outright.
I did not begrudge him this brief pleas-ure, for on the first day when he went to the castle, as could easily have been foreseen, there was an end to our joy and grand ideas. And now he began that apparent service which I have already told you about. The way Barnabas first set foot in the castle, or more correctly in that office which has, so to speak, become his place of work, without any difficulty was astonishing. This success almost turned my wits at the time, and when Barnabas whispered his news to me on coming home I ran to Amalia, seized her, led her into a corner, and kissed her fiercely, with my lips and teeth and all, so that she wept with pain and fright. I couldn’t speak for excitement, and it was so long since we had talked to each other anyway, I thought I would put it off for a few days. But there was no more to tell over the next few days. We got no further than that first achievement. For two years Barnabas led the same monotonous, oppressive life. The ser-vants failed me entirely; I gave Barnabas a little letter to take with him, in which I recommended him to their attention, at the same time reminding them of their promise, and whenever Barnabas saw one of the servants he took out the letter and showed it to him. Sometimes he came upon servants who didn’t know me, and his way of showing the letter in silence, because he dared not speak up there, probably annoyed even those who did, yet it was a shame that no one helped him. Release came in a way that we ourselves could and should have thought of long before, when one servant, on whom the letter had probably been pressed several times, crumpled it up and threw it into a waste-paper basket. He might have been saying, it occurred to me: “Well, that’s only the way you treat letters yourselves.” Unsuccessful as this whole period was otherwise, however, it had a beneficial effect on Barnabas, if you can call it beneficial that he aged before his time, became a man before his time, and in many ways is more grave and understanding than most grown men. That often makes me look at him very sadly, comparing him with the boy he still was two years ago. And yet I do not have the comfort and support that, as a man, he might be able to provide.
Without me he would hardly have got into the castle at all, but now that he is there he is independent of me. I am his one close friend, but I am sure he tells me only a small part of what is on his mind. He tells me a great deal about the castle, but from his stories, from the little things he does tell me, it’s hard to understand how it can have changed him so. In particular, it’s hard to understand why, when he was so brave as a boy, almost driving us to despair, he has now so entirely lost his courage as a man up there. To be sure, all that pointless standing about and waiting day after day, always starting all over again without any prospect of change, will wear a man down and make him doubtful, and ultimately incap-able of anything but that despairing standing about. But why didn’t he put up any resistance even at the start? Particularly since he soon realized that I had been right, and there was nothing there to satisfy his ambition, though there might be some prospect of improving our family’s situation. For everything is in a very low key there, except for the whims of the servants, ambition seeks its satis-faction in work up there, and as the work itself is what matters ambition is lost entirely, there is no room there for childish wishes. But Barnabas thought, as he told me, that he saw clearly how great was the power and knowledge of even those very dubious officials into whose room he was allowed. How they dictated, fast, with eyes half-closed, brief gestures, how they handled the morose servants just by crooking a forefinger, without a word—and at such moments the servants, breathing heavily, smiled happily—or how they found an important place in their books, struck the page ostentatiously, and then, so far as was possible in the cramped space, the others came hurrying up and craned their necks to look.
That and similar things gave Barnabas great ideas of these men, and he had the impression that if he ever rose so high as to be noticed by them, and was able to exchange a few words with them, not as a stranger but as a colleague in the office, although one of the most junior rank, then he could do all sorts of things for our family. But it’s never come to that yet, and Barnabas dares not do anything that might bring him within reach of it, although he knows very well that, in spite of his youth, he himself has moved into the responsible posi-tion of head of the family on account of the unfortunate circum-stances. And now for the last of my confessions; you came here a week ago, I heard someone at the Castle Inn mention it, but took no notice; a land surveyor had arrived—well, I didn’t even know what a land surveyor was. However, next evening Barnabas—whom I usually go a little way to meet at a certain time—comes home earlier than usual, sees Amalia in the living-room, and so takes me out into the road, where he puts his face against my
