The people now waiting were discussing all these things under their breath. It struck K. that while there was plenty of grumbling here, no one had any objection to Erlanger’s summoning members of the public in the middle of the night. He asked about that, and was told that in fact they ought to be very grateful to Erlanger. Apparently it was solely his own good nature and his elevated concept of his office that moved him to come down to the village at all. If he had wanted he could have sent some under-secretary to take down state-ments instead, which in fact might have been more in line with the regulations. But he generally refrained from doing so, he wanted to see and hear everything for himself, although it meant giving up his nights for the purpose, because no time for visits was provided in his official timetable. K. objected that Klamm too came to the village by day, and even spent several days on end here. Was Erlanger, who was only of secretarial rank, more indispensable up at the castle? A few good-natured people laughed, while others preserved an awkward silence, the latter were in the majority, and no one seemed inclined to answer K.’s question. But one man did say, hesitantly, well, of course Klamm was indispensable in the castle and the village alike.
Then the door of the inn opened, and Momus appeared between two servants carrying lamps. ‘The first to be admitted to Mr Secretary Erlanger’, he said, ‘are Gerstäcker and K. Are those two here?’ They said they were, but then Jeremias slipped into the house ahead of them, saying: ‘I’m the room-service waiter here,’ and was greeted by Momus with a pat on the back. ‘I see I’ll have to keep a closer eye on Jeremias,’ said K. to himself, although he was aware that Jeremias was probably far less dangerous than Artur, who was intriguing against him up in the castle. Perhaps it was actually wiser to let the assistants pester him than to allow them to wander around unchecked, free to hatch the plots that they seemed to delight in so much.
When K. passed Momus the latter acted as if he only now recog-nized him. ‘Ah, the land surveyor!’ he said. ‘The man who was so unwilling to answer questions is now anxious for a hearing. You’d have had an easier time of it with me. Ah, well, it’s difficult to choose the right hearing.’ And when, at these words, K. was about to stop dead, Momus said: ‘Go along, go along in! I could have done with your answers then, I don’t need them any more now.’ All the same K., nettled by the attitude of Momus, said: ‘You none of you think of anything but yourselves. I’m not answering questions just because you’re officials, either then or now.’ ‘Well, who else would we be thinking of ?’ said Momus. ‘Who else matters here? Go along in!’
A servant received them in the front hall and led them the way that K. already knew, across the yard, then through the gate, and into the low corridor that sloped slightly down. Obviously only the higher-ranking officials stayed on the upper floors, while the rooms for the secretaries, even Erlanger, who was one of the most important of them, lay off this corridor. The servant extinguished his lantern, for there was bright electric light here, where everything was built on a small scale but delicately designed. The best possible use was made of the space. You could only just walk upright along the corridor; door after door opened off the sides of it, all the doors close to each other, and the walls did not go all the way up to the ceiling, presum-ably for ventilation, since there were probably no windows in the little rooms off this low-lying, cellar-like passage. The disadvantage of the gap at the top of the walls was that the corridor and inevitably the rooms too were noisy. Many of the rooms seemed to be occupied, and the occupants of most of these were still awake, for voices, hammer-blows, and the clinking of glasses could be heard. However, there was no impression of any particular merriment. The voices were muted; you could catch a word here and there, and no conver-sations seemed to be going on; the voices were probably just dictating or reading something aloud.
No words were spoken in the rooms where the clink of plates and glasses could be heard, and the hammer-blows reminded K. of something he had once been told: many of the officials, as a means of relaxation after their constant intellectual efforts, liked to go in for hobbies like joinery, precision engineering, and so on. The corridor itself was empty, except for a tall, pale, lean gentleman who was sitting outside one door, wearing a fur coat with his nightclothes showing under it. He had probably found it too stuffy in the room, so he was sitting outside reading a newspaper, but not very attentively. He often stopped reading with a yawn, and then leaned forward to look down the corridor. Perhaps he was expecting a member of the public whom he had asked to come and see him and who was late. When they had passed him the servant said to Gerstäcker, referring to the gentleman: ‘That’s Pinzgauer!’ Gerstäcker nodded. ‘He hasn’t been down here for a long time,’ he said. ‘No, indeed, not for a long time,’ agreed the servant.
Finally they came to a door that looked no different from the rest, although, as the servant informed them, Erlanger was staying in the room behind it. The servant got K. to raise him on his shoulders and then looked down into the room through the space above the corri-dor wall. ‘He’s lying on his bed,’ said the servant, clambering back down to the floor, ‘fully clothed, but I think he’s asleep. Sometimes weariness overcomes him in the village; it’s the different way of life here. We’ll have to wait. He’ll ring the bell when he wakes up. I’ve known him to sleep away his entire visit to the village, and then have to go back to the castle as soon as he woke again. After all, it’s voluntary work he does down here.’ ‘Let’s hope he has his sleep out, then,’ said Gerstäcker, ‘because if he has any time left for work after he wakes up he’ll be very cross that he fell asleep, he’ll try to get everything done in a hurry, and we’ll hardly have any chance to say a thing.’ ‘You’ve come about a permit for the rights to work as a carrier for the building-site, have you?’ asked the servant. Gerstäcker nodded, drew the servant aside, and spoke to him quietly, but the man was hardly listening. He looked beyond Gerstäcker, for he was more than a head taller, and gravely and slowly ran his hand over his hair.
22
Then, looking aimlessly around, K. saw Frieda in the distance, at a turn in the corridor; she acted as if she didn’t recognize him, and just looked blankly at him. She was carrying a tray of empty dishes. He told the servant, although the man didn’t seem to be attending to him—the more you spoke to this servant the more his mind appeared to be elsewhere—that he would be back in a minute, and walked towards Frieda. On reaching her, he grasped her by the shoulders as if taking possession of her again, asked a few trivial questions, and looked searchingly into her eyes. But her rigid bearing hardly changed; she absently tried rearranging the china on the tray several times and said: ‘What do you want from me? Go back to those—well, you know their names. You’ve just come from them, I can tell that you have.’ K. hastily changed the subject; he didn’t want this subject to be broached so suddenly, and to begin in the worst, least promis-ing way possible for him. ‘I thought you’d be in the bar,’ he said. Frieda looked at him in surprise, and then gently passed her one free hand over his forehead and cheek. It was as if she had forgotten what he looked like, and did that to recall him to her mind. Her eyes too had a veiled look of appearing to remember something with diffi-culty. ‘Yes, I’ve been taken back to work in the bar,’ she said slowly, as if it didn’t matter what she said, but beneath the words she spoke she was conducting another and more important conversation with K. ‘The work down here isn’t fit for me, any girl can do it—anyone who can make a bed and look friendly and doesn’t fear the pestering of the guests, but actually invites it, can be a chambermaid.
But a barmaid is a different matter. I was taken back at once to work in the bar, although I left the post in circumstances that weren’t very cred-itable, but of course this
