The locals behind him had come very close now, and the assistants, with many surreptitious glances at him, were busy keeping them back. However, it seemed to be just for show, and the locals, satisfied by the outcome of the conversation, slowly gave way. Then a man walked through the group from behind it, dividing it in two, bowed to K., and gave him a letter. Holding the letter in his hand, K. looked at the messenger, who just now seemed to him more important than the message itself. He greatly resembled the assistants; he was as slender as they were, his clothes too were close-fitting, he was nimble and spry, and yet he was quite different. K. would far rather have had him as his assistant! The man reminded him a little of the woman with the baby whom he had seen in the master tanner’s house. His clothing was almost white and was probably not silk, but an ordinary winter-weight fabric, yet it had the fine look of a silk suit worn for special occasions. His face was clear and open, his eyes very large. His smile was extraordinarily cheering, and although he passed a hand over his face, as if to wipe that smile away, he did not succeed. ‘Who are you?’ asked K. ‘My name is Barnabas,’* he said, ‘and I am a messenger.’* His lips moved in a manly yet gentle way as he spoke. ‘How do you like it here?’ asked K., indicating the rustics, who were still taking an interest in him.
They were watching him with their positively tormented faces—their skulls looked as if they had been beaten flat on top, and their features had contorted into an expression of pain in the process—they were watching him with their thick-lipped mouths open, and yet not watching either, for sometimes their eyes wandered, lingering for a long time on some ordinary object before returning to him. Then K. also pointed to the assistants, who were holding each other close, cheek to cheek and smiling, whether humbly or in derision it was hard to say. He indicated all these people as if to introduce a retinue forced on him by special circumstances, expecting—which implied familiarity, and that mattered to K. just now—that Barnabas would see the difference between him and them. But Barnabas did not respond to the question—although, as could easily be seen, in all innocence—and let it pass him by, like a well-trained servant hearing his master say something that is only appar-ently addressed to him. He merely looked around as the question required, greeting acquaintances among the locals with a wave of his hand, and exchanged a few words with the assistants, all easily and as a matter of course, without actually mixing with them. K., warned off the subject but undeterred, turned back to the letter in his hand and opened it. It ran as follows: ‘Dear Sir, you are, as you know, taken into the count’s service. Your immediate superior is the village mayor as chairman of the parish council, who will communicate to you all further details concerning your work and your remuneration, and to whom you will be answerable.
Nonetheless, I will keep an eye on you myself. Barnabas, the messenger who brings this letter, will make enquiries of you from time to time, find out what your require-ments are, and impart them to me. You will find me always ready to oblige you as far as possible. I am anxious to have contented work-ers.’ The signature was illegible, but printed beside it were the words: ‘Chief Executive, Office X.’ ‘Wait a minute!’ said K. to Barnabas, who was bowing to him, and he called to the landlord to show him his room, saying he wanted to spend a little time alone studying this letter. As he did so, he remembered that although he had taken to Barnabas so much, he was only a messenger, and ordered him a beer. He watched to see how he would take this; he was obviously pleased, and drank it at once. Then K. went with the landlord. They had been able to give him only a little attic room at the inn, which was a small place, and even that had been difficult, for two maids who had been sleeping there before had to be accommodated elsewhere. In fact all that had been done was to clear the maids out of the room, which otherwise appeared unchanged, with no linen on the only bed and just a couple of bolsters and a horse-blanket, left in the state it had been in after last night, with a few pictures of saints and photographs of soldiers on the walls. The room hadn’t even been aired; obviously they hoped that the new guest would not stay long, and they were doing nothing to keep him. But K. didn’t mind; he wrapped himself in the blanket and began rereading the letter by the light of a candle.
It was not all of a piece; there were passages where he was addressed as a free agent whose autonomy was recognized, for instance in the opening greeting and the part about his requirements. But then again, there were passages in the letter where he was openly or by implication addressed as a common labourer, hardly worthy even to be noticed by the chief executive of Office X, who obviously felt he must make an effort ‘to keep an eye on him’, while his super-ior, to whom he was actually ‘answerable’, was only the village mayor, and perhaps his sole colleague would be the village police-man. These contradictions were certainly so blatant that they must be intentional. Considering that the letter came from such an author-ity, K. scarcely even entertained the crazy idea that any indecision might have entered into it. Rather, he saw himself offered a choice: it was left to him to make what he liked of the arrangements in this letter, and decide whether he wanted to be a village worker who seemed, but only seemed, to have the distinction of a link to the castle, or apparently a village worker but one whose conditions of work were really determined entirely by the message that Barnabas had brought. K. did not hesitate to choose, nor would he have done so even without his experiences so far. Only as a village worker as far as possible from the gentlemen in the castle could he get anywhere with the castle itself. These villagers, who were still so suspicious of him, would start talking to him once he was, if not their friend, at least one of them, indistinguishable from, say, Gerstäcker and Lasemann—that must be brought about very soon, everything depended on it—and then, he was sure, all paths would be open to him, paths that would have been closed to him for ever, and not only closed but invisible, if it had depended solely on the good graces of the gentlemen up above.
Of course there was a danger, and it was sufficiently emphasized in the letter, even represented with a certain pleasure as if it were inevitable. It was that his was the status of a labourer. ‘Service’, ‘superior’, ‘work’, ‘conditions of remuneration’, ‘answerable’, ‘workmen’: the letter was full of such terms, and even when something else and more personal was said, it was written from the same point of view. If K. wanted to work here then he could, but if so it must be in deadly earnest, without so much as glancing else-where. K. knew that no real compulsion threatened him, he wasn’t afraid of that, least of all here, but he did fear the force of his discour-aging surroundings, he feared getting used to disappointment, he feared the imperceptible influence of every passing moment—but he must contend with that danger. The letter did not, after all, gloss over the fact that if there were any disagreements it would be the fault of K.’s recklessness—it was said with delicacy, and only an uneasy conscience (uneasy, not guilty) would have noticed it in those three words ‘as you know’, referring to his entering the employment of the castle. K. had applied for the post, and now he knew that, as the letter put it, he had been accepted into the count’s service.
K. took a picture off the wall and hung up the letter on the nail instead. He would be living in this room, so this was where the letter should hang.
Then he went down to the saloon bar of the inn. Barnabas and the assistants were sitting at a little table. ‘Oh, there you are,’ said K. for no special reason, just because he was glad to see Barnabas, who got to his feet at once. No sooner had K. entered the room than the rustics rose to come closer to him; it had become a habit of theirs to follow him around. ‘What is it you keep wanting from me?’ cried K. They did not take offence, but turned slowly back to their places. One said, by way of explanation as he turned away, but with an inscrutable smile copied by some of the others in the saloon bar: ‘We’re always hearing something new,’ and he licked his lips as if the ‘new’ was something delicious to eat. K. said not a word to smooth things over;
