But then there were cases, one or two of them, where he simply gave up any attempt, although even here K. thought he was only appearing to give up, or at least giving up on reasonable grounds, for he went calmly on, putting up with the noise made by a gentleman who felt badly treated, and only the way he sometimes closed his eyes for quite a while showed that he suffered from the racket. But the gentleman would gradually calm down, and his pro-tests were made less often, just as the uninterrupted crying of children gradually turns to isolated sobs. But even after he had fallen silent there was still an occasional screech from his room, or its door was swiftly opened and slammed again. At least it turned out that here the servant had probably done just the right thing. In the end there was only one gentleman left who would not calm down; he remained silent for a long time, but only to get his breath back, and then he started up again, making just as much fuss as before. It was not quite clear why he was shouting and complaining like that; perhaps it wasn’t to do with the distribution of the files at all. By now the ser-vant had finished his work, and there was only a single file, or really just a piece of paper torn from a notepad, left on the trolley; that was the other servant’s fault. An idea went through K.’s head: why, he thought, that could very well be my file. The village mayor had called his a very minor case. And K., however random and ridiculous his assumption seemed even to himself, tried to approach the servant, who was looking thoughtfully at the sheet of paper. However, that wasn’t easy, for the servant did not react well to the interest that K. was taking in him; even in the middle of his hardest work he had always found time to look round at K. with an angry or impatient and nervous jerk of his head. Only now that the files were distributed did he seem to have forgotten K. for the moment, and seemed indiffer-ent, which his exhaustion made understandable. He wasn’t taking much trouble with the sheet of paper either, perhaps he wasn’t even reading it, just looking as if he was, and although he would probably have made any of the gentlemen in the rooms happy by giving them this sheet of paper, he decided not to. He was tired of distributing files. With his forefinger to his lips, he signed to his companion to keep quiet, and then—K. was nowhere near him yet—tore up the sheet of paper into small pieces and put it in his pocket. This was the first irregularity that K. had seen in all the office business here, although it was possible that he had misunderstood it.
And even if it had been an irregularity, it could be forgiven, considering the cir-cumstances; the servant could not work flawlessly all the time, a point must come when his accumulated annoyance and uneasiness must break out, and venting it simply by tearing up a small sheet of paper was innocent enough. The voice of the gentleman who wasn’t to be mollified was still echoing down the corridor, and his col-leagues, who in other respects didn’t behave in a very friendly way to each other, seemed to be all of the same opinion about the noise he was making. It was coming to seem as if the gentleman had assumed the task of making enough noise for them all, and their shouts and nods of the head merely encouraged him to go on with it. But now it didn’t bother the servant any more; he had finished his work, and taking hold of the trolley signed to the other servant to do the same, so they wheeled it away again just as they had come, only more con-tentedly, and so fast that the trolley jolted along in front of them. Only once did they stop suddenly and look back, when the shouting gentleman outside whose door K. was now wandering around—he would have liked to know what the gentleman really wanted—had obviously deciding that screaming was getting him nowhere. He seemed to have found an electric bell-push, and in his delight at being relieved in this way began ringing the bell continuously instead of screaming. Thereupon loud murmuring, which seemed to indi-cate approval, came from the other rooms. The gentleman appeared to be doing something they would all have liked to do for a long time, and had been obliged to leave undone only for some unknown rea-son. Was it perhaps the servants, was it perhaps Frieda that the gentleman hoped to summon by ringing? He would have to wait a long time. Frieda was probably busy wrapping Jeremias in wet tow-els, and even if he was better by now she wouldn’t have the time to come, for then she would be lying in his arms. But the ringing of the bell did have an immediate effect. The landlord of the Castle Inn himself came hurrying up from a distance, clad in black and neatly buttoned up as usual, but the way he ran suggested that he was for-getting his dignity. His arms were half outstretched as if he had been called to the scene of some great disaster, and was prepared to seize the cause of it, clamp it to his chest, and so stifle it, and with every little irregularity in the ringing of the bell he seemed to jump in the air for a moment and then hurry even faster.
And now his wife also appeared, a long way behind him. She too was running with her arms outstretched, but her steps were small and dainty, and K. thought she would arrive too late; the landlord would have dealt with every-thing before she got there. K. pressed close to the wall to give the landlord room to run by. But the landlord stopped right in front of him, as if K. himself were his destination, and next moment the landlady was there too, both of them heaping reproaches on him which in all the haste and surprise he didn’t understand, particularly as the gentleman’s bell joined in as well, and other bells began ringing too, not with any sense of emergency now but just for fun and in an excess of high spirits. Since K. was very anxious to discover exactly what he had done wrong, he was perfectly happy for the landlord to take his arm and frogmarch him away from all this noise, which was getting louder and louder, for behind them—K. didn’t turn to look, because the landlord was talking to him, and the land-lady on his other side was talking even more—behind them the doors now opened wide, the corridor was teeming with life, there seemed to be coming and going as if it were a narrow but busy alley, the doors ahead of them were obviously waiting impatiently for K. to come past, so that they could let the gentlemen inside those rooms out, and through all this the bells rang as the gentlemen pushed them again and again, as if to celebrate a victory. And now at last—they were in the quiet white yard again, where several sleighs were waiting—did K. gradually gather what it was all about. Neither the landlord nor the landlady understood how K. could have done any-thing of the kind. But what exactly had he done? K. asked again and again, although he didn’t get the chance to ask for long, because his guilt was only too obvious to both of them, and they didn’t believe for a moment that he was asking in good faith. Only bit by bit did K. find out what the matter was. He had no right to be in the corridor, in general he could enter only the bar, and that only as a favour which could be withdrawn. If he had been summoned to see a gentleman, he must of course go to the place to which he had been summoned, but must always remain aware—he did have his wits about him, they imagined, like anyone else?—that he was somewhere where he did not belong, to which he had been summoned only by a gentleman, and very unwillingly at that, merely because official business required and justified it. He therefore had to turn up quickly, go through his hearing, and then disappear, even more quickly if possible.
Hadn’t he felt how very wrong it was for him to be there in the corridor? And if he had, then how could he have gone wandering around there like an animal out at
