and those beds in your room. I am sure they look very attractive there, but here everyone laughs at them, whether secretly or openly. And what else do you say? You say I have been misused and betrayed? No, dear Pepi, I haven’t been misused and betrayed any more than you have. It is true that at present Frieda has left me, or as you put it has run off with one of the assistants, so you have hit upon some idea of the facts, and it is really very unlikely that she will be my wife now, but it is entirely untrue to say that I tired of her, or chased her away next day, or that she betrayed me as a woman might usually betray a man. You chamber-maids are used to spying through keyholes, which means that when you really do see some small thing, it leads you to draw grand but erroneous conclusions about the whole picture. The result is that I, for instance, know much less than you claim to know. I cannot explain in nearly as much detail as you do why Frieda has left me. It seems to me that you have also touched on the most probable explanation, although you didn’t make much of it: I neglected her. I am afraid that’s true, I have indeed neglected her, but there were particular reasons for that which it is not right to mention here. I would be happy if she came back to me, but I would begin neglecting her again at once, and that’s how it is. When she was with me, I was always out and about on those wanderings you ridicule; now that she’s gone I have almost nothing to do, I am tired, I long to be even more entirely unoccupied.

Have you no advice for me, Pepi?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Pepi, suddenly becoming lively and taking hold of K.’s shoulders. ‘We’ve both been betrayed, let’s stay together, come down to the other maids with me.’ ‘I can’t talk to you sensibly while you complain of being betrayed,’ said K. ‘You keep saying you were betrayed because the idea touches you and flatters you. But the truth is that you are not suitable for this position. If even I, who in your opinion know noth-ing, see that unsuitability then it must be very obvious. You are a good girl, Pepi, but it isn’t easy to see that. I, for instance, thought you cruel and arrogant at first, which you aren’t, it is just this post that bewilders you because you’re not suitable for it. I don’t mean to say it is too elevated for you, it is nothing so very out of the ordinary, or perhaps, looking at it closely, its status is a little higher than your previous job, but on the whole there is no great difference, the two are very similar, in fact one might almost say that to be a chamber-maid is better than working in the bar, for the chambermaids are always among the secretaries, while here, even if you may serve the secretaries’ superiors in the guest-rooms, you must also meet very common folk, for instance me; it is right and proper that I can’t go anywhere else in the inn, only be here in the bar, and is the possibil-ity of meeting me such a great distinction? Well, it seems so to you, and perhaps you have your reasons. But that is just why you are unsuitable. Although this is a job like any other, to you it seems like heaven, and as a result you do everything with excessive enthusiasm, you deck yourself out as you think the angels are adorned—although they are really not at all like that—you tremble for your post, you feel persecuted the whole time, you try to win over everyone who, you think, might be able to support you, showing far too much friendliness, but that is a nuisance to them and puts them off, for they want peace when they come to the inn, not to add the barmaid’s troubles to their own. It’s possible that after Frieda left none of the distinguished guests really noticed, but today they do and they really long to have Frieda back, I suppose because she ran everything very differently. Whatever else she may be like, and however she valued her post, she was experienced at serving the guests, cool and control-led, as you say yourself, but you don’t profit by her example. Did you ever notice the expression in her eyes? It was not the expression of a barmaid but almost of a landlady. She saw everything, every detail, and the way she looked at an individual was enough to subdue him.

What did it matter that she may have been a little thin, not as young as she once was, that a girl can have thicker hair? Those are all small details compared to what she really did have, and anyone troubled by those flaws would just have shown that he lacked a sense of better things. No such accusation can be levelled against Klamm, and it is only a young, inexperienced girl’s viewpoint that makes you believe Klamm couldn’t have loved Frieda. Klamm seems to you—and correctly—out of reach, and so you think that Frieda couldn’t have been close to Klamm either. You are wrong. I would trust Frieda’s word alone for that, even if I didn’t have incontrovertible evidence of it. Incredible as it seems to you, and little as you can reconcile it with your ideas of the world, and the life of the officials, of distinction and the effect of female beauty, it is true, as true as we’re sitting here together and I take your hand between mine. No doubt that is how Klamm and Frieda sat side by side too, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and he came down here of his own free will, indeed he hurried down, no one was lying in wait for him in the cor-ridor and neglecting the rest of her work, Klamm had to come down of his own accord, and the deficiencies of Frieda’s clothing that have horrified you so much didn’t trouble him at all. You just don’t want to believe her! And you don’t know how you are exposing yourself, because it shows your inexperience. Even someone who knew noth-ing about her relationship with Klamm must notice that of its very nature it left its mark on someone above you and me and all the other people in the village, and that their conversations went beyond the usual sort of joking between guests and waitresses, which seems to be the whole aim of your life.

But I am doing you an injustice. You know Frieda’s advantages very well yourself, you notice her gift for observation, her power of decision, her influence over other people, only you interpret it all in the wrong way, you think that she uses all that selfishly for her own benefit and with bad intentions, or even as a weapon against you. No, Pepi, even if she did hold such arrows in her hand she couldn’t shoot them such a short way. And selfish? One might rather say that by sacrificing what she had, and what she could expect, she gave us both, you and me, an opportunity to rise higher, but that we have disappointed her and have positively forced her to come back here. I don’t know whether that is so, and I am not quite clear how I am to blame, but when I compare myself with you some-thing of the kind does appear before me; it is as if we both tried too hard, too noisily, too childishly, and with too little experience to gain something that can easily and quietly be had with, for instance, Frieda’s calm and Frieda’s objectivity, but we tried to get it by weep-ing and scratching and tugging, just as a child tugs at the tablecloth but cannot get it, merely sweeps all the beautiful things off the table and puts them out of reach for ever—I don’t know if that is the case, but I do know for certain that it is more likely than your version of events.’ ‘I see,’ said Pepi. ‘You’re in love with Frieda because she ran away from you. It’s not difficult to be in love with her when she’s not around. But even if it’s as you claim, and even if you are right about everything, including making me look ridiculous—what are you going to do now? Frieda has left you, neither my explanation nor yours gives you any hope of her coming back to you, and even if she did, you have to spend the time in between somewhere, it’s cold weather and you have neither work nor a bed, so come to us, you’ll like my friends, we’ll make you comfortable, you can help us with our work, which really is too hard for girls on their own, we girls won’t have to rely entirely on ourselves and feel afraid at night. Do come and join us! My girlfriends know Frieda too, we’ll tell you stories of her until you’re sick and tired of them. Do come! We have pictures of Frieda as well, we’ll show you those.

Frieda was even less striking then than now, you’ll hardly recognize her, except from her eyes, which had a sly look even then. Well, will you come?’ ‘Is that allowed? Yesterday it was a great scandal when I was caught