in your corridor.’ ‘That’s because you were caught, but if you are with us you won’t be caught. No one will know about you, only the three of us. Oh, what fun it will be! My life there already seems to me more bearable than it did a little while ago. Perhaps I’m not losing so very much by having to leave the job here after all. You know, even with the three of us we weren’t bored, you have to sweeten the bitterness of life, it’s made bitter for us in our youth so that our tongues don’t get used to luxury, but we three stick together, we live as nice a life as possible, you’ll specially like Henriette, and Emilie too, I’ve already told them about you, people listen to such tales and marvel, as if nothing could happen outside our room, it’s warm if cramped in there and we keep close together, even though we have only each other to rely on we don’t get tired of one another. On the contrary, when I think of my girlfriends I almost feel it’s all right to be going back there. Why should I rise higher than them? That was what kept us together, all three of us having the future barred to us in the same way, and then I broke out and was separated from them, but the fact is I didn’t forget them, and my next concern was how I could do something for them; my own position was still uncertain—though I didn’t know just how uncertain—and already I was talking to the landlord about Henriette and Emilie. The landlord wasn’t entirely inflexible in Henriette’s case, but as for Emilie, who is much older than the two of us—she’s about Frieda’s age—he could give me no hope there.

But just think, they don’t want to leave, they know it’s a wretched life they lead there, but they’ve adjusted to it, good souls, I believe their tears when I said goodbye were mostly grief because I had to leave the room we shared and go out into the cold—in our room everything outside it seems to us cold—and I’d have to go around in those great, strange rooms with those great, strange people for no purpose but to earn a living, though I’d done that before when we lived and worked together. They probably won’t be surprised to see me coming back, and they’ll cry a little and bemoan my fate just to oblige me. But then they’ll see you, and realize that it was a good thing I left after all. It will make them happy to know that now we have a man to help and protect us, and they’ll be positively delighted that it all has to be kept secret, and the secret will bind us even more closely together than before. Come and join us, oh do please come and join us! There’s no obligation on you, you won’t be bound to the room for ever as we are. When spring comes, if you find somewhere else to stay and you don’t like it with us any more, you can go, only you’ll still have to keep the secret, and not give us away, because that would be the end of us at the Castle Inn. And of course if you’re with us you must be careful not to show yourself anywhere that we don’t consider safe, and to follow our advice. That’s all the obligation you have, and you will have to put up with it just as we do, but otherwise you’re entirely free, the work we give you to do won’t be too hard, don’t be afraid of that. Well, will you come?’ ‘How long is it until spring?’ asked K. ‘Until spring?’ Pepi repeated. ‘Oh, winter here is long, a very long, monotonous winter. But we don’t complain of that down there, we’re safe there from the winter. Well, some time spring will come, and summer too, and they have their own time, but now, as we remember them, spring and summer seem as short as if they weren’t much more than two days long, and even on those days snow sometimes falls in the middle of the finest weather.’

The door opened. Pepi jumped—in her thoughts she had moved too far from the bar—but it wasn’t Frieda, it was the landlady. She seemed surprised to find K. still here. K. excused himself by saying that he had been waiting for her, and at the same time he thanked her for letting him spend the night here. The landlady didn’t understand why K. had been waiting for her. K. said he had had the impression that the landlady wanted to speak to him, he asked her pardon if that had been a mistake, and anyway he must go now, he had been away from the school where he was janitor far too long, yesterday’s sum-mons had been to blame for everything, he still had too little experi-ence in these things, he said, he certainly wouldn’t make as much trouble for the landlady again as he had yesterday. And he bowed, ready to go. But the landlady stared at him with a look in her eyes as if she were dreaming. That look of hers kept K. there longer than he wanted. Then she smiled a little too, and only at K.’s expression of amazement did she wake up to some extent. It was as if she had been waiting for a response to her smile, but now, when none came, she woke up. ‘You had the impudence to say something about my dress yesterday.’ K. couldn’t remember that. ‘Don’t you remember? You’re not only impudent but cowardly too, then.’ K. explained that it was due to his weariness yesterday; it was possible, he said, that he had talked about something or other, but he couldn’t remember it now. What could he have been saying about the good landlady’s dresses? That they were more beautiful than any dresses he had ever seen? Or at least, he had never seen a landlady go about her work in such dresses before. ‘Never mind passing personal remarks,’ said the landlady quickly. ‘I don’t want to hear another word from you about my dresses. My dresses are none of your business. I forbid you to mention them, and that’s that.’ K. bowed again and went to the door. ‘What do you mean, anyway?’ called the landlady after him. ‘What do you mean, you never saw a landlady go about her work in such dresses before? Why say such pointless things? What could be more pointless? What do you mean by it?’ K. turned back and asked the landlady not to upset herself. Of course his remark was pointless, he said. He really didn’t know anything about dresses. In his situ-ation, any clean dress that didn’t need mending seemed to him very fine. He had just been surprised, he said, to see the landlady there in the corridor at night in such a beautiful evening dress among all those half-clothed men, that was all. ‘Well,’ said the landlady, ‘at last you seem to remember what you said yesterday! And you compound your impertinence with yet more nonsense.

It is true that you know nothing about dresses. So let me earnestly beg you, kindly desist from passing remarks on fine dresses and what they are like, or about unsuit-able evening dresses, or anything of the kind. And anyway’—here a shudder seemed to pass through her—‘you are not to pay any atten-tion to my dresses, do you hear?’ And when K. was about to turn away again, in silence, she asked: ‘Where did you get your knowledge of dresses, then?’ K. shrugged his shoulders to show that he didn’t know. ‘Well, you have none,’ said the landlady, ‘so don’t make out that you do. Come over to the office and I’ll show you something, and then I hope you will leave off your impudence for ever.’ She went ahead through the door; Pepi ran to K. On the excuse that she wanted K. to pay what he owed, they quickly came to an agreement; it was very easy, since K. knew the yard with the gate leading into the side-street. There was a little gate beside the big one, and Pepi would be waiting on the other side of that in an hour’s time and open it when he knocked three times.

The private office of the inn was opposite the bar, there was only the front hall to cross. The landlady was already standing in the lighted office, looking impatiently at K. But there was one distrac-tion. Gerstäcker had been waiting in the hall and wanted to speak to K. It wasn’t easy to shake him off. The landlady joined in too, point-ing out to Gerstäcker that he was intruding. ‘Where do I wait, then? Where do I wait?’ Gerstäcker could be heard calling as the door was closed, and his words were mingled unappealingly with sighing and coughing.
The office was a small, overheated room. A lectern desk stood by one of the shorter walls, and an iron safe too, while a wardrobe and an ottoman stood by the longer walls. The wardrobe took up most of the space; not only did it extend along the whole of one long wall, but its depth made the room very cramped, and three sliding doors were necessary to open it completely. The landlady pointed to the ottoman, indicating that K. should sit down on it, and she herself sat on the swivelling