The Castle (18 page)

"Be quiet," he said, and to Barnabas: "There's been a misunderstanding."

Barnabas did not seem to comprehend.

"There's been a misunderstanding," K. repeated, and the weariness he had felt in the afternoon came over him again, the road to the schoolhouse seemed very long, and behind Barnabas he could sec his whole family, and the assistants were still jostling him so closely that he had to drive them away with his elbows. How could Frieda have sent them to meet him when he had commanded that they should stay with her? He could quite well have found his own way home, and better alone, indeed, than in this company. And to make matters worse one of them had wound a scarf round his neck whose free ends flapped in the wind and had several times been flung against K.'s face. It is true, the other assistant had always disengaged the wrap at once with his long, pointed, perpetually mobile fingers, but that had not made things any better. Both of them seemed to have considered it an actual pleasure to walk here and back, and the wind and the wildness of the night threw them into raptures.

"Get out!" shouted K., "seeing that you've come to meet me, why haven't you brought my stick? What have I now to drive you home with?"

They crouched behind Barnabas, but they were not too frightened to set their lanterns on their protector's shoulders, right and left. However, he shook them off at once.

"Barnabas," said K., and he felt a weight on his heart when he saw that Barnabas obviously did not understand him, that though his tunic shone beautifully when fortune was there, when things became serious no help for to be found in him, but only dumb opposition, opposition against which one could not fight, for Barnabas himself was helpless, he could only smile, but that was of just as little help as the stars up there against this tempest down below.

"Look what Klamm has written!" said K., holding the letter before his face.

"He has been wrongly informed. I haven't done any surveying at all, and you see yourself how much the assistants are worth. And obviously, too, I can`t interrupt work which I've never begun. I can't even ° itc the gentleman's displeasure, so how can I have earned his preciation? As for being easy in my mind, I can never be hat"

"Ìll see to it!" said Barnabas, who all the time had been eyeing past the letter, which he could not have read in any case if he was hiding it too close to his face.

"Oh," said K., "you promise me that you'll see to it, but can I really believe you? I'm in need of a trustworthy messenger, now more than ever."

K. bit his lip with impatience.

"Sir," replied Barnabas, with a gentle inclination of the head - K. almost allowed himself to be seduced by it again into believing Barnabas - Ìll certainly see to it, and I'll certainly see to the message you gave me last time as well." "What!" cried K.,

"haven't you seen to that yet then? Weren't you at the Castle next day?"

"No," replied Barnabas, "my father is old, you've seen him yourself, and there happened to be a great deal of work just then, I had to help him, but now I'll be going to the Castle again soon."

"But what are you thinking of, you incomprehensible fellow?" cried K., beating his brow with his fist, "don't Klamm's affairs come before everything else, then? You're in an important position, you're a messenger, and yet you fail me in this wretched manner! What does your father's work matter? Klamm is waiting for this information, and instead of breaking your neck hurrying with it to him, you prefer to clean the stable!"

"My father is a cobbler," replied Barnabas calmly, "he had orders from Brunswick, and I'm my father's assistant"

"Cobbler, orders from Brunswick!" cried K. bitingly, as if he wanted to abolish the words for ever.

"And who can need boots here in these eternally empty streets? And what is all this cobbling to me? I entrusted you with a letter, not so that you might mislay it and crumple it on your bench, but that you might carry it at once to Klamm!"

K. became a little more composed now as he remembered that after all Klamm had apparently been all this time in the Herrenhof and not in the Castle at all. But Barnabas exasperated him again when, to prove that he had not forgotten K.'s first message, he now began to recite it.

"Enough! I don't want to hear any more," he said.

"Don't be angry with me, sir," said Barnabas, and as if unconsciously wishing to show disapproval of K. he withdrew his gaze from him and lowered his eyes, but probably he was only dejected by K.'s outburst

"Ìm not angry," said K., and his exasperation turned now against himself, "with you, but it's a bad lookout for me only to have a messenger like you for important affairs."

"Look here," said Barnabas, and it was as if, to vindicate his honour as a messenger, he was saying more than he should, "Klamm is really not waiting for your message, he's actually cross when I arrive. "Another new message," he said once, and generally he gets up when he sees me coming in the distance and goes into the next room and doesn't receive me. Besides, it isn't laid down that I should go at once with every message. If it were laid down of course I would go at once. But it isn't laid down, and if I never went at all, nothing could be said to me. When I take a message it's of my own free will." "Well and good," replied K., staring at Barnabas and intentionally ignoring the assistants, who kept on slowly raising their heads by turns behind Barnabas's shoulder as from a trapdoor, and hastily disappearing again with a soft whistle in imitation of the whistling of the wind, as if they were terrified at K..

They enjoyed themselves like this for a long time.

"What it's like with Klamm I don't know, but that you can understand everything there properly I very much doubt, and even if you did, we couldn't better things there. But you can carry a message and that's all I ask you. A quite short message. Can you carry it for me to-morrow and bring me the answer to-morrow, or at least tell me how you were received? Can you do that and will you do that? It would be of great service to me. And perhaps I'll have a chance yet of rewarding you properly, or have you any wish now, perhaps, that I can fulfil?"

"Certainly I'll carry out your orders," said Barnabas.

"And will you do your utmost to carry them out as well as you can, to give the message to Klamm himself, to get a reply from Klamm himself, and immediately, all this immediately, to-morrow, in the morning, will you do that?"

"Ìll do my best," replied Barnabas, "but I always do that."

"We won't argue any more about it now," said K.

This is the message: "The Land Surveyor begs the Director to grant him a personal interview. He accepts in advance any conditions which may be attached to the permission of this. He is driven to make this request because until now very intermediary has completely failed. In proof of this he advances the fact that till now he has not carried out any surveying at all, and according to the information given him by the village Superintendent will never carry out such work. Consenuently it is with humiliation and despair that he has read the last letter of the Director. Only a personal interview with the Director can be of any help here. The Land Surveyor knows how extraordinary his request is, but he will exert himself to make his disturbance of the Director as little felt as possible. He submits himself to any and every limitation of time, also any stipulation which may be considered necessary as to the number of words which may be allowed him during the interview, even with ten words he believes he will be able to manage. In profound respect and extreme impatience he awaits your decision."

K. had forgotten himself while he was speaking, it was as if he were standing before Klamm's door talking to the porter. "It has grown much longer than I had thought," he said, "but you must learn it by heart, I don't want to write a letter, it would only go the same endless way as the other papers."

So for Barnabas's guidance, K. scribbled it on a scrap of paper on the back of one of the assistants, while the other assistant held up the lantern. But already K. could take it down from Barnabas's dictation, for he had retained it all and spoke it out correctly without being put off by the misleading interpolations of the assistants.

"You've an extraordinary memory," said K., giving him the paper, "but now show yourself extraordinary in the other thing as well. And any requests? Have you none? It would reassure me a little -I say it frankly - regarding the fate of my message, if you had any."

At first Barnabas remained silent, then he said : "My sisters send you their greetings."

"Your sisters," replied K. "Oh, yes, the big strong girls."

"Both send you their greetings, but Amalia in particular," said Barnabas, "besides it was she who brought me this letter for you to-day from the Castle."

Struck by this piece of information, K. asked : "Couldn't she take my message to the Castle as well? Or Couldn't you both go and each of you try your luck?"

"Amalia is not allowed into the Chancellery," said Barnabas, "otherwise she would be very glad to do it."

"Ìll come and see you perhaps to-morrow," said K., "only you come to me first with the answer. I'll wait for you in the school. Give my greetings to your sisters too."

K.'s promise seemed to make Barnabas very happy, and after they had shaken hands he could not help touching K. lightly on the shoulder. As if everything were once more as it had been when Barnabas first walked into the inn among the peasants in all his glory, K.

felt his touch on his shoulder as a distinction, though he smiled at it. In a better mood now, he let the assistants do as they pleased on the way home.

He reached the school chilled through and through, it was quite dark, the candles in the lanterns had burned down. Led by the assistants, who already knew their way here, he felt his road into one of the classrooms.

"Your first praiseworthy service," he said, remembering Klamm's letter.

Still half-asleep Frieda cried out from the corner: "Let K. sleep! Don't disturb him!"

so entirely did K. occupy her thoughts, even though she had been so overcome with sleep that she had not been able to wait up for him. Now a light was got, but the lamp could not be turned up very far, for there was only a little paraffin left. The new household was still without many necessaries. The room had been heated, it was true, but it was a large one, sometimes used as the gymnasium - the gymnastic apparatus was standing about and hanging from the ceiling - and it had already used up all the supply of wood - had been very warm and cosy too, as K. was assured, but unfortunately had grown quite cold again. There was, however, a large supply of wood in a shed, but the shed was locked and the teacher had the key. He only allowed this wood to be used for heating the school during teaching hours. The room could have been endured if there had been beds where one might have taken refuge. But in that line there was nothing but one sack stuffed with straw, covered with praiseworthy tidiness by a woollen rug of Frieda's, but with no feather-bed and only two rough, stiff blankets, which hardly served to keep one warm. And it was precisely at this wretched bed of straw that the assistants were staring greedily, but of course without any hope of ever being allowed to lie on it.

Frieda looked anxiously at K.. That she knew how to make a room, even the most wretched, habitable, she had proved in the Bridge Inn, but here she had not been able to make any headway, quite without means as she was.

"Our only ornaments are the gymnastic contraptions," said she, trying to smile through her tears.

But for the chief deficiencies, the lack of sleeping accommodation and fuel, she promised absolutely to find help the very next day, and begged K. only to be patient till then. From no word, no hint, no sign could one have concluded that she harboured even the slightest trace of bitterness against K. in her heart, although, as he had to admit himself, he had torn her away first from the Herrenhof and now from the Bridge Inn as well. So in return K. did his best to find everything tolerable, which was not difficult for him, indeed, because in thought he was still with Barnabas repeating his message word for word, not however as he had given it to Barnabas, but as he thought it would sound before Klamm. After all, however, he was very sincerely glad of the coffee which Frieda had boiled for him on a spirit burner, and leaning against the almost cold stove followed the nimble, practised movements with which she spread the indispensable white table-cover on the teacher's table, brought out a flowered cup, then some bread and sausage, and actually a tin of sardines. Now everything was ready. Frieda, too, had not eaten yet, but had waited for K. Two chairs were available, there K. and Frieda sat down to their table, the assistants at their feet on the dais, but they could never stay quiet, even while eating they made a disturbance. Although they had received an ample store of everything and were not yet nearly finished with it, they got up from time to time to make sure whether there was still anything on the table and they could still expect something for themselves. K. paid no attention to them and only began to take notice when Frieda laughed at them. He covered her hand with his tenderly and asked softly why she was so indulgent to them and treated even their naughtiness so kindly. In this way one would never get rid of them, while through a certain degree of severity, which besides was demanded by their behaviour, one could manage either to curb them or, what was both more probable and more desirable, to make their position so hot for them that they would have finally to leave.

The school here didn't seem to be a very pleasant place to live in for long, well, it wouldn't last very long in any case. But they would hardly notice all the drawbacks if the assist, ants were once gone and they two had the quiet house to themselves. And didn't she notice, too, that the assistants were becoming more impudent every day, as if they were actually encouraged now by Frieda's presence and the hope that K. wouldn't treat them with such firmness as he would have done in other circumstances? Besides, there were probably quite simple means of getting rid of them at once, without ceremony, perhaps Frieda herself knew of these, seeing that she was so well acquainted with all the circumstances. And from all appearances one would only be doing the assistants a favour if one got rid of them in some way, for the advantage they got by staying here couldn't be great, and besides the lazy spell which they must have enjoyed till now must cease here, to a certain extent at any rate, for they would have to work while Frieda spared herself after the excitements of the last few days, and he, K., was occupied in finding a way out of their painful position. All the same, if the assistants should go away, he would be so relieved that he felt he could quite easily carry out all the school work in addition to his other duties.