The Castle (20 page)

"A lying crew!" remarked the lady teacher, who had just finished bandaging the pawr, and she took the beast into her lap, for which it was almost too big.

"So it was the janitor," said the teacher, pushing the assistants away and turning to K., who had been listening all the time leaning on the handle of his broom: "This fine janitor who out of cowardice allows other people to be falsely accused of his own villainies."

"Well," said K., who had not missed the fact that Frieda's intervention had appeased the first uncontrollable fury of the teacher, "if the assistants had got a little taste of the rod I shouldn't have been sorry. If they get off ten times when they should justly be punished, they can well afford to pay for it by being punished unjustly for once. But besides that it would have been very welcome to me if a direct quarrel between me and you, Mr Teacher, could have been avoided. Perhaps you would have liked it as well yourself too. But seeing that Frieda has sacrificed me to the assistants now-" here K.

paused, and in the silence Frieda's sobs could be heard behind the screen - "of course a clean breast must be made of the whole business."

"Scandalous!" said the lady teacher.

"I am entirely of your opinion, Fraulein Gisa," said the teacher. "You, janitor, are of course dismissed from your post for these scandalous doings. Your further punishment I reserve meantime, but now clear yourself and your belongings out of the house at once. It will be a genuine relief to us, and the teaching will manage to begin at last. Now quick about it!" "I shan't move a foot from here," said K. "You're my superior, but not the person who engaged tne for this post. It was the Superintendent who did that, and I'll only accept notice from him. And he certainly never gave me this post so that I and my dependants should freeze here, but as you told me yourself - to keep me from doing anything thoughtless or desperate. To dismiss me suddenly now would therefore be absolutely against his intentions. Till I hear the contrary from his own mouth I refuse to believe it. Besides it may possibly be greatly to your own advantage, too, if I don't accept your notice, given so hastily."

"So you don't accept it?" asked the teacher.

K. shook his head.

"Think it over carefully," said the teacher, "your decisions aren't always for the best. You should reflect, for instance, on yesterday afternoon, when you refused to be examined."

"Why do you bring that up now?" asked K.

"Because it's my whim," replied the teacher, "and now I repeat for the last tune, get out!"

But as that too had no effect the teacher went over to the table and consulted in a whisper with Fraulefo Gisa. She said something about the police, but the teacher rejected it, finally they seemed in agreement, the teacher ordered the children to go into his classroom, they would be taught there along with the other children. This change delighted everybody, the room was emptied in a moment amid laughter and shouting, the teacher and Fraulein Gisa followed last. The latter carried the class register, and on it in all its bulk the perfectly indifferent cat. The teacher would gladly have left the cat behind, but a suggestion to that effect was negatived decisively by Fraulein Gisa with a reference to K.'s inhumanity. So, in addition to all his other annoyances, the teacher blamed K. for the cat as well. And that influenced his last words to K., spoken when he reached the door: "The lady has been driven by force to leave the room with her children, because you have rebelliously refused to accept my notice, and because nobody can ask of her, a young girl, that she should teach in the middle of your dirty household affairs.

So you are left to yourself, and you can spread yourself as much as you like, undisturbed by the disapproval of respectable people. But it won't last for long, I promise you that."

With that he slammed the door.

Hardly was everybody gone when K. said to the assistants: "Clear out!"

Disconcerted by the unexpectedness of the command, they obeyed, but when K. locked the door behind them they tried to get in again, whimpered outside and knocked on the door.

"You are dismissed," cried K., "never again will I take you into my service!"

But that, of course, was just what they did not want, and they kept hammering on the door with their hands and feet.

"Let us back to you, sir!" they cried, if they were being swept away by a flood and K.

were dry wood.

But K. did not relent, he waited impatiently for the unbearable din to force the teacher to intervene.

That soon happened.

"Let your confounded assistants in!" he shouted.

"Ìve dismissed them," K. shouted back.

It had the incidental effect of showing the teacher what it was to be strong enough not merely to give notice but to enforce it. The teacher next tried to soothe the assistants by kindly assurances that they had only to wait quietly and K. would have to let them in sooner or later. Then he went away. And now things might have settled down if K. had not begun to shout at them again that they were finally dismissed once and for all, and had not the faintest chance of being taken back. Upon that they recommenced their din. Once more the teacher entered, but this time he no longer tried to reason with them, but drove them, apparently with his dreaded rod, out of the house. Soon they appeared in front of the windows of the gymnasium, rapped on the panes and cried something, but their words could no longer be distinguished.

They did not stay there long either, in the deep snow they could not be as active as their frenzy required. So they flew to the railings of the school garden and sprang on to the stone pediment, where, moreover, though only from a distance, they had a better view of the room. There they ran to and fro holding on to the railings, then remained standing and stretched out their clasped hands beseechingly towards K.. They went on like this for a long time, without thinking of the uselessness of their efforts. They were as if obsessed, they did not even stop when K. drew down the window blinds so as to rid himself of the sight of them.

In the now darkened room K. went over to the parallel bars to look for Frieda. On encountering his gaze she got up, put her hair in order, dried her tears and began in silence to prepare the coffee. Although she knew of everything, K. formally announced to her all the same that he had dismissed the assistants. She merely nodded. K. sat down at one of the desks and followed her tired movements. It had been her unfailing aliveliness and decision that had given her insignificant physiqueits beauty. Now that beauty was gone. A few days of living with K. had been enough to achieve this. Her work in the taproom had not been light, but apparently it had been more suited to her. Or was her separation from Klamm the real cause of her falling away? It was the nearness of Klamm that had made her so irrationally seductive. That was the seduction which had drawn K. to her, and now she was withering in his arms.

"Frieda," said K.

She put away the coffee-mill at once and went over to K. at his desk.

"You're angry with me?" asked she.

"No," replied K. "I don't think you can help yourself. You were happy in the Herrenhof.

I should have let you stay there."

"Yes," said Frieda, gazing sadly in front of her, "you should have let me stay there, I'm not good enough for you to live with. If you were rid of me, perhaps you would be able to achieve all that you want. Out of regard for me you've submitted yourself to the tyranny of the teacher, taken on this wretched post, and are doing your utmost to get an interview with Klamm. All for me, but I don't give you much in return."

"No, no," said K., putting his arm round her comfortingly. "All these things are trifles that don't hurt me, and it's not only on your account that I want to get to Klamm. And then think of all you've done for me! Before I knew you I was going about in a blind circle. Nobody took me up, and if I made up to anybody I was soon sent about my business. And when I was given the chance of a little hospitality it was with people that I always wanted to run away from, like Barnabas's family -"

"You wanted to run away from them? You did? Darling!" cried Frieda eagerly, and after a hesitating "Yes," from K., sank back once more into her apathy.

But K. had no longer resolution enough to explain in what way everything had changed for the better for him through his connexion with Frieda. He slowly took away his arm and they sat for a little in silence, until - as if his arm had given her warmth and comfort, which now she could not do without - Frieda said: !I won't be able to stand this life here. If you want to keep me with you, we'll have to go away somewhere or other, to the south of France, or to Spain."

"I can't go away," replied K. "I came here to stay. I'll stay here."

And giving utterance to a self-contradiction which he made no effort to explain, he added as if to himself: "What could have enticed me to this desolate country except the wish to stay here?"

Then he went on: "But you want to stay here too, after all it's your own country. Only you miss Klamm and that gives you desperate ideas."

"I miss Klamm?" said Frieda. "I've all I want of Klamm here, too much Klamm. It's to escape from him that I want to go away. It's not Klamm that I miss, it's you. I want to go away for your sake, because I can't get enough of you, here where everything distracts me. I would gladly lose my pretty looks, I would gladly be sick and ailing, if I could be left in peace with you."

K. had only paid attention to one thing.

"Then Klamm is still in communication with you?" he asked eagerly, "he sends for you?"

"I know nothing about Klamm," replied Frieda, "I was speaking just now of others, I mean the assistants."

"Oh, the assistants," said K. in disappointment, "do they persecute you?"

"Why, have you never noticed it?" asked Frieda.

"No," replied K., trying in vain to remember anything, "they're certainly importunate and lascivious young fellows, but I hadn't noticed that they had dared to lift their eyes to you."

"No?" said Frieda, "did you never notice that they simply weren't to be driven out of our room in the Bridge Inn, that they jealously watched all our movements, that one of them finished up by taking my place on that sack of straw, that they gave evidence against you a minute ago so as to drive you out of this and ruin you, and so as to be left alone with me? You've never noticed all that?"

K. gazed at Frieda without replying. Her accusations against the assistants were true enough, but all the same they could be interpreted far more innocently as simple effects of the ludicrously childish, irresponsible, and undisciplined characters of the two. And didn't it also speak against their guilt that they had always done their best to go with K. everywhere and not to be left with Frieda? K. halfsuggested this.

"It's their deceit," said Frieda, "have you never seen through it? Well, why have you driven them away, if not for those reasons?"

And she went to the window, drew the blind aside a little, glanced out, and then called K. over. The assistants were still clinging to the railings. Tired as they must have been by now, they still gathered their strength together every now and then and stretched their arms out beseechingly towards the school. So as not to have to hold on all the time, one of them had hooked himself on to the railings behind by the tail of his coat.

"Poor things! Poor things!" said Frieda.

"You ask why I drove them away?" asked K. "You were the sole cause of that."

"I?" asked Frieda without taking her eyes from the assistants.

"Your much too kind treatment of the assistants," said K., "the way you forgave their offences and smiled at them and stroked their hair, your perpetual sympathy for them -

"Poor things! Poor things!" you said just now and finally this last thing that has happened, that you haven't scrupled even to sacrifice me to save the assistants from a beating."

"Yes, that's just it, that's what I've been trying to tell you, that's just what makes me unhappy, what keeps me from you even though I can't think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there's no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else. And I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with iron bars, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more. But here - look, there are the assistants! It's not you they think of when they clasp their hands, but me."

"And it's not I who am looking at them," said K., "but you,"

"Certainly, me," said Frieda almost angrily, "that's what I've been saying all the time. Why else should they be always at my heels, even if they are messengers of Klamm's?"

"Messengers of Klamm's?" repeated K. extremely astonished by this designation, though it seemed natural enough at the same time.

"Certainly, messengers of Klamm's," said Frieda.

"Even if they are, still they're silly boys, too, who need to have more sense hammered into them. What ugly black young demons they are, and how disgusting the contrast is between their faces, which one would say belonged to grown-ups, almost to students, and their silly childish, behaviour. Do you think I don't see that? It makes me feel ashamed for them. Well, that's just it, they don't repel me, but I feel ashamed for them. I can't help looking at them. When one ought to be annoyed with them, I can only laugh at tem.

When people want to strike them, I can only stroke rheir hair. And when I'm lying beside you at night I can't sleep and must always be leaning across you to look at them, one of them lying rolled up asleep in the blanket and the other kneeling before the stove door putting in wood, and I have to bend forward so far that I nearly waken you. And it wasn't the cat that frightened me - oh, I've had experience of cats and I've bad experience as well of disturbed nights in the taproom - it wasn't the cat that frightened me, I'm frightened at myself. No, it didn't need that big beast of a cat to waken me, I start up at the slightest noise. One minute I'm afraid you'll waken and spoil everything, and the next I spring up and light the candle to force you to waken at once and protect me."