The Castle (42 page)

It would have been quite impossible to winkle her out against her will, only love for some lowly person, that is to say, something that was not in keeping with her position, could drive her from her place.

And Pepi?

Had she ever thought of getting the situation for herself?

She was a chambermaid, she had an insignificant situation with few prospects, she had dreams of a great future like any other girl, one can't stop oneself from having dreams, but she had never seriously thought of getting on in the world, she had resigned herself to staying in the job she had.

And now Frieda suddenly vanished from the taproom, it had happened so suddenly that the landlord had not had a suitable substitute on hand at the moment, he had looked round and his glance had fallen on Pepi, who had, admittedly, pushed herself forward in such a way as to be noticed. At that time she had loved K. as she had never loved anyone before.

Month after month she had been down there in her tiny dark room, prepared to spend years there, or, if the worst came to the worst, to spend her whole life here, ignored by everyone, and now suddenly K. had appeared, a hero, a rescuer of maidens in distress, and had opened up the way upstairs for her. Admittedly he did not know anything about her, he had not done it for her sake, but that did not diminish her gratitude, in the night preceding her appointment - the appointment was not yet definite, but still, it was now very probable - she spent hours talking to him, whispering her thanks in his ear. And in her eyes it exalted what he had done still more that it should have been Frieda, of all people, with whom he had burdened himself.

There was something incomprehensibly selfless in his making Frieda his mistress in order to pave the way for Pepi - Frieda, a plain, oldish, skinny girl with short, thin hair, a deceitful girl into the bargain, always having some sort of secret, which was probably connected, after all, with her appearance. If her wretchedness was glaringly obvious in her face and figure, she must at least have other secrets that nobody could inquire into, for instance her alleged affair with Klamm. And even thoughts like the following had occurred to Pepi at that time: is it possible that K. really loves Frieda, isn't he deceiving himself or is he perhaps deceiving only Frieda, and will perhaps the sole outcome of the whole thing after all be nothing but Pepi's rise in the world, and will K. then notice the mistake, or not want to cover it up any more, and no longer see Frieda, but only Pepi, which need not even be a crazy piece of conceit on Pepi's part, for so far as Frieda was concerned she was a match for her, one girl against another, which nobody would deny, and it had, after all, been primarily Frieda's position and the glory that Frieda had been able to invest it with that had dazzled K. at the moment.

And so then Pepi had dreamed that when she had the position K. would come to her, pleading, and she would then have the choice of either granting K.'s plea and losing her situation or of rejecting him and rising further. And she had worked out for herself that she would renounce everything and lower herself to him and teach him what true love was, which he would never be able to learn from Frieda and which was independent of her positions of honour in the world.

But then everything turned out differently.

And what was to blame for this?

Above all, K. and then, of course, Frieda's artfulness.

Above all, K.

For what was he after, what sort of strange person was he?

What was he trying to get, what were these important things that kept him busy and made him forget what was nearest of all, best of all most beautiful of all?

Pepi was the sacrifice and everything was stupid and everything was lost. And anyone who had the strength to set fire to the whole Herrenhof and burn it down, burn it to the ground, so that not a trace of it was left, burn it up like a piece of paper in the stove, he would to-day be Pepi's chosen love.

Well, so Pepi came into the taproom, four days ago to-day, shortly before lunch-time.

The work here was far from easy, it was almost killingly hard work, but there was a good deal to be got out of it too. Even previously Pepi had not lived only for the day, and even if she would never have aspired to this situation even in her wildest dreams, still, she had made plenty of observations, she knew what this situation involved, she had not taken on the situation without being prepared. One could not take it on without being prepared, otherwise one lost it in the first few hours. Particularly if one were to behave here the way the chambermaids did.

As a chambermaid one did in time come to feel one was quite lost and forgotten. It was like working down a mine, at least that was the way it was in the secretaries' passage, for days on end there. Except for a few daytime applicants who flitted in and out without daring to look up one didn't see a soul but two or three other chambermaids, and they were just as embittered.

In the morning one wasn't allowed to leave the room at all, that was when the secretaries wished to be alone among themselves, their meals were brought to them from the kitchen by the men-servants, the chambermaids usually had nothing to do with that, and during meal-times, too, one was not allowed to show oneself in the passage.

It was only while the gentlemen were working that the chambermaids were allowed to do the rooms, but naturally not those that were occupied, only those that happened to be empty at the time, and the work had to be done quite quietly so that the gentlemen were not disturbed at their work.

But how was it possible to do the cleaning quietly when the gentlemen occupied their rooms for several days on end, and the men-servants, dirty lot that they were, pottered about there into the bargain, and when the chambermaid was finally allowed to go into the room, it was in such a state that not even the flood could wash it clean?

Truly, they were exalted gentlemen, but one had to make a great effort to overcome one's disgust so as to be able to clean up after them. It wasn't that the chambermaids had such a great amount of work, but it was pretty tough. And never a kind word, never anything but reproaches, in particular the following, which was the most tormenting and the most frequent: that files had got lost during the doing of the rooms. In reality nothing ever got lost, every scrap of paper was handed over to the landlord, but in fact of course files did get lost, only it happened not to be the fault of the maids.

And then commissions came, and the maids had to leave their rooms, and the members of the commission rummaged through the beds, the girls had no possessions, of course, their few things could be put in a basket, but still, the commission searched for hours all the same. Naturally they found nothing. How should files come to be there? What did the maids care about files? But the outcome was always the same, abuse and threats uttered by the disappointed commission and passed on by the landlord. And never any peace, neither by day nor by night, noise going on half through the night and noise again at the crack of dawn. If at least one didn't have to live in, but one had to, for it was the chambermaids' job to bring snacks from the kitchen as they might be ordered, in between times, particularly at night. Always suddenly the first thumping on the chambermaids'

door, the order being dictated, the running down to the kitchen, shaking the sleeping scullery-lads, the setting down of the tray with the things ordered outside the chambermaids' door, from where the men-servants fetched it how sad all that was.

But that was not the worst.

The worst was when no order came, that was to say, when, at dead of night, when everyone ought to be asleep and most of them really were asleep at last, sometimes a tiptoeing around began outside the chambermaids' door. Then the girls got out of bed -

the bunks were on top of each other, for there was very little space there, the whole room the maids had being actually nothing more than a large cupboard with three shelves in it - listened at the door, knelt down, put their arms round each other in fear and whoever was tiptoeing outside the door could be heard all the time. They would all be thankful if only he would come right in and be done with it, but nothing happened, nobody came in. And at the same time one had to admit to oneself that it need not necessarily be some danger threatening, perhaps it was only someone walking up and down outside the door, trying to make up his mind to order something, and then not being able to bring himself to it after all. Perhaps that was all it was, but perhaps it was something quite different. For really one didn't know the gentlemen at all, one had hardly set eyes on them.

Anyway, inside the room the maids were fainting in terror, and when at last it was quiet again outside they leant against the wall and had not enough strength left to get back into bed. This was the life that was waiting for Pepi to return to it, this very evening she was to move back to her place in the maids' room.

And why?

Because of K. and Frieda.

Back again into that life she had scarcely escaped from, which she escaped from, it is true, with K.'s help, but also, of course, through very great exertions of her own. For in that service there the girls neglected themselves, even those who were otherwise the most careful and tidy. For whom should they smarten themselves? Nobody saw them, at best the staff in the kitchen. Anyone for whom that was enough was welcome to smarten herself.

But for the rest they were always in their little room or in the gentlemen's rooms, which it was madness and a waste so much as to set foot in with clean clodies on. And always by artificial light and in that stuffy air - with the heating always on - and actually always tired. The one free afternoon in the week was best spent sleeping quietly and without fear in one of the cubby-holes in the kitchen.

So what should one smarten oneself up for?

Yes, one scarcely bothered to dress at all.

And now Pepi had suddenly been transferred to the taproom, where, if one wanted to maintain one's position there, exactly the opposite was necessary, where one was always in full view of people, and among them very observant gentlemen, used to the best of everything, and where one therefore always had to look as smart and pleasant as possible.

Well, that was a change. And Pepi could say of herself that she had not failed to rise to the occasion. Pepi was not worrying about how things would turn out later. She knew she had the abilities necessary in this situation, she was quite certain of it, she had this conviction even now and nobody could take it away from her, not even to-day, on the day of her defeat. The only difficulty was how she was to stand the test in the very beginning, because she was, after all, only a poor chambermaid, with nothing to wear and no jewellery, and because the gentlemen had not the patience to wait and see how one would develop, but instantly, without transition, wanted a barmaid of the proper kind, or else they turned away. One would think they didn't expect so very much since, after all, Frieda could satisfy them.

But that was not right.

Pepi had often thought about this, she had, after all, often been together with Frieda and had for a time even slept together with her. It wasn't easy to find Frieda out, and anyone who was not very much on the look-out - and which of the gentlemen was very much on the look-out, after all? - was at once misled by her. No one knew better than Frieda herself how miserable her looks were, for instance when one saw her for the first time with her hair down, one clasped one's hands in pity, by rights a girl like that shouldn't even be a chambermaid. And she knew it, too, and many a night she had spent crying about it, pressing tight against Pepi and laying Pepi's hair round her own head. But when she was on duty all her doubts vanished, she thought herself better-looking than anyone, and she had the knack of getting everyone to think the same. She knew what people were like, and really that was where her art lay. And she was quick with a lie, and cheated, so that people didn't have time to get a closer look at her. Naturally that wouldn't do in the long run, people had eyes in their heads and sooner or later their eyes would tell them what to think.

But the moment she noticed the danger of that she was ready with another method, recently, for instance, her affair with Klamm.

Her affair with Klamm!

If you don't believe it, you can go and get proof.

Go to Klamm and ask him.

How cunning, how cunning.

And if you don't happen to dare to go to Klamm with an inquiry like that, and perhaps wouldn't be admitted to him with infinitely more important inquiries, and Klamm is, in fact, completely inaccessible to you only to you and your sort, for Frieda, for instance, pops in to see him whenever she likes - if that's how it is, you can still get proof of the thing, you only need to wait. After all, Klamm won't be able to tolerate such a false rumour for long, he's certain to be very keen to know what stories go round about him in the taproom and in the public rooms, all this is of the greatest importance to him, and if it's wrong he will refute it at once.

But he doesn't refute it.

Well, then there is nothing to be refuted and it is sheer truth. What one sees, indeed, is only that Frieda takes the beer into Klamm's room and comes out again with the money.

But what one doesn't see Frieda tells one about, and one has to believe her. And she doesn't even tell it, after all, she's not going to let such secrets out. No, the secrets let themselves out wherever she goes and, since they have been let out once and for all, she herself, it is true, no longer shrinks from talking about them herself, but modestly, without asserting anything, only referring to what is generally known anyway.

Not to everything.

One thing, for instance, she does not speak of, namely that since she has been in the taproom Klamm drinks less beer than formerly, not much less, but still perceptibly less beer, and there may indeed be various reasons for this, it may be that a period has come when Klamm has less taste for beer or that it is Frieda who causes him to forget about beer-drinking. Anyway, however amazing it may be, Frieda is Klamm's mistress. But how should the others not also admire what is good enough for Klamm? And so, before anyone knows what is happening, Frieda has turned into a great beauty, a girl of exactly the kind that the taproom needs. Indeed, almost too beautiful, too powerful, even now the taproom is hardly good enough for her any more.