The Castle

recompense any small favour you may do me.” “Oh, I know,” said the landlord, and repeated again, “I know all that.” Now was the time for K. to state his wishes more clearly, but this reply of the landlord’s disconcerted him, and so he merely asked, “Are there many of the Castle gentlemen staying in the house tonight?” “As far as that goes, tonight is favourable,” returned the landlord, as if in encouragement, “there’s only one gentleman.” Still K. felt incapable of urging the matter, but being in hopes that he was as good as accepted, he contented himself by asking the name of the gentleman. “Klamm,” said the landlord casually, turning meanwhile to his wife who came rustling towards them in a remarkably shabby, old-fashioned gown overloaded with pleats and frills, but of a fine city cut. She came to summon the landlord, for the Chief wanted something or other. Before the landlord complied, however, he turned once more to K., as if it lay with K. to make the decision about staying all night. But K. could not utter a word, overwhelmed as he was by the discovery that it was his patron who was in the house. Without being able to explain it completely to himself he did not feel the same freedom of action in relation to Klamm as he did to the rest of the Castle, and the idea of being caught in the inn by Klamm, although it did not terrify him as it did the landlord, gave him a twinge of uneasiness, much as if he were thoughtlessly to hurt the feelings of someone to whom he was bound by gratitude; at the same time, however, it vexed him to recognise already in these qualms the obvious effects of that degradation to an inferior status which he had feared, and to realise that although they were so obvious he was not even in a position to counteract them. So he stood there biting his lips and said nothing. Once more the landlord looked back at him before disappearing through a doorway, and K. returned the look without moving from the spot, until Olga came up and drew him away. “What did you want with the landlord?” she asked. “I wanted a bed for the night,” said K. “But you’re staying with us!” said Olga in surprise. “Of course,” said K., leaving her to make what she liked of it.

III

In the bar, which was a large room with a vacant space in the middle, there were several peasants sitting by the wall on the tops of some casks, but they looked different from those in K.’s inn. They were more neatly and uniformly dressed in coarse yellowish-grey cloth, with loose jackets and tightly-fitting trousers. They were smallish men with at first sight a strong mutual resemblance, having flat bony faces, but rounded cheeks. They were all quiet, and sat with hardly a movement, except that they followed the newcomers with their eyes, but they did even that slowly and indifferently. Yet because of their numbers and their quietness they had a certain effect on K. He took Olga’s arm again as if to explain his presence there. A man rose up from one corner, an acquaintance of Olga’s, and made towards her, but K. wheeled her round by the arm in another direction. His action was perceptible to nobody but Olga, and she tolerated it with a smiling side-glance.

The beer was drawn off by a young girl called Frieda. An unobtrusive little girl with fair hair, sad eyes and hollow cheeks, but with a striking look of conscious superiority. As soon as her eye met K.’s it seemed to him that her look decided something concerning himself, something which he had not known to exist, but which her look assured him did exist. He kept on studying her from the side, even while she was speaking to Olga. Olga and Frieda were apparently not intimate, they exchanged only a few cold words. K. wanted to hear more, and so interposed with a question on his own account: “Do you know Herr Klamm?” Olga laughed out loud. “What are you laughing at?” asked K. irritably. “I’m not laughing,” she protested, but went on laughing. “Olga is a childish creature,” said K. bending far over the counter in order to attract Frieda’s gaze again. But she kept her eyes lowered and laughed shyly. “Would you like to see Herr Klamm?” K. begged for a sight of him. She pointed to a door just on her left. “There’s a little peephole there, you can look through.” “What about the others?” asked K. She curled her underlip and pulled K. to the door with a hand that was unusually soft. The little hole had obviously been bored for spying through, and commanded almost the whole of the neighbouring room. At a desk in the middle of the room in a comfortable armchair sat Herr Klamm, his face brilliantly lit up by an incandescent lamp which hung low before him. A middle-sized, plump and ponderous man. His face was still smooth, but his cheeks were already somewhat flabby with age. His black moustache had long points, his eyes were hidden behind glittering pince-nez that sat awry. If he had been planted squarely before his desk K. would only have seen his profile, but since he was turned directly towards K. his whole face was visible. His left elbow lay on the desk, his right hand, in which was a Virginia cigar, rested on his knee. A beer-glass was standing on the desk, but there was a rim round the desk which prevented K. from seeing whether any papers were lying on it, he had the idea, however, that there were none. To make it certain he asked Frieda to