nobody else in the room, and then weeping, but still clinging to him, fell on her knees before him. While he caressed Frieda’s hair with both hands K. asked the landlady: “You seem to have no objection?” “You are a man of honour,” said the landlady, who also had tears in her eyes. She looked a little worn and breathed with difficulty, but she found strength enough to say: “There’s only the question now of what guarantees you are to give Frieda, for great as is my respect for you, you’re a stranger here; there’s nobody here who can speak to you, your family circumstances aren’t known here, so some guarantee is necessary. You must see that, my dear sir, and indeed you touched on it yourself when you mentioned how much Frieda must lose through her association with you.” “Of course, guarantees, most certainly,” said K., “but they’ll be best given before the notary, and at the same time other officials of the Count’s will perhaps be concerned. Besides, before I’m married there’s something I must do. I must have a talk with Klamm.” “That’s impossible,” said Frieda, raising herself a little and pressing close to K., “what an idea!” “But it must be done,” said K., “if it’s impossible for me to manage it, you must.” “I can’t, K.; I can’t,” said Frieda, “Klamm will never talk to you. How can you even think of such a thing!” “And won’t he talk to you?” asked K. “Not to me either,” said Frieda, “neither to you nor to me, it’s simply impossible.” She turned to the landlady with outstretched arms: “You see what he’s asking for!” “You’re a strange person,” said the landlady, and she was an awe-inspiring figure now that she sat more upright, her legs spread out and her enormous knees projecting under her thin skirt, “you ask for the impossible.” “Why is it impossible?” said K. “That’s what I’m going to tell you,” said the landlady in a tone which sounded as if her explanation were less a final concession to friendship than the first item in a score of penalties she was enumerating, “that’s what I shall be glad to let you know. Although I don’t belong to the Castle, and am only a woman, only a landlady here in an inn of the lowest kind—it’s not of the very lowest, but not far from it—and on that account you may not perhaps set much store by my explanation, still I’ve kept my eyes open all my life and met many kinds of people and taken the whole burden of the inn on my own shoulders, for my Martin is no landlord although he’s a good man, and responsibility is a thing he’ll never understand. It’s only his carelessness, for instance, that you’ve got to thank—for I was tired to death on that evening—for being here in the village at all, for sitting here on this bed in peace and comfort.” “What?” said K., waking from a kind of absentminded distraction, pricked more by curiosity than by anger. “It’s only his carelessness you’ve got to thank for it,” cried the landlady again, pointing with her forefinger at K. Frieda tried to silence her. “I can’t help it,” said the landlady with a swift turn of her whole body. “The Land Surveyor asked me a question and I must answer it. There’s no other way of making him understand what we take for granted, that Herr Klamm will never speak to him—will never speak, did I say?—can never speak to him. Just listen to me, sir. Herr Klamm is a gentleman from the Castle, and that in itself, without considering Klamm’s position there at all, means that he is of very high rank. But what are you, for whose marriage we are humbly considering here ways and means of getting permission? You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn’t wanted and is in everybody’s way, a man who’s always causing trouble, a man who takes up the maids’ room, a man whose intentions are obscure, a man who has ruined our dear little Frieda and whom we must unfortunately accept as her husband. I don’t hold all that up against you. You are what you are, and I have seen enough in my lifetime to be able to face facts. But now consider what it is you ask. A man like Klamm is to talk with you. It vexed me to hear that Frieda let you look through the peephole, when she did that she was already corrupted by you. But just tell me, how did you have the face to look at Klamm? You needn’t answer, I know you think you were quite equal to the occasion. You’re not even capable of seeing Klamm as he really is, that’s not merely an exaggeration, for I myself am not capable of it either. Klamm is to talk to you, and yet Klamm doesn’t talk even to people from the village, never yet has he spoken a word himself to anyone in the village. It was Frieda’s great distinction, a distinction I’ll be proud of to my dying day, that he used at least to call out her name, and that she could speak to him whenever she liked and was permitted the freedom of the peephole, but even to her he never talked. And the fact that he called her name didn’t mean of necessity what one might think, he simply mentioned the name Frieda—who can tell what he was thinking of? and that Frieda naturally came to him at once was her affair, and that she was admitted without let or hindrance was an act of grace on Klamm’s part, but that he deliberately summoned her is more than one can maintain. Of course
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