Then he turned to the assistants. “Come along,” he said, taking Klamm’s letter from its nail and making for the door. The landlady looked at him in silence, and only when his hand was on the latch did she say: “There’s something else to take away with you, for whatever you say and however you insult an old woman like me, you’re after all Frieda’s future husband. That’s my sole reason for telling you now that your ignorance of the local situation is so appalling that it makes my head go round to listen to you and compare your ideas and opinions with the real state of things. It’s a kind of ignorance which can’t be enlightened at one attempt, and perhaps never can be, but there’s a lot you could learn if you would only believe me a little and keep you own ignorance constantly in mind. For instance you would at once be less unjust to me, and you would begin to have an inkling of the shock it was to me—a shock from which I’m still suffering—when I realised that my dear little Frieda had, so to speak, deserted the eagle for the snake in the grass, only the real situation is much worse even than that, and I have to keep on trying to forget it so as to be able to speak civilly to you at all. Oh, now you’re angry again! No, don’t go away yet, listen to this one appeal: Wherever you may be, never forget that you’re the most ignorant person in the village, and be cautious; here in this house where Frieda’s presence saves you from harm you can drivel on to your heart’s content, for instance here you can explain to us how you mean to get an interview with Klamm, but I entreat you, I entreat you, don’t do it in earnest.”
She stood up, tottering a little with agitation, went over to K., took his hand and looked at him imploringly. “Madam,” said K., “I don’t understand why you should stoop to entreat me about a thing like this. If, as you say, it’s impossible for me to speak to Klamm, I won’t manage it in any case whether I’m entreated or not. But if it proves to be possible, why shouldn’t I do it, especially as that would remove your main objection and so make your other premises questionable. Of course I’m ignorant, that’s an unshakable truth and a sad truth for me, but it gives me all the advantage of ignorance, which is greater daring, and so I’m prepared to put up with my ignorance, evil consequences and all, for some time to come, so long as my strength holds out. But these consequences really affect nobody but myself, and that’s why I simply can’t understand your pleading. I’m certain you would always look after Frieda, and if I were to vanish from Frieda’s ken you couldn’t regard that as anything but good luck. So what are you afraid of? Surely you’re not afraid—an ignorant man thinks everything possible”—here K. flung the door open—“surely you’re not afraid for Klamm?” The landlady gazed after him in silence as he ran down the staircase with the assistants following him.
V
To his own surprise K. had little difficulty in obtaining an interview with the Superintendent. He sought to explain this to himself by the fact that, going by his experience hitherto, official intercourse with the authorities for him was always very easy. This was caused on the one hand by the fact that the word had obviously gone out once and for all to treat his case with the external marks of indulgence, and on the other, by the admirable autonomy of the service, which one divined to be peculiarly effective precisely where it was not visibly present. At the mere thought of those facts, K. was often in danger of considering his situation hopeful; nevertheless, after such fits of easy confidence, he would hasten to tell himself that just there lay his danger.
Direct intercourse with the authorities was not particularly difficult then, for well-organised as they might be, all they did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters, while K. fought for something vitally near to him, for himself, and moreover, at least at the very beginning, on his own initiative, for he was the attacker; and besides he fought not only for himself, but clearly for other powers as well which he did not know, but in which, without infringing the regulations of the authorities, he was permitted to believe. But now by the fact that they had at once amply met his wishes in all unimportant matters—and hitherto only unimportant matters had come up—they had robbed him of the possibility of light and easy victories, and with that of the satisfaction which must accompany them and the well-grounded confidence for further and greater struggles, which must result from them. Instead, they let K. go anywhere he liked—of course only within the village—and thus pampered and enervated him, ruled out all possibility of conflict, and transposed him to an unofficial, totally unrecognised, troubled and alien existence. In this life it might easily happen, if he were not always on his guard, that one day or other, in spite of the amiability of the authorities and the scrupulous fulfilment of all his exaggeratedly light duties, he might—deceived by the apparent favour shown him—conduct himself so imprudently that he might get a fall;
