and piles more in the shed.” “Will you be able to find the order?” he said turning again to his wife, “you must look for a document with the word Land Surveyor underlined in blue pencil.” “It’s too dark,” said the woman, “I’ll fetch a candle,” and she stamped through the papers to the door. “My wife is a great help to me,” said the Superintendent, “in these difficult official affairs, and yet we can never quite keep up with them. True, I have another assistant for the writing that has to be done, the teacher; but all the same it’s impossible to get things shipshape, there’s always a lot of business that has to be left lying, it has been put away in that chest there,” and he pointed to another cabinet. “And just now, when I’m laid up, it has got the upper hand,” he said, and lay back with a weary yet proud air. “Couldn’t I,” asked
K., seeing that the woman had now returned with the candle and was kneeling before the chest looking for the paper, “couldn’t I help your wife to look for it?” The Superintendent smilingly shook his head: “As I said before, I don’t want to make any parade of official secrecy before you, but to let you look through these papers yourself—no, I can’t go so far as that.” Now stillness fell in the room, only the rustling of the papers was to be heard; it looked, indeed, for a few minutes, as if the Superintendent were dozing. A faint rapping on the door made
K. turn round. It was of course the assistants. All the same they showed already some of the effects of their training, they did not rush at once into the room, but whispered at first through the door which was slightly ajar: “It’s cold out here.” “Who’s that?” asked the Superintendent, starting up. “It’s only my assistants,” replied
K. “I don’t know where to ask them to wait for me, it’s too cold outside and here they would be in the way.” “They won’t disturb me,” said the Superintendent indulgently. “Ask them to come in. Besides I know them. Old acquaintances.” “But they’re in
my way,”
K. replied bluntly, letting his gaze wander from the assistants to the Superintendent and back again, and finding on the faces of all three the same smile. “But seeing you’re here as it is,” he went on experimentally, “stay and help the Superintendent’s lady there to look for a document with the word Land Surveyor underlined in blue pencil.” The Superintendent raised no objection. What had not been permitted to
K. was allowed to the assistants; they threw themselves at once on the papers, but they did not so much seek for anything as rummage about in the heap, and while one was spelling out a document the other would immediately snatch it out of his hand. The woman meanwhile knelt before the empty chest, she seemed to have completely given up looking, in any case the candle was standing quite far away from her.
“The assistants,” said the Superintendent with a self-complacent smile, which seemed to indicate that he had the lead, though nobody was in a position even to assume this, “they’re in your way then? Yet they’re your own assistants.” “No,” replied K. coolly, “they only ran into me here.” “Ran into you,” said he; “you mean, of course, were assigned to you.” “All right then, were assigned to me,” said K., “but they might as well have fallen from the sky, for all the thought that was spent in choosing them.” “Nothing here is done without taking thought,” said the Superintendent, actually forgetting the pain in his foot and sitting up. “Nothing!” said K., “and what about my being summoned here then?” “Even your being summoned was carefully considered,” said the Superintendent; “it was only certain auxiliary circumstances that entered and confused the matter, I’ll prove it to you from the official papers.” “The papers will not be found,” said K. “Not be found?” said the Superintendent. “Mizzi, please hurry up a bit! Still I can tell you the story even without the papers. We replied with thanks to the order that I’ve mentioned already, saying that we didn’t need a Land Surveyor. But this reply doesn’t appear to have reached the original department—I’ll call it A—but by mistake went to another department, B. So Department A remained without an answer, but unfortunately our full reply didn’t reach B either; whether it was that the order itself was not enclosed by us, or whether it got lost on the way—it was certainly not lost in my department, that I can vouch for—in any case all that arrived at Department B was the covering letter, in which was merely noted that the enclosed order, unfortunately an impractical one, was concerned with the engagement of a Land Surveyor. Meanwhile Department A was waiting for our answer, they had, of course, made a memorandum of the case, but as, excusably enough, often happens and is bound to happen even under the most efficient handling, our correspondent trusted to the fact that we would answer him, after which he would either summon the Land Surveyor, or else if need be write us further about the matter. As a result he never thought of referring to his memorandum and the whole thing fell into oblivion. But in Department B the covering letter came into the hands of a correspondent, famed for his conscientiousness, Sordini by name, an Italian; it is incomprehensible even to me, though I am one of the initiated, why a man of his capacities is left in an almost subordinate position. This Sordini naturally sent us back the unaccompanied covering letter for completion. Now months, if not years, had passed by this time since that first communication from Department A, which is understandable enough, for when—which is the
