“Worse?” said the landlady. “It’s a transgression of the law in any case. And now you can do what you like. Reach me over my skirt.”
Without paying any regard to K.’s presence she pulled on her skirt and hurried into the kitchen. For a long time already K. had been hearing noises in the dining-room. There was a tapping on the kitchen hatch. The assistants had unfastened it and were shouting that they were hungry. Then other faces appeared at it. One could even hear a subdued song being chanted by several voices.
Undeniably K.’s conversation with the landlady had greatly delayed the cooking of the midday meal, it was not ready yet and the customers had assembled. Nevertheless nobody had dared to set foot in the kitchen after the landlady’s order. But now when the observers at the hatch reported that the landlady was coming, the maids immediately ran back to the kitchen, and as K. entered the dining-room a surprisingly large company, more than twenty, men and women—all attired in provincial but not rustic clothes—streamed back from the hatch to the tables to make sure of their seats. Only at one little table in the corner were a married couple seated already with a few children. The man, a kindly, blue-eyed person with disordered grey hair and beard, stood bent over the children and with a knife beat time to their singing, which he perpetually strove to soften. Perhaps he was trying to make them forget their hunger by singing. The landlady threw a few indifferent words of apology to her customers, nobody complained of her conduct. She looked round for the landlord, who had fled from the difficulty of the situation, however, long ago. Then she went slowly into the kitchen; she did not take any more notice of K., who hurried to Frieda in her room.
VII
Upstairs K. ran into the teacher. The room was improved almost beyond recognition, so well had Frieda set to work. It was well-aired, the stove amply stoked, the floor scrubbed, the bed put in order, the maids’ filthy pile of things and even their photographs cleared away; the table, which had literally struck one in the eye before with its crust of accumulated dust, was covered with a white embroidered cloth. One was in a position to receive visitors now. K.’s small change of underclothes hanging before the fire—Frieda must have washed them early in the morning—did not spoil the impression much. Frieda and the teacher were sitting at the table, they rose at K.’s entrance. Frieda greeted K. with a kiss, the teacher bowed slightly. Distracted and still agitated by his talk with the landlady, K. began to apologise for not having been able yet to visit the teacher; it was as if he were assuming that the teacher had called on him finally because he was impatient at K.’s absence. On the other hand, the teacher in his precise way only seemed now gradually to remember that sometime or other there had been some mention between K. and himself of a visit. “You must be, Land Surveyor,” he said slowly, “the stranger I had a few words with the other day in the church square.” “I am,” replied K. shortly; the behaviour which he had submitted to when he felt homeless he did not intend to put up with now here in his room. He turned to Frieda and consulted her about an important visit which he had to pay at once and for which he would need his best clothes. Without further enquiry Frieda called over the assistants, who were already busy examining the new tablecloth, and commanded them to brush K.’s suit and shoes—which he had begun to take off—down in the yard. She herself took a shirt from the line and ran down to the kitchen to iron it.
Now K. was left alone with the teacher, who was seated silently again at the table; K. kept him waiting for a little longer, drew off his shirt and began to wash himself at the tap. Only then, with his back to the teacher, did he ask him the reason for his visit. “I have come at the instance of the Parish Superintendent,” he said. K. made ready to listen. But as the noise of the water made it difficult to catch what K. said, the teacher had to come nearer and lean against the wall beside him. K. excused his washing and his hurry by the urgency of his coming appointment. The teacher swept aside his excuses, and said: “You were discourteous to the Parish Superintendent, an old and experienced man who should be treated with respect.” “Whether I was discourteous or not I can’t say,” said K. while he dried himself, “but that I had other things to think of than polite behaviour is true enough, for my existence is at stake, which is threatened by a scandalous official bureaucracy whose particular failings I needn’t mention to you, seeing that you’re an acting member of it yourself. Has the Parish Superintendent complained about me?” “Where’s the man that he would need to complain of?” asked the teacher. “And even if there was anyone, do you think he would ever do it? I’ve only made out at his dictation a short protocol on your interview, and that has shown me clearly enough how kind the Superintendent was and what your answers were like.”
While K. was looking for his comb, which Frieda must have cleared away somewhere, he said: “What? A protocol? Drawn up afterwards in my absence by someone who wasn’t at the interview at
