would really be the limit of audacity if you tried in that way to push the responsibility on to me. Perhaps it’s Herr Momus’ presence that encourages you to do it. No, Land Surveyor, I’m not trying to drive you on to anything. I can admit only one mistake, that I overestimated you a little when I first saw you. Your immediate victory over Frieda frightened me, I didn’t know what you might still be capable of. I wanted to prevent further damage, and thought that the only means of achieving that was to shake your resolution by prayers and threats. Since then I have learned to look on the whole thing more calmly. You can do what you like. Your actions may no doubt leave deep footprints in the snow out there in the courtyard, but they’ll do nothing more.” “The contradiction doesn’t seem to me to be quite cleared up,” said K., “but I’m content with having drawn attention to it. But now I beg you, Mr. Secretary, to tell me whether the landlady’s opinion is correct, that is, that the protocol which you want to take down from my answers can have the result of gaining me admission to Klamm. If that’s the case, I’m ready to answer all your questions at once. In that direction I’m ready, indeed, for anything.” “No,” replied Momus, “that doesn’t follow at all. It’s simply a matter of keeping an adequate record of this afternoon’s happenings for Klamm’s village register. The record is already complete, there are only two or three omissions which you must fill in for the sake of order; there’s no other object in view and no other object can be achieved.” K. gazed at the landlady in silence. “Why are you looking at me?” asked she, “did I say anything else? He’s always like that, Mr. Secretary, he’s always like that. Falsifies the information one gives him, and then maintains that he received false information. I’ve told him from the first and I tell him again today that he hasn’t the faintest prospect of being received by Klamm; well, if there’s no prospect in any case, he won’t alter that fact by means of this protocol. Could anything be clearer? I said further that this protocol is the only real official connection that he can have with Klamm. That too is surely clear and incontestable enough. But if in spite of that he won’t believe me, and keeps on hoping—I don’t know why or with what idea—that he’ll be able to reach Klamm, then so long as he remains in that frame of mind, the only thing that can help him is this one real official connection he has with Klamm, in other words this protocol. That’s all I have said, and whoever maintains the contrary twists my words maliciously.” “If that is so, madam,” said K., “then I beg your pardon, and I’ve misunderstood you; for I thought—erroneously, as it turns out now—that I could take out of your former words that there was still some very tiny hope for me.” “Certainly,” replied the landlady, “that’s my meaning exactly. You’re twisting my words again, only this time in the opposite way. In my opinion there is such a hope for you, and founded actually on this protocol and nothing else. But it’s not of such a nature that you can simply fall on Herr Momus with the question: ‘Will I be allowed to see Klamm if I answer your questions?’ When a child asks questions like that people laugh, when a grown man does it it is an insult to all authority; Herr Momus graciously concealed this under the politeness of his reply. But the hope that I mean consists simply in this, that through the protocol you have a sort of connection, a sort of connection perhaps with Klamm. Isn’t that enough? If anyone enquired for any services which might earn you the privilege of such a hope, could you bring forward the slightest one? For the last time, that’s the best that can be said about this hope of yours, and certainly Herr Momus in his official capacity could never give even the slightest hint of it. For him it’s a matter, as he says, merely of keeping a record of this afternoon’s happenings, for the sake of order; more than that he won’t say, even if you ask him this minute his opinion of what I’ve said.” “Will Klamm, then, Mr. Secretary,” asked K., “read the protocol?” “No,” replied Momus, “why should he? Klamm can’t read every protocol, in fact he reads none. Keep away from me with your protocols! he usually says.” “Land Surveyor,” groaned the landlady, “you exhaust me with such questions. Do you think it’s necessary, or even simply desirable, that Klamm should read this protocol and become acquainted word for word with the trivialities of your life? Shouldn’t you rather pray humbly that the protocol should be concealed from Klamm—a prayer, however, that would be just as unreasonable as the other, for who can hide anything from Klamm even though he has given many signs of his sympathetic nature? And is it even necessary for what you call your hope? Haven’t you admitted yourself that you would be content if you only got the chance of speaking to Klamm, even if he never looked at you and never listened to you? And won’t you achieve that at least through the protocol, perhaps much more?” “Much more?” asked K. “In what way?” “If you wouldn’t always talk about things like a child, as if they were for eating! Who on earth can give any answer to such questions? The protocol will be put in Klamm’s village register, you have heard that already, more than that can’t be said with certainty. But do you know yet the full importance of the protocol, and of Herr Momus, and of the village register? Do you know what
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