of her, “you should have let me stay there. I’m not good enough for you to live with. If you were rid of me, perhaps you would be able to achieve all that you want. Out of regard for me you’ve submitted yourself to the tyranny of the teacher, taken on this wretched post, and are doing your utmost to get an interview with Klamm. All for me, but I don’t give you much in return.” “No, no,” said
K. putting his arm round her comfortingly. “All these things are trifles that don’t hurt me, and it’s not only on your account that I want to get to Klamm. And then think of all you’ve done for me! Before I knew you I was going about in a blind circle. Nobody took me up, and if I made up to anybody I was soon sent about my business. And when I was given the chance of a little hospitality it was with people that I always wanted to run away from, like Barnabas’ family—” “You wanted to run away from them? You did? Darling!” cried Frieda eagerly, and after a hesitating, “Yes” from
K., sank back once more into her apathy. But
K. had no longer resolution enough to explain in what way everything had changed for the better for him through his connection with Frieda. He slowly took away his arm and they sat for a little in silence, until—as if his arm had given her warmth and comfort, which now she could not do without—Frieda said: “I won’t be able to stand this life here. If you want to keep me with you, we’ll have to go away somewhere or other, to the south of France, or to Spain.” “I can’t go away,” replied
K. “I came here to stay. I’ll stay here.” And giving utterance to a self-contradiction which he made no effort to explain, he added as if to himself: “What could have enticed me to this desolate country except the wish to stay here?” Then he went on: “But you want to stay here too, after all it’s your own country. Only you miss Klamm and that gives you desperate ideas.” “I miss Klamm?” said Frieda, “I’ve all I want of Klamm here, too much Klamm; it’s to escape from him that I want to go away. It’s not Klamm that I miss, it’s you. I want to go away for your sake, because I can’t get enough of you, here where everything distracts me. I would gladly lose my pretty looks, I would gladly be sick and ailing, if I could be left in peace with you.”
K. had only paid attention to one thing. “Then Klamm is still in communication with you?” he asked eagerly, “he sends for you?” “I know nothing about Klamm,” replied Frieda, “I was speaking just now of others, I mean the assistants.” “Oh, the assistants,” said
K. in disappointment, “do they persecute you?” “Why, have you never noticed it?” asked Frieda. “No,” replied
K. trying in vain to remember anything, “they’re certainly importunate and lascivious young fellows, but I hadn’t noticed that they had dared to lift their eyes to you.” “No?” said Frieda, “did you never notice that they simply weren’t to be driven out of our room in the Bridge Inn, that they jealously watched all our movements, that one of them finished up by taking my place on that sack of straw, that they gave evidence against you a minute ago so as to drive you out of this and ruin you, and so as to be left alone with me? You’ve never noticed all that?”
K. gazed at Frieda without replying. Her accusations against the assistants were true enough, but all the same they could be interpreted far more innocently as simple effects of the ludicrously childish, irresponsible and undisciplined characters of the two. And didn’t it also speak against their guilt that they had always done their best to go with
K. everywhere and not to be left with Frieda?
K. half suggested this. “It’s their deceit,” said Frieda, “have you never seen through it? Well, why have you driven them away, if not for those reasons?” And she went to the window, drew the blind aside a little, glanced out, and then called
K. over. The assistants were still clinging to the railings; tired as they must have been by now, they still gathered their strength together every now and then and stretched their arms out beseechingly towards the school. So as not to have to hold on all the time, one of them had hooked himself on to the railings behind by the tail of his coat.
“Poor things! Poor things!” said Frieda.
“You ask why I drove them away?” asked K. “You were the sole cause of that.” “I?” asked Frieda without taking her eyes from the assistants. “Your much too kind treatment of the assistants,” said K., “the way you forgave their offences and smiled at them and stroked their hair, your perpetual sympathy for them—‘Poor things! Poor things!’ you said just now—and finally this last thing that has happened, that you haven’t scrupled even to sacrifice me to save the assistants from a beating.” “Yes, that’s just it, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, that’s just what makes me unhappy, what keeps me from you even though I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with iron bars, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any
