out Barnabas’s name. I only wish you had once called out my name as lovingly as for some incomprehensible reason you called that hateful name. If you have no trust in me, how can I keep mistrust from rising? It delivers me completely to the landlady, whom you justify in appearance by your behaviour. Not in everything, I won’t say that you justify her in everything, for was it not on my account alone that you sent the assistants packing? Oh, if you but knew with what passion I try to find a grain of comfort for myself in all that you do and say, even when it gives me pain.” “Once and for all, Frieda,” said K. “I conceal not the slightest thing from you. See how the landlady hates me, and how she does her best to get you away from me, and what despicable means she uses, and how you give in to her, Frieda, how you give in to her? Tell me, now, in what way do I hide anything from you? That I want to reach Klamm you know, that you can’t help me to do it and that accordingly I must do it by my own efforts you know too; that I have not succeeded up till now you see for yourself. Am I to humiliate myself doubly, perhaps, by telling you of all the bootless attempts which have already humiliated me sufficiently? Am I to plume myself on having waited and shivered in vain all an afternoon at the door of Klamm’s sledge? Only too glad not to have to think of such things any more, I hurry back to you, and I am greeted again with all those reproaches from you. And Barnabas? It’s true I’m waiting for him. He’s Klamm’s messenger, it isn’t I who made him that.” “Barnabas again!” cried Frieda. “I can’t believe that he’s a good messenger.” “Perhaps you’re right,” said K., “but he’s the only messenger that’s sent to me.” “All the worse for you,” said Frieda, “all the more reason why you should beware of him.” “Unfortunately he has given me no cause for that till now,” said K. smiling. “He comes very seldom, and what messages he brings are of no importance; only the fact that they come from Klamm gives them any value.” “But listen to me,” said Frieda, “for it is not even Klamm that’s your goal now, perhaps that disturbs me most of all; that you always longed for Klamm while you had me was bad enough, but that you seem to have stopped trying to reach Klamm now is much worse, that’s something which not even the landlady foresaw. According to the landlady your happiness, a questionable and yet very real happiness, would end on the day when you finally recognised that the hopes you founded on Klamm were in vain. But now you don’t wait any longer even for that day, a young lad suddenly comes in and you begin to fight with him for his mother, as if you were fighting for your very life.” “You’ve understood my talk with Hans quite correctly,” said K., “it was really so. But is your whole former life so completely wiped from your mind (all except the landlady, of course, who won’t allow herself to be wiped out), that you can’t remember any longer how one must fight to get to the top, especially when one begins at the bottom? How one must take advantage of everything that offers any hope whatever? And this woman comes from the Castle, she told me so herself on my first day here, when I happened to stray into Lasemann’s. What’s more natural than to ask her for advice or even for help; if the landlady only knows the obstacles which keep one from reaching Klamm, then this woman probably knows the way to him, for she has come here by that way herself.” “The way to Klamm?” asked Frieda. “To Klamm, certainly, where else?” said K. Then he jumped up: “But now it’s high time I was going for the lunch.” Frieda implored him to stay, urgently, with an eagerness quite disproportionate to the occasion, as if only his staying with her would confirm all the comforting things he had told her. But K. was thinking of the teacher, he pointed towards the door, which any moment might fly open with a thunderous crash, and promised to return at once, she was not even to light the fire, he himself would see about it. Finally Frieda gave in in silence. As K. was stamping through the snow outside—the path should have been shovelled free long ago, strange how slowly the work was getting forward!—he saw one of the assistants, now dead tired, still holding to the railing. Only one, where was the other? Had K. broken the endurance of one of them, then, at least? The remaining one was certainly still zealous enough, one could see that when, animated by the sight of K., he began more feverishly than ever to stretch out his arms and roll his eyes. “His obstinacy is really wonderful,” K. told himself, but had to add, “he’ll freeze to the railings if he keeps it up.” Outwardly, however, K. had nothing for the assistant but a threatening gesture with his fist, which prevented any nearer approach; indeed the assistant actually retreated for an appreciable distance. Just then Frieda opened one of the windows so as to air the room before putting on the fire, as she had promised K. Immediately the assistant turned his attention from K., and crept as if irresistibly attracted to the window. Her face torn between pity for the assistant and a beseeching helpless glance which she cast at K., Frieda put her hand out hesitatingly from the window, it was not clear whether it was a greeting or
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