The Castle

cajole and kiss his doubts out of him, and even then he refuses to admit that his doubts are doubts. He has something of Amalia in him. And I’m sure that he doesn’t tell me everything, although I’m his sole confidant. But we do often speak about Klamm, whom I’ve never seen; you know Frieda doesn’t like me and has never let me look at him, still his appearance is well-known in the village, some people have seen him, everybody has heard of him, and out of glimpses and rumours and through various distorting factors an image of Klamm has been constructed which is certainly true in fundamentals. But only in fundamentals. In detail it fluctuates, and yet perhaps not so much as Klamm’s real appearance. For he’s reported as having one appearance when he comes into the village and another on leaving it, after having his beer he looks different from what he does before it, when he’s awake he’s different from when he’s asleep, when he’s alone he’s different from when he’s talking to people, and⁠—what is comprehensible after all that⁠—he’s almost another person up in the Castle. And even within the village there are considerable differences in the accounts given of him, differences as to his height, his bearing, his size and the cut of his beard, fortunately there’s one thing in which all the accounts agree, he always wears the same clothes, a black morning coat with long tails. Now of course all these differences aren’t the result of magic, but can be easily explained; they depend on the mood of the observer, on the degree of his excitement, on the countless graduations of hope or despair which are possible for him when he sees Klamm, and besides, he can usually see Klamm only for a second or two. I’m telling you all this just as Barnabas has often told it to me, and, on the whole, for anyone not personally interested in the matter, it would be a sufficient explanation. Not for us, however; it’s a matter of life or death for Barnabas whether it’s really Klamm he speaks to or not.” “And for me no less,” said K. and they moved nearer to each other on the settle.

All this depressing information of Olga’s certainly affected K., but he regarded it as a great consolation to find other people who were at least externally much in the same situation as himself, with whom he could join forces and whom he could touch at many points, not merely at a few points as in Frieda’s case. He was indeed gradually giving up all hope of achieving success through Barnabas, but the worse it went with Barnabas in the Castle the nearer he felt drawn to him down here; never would K. have believed that in the village itself such a despairing struggle could go on as Barnabas and his sister were involved in. Of course it was as yet far from being adequately explained and might turn out to be quite the reverse, one shouldn’t let Olga’s unquestionable innocence mislead one into taking Barnabas’s uprightness for granted. “Barnabas is familiar with all those accounts of Klamm’s appearance,” went on Olga, “he has collected and compared a great many, perhaps too many, he even saw Klamm once through a carriage window in the village, or believed he saw him, and so was sufficiently prepared to recognise him again, and yet⁠—how can you explain this?⁠—when he entered a bureau in the Castle and had one of several officials pointed out to him as Klamm he didn’t recognise him, and for a long time afterwards couldn’t accustom himself to the idea that it was Klamm. But if you ask Barnabas what was the difference between that Klamm and the usual description given of Klamm, he can’t tell you, or rather he tries to tell you and describes the official of the Castle, but his description coincides exactly with the descriptions we usually hear of Klamm. Well then, Barnabas, I say to him, why do you doubt it, why do you torment yourself? Whereupon in obvious distress he begins to reckon up certain characteristics of the Castle official, but he seems to be thinking them out rather than describing them, and besides that they are so trivial⁠—a particular way of nodding the head, for instance, or even an unbottoned waistcoat⁠—that one simply can’t take them seriously. Much more important seems to me the way in which Klamm receives Barnabas. Barnabas has often described it to me, and even sketched the room. He’s usually admitted into a large room, but the room isn’t Klamm’s bureau, nor even the bureau of any particular official. It’s a room divided into two by a single reading-desk stretching all its length from wall to wall; one side is so narrow that two people can hardly squeeze past each other, and that’s reserved for the officials, the other side is spacious, and that’s where clients wait, spectators, servants, messengers. On the desk there are great books lying open, side by side, and officials stand by most of them reading. They don’t always stick to the same book, yet it isn’t the books that they change but their places, and it always astounds Barnabas to see how they have to squeeze past each other when they change places, because there’s so little room. In front of the desk and close to it there are small low tables at which clerks sit ready to write from dictation, whenever the officials wish it. And the way that is done always amazes Barnabas. There’s no express command given by the official, nor is the dictation given in a loud voice, one could hardly tell that it was being given at all, the official just seems to go on reading as before, only whispering as he reads, and the clerk hears the whisper. Often it’s so low that the clerk can’t hear it at all in his seat,