and then he has to jump up, catch what’s being dictated, sit down again quickly and make a note of it, then jump up once more, and so on. What a strange business! It’s almost incomprehensible. Of course Barnabas has time enough to observe it all, for he’s often kept standing in the big room for hours and days at a time before Klamm happens to see him. And even if Klamm sees him and he springs to attention, that needn’t mean anything, for Klamm may turn away from him again to the book and forget all about him. That often happens. But what can be the use of a messenger-service so casual as that? It makes me quite doleful to hear Barnabas say in the early morning that he’s going to the Castle. In all likelihood a quite useless journey, a lost day, a completely vain hope. What’s the good of it all? And here’s cobbler’s work piled up which never gets done and which Brunswick is always asking for.” “Oh, well,” said K., “Barnabas has just to hang on till he gets a commission. That’s understandable, the place seems to be over-staffed, and everybody can’t be given a job every day, you needn’t complain about that, for it must affect everybody. But in the long run even a Barnabas gets commissions, he has brought two letters already to me.” “It’s possible, of course,” answered Olga, “that we’re wrong in complaining, especially a girl like me who knows things only from hearsay and can’t understand it all so well as Barnabas, who certainly keeps many things to himself. But let me tell you how the letters are given out, your letters, for example. Barnabas doesn’t get these letters directly from Klamm, but from a clerk. On no particular day, at no particular hour—that’s why the service, however easy it appears, is really very exhausting, for Barnabas must be always on the alert—a clerk suddenly remembers about him and gives him a sign, without any apparent instructions from Klamm, who merely goes on reading in his book. True, sometimes Klamm is polishing his glasses when Barnabas comes up, but he often does that anyhow—however, he may take a look at Barnabas then, supposing, that is, that he can see anything at all without his glasses, which Barnabas doubts; for Klamm’s eyes are almost shut, he generally seems to be sleeping and only polishing his glasses in a kind of dream. Meanwhile the clerk hunts among the piles of manuscripts and writings under his table and fishes out a letter for you, so it’s not a letter newly written, indeed, by the look of the envelope, it’s usually a very old letter, which has been lying there a long time. But if that is so, why do they keep Barnabas waiting like that? And you too? And the letter too, of course, for it must be long out of date. That’s how they get Barnabas the reputation of being a bad and slow messenger. It’s all very well for the clerk, he just gives Barnabas the letter, saying: ‘From Klamm for K.’ and so dismisses him. But Barnabas comes home breathless, with his hardly-won letter next to his bare skin, and then we sit here on the settle like this and he tells me about it and we go into all the particulars and weigh up what he has achieved and find ultimately that it’s very little, and questionable at that, until Barnabas lays the letter down with no longer any inclination to deliver it, yet doesn’t feel inclined to go to sleep either, and so sits cobbling on his stool all night. That’s how it is, K. and now you have all my secrets and you can’t be surprised any longer at Amalia’s indifference to them.” “And what happens to the letter?” asked K. “The letter?” said Olga, “oh, some time later when I’ve plagued Barnabas enough about it, it may be days or weeks later, he picks it up again and goes to deliver it. In such practical matters he’s very dependent on me. For I can usually pull myself together after I’ve recovered from the first impression of what he has told me, but he can’t, probably because he knows more. So I always find something or other to say to him, such as ‘What are you really aiming at, Barnabas? What kind of career, what ambition are you dreaming of? Are you thinking of climbing so high that you’ll have to leave us, to leave me, completely behind you? Is that what you’re aiming at? How can I help believing so when it’s the only possible explanation why you’re so dreadfully discontented with all you’ve done already? Only take a look round and see whether any of our neighbours has got on so well as you. I admit their situation is different from ours and they have no grounds for ambition beyond their daily work, but even without making comparisons it’s easy to see that you’re all right. Hindrances there may be, doubts and disappointments, but that only means, what we all knew beforehand, that you get nothing without paying for it, that you have to fight for every trivial point; all the more reason for being proud instead of downcast. And aren’t you fighting for us as well? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that put new strength into you? And the fact that I’m happy and almost conceited at having such a brother, doesn’t that give you any confidence? It isn’t what you’ve achieved in the Castle that disappoints me, but the little that I’m able to achieve with you. You’re allowed into the Castle, you’re a regular visitor in the bureaux, you spend whole days in the same room as Klamm, you’re an officially recognised messenger, with a claim on an official suit, you’re entrusted with important commissions, you have all that to your credit, and then you
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