K. was soon out in the street, and from the threshold the two men surveyed him. Snow was again falling, yet the sky seemed a little brighter. The bearded man cried impatiently; “Where do you want to go? This is the way to the Castle, and that to the village.” K. made no reply to him, but turned to the other, who in spite of his shyness seemed to him the more amiable of the two, and said: “Who are you? Whom have I to thank for sheltering me?” “I am the tanner Lasemann,” was the answer, “but you owe thanks to nobody.” “All right,” said K., “perhaps we’ll meet again.” “I don’t suppose so,” said the man. At that moment the other cried, with wave of his hand: “Good morning, Arthur; good morning, Jeremiah!” K. turned round; so there were really people to be seen in the village streets! From the direction of the Castle came two young men of medium height, both very slim, in tight-fitting clothes, and like each other in their features. Although their skin was a dusky brown the blackness of their little pointed beards was actually striking by contrast. Considering the state of the road, they were walking at a great pace, their slim legs keeping time. “Where are you off to?” shouted the bearded man. One had to shout to them, they were going so fast and they would not stop. “On business,” they shouted back, laughing. “Where?” “At the inn.” “I’m going there too,” yelled K. suddenly, louder than all the rest; he felt a strong desire to accompany them, not that he expected much from their acquaintance, but they were obviously good and jolly companions. They heard him, but only nodded, and were already out of sight.
K. was still standing in the snow, and was little inclined to extricate his feet only for the sake of plunging them in again; the tanner and his comrade, satisfied with having finally got rid of him, edged slowly into the house through the door which was now barely ajar, casting backward glances at K., and he was left alone in the falling snow. “A fine setting for a fit of despair,” it occurred to him, “if I were only standing here by accident instead of design.”
Just then in the hut on his left hand a tiny window was opened, which had seemed quite blue when shut, perhaps from the reflection of the snow, and was so tiny that when opened it did not permit the whole face of the person behind it to be seen, but only the eyes, old brown eyes. “There he is,” K. heard a woman’s trembling voice say. “It’s the Land Surveyor,” answered a man’s voice. Then the man came to the window and asked, not unamiably, but still as if he were anxious to have no complications in front of his house: “Are you waiting for somebody?” “For a sledge, to pick me up,” said K. “No sledges will pass here,” said the man, “there’s no traffic here.” “But it’s the road leading to the Castle,” objected K. “All the same, all the same,” said the man with a certain finality, “there’s no traffic here.” Then they were both silent. But the man was obviously thinking of something, for he kept the window open. “It’s a bad road,” said K., to help him out. The only answer he got, however, was: “Oh, yes.” But after a little the man volunteered: “If you like, I’ll take you in my sledge.” “Please do,” said K. delighted, “what is your charge?” “Nothing,” said the man. K. was very surprised. “Well, you’re the Land Surveyor,” explained the man, “and you belong to the Castle. Where do you want to be taken?” “To the Castle,” returned K. quickly. “I won’t take you there,” said the man without hesitation. “But I belong to the Castle,” said K., repeating the other’s very words. “Maybe,” said the man shortly. “Oh, well, take me to the inn,” said K. “All right,” said the man, “I’ll be out with the sledge in a moment.” His whole behaviour had the appearance of springing not from any special desire to be friendly but rather from a kind of selfish, worried and almost pedantic insistence on shifting K. away from the front of the house.
The gate of the courtyard opened, and a small light sledge, quite flat, without a seat of any kind, appeared, drawn by a feeble little horse, and behind it limped the man, a weakly stooping figure with a gaunt red snuffling face that looked peculiarly small beneath a tightly swathed woollen scarf. He was obviously ailing, and yet only to transport K. he had dragged himself out. K. ventured to mention it, but the man waved him aside. All that K. elicited was that he was a coachman called Gerstäcker, and that he had taken this uncomfortable sledge because it was standing ready, and to get out one of the others would have wasted too much time. “Sit down,” he said, pointing to the sledge. “I’ll sit beside you,” said K. “I’m going to walk,” said Gerstäcker. “But why?” asked K. “I’m going to walk,” repeated Gerstäcker, and was seized with a fit of coughing which shook him so severely that he had to brace his legs in the snow and hold on to the rim of the sledge. K. said no more, but sat down on the sledge, the man’s cough slowly abated, and they drove off.
The Castle above them, which K. had hoped to reach that very day, was already beginning to grow dark, and retreated again into the distance. But as if
