The Castle

refined, wouldn’t suffer a lot of people to come into the Herrenhof at the same time. “If it absolutely must be and they must come,” she used to say, “then in Heaven’s name let them come one at a time.” And she had managed to arrange that the clients, who at first had waited simply in a passage, later on the stairs, then in the hall, and finally in the taproom, were at last pushed out into the street. But even that had not satisfied her. It was unendurable for her to be always “besieged,” as she expressed herself, in her own house. It was incomprehensible to her why there should need to be clients waiting at all. “To dirty the front-door steps,” an official had once told her, obviously in annoyance, but to her this pronouncement had seemed very illuminating, and she was never tired of quoting it. She tried her best⁠—and she had the approval in this case of the clients too⁠—to get a building set up opposite the Herrenhof where the clients could wait. She would have liked best of all if the interviews and examinations could have taken place outside the Herrenhof altogether, but the officials opposed that, and when the officials opposed her seriously the landlady naturally enough was unable to gainsay them, though in lesser matters she exercised a kind of petty tyranny, thanks to her indefatigable, yet femininely insinuating zeal. And the landlady would probably have to endure those interviews and examinations in the Herrenhof in perpetuity, for the gentlemen from the Castle refused to budge from the place whenever they had official business in the village. They were always in a hurry, they came to the village much against their will, they had not the slightest intention of prolonging their stay beyond the time absolutely necessary, and so they could not be asked, simply for the sake of making things more pleasant in the Herrenhof, to waste time by transferring themselves with all their papers to some other house. The officials preferred indeed to get through their business in the taproom or in their rooms, if possible while they were at their food, or in bed before retiring for the night, or in the morning when they were too weary to get up and wanted to stretch themselves for a little longer. Yet the question of the erection of a waiting-room outside seemed to be nearing a favourable solution; but it was really a sharp blow for the landlady⁠—people laughed a little over it⁠—that this matter of a waiting-room should itself make innumerable interviews necessary, so that the lobbies of the house were hardly ever empty.

The waiting group passed the time by talking in half-whispers about those things. K. was struck by the fact that, though their discontent was general, nobody saw any objection to Erlanger’s summoning his clients in the middle of the night. He asked why this was so and got the answer that they should be only too thankful to Erlanger. It was only his goodwill and his high conception of his office that induced him to come to the village at all, he could easily if he wished⁠—and it would probably be more in accordance with the regulations too⁠—he could easily send an undersecretary and let him draw up statements. Still, he usually refused to do this, he wanted to see and hear everything for himself, but for this purpose he had to sacrifice his nights, for in his official timetable there was no time allowed for journeys to the village. K. objected that even Klamm came to the village during the day and even stayed for several days; was Erlanger, then, a mere secretary, more indispensable up there? One or two laughed good-humouredly, others maintained an embarrassed silence, the latter gained the ascendancy, and K. received hardly any reply. Only one man replied hesitatingly, that of course Klamm was indispensable, in the Castle as in the village.

Then the front door opened and Momus appeared between two attendants carrying lamps. “The first who will be admitted to Herr Elanger,” he said, “are Gerstäcker and K. Are these two men here?” They reported themselves, but before they could step forward Jeremiah slipped in with a “I’m a waiter here,” and, greeted by Momus with a smiling slap on the shoulder, disappeared inside. “I’ll have to keep a sharper eye on Jeremiah,” K. told himself, though he was quite aware at the same time that Jeremiah was probably far less dangerous than Arthur who was working against him in the Castle. Perhaps it would actually have been wiser to let himself be annoyed by them as assistants, than to have them prowling about without supervision and allow them to carry on their intrigues in freedom, intrigues for which they seemed to have special facilities.

As K. was passing Momus the latter started as if only now did he recognise in him the Land Surveyor. “Ah, the Land Surveyor?” he said, “the man who was so unwilling to be examined and now is in a hurry to be examined. It would have been simpler to let me do it that time. Well, really it’s difficult to choose the right time for a hearing.” Since at these words K. made to stop, Momus went on: “Go in, go in! I needed your answers then, I don’t now.” Nevertheless K. replied, provoked by Momus’s tone: “You only think of yourselves. I would never and will never answer merely because of someone’s office, neither then nor now.” Momus replied: “Of whom, then, should we think? Who else is there here? Look for yourself!”

In the hall they were met by an attendant who led them the old way, already known to K., across the courtyard, then into the entry and through the low, somewhat downward sloping passage. The upper storeys were evidently reserved only for higher officials, the secretaries, on the other hand, had their rooms