Part 1

FRANZ KAFKA

THE TRIAL NOVEL

VERLAG DIE SCHMIEDE BERLIN 1925

FIRST CHAPTER

ARREST · CONVERSATION WITH MRS. GRUBACH · THEN MISS BÜRSTNER

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning. The cook of Mrs. Grubach, his landlady, who brought him his breakfast every day at about eight o'clock, did not come on this occasion. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, saw from his pillow the old woman opposite him who was observing him with a curiosity quite unusual in her, then, at once puzzled and hungry, he rang. Immediately there was a knock and a man entered whom he had never seen in this apartment before. He was slim yet solidly built; he wore a tight-fitting black suit, furnished similarly to travelling clothes with various folds, pockets, buckles, buttons and a belt, and which therefore, without one's being clear as to what it was for, appeared especially practical. "Who are you?" asked K., sitting half upright in bed at once. But the man passed over the question as if one had to accept his appearance, and merely said for his part: "You rang?" "Anna is to bring me my breakfast," said K., and first tried silently, by attention and reflection, to determine who the man actually was. But the latter did not long expose himself to his looks, but turned to the door, which he opened a little, in order to say to someone who was evidently standing right behind the door: "He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast." A little laughter followed in the next room; from the sound it was not certain whether several persons were not taking part in it. Although the strange man could thereby have learned nothing he had not known before, he nevertheless said to K. now in the tone of a report: "It is impossible." "That would be something new," said K., jumped out of bed and quickly pulled on his trousers. "I want to see what sort of people are in the next room and how Mrs. Grubach will answer for this disturbance to me." It did occur to him at once that he need not have said this aloud and that he had thereby, in a way, acknowledged a right of supervision on the part of the stranger, but it did not seem important to him now. Nevertheless the stranger took it so, for he said: "Would you not rather stay here?" "I will neither stay here nor be spoken to by you, as long as you do not introduce yourself." "It was meant well," said the stranger and now voluntarily opened the door. In the next room, into which K. entered more slowly than he wanted, at first glance it looked almost exactly as on the previous evening. It was Mrs. Grubach's parlour; perhaps in this room, overcrowded with furniture, covers, china and photographs, there was a little more space today than usual, but one did not notice it at once, all the less since the main change consisted in the presence of a man who sat by the open window with a book, from which he now looked up. "You should have stayed in your room! Didn't Franz tell you so?" "Well, what do you want?" said K., and looked from the new acquaintance to the one named Franz, who had remained standing in the door, and then back again. Through the open window one again saw the old woman, who with truly senile curiosity had stepped up to the now opposite window in order to go on seeing everything. "I want Mrs. Grubach—" said K., made a movement as if he were tearing himself away from the two men, who however stood far from him, and wanted to go on. "No," said the man at the window, threw the book onto a little table and stood up. "You may not go away, you are under arrest." "So it seems," said K. "And why, then?" he asked then. "We are not appointed to tell you that. Go into your room and wait. The proceedings are once and for all set in motion and you will learn everything at the proper time. I am going beyond my instructions when I speak to you thus in a friendly way. But I hope no one else hears it except Franz, and he himself, contrary to all rule, is friendly to you. If you also continue to have as much luck as in the choice of your guards, then you may be confident." K. wanted to sit down, but now saw that in the whole room there was no place to sit except the armchair by the window. "You will yet see how true all this is," said Franz, and went up to him at the same time as the other man. Especially the latter towered considerably above K. and tapped him repeatedly on the shoulder. Both examined K.'s nightshirt and said that he would now have to put on a much worse shirt, but that they would keep this shirt as well as his other linen, and if his case should turn out favourably, would give it back to him. "It is better you give the things to us than to the depot," they said, "for in the depot fraud often occurs and besides they sell all things there after a certain time without regard to whether the proceedings in question are finished or not. And how long such trials last, especially of late. You would then finally get the proceeds from the depot, but this proceeds is first of all in itself already small, for at the sale not the height of the offer decides, but the height of the bribe, and further such proceeds, experience shows, diminish when they pass from hand to hand and from year to year." K. scarcely heeded these speeches; the right of disposal over his things, which he perhaps still possessed, he did not value highly; more important to him was to get clarity about his situation; but in the presence of these people he could not even think, again and again the belly of the second guard—they could only be guards—practically thrust itself friendly against him, but if he looked up, then he beheld a dry, bony face, with a strong, sideways-turned nose, which did not at all suit this fat body, and which communicated over him with the other guard. What sort of people were these then? Of what did they speak? To what authority did they belong? K. after all lived in a state of law, everywhere peace prevailed, all laws stood upright, who dared to assail him in his dwelling? He was always inclined to take everything as lightly as possible, to believe the worst only upon the occurrence of the worst, to make no provision for the future, even when everything threatened. Here it did not seem right to him, one could indeed regard the whole as a joke, as a coarse joke, which for unknown reasons, perhaps because today was his thirtieth birthday, his colleagues at the bank had arranged, it was of course possible, perhaps he needed only in some way to laugh in the guards' faces and they would laugh along, perhaps they were attendants from the street corner, they did not look unlike them—nevertheless this time he was, formally already since the first sight of the guard Franz, resolved not to give away the least advantage which he perhaps possessed over these people. In the fact that later one would say he had not understood a joke, K. saw a very slight danger, but he did remember—without it otherwise being his habit to learn from experience—several in themselves insignificant cases, in which, unlike his friends, with consciousness, without the slightest feeling for the possible consequences, he had behaved incautiously and had been punished for it by the outcome. It should not happen again, at least not this time; were it a comedy, he wanted to play along.

He was still free. "Permit me," he said and went hurriedly between the guards into his room. "He seems to be reasonable," he heard said behind him. In his room he at once pulled open the drawers of the writing desk; everything lay there in great order, but precisely the papers of identification which he sought he could not at once find in his agitation. Finally he found his bicycle licence and wanted already to go with it to the guards, then however the paper seemed to him too trifling and he searched on until he found the birth certificate. When he came back into the next room, the opposite door just opened and Mrs. Grubach wanted to enter there. One saw her only a moment, for scarcely had she recognised K. than she evidently became embarrassed, begged pardon, disappeared and very cautiously closed the door. "Do come in," K. had just been able to say. Now however he stood with his papers in the middle of the room, looked still at the door, which did not open again, and was only startled by a call of the guards, who sat at the little table by the open window and, as K. now recognised, were consuming his breakfast. "Why did she not enter?" he asked. "She may not," said the tall guard. "You are under arrest." "How can I be under arrest? And in this way?" "Now you are starting again," said the guard and dipped a buttered bread into the honey pot. "Such questions we do not answer." "You will have to answer them," said K. "Here are my papers of identification, show me yours now and above all the warrant of arrest." "Good heavens!" said the guard, "that you cannot submit to your situation and that you seem to have it in mind to uselessly provoke us, who now probably stand closest to you of all your fellow men." "It is so, believe it," said Franz, led the coffee cup, which he held in his hand, not to his mouth, but looked at K. with a long, probably meaningful, but incomprehensible glance. K. involuntarily let himself into a dialogue of glances with Franz, but then struck nevertheless upon his papers and said: "Here are my papers of identification." "What do we care about those?" cried now already the tall guard. "You behave worse than a child. What do you want then? Do you want to bring your great damned trial to a quick end by discussing with us, the guards, identification and warrant of arrest? We are low employees, who can hardly make out a paper of identification and who have nothing else to do with your affair than that they keep watch over you ten hours daily and are paid for it. That is all we are, nevertheless we are capable of seeing that the high authorities, in whose service we stand, before they order such an arrest, very exactly inform themselves about the reasons for the arrest and the person of the arrested. There is no error therein. Our authority, as far as I know it, and I know only the lowest grades, does not by any means seek the guilt in the population, but is, as it says in the law, attracted by the guilt and must send us guards out. That is law. Where would there be an error?" "This law I do not know," said K. "So much the worse for you," said the guard. "It exists perhaps only in your heads," said K., he wanted somehow to creep into the thoughts of the guards, to turn them to his advantage or to naturalise himself there. But the guard said only repulsively: "You will come to feel it." Franz mixed in and said: "See, Willem, he admits he does not know the law and at the same time claims to be innocent." "You are quite right, but one can make nothing understandable to him," said the other. K. answered no more; must I, he thought, let myself be further confused by the chatter of these lowest organs—they admit themselves to be such—? They speak after all of things they do not understand at all. Their security is possible only through their stupidity. A few words, which I shall speak with a person my equal, will make everything incomparably clearer than the longest speeches with these. He walked up and down a few times in the free space of the room; over there he saw the old woman, who had dragged an even older greybeard to the window, whom she embraced. K. had to put an end to this show: "Take me to your superior," he said. "Not until he wishes it; no earlier," said the guard who had been named Willem. "And now I advise you," he added, "to go into your room, keep quiet and wait for what will be decided about you. We advise you, do not dissipate yourself through useless thoughts, but collect yourself, great demands will be made upon you. You have not treated us as our complaisance would have deserved, you have forgotten that we, whatever we may be, are at least now free men as against you, that is no small advantage. Nevertheless we are ready, if you have money, to bring you a small breakfast from the coffee house opposite."

Without answering this offer, K. stood still for a while. Perhaps the two would not dare to hinder him at all if he opened the door of the adjoining room or even the door of the anteroom, perhaps it would be the simplest solution of the whole that he carried it to the extreme. But perhaps they would nevertheless seize him, and once thrown down, all superiority was also lost which he now in a certain respect still maintained over them. Therefore he preferred the certainty of the solution which the natural course must bring, and went back into his room, without another word having fallen on his part or on the part of the guards.

He threw himself on his bed and took from the washstand a fine apple, which he had prepared for his breakfast yesterday evening. Now it was his only breakfast and in any case, as he assured himself at the first big bite, much better than the breakfast from the dirty night café would have been, which he could have got through the grace of the guards. He felt well and confident; in the bank he indeed missed his duty this morning, but that, given the relatively high position which he held there, was easily excused. Should he state the real excuse? He intended to do so. Would one not believe him, which in this case was comprehensible, then he could produce Mrs. Grubach as witness or also the two old people from opposite, who were probably now on the march to the opposite window. It surprised K., at least from the train of thought of the guards it surprised him, that they had driven him into the room and left him alone here, where he yet had multiple possibility to kill himself. At the same time however he asked himself, from his own train of thought, what reason he could have to do it. Perhaps, because the two sat next door and had intercepted his breakfast. It would have been so senseless to kill himself, that he, even if he had wanted to, would not have been able to do it owing to the senselessness. Had the mental limitation of the guards not been so striking, one could have assumed that they too, in consequence of the same conviction, had seen no danger in leaving him alone. They might now, if they wanted, watch how he went to a wall cupboard, in which he kept a good brandy, how he first emptied a small glass to replace the breakfast, and how he destined a second small glass to give him courage, the latter only out of caution for the improbable case that it should be necessary.

Here a call from the next room so startled him that he struck his teeth against the glass. "The inspector calls you," it said. It was only the shouting that startled him, this short, abrupt, military shouting, which he would not have credited the guard Franz with. The command itself was very welcome to him; "at last," he called back, locked the cupboard and hurried at once into the next room. There stood the two guards and chased him, as if it were self-evident, back into his room. "What do you think you're doing?" they cried, "in your shirt you want to appear before the inspector? He'll have you and us thrashed." "Leave me, to the devil," cried K., who had already been pushed back to his wardrobe, "if one is surprised in bed, one cannot expect to find me in full dress." "It helps nothing," said the guards, who, whenever K. shouted, became quite calm, even almost sad, and thereby confused him or brought him, in a way, to his senses. "Ridiculous ceremonies!" he still grumbled, but already lifted a coat from the chair and held it a while with both hands, as if submitting it to the judgement of the guards. They shook their heads. "It must be a black coat," they said. K. thereupon threw the coat to the floor and said—he himself did not know in what sense he said it—: "It is not yet the main hearing." The guards smiled, but remained at their: "It must be a black coat." "If I thereby accelerate the matter, let it be right," said K., himself opened the wardrobe, searched long among the many clothes, chose his best black suit, a jacket suit, which through its waist had almost caused a sensation among acquaintances, now also drew out another shirt and began to dress carefully. Secretly he believed to have achieved an acceleration of the whole thereby, that the guards had forgotten to force him to bathe. He observed them, whether they might perhaps remember it after all, but that did not occur to them at all; on the contrary Willem did not forget to send Franz with the message that K. was dressing, to the inspector.

When he was completely dressed, he had to go, close past Willem, through the empty next room into the following room, whose door with both wings was already opened. This room, as K. knew exactly, had been occupied for a short time by a Miss Bürstner, a typist, who was accustomed to go very early to work, came home late, and with whom K. had exchanged little more than words of greeting. Now the night table from her bed had been moved into the middle of the room as a hearing table and the inspector sat behind it. He had crossed his legs and laid an arm on the backrest of the chair.

In a corner of the room stood three young men and looked at the photographs of Miss Bürstner, which were stuck in a mat hung on the wall. On the handle of the open window hung a white blouse. In the opposite window lay again the two old people, but their company had increased, for behind them, towering far above them, stood a man with a shirt open on the chest, who pressed and twisted his reddish pointed beard with his fingers. "Josef K.?" asked the inspector, perhaps only to draw K.'s distracted glances to himself. K. nodded. "You are probably very surprised by the events of this morning," asked the inspector and thereby shifted with both hands the few objects that lay on the night table, the candle with matches, a book and a pincushion, as if they were objects he needed for the hearing. "Certainly," said K., and the good feeling of finally standing opposite a reasonable human being and being able to speak with him about his affairs seized him, "certainly I am surprised, but I am by no means very surprised." "Not very surprised?" asked the inspector and now placed the candle in the middle of the little table, while he grouped the other things around it. "You perhaps misunderstand me," K. hastened to remark. "I mean"—here K. broke off and looked around for a chair. "May I sit down?" he asked. "It is not customary," answered the inspector. "I mean," said K. now without further pause, "I am indeed very surprised, but one is, when one has been thirty years in the world and had to struggle through alone, as was allotted to me, hardened against surprises and does not take them too heavily. Especially not today's." "Why especially not today's?" "I will not say that I regard the whole as a joke, for that the arrangements that were made seem to me too extensive. All members of the boarding house would have to be involved and you all too, that would go beyond the bounds of a joke. I will therefore not say that it is a joke." "Quite right," said the inspector and looked how many matches were in the matchbox. "On the other hand however," K. continued and turned thereby to all and would gladly have even turned the three at the photographs to him, "on the other hand however the matter also cannot have much importance. I conclude that from the fact that I am accused, but cannot find the least guilt for which one could accuse me. But that too is incidental; the main question is, by whom am I accused? What authority conducts the proceedings? Are you officials? No one has a uniform, if one does not want to call your suit—here he turned to Franz—a uniform, but it is rather a travelling suit. In these questions I demand clarity and I am convinced that after this clarification we shall be able to take the heartiest leave of one another." The inspector struck the matchbox down on the table. "You are in a great error," he said. "These gentlemen here and I are completely incidental to your affair, indeed we know almost nothing of it. We could wear the most regular uniforms and your affair would stand no worse. I also absolutely cannot tell you that you are accused, or rather I do not know whether you are. You are arrested, that is correct, more I do not know. Perhaps the guards chattered something else, then it was just chatter. If I now also do not answer your questions, I can nevertheless advise you, think less of us and of what will happen to you, think rather more of yourself. And make no such noise with the feeling of your innocence, it disturbs the not exactly bad impression which you otherwise make. Also you should be more reserved in speaking altogether; almost everything you said before could, if you had said only a few words, have been gathered from your behaviour, besides it was nothing excessively favourable for you."

K. stared at the inspector. Schoolmasterly lessons he got here from a perhaps younger person? For his openness he was punished with a rebuke? And about the ground of his arrest and about its instigator he learned nothing?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”