Part 13

He was still shaking his head over it when the servant stepped up to his side and drew his attention to three gentlemen who were sitting on a bench here in the anteroom. They had already been waiting a long time to be admitted to K. Now that the servant was speaking with K., they had stood up, and each wanted to seize a favorable opportunity to approach K. ahead of the others. Since from the direction of the bench they had been so inconsiderate as to let them waste their time here in the waiting room, they too no longer wished to show any consideration. "Procurator," one of them already said. But K. had had the winter coat brought to him by the servant and, while he put it on with the servant's help, said to all three: "Pardon me, gentlemen, unfortunately I have no time at the moment to receive you. I beg your forgiveness, but I have an urgent business errand to attend to and must leave immediately. You yourselves saw how long I was detained just now. Would you be so kind as to come again tomorrow or whenever? Or shall we perhaps discuss the matters by telephone? Or would you perhaps briefly tell me now what it concerns, and I will then give you a detailed written reply. Best of all, however, would be for you to come another time." These proposals of K.'s, by which the gentlemen were now to have waited completely in vain, filled them with such astonishment that they looked at one another silently. "So we are agreed?" asked K., who had turned toward the servant, who was now also bringing him his hat. Through the open door to K.'s room one could see how the snowfall outside had greatly intensified. K. therefore turned up the collar of his coat and buttoned it high up under his throat.

Just then the deputy director came out of the adjoining room, saw K. in his winter coat negotiating with the gentlemen, and asked: "You are leaving now, Procurator." "Yes," said K. and straightened up, "I have a business errand to make." But the deputy director had already turned to the gentlemen. "And the gentlemen?" he asked. "I believe they have been waiting a long time." "We have already come to an agreement," said K. But now the gentlemen could no longer be held back; they surrounded K. and declared that they would not have waited for hours if their affairs were not important and did not have to be discussed now, and indeed in detail and in private. The deputy director listened to them for a while, also observed K., who held his hat in his hand and was cleaning it here and there of dust, and then said: "Gentlemen, there is a very simple way out. If you will be content with me, I shall very gladly take over the negotiations in place of the Procurator. Your affairs must of course be discussed immediately. We are men of business like yourselves and know how to properly value the time of men of business. Will you step in here?" And he opened the door that led to the anteroom of his office.

How the deputy director did know how to appropriate everything that K. was now forced to give up! But did K. not give up more than was absolutely necessary? While he was running, with uncertain and, as he had to admit to himself, very slight hopes, to an unknown painter, his standing here suffered an incurable injury. It would probably have been much better to take off the winter coat again and win back at least the two gentlemen, who after all still had to wait next door. K. might perhaps have attempted this too, if he had not just now caught sight in his room of the deputy director, how he was searching in the bookcase, as if it were his own, for something. When K. approached the door excitedly, he called: "Ah, you have not yet left." He turned his face toward him, whose many taut wrinkles seemed to attest not age but strength, and immediately began searching again. "I am looking for a copy of a contract," he said, "which, according to the representative of the firm, is supposed to be in your possession. Will you not help me search." K. took a step, but the deputy director said: "Thank you, I have already found it," and returned to his room with a large package of papers, which contained not only the copy of the contract but certainly much else besides.

I am no match for him now, K. said to himself, but once my personal difficulties are removed, he shall truly be the first to feel it, and as bitterly as possible. Somewhat calmed by this thought, K. gave the servant, who had long been holding the door to the corridor open for him, the order to report to the director at some point that he was on a business errand, and left the bank, almost happy to be able to devote himself completely for a while to his own affair.

He drove at once to the painter, who lived in a suburb that was completely opposite to the one in which the court offices were located. It was an even poorer district, the houses even darker, the alleys full of filth that slowly drifted about on the melted snow. In the house where the painter lived, only one wing of the large gate was open, but in the other a gap had been broken in the wall at the bottom, out of which, just as K. approached, a disgusting yellow, smoking liquid shot forth, before which a rat fled into the nearby canal. At the foot of the stairs a small child lay belly-down on the ground and wept, but one could hardly hear it owing to the noise that drowned out everything, coming from a tinsmith's workshop on the other side of the gateway passage. The door of the workshop was open; three assistants stood in a semicircle around some piece of work on which they were striking with their hammers. A large sheet of white tin hanging on the wall cast a pale light that penetrated between two of the assistants and illuminated their faces and work aprons. K. had only a fleeting glance for all this; he wanted to get done here as quickly as possible, sound out the painter with a few words, and go back to the bank at once. If he had even the smallest success here, it was to have a good effect still on his work at the bank today. On the third floor he had to moderate his pace; he was quite out of breath, the stairs as well as the stories were excessively high, and the painter was supposed to live quite at the top in an attic chamber. Also the air was very oppressive; there was no stairwell, the narrow staircase was enclosed on both sides by walls, in which here and there, almost entirely at the top, small windows were set. Just as K. paused for a moment, a few little girls ran out of a dwelling and hurried laughing up the stairs. K. followed them slowly, caught up with one of the girls who had stumbled and fallen behind the others, and asked her, while they continued upward side by side: "Does a painter Titorelli live here?" The girl, a barely thirteen-year-old, somewhat hunchbacked girl, thereupon nudged him with her elbow and looked up at him from the side. Neither her youth nor her bodily defect had been able to prevent her from being already quite corrupted. She did not even smile, but looked at K. seriously with a sharp, inviting gaze. K. acted as if he had not noticed her behavior, and asked: "Do you know the painter Titorelli?" She nodded and asked in turn: "What do you want from him?" It seemed advantageous to K. to learn a little about Titorelli quickly: "I want to have him paint my portrait," he said. "Have your portrait painted?" she asked, opened her mouth excessively, struck lightly with her hand against K. as if he had said something extraordinarily surprising or clumsy, lifted her already very short skirt with both hands, and ran as fast as she could after the other girls, whose shouting was already faintly disappearing in the height. But at the next turn of the stairs K. met all the girls again. They had obviously been informed by the hunchback of K.'s intention and were expecting him. They stood on both sides of the staircase, pressed against the wall so that K. might pass comfortably between them, and smoothed their aprons with their hands. All faces, as also this formation of a guard of honor, presented a mixture of childishness and depravity. At the head of the girls, who now closed laughing behind K., was the hunchback, who took the lead. K. had her to thank for finding the right way at once. He wanted namely to continue straight upward, but she showed him that he must choose a branch of the stairs in order to reach Titorelli. The staircase leading to him was especially narrow, very long, without a bend, to be overlooked in its whole length, and at the top directly closed off by Titorelli's door. This door, which through a small skylight window set in askew above it was, in contrast to the rest of the staircase, relatively brightly lit, was composed of unwhitewashed beams, on which the name Titorelli was painted with red paint in broad brushstrokes. K. with his following was scarcely in the middle of the stairs when above, evidently prompted by the noise of the many footsteps, the door was opened a little and a man, probably clad only in a nightshirt, appeared in the door crack. "Oh!" he cried, when he saw the crowd coming, and disappeared. The hunchback clapped her hands with joy and the other girls pressed behind K. to drive him forward more quickly.

But they had not even come up when above the painter threw the door fully open and with a deep bow invited K. to enter. The girls, however, he warded off; he would let none of them in, however much they begged and however much they tried, if not with his permission, then against his will, to force their way in. Only the hunchback managed to slip through under his outstretched arm, but the painter chased after her, grabbed her by the skirts, whirled her once around himself, and then set her down before the door among the other girls, who, while the painter had left his post, had nevertheless not dared to cross the threshold. K. did not know how to judge the whole thing, for it had the appearance of happening in friendly mutual understanding. The girls at the door stretched one after another their necks upward, called to the painter various jokingly meant words that K. did not understand, and the painter also laughed while the hunchback almost flew in his hand. Then he closed the door, bowed again before K., offered him his hand, and said, introducing himself: "Painter Titorelli." K. pointed to the door behind which the girls whispered and said: "You seem to be very popular in the house." "Oh, these faces!" said the painter and vainly tried to button up his nightshirt at the throat. He was otherwise barefoot and clothed only in a broad yellowish linen trousers, which was fastened with a strap whose long end swung freely back and forth. "These faces are a true burden to me," he continued, while he gave up on the nightshirt, whose last button had just torn off, fetched a chair, and urged K. to sit down. "I once painted one of them — she is not even here today — and since then all of them persecute me. If I myself am here, they only come in when I allow it, but if I am once away, then always at least one is there. They have had a key made to my door, which they lend among themselves. One can hardly imagine how annoying that is. I come, for example, with a lady whom I am to paint, home, open the door with my key and find perhaps the hunchback there at the little table, how she paints her lips red with the brush, while her little siblings, whom she is to supervise, roam about and foul the room in all corners. Or I come, as happened to me only yesterday, late in the evening home — please excuse with regard to that my state and the disorder in the room — so I come home late in the evening and want to get into bed, then something pinches my leg, I look under the bed and pull out again such a thing. Why they press themselves to me so, I do not know; that I do not seek to lure them to me, you should just have noticed. Naturally I am also disturbed in my work by this. If this atelier were not placed at my disposal for free, I would have moved out long ago." Just then a little voice called behind the door, tender and fearful: "Titorelli, may we come in now?" "No," answered the painter. "Not even I alone?" it asked again. "Not even," said the painter, went to the door and locked it.

K. had in the meantime looked around in the room; he would never himself have come to the thought that one could call this miserable little room an atelier. More than two long steps one could scarcely make here lengthwise and crosswise. Everything, floor, walls, and ceiling, was of wood; between the beams one saw narrow cracks. Opposite K. stood against the wall the bed, which was overloaded with multicolored bedding. In the middle of the room, on an easel, was a picture that was shrouded with a shirt, whose sleeves dangled to the floor. Behind K. was the window, through which one could not see further in the fog than over the snow-covered roof of the neighboring house.

The turning of the key in the lock reminded K. that he had wanted to leave soon. He therefore drew the letter of the manufacturer from his pocket, handed it to the painter, and said: "I learned of you through this gentleman, your acquaintance, and have come on his advice." The painter read the letter cursorily and threw it on the bed. Had the manufacturer not spoken of Titorelli in the most definite terms as of his acquaintance, as of a poor man dependent on his alms, one could now really have believed that Titorelli did not know the manufacturer or at least did not remember him. Moreover the painter now asked: "Do you want to buy pictures or have your own portrait painted?" K. looked at the painter in astonishment. What actually stood in the letter? K. had taken it as self-evident that the manufacturer in the letter had informed the painter that K. wanted nothing other than to inquire here about his trial. He had really run here much too hastily and without reflection! But he now had to answer the painter somehow and said with a glance at the easel: "You are just working on a picture?" "Yes," said the painter and threw the shirt that hung over the easel, after the letter, onto the bed. "It is a portrait. A good work, but not quite finished." Chance was favorable to K.; the possibility of speaking of the court was offered to him formally, for it was obviously the portrait of a judge. It was incidentally strikingly similar to the picture in the advocate's study. It was true here a quite different judge, a stout man with a black bushy full beard that reached far up the cheeks on the sides, and that picture was an oil painting, whereas this one was faintly and unclearly laid in with pastel colors. But everything else was similar, for here too the judge wanted to rise threateningly from his throne-chair, whose side-arms he held fast. "That is a judge," K. had wanted to say at once, but held himself back for the time being and approached the picture as if he wanted to study it in details. A large figure that stood in the middle above the backrest of the throne-chair he could not explain to himself and asked the painter about it. It still needed to be worked out a little, answered the painter, fetched a pastel crayon from a little table and stippled a little at the edges of the figure, without thereby making it clearer to K. "It is Justice," said the painter finally. "Now I already recognize her," said K., "here is the bandage over the eyes and here the scales. But are there not wings on the heels and is she not in flight?" "Yes," said the painter, "I had to paint it so by commission; it is actually Justice and the goddess of Victory in one." "That is no good combination," said K. smiling, "Justice must rest, otherwise the scales waver and no just judgment is possible." "I submit in this to my commissioner," said the painter. "Certainly," said K., who had not wanted to offend anyone with his remark. "You have painted the figure as she really stands on the throne-chair." "No," said the painter, "I have seen neither the figure nor the throne-chair; all this is invention, but I was told what I was to paint." "How?" asked K.; he intentionally acted as if he did not fully understand the painter, "it is yet a judge who sits on the judgment seat." "Yes," said the painter, "but he is no high judge and has never sat on such a throne-chair." "And yet has himself painted in such solemn posture? He sits there like a president of the court." "Yes, vain are these gentlemen," said the painter. "But they have the higher permission to have themselves painted so. To each it is precisely prescribed how he may have himself painted. Only unfortunately one cannot judge precisely from this picture the details of the costume and the seat; pastel colors are not suited for such representations." "Yes," said K., "it is strange that it is painted in pastel colors." "The judge wished it so," said the painter, "it is intended for a lady." The sight of the picture seemed to have given him a desire for work; he rolled up the shirt-sleeves, took several crayons in his hand, and K. watched how, under the trembling tips of the crayons, adjoining the head of the judge, a reddish shadow formed that vanished radiately toward the edge of the picture. Gradually this play of shadow surrounded the head like an ornament or a high distinction. But around the figure of Justice it remained bright except for an imperceptible tint; in this brightness the figure seemed to press forward particularly, it scarcely more reminded of the goddess of Justice, but also not of that of Victory, rather it now looked completely like the goddess of the Hunt. The work of the painter attracted K. more than he wanted; finally, however, he reproached himself for having been here so long already and in truth undertaken nothing yet for his own affair. "What is the name of this judge?" he asked suddenly. "That I may not say," answered the painter; he was bent deeply down toward the picture and clearly neglected his guest, whom he had yet received at first so considerately. K. held that for a caprice and was annoyed by it because he thereby lost time. "You are perhaps a confidant of the court?" he asked. Immediately the painter laid the crayons aside, straightened up, rubbed his hands together, and looked at K. smiling. "Always straight to the truth," he said, "you want to learn something about the court, as stands also in your letter of recommendation, and have first spoken about my pictures in order to win me over. But I take no offense at that, you could not know that this is out of place with me. Oh please!" he said sharply warding off, when K. wanted to object. And then continued: "Incidentally you are completely right with your remark, I am a confidant of the court." He made a pause, as if he wanted to give K. time to come to terms with this fact. One now heard again behind the door the girls. They were probably pressing around the keyhole; perhaps one could also see through the cracks into the room. K. omitted to excuse himself in any way, for he did not want to distract the painter, but he did not want the painter to become too arrogant and thereby make himself in a way unreachable; he therefore asked: "Is that a publicly recognized position?" "No," said the painter shortly, as if thereby the further speech were taken from him. But K. did not want to let him fall silent and said: "Well, often such unrecognized positions are more influential than the recognized ones." "That is just the case with me," said the painter and nodded with contracted brow. "I spoke yesterday with the manufacturer about your case; he asked me whether I would not help you; I answered: 'The man can simply come to me once,' and now I am glad to see you here so soon. The matter seems to go very close to you, at which I naturally do not wonder at all. Will you perhaps first take off your coat?" Although K. intended to stay here only a very short time, this invitation of the painter was yet very welcome to him. The air in the room had gradually become oppressive to him; several times he had already looked in wonder at a small, certainly unheated iron stove in the corner; the sultriness in the room was inexplicable. While he took off the winter coat and also unbuttoned the coat, the painter said apologetically: "I must have warmth. It is very cozy here, is it not? The room is very well situated in this regard." K. said nothing to that, but it was actually not the warmth that made him uncomfortable; it was rather the stale air that almost hindered breathing; the room had probably not been aired for a long time. This unpleasantness was further increased for K. by the fact that the painter asked him to sit on the bed, while he himself sat down on the only chair of the room before the easel. Besides, the painter seemed to misunderstand why K. remained only at the edge of the bed; he rather asked K. to make himself comfortable and, since K. hesitated, went himself and pressed him deep into the beds and cushions. Then he returned to his seat and finally put the first factual question, which made K. forget everything else. "Are you innocent?" he asked. "Yes," said K. The answering of this question gave him downright pleasure, especially since it occurred toward a private person, thus without any responsibility. No one had yet asked him so openly. To savor this pleasure, he added: "I am completely innocent." "So," said the painter, lowered his head and seemed to reflect. Suddenly he raised his head again and said: "If you are innocent, then the matter is very simple." K.'s gaze clouded; this alleged confidant of the court spoke like an ignorant child. "My innocence does not simplify the matter," said K. He had to smile despite everything and shook his head slowly. "It depends on many subtleties into which the court loses itself. But in the end it draws from somewhere, where originally there was nothing at all, a great guilt forth." "Yes, yes, certainly," said the painter, as if K. were unnecessarily disturbing his train of thought. "But you are yet innocent?" "Well yes," said K. "That is the main thing," said the painter. He could not be influenced by counterarguments; only, despite his decisiveness, it was not clear whether he spoke from conviction or merely from indifference. K. wanted to establish this first and therefore said: "You certainly know the court much better than I; I know little more than what I have heard about it, admittedly from quite different people. But in this all agreed, that frivolous accusations are not made, and that the court, once it accuses, is firmly convinced of the guilt of the accused and can be moved away from this conviction only with difficulty." "With difficulty?" asked the painter and threw a hand upward. "Never can the court be moved from it. If I paint all the judges here side by side on a canvas and you will defend yourself before this canvas, you will have more success than before the real court." "Yes," said K. to himself and forgot that he had only wanted to sound out the painter.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”