Part 15

This orderly exposition at first astonished K., but then he said, just as quietly as the painter: "I believe you are contradicting yourself." "How so?" asked the painter patiently, leaning back with a smile. This smile gave K. the feeling that he was now about to discover contradictions not in the painter's words, but in the judicial procedure itself. Nevertheless he did not draw back, and said: "You earlier made the remark that the court is inaccessible to evidence; later you restricted this to the public court, and now you even say that the innocent man needs no help before the court. Therein lies already a contradiction. Besides, you earlier said that one can personally influence the judges, but now you deny that the actual acquittal, as you call it, can ever be achieved through personal influence. Therein lies the second contradiction."

"These contradictions are easily explained," said the painter. "Here two different things are being spoken of, what stands in the law and what I have personally experienced; you must not confuse those. In the law—I, admittedly, have not read it—it says, on the one hand, that the innocent man is acquitted, but on the other hand it does not say there that the judges can be influenced. Now, however, I have experienced precisely the opposite. I know of no actual acquittal, but of many influences. It is of course possible that in all the cases known to me there was no innocence. But is that not improbable? In so many cases not a single innocent man? Even as a child I listened closely to my father when he told of trials at home; the judges who came into his studio also spoke of the court; in our circles one speaks of nothing else; as soon as I had the chance to go to court myself, I always made use of it; I have listened to countless proceedings in important stages and, as far as they are visible, followed them, and—I must admit—experienced not a single actual acquittal."

"Not a single acquittal, then," said K., as if speaking to himself and to his hopes. "That confirms the opinion I already have of the court. It is therefore pointless from this side too. A single executioner could replace the whole court." "You must not generalize," said the painter discontentedly; "I have only spoken of my own experiences." "That is enough," said K., "or have you heard of acquittals from earlier times?" "Such acquittals," answered the painter, "are said indeed to have existed. Only it is very difficult to establish that. The final decisions of the court are not published; they are not even accessible to the judges; consequently only legends have survived concerning old court cases. These, admittedly, contain even in the majority actual acquittals; one may believe them, but they are not provable. Still, one must not entirely neglect them; they certainly contain a certain truth; also they are very beautiful; I myself have painted some pictures whose subject is such legends."

"Mere legends do not change my opinion," said K., "one can surely not invoke these legends before the court either?" The painter laughed. "No, one cannot," he said. "Then it is useless to talk about it," said K. He wanted for the present to accept all the painter's opinions, even if he considered them improbable and contradicting other reports. He had no time now to examine everything the painter said for truth or even to refute it; it was already the utmost if he induced the painter to help him in some way, be it even in a non-decisive manner. Therefore he said: "Let us then set aside the actual acquittal; but you mentioned two other possibilities."

"The apparent acquittal and the prolongation. Those alone can come into question," said the painter. "But before we speak of them, will you not take off your coat? You are probably hot." "Yes," said K., who had hitherto paid attention to nothing but the painter's explanations, but to whom, now that he was reminded of the heat, strong sweat broke out on his forehead. "It is almost unbearable." The painter nodded, as if he understood K.'s discomfort very well. "Could one not open the window?" asked K. "No," said the painter. "It is merely a fixed pane of glass; it cannot be opened." Now K. recognized that he had been hoping all along that suddenly the painter or he would go to the window and throw it open. He was prepared to breathe in the fog himself with open mouth. The feeling of being completely cut off from the air here caused him dizziness. He tapped lightly with his hand on the featherbed beside him and said in a weak voice: "That is inconvenient and unhealthy."

"Oh no," said the painter in defense of his window. "Precisely because it cannot be opened, although it is only a simple pane, the warmth is better retained here than by a double window. But if I want to air the room—which is not very necessary, since air penetrates everywhere through the cracks in the beams—I can open one of my doors or even both." K., somewhat comforted by this explanation, looked around to find the second door. The painter noticed it and said: "It is behind you; I had to block it with the bed." Only now did K. see the small door in the wall. "Everything here is really too small for a studio," said the painter, as if to forestall a reproach from K. "I had to arrange myself as best I could. The bed before the door is naturally in a very bad spot. The judge, for instance, whom I am now painting, always comes through the door by the bed, and I have even given him a key to this door, so that he can wait for me here in the studio even when I am not at home. Now he usually comes early in the morning, while I am still sleeping. It naturally always tears me from my deepest sleep when the door opens beside the bed. You would lose all reverence for judges if you heard the curses with which I receive him when he steps over my bed early. I could of course take the key from him, but that would only make things worse. One can break all the doors here out of their hinges with the slightest effort."

During this whole speech K. considered whether he should take off his coat; but he finally saw that if he did not, he was incapable of remaining there any longer; he therefore took off the coat, but laid it over his knees so as to be able to put it on again if the conversation were over. Hardly had he taken off the coat when one of the girls called: "He has already taken off his coat" and one could hear how they all pressed to the cracks to see the spectacle themselves. "The girls believe, you see," said the painter, "that I am going to paint you and that you are undressing for that reason." "I see," said K., little amused, for he felt not much better than before, despite now sitting in shirt sleeves. Almost sullenly he asked: "What did you call the two other possibilities?" He had already forgotten the expressions again.

"The apparent acquittal and the prolongation," said the painter. "It is up to you which you choose. Both are achievable through my help, certainly not without effort; the difference in this regard is that the apparent acquittal requires a concentrated temporary exertion, while the prolongation requires a much smaller but lasting effort. First, then, the apparent acquittal. If you should desire this, I write on a sheet of paper a confirmation of your innocence. The text for such a confirmation has been handed down to me by my father and is quite unassailable. With this confirmation I then make a round among the judges known to me. I begin, say, by laying the confirmation before the judge whom I am now painting, this evening when he comes to the session. I lay the confirmation before him, explain to him that you are innocent, and vouch for your innocence. But that is not a mere outward guarantee, rather a truly binding one." In the painter's glance lay something like a reproach that K. would impose on him the burden of such a guarantee.

"That would be very kind," said K. "And the judge would believe you and yet not really acquit me?" "As I already said," answered the painter. "Besides, it is by no means certain that everyone would believe me; some judge, for example, will demand that I bring you to him myself. Then you would have to come along once. In such a case, however, the matter is already half won, especially since I would of course instruct you exactly beforehand how to behave with the respective judge. Worse are the judges who—as will also occur—reject me from the outset. On these we must, though I will certainly not fail to make repeated attempts, give up; but we may do so, for individual judges cannot be decisive here. If I now have a sufficient number of judges' signatures on this confirmation, I go with this confirmation to the judge currently conducting your trial. Possibly I already have his signature too; then everything develops a little faster than otherwise. In general, however, there are then no longer many obstacles; it is then for the accused the time of highest confidence. It is strange but true: people are in this time more confident than after the acquittal. No special effort is needed any more. The judge possesses in the confirmation the guarantee of a number of judges, can acquit you without concern, and will, after carrying out various formalities, certainly do so to please me and other acquaintances. But you step out of the court and are free."

"Then I am free," said K. hesitantly. "Yes," said the painter, "but only apparently free, or better expressed, temporarily free. The lowest judges, to whom my acquaintances belong, have not the right to acquit definitively; that right belongs only to the highest court, which is quite unreachable for you, for me, and for all of us. How it looks there we do not know, and, incidentally, do not wish to know. The great right to free from the charge, therefore, our judges do not have; but they do have the right to detach from the charge. That means: if you are acquitted in this way, you are for the moment withdrawn from the charge, but it continues to hover over you and can, as soon as only the higher order comes, immediately take effect. Since I am in such good connection with the court, I can also tell you how the difference between actual and apparent acquittal shows itself, purely outwardly, in the regulations for the court offices. In an actual acquittal the trial records are said to be completely filed away; they vanish entirely from the proceedings; not only the charge, but also the trial and even the acquittal are destroyed; everything is destroyed. Different with the apparent acquittal. No further change has occurred with the file except that it has been enriched by the confirmation of innocence, by the acquittal, and by the grounds of the acquittal. Otherwise it remains in the proceedings; it is, as the uninterrupted communication of the court offices requires, forwarded to the higher courts, comes back to the lower ones, and oscillates thus up and down with greater and smaller swings, with greater and smaller stoppages. These paths are incalculable. Seen from outside, it can sometimes appear as if everything were long forgotten, the file lost, and the acquittal complete. An initiate will not believe that. No file is lost; there is no forgetting at court. One day—no one expects it—some judge takes the file up attentively, recognizes that in this case the charge is still alive, and orders immediate arrest. I have here assumed that a long time passes between the apparent acquittal and the new arrest; that is possible and I know of such cases; but it is equally possible that the acquitted man comes home from court and there already await agents to arrest him again. Then, naturally, the free life is over."

"And the trial begins anew?" asked K. almost incredulously. "Certainly," said the painter, "the trial begins anew, but there is again the possibility, just as before, to obtain an apparent acquittal. One must gather all forces again and must not give up." The latter the painter said perhaps under the impression that K., who had sunk down a little, made on him. "But," asked K., as if he wanted to forestall any further revelations of the painter, "is not the obtaining of a second acquittal more difficult than that of the first?" "One can," answered the painter, "say nothing definite in this regard. You probably mean that the judges are influenced by the second arrest in their judgment to the disadvantage of the accused? That is not the case. The judges had already foreseen this arrest at the time of the acquittal. This circumstance therefore hardly has effect. But it can well be that for countless other reasons the mood of the judges as well as their legal assessment of the case has become another, and the efforts for the second acquittal must therefore be adapted to the changed circumstances and in general be just as vigorous as those before the first acquittal."

"But this second acquittal is again not final," said K. and turned his head away rejectingly. "Naturally not," said the painter, "the second acquittal is followed by the third arrest, the third acquittal by the fourth arrest, and so on. That already lies in the concept of the apparent acquittal." K. was silent. "The apparent acquittal evidently does not seem advantageous to you," said the painter, "perhaps the prolongation suits you better. Shall I explain to you the nature of the prolongation?" K. nodded. The painter had leaned back broadly in his armchair; the nightshirt was wide open; he had slipped a hand underneath, with which he stroked his chest and sides. "The prolongation," said the painter and looked ahead for a moment, as if seeking a completely fitting explanation, "the prolongation consists in keeping the trial permanently in the lowest stage of the trial. To achieve this, it is necessary that the accused and the helper, but especially the helper, remain in uninterrupted personal contact with the court. I repeat: for this no such expenditure of strength is needed as for achieving an apparent acquittal, but a much greater attentiveness is needed. One must not lose sight of the trial; one must go to the respective judge at regular intervals and moreover on special occasions, and try to keep him friendly in every way; if one is not personally acquainted with the judge, one must have him influenced through acquainted judges, without thereby being allowed to give up the immediate discussions. If one neglects nothing in this regard, one can assume with sufficient certainty that the trial will not get beyond its first stage. The trial does not cease, but the accused is almost as secured against conviction as if he were free. Compared with the apparent acquittal, the prolongation has the advantage that the future of the accused is less uncertain; he is preserved from the terror of sudden arrests and need not fear having to undergo, precisely at times when his other circumstances are least favorable, the exertions and excitements connected with achieving the apparent acquittal. Admittedly, the prolongation also has for the accused certain disadvantages that one must not underestimate. I am not thinking here that the accused is never free; he is not that either, in the proper sense, in the apparent acquittal. It is another disadvantage. The trial cannot stand still without at least apparent grounds for it. It must therefore outwardly something happen in the trial. Various orders must therefore be made from time to time; the accused must be heard; investigations must take place, etc. The trial must constantly be turned in the small circle to which it has been artificially restricted. That naturally brings certain inconveniences for the accused, but which you must again not imagine too badly. It is all only outward; the hearings, for example, are therefore quite short; if one once has no time or no inclination to go, one may excuse oneself; one can even, with certain judges, settle the orders in advance for a long time; essentially it only matters that, being an accused, one reports to one's judge from time to time."

Already during the last words K. had laid the coat over his arm and stood up. "He is already standing up," was called immediately outside the door. "You want to go already?" asked the painter, who had also stood up. "It is certainly the air that drives you from here. It is very embarrassing to me. I would have had much more to say to you. I had to be very brief. But I hope to have been understandable." "Oh yes," said K., whose head ached from the exertion with which he had forced himself to listen. Despite this confirmation, the painter summarized everything once more, as if he wanted to give K. a consolation for the way home: "Both methods have in common that they prevent a conviction of the accused." "But they also prevent the actual acquittal," said K. softly, as if ashamed to have recognized that. "You have grasped the core of the matter," said the painter quickly.

K. laid his hand on his winter coat, but could not even decide to put the coat on. He would most liked to have packed everything together and run with it into the fresh air. Even the girls could not move him to dress; although they, prematurely, already called to one another that he was dressing. The painter was eager to interpret K.'s mood somehow; he therefore said: "You have probably not yet decided regarding my proposals. I approve of that. I would even have advised against deciding immediately. The advantages and disadvantages are hair-fine. One must estimate everything exactly. But one must also not lose too much time." "I will come again soon," said K., who in a sudden decision put on the coat, threw the mantle over his shoulder, and hurried to the door, behind which the girls now began to scream. K. believed he saw the screaming girls through the door. "But you must keep your word," said the painter, who had not followed him, "otherwise I will come to the bank to inquire myself." "Just unlock the door," said K. and pulled at the latch, which the girls, as he noticed by the counter-pressure, held fast from outside. "Do you want to be molested by the girls?" asked the painter. "Rather use this exit," and he pointed to the door behind the bed. K. agreed and jumped back to the bed. But instead of opening the door there, the painter crawled under the bed and asked from below: "Just one moment. Do you not want to see a picture that I could sell you?" K. did not want to be impolite; the painter had really taken care of him and promised to help him further; also, due to K.'s forgetfulness, the remuneration for the help had not yet been spoken of at all; therefore K. could not refuse him now and let the picture be shown, although he trembled with impatience to get away from the studio.

The painter pulled out from under the bed a heap of unframed pictures, which were so covered with dust that this, as the painter tried to blow it off the top picture, whirled before K.'s eyes breath-takingly for a long time. "A heath landscape," said the painter and handed K. the picture. It showed two weak trees standing far apart in the dark grass. In the background was a multicolored sunset. "Beautiful," said K., "I buy it." K. had expressed himself so briefly unthinkingly; he was therefore glad when the painter, instead of taking it amiss, lifted a second picture from the floor. "Here is a counterpart to this picture," said the painter. It might have been intended as a counterpart, but not the slightest difference from the first picture was noticeable; here were the trees, here the grass, and there the sunset. But K. cared little. "They are beautiful landscapes," he said, "I buy both and will hang them in my office." "The motif seems to please you," said the painter and brought up a third picture, "it is fortunate that I still have a similar picture here." But it was not similar; it was rather the completely same old heath landscape. The painter made good use of this opportunity to sell old pictures. "I'll take this one too," said K. "How much do the three pictures cost?" "We will speak of that next time," said the painter. "You are in a hurry now and we remain in contact anyway. Besides, it pleases me that the pictures please you; I will give you all the pictures that I have down here. They are all heath landscapes; I have painted many heath landscapes. Some people reject such pictures because they are too gloomy; others, and you belong to them, love precisely the gloomy."

But K. now had no sense for the professional experiences of the begging painter. "Pack all the pictures," he cried, interrupting the painter, "tomorrow my servant will come and fetch them." "It is not necessary," said the painter. "I hope I will be able to provide you with a carrier who will go with you at once." And he finally bent over the bed and unlocked the door. "Step onto the bed without shyness," said the painter, "everyone who comes in here does that." K. would have shown no consideration even without this invitation; he had even already set one foot in the middle of the featherbed when he looked out through the open door and drew the foot back. "What is that?" he asked the painter. "What are you astonished at?" asked the latter, astonished in turn. "They are the court offices. Did you not know that there are court offices here? Court offices are almost in every attic; why should they be missing precisely here? Also my studio actually belongs to the court offices, but the court has placed it at my disposal."

K. was not so much frightened that he had found court offices here too, as he was frightened mainly at himself, at his ignorance in court matters. As a basic rule for the behavior of an accused it appeared to him to be always prepared, never to let himself be surprised, not to look innocently to the right when the judge stood beside him on the left—and precisely against this basic rule he offended again and again. Before him stretched a long corridor, from which blew an air compared to which the air in the studio was refreshing. Benches were placed on both sides of the corridor, exactly as in the waiting room of the office that was responsible for K. It seemed that exact regulations existed for the furnishing of offices. At the moment the party traffic here was not very large. One man sat there half lying, his face buried in his arms on the bench, and seemed to sleep; another stood in the half-dark at the end of the corridor. K. now stepped over the bed; the painter followed him with the pictures. They soon met a court servant—K. now already recognized all court servants by the gold button which they had on their civilian suit beneath the ordinary buttons—and the painter gave him the order to accompany K. with the pictures.

K. staggered more than he walked; he held his handkerchief pressed to his mouth. They were already near the exit when the girls stormed toward them, so K. had not been spared them either. They had obviously seen that the second door of the studio had been opened and had taken the detour to break in from this side. "I can no longer accompany you," cried the painter laughing under the press of the girls. "Farewell. And do not think too long!" K. did not even look around at him. In the street he took the first carriage that came his way. It mattered to him to get rid of the servant, whose gold button constantly struck his eyes, though he probably attracted no one else's attention. In his eagerness to serve, the servant even wanted to sit on the coachbox; but K. chased him down. Noon was long past when K. arrived before the bank. He would have liked to leave the pictures in the carriage, but feared being compelled on some occasion to attest to the painter with them. He therefore had them carried into the office and locked them in the bottom drawer of his desk, to bring them at least for the next few days into safety from the eyes of the deputy director.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”