Part 17

K. turned around; the merchant had scarcely noticed it when he immediately wanted to stand up. "Stay seated," said K. and drew an armchair up beside him. "Are you already an old client of the lawyer?" asked K. "Yes," said the merchant, "a very old client." "How many years has he been representing you, then?" asked K. "I don't know what you mean," said the merchant, "in business legal matters—I have a grain business—the lawyer has represented me ever since I took over the business, so for about 20 years; in my own trial, which you are probably alluding to, he has also represented me from the beginning, it's already been more than 5 years. Yes, far more than 5 years," he then added and pulled out an old wallet, "here I've written everything down; if you like, I'll tell you the exact dates. It's hard to remember it all. My trial has probably been going on much longer, it began shortly after my wife's death and that's already more than 5½ years ago." K. moved closer to him. "So the lawyer also takes on ordinary legal cases?" he asked. This combination of business and jurisprudence seemed immensely reassuring to K. "Certainly," said the merchant and then whispered to K.: "It is even said that he is more competent in these legal matters than in the others." But then he seemed to regret what he had said, he placed a hand on K.'s shoulder and said: "I beg you very much, don't betray me." K. patted his thigh to reassure him and said: "No, I am no traitor." "You see, he is vengeful," said the merchant. "Surely he won't do anything against such a loyal client," said K. "Oh yes," said the merchant, "when he is agitated he makes no distinctions; besides, I am not really loyal to him." "How is that?" asked K. "May I confide in you?" asked the merchant doubtfully. "I think you may," said K. "Well," said the merchant, "I will confide part of it to you, but you must also tell me a secret, so that we may hold together against the lawyer." "You are very cautious," said K., "but I will tell you a secret that will completely reassure you. So in what does your disloyalty to the lawyer consist?" "I have," said the merchant hesitantly and in a tone as if confessing something dishonorable, "I have, besides him, other lawyers." "That's not so terrible," said K. somewhat disappointed. "Here it is," said the merchant, who had been breathing heavily since his confession, but gained more confidence from K.'s remark. "It is not permitted. And least of all is it permitted to take, besides a so-called lawyer, also petty advocates. And that is precisely what I have done; besides him I have five petty advocates." "Five!" cried K., at first the number astonished him, "five lawyers besides this one?" The merchant nodded: "I am just now negotiating with a sixth." "But why do you need so many lawyers?" asked K. "I need them all," said the merchant. "Won't you explain that to me?" asked K. "Gladly," said the merchant. "Above all, I do not want to lose my trial, that is self-evident. Consequently I may neglect nothing that could be of use to me; even if the hope of usefulness in a particular case is only very slight, I may not discard it. I have therefore devoted everything I possess to the trial. For example, I have withdrawn all money from my business; formerly the office rooms of my business filled almost an entire floor, today a small chamber in the back building suffices, where I work with an apprentice. This decline was of course caused not only by the withdrawal of money, but even more by the withdrawal of my working capacity. If one wants to do something for one's trial, one can occupy oneself very little with anything else." "So you still work at the court yourself?" asked K. "That is precisely what I would like to learn something about." "I can report little about that," said the merchant, "at first I did try it, but I soon gave it up again. It is too exhausting and brings little success. Even working and negotiating there myself proved, at least for me, quite impossible. Why, even just sitting and waiting there is a great exertion. You know yourself the heavy air in the offices." "How do you know that I was there?" asked K. "I was just in the waiting room when you passed through." "What a coincidence that is!" cried K., entirely captivated and quite forgetting the former ridiculousness of the merchant, "so you saw me! You were in the waiting room when I passed through. Yes, I did pass through there once." "It is not such a great coincidence," said the merchant, "I am almost there every day." "I will probably have to go there more often now," said K., "only I shall hardly be received so honorably as then. Everyone stood up. They probably thought I was a judge." "No," said the merchant, "we were greeting the court usher then. That you are a defendant, we knew. Such news spreads very quickly." "So you already knew that," said K., "then my behavior perhaps appeared arrogant to you. Was there no talk of it?" "No," said the merchant, "on the contrary. But those are foolishnesses." "What foolishnesses?" asked K. "Why do you ask?" said the merchant angrily. "You seem not yet to know the people there and may perhaps take it wrongly. You must consider that in this procedure again and again many things come up for discussion for which reason no longer suffices, one is simply too tired and distracted for much, and as a substitute one resorts to superstition. I am speaking of the others, but I myself am not any better. Such a superstition is, for example, that many want to recognize the outcome of the trial from the face of the defendant, especially from the drawing of the lips. These people, then, have claimed that, judging from your lips, you would certainly and soon be condemned. I repeat, it is a ridiculous superstition and in most cases completely refuted by the facts, but when one lives in that society it is hard to withdraw from such opinions. Just think how strongly this superstition can work. You did speak to one there, didn't you? But he could hardly answer you. There are of course many reasons to be confused there, but one of them was also the sight of your lips. He later related that he had believed he saw on your lips the sign of his own condemnation." "My lips?" asked K., pulled out a pocket mirror and looked at himself. "I can recognize nothing special about my lips. And you?" "Nor I," said the merchant, "not at all." "How superstitious these people are," cried K. "Didn't I say so?" asked the merchant. "Do they then associate so much with one another and exchange their opinions?" said K. "I have kept quite apart so far." "In general they do not associate with each other," said the merchant, "that would not be possible, there are so many of them. There are also few common interests. When sometimes in a group the belief in a common interest appears, it soon proves to be an error. Together one can accomplish nothing against the court. Every case is investigated by itself, it is indeed the most careful court. Together one can accomplish nothing, only an individual sometimes achieves something in secret; only when it is achieved do the others learn of it; no one knows how it happened. There is thus no community; one does indeed now and then come together in the waiting rooms, but little is discussed there. The superstitious opinions have existed from olden times and multiply as if by themselves." "I saw the gentlemen there in the waiting room," said K., "their waiting seemed to me so useless." "The waiting is not useless," said the merchant, "only independent intervention is useless. I said already that besides this one I now have five lawyers. One should think—I myself thought so at first—now I could leave the matter entirely to them. But that would be quite wrong. I can leave it to them less than if I had only one. You don't understand that?" "No," said K. and, to hinder the merchant in his overly swift speech, laid his hand reassuringly on his hand, "I only want to ask you to speak a little more slowly, these are after all things very important to me and I cannot quite follow them." "Good that you remind me," said the merchant, "you are after all a newcomer, a young one. Your trial is half a year old, isn't it? Yes, I have heard of it. Such a young trial! But I have thought through these things countless times, they are the most self-evident thing in the world to me." "You are probably glad that your trial is already so far advanced?" asked K.; he did not want to ask outright how the merchant's affairs stood. But he also received no clear answer. "Yes, I have rolled my trial forward for five years," said the merchant and lowered his head, "it is no small achievement." Then he was silent for a while. K. listened to see whether Leni was not already coming. On the one hand he did not want her to come, for he still had much to ask and also did not want to be surprised by Leni in this confidential conversation with the merchant; on the other hand, however, he was annoyed that despite his presence she stayed so long with the lawyer, much longer than was necessary for serving the soup.

"I still remember exactly that time," the merchant began again and K. was at once full of attention, "when my trial was about as old as your trial is now. I then had only this lawyer, but was not very satisfied with him." I shall learn everything here, thought K. and nodded vigorously with his head, as if he could thereby encourage the merchant to say all that was worth knowing. "My trial," the merchant continued, "made no progress; investigations did indeed take place, I attended each one, collected material, deposited all my account books with the court, which, as I later learned, was not even necessary; I kept running back to the lawyer, he also submitted various motions—" "Various motions?" asked K. "Yes, certainly," said the merchant. "That is very important to me," said K., "in my case he is still working on the first motion. He has done nothing yet. I see now that he is shamefully neglecting me." "That the motion is not yet finished can have various justified reasons," said the merchant. "Besides, it had later turned out with my motions that they were quite worthless. I even read one myself through the indulgence of a court official. It was indeed learned, but actually without content. Above all very much Latin, which I do not understand; then pages-long general invocations of the court; then flatteries for certain individual officials, who were not named, but whom an initiate had certainly to guess; then self-praise of the lawyer, whereby he humiliated himself before the court in a downright doglike manner; and finally investigations of legal cases from olden times, which were supposed to be similar to mine. These investigations were, as far as I could follow them, very carefully made. I do not want with all this to pass judgment on the lawyer's work; also, the motion I read was only one among several; but in any case—and this is what I want to speak of now—I could then see no progress in my trial." "What kind of progress did you want to see?" asked K. "You ask quite sensibly," said the merchant smiling, "in this procedure one can rarely see progress. But then I did not know that. I am a merchant and was then still much more so than today; I wanted tangible progress, the whole should incline toward an end or at least take the regular upward course. Instead there were only hearings, which mostly had the same content; I had the answers ready like a litany; several times a week court messengers came into my business, into my dwelling, or wherever they could find me, which was naturally disturbing (today it is at least better in this regard, the telephone call disturbs me less); also among my business friends, but especially among my relatives, rumors of my trial began to spread, so there was damage from all sides, but not the least sign indicated that even the first court hearing would take place in the near future. I therefore went to the lawyer and complained. He did give me long explanations, but decidedly refused to do anything in my sense; no one had influence on the setting of the hearing, to urge it in a motion—as I demanded—was simply unheard of and would ruin me and him. I thought: what this lawyer does not want or cannot, another will want and be able to. I therefore looked around for other lawyers. I want to anticipate it: none has demanded or brought about the setting of the main hearing; it is, admittedly with a reservation of which I shall still speak, really impossible; in this point, therefore, this lawyer did not deceive me; but otherwise I had no cause to regret having turned to other lawyers as well. You have probably already heard much from Dr. Huld about the petty advocates, he has probably represented them to you as very contemptible and so they really are. Yet he always makes, when he speaks of them and compares himself and his colleagues with them, a small error, to which I want to draw your attention quite incidentally. He then always calls the lawyers of his circle, for distinction, the 'great lawyers.' That is false; of course everyone can call himself 'great' if he pleases, but in this case only court usage decides. According to this there are, besides the petty advocates, still small and great lawyers. This lawyer and his colleagues, however, are only the small lawyers; the great lawyers, of whom I have only heard and whom I have never seen, stand in rank incomparably higher above the small lawyers than these above the despised petty advocates." "The great lawyers?" asked K. "Who are they? How does one get to them?" "So you have never heard of them," said the merchant. "There is scarcely a defendant who, after learning of them, would not dream of them for a while. Do not let yourself be seduced into it. Who the great lawyers are, I do not know, and one can probably not get to them at all. I know of no case of which it could be said with certainty that they had intervened. They defend some, but one cannot achieve that by one's own will; they defend only him whom they want to defend. But the matter they take up must probably have already passed beyond the lower court. Besides, it is better not to think of them, for otherwise the discussions with the other lawyers, their advice and their assistance, seem so repulsive and useless; I have experienced myself that one would most like to throw everything away, lie down in bed at home, and hear of nothing more. But that would of course again be the stupidest thing, also one would not have peace in bed for long." "So you did not think of the great lawyers then?" asked K. "Not for long," said the merchant and smiled again, "unfortunately one cannot forget them completely, especially the night is favorable to such thoughts. But then I wanted immediate successes, I therefore went to the petty advocates."

"How you sit here together," cried Leni, who had returned with the cup and remained standing in the door. They really sat close together; at the slightest turn they had to knock their heads together; the merchant, who apart from his smallness also kept his back bent, had forced K. also to bend down deeply if he wanted to hear everything. "A little while longer," cried K. defensively to Leni and impatiently twitched the hand, which still lay on the merchant's hand. "He wanted me to tell him about my trial," said the merchant to Leni. "Tell on, tell on," said she. She spoke lovingly with the merchant, but still also condescendingly. K. did not like that; as he had now recognized, the man did after all have a certain worth, initially he had experiences which he knew how to communicate well. Leni probably judged him wrongly. He looked on angrily as Leni now took the candle, which the merchant had held all the time, from him, wiped his hand with her apron, and then knelt down beside him to scrape away some wax that had dripped from the candle onto his trousers. "You wanted to tell me about the petty advocates," said K. and pushed Leni's hand away without further remark. "What do you want?" asked Leni, struck lightly at K. and continued her work. "Yes, about the petty advocates," said the merchant and passed his hand over his forehead as if thinking. K. wanted to help him and said: "You wanted immediate successes and therefore went to the petty advocates." "Quite right," said the merchant, but did not continue. "Perhaps he does not want to speak of it before Leni," thought K., subdued his impatience to hear the rest immediately and now did not press him further.

"Have you announced me?" he asked Leni. "Of course," said she, "he is waiting for you. Leave Block alone now, you can talk to Block later too, he is staying here anyway." K. still hesitated. "You are staying here?" he asked the merchant; he wanted his own answer, he did not want Leni to speak of the merchant as of an absent one, he was today full of secret annoyance toward Leni. And again only Leni answered: "He often sleeps here." "Sleeps here?" cried K., he had thought the merchant would only wait here for him, while he would quickly finish the interview with the lawyer, then they would go off together and discuss everything thoroughly and undisturbed. "Yes," said Leni, "not everyone is admitted to the lawyer at any hour like you, Josef. You don't even seem to wonder that the lawyer, despite his illness, receives you at 11 o'clock at night. You take what your friends do for you as all too self-evident. Well, your friends or for now I, do it gladly. I want no other thanks and need no other than that you love me." "Love you?" thought K. at first, only then did it go through his head: "Well yes, I love her." Nevertheless he said, neglecting everything else: "He receives me because I am his client. If foreign help were still needed for that, one would have to beg and thank at every step." "How bad he is today, isn't he?" asked Leni the merchant. "Now I am the absent one," thought K. and became almost even angry at the merchant when the latter, taking over Leni's incivility, said: "The lawyer receives him also for other reasons. His case is namely more interesting than mine. Besides, his trial is in the beginnings, thus probably not yet very entangled, there the lawyer still gladly occupies himself with him. Later that will change." "Yes, yes," said Leni and looked laughing at the merchant, "how he chatters! You must namely believe him nothing," here she turned to K., "of what he says. As dear as he is, so talkative he is. Perhaps the lawyer also dislikes him for that reason. In any case he receives him only when in the mood. I have already taken much trouble to change that, but it is impossible. Just think, sometimes I announce Block, but he receives him only on the third day after. But if Block is not present at the time when he is called, then all is lost and he must be announced anew. Therefore I have permitted Block to sleep here; it has already happened that he was rung for him in the night. Now Block is therefore ready even at night. Yet it now again happens that the lawyer, when it shows that Block is there, sometimes revokes his order to admit him." K. looked questioningly at the merchant. The latter nodded and said, as openly as he had spoken with K. before, perhaps he was absentminded from shame: "Yes, one later becomes very dependent on one's lawyer." "He only complains for show," said Leni. "He likes very much to sleep here, as he has often confessed to me." She went to a small door and pushed it open. "Want to see his bedroom?" she asked K., went in and from the threshold looked into the low windowless room, which was completely filled by a narrow bed. Into this bed one had to climb over the bedpost. At the head of the bed was a recess in the wall, there stood, painstakingly ordered, a candle, an inkwell and pen, as well as a bundle of papers, probably trial documents. "You sleep in the maid's room?" asked K. and turned back to the merchant. "Leni has allotted it to me," answered the merchant, "it is very advantageous." K. looked at him for a long time; the first impression he had received of the merchant was perhaps after all the right one; he had experiences, for his trial had already lasted long, but he had paid dearly for these experiences. Suddenly K. could no longer bear the sight of the merchant. "Put him to bed," he cried to Leni, who did not seem to understand him at all. He himself, however, wanted to go to the lawyer and through the dismissal free himself not only from the lawyer, but also from Leni and the merchant. But before he had reached the door, the merchant addressed him in a low voice: "Mr. Head Clerk," K. turned around with an angry face. "You have forgotten your promise," said the merchant and stretched out toward K. pleadingly from his seat. "You wanted to tell me a secret too." "Truly," said K. and swept with a glance also Leni, who looked at him attentively, "so hear: it is indeed hardly a secret anymore. I am now going to the lawyer to dismiss him." "He is dismissing him," cried the merchant, sprang from the armchair and ran around the kitchen with raised arms. Again and again he cried: "He is dismissing the lawyer." Leni wanted at once to fly at K., but the merchant got in her way, for which she gave him a blow with her fists. Still with hands balled into fists she then ran after K., who however had a great lead. He had already entered the lawyer's room when Leni caught up with him. He had firmly closed the door behind him, but Leni, who held the door leaf open with her foot, seized him by the arm and wanted to pull him back. But he pressed her wrist so strongly that she had to let him go with a sigh. She did not dare to enter the room at once, but K. locked the door with the key.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”