Part 20

It was a very rainy, stormy morning when K., vexed at the day that lay before him, came to the office already at 7 o'clock, so as to get at least some work done before the visit would deprive him of everything. He was very tired, for he had spent half the night studying an Italian grammar in order to prepare himself a little; the window, at which he had of late been accustomed to sit far too often, tempted him more than the desk, but he resisted and sat down to work. Unfortunately the servant just then entered and announced that the Director had sent him to see whether the confidential clerk was already there; if he was, would he be so kind as to step into the reception room, the gentleman from Italy was already there. "I am coming," said K., put a small dictionary in his pocket, took under his arm an album of the city's sights, which he had prepared for the stranger, and went through the deputy director's office into the director's room. He was happy to have come to the office so early and to be immediately at hand, which surely no one had seriously expected. The deputy director's office was of course still as empty as in the dead of night; probably the servant had been meant to summon him too to the reception room, but it had been in vain. When K. entered the reception room, the two gentlemen rose from the deep armchairs. The director smiled in a friendly way; evidently he was very pleased at K.'s coming, and at once attended to the introductions. The Italian shook K.'s hand vigorously and, laughing, called someone an early riser; K. did not understand exactly whom he meant, and moreover it was a strange word whose meaning K. only guessed after a while. He answered with a few smooth sentences, which the Italian accepted with laughter, repeatedly passing his nervous hand over his grey-blue bushy moustache. This moustache was evidently perfumed; one was almost tempted to draw near and smell it. When they had all sat down and a little introductory conversation began, K. noticed with great discomfort that he understood the Italian only in fragments. When he spoke quite calmly, K. understood him almost completely, but those were rare exceptions; mostly the speech bubbled out of his mouth, and he shook his head as if with delight at it. But in such speeches he regularly entangled himself in some dialect that no longer had anything Italian about it for K., yet which the director not only understood but also spoke — which K. might indeed have foreseen, for the Italian came from southern Italy, where the director had also spent a few years. At any rate K. recognized that the possibility of making himself understood with the Italian was taken from him for the most part, for the latter's French too was only with difficulty comprehensible, and moreover the moustache concealed the lip movements whose sight might have helped understanding. K. began to foresee many unpleasantnesses; for the present he gave up trying to understand the Italian — in the director's presence, who understood him so easily, it would have been needless effort — and confined himself to observing him sulkily: how he rested deep yet lightly in the armchair, how he now and then plucked at his short, sharply cut little coat, and how once, with raised arms and hands loosely moving in the joints, he tried to represent something that K. could not comprehend, although, leaning forward, he never took his eyes off the hands. Finally, in K., who was otherwise unoccupied and only mechanically followed with his glances the to-and-fro of the talk, his earlier tiredness made itself felt, and to his alarm he once caught himself just in time — fortunately still in time — that in his absent-mindedness he had been on the point of standing up, turning round, and wanting to go away. At last the Italian looked at his watch and jumped up. After taking leave of the director, he pressed close to K., so close that K. had to push his armchair back in order to be able to move. The director, who surely recognized from K.'s eyes the distress he was in with this Italian, interposed in the conversation with such tact and delicacy that it seemed as if he were only adding little pieces of advice, whereas in reality he made intelligible in all brevity to K. everything the Italian, untiringly interrupting him, brought forward. K. learned from him that the Italian still had some business to attend to for the present, that unfortunately he would on the whole have very little time, that he by no means intended to rush through all the sights in haste, but had rather — provided, of course, K. agreed, the decision lay with him alone — resolved to visit only the cathedral, but that thoroughly. He was exceedingly glad to undertake this visit in the company of so learned and amiable a man — by which K. was meant, who was occupied with nothing else than not hearing the Italian and quickly grasping the director's words — and he asked him, if the hour were convenient, to appear in the cathedral in two hours, about 10 o'clock. He himself hoped to be certain to be there by that time. K. answered with some suitable remarks; the Italian pressed first the director's hand, then K.'s, then the director's again, and went, followed by both, still only half turned toward them, but never ceasing to talk, to the door. K. then remained a while longer with the director, who looked particularly unwell today. He thought he must in some way apologize to K., and said — they stood confidentially close together — that at first he had intended to go with the Italian himself, but then — he gave no closer reason — had decided to send K. instead. If he did not understand the Italian right at the beginning, he must not let that confuse him; understanding came very quickly, and even if he should not understand much at all, it was not so bad either, for to the Italian it was not so very important to be understood. Besides, K.'s Italian was surprisingly good, and he would certainly get along excellently with the matter. With that K. was dismissed. The time that still remained to him he spent copying out from the dictionary rare words he needed for the guidance in the cathedral. It was an extremely tiresome task; servants brought the mail, clerks came with various inquiries and, seeing K. busy, stood at the door, but did not move away until K. had attended to them; the deputy director did not miss the chance to disturb K., came in several times, took the dictionary out of his hand and turned the pages apparently quite senselessly; even parties appeared, when the door opened, in the half-darkness of the anteroom and bowed hesitantly — they wanted to draw attention to themselves but were not sure whether they were seen — all this moved about K. as about its centre, while he himself put together the words he needed, then looked them up in the dictionary, then copied them out, then practised their pronunciation and finally tried to learn them by heart. But his former good memory seemed to have quite deserted him; sometimes he grew so furious at the Italian, who caused him this exertion, that he buried the dictionary under papers with the firm intention of preparing no more, but then he saw that he could not after all walk up and down with the Italian before the works of art in the cathedral in silence, and he pulled the dictionary out again with even greater fury.

Just at half past nine, when he wanted to leave, there came a telephone call; Leni wished him good morning and asked after his health. K. thanked her hurriedly and remarked that he could not possibly enter into a conversation now, for he had to go to the cathedral. "To the cathedral?" asked Leni. "Why, yes, to the cathedral." "But why to the cathedral?" said Leni. K. tried to explain it to her briefly, but hardly had he begun when Leni suddenly said: "They are hounding you." Regret that he had not provoked and not expected, K. could not bear; he took leave with two words, but still said, while hanging the receiver in its place, half to himself, half to the distant girl who no longer heard it: "Yes, they are hounding me."

But now it was already late; there was almost the danger that he would not arrive in time. He drove there by automobile; at the last moment he had remembered the album, which he had found no opportunity to hand over in the morning and which he was therefore taking along now. He held it on his knees and drummed nervously on it during the whole drive. The rain had grown weaker, but it was damp, cool and dark; one would see little in the cathedral, but there, as a result of long standing on the cold flagstones, K.'s cold would very likely grow much worse.

The cathedral square was quite empty; K. remembered that even as a small child it had struck him that in the houses of this narrow square almost all the window curtains were always drawn down. In today's weather it was indeed more understandable than usual. In the cathedral too it seemed empty; of course no one thought of coming here now. K. went through both side aisles; he met only an old woman, wrapped in a warm cloth, who knelt before a picture of the Virgin and gazed at it. From afar he then saw a limping servant disappear in a wall door. K. had come punctually; just as he entered, it had struck ten, but the Italian was not here yet. K. went back to the main entrance, stood there undecided for a while, and then made a tour around the cathedral in the rain to see whether the Italian might perhaps be waiting at some side entrance. He was nowhere to be found. Could the director have misunderstood the time? How could one properly understand that man. However it might be, at any rate K. first had to wait half an hour for him. Since he was tired, he wanted to sit down; he went back into the cathedral, found on a step a small carpet-like rag, drew it with his toe in front of a nearby bench, wrapped himself more tightly in his coat, turned up the collar, and sat down. To distract himself he opened the album, leafed through it a little, but soon had to stop, for it grew so dark that when he looked up he could scarcely distinguish a detail in the nearby side aisle.

In the distance a large triangle of candlelight glimmered on the high altar; K. could not have said with certainty whether he had seen it earlier. Perhaps it had only just been lit. The church servants are professional sneaks; one does not notice them. When K. happened to turn round, he saw not far behind him a tall, strong candle fastened to a pillar likewise burning. However beautiful that was, for the illumination of the altar pictures, which mostly hung in the darkness of the side altars, it was wholly insufficient; rather it increased the darkness. It was as sensible as it was impolite of the Italian not to have come; there would have been nothing to see; one would have had to content oneself with searching out some pictures inch by inch with K.'s electric pocket lamp. To try what one might expect from it, K. went to a nearby small side chapel, climbed a few steps to a low marble balustrade, and, leaning over it, illuminated the altar picture with the lamp. The eternal light hovered before it, disturbing. The first thing K. saw and partly guessed was a large armored knight, who was depicted at the outermost edge of the picture. He leaned on his sword, which he had thrust into the bare ground before him — only a few blades of grass came forth here and there. He seemed to observe attentively an event taking place before him. It was astonishing that he stood thus and did not draw nearer. Perhaps he was destined to stand watch. K., who had seen no pictures for a long time, regarded the knight for a while, although he constantly had to blink, since he could not bear the green light of the lamp. When he then let the light glide over the rest of the picture, he found a deposition of Christ in the usual conception; it was by the way a more recent picture. He put the lamp away and returned to his place.

It was now probably unnecessary to wait for the Italian, but outside there was certainly pouring rain, and since it was not so cold here as K. had expected, he decided to stay here for the present. In his neighborhood was the great pulpit; on its small round roof two empty golden crosses were attached, half lying, which crossed with their outermost tips. The outer wall of the balustrade and the transition to the supporting pillar were formed of green foliage, into which small angels reached, now lively, now at rest. K. stepped before the pulpit and examined it from all sides; the working of the stone was exceedingly careful; the deep darkness between the foliage and behind it seemed as if captured and held fast; K. laid his hand into such a gap and then felt cautiously along the stone; of the existence of this pulpit he had hitherto not known at all. Then he noticed by chance behind the next row of benches a church servant, who stood there in a hanging, wrinkled black coat, holding a snuffbox in his left hand and looking at him. "What does the man want?" thought K. "Am I suspicious to him? Does he want a tip?" But when the church servant saw himself noticed by K., he pointed with his right hand — between two fingers he still held a pinch of tobacco — in some indefinite direction. His behavior was almost incomprehensible; K. waited a while longer, but the church servant did not cease pointing with his hand and confirmed it by nodding his head. "What does he want?" asked K. softly; he did not dare to call out here; then he drew out his purse and pushed through the nearest bench to get to the man. But the latter at once made a repelling motion with his hand, shrugged his shoulders, and limped away. With a gait similar to this hurried limping, K. as a child had tried to imitate riding on horses. "A childish old man," thought K., "his mind only reaches far enough for church service. How he stops when I stop, and how he lurks to see whether I want to go on." Smiling, K. followed the old man through the whole side aisle almost to the level of the high altar; the old man did not cease pointing at something, but K. deliberately did not turn round; the pointing had no other purpose than to lead K. off the old man's track. At last he really left him; K. did not want to frighten him too much, and also did not want to wholly scare away the apparition, in case the Italian should yet come.

When he stepped into the main aisle to look for his place, where he had left the album lying, he noticed at a pillar almost adjoining the benches of the choir a small side pulpit, quite simple, of bare, pale stone. It was so small that from afar it appeared like an empty niche still meant for the reception of a statue. The preacher could certainly not take a full step back from the balustrade. Besides, the stone vaulting of the pulpit began unusually low and rose, indeed without any ornament, but in such a curved fashion, that a man of medium height could not stand upright there, but had perpetually to lean over the balustrade. The whole seemed destined for the torment of the preacher; it was incomprehensible why one needed this pulpit, since one had the other large and so artistically adorned one at one's disposal.

K. would certainly not have noticed this small pulpit either, had not a lamp been fastened above it, such as one is accustomed to place shortly before a sermon. Was a sermon now perhaps to take place? In the empty church? K. looked down the stairway that, nestling to the pillar, led to the pulpit and was so narrow as if it were not meant for men but only for the adornment of the pillar. But down at the pulpit — K. smiled in astonishment — stood indeed the clergyman, held his hand on the railing, ready to ascend, and looked at K. Then he nodded very slightly with his head, whereupon K. crossed himself and bowed, which he should have done earlier. The clergyman gave himself a little push and climbed the pulpit with short, quick steps. Was a sermon really to begin? Perhaps the church servant had after all not been wholly deserted of understanding and had wanted to drive K. to the preacher, which indeed had been extremely necessary in the empty church. Besides, there was somewhere before a picture of the Virgin that old woman who should have come too. And if it was to be a sermon, why was it not introduced by the organ. But it remained silent and only gleamed faintly out of the darkness of its great height.

K. thought whether he should not now hurriedly withdraw; if he did not do it now, there was no prospect that he could do it during the sermon; he had to stay as long as it lasted; in the office he was losing so much time; he had long since no obligation to wait for the Italian; he looked at his watch — it was 11. But could there really be preaching? Could K. alone represent the congregation? What if he had been a stranger who only wanted to visit the church? Essentially he was nothing else. It was nonsensical to think that there should be preaching, now at 11 o'clock, on a weekday in ghastly weather. The clergyman — it was doubtless a clergyman, a young man with a smooth, dark face — was evidently only going up to extinguish the lamp that had been lit by mistake.

But it was not so; rather the clergyman tested the light and turned it up a little more, then turned slowly to the balustrade, which he grasped in front at its angular casing with both hands. Thus he stood for a while and looked around without moving his head. K. had stepped back a good distance and leaned with his elbows on the foremost church bench. With uncertain eyes he looked somewhere, without exactly determining the place, at the church servant crouching peacefully with bent back as after a finished task. What stillness now reigned in the cathedral! But K. had to disturb it; he had no intention of staying here; if it was the clergyman's duty to preach at a certain hour regardless of circumstances, then let him do it; it would succeed even without K.'s assistance, just as K.'s presence would certainly not enhance the effect. Slowly, therefore, K. set himself in motion, felt his way on tiptoe along the bench, then came into the broad main path and went there too quite undisturbed, only that the stone floor rang under the slightest step and the vaulting echoed faintly but uninterruptedly, in manifold, regular progression, therefrom. K. felt a little forsaken as he went there, perhaps observed by the clergyman, alone between the empty benches, and also the size of the cathedral seemed to him to lie just at the boundary of what was still bearable for men. When he came to his former place, he literally snatched, without further delay, at the album left lying there and took it. He had almost already left the region of the benches and was approaching the open space that lay between them and the exit, when he heard the clergyman's voice for the first time. A mighty, practised voice. How it pierced the cathedral, ready to receive it! But it was not the congregation the clergyman called to; it was quite unambiguous and there was no evasion: he called: Josef K.!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”