Part 21

K. hesitated and looked down at the ground before him. For the time being he was still free; he could still go on and, through one of the three small dark wooden doors that were not far ahead of him, make his escape. It would simply mean that he had not understood, or that he had indeed understood but did not care to bother about it. If, however, he turned around, he would be caught, for then he would have made the confession that he had understood perfectly, that he was truly the one summoned, and that he was willing to follow as well. Had the priest called out once more, K. would certainly have gone away, but since everything remained silent as long as K. waited, he nevertheless turned his head a little, for he wanted to see what the priest was doing now. He stood quietly in the pulpit as before, but it was clearly to be seen that he had noticed K.'s turning of the head. It would have been a childish game of hide-and-seek if K. had not now turned around completely. He did so and was beckoned closer by the priest with a movement of his finger. Since everything could now happen openly, he ran—he did it also out of curiosity and to cut the matter short—with long flying strides toward the pulpit. At the first pews he came to a halt, but the distance still seemed too great to the priest, who stretched out his hand and pointed with his sharply lowered index finger to a spot just in front of the pulpit. K. complied in this too; on this spot he had to bend his head far back merely to still see the priest. "You are Josef K.," said the priest, raising a hand on the railing in an indefinite gesture. "Yes," said K., thinking how openly he had once always stated his name, whereas for some time now it had become a burden to him, and people he was meeting for the first time now knew it too; how beautiful it had been to introduce oneself first and only then be known. "You are accused," said the priest particularly softly. "Yes," said K., "I was informed of it." "Then you are the one I am looking for," said the priest. "I am the prison chaplain." "I see," said K. "I had you summoned here," said the priest, "to speak with you." "I did not know that," said K. "I came here to show the cathedral to an Italian." "Leave aside what is incidental," said the priest. "What are you holding in your hand? Is it a prayer book?" "No," answered K., "it is an album of the city's sights." "Put it out of your hand," said the priest. K. threw it away so violently that it flew open and, with crushed leaves, dragged a stretch across the floor. "Do you know that your case is going badly?" asked the priest. "It seems so to me too," said K. "I have exerted myself greatly, but so far without success. To be sure, I have not yet finished the petition." "How do you imagine the end?" asked the priest. "Earlier I thought it must end well," said K., "now I sometimes doubt it myself. I do not know how it will end. Do you?" "No," said the priest, "but I fear it will end badly. You are held to be guilty. Your case will perhaps not even get beyond a lower court. At least for the present your guilt is considered proven." "But I am not guilty," said K. "It is a mistake. How can a person be guilty at all. We are all human beings here, one like the other." "That is correct," said the priest, "but that is how the guilty are wont to speak." "Do you too have a prejudice against me?" asked K. "I have no prejudice against you," said the priest. "I thank you," said K. "But all the others involved in the proceedings have a prejudice against me. They even instill it in those not involved. My position is becoming ever more difficult." "You misunderstand the facts," said the priest. "The verdict does not come all at once; the proceedings gradually turn into the verdict." "So that is how it is," said K. and lowered his head. "What do you intend to do next in your affair?" asked the priest. "I want to seek help still," said K., raising his head to see how the priest judged it. "There are still certain possibilities that I have not made use of." "You seek too much outside help," said the priest disapprovingly, "and especially in women. Do you not notice that it is not the true help." "Sometimes, and even often, I could agree with you," said K., "but not always. Women have great power. If I could move some women I know to work for me jointly, I would have to get through. Especially with this court, which consists almost entirely of women-chasers. Show the examining magistrate a woman from afar and he overturns, just to arrive in time, the court table and the accused." The priest inclined his head toward the railing; only now did the canopy of the pulpit seem to press down on him. What a storm might be raging outside? This was no longer a dull day, it was already deep night. No stained glass of the great windows was able to interrupt the dark wall even with a glimmer. And just now the sacristan began to extinguish the candles on the high altar one after another. "Are you angry with me?" K. asked the priest. "Perhaps you do not know what kind of court you serve." He received no answer. "They are only my experiences," said K. Above, all remained silent. "I did not mean to offend you," said K. Then the priest cried down to K.: "Can you not see two steps ahead?" It was cried in anger, but at the same time like someone who sees a person falling and, because he himself is startled, cries out inadvertently without will.

Now both were silent for a long time. Certainly the priest, in the darkness that prevailed below, could not clearly recognize K., while K. saw the priest distinctly in the light of the small lamp. Why did the priest not come down? He had after all delivered no sermon, but only given K. some information which, if he heeded it exactly, would probably harm him more than help. Yet the good intention of the priest seemed unquestionable to K.; it was not impossible that, if he came down, K. would come to an understanding with him; it was not impossible that he would receive from him a decisive and acceptable piece of advice which would show him, not how to influence the proceedings, but how to break out of the proceedings, how to bypass them, how to live outside the proceedings. This possibility had to exist; K. had thought of it more often of late. But if the priest knew such a possibility, would he perhaps, if asked, reveal it, despite belonging to the court himself and despite having, when K. attacked the court, suppressed his gentle nature and even cried out at K.

"Will you not come down?" said K. "There is no sermon to be delivered. Come down to me." "Now I can come," said the priest, perhaps regretting his cry. While he unhooked the lamp from its hook, he said: "I had to speak with you from a distance at first. Otherwise I let myself be too easily influenced and forget my duty."

K. awaited him below at the stairs. The priest, already on a higher step while descending, stretched out his hand toward him. "Do you have a little time for me?" asked K. "As much time as you need," said the priest, and handed K. the small lamp so that he might carry it. Even at close range a certain solemnity did not leave his bearing. "You are very kind to me," said K. They walked up and down side by side in the dark aisle. "You are an exception among all who belong to the court. I have more trust in you than in anyone of them, however many I have already come to know. With you I can speak openly." "Do not deceive yourself," said the priest. "In what should I deceive myself?" asked K. "You deceive yourself about the court," said the priest, "in the introductory writings to the Law it is said of this deception: Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper comes a man from the country and asks for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant him admittance now. The man considers and then asks whether he may therefore enter later. 'It is possible,' says the doorkeeper, 'but not now.' Since the gate to the Law stands open as always and the doorkeeper steps aside, the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior. When the doorkeeper notices this, he laughs and says: 'If it tempts you so, try nevertheless to go in despite my prohibition. But note: I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall stand doorkeepers, one more powerful than the other. Even the sight of the third I myself can no longer endure.' Such difficulties the man from the country had not expected; the Law should after all be accessible to everyone and always, he thinks, but when he now looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, his large pointed nose, the long, thin, black, Tartar beard, he decides nevertheless to wait until he receives permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down to the side of the door. There he sits days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in and wearies the doorkeeper with his entreaties. The doorkeeper occasionally conducts small examinations with him, asks him about his homeland and about much else, but they are indifferent questions such as great lords ask, and in conclusion he always tells him again that he cannot let him in yet. The man, who has equipped himself for his journey with much, uses everything, even what is most valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The latter accepts it all, but says: 'I accept it only so that you do not think you have omitted anything.' During the many years the man observes the doorkeeper almost uninterruptedly. He forgets the other doorkeepers and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle to entry into the Law. He curses the unhappy chance in the first years aloud, later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in the years-long study of the doorkeeper he has also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even begs the fleas to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. Finally his eyesight grows weak and he does not know whether it actually grows darker around him or whether his eyes merely deceive him. But he now recognizes in the darkness a radiance that breaks inextinguishably from the door of the Law. Now he has not long to live. Before his death all the experiences of the whole time gather in his head into a question that he has not yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons to him, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper must bend deep down to him, for the difference in size has changed very much to the disadvantage of the man. 'What do you still want to know,' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'All strive after the Law,' says the man, 'how does it come about that in all these years no one except me has asked for admittance.' The doorkeeper recognizes that the man is already at his end and, to reach his failing hearing yet, roars at him: 'Here no one else could gain admittance, for this entrance was destined only for you. I now go and close it.'

"The doorkeeper thus deceived the man," said K. at once, very strongly attracted by the story. "Do not be hasty," said the priest, "do not adopt the foreign opinion unexamined. I have told you the story in the wording of the scripture. Nothing of deception stands in it." "But it is clear," said K., "and your first interpretation was quite right. The doorkeeper gave the redeeming communication only when it could no longer help the man." "He was not asked earlier," said the priest, "and consider also that he was only a doorkeeper and as such fulfilled his duty." "Why do you believe he fulfilled his duty?" asked K., "he did not fulfill it. His duty was perhaps to repel all strangers, but this man, for whom the entrance was destined, he should have let in." "You have too little respect for the scripture and alter the story," said the priest. "The story contains concerning admittance to the Law two important statements of the doorkeeper, one at the beginning, one at the end. The one passage reads: that he could not grant him admittance now, and the other: this entrance was destined only for you. If between these two statements there were a contradiction, then you would be right and the doorkeeper would have deceived the man. Now there is no contradiction. On the contrary, the first statement even points to the second. One could almost say the doorkeeper went beyond his duty by holding out to the man a future possibility of admittance. At that time it seems to have been only his duty to repel the man, and indeed many interpreters of the scripture wonder that the doorkeeper made that hint at all, for he seems to love precision and watches strictly over his office. Through many years he does not leave his post and closes the gate only at the very last; he is very conscious of the importance of his service, for he says: 'I am powerful'; he has reverence for his superiors, for he says: 'I am only the lowest doorkeeper'; he is not talkative, for during the many years he puts only, as it is said, 'indifferent questions'; he is not bribable, for he says of a gift: 'I accept it only so that you do not think you have omitted anything'; he is, where fulfillment of duty is concerned, neither to be moved nor angered, for it is said of the man that 'he wearies the doorkeeper with his entreaties'; finally his outward appearance also points to a pedantic character, the large pointed nose and the long, thin, black, Tartar beard. Can there be a more dutiful doorkeeper. Now, however, other traits mingle in the doorkeeper which are very favorable for the one demanding admittance and which make it at least comprehensible that he could in that hint of a future possibility go somewhat beyond his duty. For it is not to be denied that he is a little simple-minded and in connection therewith a little conceited. Even if his utterances about his power and about the power of the other doorkeepers and about their even for him unbearable sight—I say, even if all these utterances may be correct in themselves, yet the manner in which he brings forth these utterances shows that his comprehension is clouded by simplicity and presumption. The interpreters say hereto: 'Correct grasping of a matter and misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude one another.' In any case one must assume that that simplicity and presumption, however slight they may perhaps show themselves, yet weaken the guarding of the entrance; they are gaps in the character of the doorkeeper. To this is added that the doorkeeper by his natural disposition seems to be kindly; he is by no means always an official person. Right in the first moments he makes the joke of inviting the man to enter despite the expressly maintained prohibition, then he does not send him away, but gives him, as it is said, a stool and lets him sit down to the side of the door. The patience with which he endures through all the years the entreaties of the man, the small examinations, the acceptance of gifts, the nobility with which he permits the man beside him to curse aloud the unhappy chance that stationed the doorkeeper here—all this allows one to conclude the presence of stirrings of pity. Not every doorkeeper would have acted so. And finally he bends down at a beckoning, deep to the man, to give him opportunity for the last question. Only a weak impatience—the doorkeeper knows that all is at an end—speaks in the words: 'You are insatiable.' Some go even further in this kind of interpretation and think the words 'You are insatiable' express a kind of friendly admiration which is indeed not free of condescension. In any case the figure of the doorkeeper thus closes differently than you believe." "You know the story more exactly and longer than I," said K. They were silent a while. Then K. said: "You believe then that the man was not deceived?" "Do not misunderstand me," said the priest, "I only show you the opinions that exist about it. You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The scripture is unalterable and the opinions are often only an expression of the despair over it. In this case there is even an opinion according to which precisely the doorkeeper is the deceived one." "That is a far-reaching opinion," said K. "How is it grounded?" "The grounding," answered the priest, "proceeds from the simplicity of the doorkeeper. It is said that he does not know the interior of the Law, but only the path that he must always walk again before the entrance. The notions he has of the interior are held to be childlike, and one assumes that he fears that before which he wants to make the man afraid, himself. Yes, he fears it more than the man, for the latter wants nothing other than to enter, even after he has heard of the terrible doorkeepers of the interior, whereas the doorkeeper does not want to enter, at least nothing is learned of it. Others indeed say that he must already have been in the interior, for he was once taken into the service of the Law, and that could only have happened in the interior. To this it is to be answered that he could also have been appointed doorkeeper by a call from the interior, and that he can at least not have been deep in the interior, since he cannot endure the sight of the third doorkeeper. Besides, it is not reported that during the many years he told anything of the interior except the remark about the doorkeepers. It could be forbidden to him, but of the prohibition he told nothing either. From all this one concludes that he knows nothing of the appearance and meaning of the interior and is in deception about it. But he is also held to be in deception about the man from the country, for he is subordinate to this man and does not know it. That he treats the man as a subordinate is recognized from much that you will still recall. But that he is in fact subordinate to him is, according to this opinion, to be evident just as clearly. Above all the free is superior to the bound. Now the man is in fact free; he can go where he will, only entrance into the Law is forbidden him and moreover only by a single individual, the doorkeeper. If he sits down on the stool to the side of the gate and remains there his whole life, this happens voluntarily; the story tells of no compulsion. The doorkeeper, by contrast, is bound to his post by his office; he may not remove himself outward, and apparently also not go into the interior, even if he wanted to. Besides, he is indeed in the service of the Law, but serves only for this entrance, thus also only for this man, for whom this entrance alone is destined. Also for this reason he is subordinate to him. It is to be assumed that he, through many years, through a whole man's age as it were, performed only empty service, for it is said that a man comes, thus someone in man's age, so that the doorkeeper had to wait long until his purpose was fulfilled, and indeed had to wait as long as it pleased the man, who after all came voluntarily. But also the end of the service is determined by the life's end of the man; until the end he thus remains subordinate to him. And again and again it is emphasized that of all this the doorkeeper seems to know nothing. But nothing striking is seen in this, for according to this opinion the doorkeeper is in an even heavier deception, which concerns his service. For at the end he speaks of the entrance and says: 'I now go and close it,' but at the beginning it says that the gate to the Law stands open as always; if it stands always open, always meaning independent of the lifespan of the man for whom it is destined, then the doorkeeper will not be able to close it either. Opinions diverge on whether with the announcement that he will close the gate the doorkeeper only gives an answer or emphasizes his duty or wants to put the man in repentance and sorrow at the last moment. But in this many agree, that he will not be able to close the gate. They even believe that at least at the end he is subordinate to the man also in his knowledge, for the latter sees the radiance that breaks from the entrance of the Law, while the doorkeeper as such probably stands with his back to the entrance and shows by no utterance that he had noticed a change." "That is well grounded," said K., who had repeated some passages of the priest's explanation half-aloud to himself. "It is well grounded and I now also believe that the doorkeeper is deceived. Thereby I have not departed from my earlier opinion, for both partly coincide. It is undecided whether the doorkeeper sees clearly or is deceived. I said the man is deceived. If the doorkeeper sees clearly, one could doubt that; if the doorkeeper is deceived, however, then his deception must necessarily transfer to the man. The doorkeeper is then indeed no deceiver, but so simple-minded that he would have to be dismissed from service at once. You must consider that the deception in which the doorkeeper finds himself harms him nothing, but the man a thousandfold." "Here you encounter a counter-opinion," said the priest. "Some say namely that the story gives no one the right to judge the doorkeeper. However he may appear to us, he is yet a servant of the Law, thus belonging to the Law, thus removed from human judgment. One may then also not believe that the doorkeeper is subordinate to the man. To be bound through his service even only to the entrance of the Law is incomparably more than to live free in the world. The man only comes to the Law, the doorkeeper is already there. He is appointed to service by the Law; to doubt his worthiness would mean to doubt the Law." "I do not agree with this opinion," said K., shaking his head, "for if one adheres to it, one must hold everything the doorkeeper says to be true. That that is impossible, you yourself have elaborately grounded." "No," said the priest, "one must not hold everything to be true, one must only hold it to be necessary." "Miserable opinion," said K. "The lie is made into the world-order."

K. said this conclusively, but it was not his final judgment. He was too tired to survey all the conclusions of the story; they were also unaccustomed trains of thought into which it led him, unreal things, better suited for discussion in the society of the court officials than for him. The simple story had become unwieldy; he wanted to shake it off, and the priest, who now showed great delicacy, tolerated it and received K.'s remark in silence, despite its certainly not agreeing with his own opinion.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”