Part 4
On the first floor the real search began. Since he could not ask about the examining commission, he invented a carpenter named Lanz — the name occurred to him because the captain, the nephew of Frau Grubach, was called that — and now wanted to inquire in all the apartments whether a carpenter Lanz lived here, so as to get the chance to look into the rooms. But it turned out that this was mostly possible without further ado, for almost all the doors stood open and the children ran in and out. They were as a rule small one-windowed rooms, in which cooking was also done. Some women held infants in their arms and worked with the free hand at the stove. Half-grown girls, apparently clad only in aprons, ran back and forth the most busily. In all the rooms the beds were still in use; there lay sick people or still-sleeping ones or folks who were stretching out there in their clothes. At the apartments whose doors were closed, K. knocked and asked whether a carpenter Lanz lived here. Mostly a woman opened, heard the question and turned into the room to someone who was rising from the bed. "The gentleman asks whether a carpenter Lanz lives here." "Carpenter Lanz?" asked the one from the bed. "Yes," said K., even though the examining commission was doubtless not here and therefore his task was finished. Many believed that K. was very eager to find the carpenter Lanz, thought long about it, named a carpenter who, however, was not called Lanz, or a name that had a very distant similarity to Lanz, or they asked neighbors or accompanied K. to a faraway door, where in their opinion such a man might possibly live as a subtenant or where someone was who could give better information than they themselves. Finally K. hardly needed to ask himself anymore, but was drawn through the floors in this way. He regretted his plan, which had at first seemed so practical to him. Before the fifth floor he resolved to give up the search, took leave of a friendly young worker who wanted to lead him further up, and went downstairs. But then the uselessness of this whole undertaking angered him again; he went back once more and knocked at the first door of the fifth floor. The first thing he saw in the small room was a large wall clock that already showed 10 o'clock. "Does a carpenter Lanz live here?" he asked. "Please," said a young woman with black shining eyes, who was just washing children's laundry in a tub, and pointed with her wet hand to the open door of the adjoining room.
K. believed he was entering an assembly. A crush of the most varied people — no one paid attention to the entrant — filled a medium-sized two-windowed room, which was narrowly surrounded at the ceiling by a gallery that was likewise completely occupied and where the people could only stand bent over and struck head and back against the ceiling. K., to whom the air was too stuffy, stepped out again and said to the young woman, who had probably misunderstood him: "I asked after a carpenter, a certain Lanz?" "Yes," said the woman, "please go in." K. would perhaps not have followed her, if the woman had not come up to him, taken the door handle and said: "After you I must close, no one may enter anymore." "Very sensible," said K., "but it is already too full now." Then, however, he went in again.
Between two men who were conversing directly by the door — one made with both far-outstretched hands the motion of counting money, the other looked sharply into his eyes — a hand grabbed at K. It was a small red-cheeked boy. "Come, come," he said. K. let himself be led; it turned out that amid the swarming confusion there was nevertheless a narrow path free, which possibly separated two parties; in favor of this also spoke that in the first rows right and left K. scarcely saw a face turned toward him, but only the backs of people who directed their speeches and movements only at people of their party. Most were dressed in black, in old holiday coats hanging long and loosely down. Only this clothing puzzled K.; otherwise he would have taken the whole for a political district assembly.
At the other end of the hall, to which K. was led, stood on a very low, likewise overcrowded podium a small table, placed crosswise, and behind it near the edge of the podium sat a small fat panting man, who was just conversing with someone standing behind him — this one had propped his elbow on the chair back and crossed his legs — amid great laughter. Now and then he threw his arm into the air, as if caricaturing someone. The boy who led K. had difficulty delivering his message. Twice he had already tried, standing on tiptoe, to say something, without being noticed by the man above. Only when one of the people up on the podium drew the boy's attention to him did the man turn to him and, bent down, heard his quiet report. Then he pulled out his watch and looked quickly at K. "You should have appeared one hour and five minutes ago," he said. K. wanted to answer something, but he had no time, for scarcely had the man spoken than a general murmuring arose in the right half of the hall. "You should have appeared one hour and five minutes ago," repeated the man now in a raised voice and also looked quickly down into the hall. Immediately the murmuring grew stronger and subsided, since the man said nothing more, only gradually. It was now much quieter in the hall than at K.'s entrance. Only the people on the gallery did not cease making their remarks. They seemed, as far as one could make out up there in the half-darkness, vapor and dust, to be more poorly dressed than those below. Some had brought cushions, which they had placed between head and ceiling so as not to chafe themselves.
K. had resolved to observe more than to speak; consequently he renounced the defense regarding his alleged lateness and said merely: "Whether I may have come too late, now I am here." An applause, again from the right half of the hall, followed. "Easily won people," thought K. and was only disturbed by the silence in the left half of the hall, which lay just behind him and from which only very isolated hand-clapping had arisen. He thought about what he could say to win all at once or, if that should not be possible, at least temporarily the others as well.
"Yes," said the man, "but I am no longer obliged to examine you now" — again the murmuring, this time ambiguous, for the man continued, waving the people off with his hand — "but I will, exceptionally, do it today still. Such a delay, however, must not repeat itself. And now step forward!" Someone sprang down from the podium, so that a place was freed for K., onto which he climbed. He stood pressed tight against the table; the crush behind him was so great that he had to resist it, if he did not want to push the table of the examining judge and perhaps the judge himself off the podium.
The examining judge, however, paid no attention to it, but sat quite comfortably in his chair and, after he had said a concluding word to the man behind him, reached for a small notebook, the only object on his table. It was like a school exercise book, old, completely misshapen from much leafing through. "So," said the examining judge, leafed through the book and turned to K. in the tone of a statement: "You are a house painter?" "No," said K., "but chief clerk of a large bank." This answer was followed in the right party by a laughter so hearty that K. had to laugh along. The people propped their hands on their knees and shook as if under heavy fits of coughing. Even some on the gallery laughed. The examining judge, who had become quite angry and was probably powerless against the people below, sought compensation from the gallery, jumped up, threatened the gallery, and his otherwise inconspicuous eyebrows crowded bushy, black and large above his eyes.
But the left half of the hall was still silent; the people stood there in rows, had their faces turned toward the podium and listened as calmly to the words exchanged above as to the noise of the other party; they even tolerated that individuals from their rows now and then proceeded jointly with the other party. The people of the left party, who moreover were less numerous, might at bottom be just as insignificant as those of the right party, but the calmness of their behavior made them appear more significant. When K. now began to speak, he was convinced he was speaking in their sense.
"Your question, Mr. Examining Judge, whether I am a house painter — rather you did not ask at all, but asserted it to my face — is characteristic of the whole manner of the proceedings conducted against me. You may object that it is not a proceeding at all; you are quite right, for it is only a proceeding if I acknowledge it as such. But I acknowledge it for the moment now, out of pity, as it were. One cannot take any other attitude than pitying, if one pays it any attention at all. I do not say that it is a disorderly proceeding, but I should like to offer you this designation for self-recognition."
K. interrupted himself and looked down into the hall. What he had said was sharp, sharper than he had intended, but nevertheless correct. It would have deserved applause here or there; yet all was silent; apparently one waited tensely for what followed; perhaps in the silence an outburst was preparing that would make an end to everything. It was disturbing that now the door at the hall end opened, the young washerwoman, who had probably finished her work, entered and despite all the caution she exercised drew some glances. Only the examining judge gave K. immediate pleasure, for he seemed to be struck at once by the words. He had hitherto listened standing, for he had been surprised by K.'s speech, while he had reared up against the gallery. Now in the pause he sat down gradually, as if it should not be noticed. Probably, to compose his expression, he took up the little book again.
"It helps nothing," K. continued, "even your little book, Mr. Examining Judge, confirms what I say." Satisfied merely to hear his calm words in the strange assembly, K. even ventured to snatch the book abruptly from the examining judge and lift it by a middle leaf with the fingertips, as if he shrank from it, so that on both sides the closely written, stained, fire-browned leaves hung down. "These are the records of the examining judge," he said and let the book fall onto the table. "Read on quietly in it, Mr. Examining Judge; before this book of guilt I am truly not afraid, even though it is inaccessible to me, for I can only touch it with two fingertips and not take it in hand." It could only be a sign of deep humiliation, or at least had to be taken as such, that the examining judge, after the little book had fallen onto the table, grabbed for it, tried to put it somewhat in order and took it up again to read in it.
The faces of the people in the first row were directed so tensely at K. that he looked down at them for a while. They were throughout older men; some were white-bearded. Perhaps they were the decisive ones who could influence the whole assembly, which also, through the humiliation of the examining judge, did not allow itself to be roused from the motionlessness into which it had sunk since K.'s speech.
"What has happened to me," K. continued, somewhat more quietly than before, and kept scanning the faces of the first row, which gave his speech a somewhat distracted expression, "what has happened to me is indeed only a single case and as such not very important, since I do not take it very hard, but it is the sign of a proceeding as is practiced against many. For these I stand here, not for myself."
He had involuntarily raised his voice. Somewhere someone clapped with raised hands and cried: "Bravo! Why not? Bravo! And again bravo!" Those in the first row now and then grasped into their beards; none turned around because of the cry. K. too attached no significance to it, but was nevertheless cheered; he now no longer held it necessary that all clap applause; it sufficed if the general public began to reflect on the matter and now and then one was won through persuasion.
"I do not want oratorical success," K. said, out of this consideration, "nor would it probably be attainable for me. The Mr. Examining Judge probably speaks much better; it belongs to his profession after all. What I want is only the public discussion of a public abuse. Hear: I was arrested about 10 days ago; I laugh at the fact of the arrest itself, but that does not belong here now. I was surprised in bed early in the morning; perhaps one had — it is not excluded according to what the examining judge said — the order to arrest some house painter who is just as innocent as I, but one chose me. The adjoining room was occupied by two coarse warders. If I had been a dangerous robber, one could not have taken better precautions. These warders were moreover demoralized rabble; they chattered my ears full, they wanted to be bribed, they wanted to coax linen and clothes from me under false pretenses, they wanted money to bring me allegedly a breakfast, after they had shamelessly eaten my own breakfast before my eyes. Not enough of that. I was led into a third room before the supervisor. It was the room of a lady whom I esteem highly, and I had to watch how this room, on my account but without my fault, was as it were polluted by the presence of the warders and the supervisor. It was not easy to remain calm. But I succeeded, and I asked the supervisor completely calmly — if he were here he would have to confirm it — why I was arrested. What did this supervisor, whom I still see before me now, sitting on the chair of the mentioned lady as a depiction of the most obtuse haughtiness, answer? Gentlemen, he answered in essence nothing; perhaps he really knew nothing; he had arrested me and was satisfied with that. He has even done more, and brought into the room of that lady three low employees of my bank, who occupied themselves with feeling over and disarranging photographs, the property of the lady. The presence of these employees naturally had still another purpose: they were to spread, just as my landlady and her maid, the news of my arrest, damage my public reputation and especially shake my position at the bank. Now none of that, not in the least, has succeeded; even my landlady, a quite simple person — I want to name her here in an honoring sense, she is called Frau Grubach — even Frau Grubach was sensible enough to see that such an arrest means no more than an attack that insufficiently supervised boys carry out in the street. I repeat, the whole has caused me only inconveniences and temporary annoyance, but could it not also have had worse consequences?"
When K. here broke off and looked at the silent examining judge, he believed to notice that the latter was just giving someone in the crowd a sign with a glance. K. smiled and said: "Just now, here beside me, the Mr. Examining Judge is giving one of you a secret sign. So there are people among you who are directed from up here. I do not know whether the sign was meant to cause hissing or applause, and by revealing the matter prematurely I deliberately renounce learning the meaning of the sign. It is completely indifferent to me, and I authorize the Mr. Examining Judge publicly to command his paid employees down there, instead of with secret signs, aloud with words, by saying once: now hiss, and the next time: now clap."
In embarrassment or impatience the examining judge shifted back and forth on his chair. The man behind him, with whom he had already spoken earlier, bent down to him again, whether to encourage him generally or to give him a particular counsel. Below the people conversed quietly but lively. The two parties, which earlier had seemed to hold such opposite opinions, mingled; individual people pointed with the finger at K., others at the examining judge. The nebulous vapor in the room was extremely annoying; it even prevented a closer observation of those standing farther off. Particularly for the gallery visitors it had to be disturbing; they were forced, indeed under shy sidelong glances at the examining judge, to put quiet questions to the assembly participants in order to inform themselves more closely. The answers were given just as quietly in the shelter of raised hands.
"I am soon finished," said K. and, since no bell was present, struck with his fist on the table. In fright at this the heads of the examining judge and his counselor instantly parted: "The whole matter stands far from me, therefore I judge it calmly, and you can, provided you care about this alleged court, have great advantage from it if you listen to me. Your mutual discussions of what I present, I ask you to postpone for later, for I have no time and will soon go away."
Immediately it was silent; so much did K. already dominate the assembly. One no longer cried confusedly as at the beginning; one did not even clap applause anymore, but one seemed already convinced or on the nearest way to it.
"There is no doubt," said K. very quietly, for the tense listening of the whole assembly pleased him; in this silence arose a rustling that was more provocative than the most enraptured applause, "there is no doubt that behind all utterances of this court, in my case therefore behind the arrest and today's examination, there is a great organization. An organization that employs not only bribable warders, silly supervisors and examining judges who at best are modest, but that further maintains, without doubt, a judiciary of high and highest rank, with the countless unavoidable retinue of servants, clerks, gendarmes and other auxiliaries, perhaps even executioners, I do not shrink from the word. And the sense of this great organization, gentlemen? It consists in innocent persons being arrested and against them a senseless and mostly, as in my case, resultless proceeding being initiated. How could the worst corruption of the officialdom be concealed given this senselessness of the whole? That is impossible; the highest judge himself would not bring that about even for himself. Therefore the warders seek to steal the clothes from the arrested; therefore supervisors break into strange dwellings; therefore the innocent are to be debased before whole assemblies rather than examined. The warders have spoken only of depots into which one brings the property of the arrested; I wanted once to see these depot places where the hard-earned wealth of the arrested rots, insofar as it is not stolen by thieving depot officials."
K. was interrupted by a screeching from the hall end; he shaded his eyes to be able to look, for the dull daylight made the vapor whitish and dazzled. It concerned the washerwoman, whom K. had recognized immediately at her entrance as a substantial disturbance. Whether she was guilty now or not one could not recognize. K. saw only that a man had pulled her into a corner by the door and there pressed her to him. But it was not she who screeched, but the man; he had stretched his mouth wide and looked at the ceiling. A small circle had formed around the two; the gallery visitors nearby seemed delighted that the seriousness K. had introduced into the assembly was interrupted in this way. K. wanted under the first impression to run there at once; also he thought everyone would be interested in restoring order there and at least showing the pair out of the hall, but the first rows before him remained quite firm, no one stirred and no one let K. through. On the contrary, one hindered him, and some hand — he had no time to turn around — grabbed him from behind by the collar; old men held their arm in front; K. no longer really thought of the pair; it seemed to him as if his freedom were being restricted, as if they were seriously making the arrest, and he sprang recklessly down from the podium. Now he stood eye to eye with the crush. Had he not judged the people rightly? Had he credited his speech with too much effect? Had they dissembled as long as he spoke, and now, as he came to the conclusions, had enough of the pretense? What faces all around him! Small black eyes darted back and forth; the cheeks hung down like those of drunkards; the long beards were stiff and sparse, and if one grasped into them it was as if one only formed claws, not as if one grasped at beards. But beneath the beards — and that was the actual discovery K. made — there shimmered at the coat collar badges of various size and color. All had these badges, as far as one could see. All belonged together, the apparent parties right and left, and as he suddenly turned around, he saw the same badges at the collar of the examining judge, who, hands in lap, looked down calmly. "So," cried K. and threw his arms up; the sudden realization wanted space, "you are all officials, as I see, you are the corrupt gang against whom I spoke; you have crowded here as listeners and spies, have apparently formed parties, and one has applauded to test me; you wanted to learn how one seduces the innocent. Well, you have been quite useless here, I hope; either you have talked among yourselves about someone expecting from you the defense of innocence, or else — let me go or I strike," cried K. to a trembling old man who had pushed particularly close to him — "or else you have really learned something. And with that I wish you luck in your trade." He quickly took his hat, which lay at the edge of the table, and pressed himself out amid general silence, certainly the silence of complete surprise, to the exit. The examining judge, however, seemed to have been even faster than K., for he awaited him at the door. "One moment," he said. K. stood still but did not look at the examining judge, rather at the door, whose handle he had already grasped. "I only wanted to draw your attention," said the examining judge, "to the fact that you have today — it probably has not yet come to your consciousness — deprived yourself of the advantage that an examination means for the arrested in any case." K. laughed at the door. "You rags, I give you all examinations," he cried, opened the door and hurried down the stairs. Behind him arose the noise of the assembly come alive again, which began to discuss the incidents in the manner of students.
THIRD CHAPTER
IN THE EMPTY COURTROOM · THE STUDENT · THE OFFICES
“Stories of the world, in your language.”