Part 5

K. waited from day to day during the following week for a renewed summons; he could not believe that they had taken his renunciation of the hearing literally, and when the expected summons had still not come by Sunday evening, he assumed that he had been tacitly summoned again to the same house at the same time. He therefore went there again on Sunday, this time going straight up stairs and along corridors; a few people who remembered him greeted him at their doors, but he no longer had to ask anyone and soon came to the right door. At his knock the door was opened at once, and without looking around further at the familiar woman who remained standing by the door, he wanted to go straight into the adjoining room. "There is no session today," said the woman. "Why should there be no session?" he asked, not wanting to believe it. But the woman convinced him by opening the door of the adjoining room. It was really empty and in its emptiness looked even more wretched than on the last Sunday. On the table, which stood unchanged on the podium, lay a few books. "May I look at the books," asked K., not out of any particular curiosity, but only so as not to have been here entirely uselessly. "No," said the woman and closed the door again, "that is not allowed. The books belong to the examining magistrate." "I see," said K. and nodded, "the books are probably law books and it is part of the nature of this judicial system that one is condemned not only innocent but also ignorant." "It will be so," said the woman, who had not quite understood him. "Well then, I'll go again," said K. "Shall I tell the examining magistrate something?" asked the woman. "You know him?" asked K. "Of course," said the woman, "my husband is after all a court usher." Only now did K. notice that the room, in which last time only a washtub had stood, now formed a fully furnished sitting room. The woman noticed his astonishment and said: "Yes, we have free lodging here, but on session days we must clear the room. My husband's position has many disadvantages." "I am not so much astonished at the room," said K. and looked at her angrily, "as rather at the fact that you are married." "Are you perhaps alluding to the incident in the last session, by which I disturbed your speech," asked the woman. "Naturally," said K., "today it is already past and almost forgotten, but at the time it made me downright furious. And now you say yourself that you are a married woman." "It was not to your disadvantage that your speech was interrupted. Afterwards one judged it very unfavorably." "Maybe," said K., diverting the subject, "but that does not excuse you." "I am excused before all who know me," said the woman, "the one who embraced me then has been pursuing me for a long time. I may not generally be seductive, but for him I am. There is no protection against this, even my husband has by now resigned himself to it; if he wants to keep his position he must tolerate it, for that man is a student and will presumably come to greater power. He is constantly after me, just before you came he went away." "It fits with everything else," said K., "it does not surprise me." "You presumably want to improve some things here," asked the woman slowly and probing, as if saying something that was dangerous both for her and for K. "I concluded that from your speech, which personally pleased me very much. To be sure, I only heard a part, I missed the beginning and during the end I lay on the floor with the student. — It is so disgusting here," she said after a pause and took K.'s hand. "Do you believe that you will succeed in achieving an improvement?" K. smiled and turned his hand a little in her soft hands. "Actually," he said, "I am not employed to achieve improvements here, as you put it, and if you were to tell the examining magistrate, for example, you would be laughed at or punished. In fact, I would certainly not have meddled in these affairs of my own free will, and the need for improvement of this judicial system would never have disturbed my sleep. But I have been forced to intervene here, by the fact that I was allegedly arrested — I am arrested, you see — and that for my own sake. But if I can thereby also be of some use to you, I shall of course do so very gladly. Not merely out of charity, but also because you too can help me." "How could I do that," asked the woman. "By showing me, for example, the books there on the table." "But certainly," cried the woman and drew him hurriedly after her. They were old worn books, one cover was almost broken in the middle, the pieces held together only by fibers. "How dirty everything is here," said K. shaking his head, and the woman wiped with her apron, before K. could reach for the books, at least superficially the dust away. K. opened the first book, an indecent picture appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on the couch, the base intention of the draftsman was clearly recognizable, but his clumsiness had been so great that in the end only a man and a woman were to be seen, who stood out all too physically from the picture, sat excessively upright and, owing to false perspective, turned to each other only with difficulty. K. did not turn further, but only opened the title page of the second book; it was a novel with the title: "The Sorrows which Grete had to suffer from her husband Hans." "These are the law books that are studied here," said K., "by such people am I to be judged." "I will help you," said the woman. "Will you?" "Could you really do that, without bringing yourself into danger? You said earlier, after all, that your husband is very dependent on superiors." "Nevertheless I want to help you," said the woman, "come, we must discuss it. Do not speak further of my danger, I fear danger only where I want to fear it. Come." She pointed to the podium and asked him to sit with her on the step. "You have beautiful dark eyes," she said, after they had sat down and looked up into K.'s face, "they tell me I too have beautiful eyes, but yours are much more beautiful. Incidentally, they struck me right away then, when you first entered here. They were also the reason why I later went here into the assembly room, which I otherwise never do and which is even forbidden me to a certain extent." 'So that is all,' thought K., 'she offers herself to me, she is corrupted like everyone here around, she is sick of the court officials, which is understandable, and therefore greets any chance stranger with a compliment about his eyes.' And K. silently stood up, as if he had spoken his thoughts aloud and thereby explained his behavior to the woman. "I do not believe that you could help me," he said, "to really help me, one would have to have relations with high officials. But you certainly know only the low employees who loiter here in masses. These you certainly know very well and could certainly accomplish much with them, I do not doubt that, but the greatest that one could accomplish with them would be completely irrelevant for the final outcome of the trial. But you would thereby have made yourself some enemies. I do not want that. Continue your previous relation to these people, for it seems to me that it is indispensable to you. I say that not without regret, for, to return your compliment in some way, you please me too, particularly when you look at me so sadly as now, for which incidentally there is no reason at all on your part. You belong to the society that I must fight, but are very comfortable in it, you even love the student, and if you do not love him, you at least prefer him to your husband. That could easily be recognized from your words." "No," she cried, remained sitting and only grasped K.'s hand, which he did not withdraw quickly enough. "You must not go now, you must not go away with a false judgment of me. Could you really bring it about to go away now? Am I really so worthless that you will not even do me the favor of staying here a little while longer?" "You misunderstand me," said K. and sat down, "if you really care that I stay here, I gladly stay, I have time after all, I came in the expectation that there would be a hearing today. With what I said earlier, I only wanted to ask you to undertake nothing in my trial for me. But that too must not offend you, if you consider that the outcome of the trial matters nothing to me and that I shall only laugh at a conviction. Provided that it comes to an actual conclusion of the trial at all, which I very much doubt. I rather believe that the proceedings have already been broken off, or will be broken off in the near future, owing to laziness or forgetfulness or perhaps even fear of the officials. Possible also is that, in hope of some greater bribe, they will apparently continue the trial, quite vainly, as I can say already today, for I bribe no one. It would always be a favor you could do me, if you were to inform the examining magistrate or anyone else who likes to spread important news, that I will never be moved to a bribe by any tricks, of which the gentlemen are probably rich. It would be quite hopeless, you can tell them that openly. Incidentally, they may already have noticed it themselves and even if this should not be so, it does not matter so much to me that they learn it now. It would after all only save the gentlemen some work, though also spare me some unpleasantness, which I gladly take upon myself, if I know that each is at the same time a blow for the others. And that it will be so, for that I will take care. Do you actually know the examining magistrate?" "Of course," said the woman, "I even thought of him first, when I offered you help. I did not know that he is only a low official, but since you say so, it is probably correct. Nevertheless I believe that the report which he sends upward has some influence. And he writes so many reports. You say that the officials are lazy, certainly not all, particularly not this examining magistrate, he writes very much. Last Sunday for example the session lasted until toward evening. All people went away, but the examining magistrate remained in the hall, I had to bring him a lamp, I had only a small kitchen lamp, but he was satisfied with it and began to write at once. Meanwhile my husband had also come, who on that Sunday happened to have leave, we fetched the furniture, set up our room again, then neighbors came, we conversed by a candle, in short, we forgot the examining magistrate and went to sleep. Suddenly in the night, it must already have been deep in the night, I wake up, beside the bed stands the examining magistrate and shades the lamp with his hand, so that no light falls on my husband, it was unnecessary caution, my husband has such a sleep that even the light would not have woken him. I was so frightened that I almost cried out, but the examining magistrate was very friendly, admonished me to caution, whispered to me that he had been writing until now, that he was now bringing me back the lamp and that he would never forget the sight of how he had found me sleeping. With all that I only wanted to tell you that the examining magistrate actually writes many reports, particularly about you, for your examination was certainly one of the main subjects of the two-day session. Such long reports cannot after all be quite meaningless. Besides, you can also see from the incident that the examining magistrate courts me and that I, precisely now in the first period, he must have only just noticed me, can have great influence on him. That he cares much for me, for that I now have other proofs too. He sent me yesterday through the student, in whom he has much confidence and who is his collaborator, silk stockings as a gift, allegedly for my clearing up the session room, but that is only a pretext, for this work is after all only my duty and for it my husband is paid. They are beautiful stockings, look — she stretched out her legs, pulled her skirts up to the knee and looked at the stockings herself — they are beautiful stockings, but actually too fine and not suitable for me."

Suddenly she broke off, laid her hand on K.'s hand, as if to calm him and whispered: "Quiet, Bertold is watching us." K. slowly raised his gaze. In the door of the session room stood a young man, he was small, had not quite straight legs and sought to give himself dignity through a short sparse reddish full beard, in which he continually moved his fingers. K. looked at him curiously, he was after all the first student of the unknown jurisprudence whom he met, so to speak, humanly, a man who would probably also once attain to higher official positions. The student, however, seemed to care nothing about K., he only beckoned with a finger, which he drew for a moment from his beard, to the woman and went to the window, the woman bent to K. and whispered: "Do not be angry with me, I beg you very much, do not think badly of me either, I must go to him now, to this loathsome person, just look at his crooked legs. But I'll come right back and then I'll go with you, if you take me, I'll go wherever you want, you can do with me what you want, I shall be happy if I am away from here for as long a time as possible, preferably forever though." She still stroked K.'s hand, sprang up and ran to the window. Involuntarily K. still grasped after her hand into emptiness. The woman really tempted him, he found, despite all reflection, no valid reason why he should not yield to the temptation. The fleeting objection that the woman would ensnare him for the court he warded off without trouble. In what way could she ensnare him? Did he not remain always so free that he could shatter the whole court, at least as far as it concerned him, at once? Could he not have this small confidence in himself? And her offer of help sounded sincere and was perhaps not worthless. And there was perhaps no better revenge on the examining magistrate and his following than that he took this woman from them and took her to himself. It could then happen that the examining magistrate, after laborious work on lying reports about K. in late night, would find the woman's bed empty. And empty because she belonged to K., because this woman at the window, this voluptuous supple warm body in the dark dress of coarse heavy stuff belonged entirely only to K.

After he had in this way removed the scruples against the woman, the soft whispering at the window became too long for him, he knocked with his knuckles on the podium and then also with his fist. The student looked briefly over the woman's shoulder toward K., but let himself not be disturbed, indeed pressed himself even closer to the woman and embraced her. She lowered her head deeply, as if listening attentively to him, he kissed her, as she bent down, loudly on the neck, without essentially interrupting his speech. K. saw in that the tyranny confirmed which the student, according to the woman's complaints, exercised over her, stood up and walked up and down the room. He considered, with side glances at the student, how he could most quickly get rid of him, and it was therefore not unwelcome to him when the student, evidently disturbed by K.'s walking about, which had already at times degenerated into a tramping, remarked: "If you are impatient, you can go. You could have gone earlier too, no one would have missed you. Yes, you should even have gone, namely already at my entrance, and namely with all speed." There might break out in this remark all possible rage, at any rate there lay in it also the haughtiness of the future court official, who spoke to an undesirable accused. K. remained standing quite close to him and said smiling: "I am impatient, that is correct, but this impatience will most easily be removed by your leaving us. If you perhaps came here to study — I heard that you are a student — then I will gladly make room for you and go away with the woman. You will incidentally still have to study much, before you become a judge. I do not yet know your judicial system very exactly, but assume that it is not done with coarse speeches alone, which you indeed already know how to make impudently well." "One should not have let him run about so freely," said the student, as if he wanted to give the woman an explanation for K.'s insulting speech, "it was a mistake. I told the examining magistrate. One should have kept him in his room at least between the hearings. The examining magistrate is sometimes incomprehensible." "Useless talk," said K. and stretched out his hand toward the woman, "come." "Oh so," said the student, "no, no, you won't get her," and with a strength one would not have credited him with, he lifted her onto one arm, and ran with bent back, looking up tenderly at her, to the door. A certain fear of K. was not to be denied therein, nevertheless he dared to provoke K. further, by stroking and pressing the woman's arm with his free hand. K. ran a few steps beside him, ready to seize him and, if need be, to throttle him, then said the woman: "It helps nothing, the examining magistrate has me fetched, I may not go with you, this little monster," she herewith passed her hand over the student's face, "this little monster will not let me." "And you do not want to be freed," cried K. and laid his hand on the student's shoulder, who snapped at it with his teeth. "No," cried the woman and warded K. off with both hands, "no, no, only not that, what are you thinking of! That would be my ruin. Leave him, oh please, leave him. He is only carrying out the order of the examining magistrate and is carrying me to him." "Then let him run and you I never want to see again," said K. furious with disappointment and gave the student a push in the back, so that he stumbled briefly, only to spring all the higher with his load immediately thereafter, out of pleasure that he had not fallen. K. walked slowly after them, he saw that this was the first undeniable defeat that he had suffered from these people. It was of course no reason to be afraid on that account, he suffered the defeat only because he sought the fight. If he stayed at home and led his accustomed life, he was a thousandfold superior to each of these people and could remove any of them from his path with a kick. And he imagined the most ridiculous scene that there would be, for example, if this pitiful student, this inflated child, this crooked beard-wearer knelt before Elsa's bed and begged for mercy with folded hands. K. liked this notion so much that he resolved, if only some opportunity offered, to take the student along to Elsa once.

Out of curiosity K. hurried still to the door, he wanted to see where the woman was carried, the student would surely not carry her on his arm through the streets. It turned out that the way was much shorter. Directly opposite the apartment door led a narrow wooden staircase probably to the attic, it made a turn, so that one did not see its end. Up this staircase the student carried the woman, already very slowly and groaning, for he was weakened by the previous running. The woman greeted with her hand down to K., and sought by shrugging her shoulders up and down to show that she was innocent of the abduction, but there lay not much regret in this movement. K. looked at her expressionlessly, like a stranger, he wanted to betray neither that he was disappointed, nor that he could easily overcome the disappointment.

The two had already disappeared, but K. still stood in the door. He had to assume that the woman had not only deceived him, but also lied with the statement that she was carried to the examining magistrate. The examining magistrate would surely not sit on the attic and wait. The wooden staircase explained nothing, however long one looked at it. Then K. noticed a small note beside the ascent, went over and read in a childish unpracticed handwriting: "Ascent to the court offices." Here in the attic of this tenement house were then the court offices? That was no institution capable of inspiring much respect and it was reassuring for an accused to imagine how little money this court had at its disposal, if it placed its offices there where the tenants, who themselves already belonged to the poorest, threw their useless junk. Admittedly it was not excluded that one had enough money, but that the officialdom squandered it on themselves, before it was used for court purposes. That was, according to K.'s previous experiences, even very probable, only then such a degeneration of the court was for an accused humiliating, but in essence still more reassuring than the poverty of the court would have been. Now it was also comprehensible to K. that at the first hearing one was ashamed to summon the accused to the attic and preferred to molest him in his apartment. In what position did K. stand, after all, opposite the judge who sat on the attic, while he himself in the bank had a large room with an anteroom and could look down through a huge windowpane onto the busy town square. To be sure, he had no incidental income from bribes or embezzlements and could not have a woman carried into the office on the usher's arm either. But K. wanted to renounce that, at least in this life, gladly.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”