Part 8

One of the following evenings, as K. was passing through the corridor that separated his office from the main staircase — this time he was going home almost last, only two clerks were still working in the expedition by the dim light of an incandescent lamp — he heard sighs coming from behind a door behind which he had always supposed there was only a lumber room, without ever having seen it himself. He stopped in astonishment and listened again to make sure he was not mistaken — for a while it was quiet, but then there were sighs again. At first he wanted to fetch one of the clerks; one might need a witness, but then such uncontrollable curiosity seized him that he practically tore the door open. It was, as he had rightly supposed, a lumber room. Useless old printed forms, overturned empty earthenware ink bottles lay behind the threshold. But in the room itself stood three men, bent over in the low space. A candle fixed to a shelf gave them light. "What are you doing here?" asked K., hurrying out the words in his agitation, but not loudly. The one man, who evidently dominated the others and first drew the gaze upon himself, was clad in a kind of dark leather outfit that left the neck bare down to the chest and the whole arms uncovered. He did not answer. But the two others cried: "Sir! We are to be beaten because you complained about us to the examining magistrate." And only now did K. recognize that they were really the warders Franz and Willem, and that the third held a rod in his hand to beat them with. "Well," said K. and stared at them, "I did not complain, I only said what happened in my lodgings. And you certainly did not behave impeccably." "Sir," said Willem, while Franz behind him seemed to seek protection from the third, "if you knew how badly we are paid, you would judge us more kindly. I have a family to feed and Franz here wanted to marry; one tries to enrich oneself as best one can, by mere work it does not succeed, not even by the most strenuous. Your fine linen tempted me; of course it is forbidden to the warders to act so, it was wrong, but it is tradition that the linen belongs to the warders, it has always been so, believe me; it is also understandable, what do such things matter to one who is unfortunate enough to be arrested. If he then brings it publicly to light, the punishment must follow." "What you say now I did not know, I by no means demanded your punishment, it was a matter of principle with me." "Franz," Willem turned to the other warder, "did I not tell you the gentleman had not demanded our punishment. Now you hear that he did not even know we had to be punished." "Do not let yourself be moved by such talk," said the third to K., "the punishment is as just as it is unavoidable." "Do not listen to him," said Willem and broke off only to quickly raise to his mouth the hand over which he had received a rod-stroke, "we are only punished because you reported us. Otherwise nothing would have happened to us, even if it had been found out what we did. Can that be called justice? We two, but especially I, had proved ourselves as warders over a long time — you yourself must admit that we, seen from the standpoint of the authority, kept good watch — we had prospects of advancing and would certainly soon have become beaters like this one, who simply had the luck of being reported by no one, for such a report really occurs very seldom. And now, sir, all is lost, our career ended, we will have to do even more subordinate work than the watch service, and besides we now get these terribly painful beatings." "Can the rod cause such pain," asked K. and examined the rod which the beater swung before him. "We will have to undress completely," said Willem. "Ah so," said K. and looked closely at the beater; he was sunburnt like a sailor and had a wild fresh face. "Is there no possibility of sparing these two the beating," he asked him. "No," said the beater and shook his head smiling. "Undress," he ordered the warders. And to K. he said: "You must not believe everything they say, they have become a little feeble-minded from fear of the beating. What this one" — he pointed at Willem — "told about his possible career is downright ridiculous. Look how fat he is — the first rod-strokes will be lost in the fat entirely. — Do you know how he got so fat? He has the habit of eating up the breakfast of all arrested persons. Did he not also eat up your breakfast? Well, I said so. But a man with such a belly can never in the world become a beater, that is quite out of the question." "There are such beaters," asserted Willem, who was just loosening his belt. "No," said the beater and stroked him with the rod across the neck so that he flinched, "you shall not listen but undress." "I would reward you well if you let them go," said K. and drew, without looking at the beater again — such business is best transacted on both sides with downcast eyes — his wallet forth. "You will then want to report me too," said the beater, "and procure me a beating as well. No, no!" "Be reasonable," said K., "if I had wanted these two to be punished, would I now want to buy them free? I could simply slam the door here, want to see and hear nothing more and go home; but I am not doing that, rather it matters to me seriously to free them; had I suspected that they were to be punished or could even be punished, I would never have named their names. For I do not consider them guilty at all, guilty is the organization, guilty are the high officials." "So it is," cried the warders and immediately got a stroke over their already bared backs. "If you had a high judge under your rod here," said K. and, while speaking, pressed down the rod which was already rising again, "I would truly not hinder you from striking, on the contrary, I would give you money so that you might strengthen yourself for the good cause." "What you say sounds credible," said the beater, "but I am not to be bribed. I am hired to beat, so I beat." The warder Franz, who perhaps in expectation of a good outcome of K.'s intervention had hitherto been rather reserved, now stepped forward clad only in his trousers to the door, hung on K.'s arm kneeling and whispered: "If you cannot secure leniency for both of us, then at least try to free me. Willem is older than me, less sensitive in every respect, also he already once a few years ago received a light beating, but I am not yet dishonored and was led to my conduct only by Willem, who in good and bad is my teacher. Down before the bank my poor bride waits for the outcome, I am so miserably ashamed." He dried with K.'s coat his face, which was quite overrun with tears. "I am not waiting any longer," said the beater, seized the rod with both hands and struck at Franz, while Willem crouched in a corner and watched secretly, not daring a turn of the head. Then arose the cry that Franz uttered, undivided and unchanging, it seemed to come not from a human being but from a tortured instrument, the whole corridor moaned from it, the whole house must hear it. "Do not cry," cried K., he could not restrain himself, and while he looked tensely in the direction from which the clerks must come, he pushed Franz, not hard but still hard enough that the unconscious man fell and in convulsion searched the floor with his hands; but he did not escape the blows, the rod found him even on the ground; while he writhed under it, its tip swung regularly up and down. And already in the distance appeared a clerk and a few steps behind him a second. K. had quickly slammed the door, had stepped to a nearby courtyard window and opened it. The crying had completely ceased. So that the clerks should not come near, he called: "It is I." "Good evening, Mr. Procurist," it called back. "Has something happened?" "No, no," answered K. "only a dog in the yard is crying out." As the clerks nevertheless did not move, he added: "You can stay at your work." So as not to have to enter into conversation with the clerks, he leaned out of the window. When after a while he looked again into the corridor, they were already gone. But K. now remained at the window, he did not dare go into the lumber room and did not want to go home either. It was a small square yard he looked down into, all around were office rooms, all windows were already dark now, only the topmost caught a reflection of the moon. K. strained his eyes to penetrate the darkness of a yard corner in which some handcarts were jammed together. It tormented him that he had not succeeded in preventing the beating, but it was not his fault that it had not succeeded; had Franz not cried out — certainly, it must have hurt very much, but in a decisive moment one must control oneself — had he not cried out, K. would, at least very probably, have found still a means to persuade the beater. If the whole lowest officialdom was riffraff, why should precisely the beater, who had the most inhuman office, have made an exception. K. had also observed well how his eyes had lit up at the sight of the banknote, he had evidently only made serious of the beating in order to raise the bribe sum a little more. And K. would not have spared, it truly mattered to him to free the warders; if he had already begun to combat the corruption of this judicial system, it was self-evident that he also intervened from this side. But in the moment when Franz began to cry out, naturally all was over. K. could not allow that the clerks and perhaps still all possible people came and surprised him in negotiations with the society in the lumber room. No one could really demand such a sacrifice of K. If he had intended to do that, it would almost have been simpler for K. to have undressed himself and offered himself to the beater as substitute for the warders. Incidentally, the beater would certainly not have accepted this representation, since he would thereby, without gaining an advantage, still have gravely violated his duty, and probably violated it doubly, for K. must surely, as long as he stood in the proceedings, be inviolable for all employees of the court. Admittedly, special regulations could also apply here. In any case K. could have done nothing other than slam the door, although thereby even now not every danger was removed for K. That he had at last given Franz a push was regrettable and only excusable by his agitation.

In the distance he heard the steps of the clerks; so as not to be conspicuous to them, he closed the window and went in the direction of the main staircase. At the door to the lumber room he remained a little and listened. It was quite still. The man could have beaten the warders to death, they were wholly given into his power. K. had already stretched his hand toward the latch, but drew it back again. Help no one could he any longer and the clerks must come immediately; but he pledged himself to still raise the matter and to punish, as far as in his power, the truly guilty, the high officials, none of whom had yet dared show himself to him. As he went down the front stairs of the bank, he carefully observed all passers-by, but even in the wider vicinity no girl was to be seen who might have waited for someone. Franz's remark that his bride waited for him proved to be a pardonable lie, which had only had the purpose of arousing greater pity.

Also on the next day the warders would not leave K.'s mind; he was distracted at work and had to stay a little longer in the office than the day before to get through it. As on the way home he again passed the lumber room, he opened it out of habit. Before what he beheld instead of the expected darkness, he could not collect himself. All was unchanged, just as he had found it on opening the door the evening before. The printed forms and ink bottles right behind the threshold, the beater with the rod, the still fully dressed warders, the candle on the shelf and the warders began to complain and cried: Sir! Immediately K. slammed the door and beat with his fists against it, as if it were then more firmly closed. Almost weeping he ran to the clerks, who worked quietly at the copying machines and stopped in their work in astonishment. "Clear out the lumber room at last," he cried. "We are sinking in dirt." The clerks were ready to do it the next day, K. nodded, now late in the evening he could not force them to the work, as he had actually intended. He sat down a little, to keep the clerks near him a while, threw some copies into disorder, whereby he believed to give the appearance that he was checking them, and then went, since he saw that the clerks would not dare go away at the same time as he, tired and thoughtless home.

SIXTH CHAPTER

THE UNCLE · LENI

One afternoon — K. was just very busy before the mail closing — between two clerks who were carrying in documents, K.'s uncle Karl, a small landed proprietor from the country, pressed into the room. K. was less frightened at the sight than he had already been longer ago at the notion of the uncle's coming. The uncle had to come, that had been fixed with K. for about a month. Already then he had thought he saw him, how he, a little bent, the crushed panama hat in his left hand, stretched out his right to him from afar and reached it over the desk with reckless haste, overturning everything in his way. The uncle was always in a hurry, for he was pursued by the unfortunate thought that on his always only one-day stay in the capital he must be able to settle everything he had planned, and might besides let pass no occasionally offered conversation or business or pleasure. Thereby K., to whom he was especially obligated as his former guardian, had to assist him in all possible ways and moreover let him stay overnight with him. "The specter from the country" he used to call him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”