The Castle

Introductory Note

To the First American Edition

Franz Kafka’s name, so far as I can discover, is almost unknown to English readers. As he is considered by several of the best German critics to have been perhaps the most interesting writer of his generation, and as he is in some ways a strange and disconcerting genius, it has been suggested that a short introductory note should be provided for this book, the first of his to be translated into English.

Kafka died in 1924 of consumption at the early age of forty-one. During his lifetime he published only a few volumes of short stories and novelettes, all of them characterised by extreme perfection of form, and most of them wrung out of him by the persuasion of his lifelong friend, Herr Max Brod, the well-known novelist. Before he died he destroyed a great number of the manuscripts he had been engaged on, but he left, among other things, including a number of aphorisms on religion, three long unfinished novels, America, The Trial and The Castle. He left explicit instructions as well, however, that these, along with all his other papers, should be burnt. As his executor, Herr Brod was in a very difficult position. In a note appended to The Trial he has given in full Kafka’s dying instructions, and set out with the utmost candour his reasons for not following them. These reasons are entirely honourable, and his decision to publish the three novels has been approved by every responsible critic in the German-speaking countries. The novels themselves, however, provide the best data for judging the wisdom of a choice so difficult; for they are the most important of Kafka’s writings, and two of them are masterpieces of a unique kind.

Herr Brod’s courtesy has provided me with a few particulars about Kafka’s life. He was born in Prague in 1883 of well-to-do Jewish parents, studied law at the university there, and after receiving his doctorate took up a post in an accident insurance office. After a love affair, which ended disastrously, he fell ill, symptoms of consumption appeared, and for some time he lived in sanatoriums, in the Tyrol and the Carpathians, but finally left them for lodgings in a village in the Erzgebirge near Karksbad, which was to become the original of the village in the present book. Having partially regained his health, he went to live in the suburb of Berlin with a young girl who seems to have made him happy. Unfortunately the years of inflation came, food was scarce and bad, and he finally succumbed and was sent to a sanatorium near Vienna, where he died. Those last years before the collapse were the happiest of his life. The three unfinished novels which he left are an imaginative record of an earlier phase.

Of these novels two, The Trial and The Castle, are in a sense complementary, as Herr Brod points out at the end of this book. Both may be best defined perhaps as metaphysical or theological novels. Their subject-matter, in other words, is not the life and manners of any locality or any country; it is rather human life wherever it is touched by the powers which all religions have acknowledged, by divine law and divine grace. Perhaps the best way to approach The Castle is to regard it as a sort of modern Pilgrim’s Progress, with the reservation, however, that the “progress” of the pilgrim here will remain in question all the time, and will be itself the chief, the essential problem. The Castle is, like The Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious allegory; the desire of the hero in both cases to work out his salvation; and to do so (in both cases again) it is necessary that certain moves should be gone through, and gone through without a single hitch. But there the resemblance ends. For Christian knows from the beginning what the necessary moves are, and K., the hero of The Castle, has to discover every one of them for himself, and has no final assurance that even then he has discovered the right ones. Thus while Bunyan’s hero has a clear goal before his eyes, and a well-beaten if somewhat difficult road to it, the hero of this book has literally almost nothing. Kafka does agree with Bunyan in two things: that the goal and the road indubitably exist, and that the necessity to find them is urgent. His hero’s journey, however, is a much more difficult business; for people’s reports, ancient legends, one’s own intuitions, even the road signs, may all be equally untrustworthy. If anyone wanted to estimate how immensely more difficult it is for a religious genius to see his way in an age of scepticism than in an age of faith, a comparison of The Pilgrim’s Progress with The Castle might give him a fair measure of it. Yet hardly a fair measure, perhaps. For Bunyan’s mind was primitive compared with the best minds of his age, and Kafka’s is more subtly sceptical than the most sceptical of our own. Its scepticism, however, is grounded on a final faith, and this is what must make his novels appear paradoxical, perhaps even incomprehensible, to some contemporary readers. His scepticism is not an attitude or a habit; it is a weapon for testing his faith and his doubt alike, and for discarding from them what is inessential.

Accordingly in the present book and The Trial the postulates he begins with are the barest possible; they are roughly those: that there is a right way of life, and that the discovery of it depends on one’s attitude to powers which are almost unknown. What he sets out to do is to find out something about those powers, and the astonishing thing is that he appears to succeed. While following the adventures of his heroes we seem to be discovering—almost without being fully aware of it—various things about those entities which we had never divined before, and could never perhaps have divined by ourselves. We are led in through circle after circle of a newly found spiritual domain, where everything is strange and yet real, and where we recognise objects without being able to give them a name. The virtue of a good allegory is that it expresses in its own created forms something more exact than any interpretation of it could. The Pilgrim’s Progress did this in its very circumscribed way; it is more exact in detail than any theoretical exposition of it could be; but indeed its interpretation, a banally simplified theological system, existed full-blown before it. Having admitted this, one may see better the extreme difficulty of Kafka’s attempt. For his allegory is not a mere recapitulation or recreation; it does not run on lines already laid down; it is a pushing forward of the mind into unknown places; and so the things he describes seem to be actual new creations which had never existed before. They are like palpable additions to the intellectual world, and ones which cannot be comprehended at a single glance, for there is meaning behind meaning, form behind form, in them all.

I have indicated less than a tithe of the things which may be found in this book and in The Trial, and that is all that I can do here, for Kafka’s writings have an almost endless wealth of meaning. His superb gifts as a storyteller, and his genius for construction, hardly need to be pointed out; it is obvious, however, that without them he would have been unable to introduce us to his strange world. In a recent issue of the Literarische Welt Herr Willy Haas remarks very finely of him that he has a tremendous power of deducing the real from the real, of starting from something concrete and sinking his thought into something which seems still more concrete. This is his method, and in the present novel with its consummate construction, few of those links between the concrete and the more concrete are left out; the progress of the invention coincides with the exploring and creating thought, so that in being carried forward by the action we are at the same time participators in the discovery and spectators of a world being built.

The unique quality of Kafka’s temperament is shown in his attitude to this world which he is investigating. That attitude may be best described by negatives. He avoided scrupulously the pose of the spectacular wrestler with God, which even certain great writers, such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud, have incomprehensibly assumed, but from which he was saved by the modesty of his view of his own place in the universe, and by his sense of humour. He avoided also the gesture of resignation, for what meaning could resignation have—except a pragmatic one—in face of the things he was investigating? Nor did he take refuge in irony, though certain episodes in his novels are saturated with it. Perhaps his temper is shown best in two axioms of his: that compared with the divine law, however unjust it may sometimes appear, all human effort, even at its highest, is in the wrong; and that at all times, whatever we may think, the demand of the divine law for unconditional reverence and unconditional obedience is beyond question. But—here again he surprises us—unconditional reverence and obedience do not seem in his eyes to have excluded the strictest scrutiny, or even the most acute comic observation. His descriptions of the Heavenly Powers are very curious. He notes their qualities and their foibles with something of the respectful appreciation of Plutarch writing of Alexander or Cato. To more ignorant eyes, it is true, those foibles might appear mere faults, but to him, as to Plutarch in somewhat analogous circumstances, they are worthy of esteem as the qualities of superior beings, qualities perhaps disconcerting and even incomprehensible to the writer himself, but qualities nevertheless which would be found to incarnate unquestionable virtues were his mind capable of understanding them. In Kafka’s descriptions of the conflict of his heroes with heavenly destiny there are, amid all the bewilderment and nightmare apprehension, interludes of the purest humour.

Of Kafka’s style one can get an adequate idea only by going to the original. It is a style of the utmost exactitude, the utmost flexibility, the utmost naturalness, and of an inevitable propriety. His vocabulary is small, but his mastery of it is absolute. By means of the simplest words he can evoke new effects and convey the most difficult thoughts. His management of the sentence is consummate. Flowing without ever being monotonous, his long sentences achieve an endless variety of inflection by two things alone, an inevitable skill in the disposition of the clauses, and of the words making them up. I can think of no other writer who can secure so much force and meaning as Kafka does by the mathematically correct placing of a word. Yet in all his books he probably never placed a word unnaturally or even conspicuously. His sentences are constructed so easily and yet balanced so exactly that, even when they are very long, he hardly ever needs the support of a semicolon, the comma doing all that is required. For the comma, indeed, with its greater flexibility, he shows a partiality; or he loves the sinuous line, the sentence which flows forward, flows back on itself and flows forward again before it winds to its determined end. His dialogue is untranslatable. It is not the realistic dialogue of which almost all contemporary novels are full; it is a separate form of art with its own laws. In sense of style there is no living English writer who approaches it, except Mr. Joyce in certain pages of Ulysses.

I

It was late in the evening when K. arrived. The village was deep in snow. The Castle hill was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there. On the wooden bridge leading from the main road to the village K. stood for a long time gazing into the illusory emptiness above him.

Then he went on to find quarters for the night. The inn was still awake, and although the landlord could not provide a room and was upset by such a late and unexpected arrival, he was willing to let K. sleep on a bag of straw in the parlour. K. accepted the offer. Some peasants were still sitting over their beer, but he did not want to talk, and after himself fetching the bag of straw from the attic, lay down beside the stove. It was a warm corner, the peasants were quiet, and letting his weary eyes stray over them he soon fell asleep.

But very shortly he was awakened. A young man dressed like a townsman, with the face of an actor, his eyes narrow and his eyebrows strongly marked, was standing beside him along with the landlord. The peasants were still in the room, and a few had turned their chairs round so as to see and hear better. The young man apologised very courteously for having awakened K., introduced himself as the son of the Castellan, and then said: “This village belongs to the Castle, and whoever lives here or passes the night here does so in a manner of speaking in the Castle itself. Nobody may do that without the Count’s permission. But you have no such permit, or at least you have produced none.”

K. had half raised himself and now, smoothing down his hair and looking up at the two men, he said: “What village is this I have wandered into? Is there a castle here?”

“Most certainly,” replied the young man slowly, while here and there a head was shaken over K.’s remark, “the castle of my lord the Count West-west.”

“And must one have a permit to sleep here?” asked K., as if he wished to assure himself that what he had heard was not a dream.

“One must have a permit,” was the reply, and there was an ironical contempt for K. in the young man’s gesture as he stretched out his arm and appealed to the others, “Or must one not have a permit?”

“Well, then, I’ll have to go and get one,” said K. yawning and pushing his blanket away as if to rise up.

“And from whom, pray?” asked the young man.

“From the Count,” said K., “that’s the only thing to be done.”

“A permit from the Count in the middle of the night!” cried the young man, stepping back a pace.

“Is that impossible?” enquired K. coolly. “Then why did you waken me?”

At this the young man flew into a passion. “None of your guttersnipe manners!” he cried. “I insist on respect for the Count’s authority! I woke you up to inform you that you must quit the Count’s territory at once.”

“Enough of this fooling,” said K. in a markedly quiet voice, laying himself down again and pulling up the blanket. “You’re going a little too far, my good fellow, and I’ll have something to say tomorrow about your conduct. The landlord here and those other gentlemen will bear me out if necessary. Let me tell you that I am the Land Surveyor whom the Count is expecting. My assistants are coming on tomorrow in a carriage with the apparatus. I did not want to miss the chance of a walk through the snow, but unfortunately lost my way several times and so arrived very late. That it was too late to present myself at the Castle I knew very well before you saw fit to inform me. That is why I have made shift with this bed for the night, where, to put it mildly, you have had the discourtesy to disturb me. That is all I have to say. Good night, gentlemen.” And K. turned over on his side towards the stove.

“Land Surveyor?” he heard the hesitating question behind his back, and then there was a general silence. But the young man soon recovered his assurance, and lowering his voice, sufficiently to appear considerate of K.’s sleep while yet speaking loud enough to be clearly heard, said to the landlord: “I’ll ring up and enquire.” So there was a telephone in this village inn? They had everything up to the mark. The particular instance surprised K., but on the whole he had really expected it. It appeared that the telephone was placed almost over his head and in his drowsy condition he had overlooked it. If the young man must needs telephone he could not, even with the best intentions, avoid disturbing K., the only question was whether K. would let him do so; he decided to allow it. In that case, however, there was no sense in pretending to sleep, and so he turned on his back again. He could see the peasants putting their heads together; the arrival of a Land Surveyor was no small event. The door into the kitchen had been opened, and blocking the whole doorway stood the imposing figure of the landlady, to whom the landlord was advancing on tiptoe in order to tell her what was happening. And now the conversation began on the telephone. The Castellan was asleep, but an under-castellan, one of the under-castellans, a certain Herr Fritz, was available. The young man, announcing himself as Schwarzer, reported that he had found K., a disreputable-looking man in the thirties, sleeping calmly on a bag of straw with a minute rucksack for pillow and a knotty stick within reach. He had naturally suspected the fellow, and as the landlord had obviously neglected his duty he, Schwarzer, had felt bound to investigate the matter. He had roused the man, questioned him, and duly warned him off the Count’s territory, all of which K. had taken with an ill grace, perhaps with some justification, as it eventually turned out, for he claimed to be a Land Surveyor engaged by the Count. Of course, to say the least of it, that was a statement which required official confirmation, and so Schwarzer begged Herr Fritz to enquire in the Central Bureau if a Land Surveyor were really expected, and to telephone the answer at once.

Then there was silence while Fritz was making enquiries up there and the young man was waiting for the answer. K. did not change his position, did not even once turn round, seemed quite indifferent and stared into space. Schwarzer’s report, in its combination of malice and prudence, gave him an idea of the measure of diplomacy in which even underlings in the Castle like Schwarzer were versed. Nor were they remiss in industry, the Central Office had a night service. And apparently answered questions quickly, too, for Fritz was already ringing. His reply seemed brief enough, for Schwarzer hung up the receiver immediately, crying angrily: “Just what I said! Not a trace of a Land Surveyor. A common, lying tramp, and probably worse.” For a moment K. thought that all of them, Schwarzer, the peasants, the landlord and the landlady, were going to fall upon him in a body, and to escape at least the first shock of their assault he crawled right underneath the blanket. But the telephone rang again, and with a special insistence, it seemed to K. Slowly he put out his head. Although it was improbable that this message also concerned K. they all stopped short and Schwarzer took up the receiver once more. He listened to a fairly long statement, and then said in a low voice: “A mistake, is it? I’m sorry to hear that. The head of the department himself said so? Very queer, very queer. How am I to explain it all to the Land Surveyor?”

K. pricked up his ears. So the Castle had recognised him as the Land Surveyor. That was unpropitious for him, on the one hand, for it meant that the Castle was well informed about him, had estimated all the probable chances, and was taking up the challenge with a smile. On the other hand, however, it was quite propitious, for if his interpretation were right they had underestimated his strength, and he would have more freedom of action than he had dared to hope. And if they expected to cow him by their lofty superiority in recognising him as Land Surveyor, they were mistaken; it made his skin prickle a little, that was all.

He waved off Schwarzer who was timidly approaching him, and refused an urgent invitation to transfer himself into the landlord’s own room; he only accepted a warm drink from the landlord and from the landlady a basin to wash in, a piece of soap and a towel. He did not even have to ask that the room should be cleared, for all the men flocked out with averted faces lest he should recognise them again next day. The lamp was blown out, and he was left in peace at last. He slept deeply until morning, scarcely disturbed by rats scuttling past once or twice.

After breakfast, which, according to his host, was to be paid for by the Castle, together with all the other expenses of his board and lodging, he prepared to go out immediately into the village. But since the landlord, to whom he had been very curt because of his behaviour the preceding night, kept circling around him in dumb entreaty, he took pity on the man and asked him to sit down for a while.

“I haven’t met the Count yet,” said K., “but he pays well for good work, doesn’t he? When a man like me travels so far from home he wants to go back with something in his pockets.”

“There’s no need for the gentleman to worry about that kind of thing; nobody complains of being badly paid.”

“Well,” said K., “I’m not one of your timid people, and can give a piece of my mind even to a Count, but of course it’s much better to have everything settled up without any trouble.”

The landlord sat opposite K. on the rim of the window-ledge, not daring to take a more comfortable seat, and kept on gazing at K. with an anxious look in his large brown eyes. He had thrust his company on K. at first, but now it seemed that he was eager to escape. Was he afraid of being cross-questioned about the Count? Was he afraid of some indiscretion on the part of the “gentleman” whom he took K. to be? K. must divert his attention. He looked at the clock, and said: “My assistants should be arriving soon. Will you be able to put them up here?”

“Certainly, sir,” he said, “but won’t they be staying with you up at the Castle?”

Was the landlord so willing, then, to give up prospective customers, and K. in particular, whom he so unconditionally transferred to the Castle?

“That’s not at all certain yet,” said K., “I must first find out what work I am expected to do. If I have to work down here, for instance, it would be more sensible to lodge down here. I’m afraid, too, that the life in the Castle wouldn’t suit me. I like to be my own master.”

“You don’t know the Castle,” said the landlord quietly.

“Of course,” replied K., “one shouldn’t judge prematurely. All that I know at present about the Castle is that the people there know how to choose a good Land Surveyor. Perhaps it has other attractions as well.” And he stood up in order to rid the landlord of his presence, since the man was biting his lip uneasily. His confidence was not to be lightly won.

As K. was going out he noticed a dark portrait in a dim frame on the wall. He had already observed it from his couch by the stove, but from that distance he had not been able to distinguish any details and had thought that it was only a plain back to the frame. But it was a picture after all, as now appeared, the bust portrait of a man about fifty. His head was sunk so low upon his breast that his eyes were scarcely visible, and the weight of the high, heavy forehead and the strong hooked nose seemed to have borne the head down. Because of this pose the man’s full beard was pressed in at the chin and spread out further down. His left hand was buried in his luxuriant hair, but seemed incapable of supporting the head. “Who is that?” asked K., “the Count?” He was standing before the portrait and did not look round at the landlord. “No,” said the latter, “the Castellan.” “A handsome castellan, indeed,” said K., “a pity that he has such an ill-bred son.” “No, no,” said the landlord, drawing K. a little towards him and whispering in his ear, “Schwarzer exaggerated yesterday, his father is only an under-castellan, and one of the lowest, too.” At that moment the landlord struck K. as a very child. “The villain!” said K. with a laugh, but the landlord instead of laughing said, “Even his father is powerful.” “Get along with you,” said K., “you think everyone powerful. Me too, perhaps?” “No,” he replied, timidly yet seriously, “I don’t think you powerful.” “You’re a keen observer,” said K., “for between you and me I’m not really powerful. And consequently I suppose I have no less respect for the powerful than you have, only I’m not so honest as you and am not always willing to acknowledge it.” And K. gave the landlord a tap on the cheek to hearten him and awaken his friendliness. It made him smile a little. He was actually young, with that soft and almost beardless face of his; how had he come to have that massive, elderly wife, who could be seen through a small window bustling about the kitchen with her elbows sticking out? K. did not want to force his confidence any further, however, nor to scare away the smile he had at last evoked. So he only signed to him to open the door, and went out into the brilliant winter morning.

Now he could see the Castle above him, clearly defined in the glittering air, its outline made still more definite by the moulding of snow covering it in a thin layer. There seemed to be much less snow up there on the hill than down in the village, where K. found progress as laborious as on the main road the previous day. Here the heavy snowdrifts reached right up to the cottage windows and began again on the low roofs, but up on the hill everything soared light and free into the air, or at least so it appeared from down below.

On the whole this distant prospect of the Castle satisfied K.’s expectations. It was neither an old stronghold nor a new mansion, but a rambling pile consisting of innumerable small buildings closely packed together and of one or two storeys; if K. had not known that it was a Castle he might have taken it for a little town. There was only one tower as far as he could see, whether it belonged to a dwelling-house or a church he could not determine. Swarms of crows were circling round it.

With his eyes fixed on the Castle, K. went on further, thinking of nothing else at all. But on approaching it he was disappointed in the Castle; it was after all only a wretched-looking town, a huddle of village houses, whose sole merit, if any, lay in being built of stone, but the plaster had long since flaked off and the stone seemed to be crumbling away. K. had a fleeting recollection of his native town. It was hardly inferior to this so-called Castle, and if it were merely a question of enjoying the view it was a pity to have come so far, K. would have done better to visit his native town again, which he had not seen for such a long time. And in his mind he compared the church tower at home with the tower above him. The church tower, firm in line, soaring unfalteringly to its tapering point, topped with red tiles and broad in the roof, an earthly building—what else can men build?—but with a loftier goal than the humble dwelling-houses, and a clearer meaning than the muddle of everyday life. The tower above him here—the only one visible—the tower of a house, as was now apparent, perhaps of the main building, was uniformly round, part of it graciously mantled with ivy, pierced by small windows that glittered in the sun, a somewhat maniacal glitter, and topped by what looked like an attic, with battlements that were irregular, broken, fumbling, as if designed by the trembling or careless hand of a child, clearly outlined against the blue. It was as if a melancholy-mad tenant who ought to have been kept locked in the topmost chamber of his house had burst through the roof and lifted himself up to the gaze of the world.

Again K. came to a stop, as if in standing still he had more power of judgment. But he was disturbed. Behind the village church where he had stopped—it was really only a chapel widened with barn-like additions so as to accommodate the parishioners—was the school. A long, low building, combining remarkably a look of great age with a provisional appearance, it lay behind a fenced-in garden which was now a field of snow. The children were just coming out with their teacher. They thronged round him, all gazing up at him and chattering without a break so rapidly that K. could not follow what they said. The teacher, a small young man with narrow shoulders and a very upright carriage which yet did not make him ridiculous, had already fixed K. with his eyes from the distance, naturally enough, for apart from the schoolchildren there was not another human being in sight. Being the stranger, K. made the first advance, especially as the other was such an authoritative-looking little man, and said, “Good morning, sir.” As if by one accord the children fell silent, perhaps the master liked to have a sudden stillness as a preparation for his words. “You are looking at the Castle?” he asked more gently than K. had expected, but with an inflection that denoted disapproval of K.’s occupation. “Yes,” said K. “I am a stranger here, I came to the village only last night.” “You don’t like the Castle?” returned the teacher quickly. “What?” countered K., a little taken aback, and repeated the question in a modified form. “Do I like the Castle? Why do you assume that I don’t like it?” “Strangers never do,” said the teacher. To avoid saying the wrong thing K. changed the subject and asked, “I suppose you know the Count?” “No,” said the teacher turning away. But K. would not be put off and asked again, “What, you don’t know the Count?” “Why should I?” replied the teacher in a low tone, and added aloud in French: “Please remember that there are innocent children present.” K. took this as a justification for asking: “Might I come to pay you a visit one day, sir? I am to be staying here for some time and already feel a little lonely. I don’t fit in with the peasants nor, I imagine, with the Castle.” “There is no difference between the peasantry and the Castle,” said the teacher. “Maybe,” said K., “that doesn’t alter my position. Can I pay you a visit one day?” “I live in Swan Street at the butcher’s.” That was assuredly more of a statement than an invitation, but K. said: “Right, I’ll come.” The teacher nodded and moved on with his batch of children, who began to scream again immediately. They soon vanished in a steeply descending by-street.

But K. was disconcerted, irritated by the conversation. For the first time since his arrival he felt really tired. The long journey he had made seemed at first to have imposed no strain upon him—how quietly he had sauntered through the days, step by step!—but now the consequences of his exertion were making themselves felt, and at the wrong time, too. He felt irresistibly drawn to seek out new acquaintances, but each new acquaintance only seemed to increase his weariness. If he forced himself in his present condition to go on at least as far as the Castle entrance, he would have done more than enough.

So he resumed his walk, but the way proved long. For the street he was in, the main street of the village, did not lead up to the Castle hill, it only made towards it and then, as if deliberately, turned aside, and though it did not lead away from the Castle it got no nearer to it either. At every turn K. expected the road to double back to the Castle, and only because of this expectation did he go on; he was flatly unwilling, tired as he was, to leave the street, and he was also amazed at the length of the village, which seemed to have no end, again and again the same little houses, and frost-bound windowpanes and snow and the entire absence of human beings—but at last he tore himself away from the obsession of the street and escaped into a small side-lane, where the snow was still deeper and the exertion of lifting one’s feet clear was fatiguing; he broke into a sweat, suddenly came to a stop, and could not go on.

Well, he was not on a desert island, there were cottages to right and left of him. He made a snowball and threw it at a window. The door opened immediately—the first door that had opened during the whole length of the village—and there appeared an old peasant in a brown fur jacket, with his head cocked to one side, a frail and kindly figure. “May I come into your house for a little?” asked K., “I’m very tired.” He did not hear the old man’s reply, but thankfully observed that a plank was pushed out towards him to rescue him from the snow, and in a few steps he was in the kitchen.

A large kitchen, dimly lit. Anyone coming in from outside could make out nothing at first. K. stumbled over a washing-tub, a woman’s hand steadied him. The crying of children came loudly from one corner. From another steam was welling out and turning the dim light into darkness. K. stood as if in the clouds. “He must be drunk,” said somebody. “Who are you?” cried a hectoring voice, and then obviously to the old man; “Why did you let him in? Are we to let in everybody that wanders about in the street?” “I am the Count’s Land Surveyor,” said K., trying to justify himself before this still invisible personage. “Oh, it’s the Land Surveyor,” said a woman’s voice, and then came a complete silence. “You know me, then?” asked K. “Of course,” said the same voice curtly. The fact that he was known did not seem to be a recommendation.

At last the steam thinned a little, and K. was able gradually to make things out. It seemed to be a general washing-day. Near the door clothes were being washed. But the steam was coming from another corner, where in a wooden tub larger than any K. had ever seen, as wide as two beds, two men were bathing in steaming water. But still more astonishing, although one could not say what was so astonishing about it, was the scene in the right-hand corner. From a large opening, the only one in the back wall, a pale snowy light came in, apparently from the courtyard, and gave a gleam as of silk to the dress of a woman who was almost reclining in a high armchair. She was suckling an infant at her breast. Several children were playing around her, peasant children, as was obvious, but she seemed to be of another class, although of course illness and weariness give even peasants a look of refinement.

“Sit down!” said one of the men, who had a full beard and breathed heavily through his mouth which always hung open, pointing—it was a funny sight—with his wet hand over the edge of the tub towards a settle, and showering drops of warm water all over K.’s face as he did so. On the settle the old man who had admitted K. was already sitting, sunk in vacancy. K. was thankful to find a seat at last. Nobody paid any further attention to him. The woman at the washing-tub, young, plump and fair, sang in a low voice as she worked, the men stamped and rolled about in the bath, the children tried to get closer to them but were constantly driven back by mighty splashes of water which fell on K., too, and the woman in the armchair lay as if lifeless staring at the roof without even a glance towards the child at her bosom.

She made a beautiful, sad, fixed picture, and K. looked at her for what must have been a long time; then he must have fallen asleep, for when a loud voice roused him he found that his head was lying on the old man’s shoulder. The men had finished with the tub—in which the children were now wallowing in charge of the fair-haired woman—and were standing fully dressed before K. It appeared that the hectoring one with the full beard was the less important of the two. The other, a still slow-thinking man who kept his head bent, was not taller than his companion and had a much smaller beard, but he was broader in the shoulders and had a broad face as well, and he it was who said, “You can’t stay here, sir. Excuse the discourtesy.” “I don’t want to stay,” said K., “I only wanted to rest a little. I have rested, and now I shall go.” “You’re probably surprised at our lack of hospitality,” said the man, “but hospitality is not our custom here, we have no use for visitors.” Somewhat refreshed by his sleep, his perceptions somewhat quickened, K. was pleased by the man’s frankness. He felt less constrained, poked with his stick here and there, approached the woman in the armchair, and noted that he was physically the biggest man in the room.

“To be sure,” said K., “what use would you have for visitors? But still you need one now and then, me, for example, the Land Surveyor.” “I don’t know about that,” replied the man slowly, “if you’ve been asked to come you’re probably needed, that’s an exceptional case, but we small people stick to our tradition, and you can’t blame us for that.” “No, no,” said K., “I am only grateful to you, to you, and everybody here.” And taking them all by surprise he made an adroit turn and stood before the reclining woman. Out of weary blue eyes she looked at him, a transparent silk kerchief hung down to the middle of her forehead, the infant was asleep on her bosom. “Who are you?” asked K., and disdainfully—whether contemptuous of K. or of her own answer was not clear—she replied: “A girl from the Castle.”

It had only taken a second or so, but already the two men were at either side of K. and were pushing him towards the door, as if there were no other means of persuasion, silently, but putting out all their strength. Something in this procedure delighted the old man, and he clapped his hands. The woman at the bathtub laughed too, and the children suddenly shouted like mad.

K. was soon out in the street, and from the threshold the two men surveyed him. Snow was again falling, yet the sky seemed a little brighter. The bearded man cried impatiently; “Where do you want to go? This is the way to the Castle, and that to the village.” K. made no reply to him, but turned to the other, who in spite of his shyness seemed to him the more amiable of the two, and said: “Who are you? Whom have I to thank for sheltering me?” “I am the tanner Lasemann,” was the answer, “but you owe thanks to nobody.” “All right,” said K., “perhaps we’ll meet again.” “I don’t suppose so,” said the man. At that moment the other cried, with wave of his hand: “Good morning, Arthur; good morning, Jeremiah!” K. turned round; so there were really people to be seen in the village streets! From the direction of the Castle came two young men of medium height, both very slim, in tight-fitting clothes, and like each other in their features. Although their skin was a dusky brown the blackness of their little pointed beards was actually striking by contrast. Considering the state of the road, they were walking at a great pace, their slim legs keeping time. “Where are you off to?” shouted the bearded man. One had to shout to them, they were going so fast and they would not stop. “On business,” they shouted back, laughing. “Where?” “At the inn.” “I’m going there too,” yelled K. suddenly, louder than all the rest; he felt a strong desire to accompany them, not that he expected much from their acquaintance, but they were obviously good and jolly companions. They heard him, but only nodded, and were already out of sight.

K. was still standing in the snow, and was little inclined to extricate his feet only for the sake of plunging them in again; the tanner and his comrade, satisfied with having finally got rid of him, edged slowly into the house through the door which was now barely ajar, casting backward glances at K., and he was left alone in the falling snow. “A fine setting for a fit of despair,” it occurred to him, “if I were only standing here by accident instead of design.”

Just then in the hut on his left hand a tiny window was opened, which had seemed quite blue when shut, perhaps from the reflection of the snow, and was so tiny that when opened it did not permit the whole face of the person behind it to be seen, but only the eyes, old brown eyes. “There he is,” K. heard a woman’s trembling voice say. “It’s the Land Surveyor,” answered a man’s voice. Then the man came to the window and asked, not unamiably, but still as if he were anxious to have no complications in front of his house: “Are you waiting for somebody?” “For a sledge, to pick me up,” said K. “No sledges will pass here,” said the man, “there’s no traffic here.” “But it’s the road leading to the Castle,” objected K. “All the same, all the same,” said the man with a certain finality, “there’s no traffic here.” Then they were both silent. But the man was obviously thinking of something, for he kept the window open. “It’s a bad road,” said K., to help him out. The only answer he got, however, was: “Oh, yes.” But after a little the man volunteered: “If you like, I’ll take you in my sledge.” “Please do,” said K. delighted, “what is your charge?” “Nothing,” said the man. K. was very surprised. “Well, you’re the Land Surveyor,” explained the man, “and you belong to the Castle. Where do you want to be taken?” “To the Castle,” returned K. quickly. “I won’t take you there,” said the man without hesitation. “But I belong to the Castle,” said K., repeating the other’s very words. “Maybe,” said the man shortly. “Oh, well, take me to the inn,” said K. “All right,” said the man, “I’ll be out with the sledge in a moment.” His whole behaviour had the appearance of springing not from any special desire to be friendly but rather from a kind of selfish, worried and almost pedantic insistence on shifting K. away from the front of the house.

The gate of the courtyard opened, and a small light sledge, quite flat, without a seat of any kind, appeared, drawn by a feeble little horse, and behind it limped the man, a weakly stooping figure with a gaunt red snuffling face that looked peculiarly small beneath a tightly swathed woollen scarf. He was obviously ailing, and yet only to transport K. he had dragged himself out. K. ventured to mention it, but the man waved him aside. All that K. elicited was that he was a coachman called Gerstäcker, and that he had taken this uncomfortable sledge because it was standing ready, and to get out one of the others would have wasted too much time. “Sit down,” he said, pointing to the sledge. “I’ll sit beside you,” said K. “I’m going to walk,” said Gerstäcker. “But why?” asked K. “I’m going to walk,” repeated Gerstäcker, and was seized with a fit of coughing which shook him so severely that he had to brace his legs in the snow and hold on to the rim of the sledge. K. said no more, but sat down on the sledge, the man’s cough slowly abated, and they drove off.

The Castle above them, which K. had hoped to reach that very day, was already beginning to grow dark, and retreated again into the distance. But as if to give him a parting sign till their next encounter a bell began to ring merrily up there, a bell which for at least a second made his heart palpitate, for its tone was menacing, too, as if it threatened him with the fulfilment of his vague desire. This great bell soon died away, however, and its place was taken by a feeble monotonous little tinkle which might have come from the Castle, but might have been somewhere in the village. It certainly harmonised better with the slow-going journey with the wretched-looking yet inexorable driver.

“I say,” cried K. suddenly—they were already near the church, the inn was not far off, and K. felt he could risk something—“I’m surprised that you have the nerve to drive me round on your own responsibility; are you allowed to do that?” Gerstäcker paid no attention, but went on walking quietly beside the little horse. “Hi!” cried K., scraping some snow from the sledge and flinging a snowball which hit Gerstäcker full in the ear. That made him stop and turn round; but when K. saw him at such close quarters—the sledge had slid forward a little—this stooping and somehow ill-used figure with the thin red tired face and cheeks that were different—one being flat and the other fallen in—standing listening with his mouth open, displaying only a few isolated teeth, he found that what he had just said out of malice had to be repeated out of pity, that is, whether Gerstäcker was likely to be penalised for driving him about. “What do you mean?” asked Gerstäcker uncomprehendingly, but without waiting for an answer he spoke to the horse and they moved on again.