XV

Seeing that with a somewhat astonished face K. remained standing where he was, Olga laughed at him and drew him towards the settle by the stove, she seemed to be really happy at the prospect of sitting there alone with him, but it was a contented happiness without a single hint of jealousy. And precisely this freedom of hers from jealousy and therefore from any kind of claim upon him did K. good, he was glad to look into her blue eyes which were not cajoling, nor hectoring, but shyly simple and frank. It was as if the warnings of Frieda and the landlady had made him, not more suspectible to all those things, but more observant and more discerning. And he laughed with Olga when she expressed her wonder at his calling Amalia good-natured, of all things, for Amalia had many qualities, but good-nature was certainly not one of them. Whereupon K. explained that of course his praise had been meant for Olga, only Amalia was so masterful that she not only took to herself whatever was said in her presence, but induced other people of their own free will to include her in everything. “That’s true,” said Olga, becoming more serious, “truer than you think. Amalia’s younger than me, and younger than Barnabas, but hers is the decisive voice in the family for good or for ill, of course she bears the burden of it more than anybody, the good as well as the bad.” K. thought that an exaggeration, for Amalia had just said that she paid no attention, for instance, to her brother’s affairs, while Olga knew all about them. “How can I make it clear?” said Olga, “Amalia bothers neither about Barnabas nor about me, she really bothers about nobody but the old people whom she tends day and night; now she had just asked them again if they want anything and has gone into the kitchen to cook them something, and for their sakes she has overcome her indisposition, for she’s been ill since midday and been lying here on the settle. But although she doesn’t bother about us we’re as dependent on her as if she were the eldest, and if she were to advise us in our affairs we should certainly follow her advice, only she doesn’t do it, she’s different from us. You have experience of people, you come from a strange land, don’t you think, too, that she’s extraordinarily clever?” “Extraordinarily unhappy is what she seems to me,” said K., “but how does it go with your respect for her that Barnabas, for example, takes service as a messenger, in spite of Amalia’s evident disapproval, and even her scorn?” “If he knew what else to do he would give up being a messenger at once, for it doesn’t satisfy him.” “Isn’t he an expert shoemaker?” asked K. “Of course he is,” said Olga, “and in his spare time he does work for Brunswick, and if he liked he could have enough work to keep him going day and night and earn a lot of money.” “Well then,” said K. “That would be an alternative to his service as a messenger.” “An alternative?” asked Olga in astonishment, “do you think he does it for the money?” “Maybe he does,” said K., “but didn’t you say he was discontented?” “He’s discontented, and for various reasons,” said Olga, “but it’s Castle service, anyhow a kind of Castle service, at least one would suppose so.” “What!” said K., “do you even doubt that?” “Well,” said Olga, “not really, Barnabas goes into the bureaux and is accepted by the attendants as one of themselves, he sees various officials, too, from the distance, is entrusted with relatively important letters, even with verbally delivered messages, that’s a good deal, after all, and we should be proud of what he has achieved for a young man of his years.” K. nodded and no longer thought of going home. “He has a uniform of his own, too?” he asked. “You mean the jacket?” said Olga, “no, Amalia made that for him long before he became a messenger. But you’re touching on a sore spot now. He ought long ago to have had, not a uniform, for there aren’t many in the Castle, but a suit provided by the department, and he has been promised one, but in things of that kind the Castle moves slowly, and the worst of it is that one never knows what this slowness means; it can mean that the matter’s being considered, but it can also mean that it hasn’t yet been taken up, that Barnabas for instance is still on probation, and in the long run it can also mean that the whole thing has been settled, that for some reason or other the promise has been cancelled, and that Barnabas will never get his suit. One can never find out exactly what is happening, or only a long time afterwards. We have a saying here, perhaps you’ve heard it: Official decisions are as shy as young girls.” “That’s a good observation,” said K., he took it still more seriously than Olga, “a good observation, and the decisions may have other characteristics in common with young girls.” “Perhaps,” said Olga. “But as far as the official suit’s concerned, that’s one of Barnabas’s great sorrows, and since we share all our troubles, it’s one of mine too. We ask ourselves in vain why he doesn’t get an official suit. But the whole affair is not just so simple as that. The officials, for instance, apparently have no official dress; so far as we know here, and so far as Barnabas tells us, the officials go about in their ordinary clothes, very fine clothes, certainly. Well, you’ve seen Klamm. Now, Barnabas is certainly not an official, not even one in the lowest category, and he doesn’t overstep his limitations so far as to want to be one. But according to Barnabas, the higher grade servants, whom one certainly never sees down here in the village, have no official dress; that’s a kind of comfort, one might suppose, but it’s a deceptive comfort, for is Barnabas a high-grade servant? Not he; however partial one might be towards him one couldn’t maintain that, the fact that he comes to the village and even lives here is sufficient proof of the contrary, for the higher-grade servants are even more inaccessible than the officials, perhaps rightly so, perhaps they are even of higher rank than many an official, there’s some evidence of that, they work less, and Barnabas says it’s a marvellous sight to see these tall and distinguished men slowly walking through the corridors, Barnabas always gives them a wide berth. Well, he might be one of the lower-grade servants, then, but these always have an official suit, at least whenever they come down into the village, it’s not exactly a uniform, there are many different versions of it, but at any rate one can always tell Castle servants by their clothes, you’ve seen some of them in the Herrenhof. The most noticeable thing about the clothes is that they’re mostly close-fitting, a peasant or a handworker couldn’t do with them. Well, a suit like that hasn’t been given to Barnabas, and it’s not merely the shame of it or the disgrace⁠—one could put up with that⁠—but the fact that in moments of depression⁠—and we often have such moments, none too rarely, Barnabas and I⁠—it makes us doubt everything. Is it really Castle service Barnabas is doing, we ask ourselves then; granted, he goes into the bureaux, but are the bureaux part of the real Castle? And even if there are bureaux actually in the Castle, are they the bureaux that Barnabas is allowed to enter?

“He’s admitted into certain rooms, but they’re only a part of the whole, for there are barriers behind which there are more rooms. Not that he’s actually forbidden to pass the barriers, but he can’t very well push past them once he has met his chiefs and been dismissed by them. Besides, everybody is watched there, at least so we believe. And even if he did push on further what good would it be to him, if he had no official duties to carry out and were a mere intruder? And you mustn’t imagine that these barriers are a definite dividing-line; Barnabas is always impressing that on me. There are barriers even at the entrance to the rooms where he’s admitted, so you see there are barriers he can pass, and they’re just the same as the ones he’s never yet passed, which looks as if one oughtn’t to suppose that behind the ultimate barriers the bureaux are any different from those Barnabas has already seen. Only that’s what we do suppose in moments of depression. And the doubt doesn’t stop there, we can’t keep it within bounds. Barnabas sees officials, Barnabas is given messages. But who are those officials, and what are the messages? Now, so he says, he’s assigned to Klamm, who gives him his instructions in person. Well, that would be a great favour, even higher-grade servants don’t get so far as that, it’s almost too much to believe, almost terrifying. Only think, directly assigned to Klamm, speaking with him face to face! But is it really the case? Well, suppose it is so, then why does Barnabas doubt that the official who is referred to as Klamm is really Klamm?” “Olga,” said K., “you surely must be joking; how can there be any doubt about Klamm’s appearance, everybody knows what he looks like, even I have seen him.” “Of course not, K.,” said Olga. “I’m not joking at all, I’m desperately serious. Yet I’m not telling you all this simply to relieve my own feelings and burden yours, but because Amalia charged me to tell you, since you were asking for Barnabas, and because I think too that it would be useful for you to know more about it. I’m doing it for Barnabas’s sake as well, so that you won’t pin too many hopes upon him, and suffer disappointment, and make him suffer too because of your disappointment. He’s very sensitive, for instance he didn’t sleep all night because you were displeased with him yesterday evening. He took you to say that it was a bad lookout for you to have only a messenger like him. These words kept him off his sleep. I don’t suppose that you noticed how upset he was, for Castle messengers must keep themselves well under control. But he hasn’t an easy time, not even with you, although from your point of view you don’t ask too much of him, for you have your own prior conception of a messenger’s powers and make your demands accordingly. But in the Castle they have a different conception of a messenger’s duties, which couldn’t be reconciled with yours, even if Barnabas were to devote himself entirely to the task, which, unfortunately, he often seems inclined to do. Still, one would have to submit to that and raise no objection, if it weren’t for the question whether Barnabas is really a messenger or not. Before you, of course, he can’t express any doubt of it whatever, to do that would be to undermine his very existence and to offend grievously against laws which he believes himself still plighted to, and even to me he doesn’t speak freely, I have to cajole and kiss his doubts out of him, and even then he refuses to admit that his doubts are doubts. He has something of Amalia in him. And I’m sure that he doesn’t tell me everything, although I’m his sole confidant. But we do often speak about Klamm, whom I’ve never seen; you know Frieda doesn’t like me and has never let me look at him, still his appearance is well-known in the village, some people have seen him, everybody has heard of him, and out of glimpses and rumours and through various distorting factors an image of Klamm has been constructed which is certainly true in fundamentals. But only in fundamentals. In detail it fluctuates, and yet perhaps not so much as Klamm’s real appearance. For he’s reported as having one appearance when he comes into the village and another on leaving it, after having his beer he looks different from what he does before it, when he’s awake he’s different from when he’s asleep, when he’s alone he’s different from when he’s talking to people, and⁠—what is comprehensible after all that⁠—he’s almost another person up in the Castle. And even within the village there are considerable differences in the accounts given of him, differences as to his height, his bearing, his size and the cut of his beard, fortunately there’s one thing in which all the accounts agree, he always wears the same clothes, a black morning coat with long tails. Now of course all these differences aren’t the result of magic, but can be easily explained; they depend on the mood of the observer, on the degree of his excitement, on the countless graduations of hope or despair which are possible for him when he sees Klamm, and besides, he can usually see Klamm only for a second or two. I’m telling you all this just as Barnabas has often told it to me, and, on the whole, for anyone not personally interested in the matter, it would be a sufficient explanation. Not for us, however; it’s a matter of life or death for Barnabas whether it’s really Klamm he speaks to or not.” “And for me no less,” said K. and they moved nearer to each other on the settle.

All this depressing information of Olga’s certainly affected K., but he regarded it as a great consolation to find other people who were at least externally much in the same situation as himself, with whom he could join forces and whom he could touch at many points, not merely at a few points as in Frieda’s case. He was indeed gradually giving up all hope of achieving success through Barnabas, but the worse it went with Barnabas in the Castle the nearer he felt drawn to him down here; never would K. have believed that in the village itself such a despairing struggle could go on as Barnabas and his sister were involved in. Of course it was as yet far from being adequately explained and might turn out to be quite the reverse, one shouldn’t let Olga’s unquestionable innocence mislead one into taking Barnabas’s uprightness for granted. “Barnabas is familiar with all those accounts of Klamm’s appearance,” went on Olga, “he has collected and compared a great many, perhaps too many, he even saw Klamm once through a carriage window in the village, or believed he saw him, and so was sufficiently prepared to recognise him again, and yet⁠—how can you explain this?⁠—when he entered a bureau in the Castle and had one of several officials pointed out to him as Klamm he didn’t recognise him, and for a long time afterwards couldn’t accustom himself to the idea that it was Klamm. But if you ask Barnabas what was the difference between that Klamm and the usual description given of Klamm, he can’t tell you, or rather he tries to tell you and describes the official of the Castle, but his description coincides exactly with the descriptions we usually hear of Klamm. Well then, Barnabas, I say to him, why do you doubt it, why do you torment yourself? Whereupon in obvious distress he begins to reckon up certain characteristics of the Castle official, but he seems to be thinking them out rather than describing them, and besides that they are so trivial⁠—a particular way of nodding the head, for instance, or even an unbottoned waistcoat⁠—that one simply can’t take them seriously. Much more important seems to me the way in which Klamm receives Barnabas. Barnabas has often described it to me, and even sketched the room. He’s usually admitted into a large room, but the room isn’t Klamm’s bureau, nor even the bureau of any particular official. It’s a room divided into two by a single reading-desk stretching all its length from wall to wall; one side is so narrow that two people can hardly squeeze past each other, and that’s reserved for the officials, the other side is spacious, and that’s where clients wait, spectators, servants, messengers. On the desk there are great books lying open, side by side, and officials stand by most of them reading. They don’t always stick to the same book, yet it isn’t the books that they change but their places, and it always astounds Barnabas to see how they have to squeeze past each other when they change places, because there’s so little room. In front of the desk and close to it there are small low tables at which clerks sit ready to write from dictation, whenever the officials wish it. And the way that is done always amazes Barnabas. There’s no express command given by the official, nor is the dictation given in a loud voice, one could hardly tell that it was being given at all, the official just seems to go on reading as before, only whispering as he reads, and the clerk hears the whisper. Often it’s so low that the clerk can’t hear it at all in his seat, and then he has to jump up, catch what’s being dictated, sit down again quickly and make a note of it, then jump up once more, and so on. What a strange business! It’s almost incomprehensible. Of course Barnabas has time enough to observe it all, for he’s often kept standing in the big room for hours and days at a time before Klamm happens to see him. And even if Klamm sees him and he springs to attention, that needn’t mean anything, for Klamm may turn away from him again to the book and forget all about him. That often happens. But what can be the use of a messenger-service so casual as that? It makes me quite doleful to hear Barnabas say in the early morning that he’s going to the Castle. In all likelihood a quite useless journey, a lost day, a completely vain hope. What’s the good of it all? And here’s cobbler’s work piled up which never gets done and which Brunswick is always asking for.” “Oh, well,” said K., “Barnabas has just to hang on till he gets a commission. That’s understandable, the place seems to be over-staffed, and everybody can’t be given a job every day, you needn’t complain about that, for it must affect everybody. But in the long run even a Barnabas gets commissions, he has brought two letters already to me.” “It’s possible, of course,” answered Olga, “that we’re wrong in complaining, especially a girl like me who knows things only from hearsay and can’t understand it all so well as Barnabas, who certainly keeps many things to himself. But let me tell you how the letters are given out, your letters, for example. Barnabas doesn’t get these letters directly from Klamm, but from a clerk. On no particular day, at no particular hour⁠—that’s why the service, however easy it appears, is really very exhausting, for Barnabas must be always on the alert⁠—a clerk suddenly remembers about him and gives him a sign, without any apparent instructions from Klamm, who merely goes on reading in his book. True, sometimes Klamm is polishing his glasses when Barnabas comes up, but he often does that anyhow⁠—however, he may take a look at Barnabas then, supposing, that is, that he can see anything at all without his glasses, which Barnabas doubts; for Klamm’s eyes are almost shut, he generally seems to be sleeping and only polishing his glasses in a kind of dream. Meanwhile the clerk hunts among the piles of manuscripts and writings under his table and fishes out a letter for you, so it’s not a letter newly written, indeed, by the look of the envelope, it’s usually a very old letter, which has been lying there a long time. But if that is so, why do they keep Barnabas waiting like that? And you too? And the letter too, of course, for it must be long out of date. That’s how they get Barnabas the reputation of being a bad and slow messenger. It’s all very well for the clerk, he just gives Barnabas the letter, saying: ‘From Klamm for K.’ and so dismisses him. But Barnabas comes home breathless, with his hardly-won letter next to his bare skin, and then we sit here on the settle like this and he tells me about it and we go into all the particulars and weigh up what he has achieved and find ultimately that it’s very little, and questionable at that, until Barnabas lays the letter down with no longer any inclination to deliver it, yet doesn’t feel inclined to go to sleep either, and so sits cobbling on his stool all night. That’s how it is, K. and now you have all my secrets and you can’t be surprised any longer at Amalia’s indifference to them.” “And what happens to the letter?” asked K. “The letter?” said Olga, “oh, some time later when I’ve plagued Barnabas enough about it, it may be days or weeks later, he picks it up again and goes to deliver it. In such practical matters he’s very dependent on me. For I can usually pull myself together after I’ve recovered from the first impression of what he has told me, but he can’t, probably because he knows more. So I always find something or other to say to him, such as ‘What are you really aiming at, Barnabas? What kind of career, what ambition are you dreaming of? Are you thinking of climbing so high that you’ll have to leave us, to leave me, completely behind you? Is that what you’re aiming at? How can I help believing so when it’s the only possible explanation why you’re so dreadfully discontented with all you’ve done already? Only take a look round and see whether any of our neighbours has got on so well as you. I admit their situation is different from ours and they have no grounds for ambition beyond their daily work, but even without making comparisons it’s easy to see that you’re all right. Hindrances there may be, doubts and disappointments, but that only means, what we all knew beforehand, that you get nothing without paying for it, that you have to fight for every trivial point; all the more reason for being proud instead of downcast. And aren’t you fighting for us as well? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that put new strength into you? And the fact that I’m happy and almost conceited at having such a brother, doesn’t that give you any confidence? It isn’t what you’ve achieved in the Castle that disappoints me, but the little that I’m able to achieve with you. You’re allowed into the Castle, you’re a regular visitor in the bureaux, you spend whole days in the same room as Klamm, you’re an officially recognised messenger, with a claim on an official suit, you’re entrusted with important commissions, you have all that to your credit, and then you come down here and instead of embracing me and weeping for joy you seem to lose all heart as soon as you set eyes on me, and you doubt everything, nothing interests you but cobbling, and you leave the letter, the pledge of our future, lying in a corner.’ That’s how I speak to him, and after I’ve repeated the same words day after day he picks up the letter at last with a sigh and goes off. Yet probably it’s not the effect of what I say that drives him out, but a desire to go to the Castle again, which he dare not do without having delivered his message.” “But you’re absolutely right in everything you say,” said K., “it’s amazing how well you grasp it all. What an extraordinarily clear mind you have!” “No,” said Olga, “it takes you in, and perhaps it takes him in too. For what has he really achieved? He’s allowed into a bureau, but it doesn’t seem to be even a bureau. He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who’s a little like Klamm? A secretary perhaps, at the most, who resembles Klamm a little and takes pains to increase the resemblance and poses a little in Klamm’s sleepy and dreamy style. That side of his nature is the easiest to imitate, there are many who try it on, although they have sense enough not to attempt anything more. And a man like Klamm who is so much sought after and so rarely seen is apt to take different shapes in people’s imagination. For instance Klamm has a village secretary here called Momus. You know him, do you? He keeps well in the background too, but I’ve seen him several times. A stoutly-built young man, isn’t he? And so evidently not in the least like Klamm. And yet you’ll find people in the village who swear that Momus is Klamm, he and no other. That’s how people work their own confusion. Is there any reason why it should be different in the Castle? Somebody pointed out that particular official to Barnabas as Klamm, and there is actually a resemblance that Barnabas has always questioned. And everything goes to support his doubt. Are we to suppose that Klamm has to squeeze his way among other officials in a common room with a pencil behind his ear? It’s wildly improbable. Barnabas often says, somewhat like a child and yet in a child’s mood of trustfulness: ‘The official is really very like Klamm, and if he were sitting in his own office at his own desk with his name on the door I would have no more doubt at all.’ That’s childish, but reasonable. Of course it would be still more reasonable of Barnabas when he’s up there to ask a few people about the truth of things, for judging from his account there are plenty of men standing round. And even if their information were no more reliable than that of the man who pointed out Klamm of his own accord, there would be surely some common ground, some ground for comparison, in the various things they said. That’s not my idea, but Barnabas’s, yet he doesn’t dare to follow it out, he doesn’t venture to speak to anybody for fear of offending in ignorance against some unknown rule and so losing his job; you see how uncertain he feels; and this miserable uncertainty of his throws a clearer light on his position there than all his descriptions. How ambiguous and threatening everything must appear to him when he won’t even risk opening his mouth to put an innocent question! When I reflect on that I blame myself for letting him go alone into those unknown rooms, which have such an effect on him that, though he’s daring rather than cowardly, he apparently trembles with fright as he stands there.”

“Here I think you’ve touched on the essential point,” said K. “That’s it. After all you’ve told me, I believe I can see the matter clearly. Barnabas is too young for this task. Nothing he tells you is to be taken seriously at its face value. Since he’s beside himself with fright up there, he’s incapable of observing, and when you force him to give an account of what he has seen, you get simply confused fabrications. That doesn’t surprise me. Fear of the authorities is born in you here, and is further suggested to you all your lives in the most various ways and from every side, and you yourselves help to strengthen it as much as possible. Still, I have no fundamental objection to that; if an authority is good why should it not be feared? Only one shouldn’t suddenly send an inexperienced youngster like Barnabas, who has never been further than this village, into the Castle, and then expect a truthful account of everything from him, and interpret each single word of his as if it were a revelation, and base one’s own life’s happiness on the interpretation. Nothing could be more mistaken. I admit that I have let him mislead me in exactly the same way and have set hopes upon him and suffered disappointments through him, both based simply on his own words, that is to say, with almost no basis.” Olga was silent. “It won’t be easy for me,” went on K., “to talk you out of your confidence in your brother, for I see how you love him and how much you expect from him. But I must do it, if only for the sake of that very love and expectation. For let me point out that there’s always something⁠—I don’t know what it is⁠—that hinders you from seeing clearly how much Barnabas has⁠—I’ll not say achieved⁠—but has had bestowed on him. He’s permitted to go into the bureaux, or if you prefer, into an antechamber, well let it be an antechamber, it has doors that lead on further, barriers which can be passed if one has the courage. To me, for instance, even this antechamber is utterly inaccessible, for the present at least. Who it is that Barnabas speaks to there I have no idea, perhaps the clerk is the lowest in the whole staff, but even if he is the lowest he can put one in touch with the next man above him, and if he can’t do that he can at least give the other’s name, and if he can’t even do that he can refer to somebody who can give the name. This so-called Klamm may not have the smallest trait in common with the real one, the resemblance may not exist except in the eyes of Barnabas, half-blinded by fear, he may be the meanest of the officials, he may not even be an official at all, but all the same he has work of some kind to perform at the desk, he reads something or other in his great book, he whispers something to the clerk, he thinks something when his eye falls on Barnabas once in a while, and even if that isn’t true and he and his acts have no significance whatever, he has at least been set there by somebody for some purpose. All that simply means that something is there, something which Barnabas has the chance of using, something or other at the very least; and that it is Barnabas’s own fault if he can’t get any further than doubt and anxiety and despair. And that’s only on the most unfavourable interpretation of things, which is extremely improbable. For we have the actual letters, which I certainly set no great store on, but more than on what Barnabas says. Let them be worthless old letters, fished at random from a pile of other such worthless old letters, at random and with no more discrimination than the lovebirds show in the fairs when they pick one’s fortune out of a pile; let them be all that, still they have some bearing on my fate. They’re evidently meant for me, although perhaps not for my good, and, as the Superintendent and his wife have testified, they are written in Klamm’s own hand, and, again on the Superintendent’s evidence, they have a significance which is only private and obscure, it is true, but still great.” “Did the Superintendent say that?” asked Olga. “Yes, he did,” replied K. “I must tell Barnabas that,” said Olga quickly, “that will encourage him greatly.” “But he doesn’t need encouragement,” said K. “to encourage him amounts to telling him that he’s right, that he has only to go on as he is doing now, but that is just the way he will never achieve anything by. If a man has his eyes bound you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he’ll never see anything. He’ll be able to see only when the bandage is removed. It’s help Barnabas needs, not encouragement. Only think, up there you have all the inextricable complications of a great authority⁠—I imagined that I had an approximate conception of its nature before I came here, but how childish my ideas were!⁠—up there, then, you have the authorities and over against them Barnabas, nobody more, only Barnabas, pathetically alone, where it would be enough honour for him to spend his whole life cowering in a dark and forgotten corner of some bureau.” “Don’t imagine, K., that we underestimate the difficulties Barnabas has to face,” said Olga, “we have reverence enough for the authorities, you said so yourself.” “But it’s a mistaken reverence,” said K., “a reverence in the wrong place, the kind of reverence that dishonours its object. Do you call it reverence that leads Barnabas to abuse the privilege of admission to that room by spending his time there doing nothing, or makes him when he comes down again belittle and despise the men before whom he has just been trembling, or allows him because he’s depressed or weary to put off delivering letters and fail in executing commissions entrusted to him? That’s far from being reverence. But I have a further reproach to make, Olga; I must blame you too, I can’t exempt you. Although you fancy you have some reverence for the authorities you sent Barnabas into the Castle in all his youth and weakness and forlornness, or at least you didn’t dissuade him from going.”

“This reproach that you make,” said Olga, “is one I have made myself from the beginning. Not indeed that I sent Barnabas to the Castle, I didn’t send him, he went himself, but I ought to have prevented him by all the means in my power, by force, by craft, by persuasion. I ought to have prevented him, but if I had to decide again this very day, and if I were to feel as keenly as I did then and still do the straits Barnabas is in, and our whole family, and if Barnabas, fully conscious of the responsibility and danger ahead of him, were once more to free himself from me with a smile and set off, I wouldn’t hold him back even today, in spite of all that has happened in between, and I believe that in my place you would do exactly the same. You don’t know the plight we are in, that’s why you’re unfair to all of us, and especially to Barnabas. At that time we had more hope than now, but even then our hope wasn’t great, but our plight was great, and is so still. Hasn’t Frieda told you anything about us?” “Mere hints,” said K., “nothing definite, but the very mention of your name exasperates her.” “And has the landlady told you nothing either?” “No, nothing.” “Nor anybody else?” “Nobody.” “Of course; how could anybody tell you anything? Everyone knows something about us, either the truth, so far as it is accessible, or at least some exaggerated rumour, mostly invention, and everybody thinks about us more than need be, but nobody will actually speak about it, people are shy of putting these things into words. And they’re quite right in that. It’s difficult to speak of it even before you, K., and when you’ve heard it all it’s possible⁠—isn’t it?⁠—that you’ll go away and not want to have anything more to do with us, however little it may seem to concern you. Then we should have lost you, and I confess that now you mean almost more to me than Barnabas’s service in the Castle. But yet⁠—and this argument has been distracting me all the evening⁠—you must be told, otherwise you would have no insight into our situation, and, what would vex me most of all, you would go on being unfair to Barnabas. Complete accord would fail between us, and you could neither help us, nor accept our additional help. But there is still one more question: Do you really want to be told?” “Why do you ask?” said K., “if it’s necessary, I would rather be told, but why do you ask me so particularly?” “Superstition,” said Olga. “You’ll become involved in our affairs, innocent as you are, almost as innocent as Barnabas.” “Tell me quickly,” said K., “I’m not afraid. You’re certainly making it much worse than it is with such womanish fussing.”