The Trial

Josef K., a competent bank officer, wakes on the morning of his thirtieth birthday to find himself arrested by agents of an unspecified court for a crime they will not name. Over the following year he is drawn deeper into a vast, inaccessible legal apparatus that operates in attics, tenements, and private rooms -- a system in which guilt is assumed, proceedings never end, and the accused can neither understand the charges against him nor reach the judges who might resolve them.

Chapter One: Arrest---Conversation with Mrs. Grubach---Then Miss Bürstner

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for he knew he had done nothing wrong, yet one morning he was arrested. His landlady Mrs. Grubach's cook, who brought breakfast every day at eight, did not come. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and finally, both hungry and disconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered---slim, firmly built, dressed in black with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all giving the impression of being very practical without making clear what they were actually for. "Who are you?" K. asked, sitting half upright in bed. The man ignored the question. "You rang?" He went to the door and told someone behind it, "He wants Anna to bring him his breakfast." There was laughter in the neighbouring room. "It is not possible."

K. jumped out of bed and pulled on his trousers. In the next room, Mrs. Grubach's living room, over-filled with furniture and photographs, another man sat by the open window with a book. "You should have stayed in your room! Didn't Franz tell you?" Through the window, the old woman across the street had pressed close to her own window to continue watching. "You can't go away when you're under arrest," said the man at the window. K. demanded to know why. "That's something we're not allowed to tell you. Proceedings are underway and you'll learn about everything all in good time."

The two men---they could only be policemen---told K. he would have to surrender his nightshirt and wear one of much lower quality. They would keep his belongings, but things had a tendency to go missing in the storeroom, and after a certain time they sold things off whether the case had ended or not. Cases like these could last a long time, especially the ones coming up lately. K. paid hardly any attention. He wanted a clear understanding of his position, but could not think clearly with these people present. The second policeman's belly looked friendly enough, sticking out towards him, but his dry, bony face did not match. What sort of people were these? What office did they belong to? K. was living in a free country, after all; who dared accost him in his own home?

He might have taken it all as a joke set up by colleagues at the bank---it was, after all, his thirtieth birthday---but he was determined not to lose any slight advantage he might have over these people. He fetched his identification papers, found first his bicycle permit, thought it too petty, and searched until he found his birth certificate. Mrs. Grubach appeared briefly at the door but retreated in embarrassment. One of the policemen sat eating K.'s breakfast by the open window. "She's not allowed to come in. You're under arrest, aren't you?"

K. demanded to see the arrest warrant. "Oh, my God!" said the big policeman. "We're just coppers, junior officers. We hardly know one end of an ID card from another. All we've got to do is keep an eye on you for ten hours a day and get paid for it. But what we can do is make sure the high officials find out just what sort of person it is they're going to arrest. Our authorities don't go out looking for guilt among the public; it's the guilt that draws them out, like it says in the law." K. said the law probably existed only in their heads. Franz pointed out that K. admitted he didn't know the law and at the same time insisted he was innocent. K. stopped talking with them. They were of the lowest position, talking about things they didn't understand. He needed a few words with someone of his own standing.

A curt, military shout came from the other room: "The supervisor wants to see you!" K. hurried out but was chased back---he couldn't appear in just his shirt. "It's got to be a black coat," the policemen insisted. K. threw his coat to the floor and said, without knowing what he meant by it, "Well it's not going to be the main trial, after all." He chose his best black suit with the short jacket and dressed carefully, secretly pleased he had made them forget about making him bathe.

He was led into Miss Bürstner's room, where her bedside table had been pulled to the middle to serve as a desk. The supervisor sat behind it, legs crossed, one arm thrown over the backrest. In one corner, three young people examined photographs on the wall. A white blouse hung on the window handle. Across the street, the old couple had been joined by a man with a reddish goatee beard which he squeezed and twisted with his fingers.

"I daresay you were quite surprised by all that's been taking place this morning," said the supervisor. K. began to feel relaxed---at last, someone with some sense. He explained that thirty years of making his own way had hardened him to surprises. He demanded to know who was issuing the indictment, what office was conducting the affair, whether any of them were officials. The supervisor slammed the box of matches down on the table. "You're making a big mistake. These gentlemen and I have got nothing to do with your business; in fact we know almost nothing about you. You'd better think less about us and what's going to happen to you, and think a bit more about yourself. And stop making all this fuss about your sense of innocence; you don't make such a bad impression, but with all this fuss you're damaging it."

K. grew cross, paced the room, told the three men by the photographs "It makes no sense," and finally offered the supervisor a handshake to settle the matter peacefully. The supervisor stood, picked up a hard round hat from Miss Bürstner's bed, and put it carefully on with both hands. "Everything seems so simple to you, doesn't it. No, no, that won't do. You're simply under arrest, nothing more than that." But K. could still go to the bank, still carry on with his usual life. "In that case it's not too bad, being under arrest," K. said, feeling more independent now. The supervisor had arranged for three of K.'s own bank colleagues to accompany him---Rabensteiner with his stiff demeanour, Kullich with his blonde hair and deep-set eyes, and Kaminer with his involuntary grin caused by chronic muscle spasms. K. had been so absorbed he hadn't recognized them. They set off by taxi. K. noticed he had failed to observe the supervisor and policemen leaving, and resolved to watch himself more carefully. But he turned back round without even making the effort to see anyone.

That spring K. usually spent evenings walking or at the regulars' table in a pub until eleven, and once a week visited a girl called Elsa who worked nights in a wine bar. But this evening he went straight home, feeling the flat had been thrown into disarray and that it was up to him to restore order. Once order was restored, every trace of those events would be erased. At the bank, the three colleagues had immersed themselves back in their paperwork with no alteration to be seen in them.

At half past nine he met the landlord's young son smoking a pipe in the doorway, then went to Mrs. Grubach. She sat knitting stockings. K. raised the morning's events; she waved them off gently. She admitted she had listened from behind the door and the policemen had told her a thing or two. "It's all to do with your happiness, and that's something that's quite close to my heart. You have been arrested, but it's not in the same way as when they arrest a thief. It seems to me that it's something very complicated that I don't understand, but something that you don't really need to understand anyway."

K. dismissed the whole affair as a fuss about nothing. Had he simply got up without letting himself get confused, paid no regard to anyone in his way, and come straight to Mrs. Grubach, nothing would have happened. At the bank he was always prepared, always alert---nothing of the sort could touch him there. Mrs. Grubach, with tears in her voice, said, "Don't take it so hard, Mr. K." He felt suddenly tired and saw that her agreement was of very little value.

He asked after Miss Bürstner. She was at the theatre. Mrs. Grubach volunteered that the young woman came home late often, that she'd seen her twice in the street with a different gentleman each time. K. grew angry. "You are on quite the wrong track," he said, and warned her directly to say nothing. He slammed his door, then regretted the thought of persuading Miss Bürstner to give notice alongside him---that would be shockingly excessive and pointless.

He lay on the couch smoking a cigar until eleven, then paced the hallway. He had no particular desire for Miss Bürstner---he could not even remember what she looked like---but he wanted to speak to her, and it irritated him that her late arrival meant this day would be full of unease right to its very end. Past half eleven, she arrived, shivering, pulling a silk shawl over her slender shoulders. K. whispered from his dark doorway. She was tired but let him into her room. He explained that an investigating committee had used her room that morning, that her photographs had been disturbed. She stopped at the mat. "Look at this! My photographs really have been put in the wrong places. Someone really has been in my room without permission."

She was intrigued by the arrest. "You believe that I'm innocent then?" K. asked. "Well now, innocent..." she said carefully, "I don't want to start making any pronouncements that might have serious consequences." She mentioned she would soon start work in a legal office. K. said she might help with his trial. But when she pressed for details he could not explain---he didn't know what the charges were himself.

K. offered to re-enact the scene. He moved her bedside table to the center of the room, sat behind it, and played the supervisor. He placed the policemen on the chest, the three young people by the photographs, described the blouse on the window handle. Then he called out "Josef K.!"---louder than intended. The cry seemed to spread itself all round the room.

Immediately there came a series of loud, curt knocks from the adjoining room. Miss Bürstner went pale and laid her hand on her heart. Mrs. Grubach's nephew, a captain in the army, was sleeping there---she had forgotten. K. took her hand, whispered reassurances, promised Mrs. Grubach would believe whatever explanation they offered. He would even let it be said he had attacked her, and Mrs. Grubach would believe it without losing her trust in him. Miss Bürstner refused. "I can bear the responsibility for anything that happens in my room myself, and I can do so with anyone. I'm surprised you don't realise just how insulting your suggestions are."

At the door, K. halted as if he hadn't expected to find a door there. Miss Bürstner slipped into the hallway. She pointed to the light under the captain's door. "He's put a light on and he's laughing at us." K. moved forward, took hold of her, and kissed her on the mouth and then over her whole face like a thirsty animal lapping with its tongue when it eventually finds water. He kissed her neck and throat and left his lips pressed there until a noise came from the captain's room. She offered her hand to be kissed, turned away as if she did not know what she was doing, and went back inside with her head bowed. K. lay in bed and soon fell asleep. He was satisfied with his behaviour but surprised he was not more satisfied, and seriously worried about Miss Bürstner because of the captain.

Chapter Two: First Cross-examination

K. was informed by telephone that a small hearing concerning his case would be held the following Sunday. Cross-examinations would follow regularly, perhaps not every week but quite frequently. Sunday had been chosen so as not to disturb his professional work. He was given the number of a building in a street in a suburb well away from the city centre which K. had never been to before. He hung up without answering---he had decided immediately to go. Proceedings had begun and he had to face up to it.

He was still standing by the telephone when the deputy director appeared behind him and invited K. to join him on his sailing boat that Sunday. The invitation was of no small importance---the deputy director, with whom K. had never got on well, was trying to improve relations, a sign of how important K. had become at the bank. But K. had to humiliate him a second time. "I'm afraid I will have no time on Sunday, I have a previous obligation." The deputy director said "Pity" and turned to his telephone call. K. lingered awkwardly, then said he'd received a call and had to go somewhere but they'd forgotten to tell him the time. "Ask them then," said the deputy director. "It's not that important," said K., making his already weak excuse even weaker.

Sunday was dull. K. had stayed out drinking late with the regulars and nearly overslept. He dressed hurriedly, without time to think through the plans he had worked out during the week, and rushed to the suburb without breakfast. Oddly, he spotted all three bank colleagues from his arrest---Rabensteiner and Kullich in a tram, Kaminer on a café terrace, all surprised to see their superior running. A kind of pride made K. want to go on foot; this was his affair, and the idea of any help from strangers was repulsive.

Juliusstrasse consisted on each side of almost nothing but monotonous grey constructions, tall blocks of flats occupied by poor people. Men in shirtsleeves leant from windows smoking, a fruitmonger nearly knocked him down with his cart, and a worn-out gramophone began to play some murderous tune. K. went further into the street slowly, as if the examining magistrate were watching from one of the windows. The building was enormous, its gateway intended for delivery wagons. K. chose a stairway at random, his thoughts playing on what the policeman Willem had said---that the court is attracted by guilt.

He climbed past children playing on the stairs. On the first floor he invented a joiner called Lanz---the name occurred to him because Mrs. Grubach's nephew, the captain, was called Lanz---as a pretext to peer into flats. Almost all doors stood open: small, one-windowed rooms where women held babies in one arm and worked at the stove with the other, where beds were still occupied by the ill or the sleeping. No one knew Lanz. K. was led from floor to floor, people naming joiners who were not called Lanz or accompanying him to distant doors. Exasperated on the fifth floor, he decided to give up, but then went back and knocked at the first door. A young woman washing children's underclothes pointed her wet hand toward the adjoining room.

He had stepped into the hearing. A medium-sized, two-windowed room was filled with the most diverse crowd---nobody paid attention to the person who had just entered. Close under the ceiling a gallery was fully occupied, people standing bent with their heads and backs touching the ceiling, many having brought pillows to cushion themselves. On a low podium at the far end, a small, fat, wheezing man sat behind a table---the examining judge. A youth led K. through a narrow passage dividing two factions, most dressed in old, long, formal black frock coats. The judge pulled out his watch. "You should have been here one hour and five minutes ago." A muttering rose from the right side of the hall, then died away gradually.

K. decided to watch more than talk. "Well maybe I have arrived late, I'm here now." Loud applause from the right. Quiet from the left, directly behind him. The judge said he was no longer obliged to hear the case but would continue as an exception. "But you should never arrive late like this again." K. stepped onto the podium, pressed against the table by the crowd behind him.

The judge thumbed through a misshapen old notebook, the only item on his desk. "You are a house painter?" "No," said K., "I am the chief clerk in a large bank." Hearty laughter erupted from the right faction; people supported themselves with their hands on their knees and shook as if suffering a serious attack of coughing. Even some in the gallery were laughing. The judge jumped up threatening them, his eyebrows pushing up big, black and bushy over his eyes. The left side remained quiet, people standing in rows with their faces toward the podium.

K. launched into his address. He called the question symptomatic of how the proceedings were being conducted. "Perhaps you will object that there are no proceedings against me. You will be quite right, as there are proceedings only if I acknowledge that there are. But, for the moment, I do acknowledge it, out of pity for yourselves to a large extent." He described his arrest---the two police thugs who wanted bribes and ate his breakfast, the supervisor in Miss Bürstner's room who told him basically nothing, a picture of dull-witted arrogance, the three bank employees brought along to damage his reputation. "Even my landlady, Mrs. Grubach, was understanding enough to see that an arrest like this has no more significance than an attack carried out on the street by youths who are not kept under proper control."

He noticed the judge giving a secret sign to someone in the crowd. "And now the judge, right next to me, is giving a secret sign to someone among you. I give his lordship my full and public permission to stop giving secret signs to his paid subordinate and give his orders in words instead; let him just say 'Boo now!,' and then the next time 'Clap now!'" The judge rocked on his seat. The two factions began to intermingle. The air was fuggy and oppressive, those standing furthest away could hardly be seen through it.

K. struck the desk with his fist. "There is no doubt that there is some enormous organisation determining what is said by this court," he said quietly. "Its purpose is to arrest innocent people and wage pointless prosecutions against them which, as in my case, lead to no result. How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning? That is impossible, not even the highest judge would be able to achieve that for himself."

A screeching interrupted him---the washerwoman had been pulled into a corner by a man pressing himself against her. K. tried to push through the front row but was blocked. Old men held out their arms; a hand seized his collar. He jumped down from the podium and made his real discovery: beneath their beards, every one of them wore badges of various sizes and colours on their collars. All belonged to the same organisation---the division into factions was a sham. "All of you are working for this organisation," K. called out, throwing his arms in the air. "You've all pressed yourselves in here to listen in and snoop on me!" He took his hat and pushed toward the exit. The examining judge was waiting at the door. "Today, you have robbed yourself of the advantages that a hearing of this sort always gives to someone who is under arrest." K. laughed. "You bunch of louts, you can keep all your hearings as a present from me," and hurried down the steps.

Chapter Three: In the Empty Courtroom---The Student---The Offices

No summons came the following week, so on Sunday K. returned to the same building, going without hesitation up the steps and through the corridors. Some of the people remembered him and greeted him from their doorways, but he no longer needed to ask anyone the way. The woman from before opened the door. "There's no session today." The room was empty, the podium bare except for a few books. K. asked to see them. "Those books belong to the examining judge." She was the court usher's wife; the room doubled as their living quarters, cleared out for each session. "We're allowed to live here as we like, only we have to clear the room out when the court's in session."

K. asked about the disturbance during his speech. She said the man who seized her---a student named Berthold---had been chasing her for a long time, and her husband had to tolerate it because the student would one day be powerful. She offered to help K. "Do you believe you really will be able to make things better?" K. doubted she could---she knew only lower officials, not the high judiciary. She protested, insisting the examining judge wrote endless reports, especially about K. She described how the judge had stayed writing until deep in the night after the hearing, and she had brought him a lamp. Everyone else had gone to bed, but the examining judge wrote on. Then in the middle of the night she woke to find him standing by her bedside, shading the lamp with his hand so the light would not fall on her husband. He needn't have been so careful---the way her husband slept, the light wouldn't have woken him anyway. She had nearly screamed, but the judge whispered he had been writing all this time and was returning the lamp, and he would never forget how she looked asleep. He had even sent her silk stockings through the student. She stretched out her leg and drew her skirt up to her knee to show them. "They are nice stockings, but they're too good for me, really."

K. asked to see the books on the table. They were old and well worn. He threw open the first---an indecent picture of a naked man and woman on a sofa, grossly lacking in skill. The next was a novel titled What Grete Suffered from her Husband, Hans. "So this is the sort of law book they study here," said K., "this is the sort of person sitting in judgement over me."

The woman invited him to sit on the podium step with her. "You've got lovely dark eyes," she said. "That's even why I came in here, into the assembly room." K. stood up. She was offering herself to him, as degenerate as everything else around here. She'd had enough of the court officials and so approached any stranger. He told her he didn't think she could help---the most that could be done through lower employees would have no bearing on the final outcome. "You belong to the people I have to combat, and you're very comfortable among them, you're even in love with the student." She protested, grasped his hand. He sat back down and told her he doubted the trial would ever reach any conclusion---the officials were too lazy, too forgetful, or too fearful to continue. Perhaps one favour she could do him would be to tell the examining judge that he would never be induced to pay any sort of bribe through any stratagem of theirs.

The student appeared in the doorway, short, with legs that were not quite straight, continually moving his finger round in a short, thin, red beard. The woman whispered she had to go to him---the examining judge had sent for her---but would come back. K. was attracted to her and could find no good reason not to give in. Perhaps there was no better revenge against the examining judge than to take this woman from him---then the judge would go to her bed late one night and find it empty. But the student, with unexpected strength, lifted her on one arm and ran with her to the door, stroking and squeezing her arm with his free hand. K. pursued them. The woman pushed him away. "It's no good, it's the examining judge who's sent for me. This little bastard won't let me." K. gave the student a thump in the back and let them go. It was the first unambiguous setback he had suffered from these people, though he told himself that if he stayed home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times superior to any of them.

The student carried her up a narrow wooden staircase opposite the flat. K. noticed a small piece of paper in a childish, unpractised hand: "Entrance to the Court Offices." The offices were in the attic of this tenement---some comfort for the accused to realise how little money this court had, unless the officials simply squandered it on themselves. K. also understood now why the court preferred to impose upon the accused in their own homes rather than summon them to this attic.

The court usher appeared, a man with gilded buttons on his civilian coat---the only sign of his office, taken from an old army officer's coat. He confirmed the student was always carrying his wife away. "If I wasn't so dependent on them I'd have squashed the student against the wall here a long time ago," he said, describing a vivid fantasy of the student crushed with arms spread, crooked legs twisted into a circle, and blood squirting all around. He offered to show K. the offices.

They climbed into a long corridor from which roughly made doors led to separate departments. Instead of solid walls, wooden bars reached to the ceiling, through which officials could be seen writing at desks or standing at the wooden frameworks watching the people in the corridor through the gaps. On two rows of long benches sat the waiting accused---carelessly dressed but clearly of the upper classes, their backs bowed, their knees bent, standing like beggars when K. passed. "They must all be very dispirited," K. said. "They are the accused," said the usher. "They're colleagues of mine then," said K.

He approached a tall, thin man with greying hair and asked what he was waiting for. The man was so startled he could barely speak---pitiful to see, since elsewhere he would certainly have been able to show his superiority. Finally: "A month ago I made some applications for evidence to be heard in my case, and I'm waiting for it to be settled." K. told him he himself had been indicted but had submitted no evidence. "Do you really think that's necessary?" The man was totally unsure of himself; he clearly thought K. was joking with him. When K. grasped his arm the man cried out as if seized with red-hot tongs. K., tired of him, shoved him back onto the bench and walked on. "These defendants are so sensitive, most of them," said the usher. A security guard approached, identifiable mainly by his sword with a scabbard that seemed to be made of aluminium, which greatly surprised K. and he reached out for it with his hand. The guard had come because of the shouting; the usher said a few words to calm him down.

The air in the offices grew unbearable. K. began to feel dizzy, as if on a ship in a rough sea---the corridor swaying, the waiting litigants rising and sinking on each side, a thundering from the depths of the corridor as if a torrent were crashing over it. A young woman brought him a chair. "Almost everyone gets an attack like that the first time they come here. The sun burns down on the roof and the hot wood makes the air so thick and heavy. It makes this place rather unsuitable for offices, whatever other advantages it might offer." She tried to open a hatch above his head but so much soot fell in she had to close it immediately and clean K.'s hands with her handkerchief.

An elegantly dressed man appeared---the information-giver. The girl explained that the office staff and litigants had taken up a collection to buy him fine clothes, since he was the first person litigants met and needed to give a dignified first impression. The rest of the staff dressed badly and old-fashioned, hardly ever leaving the offices, even sleeping there. "There, you see," the information-giver said to the girl, laughing, "the gentleman is only unwell here, and not in general." They supported K. under the arms. The girl whispered to K. as they walked that the information-giver was not hard-hearted, that none of them were really, but working for the court offices it was easy to give that impression. In the corridor they passed the defendant K. had spoken to earlier, who stood humbly as if wanting to apologise for being there. The information-giver told him it was commendable to be so attentive.

K. felt as if the water were hitting against wooden walls. All he heard was a noise that filled all the space, through which a higher note sounded like a siren. At last a draught of cool air blew in his face---a gap had been torn in the wall before him, and the young woman had opened the door. All his strength seemed to return at once. He stepped onto the stairs, shook their hands, and ran down in such long leaps that the contrast with his previous state nearly frightened him. Whatever he did, he wanted to spend all Sunday mornings in future better than he had spent this one.

Chapter Four: Miss Bürstner's Friend

For some time after that night, K. found it impossible to exchange even a few words with Miss Bürstner. He tried everything---coming straight home from the office, sitting in his dark room watching the empty hallway, getting up an hour early to catch her leaving. He wrote her a letter, both to the office and the flat, justifying his behaviour, promising never to cross whatever boundary she might set, begging merely for the chance to speak with her. The letters were not returned, but there was no answer either.

On the following Sunday came a sign clear enough: a French teacher called Montag, a pale, febrile girl with a slight limp, was moving into Miss Bürstner's room. She could be seen shuffling through the hallway for hours, fetching one forgotten item after another. When Mrs. Grubach brought K. his breakfast---she no longer trusted the maid to do the slightest job since K. had been so cross with her---he asked about the noise. Mrs. Grubach explained the move and waited anxiously for K.'s reaction. He asked whether she had given up her suspicions about Miss Bürstner. She nearly wept. "I just made a chance remark and you took it so badly. You don't know how I've been suffering!" K. attempted a reconciliation, and Mrs. Grubach, feeling freer to speak, added something inept: "I kept asking myself why it was that Mr. K. took such an interest in Miss Bürstner."

The maid came to say Miss Montag wished to speak with K. in the dining room. He found her there, her head unusually erect. She had come on behalf of her friend. "Miss Bürstner is aware of your reasons for asking for this meeting, and she is quite sure that it would be of no benefit to anyone if this meeting actually took place." She delivered this message with elaborate formality, explaining that even the slightest uncertainty should be removed without delay. K. thanked her, stood up, and went to the door. There he encountered Captain Lanz, who bowed slightly and went to kiss Miss Montag's hand with great elegance. K. saw them as a group formed to keep him at a distance from Miss Bürstner while seeming harmless and unselfish. Miss Montag exaggerated the importance of everything. K. told himself Miss Bürstner was a little typist who would not offer him much resistance for long.

He went to Miss Bürstner's room and knocked. No answer. He knocked harder, then carefully opened the door. The room had been transformed---two beds, clothes piled on chairs, a wardrobe standing open. Miss Bürstner had gone out. As he closed the door he saw Miss Montag and the captain watching from the dining room doorway, chatting lightly, following his movements with absent-minded glances to the side. These glances were heavy for K., and he rushed back to his own room.

Chapter Five: The Whip-man

One evening a few days later, K. was walking along a corridor at the bank---nearly the last to leave---when he heard a sigh from behind a door he had always thought led to a junk room. He yanked it open. In the cupboard-like space, three men crouched under the low ceiling by candlelight. One wore a dark leather costume leaving his neck and arms exposed. The other two cried out: "Mr. K.! We're to be beaten because you made a complaint about us to the examining judge." It was Franz and Willem, the policemen from his arrest. The third man held a cane.

"I didn't make any complaint," K. said. "I only said what took place in my home." Willem pleaded---he had a family to feed, Franz wanted to get married, the clothes they'd taken were tradition among officers. "If he starts talking about it openly then the punishment has to follow." The whip-man said the punishment was just and unavoidable. Willem insisted they'd proved their worth as good police officers, that their careers were now finished. K. tested the cane the whip-man swung before him. "Is there no possibility of sparing these two their beating?" "No," said the whip-man with a laugh. He ordered them to strip naked.

K. offered money. The whip-man refused---"I'm not the sort of person you can bribe. It's my job to flog people, so I flog them." Franz knelt before K. in just his trousers, weeping, begging to be spared, saying his poor bride was waiting at the bank entrance. The whip-man took the cane in both hands and laid into Franz. The scream that shot out was long and irrevocable, seeming to come not from a human being but from an instrument being tortured. The whole corridor rang with it. K. shoved Franz to the ground---not hard, but hard enough to knock him down---and slammed the door shut. A servitor appeared in the distance. "It's only me!" K. called from the window. "Is there anything wrong?" "No, it's only a dog yelping in the yard."

K. remained at the window, unable to go back into the junk room or to go home. He felt anguish at not having prevented the flogging, but told himself it was Franz's screaming that had made it impossible---if Franz had maintained control, K. might have raised the bribe high enough. He promised himself he would see that the high officials who were really guilty received their due punishment.

The following day, passing the junk room on his way home, he opened the door. Everything was exactly the same---the whip-man with his cane, the two policemen still undressed, the candle on the shelf. The policemen began to wail: "Mr. K.!" He slammed the door shut, thumped it with his fists, and ran almost in tears to the servitors at the copying machine. "Go and get that junk room cleared out! It should have been done long ago, we're sinking in dirt!" They would do it the next day. K. sat down briefly to keep them near him, then went home tired and with his mind numb.

Chapter Six: K.'s Uncle---Leni

One afternoon K.'s Uncle Karl, a small country landowner and K.'s former guardian, burst into his office at the bank, pushing his way between two staff members bringing in papers. K. had long expected him---his uncle was always in a hurry, suffering from the belief that he had a number of things to settle in one day. "I'm haunted by a ghost from the country," K. would say.

Uncle Karl wanted to speak in private. "It is necessary for my peace of mind." K. sent the junior staff from the room. His uncle had received a letter from his daughter Erna, who had tried to visit K. at the bank but been told he was busy with legal proceedings. She had written to her father: a bank clerk had told her about proceedings against the chief clerk, something quite serious, and she urged her father to look into it. K.'s uncle read the letter aloud, wiped tears from his eyes, and demanded the truth. "It is true," K. said. "Not a criminal trial, I hope?" "It's a criminal trial." His uncle was appalled. "And you sit quietly here while you've got a criminal trial round your neck? Josef, my dear Josef, think about yourself, about your family, think about our good name! Up till now, you've always been our pride, don't now become our disgrace. I don't like the way you're behaving---that's not how an innocent man behaves when he's accused of something."

K. asked him to lower his voice---a staff member might be listening at the door. They left the bank, his uncle asking questions all the way. On the front steps, K. explained it was not a trial like you'd have in a normal courtroom. "So much the worse," said his uncle. They walked on, absorbed into the bustle of the street. His uncle urged K. to take a holiday in the country, away from the court's reach. "Here they've got every means of showing the powers at their disposal and they're automatically bound to use them against you; in the country they'll have to try and bother you by letter, telegram or telephone." K. refused---staying in the city meant he could press the matter forward. "Do you want to lose the trial?" his uncle cried. "Do you realise what that would mean? That would mean you would be simply destroyed. And that everyone you know would be pulled down with you." K. calmed him: "The case won't be won by getting excited." They agreed K. would push things forward himself.

His uncle hailed a taxi. "We're going now to see Dr. Huld, the lawyer. We were at school together. He's got a very good reputation as a defence barrister and for working with the poor." K. told his uncle everything about the case as they drove, holding nothing back. He noticed they were passing the suburb where the court offices were.

They arrived at a dark building. Two large black eyes appeared in the spy-hatch of the door. A man in a dressing gown whispered from the passage: "Dr. Huld is ill." A young girl---K. noticed her dark, slightly bulging eyes, her round face like a puppy's---let them in, holding a candle in a long white apron. In a corner of the bedroom, the lawyer looked up from his bed with a long beard. "It's your old friend, Albert," said K.'s uncle. The lawyer fell back onto his pillow as if this visit meant he would not need to keep up appearances. It was a recurrence of his heart trouble---he could hardly breathe, couldn't sleep, was getting weaker by the day.

K.'s uncle persecuted the girl, Leni, with his scowl as she fussed over the pillows and smoothed the cloth covering the wall. "Young lady, now please leave us alone for a while, I have some personal matters to discuss with my friend." Leni replied quietly that the doctor was too ill to discuss anything. K.'s uncle nearly exploded---"You damned..."---but the lawyer intervened, raising himself from the bed. "You can say anything in front of Leni," he said imploringly. K.'s uncle twisted round, refusing. The lawyer sent Leni away, stretching his hand out to her as if it were a farewell that would have to last a long time.

The lawyer already knew about K.'s case---he moved in court circles, and interesting cases stayed in one's mind. "I also derive great advantage for my clients from mixing with those people," he said. He pointed to a dark corner of the room. An elderly gentleman had been sitting there unnoticed the entire time---the office director, a high official with direct command over K.'s affair. He stood up with a great deal of fuss, flapping his hands like short wings, clearly unhappy that attention had been drawn to him. The lawyer introduced everyone. The office director smiled and spread himself in an armchair. "I'm afraid I'll only be able to stay a few minutes more. Business calls."

K.'s uncle was enchanted by this new acquaintance. K., leaning against the bedpost, was totally ignored by the office director and served the old man only as audience. He had hardly any idea what the conversation was about, and his thoughts soon turned to Leni. He wondered whether he had seen the office director before---perhaps among the old gentlemen with thin beards in the first row at his hearing.

A noise came from the hallway---something of porcelain breaking. K. went to investigate. In the darkness, a small hand placed itself on his and shut the door. It was Leni. "Nothing has happened," she whispered. "I just threw a plate against the wall to get you out of there." She led him to the lawyer's office, a large room with heavy furniture illuminated by moonlight. She sat very close beside him, almost pressing him against the armrest. "I did think you would come out here to me by yourself. You ought to call me Leni," she said.

K. noticed a large painting of a man in judge's robes on a lofty gilded throne, his right arm free as if about to jump up in vigorous outrage and pass sentence. "That might be my judge," said K. "I know him," said Leni. "He comes here quite often. He's tiny, minute almost, but he had himself made to look bigger---he's madly vain, just like everyone round here. Really he's sitting on a kitchen chair with an old horse blanket folded over it."

"You're too unyielding, that's what I've heard," Leni told him. "There's nothing you can do to defend yourself from this court, you have to confess. So confess to them as soon as you get the chance. It's only then that they give you the chance to get away." K. tested her: "And what if I don't confess, could you not help me then?" "No," she said, slowly shaking her head. She asked if he had a lover. He showed her a photograph of Elsa, the waitress, caught mid-dance in a wine bar, her skirt still flung out as she spun, her hands on her firm hips. "She's very tightly laced," Leni said. "I don't like her, she's clumsy and crude. Would she be capable of sacrificing herself for you?" "No," K. admitted. "She isn't gentle or friendly, and nor would she be capable of sacrificing herself for me."

Leni showed him her own bodily defect---the flap of skin between her middle and ring fingers reaching almost to the top joint. "What a freak of nature," said K. "What a pretty claw!" He kissed her fingers. She clambered onto his lap with her knees, grasped his head, leant over him---there was a bitter, irritating smell from her, like pepper---and bit and kissed his neck. "I've taken her place!" she exclaimed. Her last words as he left were "Here's the key to the door, come whenever you want," and she planted an undirected kiss on his back.

Outside in the light rain, K.'s uncle leapt from a waiting car and shoved him against the door as if wanting to nail him to it. "How could you do a thing like that?! Things were going well with this business of yours, now you've caused it terrible damage. You slip off with some dirty, little thing who is obviously the lawyer's beloved, and stay away for hours. You don't even try to find an excuse. Meanwhile we're sitting there---your uncle who's going to such effort for you, the lawyer who needs to be won over to your side, and above all the office director, a very important gentleman in direct command of your affair. We wanted to discuss how best to help you. Eventually the office director left, looked at me in sympathy without being able to help. The lawyer was quite unable to speak. You have probably contributed to his total collapse and brought the very man you are dependent on closer to his death. And me, your own uncle, you leave me here in the rain---just feel this, I'm wet right through---waiting here for hours, sick with worry."

Chapter Seven: Lawyer---Manufacturer---Painter

One winter morning, snow falling in the dull light outside, K. sat in his office already extremely tired despite the early hour. He had told the servitor he was engaged in major work and no junior staff should be let in. But instead of working he turned round in his chair, slowly moved items around his desk, then lay his arm stretched out and sat immobile with his head sunk on his chest.

He could no longer get the thought of the trial out of his head. He had often wondered whether to compose a written defence and hand it to the court---a short description of his life explaining why he had acted as he had at each important event. There was no doubt of the advantages over relying on the lawyer, who was not without his shortcomings. It was more than a month since Dr. Huld had summoned him, and none of their discussions gave K. the impression this man could do much. The lawyer did not ask questions but did all the talking himself, or sat silently pulling at a strand of hair in his beard, looking down at the carpet---perhaps at the very spot where K. had lain with Leni. His speeches were pointless and boring, and K. decided that when the final bill came he would pay not a penny for them.

The lawyer would claim to have won many such cases, would tap on drawers said to contain official secrets he could never actually show, and announce that the first documents were nearly ready. But in the next breath he would explain that first documents were sometimes not even read by the court---they simply filed them with the rest. If the applicant became insistent, they would promise the documents would be checked over eventually, but they were usually mislaid or lost completely. The trial would not be public. The accused and his defence had no access to court records or even the indictment. Defence was not really allowed under the law, only tolerated---there was even dispute about whether the law implied even that. Anyone who came before this court as counsel was basically no more than a barrack room lawyer.

The lawyers' room at the court was a wretched place---narrow, low-ceilinged, lit only by a window so high you needed a colleague's back to reach it, with chimney smoke going up your nose and a hole in the floor big enough for your foot to disappear through into the corridor below where litigants waited. The court wanted to prevent any kind of defence, making everything the responsibility of the accused alone. Yet lawyers were still necessary because proceedings were kept secret---the accused could not even see his own records. The most important thing, then, was the lawyer's personal connections with officials. Dr. Huld claimed court officials came to his home, brought documents, sought his advice. But K. suspected the lawyer was exploiting these contacts for his own purposes rather than K.'s. The first documents still had not been submitted after months. Everything remained in its initial stages, which was precisely the point---to keep the defendant passive and helpless until the verdict fell on him like a surprise.

The only welcome interruption during visits was when Leni brought tea. She would stand behind K., pretending to watch the lawyer drink, and secretly let K. hold her hand. There was always complete silence. The lawyer drank. K. squeezed Leni's hand and Leni would sometimes dare to gently stroke K.'s hair. "Still here, are you?" the lawyer would ask, and start talking again with renewed energy.

It was essential that K. take a hand in it himself. He no longer felt the contempt for the trial he had had earlier. If he had been alone in the world it would have been easy to ignore it, but now his uncle had dragged him to the lawyer, his job was no longer separate from the trial's progress, he had carelessly mentioned it to acquaintances, his relationship with Miss Bürstner seemed in trouble because of it. In short, he no longer had any choice whether to accept the trial or turn it down---he was in the middle of it and had to defend himself. If he was tired, then that was bad.

But there was no reason to worry too much before he needed to. He had been capable of working himself up to his high position at the bank in a relatively short time and retaining it with respect from everyone. Now he simply had to apply those same talents to the trial. The most important thing was to reject in advance any idea of guilt. There was no guilt. The trial was nothing but a big piece of business, like those he had concluded at the bank many times, a piece of business that concealed many lurking dangers waiting in ambush. He would dismiss the lawyer, submit documents himself, and force the officials to deal with his case every day---force them to sit at their desks and study K.'s documents instead of looking out on the corridor through the grating. It was about time the court came up against a defendant who knew how to defend and make use of his rights.

But composing the documents proved overwhelming. He did not know the charges, and would have to remember every tiny action and event from his whole life, looking at them from all sides. One morning he shoved everything aside and sketched out thoughts on a writing pad, but the deputy director walked in laughing at a stock-exchange joke, leant over K.'s desk, took his pencil, and drew an illustration on K.'s pad.

That morning, a manufacturer---a short, jolly man and important bank client---was shown in. K. could not concentrate. He stared at the manufacturer's bald head, nodding mechanically. The deputy director appeared, and the manufacturer jumped up to greet him. The two men leant over K.'s desk, and K. felt as if they were much bigger than they really were and their negotiations were about him. He slowly raised a paper from his desk as he rose to their level, but the deputy director took it saying, "Thank you, I'm already familiar with everything," and laid it calmly back. The deputy director invited the manufacturer into his own office: "I'm sure the chief clerk will be very glad to have us take it off his hands. He seems to be over-burdened today."

K. sat alone by the window watching the snow. The decision to take his own defence now seemed more of a burden than he had assumed. If he was to conduct it himself, he would have to devote himself entirely to the court. How would he survive that? How was he to succeed at the bank?

Before leaving, the manufacturer told K. privately that he knew about the trial. He recommended a painter named Titorelli who worked for the court, painting portraits of judges. "He knows lots of judges and even if he can't have much influence himself he can give you some advice about how to get influential people on your side. You're nearly a lawyer yourself. That's what I always say, Mr. K. the chief clerk is nearly a lawyer." K. took the letter of recommendation. The manufacturer warned him not to invite Titorelli to the bank or send letters---"you don't know what might happen to them."

K. left the bank, giving three waiting clients to the deputy director---who seemed very good at appropriating everything K. was forced to give up. Was K. not giving up more than he absolutely had to? By running off to some unknown painter with very little hope of any vague benefit, his renown was suffering damage that could not be repaired. But when he glimpsed the deputy director in his office, looking for something from K.'s bookshelves as if they were his own, he could not bring himself to turn back. "I can't deal with him right now," K. said to himself, "but once my personal difficulties have been settled, then he'll certainly be the first to get the effect of it."

He went straight to the painter, who lived in an outlying part of town near the court offices, in an even poorer area. In the great gateway, a repulsive yellow liquid shot from a hole in the wall, rats scurried into the canal, a child lay crying on its belly, drowned out by a metal-workshop. K. climbed the narrow, oppressive stairway---no proper stairwell, walls on both sides, only small high windows. Young girls ran out of a flat and rushed up the stairs. A hunchbacked girl of about thirteen, sharp and depraved, jabbed him with her elbow when he asked for Titorelli. She opened her mouth too wide and hit him with her hand as if he had said something extraordinarily surprising. The girls formed a guard of honour on the stairs, pressing against the walls, smoothing their aprons, a mixture of childishness and depravity on their faces.

Titorelli opened the door in his nightshirt, barefoot, wearing only loose yellowish trousers. The studio was wretched---hardly long enough for two steps, everything made of wood with gaps between the planks, a bed against the wall under a covering of many colours, an easel in the middle covered with a shirt, a window looking onto a snow-covered roof through fog. The girls pressed at the door; the painter locked them out. "Those kids are a real burden for me. They had a key made to my door and lend it round to each other."

K. showed the manufacturer's letter. The painter glanced at it and threw it on the bed. On the easel was a portrait of a judge---a heavy man with a full black beard extending far up his cheeks, gripping the arm of his throne, seeming about to rise in vigorous outrage. Behind the figure, the painter added strokes to a shape K. couldn't make out. "That's the figure of justice," the painter said. "But aren't those wings on her heels, and isn't she moving?" asked K. "I had to paint it like that according to the contract. It's actually the figure of justice and the goddess of victory all in one." "That is not a good combination," said K. with a smile. "Justice needs to remain still, otherwise the scales will move about and it won't be possible to make a just verdict." As the painter worked, a reddish shadow built up around the judge's head like a decoration or lofty distinction, while the figure of Justice shone forward in brightness---looking now like neither Justice nor Victory but a perfect depiction of the God of the Hunt.

"Always straight out with the truth," said the painter when K. asked about the court. He confirmed he was a trustee of the court, a position inherited from his father. The rules governing how judges were painted were so many, varied, and secret that no one outside certain families knew them. "These girls belong to the court as well," he added. "Well, everything belongs to the court."

K. now began to find it far easier to believe the painter. If it really was so easy to influence judges through personal contacts, as the lawyer had said, then the painter's contacts with these vain judges were especially important. The painter would fit well in the circle of assistants K. was slowly gathering around himself. He had been noted at the bank for his talent in organising; here, placed entirely on his own resources, would be a good opportunity to test that talent to its limits.

"You're innocent, are you?" the painter asked. "Yes," said K., feeling simple joy at answering so openly to a private individual. "Well if you're innocent it's all very simple." K. scowled. "My being innocent does not make things simple. There are many fine details in which the court gets lost, but in the end it reaches into some place where originally there was nothing and pulls enormous guilt out of it." "Yeah, yeah, sure," said the painter, as if K. had been disturbing his train of thought. "But you are innocent, aren't you?" "Well of course I am." "That's the main thing."

The painter pulled his chair closer and spoke in a subdued voice. There were three possibilities: absolute acquittal, apparent acquittal, and deferment. Absolute acquittal was the best, but the painter could do nothing to achieve it---probably no one could. He had never seen a single absolute acquittal. "They say there have been some acquittals earlier, but the courts don't make their final conclusions public. All we know about these earlier cases are just legends." K. said legends could not be cited in court. "Then there's no point in talking about them."

Apparent acquittal worked differently. The painter would write an assertion of innocence on a piece of paper---the text passed down from his father, quite unassailable---take it round to judges he knew, and give them his personal guarantee of K.'s innocence. "And that's not just a superficial guarantee, it's a real one and it's binding." Some judges might want K. brought to them personally, and the painter would teach him in advance exactly how to act. Some judges would turn him down, but no one judge could pass the decisive verdict. When enough signatures were collected, the judge handling K.'s case could acquit him without worries. "You walk out the court and you're free." But only apparently free---temporarily free. The junior judges did not have the right to give final acquittal; only the highest judge could do that, in a court quite out of reach. With absolute acquittal, everything disappeared---the indictment, the trial, even the acquittal itself. With apparent acquittal, nothing changed except that the case for innocence had been made stronger. Proceedings went on as before, passed to higher courts, back to lower courts, backwards and forwards. "No documents ever get lost, the court forgets nothing. One day---no-one expects it---some judge or other picks up the documents, notices the case is still active, and orders the defendant's immediate arrest." The trial would start over again. "The second acquittal is followed by the third arrest, the third acquittal by the fourth arrest and so on. That's what is meant by the term apparent acquittal."

Deferment meant keeping proceedings permanently in their earliest stages. The accused and his helpers had to maintain continuous personal contact with the court, visit the appropriate judge at regular intervals, remain friendly with him. "The trial doesn't stop, but the defendant is almost as certain of avoiding conviction as if he'd been acquitted." The advantage was less uncertainty---no sudden re-arrests. The disadvantage was that the trial had to be continuously spun round inside a tiny circle, with periodic interrogations and investigations, all for show. "As the accused, you have to report to the judge from time to time."

"Both have in common that they prevent the defendant being convicted," the painter summarized. "But they also prevent his being properly acquitted," said K. quietly, as if ashamed to acknowledge it. "You've got it, in essence," said the painter quickly.

K. wanted only to leave. The air was unbearable, the room unventilated, the window a fixed pane that could not be opened. The painter pointed to a second door behind the bed. But first he crawled under the bed and pulled out a pile of dusty paintings. "Moorland landscape"---two sickly trees in dark grass, a multi-coloured sunset. K. bought it, then a second identical painting, then a third exactly the same. "I'll take this one too." "We can talk about the price next time," said the painter. "I'll give you all the paintings I've got down here. They're all moorland landscapes."

The painter unlocked the door behind the bed. K. looked through and drew his foot back. "What is that?" "Those are court offices. Didn't you know there are court offices here? There are court offices in almost every attic. Even my studio is actually one of the court offices." It seemed to K. that one of the most basic rules for a defendant was always to be prepared, never allow surprises---and this was the very rule he was continually violating. A long corridor extended before him with benches along each side, a man half-sleeping, another standing in the half-dark. K. climbed over the bed and staggered through the corridor, handkerchief pressed over his mouth. The girls stormed in from the other side. "I can't come with you any further!" called the painter with a laugh. "Goodbye, and don't hesitate too long!"

K. took the first cab, arrived at the bank well into the afternoon, and locked the paintings in the lowest drawer of his desk to keep them safe from the deputy director's view.

Chapter Eight: Block, the Businessman---Dismissing the Lawyer

K. had at last decided to withdraw his defence from the lawyer. It was past ten o'clock when he stood in front of Dr. Huld's door. He had considered giving notice by letter or telephone, but a personal conversation would let him read the lawyer's reaction. And perhaps he might even be persuaded otherwise.

At first no one answered. Then two eyes appeared at the spy-hatch---not Leni's. A small, wizened man with a full beard opened the door, holding a candle. Through the corridor K. saw Leni running away in her nightshirt. "Do you work here?" K. asked. "No, the lawyer is only representing me. I'm here on legal business." "Without your coat?" K. asked, noting the man's undress. "Is Leni your lover?" The man raised his hand in defence. "Oh God, no, no, what can you be thinking?"

His name was Block, a businessman. K. led him through the flat, stopping before the painting of the judge. "Do you know him?" Block lifted the candle and blinked. "He's an important judge." "You don't have much insight," said K. "He is the lowest of the lowest examining judges." "That's what I've already been told," Block admitted.

In the kitchen, Leni stood at the stove in her white apron, breaking eggs into a pot. "Who is this man?" K. asked, leaning over her shoulder. "He's a pitiful character, a poor businessman by the name of Block. Just look at him." Block sat in the corner, extinguishing his candle and pressing the wick with his fingers. K. asked if Block was her lover. "You're not going to be jealous of Mr. Block now, are you?" Leni said. She whispered that she'd been helping him because he was an important client of the lawyer's, nothing more. She offered to tell the lawyer K. was there, helped him off with his coat, and went to take the lawyer his soup.

K. turned to Block. The businessman had been the lawyer's client for over five years in his trial, twenty years for business matters. His trial had started soon after his wife's death. "I've got everything written down," he said, pulling out an old briefcase. He had taken all the money out of his business, reduced his offices to a single room with one apprentice. "If you want to do something about your trial you don't have much time for anything else." He had tried working at the court himself but soon gave it up---it wore you out too much, and it was quite impossible to work there and negotiate. "It's a heavy strain there just sitting and waiting. You know yourself what the air is like in those offices." He had been in the waiting room when K. passed through. "We knew you were a defendant. That sort of news spreads very quickly." The defendants had stood up not for K. but for the servant of the court.

Block confessed he had taken on other lawyers besides Dr. Huld---five petty lawyers, with a sixth under negotiation. "That's not allowed. And it's allowed least of all to take on petty lawyers when you've already got a proper one." K. was astonished at the number. Block explained that the court distinguished between petty lawyers, minor lawyers like Dr. Huld, and great lawyers whose existence was almost legendary. "I don't know who the great lawyers are, and there's probably no way of contacting them. They only defend those who they want to defend." The petty lawyers had submitted documents that turned out to be worthless---pages of Latin, general appeals, flattery for unnamed officials, self-praise where the lawyer humiliated himself in a way that was downright dog-like. "I couldn't see any progress in my trial at all."

Block told K. about the superstitions of the waiting room. The accused could be identified in a crowd by those with experience---those facing a charge were the most attractive. The defendants had examined K.'s lips and concluded he would be found guilty very soon. "That's just a ridiculous superstition," K. said, pulling out a pocket mirror. "Isn't that what I just told you?" Block replied.

"He's sacking his lawyer!" Block yelled when K. revealed his intention, jumping from his chair and running around the kitchen with his arms in the air. Leni tried to rush at K. but Block got in her way. K. ran to the lawyer's room and locked the door behind him.

"I've been waiting for you a very long time," said the lawyer from his bed, putting on his glasses and looking at K. sharply. K. told him he was withdrawing his representation with immediate effect. The lawyer asked him to sit. "It's not a plan any more," K. said. "The decision is final." The lawyer threw the bed cover aside and sat on the edge of the bed, his naked white-haired legs shivering. He asked for a blanket. "You are running the risk of catching cold for no reason," K. said. "The circumstances are important enough," the lawyer replied.

He tried to persuade K. to stay. He spoke of his friendship with K.'s uncle, his fondness for K. himself, how he had concentrated his entire practice on cases like K.'s, turning away almost everyone else, working alone, becoming ill from overwork. "Some lawyers lead their clients on a thread until judgement is passed, but there are others who immediately lift their clients onto their shoulders and carry them all the way to the judgement and beyond. That's just how it is." K. grew impatient. From the way the lawyer was speaking, he could hear what would follow if he gave in---the same delays and excuses, reports of documents progressing, moods of court officials improving, enormous difficulties. He would try to mislead K. with hopes that were never specified and make him suffer with threats that were never clear. "What will you undertake on my behalf if you continue to represent me?" he asked. "I should continue with what I've already been doing for you." "That's just what I thought," said K., "and now you don't need to say another word."

"I am not impatient," K. said, with some irritation. "When I first came here with my uncle I wasn't greatly concerned about my case. But once there was someone representing me, everything was set for something to happen. I was always, without cease, waiting for you to do something, getting more and more tense, but you did nothing." The lawyer replied that after a certain point in proceedings, nothing new of any importance ever happened. "So many litigants, at the same stage in their trials, have stood before me just like you are now and spoken in the same way." "Then these other litigants have all been right, just as I am," said K.

The lawyer made one more attempt. "I would like to show you how other defendants are treated. I will call Block in." K. agreed, always ready to learn something new. The lawyer rang for Leni and told her to fetch Block.

Block entered on tiptoe, his face tense, hands clenched behind his back. "Block here?" the lawyer asked from behind the quilt, his face turned to the wall. "At your service, sir." "What do you want? You've come at a bad time." "Wasn't I summoned?" "You were summoned, but you have still come at a bad time. You always come at a bad time."

The lawyer told Block he had visited the third judge, a friend of his, and brought the conversation round to Block's case. "Do you want to know what he said?" Block lowered his head as if about to kneel. K. shouted at him: "What do you think you're doing?" The lawyer asked Block who his lawyer was. "You are, sir." "And who besides me?" "No-one besides you, sir." "And let there be no-one besides me." Block glowered at K., shaking his head violently.

Leni sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the lawyer's long white hair until he spoke. "He's been quiet and industrious," she reported of Block's day. She had kept him locked in the maid's room, where he knelt on the bed reading the lawyer's papers by the dim light of an air shaft, running his finger along the lines, sighing as if the reading were a great labor.

"You speak well of him," said the lawyer, "but that's just what makes it difficult for me. The judge did not speak well of him at all." Block looked at Leni with such tension, as though she could change the judge's words in his favour. The lawyer recounted the conversation: the judge had called Block sly, said he knew how to delay proceedings but didn't know as much as he thought. "'What do you think he'd say if he learned his trial still hasn't begun, if you told him they haven't even rung the bell to announce the start of proceedings?'"

Block began to raise himself on trembling knees. The lawyer spoke directly to him for the first time: "What the judge said has no meaning for you. You needn't be frightened at every word. If you do it again I won't tell you anything else at all. You're still alive, you're still under my protection." He explained that opinions about procedure varied endlessly---this judge saw proceedings as starting at a different point. "A difference of opinion, nothing more."

K. watched all of this, testing it and thinking it over. These were the lawyer's methods: to let the client forget about the whole world and leave him with nothing but the hope of reaching the end of his trial by this deluded means. Block was no longer a client---he was the lawyer's dog. If the lawyer had ordered him to crawl under the bed as if it were a kennel and bark, he would have done so with enthusiasm.

Block ran his fingers through the pile of the carpet. "Block," said Leni, taking hold of his collar and pulling him up slightly. "Leave the carpet alone and listen to what the lawyer is saying."

Chapter Nine: In the Cathedral

A very important Italian business contact had come to visit the city, and K. was given the task of showing him its cultural sights. At any other time he would have seen this as an honour, but now, finding it hard even to maintain his position at the bank, he accepted only with reluctance. Every hour away from the office was a cause of concern. He sometimes thought he saw the deputy director come into his office, sit at his desk, look through his papers, receive clients who had almost become old friends of K.'s, and lure them away. If his fears had the slightest foundation, turning jobs down would have been an acknowledgement of them.

He arrived at the office early on a rainy, stormy morning, having spent half the night studying Italian grammar. The servitor reported that the Italian was already in the director's reception room. K. went through the deputy director's empty office and was introduced. The Italian shook his hand vigorously and spoke in a dialect K. could barely follow---words gushing from his mouth, his head shaking with enjoyment, his bushy moustache concealing the movements of his lips. The director, who had spent years in southern Italy, understood perfectly and took over the conversation. K. had nothing to do but mechanically watch the exchange, his tiredness making itself felt until he nearly caught himself getting up and leaving.

The Italian wanted only to see the cathedral, thoroughly, and asked K. to meet him there at ten o'clock. K. spent the remaining time copying obscure words from a dictionary, besieged by servitors, bank staff, clients, and the deputy director, who came in frequently and flicked through the dictionary for no purpose.

At half past nine Leni telephoned. "To the cathedral?" she asked. "They're harassing you." K. could not bear pity he had not wanted. "Yes," he said, half to himself, "they're harassing me."

He took a taxi through the rain, holding the album of tourist sights on his knees. The square before the cathedral was empty, curtains closed in nearly every window. Inside, the cathedral was dark and seemed deserted---only an old woman kneeling before a picture of the Virgin Mary. The Italian was not there. K. walked round the building in the rain but found no one. He sat down in a pew, wrapped in his coat with the collar up, and flicked through the album until it became too dark to see.

He noticed a small secondary pulpit on a column near the choir stalls---very simple, plain white stone, so small it looked like an empty niche. A lamp was fastened above it, which usually meant a sermon was about to be given. Under the pulpit stood a priest, his hand on the handrail, looking at K. The priest nodded slightly, and K. crossed himself and genuflected. With a little swing, the priest went up into the pulpit.

K. considered leaving---it was eleven, there was no need to wait for the Italian any longer. The idea of a sermon now, on a workday, in hideous weather, was nonsense. The priest was clearly just going to put the lamp out. But the priest turned it higher, leant on the balustrade, and looked around. K. began to move toward the exit, his steps ringing on the stone floor and resounding from the vaulting. The size of the cathedral seemed just at the limit of what a man could bear.

Then the priest's voice pierced through the reaches of the cathedral: "Josef K.!"

K. stood still and looked at the floor. In theory he was still free---he could walk through one of the dark wooden doors and away. But if he turned round he would be trapped, acknowledging that he was the Josef K. the priest had called. He turned. The priest beckoned him with his finger. K. ran with long flying leaps toward the pulpit.

"You are Josef K.," said the priest. "You have been accused." "Yes, so I have been informed." "Then you are the one I am looking for. I am the prison chaplain." He had summoned K. here to speak with him. "Do you know your case is going badly?" "That's how it seems to me too," said K. "I've expended a lot of effort on it, but so far with no result." "How do you imagine it will end?" "At first I thought it was bound to end well, but now I have my doubts. I don't know how it will end." "I don't," said the priest, "but I fear it will end badly. You are considered guilty. Your case will probably not even go beyond a minor court."

"But I'm not guilty," said K. "There's been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We're all human beings here, one like the other." "That is true," said the priest, "but that is how the guilty speak."

K. said he still needed to find help. "You look for too much help from people you don't know," said the priest, "and especially from women." K. argued that women had power---show the examining judge a woman in the distance and he'd run right over the desk. The priest screamed down at him: "Can you not see two steps in front of you?" It was the scream of one who sees another fall and, shocked and without thinking, screams against his own will.

They were silent for a long time. Then K. asked the priest to come down. "To start off with I had to speak to you from a distance," said the priest. "Otherwise I'm too easily influenced and forget my duty." They walked together in the darkness of a side nave. "You are very friendly towards me," said K. "That makes you an exception among all those who belong to the court." "Don't fool yourself," said the priest. "You fool yourself in the court. It talks about this self-deceit in the opening paragraphs to the law."

He told K. the parable of the doorkeeper: A man from the countryside comes to the door of the law and asks for entry. The doorkeeper says he cannot let him in now, but perhaps later. The gateway stands open, but the doorkeeper warns of ever more powerful doorkeepers within. The man sits on a stool beside the door for days and years, trying again and again, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the gifts: "I'll only accept this so that you don't think there's anything you've failed to do." The man grows old, his eyes dim. Just before he dies, he asks: "Everyone wants access to the law---how come no-one but me has asked to be let in?" The doorkeeper shouts: "Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I'll go and close it."

"So the doorkeeper cheated the man," said K. "Don't be too quick," said the priest. They debated the parable. The priest argued the doorkeeper had done his duty, had even gone beyond it by hinting at future admission. K. insisted the man had been deceived. The priest presented commentators who believed the doorkeeper himself was deceived---he didn't know the inside of the law, was the man's subordinate without knowing it. Others said the doorkeeper belonged to the law and was beyond what man had a right to judge. "You don't need to accept everything as true," said the priest, "you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world."

The simple story had lost its shape. K. was too tired to think about all its ramifications. They walked in silence. The lamp had long since gone out. "We're near the main entrance, are we?" K. asked. "No, we're a long way from it." K. said he had to go. "Go to your left as far as the wall, then continue alongside it and you'll find a way out." K. called after him: "You were so friendly to me earlier, but now you abandon me as if I were nothing to you." "You have to go," said the priest. "First, you need to understand who I am." "You're the prison chaplain." "So that means I belong to the court. So why would I want anything from you? The court doesn't want anything from you. It accepts you when you come and it lets you go when you leave."

Chapter Ten: End

The evening before K.'s thirty-first birthday, two men came to where he lived---pale and fat, in frock coats and top hats. K. sat near the door dressed in black, slowly pulling on new gloves as if expecting visitors. "You've come for me then, have you?" The gentlemen nodded. "Some ancient, unimportant actors," he said to himself. "They want to sort me out as cheaply as they can."

On the stairs they reached for his arms but K. refused until they were in the street. There they seized him in a grip he had never experienced---shoulders pressed close behind his, arms twisted around the full length of his, hands clasped in a hold that was formal, experienced, and could not be resisted. They formed a single unit of the sort that can be formed only by lifeless matter.

At the edge of an open square K. stopped. "Why did they send you, of all people!" Just then Miss Bürstner---or someone very like her---came up from a lower street. K. became aware there was no point in resistance. He started walking. The only thing he could do now was keep his common sense right till the end.

They went over a bridge in the moonlight, through streets where policemen stood, and out into the fields. They stopped at an abandoned quarry. The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light. One gentleman removed K.'s coat, waistcoat, and shirt, folding them as if they would still be needed, and walked him up and down against the chill. They leant him against a stone near the rockface and settled his head on top of it.

One drew a long, thin butcher's knife and held it up to test its sharpness. They passed it over K. from one to the other and back. K. knew it would be his duty to take the knife and thrust it into himself. But he did not. He twisted his neck and looked around. He lacked the strength he needed, and this final shortcoming was the fault of whoever had denied it to him. A light flickered on in the building above; somebody leant far out and stretched his arms. A friend? Was it everyone? Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached?

But the hands of one gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. "Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.