Franz Kafka: The Complete Novels. Франц Кафка

unpleasantness for me is a blow against them. And I will make quite sure it is a blow against them. Do you actually know the judge?” “Course I do,” said the woman, “he was the first one I thought of when I offered to help you. I didn’t know he’s only a minor official, but if you say so it must be true. Mind you, I still think the report he gives to his superiors must have some influence. And he writes so many reports. You say these officials are lazy, but they’re certainly not all lazy, especially this examining judge, he writes ever such a lot. Last Sunday, for instance, that session went on till the evening. Everyone had gone, but the examining judge, he stayed in the hall, I had to bring him a lamp in, all I had was a little kitchen lamp but he was very satisfied with it and started to write straight away. Meantime my husband arrived, he always has the day off on Sundays, we got the furniture back in and got our room sorted out and then a few of the neighbours came, we sat and talked for a bit by a candle, in short, we forgot all about the examining judge and went to bed. All of a sudden in the night, it must have been quite late in the night, I wakes up, next to the bed, there’s the examining judge shading the lamp with his hand so that there’s no light from it falls on my husband, he didn’t need to be as careful as that, the way my husband sleeps the light wouldn’t have woken him up anyway. I was quite shocked and nearly screamed, but the judge was very friendly, warned me I should be careful, he whispered to me he’s been writing all this time, and now he’s brought me the lamp back, and he’ll never forget how I looked when he found me there asleep. What I mean, with all this, I just wanted to tell you how the examining judge really does write lots of reports, especially about you as questioning you was definitely one of the main things on the agenda that Sunday. If he writes reports as long as that they must be of some importance. And besides all that, you can see from what happened that the examining judge is after me, and it’s right now, when he’s first begun to notice me, that I can have a lot of influence on him. And I’ve got other proof I mean a lot to him, too. Yesterday, he sent that student to me, the one he really trusts and who he works with, he sent him with a present for me, silk stockings. He said it was because I clear up in the courtroom but that’s only a pretence, that job’s no more than what I’m supposed to do, it’s what my husband gets paid for. Nice stockings, they are, look,” — she stretched out her leg, drew her skirt up to her knee and looked, herself, at the stocking — “they are nice stockings, but they’re too good for me, really.”

      She suddenly interrupted herself and lay her hand on K.’s as if she wanted to calm him down, and whispered, “Be quiet, Berthold is watching us.” K. slowly looked up. In the doorway to the courtroom stood a young man, he was short, his legs were not quite straight, and he continually moved his finger round in a short, thin, red beard with which he hoped to make himself look dignified. K. looked at him with some curiosity, he was the first student he had ever met of the unfamiliar discipline of jurisprudence, face to face at least, a man who would even most likely attain high office one day. The student, in contrast, seemed to take no notice of K. at all, he merely withdrew his finger from his beard long enough to beckon to the woman and went over to the window, the woman leant over to K. and whispered, “Don’t be cross with me, please don’t, and please don’t think ill of me either, I’ve got to go to him now, to this horrible man, just look at his bent legs. But I’ll come straight back and then I’ll go with you if you’ll take me, I’ll go wherever you want, you can do whatever you like with me, I’ll be happy if I can be away from here for as long as possible, it’d be best if I could get away from here for good.” She stroked K.’s hand once more, jumped up and ran over to the window. Before he realised it, K. grasped for her hand but failed to catch it. He really was attracted to the woman, and even after thinking hard about it could find no good reason why he should not give in to her allure. It briefly crossed his mind that the woman meant to entrap him on behalf of the court, but that was an objection he had no difficulty in fending off. In what way could she entrap him? Was he not still free, so free that he could crush the entire court whenever he wanted, as least where it concerned him? Could he not have that much confidence in himself? And her offer of help sounded sincere, and maybe it wasn’t quite worthless. And maybe there was no better revenge against the examining judge and his cronies than to take this woman from him and have her for himself. Maybe then, after much hard work writing dishonest reports about K., the judge would go to the woman’s bed late one night and find it empty. And it would be empty because she belonged to K., because this woman at the window, this lush, supple, warm body in its sombre clothes of rough, heavy material belonged to him, totally to him and to him alone. Once he had settled his thoughts towards the woman in this way, he began to find the quiet conversation at the window was taking too long, he rapped on the podium with his knuckles, and then even with his fist. The student briefly looked away from the woman to glance at K. over his shoulder but did allow himself to be disturbed, in fact he even pressed himself close to the woman and put his arms around her. She dropped her head down low as if listening to him carefully, as she did so he kissed her right on the neck, hardly even interrupting what he was saying. K. saw this as confirmation of the tyranny the student held over the woman and which she had already complained about, he stood up and walked up and down the room. Glancing sideways at the student, he wondered what would be the quickest possible way to get rid of him, and so it was not unwelcome to him when the student, clearly disturbed by K.’s toing and froing which K. had now developed into a stamping up and down, said to him, “You don’t have to stay here, you know, if you’re getting impatient. You could have gone earlier, no-one would have missed you. In fact you should have gone, you should have left as quickly as possible as soon as I got here.” This comment could have caused all possible rage to break out between them, but K. also bore in mind that this was a prospective court official speaking to a disfavoured defendant, and he might well have been taking pride in speaking in this way. K. remained standing quite close to him and said with a smile, “You’re quite right, I am impatient, but the easiest way to settle this impatience would be if you left us. On the other hand, if you’ve come here to study — you are a student, I hear — I’ll be quite happy to leave the room to you and go away with the woman. I’m sure you’ll still have a lot of study to do before you’re made into a judge. It’s true that I’m still not all that familiar with your branch of jurisprudence but I take it it involves a lot more than speaking roughly — and I see you have no shame in doing that extremely well.” “He shouldn’t have been allowed to move about so freely,” said the student, as if he wanted to give the woman an explanation for K.’s insults, “that was a mistake. I’ve told the examining judge so. He should at least have been detained in his room between hearings. Sometimes it’s impossible to understand what the judge thinks he’s doing.” “You’re wasting your breath,” said K., then he reached his hand out towards the woman and said, “come with me.” “So that’s it,” said the student, “oh no, you’re not going to get her,” and with a strength you would not have expected from him, he glanced tenderly at her, lifted her up on one arm and, his back bent under the weight, ran with her to the door. In this way he showed, unmistakeably, that he was to some extent afraid of K., but he nonetheless dared to provoke him still further by stroking and squeezing the woman’s arm with his free hand. K. ran the few steps up to him, but when he had reached him and was about to take hold of him and, if necessary, throttle him, the woman said, “It’s no good, it’s the examining judge who’s sent for me, I daren’t go with you, this little bastard... “ and here she ran her hand over the student’s face, “this little bastard won’t let me.” “And you don’t want to be set free!” shouted K., laying his hand on the student’s shoulder, who then snapped at it with his teeth. “No!” shouted the woman, pushing K. away with both hands, “no, no don’t do that, what d’you think you’re doing!? That’d be the end of me. Let go of him, please just let go of him. He’s only carrying out the judge’s orders, he’s carrying me to him.” “Let him take you then, and I want to see nothing more of you,” said K., enraged by his disappointment and giving the student a thump in the back so that he briefly stumbled and then, glad that he had not fallen, immediately jumped up all the higher with his burden. K. followed them slowly. He realised that this was the first unambiguous setback he had suffered from these people. It was of course nothing to worry about, he accepted the setback only because he was looking for a fight. If he stayed at home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times superior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just with a kick. And he imagined