Olga’s Plans
“Now it was necessary again to find some occupation for father that he was still fit for, something that at least would make him believe that he was helping to remove the burden of guilt from our family. Something of the kind was not hard to find, anything at all in fact would have been as useful for the purpose as sitting in Bertuch’s garden, but I found something that actually gave me a little hope. Whenever there had been any talk of our guilt among officials or clerks or anybody else, it was only the insult to Sortini’s messenger that had always been brought up, farther than that nobody dared to go. Now, I said to myself, since public opinion, even if only ostensibly, recognised nothing but the insult to the messenger, then, even if it were still only ostensibly, everything might be put right if one could propitiate the messenger. No charge had actually been made, we were told, no department therefore had taken up the affair yet, and so the messenger was at liberty, so far as he was concerned—and there was no question of anything more—to forgive the offence. All that of course couldn’t have any decisive importance, was mere semblance and couldn’t produce in turn anything but semblance, but all the same it would cheer up my father and might help to harass the swarm of clerks who had been tormenting him, and that would be a satisfaction. First of course one had to find the messenger. When I told father of my plan, at first he was very annoyed, for to tell the truth he had become terribly self-willed; for one thing he was convinced—this happened during his illness—that we had always held him back from final success, first by stopping his allowance and then by keeping him in his bed; and for another he was no longer capable of completely understanding any new idea. My plan was turned down even before I had finished telling him about it, he was convinced that his job was to go on waiting in Bertuch’s garden, and as he was in no state now to go there every day himself, we should have to push him there in a handbarrow. But I didn’t give in, and gradually he became reconciled to the idea, the only thing that disturbed him was that in this matter he was quite dependent on me, for I had been the only one who had seen the messenger, he did not know him. Actually one messenger is very like another, and I myself was not quite certain that I would know this one again. Presently we began to go to the Herrenhof and look round among the servants. The messenger of course had been in Sortini’s service and Sortini had stopped coming to the village, but the gentlemen are continually changing their servants, one might easily find our man among the servants of another gentleman, and even if he himself was not to be found, still one might perhaps get news of him from the other servants. For this purpose it was of course necessary to be in the Herrenhof every evening, and people weren’t very pleased to see us anywhere, far less in a place like that; and we couldn’t appear either as paying customers. But it turned out that they could put us to some use all the same. You know what a trial the servants were to Frieda, at bottom they are mostly quiet people, but pampered and made lazy by too little work—‘May you be as well off as a servant’ is a favourite toast among the officials—and really, as far as an easy life goes, the servants seem to be the real masters in the Castle, they know their own dignity too, and in the Castle, where they have to behave in accordance with their regulations, they’re quiet and dignified, several times I’ve been assured of that, and one can find even among the servants down here some faint signs of that, but only faint signs, for usually, seeing that the Castle regulations aren’t fully binding on them in the village, they seem quite changed; a wild unmanageable lot, ruled by their insatiable impulses instead of by their regulations. Their scandalous behaviour knows no limits, it’s lucky for the village that they can’t leave the Herrenhof without permission, but in the Herrenhof itself one must try to get on with them somehow; Frieda, for instance, felt that very hard to do and so she was very glad to employ me to quieten the servants. For more than two years, at least twice a week, I’ve spent the night with the servants in the stall. Earlier, when father was still able to go to the Herrenhof with me, he slept somewhere in the taproom, and in that way waited for the news that I would bring in the morning. There wasn’t much to bring. We’ve never found the messenger to this day, he must be still with Sortini who values him very highly, and he must have followed Sortini when Sortini retired to a more remote bureau. Most of the servants haven’t seen him since we saw him last ourselves, and when one or other claims to have seen him it’s probably a mistake. So my plan might have actually failed, and yet it hasn’t failed completely, it’s true we haven’t found the messenger, and going to the Herrenhof and spending the night there—perhaps his pity for me, too, any pity that he’s still capable of—has unfortunately ruined my father, and for two years now he has been in the state you’ve seen him in, and yet things are perhaps better with him than with my mother, for we’re waiting daily for her death; it has only been put off thanks to Amalia’s superhuman efforts. But what I’ve achieved in the Herrenhof is a certain connection with the Castle; don’t despise me when I say that I don’t repent what I’ve done. What conceivable sort of a connection with the Castle can this be, you’ll no doubt be thinking; and you’re right, it’s not much of a connection. I know a great many of the servants now, of course, almost all the gentlemen’s servants who have come to the village during the last two years, and if I should ever get into the Castle I shan’t be a stranger there. Of course they’re servants only in the village, in the Castle they’re quite different, and probably wouldn’t know me or anybody else there that they’ve had dealings with in the village, that’s quite certain, even if they have sworn a hundred times in the stall that they would be delighted to see me again in the Castle. Besides I’ve already had experience of how little all these promises are worth. But still that’s not the really important thing. It isn’t only through the servants themselves that I have a connection with the Castle, for apart from that I hope and trust that what I’m doing is being noticed by someone up there—and the management of the staff of servants is really an extremely important and laborious official function—and that finally whoever is noticing me may perhaps arrive at a more favourable opinion of me than the others, that he may recognise that I’m fighting for my family and carrying on my father’s efforts, no matter in how poor a way. If he should see it like that, perhaps he’ll forgive me too for accepting money from the servants and using it for our family. And I’ve achieved something more yet, which even you, I’m afraid, will blame me for. I learned a great deal from the servants about the ways in which one can get into the Castle service without going through the difficult preliminaries of official appointment lasting sometimes for years; in that case, it’s true, one doesn’t become an actual official employee, but only a private and semiofficial one, one has neither rights nor duties—and the worst is not to have any duties—but one advantage one does have, that one is on the spot, one can watch for favourable opportunities and take advantage of them, one may not be an employee, but by good luck some work may come one’s way, perhaps no real employee is handy, there’s a call, one flies to answer it, and one has become the very thing that one wasn’t a minute before, an employee. Only, when is one likely to get a chance like that? Sometimes at once, one has hardly arrived, one has hardly had time to look round before the chance is there, and many a one hasn’t even the presence of mind, being quite new to the job, to seize the opportunity; but in another case one may have to wait for even more years than the official employees, and after being a semiofficial servant for so long one can never be lawfully taken on afterwards as an official employee. So there’s enough here to make one pause, but it sinks to nothing when one takes into account that the test for the official appointments is very stringent and that a member of any doubtful family is turned down in advance; let us say someone like that goes in for the examination, for years he waits in fear and trembling for the result, from the very first day everybody asks him in amazement how he could have dared to do anything so wild, but he still goes on hoping—how else could he keep alive?—then after years and years, perhaps as an old man, he learns that he has been rejected, learns that everything is lost and that all his life has been in vain. Here, too, of course there are exceptions, that’s how one is so easily tempted. It happens sometimes that really shady customers are actually appointed, there are officials who, literally in spite of themselves, are attracted by those outlaws; at the entrance examinations they can’t help sniffing the air, smacking their lips, and rolling their eyes towards an entrant like that, who seems in some way to be terribly appetising to them, and they have to stick close to their books of regulations so as to withstand him. Sometimes however that doesn’t help the entrant to an appointment, but only leads to an endless postponement of the preliminary proceedings, which are never really terminated, but only broken off by the death of the poor man. So official appointment no less than the other kind is full of obvious and concealed difficulties, and before one goes in for anything of the kind it’s highly advisable to weigh everything carefully. Now we didn’t fail to do that, Barnabas and I. Every time that I come back from the Herrenhof we sat down together and I told the latest news that I had gathered, for days we talked it over, and Barnabas’ work lay idle for longer spells than was good for it. And here I may be to blame in your opinion. I knew quite well that much reliance was not to be put on the servants’ stories. I knew that they never had much inclination to tell me things about the Castle, that they always changed the subject, and that every word had to be dragged out of them, and then, when they were well started, that they let themselves go, talked nonsense, bragged, tried to surpass one another in inventing improbable lies, so that in the continuous shouting in the dark stalls, one servant beginning where the other left off, it was clear that at best only a few scanty scraps of truth could be picked up. But I repeated everything to Barnabas again just as I had heard it, though he still had no capacity whatever to distinguish between what was true and what was false, and on account of the family’s position was almost famishing to hear all these things; and he drank in everything and burned with eagerness for more. And as a matter of fact the cornerstone of my new plan was Barnabas. Nothing more could be done through the servants. Sortini’s messenger was not to be found and would never be found, Sortini and his messenger with him seemed to be receding further and further, by many people their appearance and names were already forgotten, and often I had to describe them at length and in spite of that learn nothing more than that the servant I was speaking to could remember them with an effort, but except for that could tell nothing about them. And as for my conduct with the servants, of course I had no power to decide how it might be looked on and could only hope that the Castle would judge it in the spirit I did it in, and that in return a little of the guilt of our family would be taken away, but I’ve received no outward sign of that. Still I stuck to it, for so far as I was concerned I saw no other chance of getting anything done for us in the Castle. But for Barnabas I saw another possibility. From the tales of the servants—if I had the inclination, and I had only too much inclination—I could draw the conclusion that anyone who was taken into the Castle service could do a great deal for his family. But then what was there that was worthy of belief in these tales? It was impossible to make certain of that, but that there was very little was clear. For when, say, a servant that I would never see again, or that I would hardly recognise even were I to see him again, solemnly promised me to help to get my brother a post in the Castle, or at least, if Barnabas should come to the Castle on other business, to support him, or at least to back him up—for according to the servants’ stories it sometimes happens that candidates for posts become unconscious or deranged during the protracted waiting and then they’re lost if some friend doesn’t look after them—when things like that and a great many more were told to me, they were probably justified as warnings, but the promises that accompanied them were quite baseless. But not to Barnabas; it’s true I warned him not to believe them, but my mere telling of them was enough to enlist him for my plan. The reasons I advanced for it myself impressed him less, the thing that chiefly influenced him was the servants’ stories. And so in reality I was completely thrown back upon myself, Amalia was the only one who could make herself understood to my parents, and the more I followed, in my own way, the original plans of father, the more Amalia shut herself off from me, before you or anybody else she talks to me, but not when we’re alone; to the servants in the Herrenhof I was a plaything which in their fury they did their best to wreck, not one intimate word have I spoke with any of them during those two years, I’ve had only cunning or lying or silly words from them, so only Barnabas remained for me, and Barnabas was still very young. When I saw the light in his eyes as I told him those things, a light which has remained in them ever since, I felt terrified and yet I didn’t stop, the things at stake seemed too great. I admit I hadn’t my father’s great though empty plans, I hadn’t the resolution that men have, I confined myself to making good the insult to the messenger, and only asked that the actual modesty of my attempt should be put to my credit. But what I had failed to do by myself I wanted now to achieve in a different way and with certainty through Barnabas. We had insulted a messenger and driven him into a more remote bureau; and what was more natural than for us to offer a new messenger in the person of Barnabas, so that the other messenger’s work might be carried on by him, and the other messenger might remain quietly in retirement as long as he liked, for as long a time as he needed to forget the insult? I was quite aware, of course, that in spite of all its modesty there was a hint of presumption in my plan, that it might give rise to the impression that we wanted to dictate to the authorities how they should decide a personal question, or that we doubted their ability to make the best arrangements, which they might have made long before we had struck upon the idea that something could be done. But then I thought again that it was impossible that the authorities should misunderstand me so grossly, or if they should, that they should do so intentionally, that in other words all that I did should be turned down in advance without further examination. So I did not give in and Barnabas’s ambition kept him from giving in. In this term of preparation Barnabas became so uppish that he found that cobbling was far too menial work for him, a future bureau employee, yes, he even dared to contradict Amalia, and flatly, on the few occasions that she spoke to him about it. I didn’t grudge him this brief happiness, for with the first day that he went to the Castle his happiness and his arrogance would be gone, a thing easy enough to foresee. And now began that parody of service of which I’ve told you already. It was amazing with what little difficulty Barnabas got into the Castle that first time, or more correctly into the bureau which in a manner of speaking has become his workroom. This success drove me almost frantic at the time, when Barnabas whispered the news to me in the evening after he came home. I ran to Amalia, seized her, drew her into a corner, and kissed her so wildly that she cried with pain and terror. I could explain nothing for excitement, and then it had been so long since we had spoken to each other, so I put off telling her until next day or the day after. For the next few days, however, there was really nothing more to tell. After the first quick success nothing more happened. For two long years Barnabas led this heartbreaking life. The servants failed us completely, I gave Barnabas a short note to take with him recommending him to their consideration, reminding them at the same time of their promises, and Barnabas, as often as he saw a servant, drew out the note and held it up, and even if he sometimes may have presented it to someone who didn’t know me, and even if those who did know me were irritated by his way of holding out the note in silence—for he didn’t dare to speak up there—yet all the same it was a shame that nobody helped him, and it was a relief—which we could have secured, I must admit, by our own action and much earlier—when a servant who had probably been pestered several times already by the note, crushed it up and flung it into the wastepaper basket. Almost as if he had said: ‘That’s just what you yourselves do with letters,’ it occurred to me. But barren of results as all this time was in other ways, it had a good effect on Barnabas, if one can call it a good thing that he grew prematurely old, became a man before his time, yes, even in some ways more grave and sensible than most men. Often it makes me sad to look at him and compare him with the boy that he was only two years ago. And with it all I’m quite without the comfort and support that, being a man, he could surely give me. Without me he could hardly have got into the Castle, but since he is there, he’s independent of me. I’m his only intimate friend, but I’m certain that he only tells me a small part of what he has on his mind. He tells me a great many things about the Castle, but from his stories, from the trifling details that he gives, one can’t understand in the least how those things could have changed him so much. In particular I can’t understand how the daring he had as a boy—it actually caused us anxiety—how he can have lost it so completely up there now that he’s a man. Of course all that useless standing about and waiting all day, and day after day, and going on and on without any prospect of a change, must break a man down and make him unsure of himself and in the end actually incapable of anything else but this hopeless standing about. But why didn’t he put up a fight even at the beginning? Especially seeing that he soon recognised that I had been right and that there was no opportunity there for his ambition, though there might be some hope perhaps for the betterment of our family’s condition. For up there, in spite of the servants’ whims, everything goes on very soberly, ambition seeks it sole satisfaction in work, and as in this way the work itself gains the ascendancy, ambition ceases to have any place at all, for childish desires there’s no room up there. Nevertheless Barnabas fancied, so he has told me, that he could clearly see how great the power and knowledge even of those very questionable officials was into whose bureau he is allowed. How fast they dictated, with half-shut eyes and brief gestures, merely by raising a finger quelling the surly servants, and making them smile with happiness even when they were checked; or perhaps finding an important passage in one of the books and becoming quite absorbed in it, while the others would crowd round as near as the cramped space would allow them, and crane their necks to see it. These things and other things of the same kind gave Barnabas a great idea of those men, and he had the feeling that if he could get the length of being noticed by them and could venture to address a few words to them, not as a stranger, but as a colleague—true a very subordinate colleague—in the bureau, incalculable things might be achieved for our family. But things have never got that length yet, and Barnabas can’t venture to do anything that might help towards it, although he’s well aware that, young as he is, he’s been raised to the difficult and responsible position of chief breadwinner in our family on account of this whole unfortunate affair. And now for the final confession: it was a week after your arrival. I heard somebody mentioning it in the Herrenhof, but didn’t pay much attention; a Land Surveyor had come and I didn’t even know what a Land Surveyor was. But next evening Barnabas—at an agreed hour I usually set out to go a part of the way to meet him—came home earlier than usual, saw Amalia in the sitting-room, drew me out into the street, laid his head on my shoulder, and cried for several minutes. He was the little boy he had used to be again. Something had happened to him that he hadn’t been prepared for. It was as if a whole new world had suddenly opened to him, and he could not bear the joy and the anxieties of all this newness. And yet the only thing that had happened was that he had been given a letter for delivery to you. But it was actually the first letter, the first commission, that he had ever been given.”
Olga stopped. Everything was still except for the heavy, occasionally disturbed breathing of the old people. K. merely said casually, as if to round off Olga’s story: “You’ve all been playing with me. Barnabas brought me the letter with the air of an old and much occupied messenger, and you as well as Amalia—who for that time must have been in with you—behaved as if carrying messages and the letter itself were matters of indifference.” “You must distinguish between us,” said Olga. “Barnabas had been made a happy boy again by the letter, in spite of all the doubts that he had about his capability. He confined those doubts to himself and me, but he felt it a point of honour to look like a real messenger, as according to his ideas real messengers looked. So although his hopes were now rising to an official uniform I had to alter his trousers, and in two hours, so that they would have some resemblance at least to the close-fitting trews of the official uniform, and he might appear in them before you, knowing, of course, that on this point you could be easily taken in. So much for Barnabas. But Amalia really despises his work as a messenger, and now that he seemed to have had a little success—as she could easily guess from Barnabas and myself and our talking and whispering together—she despised it more than ever. So she was speaking the truth, don’t deceive yourself about that. But if I, K., have seemed to slight Barnabas’s work, it hasn’t been with any intention to deceive you, but from anxiety. These two letters that have gone through Barnabas’s hands are the first signs of grace, questionable as they are, that our family has received for three years. This change, if it is a change and not a deception—deceptions are more frequent than changes—is connected with your arrival here, our fate has become in a certain sense dependent on you, perhaps these two letters are only a beginning, and Barnabas’s abilities will be used for other things than these two letters concerning you—we must hope that as long as we can—for the time being however everything centres on you. Now up in the Castle we must rest content with whatever our lot happens to be, but down here we can, it may be, do something ourselves, that is, make sure of your goodwill, or at least save ourselves from your dislike, or, what’s more important, protect you as far as our strength and experience goes, so that your connection with the Castle—by which we might perhaps be helped too—might not be lost. Now what was our best way of bringing that about? To prevent you from having any suspicion of us when we approached you—for you’re a stranger here and because of that certain to be full of suspicion, full of justifiable suspicion. And, besides we’re despised by everybody and you must be influenced by the general opinion, particularly through your fiancée, so how could we put ourselves forward without quite unintentionally setting ourselves up against your fiancée, and so offending you? And the messages, which I had read before you got them—Barnabas didn’t read them, as a messenger he couldn’t allow himself to do that—seemed at the first glance obsolete and not of much importance, yet took on the utmost importance in as much as they referred you to the Superintendent. Now in these circumstances how were we to conduct ourselves towards you? If we emphasised the letters’ importance, we laid ourselves under suspicion by overestimating what was obviously unimportant, and in pluming ourselves as the vehicle of these messages we should be suspected of seeking our own ends, not yours; more, in doing that we might depreciate the value of the letter itself in your eyes and so disappoint you sore against our will. But if we didn’t lay much stress on the letters we should lay ourselves equally under suspicion, for why in that case should we have taken the trouble of delivering such an unimportant letter, why should our actions and our words be in such clear contradiction, why should we in this way disappoint not only you, the addressee, but also the sender of the letter, who certainly hadn’t handed the letter to us so that we should belittle it to the addressee by our explanations? And to hold the mean, without exaggeration on either side, in other words to estimate the just value of those letters, is impossible, they themselves change in value perpetually, the reflections they give rise to are endless, and chance determines where one stops reflecting, and so even our estimate of them is a matter of chance. And when on the top of that there came anxiety about you, everything became confused, and you mustn’t judge whatever I said too severely. When for example—as once happened—Barnabas arrived with the news that you were dissatisfied with his work, and in his first distress—his professional vanity was wounded too I must admit—resolved to retire from the service altogether, then to make good the mistake I was certainly ready to deceive, to lie, to betray, to do anything, no matter how wicked, if it would only help. But even then I would have been doing it, at least in my opinion, as much for your sake as for ours.”
There was a knock. Olga ran to the door and unfastened it. A strip of light from a dark lantern fell across the threshold. The late visitor put questions in a whisper and was answered in the same way, but was not satisfied and tried to force his way into the room. Olga found herself unable to hold him back any longer and called to Amalia, obviously hoping that to keep the old people from being disturbed in their sleep Amalia would do anything to eject the visitor. And indeed she hurried over at once, pushed Olga aside, and stepped into the street and closed the door behind her. She only remained there for a moment, almost at once she came back again, so quickly had she achieved what had proved impossible for Olga.
K. then learned from Olga that the visit was intended for him. It had been one of the assistants, who was looking for him at Frieda’s command. Olga had wanted to shield K. from the assistant; if K. should confess his visit here to Frieda later, he could, but it must not be discovered through the assistant; K. agreed. But Olga’s invitation to spend the night there and wait for Barnabas he declined, for himself he might perhaps have accepted, for it was already late in the night and it seemed to him that now, whether he wanted it or not, he was bound to this family in such a way that a bed for the night here, though for many reasons painful, nevertheless, when one considered this common bond, was the most suitable for him in the village; all the same he declined it, the assistant’s visit had alarmed him, it was incomprehensible to him how Frieda, who knew his wishes quite well, and the assistants, who had learned to fear him, had come together again like this, so that Frieda didn’t scruple to send an assistant for him, only one of them, too, while the other had probably remained to keep her company. He asked Olga whether she had a whip, she hadn’t one, but she had a good hazel switch, and he took it; then he asked whether there was any other way out of the house, there was one through the yard, only one had to clamber over the wall of the neighbouring garden and walk through it before one reached the street. K. decided to do this. While Olga was conducting him through the yard, K. tried hastily to reassure her fears, told her that he wasn’t in the least angry at the small artifices she had told him about, but understood them very well, thanked her for the confidence she had shown in him in telling him her story, and asked her to send Barnabas to the school as soon as he arrived, even if it were during the night. It was true, the messages which Barnabas brought were not his only hope, otherwise things would be bad indeed with him, but he didn’t by any means leave them out of account, he would hold to them and not forget Olga either, for still more important to him than the messages themselves was Olga, her bravery, her prudence, her cleverness, her sacrifices for the family. If he had to choose between Olga and Amalia it wouldn’t cost him much reflection. And he pressed her hand cordially once more as he swung himself on to the wall of the neighbouring garden.