Petitions
“And what did we do meanwhile? The worst thing we could have done, something much more deserving of contempt than our original offence—we betrayed Amalia, we shook off her silent restraint, we couldn’t go on living like that, without hope of any kind we could not live, and we began each in his or her own fashion with prayers or blustering to beg the Castle’s forgiveness. We knew, of course, that we weren’t in a position to make anything good, and we knew too that the only likely connection we had with the Castle—through Sortini, who had been father’s superior and had approved of him—was destroyed by what had happened, and yet we buckled down to the job. Father began it, he started making senseless petitions to the village Superintendent, to the secretaries, the advocates, the clerks, usually he wasn’t received at all, but if by guile or chance he managed to get a hearing—and how we used to exult when the news came, and rub our hands!—he was always thrown out immediately and never admitted again. Besides, it was only too easy to answer him, the Castle always has the advantage. What was it that he wanted? What had been done to him? What did he want to be forgiven for? When and by whom had so much as a finger been raised against him in the Castle? Granted he had become poor and lost his customers, etc., these were all chances of everyday life, and happened in all shops and markets; was the Castle to concern itself about things of that kind? It concerned itself about the common welfare, of course, but it couldn’t simply interfere with the natural course of events for the sole purpose of serving the interest of one man. Did he expect officials to be sent out to run after his customers and force them to come back? But, father would object—we always discussed the whole interview both before and afterwards, sitting in a corner as if to avoid Amalia, who knew well enough what we were doing, but paid no attention—well, father would object, he wasn’t complaining about his poverty, he could easily make up again for all he had lost, that didn’t matter if only he were forgiven. But what was there to forgive? came the answer; no accusation had come in against him, at least there was none in the registers, not in those registers anyhow which were accessible to the public advocates, consequently, so far as could be established, there was neither any accusation standing against him, nor one in process of being taken up. Could he perhaps refer to some official decree that had been issued against him? Father couldn’t do that. Well then, if he knew of nothing and nothing had happened, what did he want? What was there to forgive him? Nothing but the way he was aimlessly wasting official time, but that was just the unforgiveable sin. Father didn’t give in, he was still very strong in those days, and his enforced leisure gave him plenty of time. ‘I’ll restore Amalia’s honour, it won’t take long now,’ he used to say to Barnabas and me several times a day, but only in a low voice in case Amalia should hear, and yet he only said it for her benefit, for in reality he wasn’t hoping for the restoration of her honour, but only for forgiveness. Yet before he could be forgiven he had to prove his guilt, and that was denied in all the bureaux. He hit upon the idea—and it showed that his mind was already giving way—that his guilt was being concealed from him because he didn’t pay enough; until then he had paid only the established taxes, which were at least high enough for means like ours. But now he believed that he must pay more, which was certainly a delusion, for, although our officials accept bribes simply to avoid trouble and discussion, nothing is ever achieved in that way. Still, if father had set his hopes on that idea, we didn’t want them upset. We sold what we had left to sell—nearly all things we couldn’t do without—to get father the money for his efforts, and for a long time every morning brought us the satisfaction of knowing that when he went on his day’s rounds he had at least a few coins to rattle in his pocket. Of course we simply starved all day, and the only thing the money really did was to keep father fairly hopeful and happy. That could hardly be called an advantage, however. He wore himself out on these rounds of his, and the money only made them drag on and on instead of coming to a quick and natural end. Since in reality nothing extra could be done for him in return for those extra payments, clerks here and there tried to make a pretence of giving something in return, promising to look the matter up, and hinting that they were on the track of something, and that purely as a favour to father, and not as a duty, they would follow it up—and father, instead of growing sceptical, only became more and more credulous. He used to bring home such obviously worthless promises as if they were great triumphs, and it was a torment to see him behind Amalia’s back twisting his face in a smile and opening his eyes wide as he pointed to her and made signs to us that her salvation, which would have surprised nobody so much as herself, was coming nearer and nearer through his efforts, but that it was still a secret and we mustn’t tell. Things would certainly have gone on like this for a long time if we hadn’t finally been reduced to the position of having no more money to give him. Barnabas, indeed, had been taken on meanwhile by Brunswick after endless imploring as an assistant, on condition that he fetched his work in the dusk of the evening and brought it back again in the dark—it must be admitted that Brunswick was taking a certain risk in his business for our sake, but in exchange he paid Barnabas next to nothing, and Barnabas is a model workman—yet his wages were barely enough to keep us from downright starvation. Very gently and after much softening of the blow we told our father that he could have no more money, but he took it very quietly. He was no longer capable of understanding how hopeless were his attempts at intervention, but he was wearied out by continual disappointments. He said, indeed—and he spoke less clearly than before, he used to speak almost too clearly—that he would have needed only a very little more money, for tomorrow or that very day he would have found out everything, and now it had all gone for nothing, ruined simply for lack of money, and so on, but the tone in which he said it showed that he didn’t believe it all. Besides, he brought out a new plan immediately of his own accord. Since he had failed in proving his guilt, and consequently could hope for nothing more through official channels, he would have to depend on appeals alone, and would try to move the officials personally. There must certainly be some among them who had good sympathetic hearts, which they couldn’t give way to in their official capacity, but out of office hours, if one caught them at the right time, they would surely listen.”
Here K., who had listened with absorption hitherto, interrupted Olga’s narrative with the question: “And don’t you think he was right?” Although his question would have answered itself in the course of the narrative he wanted to know at once.
“No,” said Olga, “there could be no question of sympathy or anything of the kind. Young and inexperienced as we were, we knew that, and father knew it too, of course, but he had forgotten it like nearly everything else. The plan he had hit on was to plant himself on the main road near the Castle, where the officials pass in their carriages, and seize any opportunity of putting up his prayer for forgiveness. To be honest, it was a wild and senseless plan, even if the impossible should have happened, and his prayer have really reached an official’s ear. For how could a single official give a pardon? That could only be done at best by the whole authority, and apparently even the authority can only condemn and not pardon. And in any case even if an official stepped out of his carriage and was willing to take up the matter, how could he get any clear idea of the affair from the mumblings of a poor, tired, ageing man like father? Officials are highly educated, but one-sided; in his own department an official can grasp whole trains of thought from a single word, but let him have something from another department explained to him by the hour, he may nod politely, but he won’t understand a word of it. That’s quite natural, take even the small official affairs that concern the ordinary person—trifling things that an official disposes of with a shrug—and try to understand one of them through and through, and you’ll waste a whole lifetime on it without result. But even if father had chanced on a responsible official, no official can settle anything without the necessary documents, and certainly not on the main road; he can’t pardon anything, he can only settle it officially, and he would simply refer to the official procedure, which had already been a complete failure for father. What a pass father must have been in to think of insisting on such a plan! If there were even the faintest possibility of getting anything in that way, that part of the road would be packed with petitioners; but since it’s a sheer impossibility, patent to the youngest schoolboy, the road is absolutely empty. But maybe even that strengthened father in his hopes, he found food for them everywhere. He had great need to find it, for a sound mind wouldn’t have had to make such complicated calculations, it would have realised from external evidence that the thing was impossible. When officials travel to the village or back to the Castle it’s not for pleasure, but because there’s work waiting for them in the village or in the Castle, and so they travel at a great pace. It’s not likely to occur to them to look out of the carriage windows in search of petitioners, for the carriages are crammed with papers which they study on the way.”
“But,” said K., “I’ve seen the inside of an official sledge in which there weren’t any papers.” Olga’s story was opening for him such a great and almost incredible world that he could not help trying to put his own small experiences in relation to it, as much to convince himself of its reality as of his own existence.
“That’s possible,” said Olga, “but in that case it’s even worse, for that means that the official’s business is so important that the papers are too precious or too numerous to be taken with him, and those officials go at a gallop. In any case, none of them can spare time for father. And besides, there are several roads to the Castle. Now one of them is in fashion, and most carriages go by that, now it’s another and everything drives pell-mell there. And what governs this change of fashion has never yet been found out. At eight o’clock one morning they’ll all be on another road, ten minutes later on a third, and half an hour after that on the first road again, and then they may stick to that road all day, but every minute there’s the possibility of a change. Of course all the roads join up near the village, but by that time all the carriages are racing like mad, while nearer the Castle the pace isn’t quite so fast. And the amount of traffic varies just as widely and incomprehensibly as the choice of roads. There are often days when there’s not a carriage to be seen, and others when they travel in crowds. Now, just think of all that in relation to father. In his best suit, which soon becomes his only suit, off he goes every morning from the house with our best wishes. He takes with him a small Fire Brigade badge, which he has really no business to keep, to stick in his coat once he’s out of the village, for in the village itself he’s afraid to let it be seen, although it’s so small that it can hardly be seen two paces away, but father insists that it’s just the thing to draw a passing official’s attention. Not far from the Castle entrance there’s a market garden, belonging to a man called Bertuch who sells vegetables to the Castle, and there on the narrow stone ledge at the foot of the garden fence father took up his post. Bertuch made no objection because he used to be very friendly with father and had been one of his most faithful customers—you see, he has a lame foot, and he thought that nobody but father could make him a boot to fit it. Well, there sat father day after day, it was a wet and stormy autumn, but the weather meant nothing to him. In the morning at his regular hour he had his hand on the latch and waved us goodbye, in the evening he came back soaked to the skin, every day, it seemed, a little more bent, and flung himself down in a corner. At first he used to tell us all his little adventures, such as how Bertuch for sympathy and old friendship’s sake had thrown him a blanket over the fence, or that in one of the passing carriages he thought he had recognised this or the other official, or that this or the other coachman had recognised him again and playfully flicked him with his whip. But later he stopped telling us these things, evidently he had given up all hope of ever achieving anything there, and looked on it only as his duty, his dreary job, to go there and spend the whole day. That was when his rheumatic pains began, winter was coming on, snow fell early, the winter begins very early here; well, so there he sat sometimes on wet stones and at other times in the snow. In the night he groaned with pain, and in the morning he was many a time uncertain whether to go or not, but always overcame his reluctance and went. Mother clung to him and didn’t want to let him go, so he, apparently grown timid because his limbs wouldn’t obey him, allowed her to go with him, and so mother began to get pains too. We often went out to them, to take them food or merely to visit them, or to try to persuade them to come back home; how often we found them crouching together, leaning against each other on their narrow seat, huddled up under a thin blanket which scarcely covered them, and round about them nothing but the grey of snow and mist, and far and wide for days at a time not a soul to be seen, not a carriage; a sight that was, K., a sight to be seen! Until one morning father couldn’t move his stiff legs out of bed at all, he wasn’t to be comforted, in a slight delirium he thought he could see an official stopping his carriage beside Bertuch’s just at that moment, hunting all along the fence for him and then climbing angrily into his carriage again with a shake of his head. At that father shrieked so loudly that it was as if he wanted to make the official hear him at all that distance, and to explain how blameless his absence was. And it became a long absence, he never went back again, and for weeks he never left his bed. Amalia took over the nursing, the attending, the treatment, did everything he needed, and with a few intervals has kept it up to this day. She knows healing herbs to soothe his pain, she needs hardly any sleep, she’s never alarmed, never afraid, never impatient, she does everything for the old folks; while we were fluttering round uneasily without being able to help in anything she remained cool and quiet whatever happened. Then when the worst was past and father was able again to struggle cautiously out of bed with one of us supporting him on each side, Amalia withdrew into the background again and left him to us.”