第12章 The Assistants

No sooner had they all left than K. said to the assistants:“Go away!”Baffled by this unexpected command, they complied, but when K.locked the door behind them, they immediately tried to come back in and began whimpering and knocking on the door.“You're dismissed,”K.cried,“I will never employ you in my service again.”They weren't willing to accept this, though, and hammered with their hands and feet on the door.“Let us come back to you, sir,”they cried, as if K.were the land and they were about to sink in the floods.But K.had no sympathy for them, he waited impatiently for the moment when the unbearable noise would force the teacher to intervene.This soon happened.“Let those damned assistants of yours in!”he shouted.“I've dismissed them!”K.shouted back;this had the undesired side-effect of showing the teacher what happened when one actually had the strength not only to give notice of dismissal but to enforce the dismissal.The teacher now attempted in an amicable way to soothe the assistants, they need only wait here calmly, for K.would finally have to let them back in again.Then he left.And the situation would have remained quiet if K.hadn't begun shouting to them that they were dismissed and hadn't the slightest hope of reinstatement.At that, they began to make as much noise as before.The teacher came back, but he would no longer negotiate with them and instead drove them, evidently with his greatly feared cane, from the school.

Before long they appeared at the windows of the gymnasium, knocking on the panes and shouting, but their words were no longer audible. Yet they didn't stay there long either, in the deep snow they couldn't jump about as much as their restlessness demanded.So they rushed to the fence of the school garden, jumped up on the stone base, where, though only from afar, they could get a better view of the room, there they ran up and down, holding on to the fence, then halted, and stretched their clasped hands beseechingly toward K.They kept this up a long time, despite the futility of their efforts;it was as if they were blind, and they probably didn't even stop when K.lowered the curtains to get them out of his sight.

In the now dusky room K. went to the parallel bars to see about Frieda.At a glance from him she got up, tidied her hair, dried her face, and silently set about making coffee.Although she already knew about all this, K.nonetheless gave her formal notice of his dismissal of the assistants.She merely nodded.K.sat down on a school bench and observed her weary movements.It had always been her freshness and resolve that had lent her paltry body a certain beauty, but now that beauty was gone.It had taken only a few days of living with K.to bring this about.The work in the taproom hadn't been easy, but it probably suited her better.Or was the distance from Klamm the real reason for her decline?Klamm's proximity had made her so madly enticing, in that enticement K.had seized her, but now she was wilting in his arms.

“Frieda,”said K. She put the coffee mill down at once and came to K.on the bench.“You're angry at me?”she asked.“No,”said K.,“I think you cannot help it.You were quite content living at the Gentlemen's Inn.I should have left you there.”“Yes,”said Frieda, gazing sadly into space,“you should have left me there.I'm not worthy enough to live with you.Freed of me, you could perhaps achieve everything you want.Out of concern for me you submit to that tyrannical teacher, take on this miserable post, and now you are making a painstaking application for an interview with Klamm.All for me, but I give you little in return.”“No,”said K.,putting his arm around her consolingly,“those are merely trifles that don't hurt me, and it isn't just for you that I want to go to Klamm.And then there's everything that you have done for me!Before getting to know you, I was very much adrift here.Nobody took me in and anybody I thrust myself upon soon made me leave.And even if I could have found peace with certain people, it could only have been with those I ought to have fled from, like Barnabas's family—”“You fled from them?Isn't that so?Darling!”Frieda broke in quite animatedly, and then, after a hesitant“Yes”from K.,fell back into her weariness.By now, though, K.was no longer so determined to explain how everything had taken a turn for the better for him through the alliance with Frieda.Slowly he took his arm away, they sat a moment in silence, and then, as if K.'s hand had supplied her with a warmth that she now found indispensable, she said:“I cannot stand this life here.If you want to hold on to me, we must leave and go somewhere else, to southern France, or to Spain.”“I cannot go abroad,”said K.,“I came here in order to stay here.I will stay here.”And in a contradiction he didn't bother to explain, he added as if speaking to himself:“Now what could have attracted me to this desolate land other than the desire to stay?”Then he said:“But you too want to stay here, it is your country.All you miss is Klamm and that prompts such desperate thoughts.”“So I miss Klamm?”said Frieda,“there's surely an abundance of Klamm here, too much Klamm;it's so as to escape from him that I want to get away.It isn't Klamm that I miss, but you.It's for your sake that I want to leave;because I cannot get enough of you here, where everybody is constantly tearing at me.Better to have this pretty mask torn off, better to have this body made ugly, so that I can live with you in peace.”K.noted only one thing:“So Klamm is still in touch with you?”he asked at once,“he calls you?”“I know nothing about Klamm,”said Frieda,“I'm talking about others, for instance, the assistants.”“Oh, the assistants,”K.said in astonishment,“they follow you?”“Did you never notice it, then?”asked Frieda.“No,”said K.,vainly trying to recall some details,“they surely are intrusive, lecherous young lads, but I never noticed their having the audacity to go near you.”“You never did?”said Frieda,“you never noticed how impossible it was to get them out of our room at the Bridge Inn, how jealously they observed our relations, how one of them lay in my place on the straw mattress, how they testified against you so as to drive you away, ruin you, and have me to themselves.You didn't notice any of that?”K.looked at Frieda without answering.These charges against the assistants were surely true, but they could also be interpreted much more innocently as a reflection of the assistants'ridiculous, childish, unstable, uncontrollable nature.And wasn't it further proof against the accusation that they should have always endeavored to go with K.instead of staying behind with Frieda?K.mentioned something of the sort.“Hypocrisy,”said Frieda.“You didn't see through it?Then why did you drive them away, if not for those reasons?”And she went to the window, pulled the curtain slightly to one side, looked out, and called to K.The assistants were still outside at the fence;visibly tired though they were, summoning all their energy, they extended their arms beseechingly every now and then toward the schoolhouse.One of them, in order to avoid having to keep holding on, impaled the back of his coat on the fence.

“Poor things!Poor things!”said Frieda.“You asked me why I drove them away?”K. asked.“You're directly to blame for that.”“Me?”Frieda asked, without taking her eyes from the window.“You were all too friendly toward the assistants,”said K.,“you tolerated their bad habits, laughed at them, stroked their hair, pitied them constantly,‘poor things, poor things,'you've just said so again, and then finally that last incident, since you believed I wasn't too high a price to pay for getting the assistants out of a beating.”“That's just it,”said Frieda,“that's what I'm talking about, that's exactly what makes me so unhappy, what keeps me from you, even though I know of no greater happiness than to be with you, constantly, without interruption, without end, but in the dreams I dream there's no tranquil place on earth for our love in the village or anywhere else, so I picture a deep and narrow grave where we embrace each other as if with clamps, I hide my face in you, you hide yours in me, and nobody will ever see us again.But then—look at those assistants!It isn't you they are thinking of when they clasp their hands like that, but me.”“And it's not me who is watching them,”said K.,“but you.”“Of course it's me,”said Frieda almost angrily,“but that's what I have been telling you all along;why else would the assistants be pursuing me, even if they are the emissaries of Klamm—”“The emissaries of Klamm,”said K.,for though the term immediately seemed quite natural to him, it still came as a big surprise.“Yes, of course, Klamm's emissaries,”said Frieda,“but even if they are, they're still clumsy youths whose education could profit from a beating.What ugly, swarthy youths, and how repulsive the contrast between their faces, which make one see them as adults, or almost as students, and their childish, silly behavior.Do you think I can't see this?I am ashamed of them.But that's exactly it, they don't repel me, I'm ashamed of them.I can't stop looking at them.When one ought to get annoyed at them, I can only laugh.When one ought to strike them, I can only stroke their hair.When I lie beside you at night, unable to sleep, I cannot help looking across you and observing one of them sleeping tightly rolled up in the blanket and the other kneeling by the open oven door stoking the fire and I must bend so far forward that I almost wake you.And it isn't the cat that frightens me—oh, I know all about cats and I know all about those uneasy, constantly interrupted naps in the taproom—it's not the cat that frightens me, but I who give myself a fright.And it doesn't take that monster of a cat, for I jump at the least noise.One moment I'm afraid you'll wake up and it'll be all over and the next I'm jumping up to light the candle so you'll wake up quickly and protect me.”“I had no idea about any of those things,”said K.,“though in an inkling of it I drove them away, but now that they're gone perhaps everything will be fine.”“Yes, they're finally gone,”said Frieda, though her face was tormented rather than joyful,“but we don't know who they are.Klamm's emissaries, that's what I call them in my thoughts, just playfully, but perhaps that is what they really are.Their eyes, those naive but sparkling eyes, somehow remind me of Klamm's eyes, yes, that's it, Klamm's glance sometimes leaps from their eyes and goes straight through me.And so it was wrong of me to have said that I'm ashamed of them.I only wish that were so!Though I realize that in other places and with other people this same conduct would be stupid and offensive, with them it isn't, I watch their silly antics with admiration and respect.But if they are Klamm's emissaries, who will free us from them, and would it even be good to be freed from them?Wouldn't you have to bring them back in at once and be happy if they actually came?”“You want me to let them back in?”K.asked.“No, no,”said Frieda,“nothing could be further from my wishes.The sight of them if they were to burst in now, their delight in seeing me again, their hopping about like children and their stretching out their arms-like men, I might not be able to bear that.But then when I think that if you keep treating them this harshly you may be denying Klamm access to you, I want to save you from the repercussions of that.Then I want you to let them in.So quickly let them in.Don't worry about me, what difference do I make.I will defend myself for as long as I can, but if I lose, well then I lose, hut with the awareness that this, too, was for your sake.”“You're only reinforcing my opinion about the assistants,”said K.,“they will never come in here again with my permission.The fact that I got them out shows that under certain circumstances it is indeed possible to curb them and that they have no significant business with Klamm.Only yesterday evening I got a letter from Klamm from which it emerges that Klamm has been completely misinformed about the assistants, and the only conclusion this permits is that he is utterly indifferent to them, for if this weren't so he could certainly have obtained precise information about them.The fact that you see Klamm in the assistants proves nothing, for unfortunately you're still influenced by the landlady and see Klamm everywhere.You're still Klamm's mistress and not my wife yet by any means.This sometimes makes me feel quite dismal, then it's as if I had lost everything, then I have the feeling I have just arrived in the village, not full of hope, as I truly was then, hut aware that nothing but disappointments lie ahead and that I will have to drink each one down to the dregs.But still that's only sometimes,”K.added, smiling, when he saw Frieda sag under his words,“besides, it does underline something positive, namely, what you mean to me.And if you call upon me to choose between you and the assistants, then the assistants have already lost.What an idea, to choose between you and the assistants.Now I want to get rid of them, once and for all.Who knows, perhaps the weakness that came over the two of us simply comes from our not having had breakfast yet.”“Possibly,”said Frieda, smiling wearily, and she set to work.K.,too, picked up his broom again.