The Castle by Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir Read Free Book Online Page B

still a few small differences were immediately apparent here; the front steps had a balustrade, and a fine lantern was fixed over the doorway. Something fluttered over their heads as they entered, it was a flag with the Count's colours. In the hall they were at once met by the landlord, who was obviously on a tour of inspection; he glanced at K. in passing with small eyes that were cither screwed up critically, or half-asleep, and said:
    "The Land Surveyor mustn't go anywhere but into the bar."
    "Certainly," said Olga, who took K.'s part at once, "he's only escorting me."
    But K. ungratefully let go her arm and drew the landlord aside. Olga meanwhile waited patiently at the end of the hall. "I should like to spend the night here," said K.

    "I'm afraid that's impossible," said the landlord. "You don't seem to be aware that this house is reserved exclusively for gentlemen from the Castle."
    "Well, that may be the rule," said K., "but it's surely possible to let me sleep in a corner somewhere."
    "I should be only too glad to oblige you," said the landlord, "but besides the strictness with which the rule is enforced - and you speak about it as only a stranger could - it's quite out of the question for another reason; the Castle gentlemen are so sensitive that I'm convinced they couldn't bear the sight of a stranger, at least unless they were prepared for it; and if I were to let you sleep here, and by some chance or other - and chances are always on the side of the gentlemen - you were discovered, not only would it mean my ruin but yours too. That sounds ridiculous, but it's true."
    This tall and closely-buttoned man who stood with his legs crossed, one hand braced against the wall and the other on his hip, bending down a little towards K. and speaking confidentially to him, seemed to have hardly anything in common with the village, even although his dark clothes looked like a peasant's finery.
    "I believe you absolutely," said K., "and I didn't mean to belittle the rule, although I expressed myself badly. Only there's something I'd like to point out, I have some influence in the Castle, and shall have still more, and that secures you against any danger arising out of my stay here overnight, and is a guarantee that I am able fully to recompense any small favour you may do me."
    "Oh, I know," said the landlord, and repeated again, "I know all that."
    Now was the time for K. to state his wishes more clearly, but this reply of the landlord's disconcerted him, and so he merely asked: "Are there many of the Castle gentlemen staying in the house to-night?"
    "As far as that goes, to-night is favourable," returned the landlord, as if in encouragement, "there's only one gentleman."
    Still K. felt incapable of urging the matter, but being in hopes that he was as good as accepted, he contented himself by asking the name of the gentleman.
    "Klamm," said the landlord casually, turning meanwhile to his wife who came rustling towards them in a remarkably shabby, old-fashioned gown overloaded with pleats and frills, but of a fine city cut. She came to summon the landlord, for the Chief wanted something or other. Before the landlord complied, however, he turned once more to K., as if it lay with K. to make the decision about staying all night. But K. could not utter a word, overwhelmed as he was by the discovery that it was his patron who was in the house.
    Without being able to explain it completely to himself he did not feel the same freedom of action in relation to Klamm as he did to the rest of the Castle, and the idea of being caught in the inn by Klamm, although it did not terrify him as it did the landlord, gave him a twinge of uneasiness, much as if he were thoughtlessly to hurt the feelings of someone to whom he was bound by gratitude; at the same time, however, it vexed him to recognize already in these qualms the obvious effects of that degradation to an inferior status which he had feared, and to realize that although they were so