them to be too aware of his presence, so he closed the window and
walked towards the main staircase. At the door of the junk room he
stopped and listened for a little while. All was silent. The two
policemen were entirely at the whip-man's mercy; he could have beaten
them to death. K. reached his hand out for the door handle but drew it
suddenly back. He was no longer in any position to help anyone, and the
servitors would soon be back; he did, though, promise himself that he
would raise the matter again with somebody and see that, as far as it
was in his power, those who really were guilty, the high officials whom
nobody had so far dared point out to him, received their due punishment.
As he went down the main stairway at the front of the bank, he looked
carefully round at everyone who was passing, but there was no girl to be
seen who might have been waiting for somebody, not even within some
distance from the bank. Franz's claim that his bride was waiting for him
was thus shown to be a lie, albeit one that was forgivable and intended
only to elicit more sympathy.
The policemen were still on K.'s mind all through the following day; he
was unable to concentrate on his work and had to stay in his office a
little longer than the previous day so that he could finish it. On the
way home, as he passed by the junk room again, he opened its door as if
that had been his habit. Instead of the darkness he expected, he saw
everything unchanged from the previous evening, and did not know how he
should respond. Everything was exactly the same as he had seen it when
he had opened the door the previous evening. The forms and bottles of
ink just inside the doorway, the whip-man with his cane, the two
policemen, still undressed, the candle on the shelf, and the two
policemen began to wail and call out "Mr. K.!" K. slammed the door
immediately shut, and even thumped on it with his fists as if that
would shut it all the firmer. Almost in tears, he ran to the servitors
working quietly at the copying machine. "Go and get that junk room
cleared out!" he shouted, and, in amazement, they stopped what they were
doing. "It should have been done long ago, we're sinking in dirt!" They
would be able to do the job the next day, K. nodded, it was too late in
the evening to make them do it there and then as he had originally
intended. He sat down briefly in order to keep them near him for a
little longer, looked through a few of the copies to give the impression
that he was checking them and then, as he saw that they would not dare
to leave at the same time as himself, went home tired and with his mind
numb.
Chapter Six
K.'s uncle--Leni
One afternoon--K. was very busy at the time, getting the post
ready--K.'s Uncle Karl, a small country land owner, came into the room,
pushing his way between two of the staff who were bringing in some
papers. K. had long expected his uncle to appear, but the sight of him
now shocked K. far less than the prospect of it had done a long time
before. His uncle was bound to come, K. had been sure of that for about
a month. He already thought at the time he could see how his uncle
would arrive, slightly bowed, his battered panama hat in his left hand,
his right hand already stretched out over the desk long before he was
close enough as he rushed carelessly towards K. knocking over everything
that was in his way. K.'s uncle was always in a hurry, as he suffered
from the unfortunate belief that he had a number of things to do while
he was in the big city and had to settle all of them in one day--his
visits were only ever for one day--and at the same time thought he could
not forgo any conversation or piece of business or pleasure that might
arise by chance. Uncle Karl was K.'s former guardian, and so K. was
duty-bound to help him in all of this as well as to offer him a bed for
the night. "I'm haunted by a ghost from the country," he would say.