stand up. "Stay where you are," said K. and pulled up a chair beside
him. "Have you been a client of the lawyer's for a long time?" asked K.
"Yes," said the businessman, "a very long time." "How many years has he
been representing you so far, then?" asked K. "I don't know how you
mean," said the businessman, "he's been my business lawyer--I buy and
sell cereals--he's been my business lawyer since I took the business
over, and that's about twenty years now, but perhaps you mean my own
trial and he's been representing me in that since it started, and
that's been more than five years. Yes, well over five years," he then
added, pulling out an old briefcase, "I've got everything written down;
I can tell you the exact dates if you like. It's so hard to remember
everything. Probably, my trial's been going on much longer than that,
it started soon after the death of my wife, and that's been more than
five and a half years now." K. moved in closer to him. "So the lawyer
takes on ordinary legal business, does he?" he asked. This combination
of criminal and commercial business seemed surprisingly reassuring for
K. "Oh yes," said the businessman, and then he whispered, "They even
say he's more efficient in jurisprudence than he is in other matters."
But then he seemed to regret saying this, and he laid a hand on K.'s
shoulder and said, "Please don't betray me to him, will you." K. patted
his thigh to reassure him and said, "No, I don't betray people." "He
can be so vindictive, you see," said the businessman. "I'm sure he won't
do anything against such a faithful client as you," said K. "Oh, he
might do," said the businessman, "when he gets cross it doesn't matter
who it is, and anyway, I'm not really faithful to him." "How's that
then?" asked K. "I'm not sure I should tell you about it," said the
businessman hesitantly. "I think it'll be alright," said K. "Well then,"
said the businessman, "I'll tell you about some of it, but you'll have
to tell me a secret too, then we can support each other with the
lawyer." "You are very careful," said K., "but I'll tell you a secret
that will set your mind completely at ease. Now tell me, in what way
have you been unfaithful to the lawyer?" "I've ..." said the businessman
hesitantly, and in a tone as if he were confessing something
dishonourable, "I've taken on other lawyers besides him." "That's not so
serious," said K., a little disappointed. "It is, here," said the
businessman, who had had some difficulty breathing since making his
confession but who now, after hearing K.'s comment, began to feel more
trust for him. "That's not allowed. And it's allowed least of all to
take on petty lawyers when you've already got a proper one. And that's
just what I have done, besides him I've got five petty lawyers." "Five!"
exclaimed K., astonished at this number, "Five lawyers besides this
one?" The businessman nodded. "I'm even negotiating with a sixth one."
"But why do you need so many lawyers?" asked K. "I need all of them,"
said the businessman. "Would you mind explaining that to me?" asked K.
"I'd be glad to," said the businessman. "Most of all, I don't want to
lose my case, well that's obvious. So that means I mustn't neglect
anything that might be of use to me; even if there's very little hope of
a particular thing being of any use I can't just throw it away. So
everything I have I've put to use in my case. I've taken all the money
out of my business, for example, the offices for my business used to
occupy nearly a whole floor, but now all I need is a little room at the
back where I work with one apprentice. It wasn't just using up the money
that caused the difficulty, of course, it was much more to do with me
not working at the business as much as I used to. If you want to do
something about your trial you don't have much time for anything else."
"So you're also working at the court yourself?" asked K. "That's just
what I want to learn more about." "I can't tell you very much about
that," said the businessman, "at first I tried to do that too but I soon
had to give it up again. It wears you out too much, and it's really not
much use. And it turned out to be quite impossible to work there
yourself and to negotiate, at least for me it was. It's a heavy strain
there just sitting and waiting. You know yourself what the air is like
in those offices." "How do you know I've been there, then?" asked K. "I
was in the waiting room myself when you went through." "What a
coincidence that is!" exclaimed K., totally engrossed and forgetting how
ridiculous the businessman had seemed to him earlier. "So you saw me!
You were in the waiting room when I went through. Yes, I did go through
it one time." "It isn't such a big coincidence," said the businessman,
"I'm there nearly every day." "I expect I'll have to go there quite
often myself now," said K., "although I can hardly expect to be shown
the same respect as I was then. They all stood up for me. They must have
thought I was a judge." "No," said the businessman, "we were greeting
the servant of the court. We knew you were a defendant. That sort of
news spreads very quickly." "So you already knew about that," said K.,
"the way I behaved must have seemed very arrogant to you. Did you
criticise me for it afterwards?" "No," said the businessman, "quite the
opposite. That was just stupidity." "What do you mean, 'stupidity'?"
asked K. "Why are you asking about it?" said the businessman in some
irritation. "You still don't seem to know the people there and you might
take it wrong. Don't forget in proceedings like this there are always
lots of different things coming up to talk about, things that you just
can't understand with reason alone, you just get too tired and
distracted for most things and so, instead, people rely on superstition.
I'm talking about the others, but I'm no better myself. One of these
superstitions, for example, is that you can learn a lot about the
outcome of a defendant's case by looking at his face, especially the
shape of his lips. There are lots who believe that, and they said they
could see from the shape of your lips that you'd definitely be found
guilty very soon. I repeat that all this is just a ridiculous
superstition, and in most cases it's completely disproved by the facts,
but when you live in that society it's hard to hold yourself back from
beliefs like that. Just think how much effect that superstition can
have. You spoke to one of them there, didn't you? He was hardly able to
give you an answer. There are lots of things there that can make you
confused, of course, but one of them, for him, was the appearance of
your lips. He told us all later he thought he could see something in
your lips that meant he'd be convicted himself." "On my lips?" asked K.,
pulling out a pocket mirror and examining himself. "I can see nothing
special about my lips. Can you?" "Nor can I," said the businessman,
"nothing at all." "These people are so superstitious!" exclaimed K.
"Isn't that what I just told you?" asked the businessman. "Do you then
have that much contact with each other, exchanging each other's
opinions?" said K. "I've kept myself completely apart so far." "They
don't normally have much contact with each other," said the businessman,
"that would be impossible, there are so many of them. And they don't
have much in common either. If a group of them ever thinks they have
found something in common it soon turns out they were mistaken. There's
nothing you can do as a group where the court's concerned. Each case is
examined separately, the court is very painstaking. So there's nothing
to be achieved by forming into a group, only sometimes an individual
will achieve something in secret; and it's only when that's been done
the others learn about it; nobody knows how it was done. So there's no
sense of togetherness, you meet people now and then in the waiting
rooms, but we don't talk much there. The superstitious beliefs were
established a long time ago and they spread all by themselves." "I saw
those gentlemen in the waiting room," said K., "it seemed so pointless
for them to be waiting in that way." "Waiting is not pointless," said
the businessman, "it's only pointless if you try and interfere yourself.
I told you just now I've got five lawyers besides this one. You might
think--I thought it myself at first--you might think I could leave the
whole thing entirely up to them now. That would be entirely wrong. I can
leave it up to them less than when I had just the one. Maybe you don't
understand that, do you?" "No," said K., and to slow the businessman
down, who had been speaking too fast, he laid his hand on the
businessman's to reassure him, "but I'd like just to ask you to speak a
little more slowly, these are many very important things for me, and I
can't follow exactly what you're saying." "You're quite right to remind
me of that," said the businessman, "you're new to all this, a junior.
Your trial is six months old, isn't it. Yes, I've heard about it. Such a
new case! But I've already thought all these things through countless
times, to me they're the most obvious things in the world." "You must be
glad your trial has already progressed so far, are you?" asked K., he
did not wish to ask directly how the businessman's affairs stood, but
received no clear answer anyway. "Yes, I've been working at my trial for
five years now," said the businessman as his head sank, "that's no small
achievement." Then he was silent for a while. K. listened to hear
whether Leni was on her way back. On the one hand he did not want her to
come back too soon as he still had many questions to ask and did not
want her to find him in this intimate discussion with the businessman,
but on the other hand it irritated him that she stayed so long with the
lawyer when K. was there, much longer than she needed to give him his
soup. "I still remember it exactly," the businessman began again, and K.
immediately gave him his full attention, "when my case was as old as
yours is now. I only had this one lawyer at that time but I wasn't very
satisfied with him." Now I'll find out everything, thought K., nodding
vigorously as if he could thereby encourage the businessman to say
everything worth knowing. "My case," the businessman continued, "didn't
move on at all, there were some hearings that took place and I went to
every one of them, collected materials, handed all my business books to
the court--which I later found was entirely unnecessary--I ran back and
forth to the lawyer, and he submitted various documents to the court
too...." "Various documents?" asked K. "Yes, that's right," said the
businessman. "That's very important for me," said K., "in my case he's
still working on the first set of documents. He still hasn't done
anything. I see now that he's been neglecting me quite disgracefully."
"There can be lots of good reasons why the first documents still aren't
ready," said the businessman, "and anyway, it turned out later on that
the ones he submitted for me were entirely worthless. I even read one of
them myself, one of the officials at the court was very helpful. It was
very learned, but it didn't actually say anything. Most of all, there
was lots of Latin, which I can't understand, then pages and pages of
general appeals to the court, then lots of flattery for particular
officials, they weren't named, these officials, but anyone familiar with
the court must have been able to guess who they were, then there was
self-praise by the lawyer where he humiliated himself to the court in a
way that was downright dog-like, and then endless investigations of
cases from the past which were supposed to be similar to mine. Although,
as far as I was able to follow them, these investigations had been
carried out very carefully. Now, I don't mean to criticise the lawyer's
work with all of this, and the document I read was only one of many, but
even so, and this is something I will say, at that time I couldn't see
any progress in my trial at all." "And what sort of progress had you
been hoping for?" asked K. "That's a very sensible question," said the
businessman with a smile, "it's only very rare that you see any progress
in these proceedings at all. But I didn't know that then. I'm a
businessman, much more in those days than now, I wanted to see some
tangible progress, it should have all been moving to some conclusion or
at least should have been moving on in some way according to the rules.
Instead of which there were just more hearings, and most of them went
through the same things anyway; I had all the answers off pat like in a
church service; there were messengers from the court coming to me at
work several times a week, or they came to me at home or anywhere else
they could find me; and that was very disturbing of course (but at least
now things are better in that respect, it's much less disturbing when
they contact you by telephone), and rumours about my trial even started
to spread among some of the people I do business with, and especially my
relations, so I was being made to suffer in many different ways but
there was still not the slightest sign that even the first hearing would
take place soon. So I went to the lawyer and complained about it. He
explained it all to me at length, but refused to do anything I asked
for, no-one has any influence on the way the trial proceeds, he said, to
try and insist on it in any of the documents submitted--like I was
asking--was simply unheard of and would do harm to both him and me. I
thought to myself: What this lawyer can't or won't do another lawyer
will. So I looked round for other lawyers. And before you say anything:
none of them asked for a definite date for the main trial and none of
them got one, and anyway, apart from one exception which I'll talk about
in a minute, it really is impossible, that's one thing this lawyer
didn't mislead me about; but besides, I had no reason to regret turning
to other lawyers. Perhaps you've already heard how Dr. Huld talks about
the petty lawyers, he probably made them sound very contemptible to you,
and he's right, they are contemptible. But when he talks about them and
compares them with himself and his colleagues there's a small error
running through what he says, and, just for your interest, I'll tell you
about it. When he talks about the lawyers he mixes with he sets them
apart by calling them the 'great lawyers'. That's wrong, anyone can call
himself 'great' if he wants to, of course, but in this case only the
usage of the court can make that distinction. You see, the court says
that besides the petty lawyers there are also minor lawyers and great
lawyers. This one and his colleagues are only minor lawyers, and the
difference in rank between them and the great lawyers, who I've only
ever heard about and never seen, is incomparably greater than between
the minor lawyers and the despised petty lawyers." "The great lawyers?"
asked K. "Who are they then? How do you contact them?" "You've never
heard about them, then?" said the businessman. "There's hardly anyone
who's been accused who doesn't spend a lot of time dreaming about the
great lawyers once he's heard about them. It's best if you don't let
yourself be misled in that way. I don't know who the great lawyers are,
and there's probably no way of contacting them. I don't know of any case
I can talk about with certainty where they've taken any part. They do
defend a lot of people, but you can't get hold of them by your own
efforts, they only defend those who they want to defend. And I don't
suppose they ever take on cases that haven't already got past the lower
courts. Anyway, it's best not to think about them, as if you do it makes
the discussions with the other lawyers, all their advice and all that
they do manage to achieve, seem so unpleasant and useless, I had that
experience myself, just wanted to throw everything away and lay at home
in bed and hear nothing more about it. But that, of course, would be the
stupidest thing you could do, and you wouldn't be left in peace in bed
for very long either." "So you weren't thinking about the great lawyers
at that time?" asked K. "Not for very long," said the businessman, and
smiled again, "you can't forget about them entirely, I'm afraid,
especially in the night when these thoughts come so easily. But I wanted
immediate results in those days, so I went to the petty lawyers."
"Well look at you two sat huddled together!" called Leni as she came
back with the dish and stood in the doorway. They were indeed sat close
together, if either of them turned his head even slightly it would have
knocked against the other's, the businessman was not only very small
but also sat hunched down, so that K. was also forced to bend down low
if he wanted to hear everything. "Not quite yet!" called out K., to turn
Leni away, his hand, still resting on the businessman's hand, twitching
with impatience. "He wanted me to tell him about my trial," said the
businessman to Leni. "Carry on, then, carry on," she said. She spoke to
the businessman with affection but, at the same time, with
condescension. K. did not like that, he had begun to learn that the man
was of some value after all, he had experience at least, and he was
willing to share it. Leni was probably wrong about him. He watched her
in irritation as Leni now took the candle from the businessman's
hand--which he had been holding on to all this time--wiped his hand
with her apron and then knelt beside him to scratch off some wax that
had dripped from the candle onto his trousers. "You were about to tell
me about the petty lawyers," said K., shoving Leni's hand away with no
further comment. "What's wrong with you today?" asked Leni, tapped him
gently and carried on with what she had been doing. "Yes, the petty
lawyers," said the businessman, putting his hand to his brow as if
thinking hard. K. wanted to help him and said, "You wanted immediate
results and so went to the petty lawyers." "Yes, that's right," said
the businessman, but did not continue with what he'd been saying. "Maybe
he doesn't want to speak about it in front of Leni," thought K.,
suppressing his impatience to hear the rest straight away, and stopped
trying to press him.
"Have you told him I'm here?" he asked Leni. "Course I have," she said,
"he's waiting for you. Leave Block alone now, you can talk to Block
later, he'll still be here." K. still hesitated. "You'll still be
here?" he asked the businessman, wanting to hear the answer from him and
not wanting Leni to speak about the businessman as if he weren't there,
he was full of secret resentment towards Leni today. And once more it
was only Leni who answered. "He often sleeps here." "He sleeps here?"
exclaimed K., he had thought the businessman would just wait there for
him while he quickly settled his business with the lawyer, and then
they would leave together to discuss everything thoroughly and
undisturbed. "Yes," said Leni, "not everyone's like you, Josef, allowed
to see the lawyer at any time you like. Don't even seem surprised that
the lawyer, despite being ill, still receives you at eleven o'clock at
night. You take it far too much for granted, what your friends do for
you. Well, your friends, or at least I do, we like to do things for you.
I don't want or need any more thanks than that you're fond of me." "Fond
of you?" thought K. at first, and only then it occurred to him, "Well,
yes, I am fond of her." Nonetheless, what he said, forgetting all the
rest, was, "He receives me because I am his client. If I needed anyone
else's help I'd have to beg and show gratitude whenever I do anything."
"He's really nasty today, isn't he?" Leni asked the businessman. "Now
it's me who's not here," thought K., and nearly lost his temper with
the businessman when, with the same rudeness as Leni, he said, "The
lawyer also has other reasons to receive him. His case is much more
interesting than mine. And it's only in its early stages too, it
probably hasn't progressed very far so the lawyer still likes to deal
with him. That'll all change later on." "Yeah, yeah," said Leni, looking
at the businessman and laughing. "He doesn't half talk!" she said,
turning to face K. "You can't believe a word he says. He's as talkative
as he is sweet. Maybe that's why the lawyer can't stand him. At least,
he only sees him when he's in the right mood. I've already tried hard to
change that but it's impossible. Just think, there are times when I tell
him Block's here and he doesn't receive him until three days later. And
if Block isn't on the spot when he's called then everything's lost and
it all has to start all over again. That's why I let Block sleep here,
it wouldn't be the first time Dr. Huld has wanted to see him in the
night. So now Block is ready for that. Sometimes, when he knows Block is
still here, he'll even change his mind about letting him in to see him."
K. looked questioningly at the businessman. The latter nodded and,
although he had spoken quite openly with K. earlier, seemed to be
confused with shame as he said, "Yes, later on you become very dependent
on your lawyer." "He's only pretending to mind," said Leni. "He likes to
sleep here really, he's often said so." She went over to a little door
and shoved it open. "Do you want to see his bedroom?" she asked. K.
went over to the low, windowless room and looked in from the doorway.
The room contained a narrow bed which filled it completely, so that to
get into the bed you would need to climb over the bedpost. At the head
of the bed there was a niche in the wall where, fastidiously tidy, stood
a candle, a bottle of ink, and a pen with a bundle of papers which were
probably to do with the trial. "You sleep in the maid's room?" asked
K., as he went back to the businessman. "Leni's let me have it,"
answered the businessman, "it has many advantages." K. looked long at
him; his first impression of the businessman had perhaps not been right;
he had experience as his trial had already lasted a long time, but he
had paid a heavy price for this experience. K. was suddenly unable to
bear the sight of the businessman any longer. "Bring him to bed, then!"
he called out to Leni, who seemed to understand him. For himself, he
wanted to go to the lawyer and, by dismissing him, free himself from not
only the lawyer but also from Leni and the businessman. But before he
had reached the door the businessman spoke to him gently. "Excuse me,
sir," he said, and K. looked round crossly. "You've forgotten your
promise," said the businessman, stretching his hand out to K.
imploringly from where he sat. "You were going to tell me a secret."
"That is true," said K., as he glanced at Leni, who was watching him
carefully, to check on her. "So listen; it's hardly a secret now anyway.
I'm going to see the lawyer now to sack him." "He's sacking him!" yelled
the businessman, and he jumped up from his chair and ran around the
kitchen with his arms in the air. He kept on shouting, "He's sacking his
lawyer!" Leni tried to rush at K. but the businessman got in her way so
that she shoved him away with her fists. Then, still with her hands
balled into fists, she ran after K. who, however, had been given a long
start. He was already inside the lawyer's room by the time Leni caught
up with him. He had almost closed the door behind himself, but Leni held
the door open with her foot, grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back.
But he put such pressure on her wrist that, with a sigh, she was forced
to release him. She did not dare go into the room straight away, and K.
locked the door with the key.