from being exiled from his work even for a single day, since he had too great a fear of not
being allowed to return, a fear which he well knew to be exaggerated, but which oppressed
him all the same. The difficulty on this occasion was to find a plausible excuse; his
knowledge of Italian was certainly not very great, but it was at least adequate, and there
was a decisive argument in the fact that he had some knowledge of art, acquired in earlier days, which was absurdly overestimated in the Bank owing to his having been for some
time, purely as a matter of business, a member of the Society for the Preservation of
Ancient Monuments. Rumor had it that the Italian was also a connoisseur, and if so, the
choice of K. to be his escort seemed the natural one.
It was a very wet and windy morning when K. arrived in his office at the early hour of
seven o’clock, full of irritation at the program before him, but determined to accomplish at
least some work before being distracted from it by the visitor. He was very tired, for he
had spent half the night studying an Italian grammar as some slight preparation; he was
more tempted by the window, where he had recently been in the habit of spending too
much time, than by his desk, but he resisted the temptation and sat down to work.
Unfortunately at that very moment the attendant appeared, reporting that he had been sent
by the Manager to see if the Chief Clerk was in his office yet, and, if he was, to beg him to
be so good as to come to the reception room; the gentleman from Italy had already arrived.
“All right,” said K., stuffed a small dictionary into his pocket, tucked under his arm an
album for sightseers, which he had procured in readiness for the stranger, and went
through the Assistant Manager’s office into the Manager’s room. He was glad that he had
turned up early enough to be on the spot immediately when required; probably no one had
really expected him to do so. The Assistant Manager’s office, of course, was as empty as in
the dead of night; very likely the attendant had been told to summon him too, and without
result. When K. entered the reception room the two gentlemen rose from their deep
armchairs. The Manager smiled kindly on K., he was obviously delighted to see him, he
performed the introduction at once, the Italian shook K. heartily by the hand and said
laughingly that someone was an early riser. K. did not quite catch whom he meant, for it
was an unfamiliar phrase the sense of which did not dawn on him at once. He answered
with a few fluent sentences which the Italian received with another laugh, meanwhile
nervously stroking his bushy iron-gray mustache. This mustache was obviously perfumed;
one was almost tempted to go. close up and have a sniff at it. When they all sat down again
and a preliminary conversation began, K. was greatly disconcerted to find that he only
partly understood what the Italian was saying. He could understand him almost completely
when he spoke slowly and quietly, but that happened very seldom, the words mostly came
pouring out in a flood, and he made lively gestures with his head as if enjoying the rush of
talk. Besides, when this happened, he invariably relapsed into a dialect which K. did not
recognize as Italian but which the Manager could both speak and understand, as indeed K.
might have expected, considering that this Italian came from the very south of Italy, where
the Manager had spent several years. At any rate, it became clear to K. that there was little
chance of communication with the Italian, for the man’s French was difficult to follow and
it was no use watching his lips for clues, since their movements were covered by the bushy
mustache. K. began to foresee vexations and for the moment gave up trying to follow the
talk — while the Manager was present to understand all that was said it was an unnecessary
effort to make — confining himself to morose observation of the Italian lounging so