At last he desisted from the pursuit, he did not want to alarm the old man too much;
besides, in case the Italian were to turn up after all, it might be better not to scare away the
verger.
As he returned to the nave to find the seat on which he had left the album, K. caught
sight of a small side pulpit attached to a pillar almost immediately adjoining the choir, a
simple pulpit of plain, pale stone. It was so small that from a distance it looked like an
empty niche intended for a statue. There was certainly no room for the preacher to take a
full step backward from the balustrade. The vaulting of the stone canopy, too, began very
low down and curved forward and upward, although without ornamentation, in such a way
that a medium-sized man could not stand upright beneath it, but would have to keep
leaning over the balustrade. The whole structure was designed as if to torture the preacher;
there seemed no comprehensible reason why it should be there at all while the other pulpit,
so large and finely decorated, was available.
And K. certainly would not have noticed it had not a lighted lamp been fixed above it,
the usual sign that a sermon was going to be preached. Was a sermon going to be delivered
now? In the empty church? K. peered down at the small flight of steps which led upward to
the pulpit, hugging the pillar as it went, so narrow that it looked like an ornamental
addition to the pillar rather than a stairway for human beings. But at the foot of it, K.
smiled in astonishment, there actually stood a priest ready to ascend, with his hand on the
balustrade and his eyes fixed on K. The priest gave a little nod and K. crossed himself and
bowed, as he ought to have done earlier. The priest swung himself lightly on to the
stairway and mounted into the pulpit with short, quick steps. Was he really going to preach
a sermon? Perhaps the verger was not such an imbecile after all and had been trying to
urge K. toward the preacher, a highly necessary action in that deserted building. But
somewhere or other there was an old woman before an image of the Madonna; she ought
to be there too. And if it were going to be a sermon, why was it not introduced by the
organ? But the organ remained silent, its tall pipes looming faintly in the darkness.
K. wondered whether this was not the time to remove himself quickly; if he did not
go now he would have no chance of doing so during the sermon, he would have to stay as
long as it lasted, he was already behindhand in the office and was no longer obliged to wait
for the Italian; he looked at his watch, it was eleven o’clock. But was there really going to
be a sermon? Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a
stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position. It was absurd to
think that a sermon was going to be preached at eleven in the morning on a weekday, in
such dreadful weather. The priest — he was beyond doubt a priest, a young man with a smooth, dark face — was obviously mounting the pulpit simply to turn out the lamp, which
had been lit by mistake.
It was not so, however; the priest after examining the lamp screwed it higher instead,
then turned slowly toward the balustrade and gripped the angular edge with both hands. He
stood like that for a while, looking around him without moving his head. K. had retreated a
good distance and was leaning his elbows on the foremost pew. Without knowing exactly
where the verger was stationed, he was vaguely aware of the old man’s bent back,
peacefully at rest as if his task had been fulfilled. What stillness there was now in the
Cathedral! Yet K. had to violate it, for he was not minded to stay; if it were this priest’s
duty to preach a sermon at a certain hour regardless of circumstances, let him do it, he