learned to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to
persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not
know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only
deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams
inextinguishably from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he
dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his
mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the
doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend
far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to
the man’s disadvantage. `What do you want to know now?’ asks the doorkeeper, `you are
insatiable.’ `Everyone strives to attain the Law,’ answers the man, `how does it come about,
then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?’ The doorkeeper
perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear:
`No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for
you. I am now going to shut it.'”
“So the doorkeeper deceived the man,” said K. immediately, strongly attracted by the
story. “Don’t be too hasty,” said the priest, “don’t take over someone else’s opinion without
testing it. I have told you the story in the very words of the scriptures. There’s no mention
of deception in it.” “But it’s clear enough,” said K., “and your first interpretation of it was
quite right. The doorkeeper gave the message of salvation to the man only when it could
no longer help him.” “He was not asked the question any earlier,” said the priest, “and you
must consider, too, that he was only a doorkeeper, and as such fulfilled his duty.” “What
makes you think he fulfilled his duty?” asked K. “He didn’t fulfill it. His duty might have
been to keep all strangers away, but this man, for whom the door was intended, should
have been let in.” “You have not enough respect for the written word and you are altering
the story,” said the priest. “The story contains two important statements made by the
doorkeeper about admission to the Law, one at the beginning, the other at the end. The first statement is: that he cannot admit the man at the moment, and the other is: that this door
was intended only for the man. If there were a contradiction between the two, you would
be right and the doorkeeper would have deceived the man. But there is no contradiction.
The first statement, on the contrary, even implies the second. One could almost say that in
suggesting to the man the possibility of future admittance the doorkeeper is exceeding his
duty. At that time his apparent duty is only to refuse admittance and indeed many
commentators are surprised that the suggestion should be made at all, since the doorkeeper
appears to be a precisian with a stern regard for duty. He does not once leave his post
during these many years, and he does not shut the door until the very last minute; he is
conscious of the importance of his office, for he says: `I am powerful’; he is respectful to
his superiors, for he says: `I am only the lowest doorkeeper’; he is not garrulous, for during
all these years he puts only what are called `impersonal questions’; he is not to be bribed,
for he says in accepting a gift: `I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left
something undone’; where his duty is concerned he is to be moved neither by pity nor rage,
for we are told that the man `wearied the doorkeeper with his importunity’; and finally
even his external appearance hints at a pedantic character, the large, pointed nose and the
long, thin, black, Tartar beard. Could one imagine a more faithful doorkeeper? Yet the