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It would have been very tempting now to laugh at Block. Leni took advantage of K.’s absent-mindedness
and, since he was holding her hands, she rested her elbows on the back of his armchair and began to rock
it gently. At first K. paid no attention to this, but watched Block cautiously lifting up the feather quilt,
obviously in order to find the lawyer’s hands, which he wished to kiss.
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. . . if one did not know what he was talking about, one would have taken it, at first sight at least, to be
the falling of water into the basin of a fountain.
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When he had said that, he faltered. It came home to him that he had been talking about a legend and
judging it and yet that he knew nothing whatsoever about its source of origin and that he was equally in
the dark about the interpretations. He had been drawn into a train of thought which was totally foreign to
him. So after all this priest was like all the others? Only willing to speak about K.’s case allusively, in
order to mislead him perhaps and finally fall silent? Revolving these thoughts, K. had neglected the
lamp, which began to smoke, although he only noticed this when the smoke was eddying round his chin.
Then he tried to turn the lamp down and it went out. He stood still. It was quite dark and he had no idea
which part of the church he was in. As there was no sound anywhere near him either, he asked: “Where
are you ?” “Here,” said the priest and took his hand. “Why did you let the lamp go out? Come with me
and I’ll take you to the vestry where there is a light.”
K. was glad enough to be able to leave the Cathedral proper. The height and breadth of the space
around him oppressed him, impenetrable as it was to his gaze except for a tiny circumference. More than
once, although well aware of the futility of doing so, he had looked up, and darkness, nothing but
darkness, had literally flown toward him from all sides. Led by the priest, he hastened after him.
A lamp was burning in the vestry, a still smaller lamp than the one K. was carrying; and it hung
down so low that it hardly illuminated anything but the floor of the vestry which, though narrow, was
probably as lofty as the Cathedral itself. “It’s so dark everywhere,” said K. and put his hand over his eyes
as if they were aching from the strain of finding his way about.
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Their eyebrows looked as if they had been stuck on to their foreheads, and they danced up and down
independently of the movements made in walking.
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They went along several paths mounting upward. There were policemen about here and there, either
standing or strolling, sometimes in the distance, sometimes very near. One of them with a bushy
mustache, his hand on the hilt of the saber entrusted to him by the state, strode up, purposefully it
seemed, toward the rather suspect-looking group. “The state is offering to come to my assistance,”
whispered K. into the ear of one of the men. “What if I transferred the trial into the domain where the
writ of the state law runs? The outcome might very well be that I would have to defend you two
gentlemen against the state !”
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ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE LAST SENTENCES IN THE PENULTIMATE PARAGRAPH.
. . . were there arguments in his favor that had been overlooked? Of course there must be. Logic is
doubtless unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living. Where was the Judge?
Where the High Court of Justice? I have something to say. I lift up my hands.
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