to a friendly young workman who wanted to conduct him farther, and descended again.
But then the uselessness of the whole expedition filled him with exasperation, he went up
the stairs once more and knocked at the first door he came to on the fifth story. The first
thing lie saw in the little room was a great pendulum clock which already pointed to ten.
“Does a joiner called Lanz live here?” he asked. “Please go through,” said a young woman
with sparkling black eyes, who was washing children’s clothes in a tub, and she pointed
with her damp hand to the open door of the next room.
K. felt as though he were entering a meeting-hall. A crowd of the most variegated
people — nobody troubled about the newcomer — filled a medium-sized two-windowed
room, which just below the roof was surrounded by a gallery, also quite packed, where the
people were able to stand only in a bent posture with their heads and backs knocking
against the ceiling. K., feeling the air too thick for him, stepped out again and said to the
young woman, who seemed to have misunderstood him: “I asked for a joiner, a man called
Lanz.” “I know,” said the woman, “just go right in.” K. might not have obeyed if she had
not come up to him, grasped the handle of the door, and said: “I must shut this door after
you, nobody else must come in.” “Very sensible,” said K., “but the room is surely too full
already.” However, he went in again. Between two men who were talking together just
inside the door — the one was making with both outstretched hands a gesture as if paying
out money while the other was looking him sharply in the eye — a hand reached out and
seized K. It belonged to a little red-cheeked lad. “Come along, come along,” he said. K. let
himself be led off, it seemed that in the confused, swarming crowd a slender path was kept
free after all, possibly separating two different factions; in favor of this supposition was the
fact that immediately to right and left of him K. saw scarcely one face looking his way, but
only the backs of people who were addressing their words and gestures to the members of
their own party. Most of them were dressed in black, in old, long, and loosely hanging
Sunday coats. These clothes were the only thing that baffled K., otherwise he would have
taken the gathering for a local political meeting. *
At the other end of the hail, toward which K. was being led, there stood on a low and somewhat crowded platform a little table, set at a slant, and behind it, near the very edge of
the platform, sat a fat little wheezing man who was talking with much merriment to a man
sprawling just behind him with his elbow on the back of the chair and his legs crossed. The
fat little man now and then flung his arms into the air, as if he were caricaturing someone.
The lad who was escorting K. found it difficult to announce his presence. Twice he stood
on tiptoe and tried to say something, without being noticed by the man up above. Not till
one of the people on the platform pointed out the lad did the man turn to him and bend
down to hear his faltered words. Then he drew out his watch and with a quick glance at K.,
“You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago,” he said. K. was about to
answer, but had no time to do so, for scarcely had the man spoken when a general growl of
disapproval followed in the right half of the hall. “You should have been here an hour and
five minutes ago,” repeated the man in a raised voice, casting another quick glance into the
body of the hail. Immediately the muttering grew stronger and took some time to subside,
even though the man said nothing more. Then it became much quieter in the hall than at
K.’s entrance. Only the people in the gallery still kept up their comments. As far as one