senile inquisitiveness had moved along to the window exactly opposite, in order to go on
seeing all that could be seen. “I’d better get Frau Grubach–” said K., as if wrenching
himself away from the two men (though they were standing at quite a distance from him)
and making as if to go out. “No,” said the man at the window, flinging the book down on
the table and getting up. “You can’t go out, you are arrested.” “So it seems,” said K. “But
what for?” he added. “We are not authorized to tell you that. Go to your room and wait
there. Proceedings have been instituted against you, and you will be informed of
everything in due course. I am exceeding my instructions in speaking freely to you like
this. But I hope nobody hears me except Franz, and he himself has been too free with you,
against his express instructions. If you continue to have as good luck as you have had in
the choice of your warders, then you can be confident of the final result.” K. felt he must
sit down, but now he maw that there was no seat in the whole room except the chair beside
the window. “You’ll soon discover that we’re telling you the truth,” said Franz, advancing
toward him simultaneously with the other man. The latter overtopped K. enormously and
kept clapping him on th. shoulder. They both examined his nightshirt and said that he
would have to wear a less fancy shirt now, but that they would take charge of this one and
the rest of his underwear and, if his case turned out well, restore them to him later. “Much
better give these things to us than hand them over to the depot,” they said, “for in the depot
there’s lots of thieving, and besides they sell everything there after a certain length of time,
no matter whether your came is settled or not. And you never know how long these cases
will last, especially these days. Of course you would get the money out of the depot in the
long run, but in the first place the prices they pay you are always wretched, for they sell
your things to the best briber, not the best bidder, and anyhow it’s well known that money
dwindles a lot if it passes from hand to hand from one year to another.” K. paid hardly any
attention to this advice. Any right to dispose of his own things which he might possess he
did not prize very highly; far more important to him was the necessity to understand his
situation clearly; but with these people beside him he could not even think. The belly of
the second warder — for they could only be warders — kept butting against him in an
almost friendly way, yet if he looked up he caught sight of a face which did not in the least
suit that fat body, a dry, bony face with a great nose, twisted to one side, which seemed to
be consulting over his head with the other warder. Who could these men be? What were
they talking about? What authority could they represent? K. lived in a country with a legal
constitution, there was universal peace, all the laws were in force; who dared seize him in
his own dwelling? He had always been inclined to take things easily, to believe in the
worst only when the worst happened, to take no care for the morrow even when the
outlook was threatening. But that struck him as not being the right policy here, one could
certainly regard the whole thing as a joke, a rude joke which his colleagues in the Bank
had concocted for some unknown reason, perhaps because this was his thirtieth birthday,
that was of course possible, perhaps he had only to laugh knowingly in these men’s faces
and they would laugh with him, perhaps they were merely porters from the street corner —
they looked very like it — nevertheless his very first glance at the man Franz had decided
him for the time being not to give away any advantage that he might possess over these people. There was a slight risk that later on his friends might possibly say he could not take