which a shrill unchanging note like that of a siren seemed to ring. “Louder,” he whispered
with bowed head, and he was ashamed, for he knew that they were speaking loudly
enough, though he could not make out what they said. Then, as if the wall in front of him
had been split in two, a current of fresh air was at last wafted toward him, and he heard a
voice near him saying: “First he wants to go, then you tell him a hundred times that the
door is in front of him and he makes no move to go.” K. saw that he was standing before
the outside door, which the girl had opened. It was as if all his energies returned at one
bound, to get a foretaste of freedom he set his feet at once on a step of the staircase and
from there said good-by to his conductors, who bent their heads down to hear him. “Many
thanks,” he said several times, then shook hands with them again and again and only left
off when he thought he saw that they, accustomed as they were to the office air, felt ill in
the relatively fresh air that came up the stairway. They could scarcely answer him and the
girl might have fallen if K. had not shut the door with the utmost haste. K. stood still for a
moment, put his hair to rights with the help of his pocket mirror, lifted up his hat, which
lay on the step below him — the Clerk of Inquiries must have thrown it there — and then
leapt down the stairs so buoyantly and with such long strides that he became almost afraid
of his own reaction. His usually sound constitution had never provided him with such
surprises before. Could his body possibly be meditating a revolution and preparing a new
trial for him, since he was withstanding the old one with such ease? He did not entirely reject the idea of going to consult a doctor at the first opportunity, in any case he had made
up his mind — and there he could advise himself — to spend all his Sunday mornings in
future to better purpose. Chapter 4
Fräulein Bürstner’s Friend
IN THE next few days K. found it impossible to exchange even a word with Fräulein
Bürstner. He tried to get hold of her by every means he could think of, but she always
managed to elude him. He went straight home from his office and sat on the sofa in his
room, with the light out and the door open, concentrating his attention on the entrance hail.
If the maid on her way past shut the door of his apparently empty room, he would get up
after a while and open it again. He rose every morning an hour earlier than usual on the
chance of catching Fräulein Bürstner alone, before she went to her work. But none of these
stratagems succeeded. Then he wrote a letter to her, sending it both to her office and to her
house address, in which he once more tried to justify his behavior, offered to make any
reparation required, promised never to overstep the bounds that she should prescribe for
him, and begged her to give him an opportunity of merely speaking to her, more especially
as he could arrange nothing with Frau Grubach until he had first consulted with her,
concluding with the information that next Sunday he would wait in his room all day for
some sign that she was prepared either to grant his request or at least to explain why, even
although he was pledging his word to defer to her in everything, she would not grant it. His
letters were not returned, but neither were they answered. On Sunday, however, he was
given a sign whose meaning was sufficiently clear. In the early morning K. observed
through the keyhole of his door an unusual commotion in the entrance hail, which soon
explained itself. A teacher of French, she was a German girl called Montag, a sickly, pale
girl with a slight limp who till now had occupied a room of her own, was apparently