moving into Fräulein Bürstner room. For hours she kept on trailing through the entrance
hail. She seemed to be always forgetting some article of underwear or a scrap of drapery or
a book that necessitated a special journey to carry it into the new apartment.
When Frau Grubach brought in his breakfast — ever since she had angered K. she had
devoted herself to performing even the most trifling services for him — K. could not help
breaking the silence between them for the first time. “Why is there such a row in the
entrance hail today?” he asked as he poured out his coffee. “Couldn’t it be put off to some
other time? Must the place be spring-cleaned on a Sunday?” Although K. did not glance up
at Frau Grubach, he could observe that she heaved a sigh of relief. These questions, though
stern, she construed as forgiveness or as an approach toward forgiveness. “The place is not
being spring-cleaned, Herr K.,” she said. “Fräulein Montag is moving in with Fräulein
Bürstner and shifting her things across.” She said no more, waiting first to see how K.
would take it and if he would allow her to go on. But K. kept her on the rack, reflectively
stirring his coffee and remaining silent. Then he looked up at her and said: “Have you
given up your previous suspicions of Fräulein Bürstner?” “Herr K.,” cried Frau Grubach, who had been merely waiting for this question and now stretched out her clasped hands
toward him, “you took a casual remark of mine far too seriously. It never entered my head
to offend you or anyone else. You have surely known me long enough, Herr K., to be
certain of that. You have no idea how I have suffered during these last few days! I to speak
ill of my boarders! And you, Herr K., believed it! And said I should give you notice! Give
you notice!” The last ejaculation was already stifled in her sobs, she raised her apron to her
face and wept aloud.
“Please don’t cry, Frau Grubach,” said K., looking out through the window, he was
really thinking of Fräulein Bürstner and of the fact that she had taken a strange girl into her
room. “Please don’t cry,” he said again as he turned back to the room and found Frau
Grubach still weeping. “I didn’t mean what I said so terribly seriously either. We
misunderstood each other. That can happen occasionally even between old friends.” Frau
Grubach took her apron from her eyes to see whether K. were really appeased. “Come
now, that’s all there was to it,” said K., and then ventured to add, since to judge from Frau
Grubach’s expression her nephew the Captain could not have divulged anything: “Do you
really believe that I would turn against you because of a strange girl?” “That’s just it, Herr
K.,” said Frau Grubach, it was her misfortune that as soon as she felt relieved in her mind
she immediately said something tactless, “I kept asking myself: Why should Herr K.
bother himself so much about Fräulein Bürstner? Why should he quarrel with me because
of her, though he knows that every cross word from him makes me lose my sleep? And I
said nothing about the girl that I hadn’t seen with my own eyes.” K. made no reply to this,
he should have sent her from the room at the very first word, and he did not want to do
that. He contented himself with drinking his coffee and leaving Frau Grubach to feel that
her presence was burdensome. Outside he could hear again the trailing step of Fräulein
Montag as she limped from end to end of the entrance hall. “Do you hear that?” asked K.,
indicating the door. “Yes,” said Frau Grubach, sighing, “I offered to help her and to order
the maid to help too, but she’s self-willed, she insists on moving everything herself. I’m
surprised at Fräulein Bürstner. I often regret having Fräulein Montag as a boarder, but now
Fräulein Bürstner is actually taking her into her own room.” “You mustn’t worry about
that,” said K., crushing with the spoon the sugar left at the bottom of his cup. “Does it