wished, he could not bring himself to do it because of its very senselessness. If the
intellectual poverty of the warders were not so manifest, he might almost assume that they
too saw no danger in leaving him alone, for the very same reason. They were quite at
liberty to watch him now while he went to a wall-cupboard where he kept a bottle of good
brandy, while he filled a glass and drank it down to make up for his breakfast, and then
drank a second to give him courage, the last one only as a precaution, for the improbable
contingency that it might be needed.
Then a shout came from the next room which made him start so violently that his
teeth rattled against the glass. “The Inspector wants you,” was its tenor. It was merely the
tone of it that startled him, a curt, military bark with which we would never have credited
the warder Franz. The command itself was actually welcome to him. “At last,” he shouted
back, closing the cupboard and hurrying at once into the next room. There the two warders
were standing, and, as if that were a matter of course, immediately drove him back into his
room again. “What are you thinking of?” they cried. “Do you imagine you can appear
before the Inspector in your shirt? He’ll have you well thrashed, and us too.” “Let me
alone, damn you,” cried K., who by now had been forced back to his wardrobe. “If you
grab me out of bed, you can’t expect to find me all dressed up in my best suit.” “That can’t
be helped,” said the warders, who as soon as K. raised his voice always grew quite calm,
indeed almost melancholy, and thus contrived either to confuse him or to some extent
bring him to his senses. “Silly formalities !” he growled,
but immediately lifted a coat from a chair and held it up for a little while in both hands, as
if displaying it to the warders for their approval. They shook their heads. “It must be a
black coat,” they said. Thereupon K. flung the coat on the floor and said — he did not
himself know in what sense he meant the words — “But this isn’t the capital charge yet.”
The warders smiled, but stuck to their: “It must be a black coat.” “If it’s to dispatch my case
any quicker, I don’t mind,” replied K., opening the wardrobe, where he searched for a long
time among his many suits, chose his best black one, a lounge suit which had caused
almost a sensation among his acquaintances because of its elegance, then selected another
shirt and began to dress with great care. In his secret heart he thought he had managed after
all to speed up the proceedings, for the warders had forgotten to make him take a bath. He
kept an eye on them to see if they would remember the ducking, but of course it never
occurred to them, yet on the other hand Willem did not forget to send Franz to the
Inspector with the information that K. was dressing.
When he was fully dressed he had to walk, with Willem treading on his heels, through
the next room, which was now empty, into the adjoining one, whose double doors were flung open. This room, as K. knew quite well, had recently been taken by a Fräulein
Bürstner, a typist, who went very early to work, came home late, and with whom he had
exchanged little more than a few words in passing. Now the night table beside her bed had
been pushed into the middle of the floor to serve as a desk, and the Inspector was sitting
behind it. He had crossed his legs, and one arm was resting on the back of the chair. *
In a corner of the room three young men were standing looking at Fräulein Bürstner’s
photographs, which were stuck into a mat hanging on the wall. A white blouse dangled
from the latch of the open window. In the window over the way the two old creatures were
again stationed, but they had enlarged their party, for behind them, towering head and