reject it, he was in the middle of it and must fend for himself. To give in to fatigue would
be dangerous.
Yet there was no need for exaggerated anxiety at the moment. In a relatively short
time he had managed to work himself up to his present high position in the Bank and to
maintain himself in that position and win recognition from everybody; surely if the
abilities which had made this possible were to be applied to the unraveling of his own case,
there was no doubt that it would go well. Above all, if he were to achieve anything, it was
essential that he should banish from his mind once and for all the idea of possible guilt.
There was no such guilt. This legal action was nothing more than a business deal such as
he had often concluded to the advantage of the Bank, a deal within which, as always
happened, lurked various dangers which must simply be obviated. The right tactics were to
avoid letting one’s thoughts stray to one’s own possible shortcomings, and to cling as
firmly as one could to the thought of one’s advantage. From this standpoint the conclusion
was inevitable that the case must be withdrawn from Dr. Huld as soon as possible,
preferably that very evening. According to him that was something unheard of, it was true,
and very likely an insult, but K. could not endure that his efforts in the case should be
thwarted by moves possibly originating in the office of his own representative. Once the
lawyer was shaken off, the petition must be sent in at once and the officials be urged daily,
if possible, to give their attention to it. This would never be achieved by sitting meekly in
the attic lobby like the others with one’s hat under the seat. K. himself, or one of the
women, or some other messenger must keep at the officials day after day and force them to
sit down at their desks and study K.’s papers instead of gaping out into the lobby through
the wooden rails. These tactics must be pursued unremittingly, everything must be
organized and supervised; the Court would encounter for once an accused man who knew
how to stick up for his rights.
Yet even though K. believed he could manage all this, the difficulty of drawing up the
petition seemed overwhelming. At one time, not more than a week ago, he had regarded the possibility of having to draw up his own plea with merely a slight feeling of shame; it
never even occurred to him that there might be difficulties in the way. He could remember
that one of those mornings, when he was up to his ears in work, he had suddenly pushed
everything aside and seized his jotting-pad with the idea of drafting the plan of such a plea
and handing it to Dr. Huld by way of egging him on, but just at that moment the door of
the Manager’s room opened and the Assistant Manager came in laughing uproariously.
That had been a very painful moment for K., though, of course, the Assistant Manager had
not been laughing at the plea, of which he knew nothing, but at a funny story from the
Stock Exchange which he had just heard, a story which needed illustrating for the proper
appreciation of the point, so that the Assistant Manager, bending over the desk, took K.’s
pencil from his hand and drew the required picture on the page of the jotting-pad which
had been intended for the plea.
Today K. was no longer hampered by feelings of shame; the plea simply had to be
drawn up. If he could find no time for it in his office, which seemed very probable, then he
must draft it in his lodgings by night. And if his nights were not enough, then he must ask
for furlough. Anything but stop halfway, that was the most senseless thing one could do in
any affair, not only in business. No doubt it was a task that meant almost interminable
labor. One did not need to have a timid and fearful nature to be easily persuaded that the