time: “I want him to paint my portrait,” he said. “To paint your portrait?” she repeated,
letting her jaw fall open, then she gave K. a little slap as if he had said something
extraordinarily unexpected or stupid, lifted her abbreviated skirts with both hands, and raced as fast as she could after the other girls, whose shrieks were already dying away in
the distance. Yet at the very next turn of the stair K. ran into all of them. Obviously the
hunchback had reported K.’s intention, and they were waiting there for him. They stood
lined up on either side of the stairway, squeezing against the walls to leave room for K. to
pass, and smoothing their skirts down with their hands. All their faces betrayed the same
mixture of childishness and depravity which had prompted this idea of making him run the
gauntlet between them. At the top end of the row of girls, who now closed in behind K.
with spurts of laughter, stood the hunchback ready to lead the way. Thanks to her, he was
able to make straight for the right door. He had intended to go on up the main stairs, but
she indicated a side-stair that branched off toward Titorelli’s dwelling. This stairway was
extremely narrow, very long, without any turning, could thus be surveyed in all its length,
and was abruptly terminated by Titorelli’s door. In contrast to the rest of the stairway this
door was relatively brightly lit by a little fan-light set on an angle above it, and was made
of unpainted planks on which sprawled the name Titorelli in red, traced in sweeping brushstrokes.
K. with his escort was hardly more than halfway up the stairs when someone
above, obviously disturbed by the clatter of so many feet, opened the door a little way, and
a man who seemed to be wearing nothing but a nightshirt appeared in the opening. “Oh!”
he cried when he saw the approaching mob, and promptly vanished. The hunchback
clapped her hands in joy, and the other girls crowded K. from behind to urge him on faster.
Yet they were still mounting toward the top when the painter flung the door wide
open and with a deep bow invited K. to enter. As for the girls, he turned them off, he
would not admit one of them, eagerly as they implored and hard as they tried to enter by
force if not by permission. The hunchback alone managed to slip in under his outstretched
arm, but he rushed after her, seized her by the skirts, whirled her once round his head, and
then set her down before the door among the other girls, who had not dared meanwhile,
although he had quitted his post, to cross the threshold. K. did not know what to make of
all this, for they seemed to be on the friendliest terms together. The girls outside the door,
craning their necks behind one another, shouted various jocular remarks at the painter
which K. did not understand, and the painter was laughing too as he almost hurled the
hunchback through the air. Then he shut the door, bowed once more to K., held out his
hand, and said in introduction: “I’m the painter Titorelli.” K. pointed at the door, behind
which the girls were whispering, and said: “You seem to be a great favorite here.” “Oh,
those brats !” said the painter, trying unsuccessfully to button his nightshirt at the neck. He
was barefooted and besides the nightshirt had on only a pair of wide-legged yellow linen
trousers girt by a belt with a long end flapping to and fro. “Those brats are a real nuisance,”
he went on, while he desisted from fiddling with his nightshirt — since the top button had
just come off — fetched a chair, and urged K. to sit down. “I painted one of them once —
not any of those you saw — and since then they’ve all persecuted me. When I’m here
myself they only come in if I let them, but whenever I go away there’s always at least one
of them here. They’ve had a key made for my door, and they lend it round. You can hardly