right to yourself.” “Certainly,” said Block, as if to give himself confidence, and then with a
hasty side-glance knelt down close beside the bed. “I’m on my knees, Dr. Huld,” he said.
But the lawyer made no reply. * Block cautiously caressed the quilt with one hand. In
the silence that now reigned Leni said, freeing herself from K.: “You’re hurting me. Let go.
I want to be with Block.” She went over and sat on the edge of the bed. Block was greatly
pleased by her coming; he made lively gestures, though in dumb show, imploring her to
plead his cause with the lawyer. Obviously he was urgently in need of any information
which the lawyer might give, but perhaps he only wanted to hand it on to his other lawyers
for exploitation. Leni apparently knew exactly the right way to coax the lawyer; she
pointed to his hand and pouted her lips as if giving a kiss. Block immediately kissed the
hand, repeating the performance twice at Leni’s instigation. But the lawyer remained
persistently unresponsive. Then Leni, displaying the fine lines of her taut figure, bent over
close to the old man’s face and stroked his long white hair. That finally evoked an answer.
“I hesitate to tell him,” said the lawyer, and one could see him shaking his head, perhaps
only the better to enjoy the pressure of Leni’s hand. Block listened with downcast eyes, as
if he were breaking a law by listening. “Why do you hesitate?” asked Leni. K. had the
feeling that he was listening to a well-rehearsed dialogue which had been often repeated
and would be often repeated and only for Block would never lose its novelty. “How has he
been behaving today?” inquired the lawyer instead of answering. Before providing this
information Leni looked down at Block and watched him for a moment as he raised his
hands toward her and clasped them appealingly together. At length she nodded gravely,
turned to the lawyer, and said: “He has been quiet and industrious.” An elderly
businessman, a man with a long beard, begging a young girl to say a word in his favor! Let
him make what private reservations he would, in the eyes of his fellow men he could find
no justification. K. did not understand how the lawyer could ever have imagined that this
performance would win him over. If the lawyer had not already succeeded in alienating
him, this scene would have finished him once and for all. It was humiliating even to an
onlooker. So the lawyer’s methods, to which K. fortunately had not been long enough
exposed, amounted to this: that the client finally forgot the whole world and lived only in
hope of toiling along this false path until the end of his case should come in sight. The
client ceased to be a client and became the lawyer’s dog. If the lawyer were to order this man to crawl under the bed as if into a kennel and bark there, he would gladly obey the
order. K. listened to everything with critical detachment, as if he had been commissioned
to observe the proceedings closely, to report them to a higher authority, and to put down a
record of them in writing. “What has he been doing all day?” went on the lawyer. “I locked
him into the maid’s room,” said Leni, “to keep him from disturbing me at my work, that’s
where he usually stays, anyhow. And I could peep at him now and then through the
ventilator to see what he was doing. He was kneeling all the time on the bed, reading the
papers you lent him, which were spread out on the window sill. That made a good
impression on me, since the window looks out on an air shaft and doesn’t give much light.
So the way Block stuck to his reading showed me how faithfully he does what he is told.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said the lawyer. “But did he understand what he was reading?” All
this time Block’s lips were moving unceasingly; he was obviously formulating the answers
he hoped Leni would make. “Well, of course,” said Leni, “that’s something I don’t know