The Trial - Franz Kafka (best novels for students TXT) 📗

One evening, a few days later, K. was walking along one of the corridors that separated his office from the main stairway - he was nearly the last one to leave for home that evening, there remained only a couple of workers in the light of a single bulb in the dispatch department - when he heard a sigh from behind a door which he had himself never opened but which he had always thought just led into a junk room. He stood in amazement and listened again to establish whether he might not be mistaken. For a while there was silence, but then came some more sighs. His first thought was to fetch one of the servitors, it might well have been worth having a witness present, but then he was taken by an uncontrollable curiosity that make him simply yank the door open. It was, as he had thought, a junk room. Old, unusable forms, empty stone ink-bottles lay scattered behind the entrance. But in the cupboard-like room itself stood three men, crouching under the low ceiling. A candle fixed on a shelf gave them light. “What are you doing here?” asked K. quietly, but crossly and without thinking. One of the men was clearly in charge, and attracted attention by being dressed in a kind of dark leather costume which left his neck and chest and his arms exposed. He did not answer. But the other two called out, “Mr. K.! We’re to be beaten because you made a complaint about us to the examining judge.” And now, K. finally realised that it was actually the two policemen, Franz and Willem, and that the third man held a cane in his hand with which to beat them.

“Well,” said K., staring at them, “I didn’t make any complaint, I only said what took place in my home. And your behaviour was not entirely unobjectionable, after all.” “Mr. K.,” said Willem, while Franz clearly tried to shelter behind him as protection from the third man, “if you knew how badly we get paid you wouldn’t think so badly of us. I’ve got a family to feed, and Franz here wanted to get married, you just have to get more money where you can, you can’t do it just by working hard, not however hard you try. I was sorely tempted by your fine clothes, policemen aren’t allowed to do that sort of thing, course they aren’t, and it wasn’t right of us, but it’s tradition that the clothes go to the officers, that’s how it’s always been, believe me; and it’s understandable too, isn’t it, what can things like that mean for anyone unlucky enough to be arrested? But if he starts talking about it openly then the punishment has to follow.” “I didn’t know about any of this that you’ve been telling me, and I made no sort of request that you be punished, I was simply acting on principle.” “Franz,” said Willem, turning to the other policeman, “didn’t I tell you that the gentleman didn’t say he wanted us to be punished? Now you can hear for yourself, he didn’t even know we’d have to be punished.” “Don’t you let them persuade you, talking like that,” said the third man to K., “this punishment is both just and unavoidable.” “Don’t listen to him,” said Willem, interrupting himself only to quickly bring his hand to his mouth when it had received a stroke of the cane, “we’re only being punished because you made a complaint against us. Nothing would have happened to us otherwise, not even if they’d found out what we’d done. Can you call that justice? Both of us, me especially, we’d proved our worth as good police officers over a long period - you’ve got to admit yourself that as far as official work was concerned we did the job well - things looked good for us, we had prospects, it’s quite certain that we would’ve been made whip-men too, like this one, only he had the luck not to have anyone make a complaint about him, as you really don’t get many complaints like that. Only that’s all finished now, Mr. K., our careers are at an end, we’re going to have to do work now that’s far inferior to police work and besides all this we’re going to get this terrible, painful beating.” “Can the cane really cause so much pain, then?” asked K., testing the cane that the whip-man swang in front of him. “We’re going to have to strip off totally naked,” said Willem. “Oh, I see,”

said K., looking straight at the whip-man, his skin was burned brown like a sailor’s, and his face showed health and vigorous. “Is there then no possibility of sparing these two their beating?” he asked him.

“No,” said the whip-man, shaking his head with a laugh. “Get undressed!” he ordered the policemen. And to K. he said, “You shouldn’t believe everything they tell you, it’s the fear of being beaten, it’s already made them a bit weak in the head. This one here, for instance,”

he pointed at Willem, “all that he told you about his career prospects, it’s just ridiculous. Look at him, look how fat he is - the first strokes of the cane will just get lost in all that fat. Do you know what it is that’s made him so fat? He’s in the habit of, everyone that gets arrested by him, he eats their breakfast. Didn’t he eat up your breakfast? Yeah, I thought as much. But a man with a belly like that can’t be made into a whip-man and never will be, that is quite out of the question.” “There are whip-men like that,” Willem insisted, who had just released the belt of this trousers. “No,” said the whip-man, striking him such a blow with the cane on his neck that it made him wince, “you shouldn’t be listening to this, just get undressed.” “I would make it well worth your while if you would let them go,” said K., and without looking at the whip-man again - as such matters are best carried on with both pairs of eyes turned down - he pulled out his wallet. “And then you’d try and put in a complaint against me, too,”

said the whip-man, “and get me flogged. No, no!” “Now, do be reasonable,” said K., “if I had wanted to get these two punished I would not now be trying to buy their freedom, would I. I could simply close the door here behind me, go home and see or hear nothing more of it.

But that’s not what I’m doing, it really is of much more importance to me to let them go free; if I had realised they would be punished, or even that they might be punished, I would never have named them in the first place as they are not the ones I hold responsible. It’s the organisation that’s to blame, the high officials are the ones to blame.”

“That’s how it is!” shouted the policemen, who then immediately received another blow on their backs, which were by now exposed. “If you had a senior judge here beneath your stick,” said K., pressing down the cane as he spoke to stop it being raised once more, “I really would do nothing to stop you, on the contrary, I would even pay you money to give you all the more strength.” “Yeah, that’s all very plausible, what you’re saying there,” said the whip-man , “only I’m not the sort of person you can bribe. It’s my job to flog people, so I flog them.”

Franz, the policeman, had been fairly quiet so far, probably in expectation of a good result from K.‘s intervention, but now he stepped forward to the door wearing just his trousers, kneeled down hanging on to K.‘s arm and whispered, “Even if you can’t get mercy shown for both of us, at least try and get me set free. Willem is older than me, he’s less sensitive than me in every way, he even got a light beating a couple of years ago, but my record’s still clean, I only did things the way I did because Willem led me on to it, he’s been my teacher both for good and bad. Down in front of the bank my poor bride is waiting for me at the entrance, I’m so ashamed of myself, it’s pitiful.” His face was flowing over with tears, and he wiped it dry on K.‘s coat. “I’m not going to wait any longer,” said the whip-man, taking hold of the cane in both hands and laying in to Franz while Willem cowered back in a corner and looked on secretly, not even daring to turn