The Castle

by Franz Kafka

The beer was served by a young girl called Frieda. A nondescript little blonde with sad features, thin cheeks, and a surprising gaze, a gaze of exceptional superiority. When this gaze descended on K., it seemed to him to be a gaze that had already decided matters concerning him, whose existence he himself still knew nothing about, but of whose existence that gaze now convinced him.

Her hands were indeed small and delicate, but they could also be called weak and expressionless.

They lay there, but without abandoning themselves as fully as that time at night. She sought something and he sought something, in a fury, grimacing, they sought with their heads boring into each other’s breasts; their embraces and arched bodies, far from making them forget, reminded them of their duty to keep searching, like dogs desperately pawing at the earth they pawed at each other’s bodies, and then, helpless and disappointed, in an effort to catch one last bit of happiness, their tongues occasionally ran all over each other’s faces. Only weariness made them lie still and be grateful to each other. Then the maids came up, “Look at the way they’re lying there,” one of them said, and out of pity she threw a sheet over them.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” she said, lifting her wide face, which was criss-crossed and lined with age, but for all its massiveness, it was still smooth and had perhaps once been beautiful.

when, as is the rule, a file heads the right way, it arrives at its department in one day at the latest and is dealt with that same day, but should it ever lose its way, the excellence of the organization is such that the file must zealously seek the wrong way, for otherwise it won’t find it, and then it does indeed take a long time.

An intriguer by nature, operating like the wind, seemingly to no end, upon remote alien instructions that one never got to see.

“That’s just it,” said Frieda, “that’s what I’m talking about, that’s exactly what makes me so unhappy, what keeps me from you, even though I know of no greater happiness than to be with you, constantly, without interruption, without end, but in the dreams I dream there’s no tranquil place on earth for our love in the village or anywhere else, so I picture a deep and narrow grave where we embrace each other as if with clamps, I hide my face in you, you hide yours in me, and nobody will ever see us again.

Amalia was so domineering that she not only appropriated everything said in her presence but that one was even willing to let her have all of it.

It was astonishing that Barnabas had no difficulty entering the Castle, or rather the office which has become his workplace, as it were. This success almost made me go mad, the moment Barnabas whispered me news of it when he came home I ran to Amalia, grabbed her, pressed her into a corner, and kissed her with lips and teeth, causing her to weep in pain and fright.

Who—even if he were the greatest worker—could keep together on his desk the ramifications of the smallest incident?

she could have put the beer glass down on the table at least as nicely as Frieda had done, could have welcomed the guests in a pleasant manner and taken leave of them just as pleasantly, without any of Frieda’s pushiness, and if Klamm ever looks for anything in a girl’s eyes, then Pepi’s eyes would have completely satisfied him.