IX

seem to me to be quite cleared up,” said K. , “but I’m content with having drawn attention to it. But now I beg you, Mr. Secretary, to tell me whether the landlady’s opinion is correct, that is, that the protocol which you want to take down from my answers can have the result of gaining me admission to Klamm. If that’s the case, I’m ready to answer all your questions at once. In that direction I’m ready, indeed, for anything.” “No,” replied Momus, “that doesn’t follow at all. It’s simply a matter of keeping an adequate record of this afternoon’s happenings for Klamm’s village register. The record is already complete, there are only two or three omissions which you must fill in for the sake of order; there’s no other object in view and no other object can be achieved.” K. gazed at the landlady in silence. “Why are you looking at me?” asked she, “did I say anything else? He’s always like that, Mr. Secretary, he’s always like that. Falsifies the information one gives him, and then maintains that he received false information. I’ve told him from the first and I tell him again today that he hasn’t the faintest prospect of being received by Klamm; well, if there’s no prospect in any case, he won’t alter that fact by means of this protocol. Could anything be clearer? I said further that this protocol is the only real official connection that he can have with Klamm. That too is surely clear and incontestable enough. But if in spite of that he won’t believe me, and keeps on hoping⁠—I don’t know why or with what idea⁠—that he’ll be able to reach Klamm, then so long as he remains in that frame of mind, the only thing that can help him is this one real official connection he has with Klamm, in other words this protocol. That’s all I have said, and whoever maintains the contrary twists my words maliciously.” “If that is so, madam,” said K. , “then I beg your pardon, and I’ve misunderstood you; for I thought⁠—erroneously, as it turns out now⁠—that I could take out of your former words that there was still some very tiny hope for me.” “Certainly,” replied the landlady, “that’s my meaning exactly. You’re twisting my words again, only this time in the opposite way. In my opinion there is such a hope for you, and founded actually on this protocol and nothing else. But it’s not