responsible official, no official can settle anything without the necessary documents, and certainly not on the main road; he can’t pardon anything, he can only settle it officially, and he would simply refer to the official procedure, which had already been a complete failure for father. What a pass father must have been in to think of insisting on such a plan! If there were even the faintest possibility of getting anything in that way, that part of the road would be packed with petitioners; but since it’s a sheer impossibility, patent to the youngest schoolboy, the road is absolutely empty. But maybe even that strengthened father in his hopes, he found food for them everywhere. He had great need to find it, for a sound mind wouldn’t have had to make such complicated calculations, it would have realised from external evidence that the thing was impossible. When officials travel to the village or back to the Castle it’s not for pleasure, but because there’s work waiting for them in the village or in the Castle, and so they travel at a great pace. It’s not likely to occur to them to look out of the carriage windows in search of petitioners, for the carriages are crammed with papers which they study on the way.”
“But,” said K. , “I’ve seen the inside of an official sledge in which there weren’t any papers.” Olga’s story was opening for him such a great and almost incredible world that he could not help trying to put his own small experiences in relation to it, as much to convince himself of its reality as of his own existence.
“That’s possible,” said Olga, “but in that case it’s even worse, for that means that the official’s business is so important that the papers are too precious or too numerous to be taken with him, and those officials go at a gallop. In any case, none of them can spare time for father. And besides, there are several roads to the Castle. Now one of them is in fashion, and most carriages go by that, now it’s another and everything drives pell-mell there. And what governs this change of fashion has never yet been found out. At eight o’clock one morning they’ll all be on another road, ten minutes later on a third, and half an hour after that on the first road