XV

change but their places, and it always astounds Barnabas to see how they have to squeeze past each other when they change places, because there’s so little room. In front of the desk and close to it there are small low tables at which clerks sit ready to write from dictation, whenever the officials wish it. And the way that is done always amazes Barnabas. There’s no express command given by the official, nor is the dictation given in a loud voice, one could hardly tell that it was being given at all, the official just seems to go on reading as before, only whispering as he reads, and the clerk hears the whisper. Often it’s so low that the clerk can’t hear it at all in his seat, and then he has to jump up, catch what’s being dictated, sit down again quickly and make a note of it, then jump up once more, and so on. What a strange business! It’s almost incomprehensible. Of course Barnabas has time enough to observe it all, for he’s often kept standing in the big room for hours and days at a time before Klamm happens to see him. And even if Klamm sees him and he springs to attention, that needn’t mean anything, for Klamm may turn away from him again to the book and forget all about him. That often happens. But what can be the use of a messenger-service so casual as that? It makes me quite doleful to hear Barnabas say in the early morning that he’s going to the Castle. In all likelihood a quite useless journey, a lost day, a completely vain hope. What’s the good of it all? And here’s cobbler’s work piled up which never gets done and which Brunswick is always asking for.” “Oh, well,” said K. , “Barnabas has just to hang on till he gets a commission. That’s understandable, the place seems to be over-staffed, and everybody can’t be given a job every day, you needn’t complain about that, for it must affect everybody. But in the long run even a Barnabas gets commissions, he has brought two letters already to me.” “It’s possible, of course,” answered Olga, “that we’re wrong in complaining, especially a girl like me who knows things only from hearsay and can’t understand it all so well as Barnabas, who certainly keeps many things to himself. But let me tell you how the letters are given out, your letters, for example. Barnabas doesn’t get these letters