XV

you grasp it all. What an extraordinarily clear mind you have!” “No,” said Olga, “it takes you in, and perhaps it takes him in too. For what has he really achieved? He’s allowed into a bureau, but it doesn’t seem to be even a bureau. He speaks to Klamm, but is it Klamm? Isn’t it rather someone who’s a little like Klamm? A secretary perhaps, at the most, who resembles Klamm a little and takes pains to increase the resemblance and poses a little in Klamm’s sleepy and dreamy style. That side of his nature is the easiest to imitate, there are many who try it on, although they have sense enough not to attempt anything more. And a man like Klamm who is so much sought after and so rarely seen is apt to take different shapes in people’s imagination. For instance Klamm has a village secretary here called Momus. You know him, do you? He keeps well in the background too, but I’ve seen him several times. A stoutly-built young man, isn’t he? And so evidently not in the least like Klamm. And yet you’ll find people in the village who swear that Momus is Klamm, he and no other. That’s how people work their own confusion. Is there any reason why it should be different in the Castle? Somebody pointed out that particular official to Barnabas as Klamm, and there is actually a resemblance that Barnabas has always questioned. And everything goes to support his doubt. Are we to suppose that Klamm has to squeeze his way among other officials in a common room with a pencil behind his ear? It’s wildly improbable. Barnabas often says, somewhat like a child and yet in a child’s mood of trustfulness: ‘The official is really very like Klamm, and if he were sitting in his own office at his own desk with his name on the door I would have no more doubt at all.’ That’s childish, but reasonable. Of course it would be still more reasonable of Barnabas when he’s up there to ask a few people about the truth of things, for judging from his account there are plenty of men standing round. And even if their information were no more reliable than that of the man who pointed out Klamm of his own accord, there would be surely some common ground, some ground for comparison, in the various things they said. That’s not my idea, but Barnabas’s, yet he