doesn’t dare to follow it out, he doesn’t venture to speak to anybody for fear of offending in ignorance against some unknown rule and so losing his job; you see how uncertain he feels; and this miserable uncertainty of his throws a clearer light on his position there than all his descriptions. How ambiguous and threatening everything must appear to him when he won’t even risk opening his mouth to put an innocent question! When I reflect on that I blame myself for letting him go alone into those unknown rooms, which have such an effect on him that, though he’s daring rather than cowardly, he apparently trembles with fright as he stands there.”
“Here I think you’ve touched on the essential point,” said K. “That’s it. After all you’ve told me, I believe I can see the matter clearly. Barnabas is too young for this task. Nothing he tells you is to be taken seriously at its face value. Since he’s beside himself with fright up there, he’s incapable of observing, and when you force him to give an account of what he has seen, you get simply confused fabrications. That doesn’t surprise me. Fear of the authorities is born in you here, and is further suggested to you all your lives in the most various ways and from every side, and you yourselves help to strengthen it as much as possible. Still, I have no fundamental objection to that; if an authority is good why should it not be feared? Only one shouldn’t suddenly send an inexperienced youngster like Barnabas, who has never been further than this village, into the Castle, and then expect a truthful account of everything from him, and interpret each single word of his as if it were a revelation, and base one’s own life’s happiness on the interpretation. Nothing could be more mistaken. I admit that I have let him mislead me in exactly the same way and have set hopes upon him and suffered disappointments through him, both based simply on his own words, that is to say, with almost no basis.” Olga was silent. “It won’t be easy for me,” went on K. , “to talk you out of your confidence in your brother, for I see how you love him and how much you expect from him. But I must do it, if only for the sake of that very love and expectation. For let me point out that there’s