XVIII

she brought a plate with slices of meat and a bottle of wine, but they were clearly only the remains of a meal, the scraps of meat had been hastily ranged out anew so as to hide the fact, yet whole sausage skins had been overlooked, and the bottle was three-quarters empty. However K. said nothing and fell on the food with a good appetite. “You were in the kitchen?” he asked. “No, in my own room,” she said. “I have a room down there.” “You might surely have taken me with you,” said K. “I’ll go down now, so as to sit down for a little while I’m eating.” “I’ll bring you a chair,” said Frieda already making to go. “Thanks,” replied K. holding her back, “I’m neither going down there, nor do I need a chair any longer.” Frieda endured his hand on her arm defiantly, bowed her head and bit her lip. “Well, then, he is down there,” she said, “did you expect anything else? He’s lying on my bed, he got a cold out there, he’s shivering, he’s hardly had any food. At bottom it’s all your fault, if you hadn’t driven the assistants away and run after those people, we might be sitting comfortably in the school now. You alone have destroyed our happiness. Do you think that Jeremiah, so long as he was in service, would have dared to take me away? Then you entirely misunderstood the way things are ordered here. He wanted me, he tormented himself, he lay in watch for me, but that was only a game, like the play of a hungry dog who nevertheless wouldn’t dare to leap up on the table. And just the same with me. I was drawn to him, he was a playmate of mine in my childhood⁠—we played together on the slope of the Castle Hill, a lovely time, you’ve never asked me anything about my past⁠—but all that wasn’t decisive as long as Jeremiah was held back by his service, for I knew my duty as your future wife. But then you drove the assistants away and plumed yourself on it besides, as if you had done something for me by it; well, in a certain sense it was true. Your plan has succeeded as far as Arthur is concerned, but only for the moment, he’s delicate, he hasn’t Jeremiah’s passion that nothing can daunt, besides you almost shattered his health for him by the buffet you gave him that night⁠—it was a blow at my happiness as well⁠—he fled to the Castle to complain, and even if he