towards his friends. “And this is my most important charge to you,” said K. , sitting down again. “You’re not to speak to anyone without my permission. I am a stranger here, and if you are my old assistants you are strangers too. We three strangers must stand by each other therefore, give me your hands on that.” All too eagerly they stretched out their hands to K. “Never mind the trimming,” said he, “but remember that my command holds good. I shall go to bed now, and I recommend you to do the same. Today we have missed a day’s work, and tomorrow we must begin very early. You must get hold of a sleigh for taking me to the Castle and have it ready outside the house at six o’clock .” “Very well,” said one. But the other interrupted him. “You say ‘very well,’ and yet you know it can’t be done.” “Silence,” said K. “You’re trying already to dissociate yourselves from each other.” But then the first man broke in: “He’s right, it can’t be done, no stranger can get into the Castle without a permit.” “Where does one apply for a permit?” “I don’t know, perhaps to the Castellan.” “Then we’ll apply by telephone, go and telephone to the Castellan at once, both of you.” They rushed to the instrument, asked for the connection—how eager they were about it! in externals they were absurdly docile—and enquired if K. could come with them next morning into the Castle. The “No” of the answer was audible even to K. at his table. But the answer went on and was still more explicit, it ran as follows: “Neither tomorrow nor at any other time.” “I shall telephone myself,” said K. , and got up. While K. and his assistants hitherto had passed nearly unremarked except for the incident with the one peasant, his last statement aroused general attention. They all got up when K. did, and although the landlord tried to drive them away, crowded round him in a close semicircle at the telephone. The general opinion among them was that K. would get no answer at all. K. had to beg them to be quiet, saying he did not want to hear their opinion.
The receiver gave out a buzz of a kind that K. had never before heard on a telephone. It was like the hum of countless children’s voices—but yet not a hum, the echo rather of voices singing at an infinite distance—blended