subordinate position. This Sordini naturally sent us back the unaccompanied covering letter for completion. Now months, if not years, had passed by this time since that first communication from Department A, which is understandable enough, for when—which is the rule—a document goes the proper route, it reaches the department at the outside in a day and is settled that day, but when it once in a while loses its way, then in an organisation so efficient as ours its proper destination must be sought for literally with desperation, otherwise it mightn’t be found; and then, well then the search may last really for a long time. Accordingly, when we got Sordini’s note we had only a vague memory of the affair, there were only two of us to do the work at that time, Mizzi and myself, the teacher hadn’t yet been assigned to us, we only kept copies in the most important instances, so we could only reply in the most vague terms that we knew nothing of this engagement of a Land Surveyor and that as far as we knew there was no need for one.”
“But,” here the Superintendent interrupted himself as if, carried on by his tale, he had gone too far, or as if at least it were possible that he had gone too far, “Doesn’t the story bore you?”
“No,” said K. , “it amuses me.”
Thereupon the Superintendent said: “I’m not telling it to amuse you.”
“It only amuses me,” said K. , “because it gives me an insight into the ludicrous bungling which in certain circumstances may decide the life of a human being.”
“You haven’t been given any insight into that yet,” replied the Superintendent gravely, “and I can go on with my story. Naturally Sordini was not satisfied with our reply. I admire the man, although he is a plague to me. He literally distrusts everyone; even if, for instance, he has come to know somebody, through countless circumstances, as the most reliable man in the world, he distrusts him as soon as fresh circumstances