V

“Allow me, Superintendent, to interrupt you with a question,” said K. “Did you not mention once before a Control Authority? From your description the whole economy is one that would rouse one’s apprehensions if one could imagine the control failing.”

“You’re very strict,” said the Superintendent, “but multiply your strictness a thousand times and it would still be nothing compared with the strictness which the Authority imposes on itself. Only a total stranger could ask a question like yours. Is there a Control Authority? There are only control authorities. Frankly it isn’t their function to hunt out errors in the vulgar sense, for errors don’t happen, and even when once in a while an error does happen, as in your case, who can say finally that it’s an error?”

“This is news indeed!” cried K.

“It’s very old news to me,” said the Superintendent. “Not unlike yourself I’m convinced that an error has occurred, and as a result Sordini is quite ill with despair, and the first Control Officials, whom we have to thank for discovering the source of error, recognise that there is an error. But who can guarantee that the second Control Officials will decide in the same way and the third lot and all the others?”

“That may be,” said K. “I would much rather not mix in these speculations yet, besides this is the first mention I’ve heard of those Control Officials and naturally I can’t understand them yet. But I fancy that two things must be distinguished here: firstly, what is transacted in the offices and can be construed again officially this way or that, and secondly, my own actual person, me myself, situated outside of the offices and threatened by their encroachments, which are so meaningless that I can’t even yet believe in the seriousness of the danger. The first evidently is covered by what you, Superintendent, tell me in such extraordinary and disconcerting detail; all the same I would like to hear a word now about myself.”