“You’ve misunderstood me,” said the Superintendent, “I don’t misconstrue the meaning of the letter, my reading of it doesn’t disparage it, on the contrary. A private letter from Klamm has naturally far more significance than an official letter, but it hasn’t precisely the kind of significance that you attach to it.”
“Do you know Schwarzer?” asked K.
“No,” replied the Superintendent. “Perhaps you know him, Mizzi? You don’t know him either? No, we don’t know him.”
“That’s strange,” said K. , “he’s a son of one of the under-castellans.”
“My dear Land Surveyor,” replied the Superintendent, “how on earth should I know all the sons of all the under-castellans?”
“Right,” said K. , “then you’ll just have to take my word that he is one. I had a sharp encounter with this Schwarzer on the very day of my arrival. Afterwards he made a telephone enquiry of an under-castellan called Fritz and received the information that I was engaged as Land Surveyor. How do you explain that, Superintendent?”
“Very simply,” replied the Superintendent. “You haven’t once up till now come into real contact with our authorities. All those contacts of yours have been illusory, but owing to your ignorance of the circumstances you take them to be real. And as for the telephone: As you see, in my place, though I’ve certainly enough to do with the authorities, there’s no telephone. In inns and suchlike places it may be of real use, as much use say as a penny in the slot musical instrument, but it’s nothing more than that. Have you ever telephoned here? Yes? Well, then perhaps you’ll understand what I say. In the Castle the telephone works beautifully of course, I’ve been told it’s going there all the time, that naturally speeds up the work a great deal. We can hear this continual telephoning in our telephones down here as a humming and singing, you must have heard it