Before the inn the landlord was waiting for him. Without being questioned he would not have ventured to address him, accordingly K. asked what he wanted. “Have you found new lodgings yet?” asked the landlord, looking at the ground. “You were told to ask by your wife?” replied K. , “you’re very much under her influence?” “No,” said the landlord, “I didn’t ask because of my wife. But she’s very bothered and unhappy on your account, can’t work, lies in bed and sighs and complains all the time.” “Shall I go and see her?” asked K. “I wish you would,” said the landlord. “I’ve been to the Superintendent’s already to fetch you. I listened at the door, but you were talking. I didn’t want to disturb you, besides I was anxious about my wife and ran back again; but she wouldn’t see me, so there was nothing for it but to wait for you.” “Then let’s go at once,” said K. , “I’ll soon reassure her.” “If you could only manage it,” said the landlord.
They went through the bright kitchen where three or four maids, engaged all in different corners at the work they were happening to be doing, visibly stiffened on seeing K. From the kitchen the sighing of the landlady could already be heard. She lay in a windowless annex separated from the kitchen by thin lath boarding. There was room in it only for a huge family bed and a chest. The bed was so placed that from it one could overlook the whole kitchen and superintend the work. From the kitchen, on the other hand, hardly anything could be seen in the annex. There it was quite dark, only the faint gleam of the purple bed-coverlet could be distinguished. Not until one entered and one’s eyes became used to the darkness did one detach particular objects.
“You’ve come at last,” said the landlady feebly. She was lying stretched out on her back, she breathed with visible difficulty, she had thrown back