Source: The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski
The Trial (Excerpt)
As he was going back into the next room, the door opposite opened and Frau Grubach was preparing to come in. She was only visible for a second, for as soon as she saw K. she was clearly seized with embarrassment, apologized, vanished and shut the door with the utmost care. “But please come in,” was all that K. had been able to say. But now he stood with his papers in the middle of the room, still looking at the door, which did not open again, until he was roused by a shout from the warders who were sitting at a table by the open window and devouring, as he now saw, his breakfast.
“Why didn’t she come in?” he asked. “She’s not allowed to,” the tall warder said, “you’re under arrest.”
“But how can I be under arrest Especially in this manner?”
“You’re at it again,” the warder said, and dipped his slice of bread and butter in the honeypot.
“We don’t answer questions like that.” “You’ll have to answer them,” K. told him. “Here are my identity papers. Now show me yours, especially the warrant for my arrest.”
“Good God!” the warder said, “why can’t you just accept your situation, instead of insisting on annoying us unnecessarily, we who are probably now closer to you than anyone else you know.”
“It’s true, take our word for it,” said Franz, not raising the coffee cup to his lips but staring at K. with a long and no doubt meaningful yet incomprehensible look.
Without wishing to, K. found himself drawn into a staring match with Franz, butat last he thumped his papers and said: “Here are my identity papers.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” the tall warder cried out. “You’re behaving worse than a child. What is it you want? Do you think you’ll get this wretched case of yours over quicker by wrangling with us, your warders, about identity papers and arrest warrants? We are lowly officials who can barely understand such documents, and our only role in your case is to guard you for ten hours a day and get paid for it. That’s all we are, but we are quite capable of understanding that the high authorities we serve, before ordering such an arrest, inform themselves in great detail about the reasons for that arrest and the person they’re arresting. There’s no possibility of a mistake. Our officials, in as much as I know them, and I know only the lowest category, never go looking for guilt in the population, but are, as the law states, attracted by guilt and must then send us warders out. That’s the law. Where could there be a mistake in that?”
“I don’t know this law,” K. said.
“So much the worse for you,” the warder said.
Source: Franz Kafka – The Trial
