INITIAL INQUIRY

K. was informed by telephone that a small inquiry into his affair would take place the following Sunday. He was notified that such inquiries would now be held on a regular basis, perhaps not every week, but with some frequency. On the one hand, it was in the general interest to bring his trial to a rapid conclusion; on the other, the inquiries must be thorough in every respect, yet never last too long, due to the strain involved. Therefore they had selected the expedient of this succession of closely spaced but brief inquiries. Sundays had been chosen for the inquiries to avoid disturbing K.’s professional life. It was assumed he would find this acceptable; if he preferred some other fixed time, they would try their best to accommodate him. For example the inquiries could be held at night, but K. probably wouldn’t be fresh enough then. At any rate, as long as K. had no objection, they would stay with Sundays. Of course he was required to appear; they presumed it was not really necessary to point that out. He was given the number of the building in which he was to appear: it was a building on a street in a distant district K. had never been to before.

Having received this message, K. hung up the phone without replying; he had resolved at once to go on Sunday; it was clearly necessary, the trial was getting under way and he had to put up a fight; this initial inquiry must also be the last. He was still standing lost in thought by the phone when he heard the voice of the executive vice president behind him, who wanted to make a phone call, but found K. blocking the way. “Bad news?” the vice president asked lightly, not because he wanted to know, but to get K. away from the phone. “No, no,” said K., stepping aside but not walking off. The vice president picked up the phone and, while waiting to be put through, spoke across the receiver: “May I ask you something, Herr K.? Will you do me the pleasure of coming to a party on my sailboat Sunday morning? There’ll be quite a few people, I’m sure you’ll know some of them. Among others Hasterer, the public prosecutor. Would you like to come? Please do!” K. tried to concentrate on what the vice president was saying. It was not without importance for him, since this invitation from the vice president, with whom he had never got along particularly well, indicated an attempt at reconciliation on the other’s part, and showed how important K. had become to the bank, and how valuable his friendship, or at least his neutrality, must seem to the bank’s second-highest officer. The invitation humbled the vice president, even if it had merely been delivered across the receiver while waiting for a call to go through. But K. was forced to humble him a second time by replying: “Thank you very much! But unfortunately I’m busy on Sunday, I have a previous engagement.” “Too bad,” the vice president said, and returned to his call, which had just been put through. It was no brief conversation, but in his preoccupied state K. remained standing by the phone the whole time. It wasn’t until the vice president hung up that he came to himself with a start and said, to excuse himself somewhat for having simply stood around, “I just received a call asking me to go somewhere, but they forgot to tell me the time.” “Call them back and ask,” said the vice president. “It’s not that important,” said K., although in doing so his previous excuse, which was already weak enough, crumbled even further. As they walked away the vice president talked of other things, and K. forced himself to answer, but he was really thinking that it would be best to arrive Sunday morning at nine, since that was when courts opened session on workdays.

The weather was dull on Sunday, and K. was very tired, having stayed at the tavern celebrating with the regulars late into the night, so that he almost overslept. He dressed hastily, without having time to think things over or review the various plans he’d worked out during the week, and skipping breakfast, hurried to the suburb they had indicated. Strangely enough, although he had little time to look about, he ran across the three clerks who were involved in his affair: Rabensteiner, Kullych, and Kaminer. The first two were riding in a tram that crossed K.’s path, but Kaminer was sitting on the terrace of a coffeehouse and, just as K. was walking by, leaned inquisitively over the railing. They probably all gazed after him, wondering why their supervisor was in such a rush; some sort of stubbornness had prevented K. from taking a cab; he had an aversion to even the slightest outside help in this affair of his; he didn’t want to enlist anyone’s aid and thus initiate them in the matter even distantly; nor, finally, did he have the least desire to humble himself before the commission of inquiry by being overly punctual. Of course he was now running to get there by nine if at all possible, although he had not even been given a specific hour at which to appear.

He had thought he would recognize the building, even at a distance, by some sign he hadn’t visualized precisely, or by some unusual activity at the entrance. But Juliusstrasse, where it was supposedly located and at the top of which K. paused for a moment, was flanked on both sides by almost completely identical buildings, tall gray apartment houses inhabited by the poor. On this Sunday morning most of the windows were occupied; men in shirtsleeves leaned there smoking, or held small children with tender care at the windowsill. Other windows were piled high with bedding, above which the disheveled head of a woman briefly appeared. People called across the street to each other; one such exchange directly over K.’s head aroused loud laughter. At regular intervals along the long street, small shops offering various foodstuffs lay below street level, reached by a few steps. Women went in and out of them, or stood on the steps chatting. A fruit vendor who was offering his wares to the windows above, paying as little attention as K., almost knocked him to the ground with his pushcart. Just then a gramophone that had served its time in better sections of the city began to murder a tune.

K. continued down the street, slowly, as if he had plenty of time now, or as if the examining magistrate had seen him from some window and knew he had arrived. It was shortly after nine. The building stretched some distance; it was almost unusually extensive, the entrance gate in particular was high and broad. It was evidently intended for heavy wagons belonging to the various warehouses, now locked shut, which lined the inner courtyard, with signs bearing the names of firms, some of which K. knew from the bank. Contrary to his normal habit, he was taking close note of all these surface details, and he paused a while at the entrance to the courtyard. On a crate nearby sat a barefoot man reading a newspaper. Two boys rocked back and forth on a handcart. A frail young girl in her night jacket stood at a pump and gazed at K. as the water poured into her jug. In one corner of the courtyard a line with wash to be dried already dangling from it was being stretched between two windows. A man stood below and directed the task with a few shouts.

K. turned to the stairs to find the room for the inquiry, but then paused as he saw three different staircases in the courtyard in addition to the first one; moreover, a small passage at the other end of the courtyard seemed to lead to a second courtyard. He was annoyed that they hadn’t described the location of the room more precisely; he was certainly being treated with strange carelessness or indifference, a point he intended to make loudly and clearly. Then he went up the first set of stairs after all, his mind playing with the memory of the remark the guard Willem had made that the court was attracted by guilt, from which it actually followed that the room for the inquiry would have to be located off whatever stairway K. chanced to choose.

On his way up he disturbed several children who were playing on the steps and who looked angrily at him as he passed through their midst. “The next time I’m to come,” he said to himself, “I’ll either have to bring candy to win them over or my cane to flog them.” Shortly before reaching the first floor he even had to pause for a moment until a marble had completed its journey, while two little boys with the pinched faces of grown tramps held him by the trouser legs; if he had wanted to shake them off he would have had to hurt them, and he feared their cries.

On the first floor the real search began. Since he couldn’t simply ask for the commission of inquiry he invented a carpenter named Lanz—the name occurred to him because Frau Grubach’s nephew, the captain, was called that—intending to ask at each apartment if a carpenter named Lanz lived there, hoping to get a chance to look into the rooms. That proved to be easy enough in general, however, since almost all the doors were standing open, with children running in and out. As a rule they were small, one-window rooms, where people cooked as well. A few women held babies in one arm as they worked at the stove with their free hand. Half-grown girls, apparently clad only in smocks, ran busily back and forth. In every room the beds were still in use, with someone sick or still asleep in them, or people stretched out in their clothes. K. knocked at the apartments with closed doors and asked if a carpenter named Lanz lived there. Generally a woman would open the door, listen to the question, and turn to someone in the room who rose up from the bed. “The gentleman wants to know if a carpenter named Lanz lives here.” “A carpenter named Lanz?” asked the one in bed. “Yes,” K. said, despite the fact that the commission of inquiry clearly wasn’t here and therefore his task was ended. Several people believed K. badly needed to find the carpenter Lanz, thought long and hard, recalled a carpenter, but not one named Lanz, remembered a name that bore some faint similarity to Lanz, asked their neighbors, or accompanied K. to some far distant door, where they fancied such a man might possibly be subletting an apartment, or where there was someone who could provide him with better information than they could. In the end K. scarcely needed even to ask, but was instead pulled along in this manner from floor to floor. He regretted his plan, which had at first seemed so practical. As he was approaching the fifth floor he decided to give up the search, took his leave from a friendly young worker who wanted to lead him further upward, and started back down. But then, annoyed once more by the futility of the whole enterprise, he returned and knocked at the first door on the fifth floor. The first thing he saw in the little room was a large wall clock that already showed ten o’clock. “Does a carpenter named Lanz live here?” he asked. “This way, please,” said a young woman with shining black eyes, who was washing diapers in a tub, and pointed with her wet hand toward the open door of the adjoining room.

K. thought he had walked into a meeting. A crowd of the most varied sort—no one paid any attention to the newcomer—filled a medium-size room with two windows, surrounded by an elevated gallery just below the ceiling that was likewise fully occupied, and where people were forced to crouch with their backs and heads pushing against the ceiling. K., who found the air too stuffy, stepped out again and said to the young woman, who had probably misunderstood him: “I was looking for a carpenter, a man named Lanz?” “Yes,” said the woman, “please go on in.” K. might not have obeyed if the woman hadn’t walked over to him, grasped the door handle and said: “I have to lock it after you, no one else is permitted in.” “Very sensible,” said K., “but it’s already too crowded.” But he went back in anyway.

Between two men who were conversing near the door—one of them was going through the motions of counting out money with outstretched hands, the other was looking him sharply in the eye—a hand reached out for K. It was a little red-cheeked boy. “Come on, come on,” he said. K. let him lead the way; it turned out that there was indeed a narrow path free through the swirling crowd, one that possibly divided two parties; this possibility was further supported by the fact that K. saw scarcely a face turned toward him in the closest rows on his left and right, but merely the backs of people addressing their words and gestures solely to those in their own party. Most were dressed in black, in old, long, loosely hanging formal coats. This was the only thing K. found confusing; otherwise he would have taken it all for a local precinct meeting.

K. was led to the other end of the hall, where a small table had been placed at an angle on a low and equally overcrowded platform, and behind the table, near the platform’s edge, sat a fat little man, wheezing and chatting with someone standing behind him—the latter was leaning with his elbow on the back of the chair and had crossed his legs—laughing heartily all the while. Now and then he would fling his arms in the air, as if he were caricaturing someone. The boy who was leading K. found it difficult to deliver his message. Twice already he’d tried to say something, standing on tiptoe, without being noticed by the man above. It was only when one of the people up on the platform drew attention to the boy that the man turned and bent down to listen to his faint report. Then he pulled out his watch and glanced over at K. “You should have appeared here an hour and five minutes ago,” he said. K. was about to reply, but he didn’t have time, for the man had scarcely spoken when a general muttering arose from the right half of the hall. “You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago,” the man repeated more loudly, and glanced down into the hall as well. The muttering immediately grew louder still and, since the man said nothing more, died out only gradually. It was now much quieter in the hall than it had been when K. entered. Only the people in the gallery continued making comments. They seemed, as far as one could tell in the semidarkness, haze, and dust overhead, to be dressed more shabbily than those below. Some of them had brought along cushions that they placed between their heads and the roof of the hall so as not to rub themselves raw.

K. had decided to observe more than speak, and therefore waived any defense of his supposedly late arrival, merely saying: “I may have arrived late, but I’m here now.” A burst of applause followed, once again from the right half of the hall. “These people are easily won over,” thought K. and was only disturbed by the silence in the left half of the hall, which lay immediately behind him and from which only thinly scattered applause had arisen. He considered what he might say to win all of them over at once, or if that was not possible, at least to win the others for the time being.

“Yes,” said the man, “but now I’m no longer required to examine you”—again the muttering, but this time mistakenly, for the man waved the people off and continued—“however, I’ll make an exception for today. But such tardiness must not be repeated. And now step forward!” Someone jumped down from the platform to free a space for K., and he stepped up into it. He was standing right up against the table; the pressure of the crowd behind him was so great that he had to actively resist if he didn’t want to push the examining magistrate’s table, and perhaps even the magistrate himself, right off the platform.

The examining magistrate wasn’t worried about that, however, but sat comfortably enough in his chair and, after a closing remark to the man behind him, reached for a little notebook, the only object on his table. It resembled a school exercise book, old and totally misshapen from constant thumbing. “So,” said the examining magistrate, leafing through the notebook and turning to K. as if simply establishing a fact: “You’re a house painter?” “No,” said K., “I’m the chief financial officer of a large bank.” This reply was followed by such hearty laughter from the right-hand party below that K. had to join in. The people propped their hands on their knees, shaken as if by fits of coughing. There were even a few laughing up in the gallery. The examining magistrate, who had become quite angry and was probably powerless to do anything about the people below, tried to compensate for this by jumping up and threatening the gallery, while his ordinarily inconspicuous eyebrows contracted bushy black and large above his eyes.

The left half of the hall, however, was still silent, the people standing there in rows, their faces turned toward the platform, listening to the words exchanged above as quietly as to the clamor of the other party, now and then even allowing a few members within their own ranks to go along with the other side. The people in the party on the left, who were in fact less numerous, may have been no more important than those in the party on the right, but their calm demeanor made them appear more so. As K. now started to speak, he was convinced that he was expressing their thoughts.

“Your question, Your Honor, about my being a house painter—and you weren’t really asking at all, you were telling me outright—is characteristic of the way these entire proceedings against me are being conducted. You may object that these aren’t proceedings at all, and you’re certainly right there, they are only proceedings if I recognize them as such. But I do recognize them, for the moment, out of compassion, so to speak. One can only view them compassionately, if one chooses to pay any attention to them at all. I’m not saying these proceedings are sloppy, but I would like to propose that description for your own self-knowledge.”

K. interrupted himself and looked down into the hall. What he had said was harsh, harsher than he had intended, but nonetheless accurate. It should have earned applause here and there, but all was still; they were evidently waiting tensely for what was to come; perhaps in that silence an outburst was building that would put an end to everything. It was disturbing that the door at the end of the hall now opened, and the young washerwoman, who had probably finished her work, entered, drawing a few glances in spite of her painstaking caution. Only the examining magistrate gave K. direct cause for joy, for he appeared to have been struck at once by his words. Up to that point he had been standing as he listened, for K.’s speech had caught him by surprise as he rose to admonish the gallery. As K. now paused, he slowly lowered himself back into his chair, as if hoping to keep anyone from noticing. In an attempt to regain his composure, no doubt, he took out his little notebook again.

“It’s no use, Your Honor,” K. continued, “even your little notebook confirms what I’m saying.” Pleased that his own calm words alone were to be heard in that strange assembly, K. even dared to snatch the notebook from the magistrate’s hands and lift it in his fingertips by a single center page, as if he were repelled by it, so that the foxed and spotted leaves filled with closely spaced script hung down on both sides. “These are the records of the examining magistrate,” he said, letting the notebook drop to the table. “Just keep reading through them, Your Honor, I really have nothing to fear from this account book, although it’s closed to me, since I can barely stand to touch it with the tips of two fingers.” It could only be a sign of deep humiliation, or at least so it seemed, that the examining magistrate took the notebook from where it had fallen on the table, tried to put it to rights somewhat, and lifted it to read again.

The faces of the people in the front row were turned toward K. so intently that he gazed down at them for a short time. They were all older men, a few with white beards. Perhaps they were the decisive ones, capable of influencing the whole assembly, men whom even the examining magistrate’s humiliation could not stir from the quiescent state they’d fallen into since K.’s speech.

“What has happened to me,” K. continued, somewhat more quietly than before, and constantly searching the faces of those in the front row, which made his speech seem slightly disjointed, “what has happened to me is merely a single case and as such of no particular consequence, since I don’t take it very seriously, but it is typical of the proceedings being brought against many people. I speak for them, not for myself.”

He had instinctively raised his voice. Someone clapped somewhere with raised hands and cried out: “Bravo! Why not? Bravo! And encore bravo!” Those in the front row pulled at their beards now and then; no one turned around at the cry. Nor did K. grant it any importance, yet it cheered him; he no longer considered it necessary for everyone to applaud, it was enough that the audience in general was beginning to think the matter over and that someone was occasionally won over by his words.

“I don’t seek success as an orator,” K. said with this in mind, “nor could I necessarily achieve it. The examining magistrate is no doubt a much better speaker; after all, it goes with his profession. What I seek is simply a public discussion of a public disgrace. Listen: Around ten days ago I was arrested; the arrest itself makes me laugh, but that’s another matter. I was assaulted in the morning in bed; perhaps they’d been ordered to arrest some house painter—that can’t be ruled out after what the examining magistrate has said—someone as innocent as I am, but they chose me. The room next door had been taken over by two coarse guards. If I had been a dangerous thief, they couldn’t have taken better precautions. These guards were corrupt ruffians as well; they talked my ear off, they wanted bribes, they tried to talk me out of my undergarments and clothes under false pretenses, they wanted money, supposedly to bring me breakfast, after they’d shamelessly eaten my own breakfast before my very eyes. And that wasn’t all. I was led into a third room to see the inspector. It was the room of a young woman for whom I have the highest respect, yet I was forced to look on while this room was defiled, so to speak, by the presence of the guards and the inspector, on my account, but through no fault of my own. It wasn’t easy to stay calm. However, I managed to, and I asked the inspector quite calmly—if he were here he’d have to confirm that—why I had been arrested. And what was the reply of this inspector, whom I still see before me, sitting on the chair of the young woman I mentioned, the very image of mindless arrogance? Gentlemen, he really had no reply at all, perhaps he actually knew nothing, he had arrested me and that was enough for him. He had taken the additional step of bringing to the young lady’s room three minor employees from my bank, who spent their time fingering photographs, the property of the lady, and mixing them all up. The presence of these employees served another purpose, of course: they were meant, like my landlady and her maid, to spread the news of my arrest, damage my public reputation, and in particular to undermine my position at the bank. Well, none of this met with the slightest success; even my landlady, a very simple person—I pronounce her name in all honor, she’s called Frau Grubach—even Frau Grubach was sensible enough to realize that an arrest like that means as little as a mugging on the street by teenage hoodlums. I repeat, the whole affair has merely caused me some unpleasantness and temporary annoyance, but might it not have had more serious consequences as well?”

As K. interrupted himself at this point and glanced at the silent magistrate, he thought he noticed him looking at someone in the crowd and giving him a signal. K. smiled and said: “The examining magistrate here beside me has just given one of you a secret signal. So there are those among you who are being directed from up here. I don’t know if the signal is meant to elicit hisses or applause, and I deliberately waive my opportunity to learn what the signal means by having revealed the matter prematurely. It’s a matter of complete indifference to me, and I publicly authorize His Honor the examining magistrate to command his paid employees below out loud, rather than by secret signals, and to say something like: ‘Now hiss’ and the next time: ‘Now clap.’ ”

The examining magistrate shifted about in his chair in embarrassment or impatience. The man behind him, with whom he had been talking earlier, bent down to him again, either to give him some general words of encouragement or to pass on special advice. The people below conversed quietly but animatedly. The two parties, which had appeared to hold such contrasting opinions before, mingled with one another, some people pointing their fingers at K., others at the examining magistrate. The foglike haze in the room was extremely annoying, even preventing any closer observation of those standing further away. It must have been particularly disturbing for the visitors in the gallery, who were forced, with timid side glances at the examining magistrate of course, to address questions under their breath to the members of the assembly in order to find out what was happening. The answers were returned equally softly, shielded behind cupped hands.

“I’m almost finished,” said K. striking his fist on the table, since no bell was available, at which the heads of the examining magistrate and his advisor immediately drew apart, startled: “I’m completely detached from this whole affair, so I can judge it calmly, and it will be to your distinct advantage to pay attention, always assuming you care about this so-called court. I suggest that you postpone your mutual discussion of what I’m saying until later, because I don’t have much time, and will be leaving soon.”

There was an immediate silence, so completely did K. now control the assembly. People weren’t shouting back and forth as they had at the beginning; they no longer even applauded but seemed by now convinced, or on the verge of being so.

“There can be no doubt,” K. said very quietly, for he was pleased by the keen attention with which the whole assembly was listening, a murmuring arising in that stillness that was more exciting than the most delighted applause, “there can be no doubt that behind all the pronouncements of this court, and in my case, behind the arrest and today’s inquiry, there exists an extensive organization. An organization that not only engages corrupt guards, inane inspectors, and examining magistrates who are at best mediocre, but that supports as well a system of judges of all ranks, including the highest, with their inevitable innumerable entourage of assistants, scribes, gendarmes, and other aides, perhaps even hangmen, I won’t shy away from the word. And the purpose of this extensive organization, gentlemen? It consists of arresting innocent people and introducing senseless proceedings against them, which for the most part, as in my case, go nowhere. Given the senselessness of the whole affair, how could the bureaucracy avoid becoming entirely corrupt? It’s impossible, even the highest judge couldn’t manage it, even with himself. So guards try to steal the shirts off the backs of arrested men, inspectors break into strange apartments, and innocent people, instead of being examined, are humiliated before entire assemblies. The guards told me about depositories to which an arrested man’s property is taken; I’d like to see these depository places sometime, where the hard-earned goods of arrested men are rotting away, if they haven’t already been stolen by pilfering officials.”

K. was interrupted by a shriek from the other end of the hall; he shaded his eyes so that he could see, for the dull daylight had turned the haze into a blinding white glare. It was the washerwoman, whom K. had sensed as a major disturbance from the moment she entered. Whether or not she was at fault now was not apparent. K. saw only that a man had pulled her into a corner by the door and pressed her to himself. But she wasn’t shrieking, it was the man; he had opened his mouth wide and was staring up toward the ceiling. A small circle had gathered around the two of them, and the nearby visitors in the gallery seemed delighted that the serious mood K. had introduced into the assembly had been interrupted in this fashion. K.’s initial reaction was to run toward them, in fact he thought everyone would want to restore order and at least banish the couple from the hall, but the first rows in front of him stood fast; not a person stirred and no one let K. through. On the contrary they hindered him: old men held out their arms and someone’s hand—he didn’t have time to turn around—grabbed him by the collar from behind; K. wasn’t really thinking about the couple anymore, for now it seemed to him as if his freedom were being threatened, as if he were being arrested in earnest, and he sprang from the platform recklessly. Now he stood eye-to-eye with the crowd. Had he misjudged these people? Had he overestimated the effect of his speech? Had they been pretending all the time he was speaking, and now that he had reached his conclusions, were they fed up with pretending? The faces that surrounded him! Tiny black eyes darted about, cheeks drooped like those of drunken men, the long beards were stiff and scraggly, and when they pulled on them, it seemed as if they were merely forming claws, not pulling beards. Beneath the beards, however—and this was the true discovery K. made—badges of various sizes and colors shimmered on the collars of their jackets. They all had badges, as far as he could see. They were all one group, the apparent parties on the left and right, and as he suddenly turned, he saw the same badges on the collar of the examining magistrate, who was looking on calmly with his hands in his lap. “So!” K. cried and flung his arms in the air, this sudden insight demanding space; “I see you’re all officials, you’re the corrupt band I was speaking about; you’ve crowded in here to listen and snoop, you’ve formed apparent parties and had one side applaud to test me, you wanted to learn how to lead innocent men astray. Well I hope you haven’t come in vain; either you found it entertaining that someone thought you would defend the innocent or else—back off or I’ll hit you,” cried K. to a trembling old man who had shoved his way quite near to him “—or else you’ve actually learned something. And with that I wish you luck in your trade.” He quickly picked up his hat, which was lying at the edge of the table, and made his way through the general silence, one of total surprise at least, toward the exit. The examining magistrate, however, seemed to have been even quicker than K., for he was waiting for him at the door. “One moment,” he said. K. stopped, looking not at the examining magistrate but at the door, the handle of which he had already seized. “I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact,” said the examining magistrate, “that you have today deprived yourself—although you can’t yet have realized it—of the advantage that an interrogation offers to the arrested man in each case.” K. laughed at the door. “You scoundrels,” he cried, “you can have all your interrogations”; then he opened the door and hurried down the stairs. Behind him rose the sounds of the assembly, which had come to life again, no doubt beginning to discuss what had occurred, as students might.