Day 1

K. arrives in the village late in the evening in the dead of winter and gets his first look at the Castle, which is supposed to be located on a hill, but he can't even make it out.  Near the bridge he is standing on is an inn, where he goes in and is allowed by the landlord to sleep on a straw mattress in the bar.  A man named Schwarzer gives him crap about needing permission to stay either in the village or at the Castle of Count Westwest—they're the same thing, he insists—so K. tells him that he was summoned to the castle as a land surveyor.  Schwarzer calls up the Castle and asks a man named Fritz if this is so.  At first the voice says no, but then he makes inquiries and calls back saying that yes, it is true.  K. then goes to sleep.

Day 2

K. talks to the landlord over breakfast a bit about the Castle and wants to know more about the mysterious Count, but gets no real answers. He says that his assistants will be coming soon, though, and would he put them up too?  He then goes out to explore the village and walks in the direction of the Castle.  He goes along the main road and down a side street, but doesn't succeed in getting there.  In his view, the Castle isn't very impressive during the day—just a jumbled collection of crumbling stone houses and a tower.  As he stands there looking, a teacher with his students comes out of the school and K. asks him a few questions about the Castle and the Count, but gets no straight answers, although he does promise to visit the teacher later.  He stops by a house and asks if he can rest there a while.  The house belongs to a man called Lasemann, the master tanner, and children are playing, men are bathing, and a woman with a baby sits in a corner.  K. is astonished to learn that they actually already know about him, and don't seem to be too impressed.  He leaves and in the street runs into two men from the Castle, Arthur and Jeremiah, who pass by him and say they have business at the inn and are gone.  A man across the street is upset at having K. hanging around in front of his house and finally offers to take him to the inn in his sleigh.  During the ride, K. asks the man, a Coachman Gerstäcker, why he hauls him around like this when he could be punished for it, but gets no answer.

When they arrive at the inn, the two men, Arthur and Jeremiah, are outside waiting for him—they're supposed to be his assistants.  However, they seem to know nothing about surveying and have no tools.  Nevertheless, K. goes with them into the inn.  K and the assistants talk about the Castle, and he learns that permission is needed to enter it.  The assistants call to ask if K. will be allowed inside, and gets the answer, "Never."  K. tries it, incidentally giving his first name as "Joseph," but gets the same answer, although he does find out that this phone is unlike any other, every other conversation can be heard dimly and the effect is like that of " utterly distant voices singing."  Immediately afterward, a messenger from the Castle, Barnabas, shows up and gives K. a letter from Klamm, a Castle official, which says that he has indeed been accepted as a land surveyor and should report to the Mayor, who will tell him his duties and basically be his boss.  K. thinks about the letter a long time, wondering what it could mean and whether it's favorable to him or not.  Meanwhile he goes to the landlord and finds his new room, which is actually only the former maids' room in the attic, and hasn't even been prepared for him—they figure he won't be staying long enough for that.  K. then comes back to Barnabas in the bar and gives him a message to take back to Klamm, that he thanks him and will do what the letter says.  Barnabas leaves, but then K. calls him back and talks with him about perhaps having set times to meet, since he's concerned with being able to get into contact with Klamm whenever necessary, and so they end up going to Barnabas's house to discuss it.  The family, Barnabas's sisters Amalia and Olga, and their practically invalid parents, are to K. somewhat repulsive and he wants to leave immediately.  Olga says she's going to the inn to fetch some beer, and K. goes with her, but they end up at the Herrenhof, a different inn where the Castle officials stay.  Other people, such as K., says the landlord there, are not allowed past the bar.  Nevertheless K. wants to find a place to sleep there, since going back to the Barnabas house for the night is absolutely out of the question for him.  Olga is disappointed, since she thought he was staying with them.  K. also finds out that tonight only one Castle official is there, Klamm.

The barmaid at the Herrenhof bar is Frieda, and the dislike between her and Olga is obvious.  However, when K. asks Frieda if she knows Klamm, Olga laughs uncontrollably.  Frieda asks if K. wants to see Klamm, and K. says yes.  He looks through a small peephole in a door next to the bar and sees Klamm sitting there, sleeping.  Then he asks if Frieda knows him well, and finds out that she is Klamm's mistress, and this makes her very respectable and important in K.'s eyes.  The two of them make small talk for a little while, and K. says that maybe they could talk more privately with the people in the bar gone.  Frieda thinks K. wants to take her away from Klamm, and K. jokes that yes, he hopes to make her his mistress.  Then he decides to leave, but Frieda tells him he can stay for the night, just as soon as she gets rid of the peasants and officials' servants who are now carousing with Olga in the bar.  She takes out a whip and hollers, "In the name of Klamm, into the stables, all of you!" and they hurry out.  Immediately after they hear footsteps and K. hides behind the counter.  The landlord comes in and wants to know where K. is.  Frieda insists, with her foot on K.'s chest, that he must have left, even suggesting he might be behind the counter, then leaning down to kiss K. and saying, "No, he's not here."  The landlord leaves, then Frieda turns off the light and joins him behind the counter.  Then there's the big deal sex scene on the floor of the bar, rolling around in puddles of beer, lying in each other's arms for hours.  This is interrupted only by Klamm calling for Frieda, who says she will never go to him again and says, "I'm with the land surveyor."  Then Frieda points out the two assistants who have mysteriously appeared, claiming to have looked for K. all night and have sat here for a long time.  It is now day, and Olga turns up, upset that K. didn't go home with her, especially "on account of a woman like that!"  Frieda has packed her few clothes and leaves with K. and the assistants for the Bridge Inn, and she is very familiar with the landlady there, calling her "little mother" (although she is in fact an orphan; she used to live at the Bridge Inn, as a stable girl).  She moves in with K. and unfortunately the assistants do too.

Day 3

He stays in bed all that day and the next night, Frieda waiting on him, and finally wakes up refreshed on his fourth day in the village.

Day 4

K. wants to get rid of the people in his room and speak with Frieda alone, and when he finally does so the two of them go at it again on the floor.  The maids come upstairs after and throw a sheet over them.  When K. gets up again, the assistants are back in the corner, where they usually are, and so is the landlady.  K. wants to leave to see the Mayor to find out what is going on with his job, but the landlady demands he stay, so they can talk about Frieda.  K. declares his intention to marry her, and Frieda bursts into tears, saying, "Why me?" before throwing herself into K.'s arms, kissing him wildly.  K. says he must speak to Klamm about Frieda, which Frieda and the landlady say is impossible, he will never speak to K.  The landlady says that K. doesn't understand the Castle or how things are in the village—Klamm never even speaks to the villagers, much less a stranger like K.  Besides, now Klamm has lost all interest in Frieda.  K. argues, saying that they don't know that for sure, and he insists on trying to talk to Klamm.  The landlady tells him again that he doesn't know what he's doing and what he does do he does wrongly.  She says that without her kindness, K. would be out on the street.  K. says no, he can stay at the Barnabas house, which leads to a discussion of the family, "that riffraff."  The conversation ends with the landlady insisting once again that K. is totally ignorant about everything in the village and he must not try to speak with Klamm, but K. insists on doing so.

K. then visits the Mayor, who is supposed to tell him about his job, finding him sick in his bed, attended by his wife Mizzi.  The Mayor tells him that the truth is, there is no need for a land surveyor, and that the Castle decree summoning one was first put out years ago.  The Mayor insisted, in a letter, that one was not needed, but that file was lost, and so the case became mired in the Castle bureaucracy, bouncing between two different departments and keeping the official Sordini very busy.  And this is only the smallest case!  The Mayor tells Mizzi to look for the original decree in the mountains of papers in his cabinet and on the floor—there's also a barn filled with them—and also enlisting the assistants' help, but they mostly fool around.  They have no luck, and K. says that the whole story amuses him.  After the Mayor gets through his lengthy tale, K. shows him the letter from Klamm confirming his hiring as the land surveyor.  The signature is valid, but the contents don't mean much—just that Klamm, if need be, will look after K. personally.  K. insists it's more than that—after all, the night he arrived, an official called Fritz confirmed his hiring.  The Mayor says that you can't always be sure—people up there may be having their own personal jokes.  Besides, could you be sure that you were actually talking to an official and not some lowly secretary?  K. is confused by all this and leaves.

K. goes back to the inn, where the landlord is waiting for him, wondering if he has new lodgings.  He and the landlady, Gardena, have just had a fight, and he goes in to talk to her.  The landlady has been waiting for him in bed, in a room next to the kitchen, and after throwing everyone out of the kitchen, wants to talk to K. and show him something.  She has a shawl, a nightcap, and a photo of a messenger that summoned her to Klamm.  These are all from Klamm, and are the reason she has been able to stay alive all these years.  Her story is this: when she was a young girl, over twenty years ago, Klamm sent for her and made her his mistress.  Three times he called her, but never a fourth.  Gardena was devestated.  She couldn't understand at first, but he must have simply forgotten about her.  She sat in the garden in front of her house crying, where a neighbor boy, Hans, saw her and consoled her.  She ended up marrying him, and then Hans's uncle sold them the Bridge Inn, which needed a lot of fixing up, and she tried to forget about Klamm through working hard at the inn, so much so that now she is pretty ill from it.  She is still very sensitive about Klamm, insisting that K. not say bad things about him.  This brings up again K.'s desire to speak with Klamm, and he finally gets Gardena to promise to try to make inquiries, but she insists he not do anything himself.  He refuses, though, and she gets up and lets in the people who have been waiting patiently outside for their lunch.

K. goes upstairs to his room, which has been pleasantly rearranged by Frieda to seem more like a home, and meets the teacher sitting there.  The teacher says that K. was very impolite to the Mayor, who just made a deposition concerning the meeting with K. to him.  Nevertheless, the Mayor was willing, since there was no need for a land surveyor, to give him a job as the school janitor, which the teacher thinks is just as unnecessary.  K. rejects this contemptuously, and the teacher leaves, but then Frieda comes up, very upset, and tells K. that Gardena is throwing him out, since she is humiliated by having said too much during their conversation, and getting nothing but rude rebuffs in return.  Frieda tells K. that he must accept the job, which would at least let them live in the schoolhouse.  K. finally agrees, hurrying to catch up with the teacher, and he accepts, telling K. that he has to clean the school, do the gardening, shovel snow, and many other things.  He leaves, and the maids come in to take back their room.  Frieda packs their things while K. makes his way to the Herrenhoff to try to meet up with Klamm.

K. arrives at the Herrenhof and goes to the room where he saw Klamm, but the door is locked and the peephole has been blocked.  Frieda's successor as barmaid, Pepi, comes up to K. and wants to know how Frieda is doing.  After all, they used to sleep together in the same bed, and were sort of friends, although she didn't really know her very well.  K. wants to know if Klamm is still in the room, but no, he's about to leave and his sleigh is already waiting for him out in the courtyard.  K. immediately runs out and finds the sleigh sitting there, with nobody but the coachman there.  K. sits and waits, but the coachman tells him it could be a very long time and offers him some brandy, which K. will have to fetch from the inside of the sleigh.  He goes in and finds it to be very comfortable, stuffed with pillows, and drinks the very good brandy, only to be surprised by footsteps.  He gets out quickly, spilling the brandy all over the inside of the sleigh in the process, only to find some strange man, not Klamm, complain about K.'s being there.  K. says he's waiting for someone, but the man says he'll miss him anyway, and tells the coachman to unharness the horses and put the sleigh away, which he does, then goes inside.  K. continues waiting out in the courtyard alone.

K. finally comes back in to the bar, where he sees the man who talked to him sitting at a table over a pile of papers with none other than Gardena standing in front of him.  K. goes to the bar and orders some brandy, which he finds undrinkable after the good stuff in the sleigh, only to see Gardena hurrying to the door with Pepi and the man, and they peek outside.  It turns out that Klamm finally left, but only after K. did.  Klamm will, of course, not speak to K.  The man, who turns out to be Klamm's village secretary, Momus, needs some information from K. to fill out a deposition, but K. refuses to be interrogated.  Momus says that this is his only way to reach Klamm, even though it is unlikely he will even read the deposition, but K. refuses all the more.  Gardena insists that K. submit, but K. wants to know if answering the questions will give him an opportunity to see Klamm.  Naturally no, but the landlady insists that being interrogated by a secretary of Klamm's is practically an honor, that it has Klamm's spirit and his approval, and basically that refusing him would be refusing Klamm.  K. is unimpressed and leaves.

K. walks out into the street and meets up with his assistants, as well as Barnabas, who has another letter for him.  Incredibly, it says that Klamm is happy with the work K. has done as land surveyor, and also with the assistants' work, and that he should continue his good work.  K. is very upset; obviously Klamm has no idea what is going on.  Barnabas says he will deliver K.'s message, and also the other earlier one.  This astonishes K.; he thought that Klamm's work took precedence over everything else, but Barnabas says that Klamm is usually in no mood to listen to him and he doesn't like to go there.  Finally K. tells Barnabas he must deliver this message tomorrow; that he wants a personal meeting with Klamm.  Barnabas says he'll do his best, although K. isn't very sure about that, and says his sisters say hello.  K. says he'll be waiting for Barnabas at the school tomorrow and sets off there with the assistants.

K. arrives at the schoolhouse and meets Frieda there, asleep.  They are living in one of the rooms in the school, which is not only used for classes but also for gymnastics, and has equipment scattered around the room.  Frieda has some food for him and they eat.  Frieda laughs at the assistants pulling their idiotic antics, and K. tells her to stop, that she only encourages them by doing that.  He wants to get rid of them and that won't be easy if Frieda is amused and charmed by their antics.  Frieda says she will, but that this was the way she dealt with it.  Needing some wood since the room is freezing, they then go to the woodshed, which is locked, and break into it, taking some wood.  Then they go to sleep on a straw mattress.  In the middle of the night, K. is awakened by a noise, and wakes up to find Arthur lying next to him on the mattress.  He hits him hard and Arthur, crying, takes off.  Frieda had been awakened by the cat jumping on her and Arthur had decided to see what the mattress was like.  Then they go back to sleep.

Day 5

They wake up to find that some of the students have already come and are standing there staring at them.  As they are rushing around getting dressed and trying to clean up, Miss Gisa, another teacher, comes in and is outraged over the fact that they aren't up yet.  She shoves their things off her desk with a crash and is most outraged that her cat's paw seems to be hurt; she calls over K. to see and scratches his hand with the paw until she draws blood.  As they set to work cleaning the schoolroom, the teacher shows up, furious that the shed has been broken into.  He demands to know who did it, and Frieda claims she did, while K. was away.  The teacher asks the assistants, who simply point at K.  The teacher threatens to beat them for lying when Frieda finally gives in and says that the assistants are telling the truth.  The teacher tells K. that he's fired, but K. insists that the Mayor gave him the post and only he can fire him.  The teacher is unsatisfied and tells him to get out, to no avail.  Finally he and Gisa take the children into the other classroom so they can clean up and slam the door.

K. tells the assistants to get lost, they're fired, and don't come back.  They go outside, and K. locks the door behind them.  They start knocking at the door and whining to be let back in, but K. refuses, even after they start jumping up and down on the stone fence in front of the windows in an effort to get K. to look at them, whereupon K. simply closes the curtains.  K. then speaks to Frieda, about whether she was happier at the Herrenhof then here, and whether she misses Klamm.  Frieda tells K. that the assistants were always trying to get to her, were always trying to get in between her and K.  She gets up and looks out the window at them and feels sorry for them, despite what she just finished saying.  She confesses that despite their antics, she is attracted to and charmed by them.  She even suggests that they have been sent from Klamm himself.  K. says though, that obviously Klamm, from his last letter, has no idea what's really going on, and that he's determined to get rid of them.  Then they go back to work cleaning.  A knock at the door interrupts K. from his work; he rushes to the door thinking it's Barnabas with the answer to his message, but in fact it's a boy, Hans, from the class who seems interested in helping them after seeing how badly they were treated.  It turns out that K. first saw him at Lasemann's house; they had gone there to take a bath in their tub.  His mother had even asked about him once, so perhaps she could help.  She is sick and his father wouldn't like the idea, but perhaps K. could go to see her for a little while.  After all, she's from the Castle.  They talk to him about what he wants to be when he grows up, and he says he wants to be like K.  Not a janitor, but because they seem to be similar and there is the chance that K. will triumph in the end.  And he also likes K.'s walking stick.  Finally he leaves, after saying that K. might be able to talk to his mother the day after tomorrow.  The teacher comes in and demands that they finish cleaning and that K. bring him his lunch.  K. is surprisingly willing to drop everything to get it, but then the teacher tells him to finish cleaning up first.  Frieda asks him why he gives in so much to him, and K. says he's doing it since he must keep this job for both of their sakes.  As they work, Frieda thinks about what has happened, as well as her conversations with the landlady about K., and she finally speaks.  Basically, she fears that the reason K. is interested in her is because he is using her to get to Klamm.  Her only worth to him is that she was Klamm's mistress.  He might be able to use her as a bargaining chip with Klamm, for instance, treating her as property, not as a person.  And if he decides that Klamm doesn't matter to him anymore, she will become simply a burden to him, since he can't use her for anything.  K. wants to know if this is Frieda or the landlady's opinion; mostly it's the landlady's, and she strongly doubts it after her experiences with K.; it seems that K. will do anything for her, even blow his chances with Klamm.  Nevertheless, Frieda continues, listening to him talk to Hans worried her, since although he talked to him sweetly and seemed interested in him, the only thing he really wanted is some way to visit with his mother, and he was using him for that purpose.  All he cared about was his own affairs.  So what's the difference between the boy and her?  Everything, says K., he really does love her and their goals are the same, so if he's pushing for his own goals he is pushing for hers too.  Frieda isn't totally convinced; she wants to trust K. but can't do it completely.  After this conversation, K. has to leave to get the teacher his lunch, and leaves.  He passes one of the assistants—the other has apparently given up—and notices Frieda open the window and wave to the assistant and then close the window, still smiling.

K. is back at the school, late in the evening, shoveling the snow from the path.  The assistant is finally gone after K. chased him away, and Miss Gisa's attitude seems to have lightened up after Schwarzer shows up—he likes her a lot, and she seems to like his company; they sit and grade the students' copybooks together.  K. muses on what effect Schwarzer had on him the first night, demanding that the authorities confirm his story and focusing attention on him right away, as opposed to letting him approach them at a somewhat more leisurely pace.  Barnabas still hasn't shown up, so K. decides to go to his house to see what's going on.  He walks in and asks about Barnabas; Olga is out chopping wood and Amalia is lying down, exhausted, and tells him that Barnabas should be coming soon, and that he should wait for Olga, since she has something to tell him.  She wants to know some more about Frieda, and so does Olga when she comes in.  He tells them how she's doing in the schoolhouse and even invites them to visit them sometime, since he is desperate to leave.  To his surprise Amalia accepts, but says she is only joking and that he should come over more often, using Barnabas as an excuse.  And Olga will tell him more about Barnabas and his messenger job.

K. and Olga sit down on a bench by the stove, where she tells him all about Barnabas's job.  She is his confidante and tells her about what he is doing.  Being a Castle messenger is an honor for Barnabas, he can go to the offices and see some of the officials, but there are problems.  He was supposed to get a uniform, but he hasn't gotten it yet, and Barnabas and Olga are concerned, even doubting that what he is doing is important, or even if it's Castle work at all.  Barnabas receives messages to deliver from Klamm, but sometimes doubts that the person he's talking to really is Klamm.  Everyone who sees him seems to come up with different descriptions of him, matching each other only in the essential matters—the details are highly variable.  When Barnabas goes to the Castle, he is only allowed in what might be called the anteroom to the offices, which has a long table across the middle, at which officials read thick books.  They have secretaries, to whom they dictate in whispers.  Barnabas stands there waiting, and it can take a long time for Klamm to notice him, if he does at all.  The letters he received to take to K. were given to him by the secretary, and the truth is that those are the only messages he's ever had to deliver.  The whole thing seems pointless, and Barnabas frequently despairs over it, wondering if his job is any use at all.  But K. is sure that it must have some importance, since the Castle is in fact making use of him.  Olga says Barnabas only took the job after the family's downfall, and does K. really want to know about it?  Yes, he does, and Olga continues.
 
 

Olga tells K. about her family's disgrace.  It all started when they went to a festival for the Fire Brigade, since their father worked as a fire official, three years ago, on the third of July (which, incidentally, just happens to be Kafka's birthday) and a Castle official named Sortini took notice of Amalia, since she was so beautifully dressed and was wearing an impressive garnet necklace.  He watched her for a long time, and when the family finally left they teased her about loving him.  The next morning a messenger showed up at her window with a message from Sortini, summoning Amalia to the Herrenhof in a rather obscene manner.  Amalia's response is to tear up the letter and shove the pieces in the messenger's face.  This refusal is unforgivable in the eyes of the village.  Olga compares Amalia's situation with Frieda's at length, which annoys K.  After all, both were summoned by an official, the only difference is that Frieda went and Amalia refused, although K. continues to insist that they are different.  Ever since then, Frieda has utterly despised them, even though they used to be fairly well off, while Frieda was merely a poor orphan, the tables have turned, so that Frieda frequently won't even deign to serve Olga at the bar.  But immediately after, the whole incident, things seemed to be going all right, since the festival had turned out well for the village Fire Brigade.
 
 

Olga continues her story.  Everyone was curious about what had happened, and soon people are abandoning them en masse—taking back their shoes (their father used to make and fix shoes) and finally the chief of the Fire Brigade comes and tells the father that he is dismissed from his job.  Amalia, although she is the youngest, seemed to be the most mature, understanding what had happened and determined to go through it without tears and with her head held high.  Even today she seems to be the real head of the family, taking care of the parents and giving advice to her siblings.  Well, the family waited for the Castle to make some complaint against them, but nothing happened.  This didn't stop them from constantly discussing it and trying to figure out ways to get out of it.  Amalia wouldn't have anything to do with it, though, so the rest of the family is reduced to whispering around the table fruitlessly.  They ended up having to move from their comfortable house to this tiny cottage.  The villagers had completely ostracized them; everything that they said and did was held in total contempt, as if their very existence was intolerable.
 
 

Olga continues her family saga.  Their father wanted to ask the Castle for forgiveness, but when he managed to speak to the people there, they asked him who had ever accused him at the Castle?  Nobody had accused him of any wrongdoing, so there was nothing to apologize for.  He took to bribing the officials, but the only result was to spend the little money the family had left.  Obsessed by the idea of restoring Amalia's honor, he got another idea, to sit next to the road leading to the Castle and make his plea to Castle officials who pass by him in their carriages.  However, this plan was doomed from the start, since hardly anybody would stop to listen to him and those that did look at him seemed to be merely amused by him.  But he continued waiting in his spot by the road for months, eventually bec oming arthritic and weak.  The mother joined him there for a while, and she too became ill.  The strain on the father drove him insane, and he kept insisting that he had almost succeeded, but was prevented at the last moment.  Both parents became too ill to leave the house, and Amalia takes care of them.
 
 

Olga goes on with the story.  She needed to find some way, however small, to keep hope alive for the father, so the new plan was to find the messenger Amalia had insulted and make amends to him.  So they would visit the Herrenhof, looking among the officials' servants for the messenger.  Frieda was displeased to see them around, but she did find a use for Olga.  For two years now, a couple times a week, Olga spends the night in the stables with the servants, and in this way she does have a connection with the Castle, in that she now knows most of the servants.  They promise to help her if she ever comes to the Castle, but those promises mean nothing.  She has never yet found the messenger, but she doesn't regret it, since she does have the connection with the Castle, however tenuous.  There are ways to enter the Castle services unofficially, since the official channels take too long and are too difficult to get past, this can be avoided by hanging around the Castle and simply doing what the officials ask you to do, and this is how Barnabas got his job as messenger.  However, the real importance of his job is in question, since after all the first letter to K. from Klamm was his first job ever, and it's impossible to know how important or unimportant these letters are.  At this point someone knocks on the door, and it turns out that it's someone looking for K.  Amalia and Olga shield K., not letting the man enter and saying he left, and K. leaves the house by a back route.

He comes secretly up to the man standing in the street and finding out it's actually one of the assistants, Jeremiah, but he has changed—he seems older and is much more serious.  He says that after K.'s mistreatment of them, Arthur went to the Castle to file a complaint against him, and Jeremiah and Frieda are moving to the Herrenhof together.  So Frieda has abandoned K.  Jeremiah says he must go back to her,  insisting that he rescued her from K.  Besides, now that he isn't K.'s assistant anymore, he doesn't care about him at all.  Then Barnabas rushes up to K. with the news that he couldn't present K.'s request to Klamm since he kept ignoring him, but that he met Erlanger, another official, who wants to see K. in his room at the Herrenhof.  Jeremiah takes off and K. catches up with him, and together they go there.

K. arrives at the Herrenhof only to have to wait outside to be called, and there are quite a few people standing around waiting for Erlanger.  K. is the first called, along with Gerstäcker, though, and goes inside to the corridor where the officials have their rooms.  However, Erlanger is asleep and he'll have to wait for him to wake up.  So he waits out in the hall with Gerstäcker.

K. looks down the hall and sees Frieda; he rushes over to talk to her.  She has her job as the barmaid again, but since Pepi didn't want to leave yet she is working as a chambermaid here for the moment.  She tells K. that it's over between them after he spent so much time at Amalia's house, and K. tries to tell her that she is mistaken; he only went there to see if Barnabas was there.  Frieda is still upset that he went after "those people," and that Jeremiah saved her from the schoolhouse—he used to be a playmate of hers when they were children, and owing to the circumstances after K. left, they fell in love.  Now he stays in her room at the Herrenhof.  K. thinks the only reason Jeremiah was interested in her is because since she was his master's fiancée, she was forbidden to him and so he wanted her; now that he has her he'll soon lose interest; so she should come back to him.  Frieda says they might still be together but K. messed up; she goes to check on Jeremiah, who is sick, then tells K. that she will never come back to him again, ever.  Then she goes back in her room and shuts the door.

(The first edition of The Castle ended here; K.'s irrevocable loss of Frieda seemed to be his decisive defeat.)

K. goes back and tries to find Erlanger's door, and enters a room to see if he's in there.  But it turns out to be another official's room, Bürgel, who stops K. from leaving.  After some small talk, he tells K. in an unrelentingly verbose and highly legalistic speech that it is possible to get your case taken care of if, instead of waiting for it to be done through the official channels, which could take forever, you could accidentally wander into the room of another official who is able to help you, and he won't be able to say no.  K. is too tired to pay any attention to this speech, nodding off and failing to see what importantce this could have for him.  Finally, when it is about 5 a.m., Bürgel dismisses K. and he leaves.

K. runs into Erlanger in the hall, who is just about to leave and tells him to get Frieda back to her job as barmaid as soon as possible, since they didn't want to offend, or even potentially offend, Klamm's sensibilities by having her gone too long.  He leaves and K. watches the spectacle of the officials waking up.  Servants come with a cart piled with files and give them out to each official, but sometimes mistakes are made and the servants get into a huge fight with the officials over the files, which the officials don't want to give up.  Oddly enough, the only time an official leaves his room is to quickly grab the files left outside his door.  The officials get upset and start pushing the buzzer for the landlord, who comes up with the landlady in a great hurry and take K. with them out of the hall, telling him that since he was there, the officials couldn't leave their rooms, and so their day has been pretty much ruined.  They take K. to the bar, where he is allowed to sleep.  Just before he falls asleep, though, he tells the landlady that, contrary to what she has been thinking, he has been looking at her dress, not at her.

Day 6

K. wakes up in the bar of the Herrenhof towards evening.  Pepi is happy to see him and proceeds to tell him her view of the events of the past few days.  Frieda is really a terrible person, she plotted to make Pepi miserable by taking back her job, sending Pepi back to her miserable job as chambermaid.  And she worked so hard and was so obviously very much better then Frieda, who is very sly and manipulative to make up for her lack of good looks.  She got everyone to respect her as a mistress of Klamm's, but when that began to wear off, she tried something new by getting K. to take her away from him.  K. is in thrall to Frieda, doing everything she wants, but at the right time Frieda leaves K. and returns to her job, with all the attention on her from her "scandal," leaving poor Pepi out in the cold.  K. tells Pepi that none of what she's said about him and Frieda is true, that he wasn't being decieved by her—although Pepi seems to like being decieved—and that she isn't as bad as Pepi claims.  Pepi says that K. is just in love with Frieda since she ran away, and offers him a place to stay, with her and her two fellow chambermaids in their tiny, womblike room.  Just then the landlady comes in and calls K. on the carpet about his remark about her dress last night.  They talk for awhile, K. saying that her dresses are just a little too much and too old-fashioned, the landlady saying that K. is insufferably rude and cheeky.  She takes K. to her office to look at her clothes cabinet.  K. just has time to tell Pepi he'll take her up on her offer.  The landlady shows K. her gigantic wardrobe—she has two more upstairs—all filled with these dresses that K. says are too much.  Since he's so knowledgeable about clothes, he should become her fashion coordinator, she says sarcastically.  She then tells him to get lost, but as she leaves she says she's getting another dress tomorrow and might send for him to see what his opinion is.
 

Continuation of the Manuscript    Then Gerstäcker, who has been waiting to see K. at the Herrenhof, tells K. he wants him to work for him by taking care of his horses.  K. accompanies Gerstäcker to his house to talk it over, where he meets Gerstäcker's mother, who has K. sit down next to her and is about to speak when the novel cuts off.

Kafka told his friend Max Brod how the novel would end:  K., exhausted from his fruitless quest to enter the Castle, would be on his deathbed, around which the villagers gather.  As he is dying, he gets a message from the Castle stating that although K.'s claims to staying in the village are not valid, nevertheless, taking into account the circumstances, he will be allowed to live and work there.

K.    The land surveyor sent for from the Castle, but it turns out there is no need for him.  He tries to get through the labyrinthine Castle bureaucracy to find out what really is the case behind his summons, but in the week the novel takes place, he not only doesn't get through but even loses interest in the search.  Interestingly enough, he gives his name over the phone as "Joseph."

Hans, the landlord at the Bridge Inn   He is against K.'s staying at the inn, but is overruled by his wife, and seems to be very much under his wife's thumb.

Gardena, the landlady at the Bridge Inn  One of the more interesting characters in the book, Gardena has her own story to tell, that she was once so honored as to be summoned by Klamm three times, and only her memories and mementos keep her going, since she was almost broken by Klamm's refusal to summon her a fourth time.  She is very close to Frieda.  She kicks K. out of the inn after he refuses to take her advice concerning a meeting with Klamm.

Klamm    One of the Castle officials, he sometimes comes down to the village and stays at the Herrenhof Inn, where K is allowed by Frieda to catch a glimpse of him through a peephole.  However, even though he spends much time trying to get an interview with him, that's as close as he'll ever get to him, since Klamm absolutely refuses to see him.  He used to have Frieda as a mistress until she went off with Klamm, and also called Gardena three times.  Nevertheless he is very mysterious, he is everywhere and nowhere.

Frieda    The barmaid at the Herrenhof bar, she is proud of being Klamm's mistress but then decides to go off with K and becomes his fiancée.  She loves K. and will do anything for him, but hates Amalia and her family, which eventually leads to her leaving him when he spends too long at their house one night.  Instead she returns to the Herrenhof with her new love, Jeremiah!

Pepi    The former chambermaid who takes Frieda's place as barmaid at the Herrenhof bar.  She doesn't like Frieda, and is happy to advance to her position, but is replaced by her after she leaves K., for which Pepi blames K.  She offers K. a place to stay with her and the other chambermaids, though, and pressures her to accept it.

Arthur (Artur) and Jeremiah (Jeremias)  The two "assistants" assigned to K. by the Castle, they spend far more time annoying K. by their childish antics than trying to help him.  Finally he gets rid of them by locking them out, only to have Arthur file complaints about him to the Castle, and Jeremiah steal Frieda away from him.

Sordini  One of the Castle officials working on K.'s case, or rather the case of whether a land surveyor is needed.  Not to be confused with Sortini.

Sortini    A Castle official who takes a liking to Amaila during a festival and writes her an obscene letter insisting that she come to him at the Herrenhof, which she rejects contemptuously.

Barnabas    A messenger from the Castle, whose duties are somewhat uncertain.  His family is in dire straits ever since Amaila rejected Sortini's advances three years ago.

Olga    Barnabas and Amalia's sister, who has been trying her best to help her family get out of their situation by spending nights with the Castle officials' servants, trying to get information, but with little luck.  She is Barnabas's confidante and tells K. the entire story of her family's downfall, as well as her brother's activities concerning the Castle.

Amalia    Although she is the youngest, she has the power in her family.  She rejected Sortini's advances and thus she and her family are outcasts in the village.  She is very proud and strong.

The teacher    K. first meets him soon after he arrives in the village; later on he offers K., unwillingly, the job as the school janitor.  He is unhappy with K.'s work and wants to get rid of him.

Miss Gisa    The other teacher, she is annoyed at K. for oversleeping and goes so far as to scratch K's hand with her cat's claws.  She seems to like Schwarzer.

Schwarzer    The son of a sub-steward, who annoys K. the first night by demanding that he have permission to stay at the village and calls up the Castle to confirm his story.  He is in thrall of Miss Gisa, sitting in her classes and standing by her door.

Lasemann    K. briefly visits his house early in the novel, where he sees Hans and his mother.

Hans    The little boy who talks to K. in an effort to help him.  K. is interested in seeing his mother, who is from the Castle; Hans also tells K. he wants to be just like him when he grows up.

Bürgel    The official whose room K. accidently walks into, and listens to his lengthy speech about people accidently walking into an official's office who might be able to help them; K. fails to profit from this advice because he's exhausted.

Erlanger    Wants to see K. at the Herrenhof at night; finally sees him at 5 a.m. and tells him that Frieda should be returned to her post as barmaid right away.

The landlord and landlady at the Herrenhof  They are quite annoyed at K.'s lounging in the hall where the officials stay; they couldn't leave until he did.  K. tells the landlady her dress is pretty as he is nodding off; as a result she demands that he stop insulting her clothes and look at her giant wardrobe full of dresses.  She might even call for him tomorrow, when she gets a new dress; he can tell her opinion of it.

Count Westwest    The Castle is supposed to belong to him, but he remains a complete and total mystery.

Gerstäcker    He takes K. in his sleigh to the inn the second day he's there; in the last chapter he offers K. a job in his stables and takes him to his house, where the book ends abruptly, with his mother about to say something to K.

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