Kafka Unleashed

“Would you be so kind as to come down?” K. asked—“There’s really no need for sermonizing. I’d greatly prefer that you come join me here below.” “Now I’m quite ready to join you” the priest replied, perhaps he was sorry about his earlier outburst. As he was unfastening the hook that held the lamp, he continued on: “It was necessary at first that I speak to you from a certain distance, otherwise I’m too easily influenced and I forget whom it is that I serve.” K. waited for him at the bottom of the stairway. The priest reached his hand out to him already from near the top. “Would you spare me a little of your time?” K. asked him. “I can spare all the time that you need” replied the priest, and he passed the small lamp over to K. so that K. would be the one carrying it. Even from up close there was a solemnity, a certain sparkle in the priest’s gaze that was unchanged. “I feel that you’re a real friend” K. said. They were now pacing back and forth through the darkness of the side gallery. “You are an exception from all of the others who belong with the system. I can trust you much more than any of them, at least judging from the ones that I’ve met. I feel that I can open myself up when I speak with you.” “Don’t deceive yourself” the priest declared. “In what am I deceiving myself?” K. replied. “As regards the court you are deceiving yourself” the priest responded, and he went on—“Within the introductory writings to the law this is what stands written as regards this deception: Before the threshold to the law there stands a guardian. A landsman approaches the guardian and pleads with him that he might enter into the domain of law. But the guardian says that he’s unable for now to allow it. The man considers this and then he asks whether, then, he will be allowed to enter later on. ‘It’s possible,’ the guardian says—‘but not now.’ As the entranceway to the law is open—as it always is—and the guardian steps off to one side, the man leans himself over so that he might see what lies within by peering through the entrance. As the guardian notices this he laughs and says: ‘If you find it so tempting, well go right ahead—attempt to get inside despite my having forbidden it. But do take note, I am powerful. And I’m merely the lowest of the guardians. Proceeding from chamber to chamber there are more guardians and each is more powerful than the one who precedes him. I myself am unable even to bear the gaze of the third guardian.’ The landsman had never considered that such difficulties were to be expected, really, the law should always be accessible to everyone, this is what he thought. But now as he takes a closer look at this guardian in his massive fur coat, his long pointy nose, the long black strands of his tartaric beard, so he decides that after all it’s better that he wait until he has permission to go inside. The guardian gives him a stool and allows him to sit down off to one side of the entranceway. There he sits, days become years. He makes countless attempts to gain entrance and the guardian grows weary of hearing his pleading. But the guardian doesn’t disdain to speak with him about other topics, he proves to be an excellent conversationalist espousing selflessly on all sorts of things—asking him about his homeland and so on: the typical banter at which great lords are so adept. Though at the end it always comes back to the same thing: that he’s yet unable to let him enter. The man who was quite well-provisioned for his trip uses it all, everything that he has and even his most valuable possessions, as bribes for the guardian. Indeed he’d accept each item but then he’d say: ‘I’m only accepting this so that you won’t believe that there’s anything else you might do.’ During all of these years the man was constantly watching the guardian. He forgot all about the other guardians and it seemed to him that just this first one was the only obstacle preventing him entrance to the law. During the first years you could hear him loudly cursing his bad luck, that fate had treated him cruelly; later on as he aged his curses became fainter and fainter, his mutterings were more like a drone. He became childlike and since after years of watching he had become acquainted with all of the fleas that lived in the fur collar of the massive coat, so he even pleaded with the fleas that they might help him to change the guardian’s mind. Finally his eyesight was dimming and he didn’t even know whether it was really growing dark or whether it was just his eyes that were tricking him. But now in the darkness he was well able to perceive a shimmering luminescence that streamed unabatedly out from the entranceway. His life was nearing its end. Before his death all of the experiences that he had acquired over this whole time congealed in his mind to form one last question, a question that he never yet had posed. As he was no longer capable of straightening up his stiffening limbs, so he motioned to him to come over. The guardian had to bend deep-down to him since their relative proportions had altered significantly, much to the man’s detriment. ‘Now what else is it that you want to know?’—the guardian asked him—‘You’re insatiable.’ ‘Everyone strives after the law,’ said the man—‘so how come after all of these years nobody but me has attempted to enter in through the entranceway?’ The guardian was cognizant that the man was at the brink of death and so as to be heard he bellowed out his answer: ‘Here nobody but you could gain entrance as this entrance was intended for you and for you alone. Now I’m going to go lock it up.’ ”