Page 103 - the-trial

just ridiculous. Look at him, look how fat he is the first
strokes of the cane will just get lost in all that fat. Do you
know what it is that’s made him so fat? He’s in the habit of,
everyone that gets arrested by him, he eats their breakfast.
Didn’t he eat up your breakfast? Yeah, I thought as much.
But a man with a belly like that can’t be made into a whip-
man and never will be, that is quite out of the question.”
“There are whip-men like that,” Willem insisted, who had
just released the belt of this trousers. “No,” said the whip-
man, striking him such a blow with the cane on his neck
that it made him wince, “you shouldn’t be listening to this,
just get undressed.” “I would make it well worth your while
if you would let them go,” said K., and without looking at
the whip-man again as such matters are best carried on
with both pairs of eyes turned down he pulled out his wal-
let. “And then you’d try and put in a complaint against me,
too,” said the whip-man, “and get me flogged. No, no!”
“Now, do be reasonable,” said K., “if I had wanted to get
these two punished I would not now be trying to buy their
freedom, would I. I could simply close the door here behind
me, go home and see or hear nothing more of it. But that’s
not what I’m doing, it really is of much more importance to
me to let them go free; if I had realised they would be pun-
ished, or even that they might be punished, I would never
have named them in the first place as they are not the ones
I hold responsible. It’s the organisation that’s to blame, the
high officials are the ones to blame.” “That’s how it is!”
shouted the policemen, who then immediately received an-
other blow on their backs, which were by now exposed. “If

10 The Trial