Page 141 - the-trial

the judges’ mood is usually more apparent than real and
most often not even that. No, K. has seen for himself that
the court officials, including some who are quite high up,
come forward without being asked, are glad to give infor-
mation which is fully open or at least easy to understand,
they discuss the next stages in the proceedings, in fact in
some cases they can be won over and are quite willing to
adopt the other person’s point of view. However, when this
happens, you should never trust them too far, as however
firmly they may have declared this new point of view in fa-
vour of the defendant they might well go straight back to
their offices and write a report for the court that says just
the opposite, and might well be even harder on the defen-
dant than the original view, the one they insist they’ve been
fully dissuaded from. And, of course, there’s no way of de-
fending yourself from this, something said in private is
indeed in private and cannot then be used in public, it’s not
something that makes it easy for the defence to keep those
gentlemen’s favour. On the other hand, it’s also true that the
gentlemen don’t become involved with the defence which
will of course be done with great expertise just for philan-
thropic reasons or in order to be friendly, in some respects
it would be truer to say that they, too, have it allocated to
them. This is where the disadvantages of a court structure
that, right from the start, stipulates that all proceedings
take place in private, come into force. In normal, mediocre
trials its officials have contact with the public, and they’re
very well equipped for it, but here they don’t; normal trials
run their course all by themselves, almost, and just need a

1 0 The Trial