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to do his own defence? How would it be later? What would
his life be like in the days ahead? Would he find the way
through it all to a happy conclusion? Did a carefully worked
out defence and any other sort would have made no sense
did a carefully worked out defence not also mean he would
need to shut himself off from everything else as much as he
could? Would he survive that? And how was he to succeed
in conducting all this at the bank? It involved much more
than just submitting some documents that he could prob-
ably prepare in a few days’ leave, although it would have
been great temerity to ask for time off from the bank just at
that time, it was a whole trial and there was no way of seeing
how long it might last. This was an enormous difficulty that
had suddenly been thrown into K.’s life!
And was he supposed to be doing the bank’s work at a
time like this? He looked down at his desk. Was he sup-
posed to let people in to see him and go into negotiations
with them at a time like this? While his trial trundled on,
while the court officials upstairs in the attic room sat look-
ing at the papers for this trial, should he be worrying about
the business of the bank? Did this not seem like a kind of
torture, acknowledged by the court, connected with the
trial and which followed him around? And is it likely that
anyone in the bank, when judging his work, would take any
account of his peculiar situation? Noone and never. There
were those who knew about his trial, although it was not
quite clear who knew about it or how much. But he hoped
rumours had not reached as far as the deputy director, oth-
erwise he would obviously soon find a way of making use of

1 The Trial