Page 17 - the-trial

or those who were arresting him? He became somewhat
cross and began to walk up and down. No-one stopped him
doing this and he pushed his sleeves back, felt his chest,
straightened his hair, went over to the three men, said, “It
makes no sense,” at which these three turned round to face
him and came towards him with serious expressions. He fi-
nally came again to a halt in front of the supervisor’s desk.
“State Attorney Hasterer is a good friend of mine,” he said,
“can I telephone him?” “Certainly,” said the supervisor, “but
I don’t know what the point of that will be, I suppose you
must have some private matter you want to discuss with
him.” “What the point is?” shouted K., more disconcerted
that cross. “Who do you think you are? You want to see
some point in it while you’re carrying out something as
pointless as it could be? It’s enough to make you cry! These
gentlemen first accost me, and now they sit or stand about
in here and let me be hauled up in front of you. What point
there would be, in telephoning a state attorney when I’m os-
tensibly under arrest? Very well, I won’t make the telephone
call.” “You can call him if you want to,” said the supervisor,
stretching his had out towards the outer room where the
telephone was, “please, go on, do make your phone call.”
“No, I don’t want to any more,” said K., and went over to the
window. Across the street, the people were still there at the
window, and it was only now that K. had gone up to his win-
dow that they seemed to become uneasy about quietly
watching what was going on. The old couple wanted to get
up but the man behind them calmed them down. “We’ve
got some kind of audience over there,” called K. to the su-

1 The Trial