Page 187 - the-trial

And of course, it always wakes me up when I hear the door
opened beside the bed, however fast asleep I am. If you
could hear the way I curse him as he climbs over my bed in
the morning you’d lose all respect for judges. I suppose I
could take the key away from him but that’d only make
things worse. It only takes a tiny effort to break any of the
doors here off their hinges.” All the time the painter was
speaking, K. was considering whether he should take off his
coat, but he finally realised that, if he didn’t do so, he would
be quite unable to stay here any longer, so he took off his
frock coat and lay it on his knee so that he could put it back
on again as soon as the conversation was over. He had hard-
ly done this when one of the girls called out, “Now he’s
taken his coat off!” and they could all be heard pressing
around the gaps in the planks to see the spectacle for them-
selves. “The girls think I’m going to paint your portrait,”
said the painter, “and that’s why you’re taking your coat off.”
“I see,” said K., only slightly amused by this, as he felt little
better than he had before even though he now sat in his
shirtsleeves. With some irritation he asked, “What did you
say the two other possibilities were?” He had already forgot-
ten the terms used. “Apparent acquittal and deferment,”
said the painter. “It’s up to you which one you choose. You
can get either of them if I help you, but it’ll take some effort
of course, the difference between them is that apparent ac-
quittal needs concentrated effort for a while and that
deferment takes much less effort but it has to be sustained.
Now then, apparent acquittal. If that’s what you want I’ll
write down an assertion of your innocence on a piece of pa-

1 The Trial