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and I can’t follow exactly what you’re saying.” “You’re quite
right to remind me of that,” said the businessman, “you’re
new to all this, a junior. Your trial is six months old, isn’t it?
Yes, I’ve heard about it. Such a new case! But I’ve already
thought all these things through countless times, to me
they’re the most obvious things in the world.” “You must be
glad your trial has already progressed so far, are you?” asked
K., he did not wish to ask directly how the businessman’s af-
fairs stood, but received no clear answer anyway. “Yes, I’ve
been working at my trial for five years now,” said the busi-
nessman as his head sank, “that’s no small achievement.”
Then he was silent for a while. K. listened to hear whether
Leni was on her way back. On the one hand he did not want
her to come back too soon as he still had many questions to
ask and did not want her to find him in this intimate discus-
sion with the businessman, but on the other hand it irritated
him that she stayed so long with the lawyer when K. was
there, much longer than she needed to give him his soup. “I
still remember it exactly,” the businessman began again,
and K. immediately gave him his full attention, “when my
case was as old as yours is now. I only had this one lawyer at
that time but I wasn’t very satisfied with him.” Now I’ll find
out everything, thought K., nodding vigorously as if he
could thereby encourage the businessman to say everything
worth knowing. “My case,” the businessman continued,
“didn’t move on at all, there were some hearings that took
place and I went to every one of them, collected materials,
handed all my business books to the court which I later
found was entirely unnecessary I ran back and forth to the

10 The Trial