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wasting made him cross, he went back again and knocked
at the first door on the fifth floor. The first thing he saw in
the small room was a large clock on the wall which already
showed ten o’clock. “Is there a joiner called Lanz who lives
here?” he asked. “Pardon?” said a young woman with black,
shining eyes who was, at that moment, washing children’s
underclothes in a bucket. She pointed her wet hand towards
the open door of the adjoining room.
K. thought he had stepped into a meeting. A medium
sized, two windowed room was filled with the most diverse
crowd of people nobody paid any attention to the person who
had just entered. Close under its ceiling it was surrounded
by a gallery which was also fully occupied and where the
people could only stand bent down with their heads and
their backs touching the ceiling. K., who found the air too
stuffy, stepped out again and said to the young woman, who
had probably misunderstood what he had said, “I asked
for a joiner, someone by the name of Lanz.” “Yes,” said the
woman, “please go on in.” K. would probably not have fol-
lowed her if the woman had not gone up to him, taken hold
of the door handle and said, “I’ll have to close the door after
you, no-one else will be allowed in.” “Very sensible,” said K.,
“but it’s too full already.” But then he went back in anyway.
He passed through between two men who were talking be-
side the door one of them held both hands far out in front
of himself making the movements of counting out money,
the other looked him closely in the eyes and someone took
him by the hand. It was a small, red-faced youth. “Come in,
come in,” he said. K. let himself be led by him, and it turned