K. at His Desk
He is her abrupt with nor excessively kind to associates. Or he is both abrupt and kind.
The telephone is, for him, a whip, a lash, but also a duit for soothing words, a sink into which he hurl gallons of syrup if it es to that.
He reads quickly, scratg brief ents ("Yes," "No") in ers of the paper. He slouches in the leather chair, looking about him with a slightly irritated air for new visitors, new difficul?ties. He spends his time sending and receiving messengers.
"I spend my time sending and receiving messen?gers," he says. "Some of these messages are im?portant. Others are not."
Described by Secretaries
A: "Quite frankly I think he fets a lot of things. But the things he fets are those which are iial. I even think he might fet delib?erately, to leave his mind free. He has the ability to get rid of unimportaails. And he does."
B: "Once when I was sick, I hadnt heard from him, and I thought he had fotten me. You know usually your boss will send flowers or something like that. I was in the hospital, and I was mighty blue. I was in a room with anirl, and her boss had her anythiher. Then sud?denly the door opened and there he was with the biggest bunch of yellow tulips Id ever seen in my life. And the irls boss was with him, and he had tulips too. They were standing there with all those tulips, smiling."
Behind the Bar
At a crowded party, he wanders behind the bar to make himself a Scotd water. His hand is otle of Scotch, his glass is waiting. The bar?tender, a small man in a beige uniform with gilt buttons, politely asks K. to return to the other side, the guests side, of the bar. "You let one be?hind here, they all be behind here," the bartender says.
K. Reading the Neer
His reas are impossible to catalogue. Often he will find a hat amuses him endlessly, some ae involving, say, a fireman who has pro?pelled his apparatus at record-breaking speed to the wrong address. These small stories are clipped, carried about in a pocket, to be produced at appropriate moments for the pleasure of friends. Other maions please him less. An at of ahquake in Chile, with its thousands of dead and homeless, may depress him for weeks. He memorizes the terrible statistics, quoting them everywhere and saying, with a grave look: "We must do something." Important as often fol?low, sometimes within a matter of hours. (Oher hand, these two kinds of responses may be, on a given day, inexplicably reversed.)
The more trivial aspects of the daily itemization are skipped. While reading, he maintains a rapid drumming of his fiips on the desktop. He re?ceives twelve neers, but of these, only four are regarded as serious.
Attitude Toward His Work
"Sometimes I t seem to do anything. The work is there, piled up, it seems to me an insur?mountable obstacle, really out of reach. I sit and look at it, w where to begin, how to take hold of it. Perhaps I pick up a piece of paper, try to read it but my mind is elsewhere, I am thinking of something else, I t seem to get the gist of it, it seems meaningless, devoid of i, not having to do with human affairs, drained of life. Then, in an hour, or even a moment, everything ges suddenly: I realize I only have to do it, hurl myself into the midst of it, proceed meically, the first thing and then the sed thing, that it is simply a matter of moving from oep to the , plow?ing through it. I bee ied, I bee ex?cited, I work very fast, thin